Just a Happy Camper

by Jinx Schwartz

  “Poor dude.”

  I laughed. “I love the project, even though I doubt my stubborn fellow Texans will take kindly to the Dutch ways. By the way, do you know who is paying for this study? I mean at the top?”

  “Nope, and we don’t care, do we?”

  That is Jenks-speak for, don’t ask.

  I guffawed. “Nope, I sure don’t, but the Dutch are experts in keeping people and property safe from rising water. Someone here ought to take that into account. Anyhow, that’s not why I called.”

  “What? I thought you just wanted to hear my sexy voice.”

  “Well, there is that. I miss you. Think you can visit Texas while I’m here.”

  “I’m going to try. You sound a little edgy. Everything okay?”

  I sighed. “Mother called a few minutes ago and said some stranger, a young guy with an accent, showed up on her doorstep looking for me. After what you told me about someone in La Paz snooping around, I wondered if it could be the same person. Not that you can do anything from there, but I needed to talk it over with you.”

  He was quiet for a few moments. “You know, it’s probably nothing. This guy is being way too obvious for a stalker.”

  “Unless he’s a nut-case serial killer stalker.”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “Gosh, thanks. I’m glad we talked. I feel sooo much better now.”

  He chuckled. “I’m kidding. Look, just be careful. You’ll know soon enough who and what this guy is. Or maybe he’ll simply go away.”

  “I hope to hell not. I want to give him a piece of my mind for scaring me.”

  “That’s my Hetta.”

  “I’m going home early tomorrow morning and will be there through the weekend, so if he shows up we’ll finally have the mystery solved.”

  “You are packing, right?”

  “Is there a Longhorn in Texas? Got one of Daddy’s shotguns and a .22 revolver on board, as well as my .380.”

  “Good. Got any plans for the weekend?”

  “Nah. Momma invited my team for lunch tomorrow, but nothing except that. We’re moving camp, so on Sunday I go to a new park.”

  “Let me know when you get home, and call if you see this mystery guy, okay? Get a photo of him if you can and send it to me. If he’s dangerous, I’ll know within a few hours. Gotta run, love you.”

  ❋

  Famished and exhausted after a restless night and then a two-hour early morning drive on an empty stomach, my spirits soared when I reached my folk’s driveway and spotted Po Thang waiting for me by the mailbox.

  I stopped to let him into the RV, where he commandeered the passenger seat and grumbled at me until I parked. “Yes, I know,” I told him. “I left you with those horrible creatures who probably feed you every damned thing you want, let you chase deer to your heart’s desire, swim in the lake, and then sleep in their bed. I should be horsewhipped.”

  ❋

  Backstrap—the filet mignon of venison—sliced into medallions, pounded into thin rounds, soaked in buttermilk overnight, then dredged in a flour, salt and pepper coating and fried? Served with homemade buttermilk biscuits and gravy made from the pan-browned skillet bits, cream and lots of pepper? Die and go to Heaven time.

  After that fab breakfast, I played sous chef and scullery maid for my mom, who was already making more biscuits and collard greens and other fixin’s for our lunch guests.

  When the team arrived at one, filling

  dad’s driveway and the yard with RVs, it looked like a gypsy get together. Dad had decided these guys would appreciate a catfish fry, so Mother and I prepared fresh okra for the deep fryer as well.

  Dad filled his outdoor fryer with oil, and dropped cornmeal coated catfish into it. The fish sank to the bottom in the hot oil, and quickly came up singing, as my dad called it. Scooping out the fish, he tossed it onto paper towels, every piece perfectly cooked.

  Our guests were delighted, and even the jerk on the team couldn’t find fault with the food. Late in the afternoon they left for our new encampment, where I’d move on Sunday. Mom and Dad took off to go shopping in Burnet; Daddy’s beer supply had taken quite a hit, what with the Dutch in attendance.

  After I cleaned up the lunch mess, I moved outside to dangle my feet in the lake, hopefully without attracting a snapping turtle looking for a quick snack. Po Thang went for swim, while Trouble, harnessed and tethered, cuddled up to my neck. The weather was perfect; too early in the season for bugs, but with a warmish breeze off the lake. The very kind of day that makes people fall in love with the Hill Country, and snookers tourists into buying houses without knowing about summer.

  Po Thang climbed up on the bank, shook water over us, and barked furiously while running down the drive. It was too soon for my mom and dad to be back, so I stood, thinking maybe a neighbor dropped by. I didn’t recognize the car.

  “Po Thang, shut the hell up,” I yelled, and called him back. He wasn’t having any of it, and seemed intent on eating the car’s tires.

  The car rolled to a stop, and I grabbed Po Thang’s collar when a well-dressed young man stepped out.

  Instantly on the alert, I patted my jacket pocket to make sure my .380 was there. This time of year it was not impossible to run into a cottonmouth, or even a rattler, so one did not go outside without a little protection. Plus, Jenks had warned me to make sure I was packing.

  “‘Allo?” A guy said, getting out of the car.

  I surreptitiously snapped his photo, then walked to meet him.

  “Afternoon,” I said, sizing him up. If this was the guy who seemed to be stalking me, he was a far cry from some cartel thug, or at least any I’d seen.

  “Good afternoon. I am seeking Miss Café,” he said.

  Catching the accent, I asked, in French if he was French. What a clever guy I am?

  “Oui. Yes I am. You are Miss Café?”

  “Yes, I am,” I answered in French.

  He looked past me at the house. “I have a rather private matter to discuss with you,” he said, in accented, but perfect English. Okay, then, English it is. “Are you free to speak?”

  I had been so intent on studying the man that I didn’t notice something important. Po Thang was sniffing him like he did me when he expected me to bring him a treat when returning from a restaurant. Interesting. Maybe he has an escargot in his pocket?

  I relaxed. “Sure, let’s go sit by the lake, but first, would you like some iced tea?”

  He said yes, so I led him into the kitchen.

  Oh, lawdy, I’ve become my mother!

  Once inside, he said, “This is a lovely home.”

  “My parents built it a few years back.”

  “I think I met your mother yesterday. She is very nice. ”

  “Yes she is. She told me you came by.”

  I scooped ice into glasses, added iced tea and led him back outside to chairs in the shade of a large cottonwood that was leafing out.

  After sitting I asked, “Did I miss your name?”

  “Oh, I do apologize. Where are my manners? My name is Antoine.”

  “Just Antoine?”

  He blushed. “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Bourbonnais.”

  I smiled. Was this dude pulling my leg? “So, you are the little prince in the flesh?”

  Antoine’s face lit up with delight and surprise. “My mother certainly thought so when I was born. They had waited years to become parents. They even call me Prince. I see you are familiar with The Little Prince?”

  “Yes. I studied French literature once upon a time, in Paris, and your namesake’s book is very popular here in the United States.”

  Po Thang was leaning up against Antoine’s leg, groaning with pleasure as the man massaged his neck.

  “Were you, by any chance , recently in La Paz, Mexico?”

  “Yes, it was I. Your yacht is quite beautiful.”

  “Thank you. Now, what exactly is it you want from me.”

  “I was hoping you might help me locate m
y father.”

  “I’m confused. Why do you think I can find your father?”

  “Because,” he took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “I think you are my birth mother.”

  Mon Dieu, l'heure de vérité a finalement sonné.

  Or, as they say in Texas: “Good Lawd, Hetta Coffey, yor chickens have dun come home to roost!”

  Chapter Ten

  I was enrolled at the University of Brussels and was in my last year of successfully dodging the daunting possibility of actually graduating and getting a job.

  Having changed my major often—from French, to Art and Design, to Engineering—I’d just turned twenty and, despite my best efforts, simply couldn’t not graduate without just flat dropping out. Which in reality wasn’t in the cards, because very soon I needed gainful employment working in a field that paid real money. So, engineering it was.

  I couldn’t afford to fly home that summer so, faced with selling my less-than-stellar artwork on street corners, I applied and was chosen for an engineering-based internship in Paris. Not only would I be housed and fed, I’d earn extra credit, and could graduate a semester early. Not that I cared about that.

  Joining a group of other students from various countries, I lucked out and was assigned to a study on the upcoming restoration project of several bridges spanning the Seine, and even scored a tiny five-story walkup on the Left Bank, all paid for.

  I thought I’d died and gone to Paris.

  And my good luck held, for my team was assigned the Pont Neuf, the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine, which was badly in need of a facelift after four hundred years, and even though I was just a glorified gofer, my participation in the structural study would be a feather in my résumé’s cap.

  I reveled in living my Left Bank dream, perfecting my French while drinking wine in St-Germain-des-Prés where the likes of Hemingway and Jean Paul Sartre quaffed theirs while debating deeply philosophical ideas. My budget didn’t cover getting whacked enough to wax too philosophical; instead, I sipped one glass of over-priced house wine for a couple of hours each evening, chatting in French with my new friends while looking down my (in my mind) Gallic nose at gauche American tourists.

  Le 14 juillet, fête nationale française, or Bastille Day to us bumpkinly English speakers, is the premier Parisian event. Commemorating the storming of the infamous Parisian jail by les misérables to free unjustly imprisoned folks, their actions eventually ended with Marie Antoinette et al losing their heads. Personally, I think our American Revolution was slightly less gory, but that’s probably because we couldn’t get our hands on King George I.

  The highlight of my summer was an invitation to attend a fellow student’s wedding at the legendary George V Hotel on Bastille Day. I spent an entire month’s wine allowance on a secondhand gold silk Yves Saint Laurent frock that was obviously designed for someone with no boobs. It was a good thing I couldn't afford much wine anyhow, because I barely squeezed into the designer’s creation as it was.

  I sincerely hoped that no one from YSL was invited to this society “do”; they’d probably tear his overly stuffed creation from my unsuitable bod. Just in case of a defrocking, I wore fancy black silk underwear.

  I never knew whether it was my red hair, me being a Texan—considered by the French as exotic for some reason—or the amount of leg and décolletage escaping golden silk, but the best looking guy in the room, who turned out to be one of the groomsmen, homed in on me like a duck on a June bug.

  Jean Luc d'Ormesson wove such an irresistible web of sophisticated nonchalance—after all the French invented the word, did they not?—and charm around me, I was powerless to refuse his attentions. Not that I tried, mind you. I was a fish out of water, totally ignoring all the warnings I'd heard about Frenchmen when it comes to matters of the heart.

  When I later asked Jean Luc why he picked me over a bevy of dazzlers vying for his attention, he said it was my Texas sense of humor. I took it as a compliment at the time, but wondered later if he couldn't have at least mentioned my dress.

  A few years older than I, and obviously completely at ease in such opulent surroundings as the George V, he had no problem whisking me from the wedding party to his suite for an after-reception shindig he hosted. More bubbly flowed as I yakked it up with all my new BFFs, then, when we were finally alone, Jean Luc and I went for a tipsy stroll through damp Paris streets gilded with the early morning light.

  I fell head over heels in love.

  For all my travels during my twenty years of life, I was still pretty naive when it came to men like him. I'd never dated anyone with his élan and was totally unprepared when, after a month of hot summer nights (in more ways than one), he dumped me.

  Just flat disappeared.

  When I fell hook, line, and sinker for his charm, I didn't realize he was more interested in the art of catch and release.

  Jean Luc's unceremonious abandonment of my precious self was one of the most devastating events of my life, bar none.

  But nothing compared to the day I realized I was pregnant.

  ❋

  And twenty years later, I was still frozen in shock when Antoine stuffed a card into my hand and made such a fast exit that I had not yet recovered by the time his car turned onto the highway.

  Po Thang, who had chased Antoine’s car to the mailbox, returned and whined, leaning up against me. I absent-mindedly petted him, and realized how my actions might seem to Antoine.

  Grabbing my cell phone, I called him and he answered on the first ring.

  “Antoine, please come back to the house. I want you to meet your grandparents when they return.”

  “Miss Café—”

  “Please, call me Hetta.”

  “Hetta, I think it best we wait until we are certain. There is no sense in raising false hopes, n’est-ce pas?”

  My goodness, he was such an adult.

  “If you think so. Where are you staying? Can we meet tomorrow and talk more?”

  “Of course.” He gave me the name of a hotel in Marble Falls, about thirty miles away.

  “I’ll be there at say, ten. Is that okay with you?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pregnant pause; you should excuse the expression. “Antoine, I have looked for you over the years. I am so happy you found me. And for your information, you look just like your father. À bientôt?”

  “Yes, I will see you tomorrow,” he said, relief obvious in his voice.

  I opened a bottle of wine and went back outside to watch a flock of white pelicans land on the lake. Po Thang watched them with interest but stayed put and rested his big head on my leg. I took his face in my hands. “You know, don’t you? We don’t need no stinkin’ DNA test.”

  “Woof.”

  “I gotta call your Auntie Jan. She’s gonna be majorly pissed at me for keeping such a phenomenal secret from her, but I might as well get this over with. It ain’t gonna be easy.”

  “Ruff?”

  “Bet on it.”

  ❋

  “You and Jean Luc have a son?” Jan screeched after I told her about meeting Antoine. “And you never told me? I am sooo pissed.”

  I mouthed what she said to Po Thang and said, “Told ya.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Jan demanded.

  “Po Thang. I told him you’d be annoyed.”

  “Oh, I’m waaaay past annoyed, Chica. We’ve been friends for all these years and you never thought you could trust me with such a huge secret? Hell, you even tell me your weight, which I’m sure you’re lying about, but that’s at least something!”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I’d trust you with my life. Hell, I have. It’s just a part of my history that, while I’ve had my regrets, I never thought would, well, surface. The nuns made it abundantly clear that I was never, ever, to try and find him. Well, I didn’t even know he was a him, but I signed a contract of confidentiality.”

  Silence.

  “Jan? Are you there
?”

  “Y-y-yes,” she sniffled.

  “Are you crying?”

  “Yes, I am. I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

  I sighed in relief. I needed her here. “Thank you.”

  She hung up.

  I wiped away a tear of my own, just as I heard my parents arrive. Deciding to tell them about their grandson after I met with Antoine the next morning, I helped them unload the car, pleaded fatigue and went to my room.

  One step at a time, Hetta.

  Jenks, Mom and Dad, and Jean Luc and the rest of the world could wait a day or two.

  I’d waited for twenty years.

  Chapter Eleven

  “How on earth did you find me?” I asked Antoine across the table at the Bluebonnet Café.

  “DNA match. I will explain later.”

  Even though it was a weekday, we had to wait for quite a while for a table at the popular eatery. While in line, we chatted about France, how it had changed over the years, and other inane stuff. He’d told me he wanted to eat a typical Texas breakfast, but when our food arrived he looked at it in shock.

  “This is for one person?” he asked, staring at his overloaded plate of chicken fried steak with fried eggs, grits, biscuits, and cream gravy.

  “Now you know why I only ordered coffee,” I told him, holding out my small extra plate. “I’ll take an egg, a little steak, some grits, and a biscuit.”

  “Certainly. What is grits?”

  I thought about it. “Kind of like polenta.”

  “And this is chicken?” he poked the steak.

  “No, it is beef, deep fried in batter, like we do chicken. You know, like Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

  “Ah, yes, I understand.” He cut off a small piece of steak, chewed it and smiled. “It is very good. I like the cream sauce, as well.”

  I smiled. Cream sauce sounds ever so much more elegant than gravy.