I lay there shaken for a moment, wondering if everything was in one piece. I wiggled my toes and was happy to learn they still worked. My right elbow was a bit sore but not badly enough to turn me around.
I looked up and down the street to see if anyone had seen the accident. I already had my jaunty quip in mind. “I meant to do that,” I would say. But the street was deserted. With no one to console me, I had no alternative but to get back on my bike and ride on to the tennis courts. When I got to the clubhouse, Juanito and the others were already there.
“Ah, there you are,” Juanito said. “We wondered if you were going to make it.”
“I wondered too,” I said, and then told the story of sliding into second base with my bicycle.
“Are you all right?” Juanito asked.
“I think so although my elbow is a little sore.” It was then that I raised my elbow to take a look for the first time. “Holy crap!” I said in English.
“Mon Dieu!” Juanito said in French.
We both stared in disbelief at a hole the size of a quarter on the inside of my elbow. The sight of it made me dizzy.
“I don’t think I’d better play tennis today guys.”
“We’ve got to get you to the doctor!” Juanito said. “You’re coming with me.”
Five minutes later, we were standing in the office of our village physician. The receptionist took one look at me, now the color of paste, and said the doctor would see me immediately.
The physician was a sixty-something, gray-haired man with a pleasant smile. “What do we have here?” he asked. He gently turned my arm over, stared at my wound, and said, “Oh, that’s not good.”
“Exactly my sentiment.”
Then the doctor did something I will never forget. He grabbed a tin box the size of an abridged dictionary and popped open the lid. There was a collection of naked scalpels, scissors, tweezers, and I’m sure a good deal of rust. He rummaged around in the box with his bare hands until he found a pair of tweezers that suited him. Then, without sterilizing the instrument, he came at me like a maniac with a hot poker.
“This may hurt a tiny bit.”
I swear that’s what he said. It must be part of the universal Hippocratic Oath.
He poked at the wound with the tweezers. He lied. It did not “hurt a tiny bit.” It hurt like hell!
“I almost have it.” He poked at the wound again. “Wait, wait, wait. Aah, got it. That’s quite the stone monsieur,” he said, holding up a bloody chunk of gravel the size of the tip of my thumb—okay, the tip of my little finger, but it was big.
Then he tossed the bloodstained tweezers back into the tin box and closed the lid. I looked at Juanito, who cocked his head and pumped his shoulders.
“Are you going to sew me up now?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not set up for that. This is a serious injury. You need to go into Montpellier.”
“I do?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And do you think I’m going to be all right?”
“Oh, sure, you’ll be fine,” he said in a tone that didn’t sound entirely convincing.
“But I need to go to Montpellier.”
“Yep. Montpellier is where you want to go.”
“Okay. Then that’s where we’ll go.” I turned to Juanito. “Are you up for that?”
“Of course,” Juanito said. “Tu peux compter sur moi.” You can count on me.
In the next few minutes, we were on the road again. Naturally, Juanito knew the way. When we arrived and got out of the car, I started to feel dizzy again.
“Can I help you?” Juanito asked.
I think I could have made it just fine into the emergency room, but it felt good to have Juanito there for me. “I’d like that. I feel a little shaky.”
Juanito put his arm around me, and we walked side by side into the clinic.
A few minutes later, I was sitting upright on an operating table. The young doctor knew what he was doing. He gave me a local anesthetic and thoroughly cleaned the wound.
At one point, when the inner stitches were going in, I felt a twinge and grabbed Juanito’s hand.
“I got you,” Juanito said.
I know all of this sounds as if I’m an absolute milksop, but I don’t see it that way. True, I’m not ready to put my hand into a nest of rattlesnakes or kick over a stand of Harley Hogs at a roadside tavern, but I have mustered enough courage to climb Mount Rainier and swim with the sharks in the Caribbean.
No, I don’t think it was cowardice that made me lean on Juanito. I gave Juanito my hand because it was reassuring to know that I had a brother who would stand by me. That may sound mawkish to some, but so be it. It is the voice of that kind of loyalty and compassion—from so many friends and especially from Juanito—that calls me back to France.
CHAPTER 16
The Garden
ROGER IS AN EPICURE. I imagine that he thinks more about food and wine than anything else. However, the first thing you notice about him is that he stammers. I am not being mean in saying that. His rapid-fire stuttering is completely congruent with his personality. Roger is constantly on the move, a freight train of energy. If a word does not come quickly enough, he simply reloads until he gets it right. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by his unique elocution. His friends (I am proud to include myself in that fortunate circle) pay it no mind.
My attention to his speech quickly dissolved the first time I was invited to his home for dinner.
“You must taste this,” Roger said.
“What is it?” I asked, looking at something that looked like pig ears.
“Pig ears.”
“Oh, that’s what I thought.”
“I-I-I think you’ll like the flavor.”
“Okay,” I said, examining the oreille. It had been fried crispy. I gave it a sniff. Hmm, not surprisingly it smelled like fried pork. I took a hardy bite. The surface layer crunched between my teeth while the inner layer was, well, chewy. I let my tongue become acquainted with the morsel of cartilage. It had a rich, sweet porky flavor. It actually tasted pretty good.
“It tastes sweet,” I said.
“I added just a touch of honey,” Roger said. “Nah-nah-not bad, huh?”
“Not bad at all. I just hope I haven’t insulted the pig.”
“Oh, he got over it long ago.”
Later that evening I asked Roger one of my favorite questions. “What are you passionate about these days, Roger?” His eyes immediately lit up. “The garden.” He thought about his response a moment and then nodded his head in approval. “Yep, the garden.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, I talked to the mayor, an-an-and he agreed to let me work a plot of ground on the edge of town. Then I talked to my friends—Jean-Marie, Roland, Jean, Juanito—and we formed an association of gardeners. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes I would,” I said honestly.
The next day Roger took me to the garden: a half acre of land bounded by a welded-wire fence.
“Right this way,” Roger said, as he opened the gate to the enclosure with a ceremonious flourish of his hand. “So what do you think?”
I canvassed the garden. It was a bountiful supermarket. A few white chickens pecked at the ground between the rows of cabbages and melons. A rock-lined pond was teeming with glistening trout. As for vegetables, there was a cornucopia of lettuce, zucchini, spinach, tomatoes, onions, scallions, carrots, radishes, and beets. Toward the back of the plot, there were cherry and apricot trees and a metal six-foot-diameter water reservoir. “C’est un beau jardin.” It was indeed a beautiful garden.
“Oui. I-I-I think so too.”
“What about theft? Does that bother you?”
“It has happened. But so what? If people are that hungry, they should help themselves.”
“Still, a thank-you note would be nice.”
“It-it-it doesn’t matter.”
When
Roger walked to the back of the enclosure, he pointed out a somewhat rusted barbecue grill, a twelve-by-sixteen-foot slab of concrete, and a half-dozen four-by-four sticks of lumber. “We are going to build a shelter,” he said. “A place where we can have a fine meal and a glass of wine.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“It will be fun. And we want you, as our honorary American, to cut the ribbon on the day of our grand opening. Would you do that for us?”
Now I was the one who was stuttering. “I-I-I don’t know what to say.”
“Say ‘yes.’”
“Of course, yes!” I said, taking Roger in my arms and giving him an American hug.
“Well, that’s good. That’s perfect,” he said, recovering from my Yankee embrace. “C’est décidé.” It’s decided.
A month later was the grand opening of the neighborhood garden. What a celebration! Jean-Marie and Monique Ducros were there, as were Tani, Odette, Marie-France, Armelle, Roland, François, Marie, Jean, and, of course, Juanito.
Roger was in typical high spirits. When Nita and I arrived, he was already stoking the grill. “We are going to eat well today,” he announced, all the while poking a metal spatula into the sky.
The shelter, which looked like a typical American carport, was well constructed. There was room enough for two picnic tables that were already loaded with bread, red wine, and a huge salad made fresh from the garden. Along one side of the shelter, a blue ribbon was wrapped around the joists and tied in a bow at the center.
Everyone was in a festive mood. We were circled up around the picnic tables with Roger just off to the side of the grill.
“Tell us the story again,” Tani said to me.
“What story?” I knew what he was talking about, but I was playing dumb.
“You know, the story about the club bike ride last week.”
“I’m not talking about that anymore,” I protested. “There are some stories you just have to let go.”
“Wha-wha-what story?” Roger asked, waving his spatula like an orchestra conductor.
“Oh, you see, Roger doesn’t know the story.” Tani spread his hands over both tables as if parting the Red Sea. “All of this is thanks to him. It’s the least you can do.”
Tani whipped the family of friends into a frenzy. They started to chant, “Al-len, Al-len, Al-len,” clapping on each syllable.
“Okay, okay,” I said, “but this is absolutely, positively the last time. An American has to retain some semblance of dignity.”
“Americans have dignity?” Tani said. “I thought Americans only had money.”
I looked at François, just as he flashed Tani a disapproving frown. “That’s enough, Tani,” I said. “I don’t want to have to send you to your room.”
Tani raised both hands to say he was done.
“All right,” I said. “For absolutely, positively the last time—the biking story.” I stood up, heaved a sigh of resignation, and faced my audience. “There were about twenty of us.”
“Twenty-five,” Roland corrected.
“Thank you, Roland,” I said in English. “Just like an engineer to obsess about the numbers.”
“You’re welcome,” Roland said, also in English.
“Get on with it,” Jean-Marie said.
“I’m trying to get on with it,” I groaned. “It was like this. It was near the end of a four-hour ride. We were all bouncing along on a bumpy dirt road. I was feeling weary. That was when I noticed what looked like a canal that followed the road. But the canal was not filled with water. It was filled with what looked to be baked mud, finely cracked by the sun. It was perfectly smooth.
“I thought this was silly. Why should we struggle to dodge the rocks and ruts on the dirt road when there was an amazingly flat surface just six feet away?”
“I love this part,” Tani said.
I gave Tani a dirty look. “Sooo, I stood up on my bike and rode down a gentle embankment onto the flat, sun-cracked bed of mud.”
“Except it wasn’t mud,” Roland said.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“What was it?” Marie-France asked, hearing the story for the first time.
“C’était un flux de déchets industriels. It was a stream of industrial waste. I had ridden my bicycle into a river of shit! I was up to my waist in the sludge, and my bicycle was buried.”
A barrage of laughter bellowed from my listeners.
Roger actually fell to one knee with laughter. “Oh, th-th-those Americans are bizarre,” he guffawed. “They bathe in the strangest places.”
“What do you expect from such a new nation?” Tani added. “They’re still learning how to groom themselves. You can see that Allen hasn’t learned how to use a comb yet.”
I slid my hand over my perfectly smooth cranium. “That’s it. You crossed the line, Tani,” I said with a wink. “No more hair jokes. Besides I don’t need a comb; a little floor polish works perfectly fine for me.”
“That’s enough, Tani,” Armelle said, always the one to come to my defense. “What happened? How did you get out of that, that … well, you know?”
“‘Merde’ is the word you’re looking for,” Tani said.
Armelle blushed. “Oui.”
“Well, I reached down into the muck, grabbed hold of the rear tire, and somehow managed to drag my bike to the bank.”
“Did anyone help you?” Monique asked.
“We were not going anywhere near Allen,” Tani said. “He stank to high heaven.”
“Then what?” Armelle asked, coming to my rescue again.
“Then I wheeled my bike up the bank. I didn’t say a word to anyone. I peddled as fast as I could to the nearest marsh. I rode right in, tipped my bike over, and sat in the pond like an American Buddha. After a long moment of reflection on divine retribution and my place in the universe, I scrubbed down my bicycle and myself as best I could. It took me days to get the foul scent out of my nostrils.”
“You poor thing,” Armelle said.
“Yes, you-you-you poor thing,” Roger said, unable to stifle another burst of laughter.
With the story told, I caught Tani’s eye and wagged my finger at him. He just screwed up his face like a guilty schoolboy playing innocent.
Roger clanked a cowbell with a metal serving spoon. “Madame est servie,” he called out, which means “Madame is served”—a fancy and, therefore, satirical way of saying, “Let’s eat.”
When we all gathered around the two picnic tables, Roger presented a two-foot-diameter meat platter, piled high with sausage, chicken, rabbit, and pork.
“Oh là là,” the French said in unison.
The feast had begun. The stories began to spin out about hikes and fishing excursions and world travels. There was a typical foray into politics, but it was always laced with humor and a good dose of hyperbole.
After the main dish and before the dessert, I suggested it was time for a song. Nearly two years earlier, Juanito and I had worked up a duet of “Les Feuilles Mortes” (“Autumn Leaves”) in both French and English. We often sang the ballad as a way of thanking our hosts. It was our theme song throughout every country we explored—France, Spain, and the United States. We stood up, each with one arm around the other, and crooned the tune to an enthusiastic reception.
“Quand même, those Americans do-do-do know how to entertain,” Roger said.
“As do the French,” I said, offering a deep bow to Juanito.
Our little performance was all that was needed to prime the pump. The French started belting out folk songs, most of which were unfamiliar to me but common fare for them. It was a joyous time.
After the singing, after the apple and peach tarts, after the wine, bread, and cheese, it was time for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Roger hammered the cowbell again. “It is time for the speeches.”
“Oui!” the French shouted.
Roger cleared his voice. “This is our garden. It is where we come to seed and har-har-har
vest our crops. It is for our delight and the delight of our neighbors. It is our place of community.”
“That’s true,” Juanito said.
“But our community is not just French,” Roger continued. “It is also American. We are international! So, we decided that our favorite American should have the honor of cutting the ribbon that joins the uprights of our little home.”
“Unfortunately, our favorite American couldn’t make it,” Tani quipped.
“Hey-hey-hey, cut that out,” Roger said. “This is serious.” He then turned to me. “My friend, would you please say a few words?”
I have never been shy about public speaking. But at that moment my brain was scrambling for the right words. I scanned the faces of the people I loved: Nita, who gave my hand a squeeze; our oldest and most loyal friends, Jean-Marie and Monique; my swimming pal, Odette; my dance partner, Marie-France; my painting buddy, Armelle; my hiking cohort, Tani; my loyal fishing pal, François; and, of course, my brother, Juanito.
“I am nearly at a loss for words.”
“Good,” Tani said.
“I said ‘nearly.’ I am never totally out of words. The problem is choosing the right words. It was Mark Twain who said, ‘The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.’ So give me a minute.”
I took a breath. “First, I need to thank you all for making us part of your family. We are so honored. And thank you, Roger, for all that you have done. We will never forget this day. We will never forget your friendship.”
Roger smiled and tipped his head.
“I think I will leave you with this. When I was a boy, my mother used to sing a lullaby to me. It is a song that came out of the depression. The tune was written by an incredible jazz cornetist, Red Nichols. The title is ‘Five Pennies.’ I would like to sing it for you, but I’m afraid I did not come prepared. Do any of you have pennies in your pockets?”
The French have an expression when they are importuned for cash. “Tu me prends pour un Américain?” You take me for an American? So when I asked Tani to dig deep that was what he said. Still, he smiled when he managed to find a worn centime and placed it in my hand.
Pardon My French Page 26
