Vignettes in France

Vignettes in France

I sit on the edge of a beaten up bed, pressing my bare feet against the dusty wooden floorboards. My legs are sore from wading through the weeds and fields of the farm and my pants have more and more holes from the thick spines on the more dastardly plant stems. On the edge of the wooden frame is a comic and I read it over and over. It’s in French but I love the characters. The boy with his sword, the dancing elephant, the worried girl driving her car. I feel like a kid making up stories in a picture book.

Maybe that’s all I am. A kid thinking up different stories for everything I see, hear, and touch.

The horse rears and pulls hard to the right. I’m shocked, at first, and I let it drag me against my saddle until I realize to grab the reigns and regain control. I laugh to myself and rub the neck of the animal, scratching with my fingernails. Over and over, in French, I say that it’s okay, that it’s good, it’s good. I look ahead and see Chris smiling. He hasn’t stopped smiling since he got on his horse, err, pony. And he thought he was going to crush it. I guide the horse back to the line, readjust my helmet, and go back to daydreaming about galloping through the farmlands that surround us.

Sebastian prepares the lamb meat for the fire outside.

Dominique runs into the kitchen, Sebastian close behind. He has a worried expression on his face and I ask what is wrong. In Spanish, he replies that a sheep, a young sheep, just drowned in the river near the rest of the herd. I watch him grab a long kitchen knife and the whetting stone. He starts sharpening it. We have to get the meat, he says. Well. Shoot.

I approach her restaurant and pause to straighten my shirt. For the final time, I check to make sure the bouquet looks perfect and the flowers are in order. I move an orange berry closer to the center. I decide to step forward. I move past the final set of tables and look ahead. There she is, fifteen feet away, taking the plates from a pair of customers. I take the last few steps and touch her on the shoulder and gently spin my fingers through the ends of her hair. I can’t hide my smile and as she turns around, she’s beaming, too, just beaming. She doesn’t know what to do with the plate or what words to say and she mutters in French and English and I foolishly hand her the small bouquet of flowers I collected earlier in the day, even though her hands are completely full. We look like a pair of goofs, standing there with these big, fat smiles on our faces. We don’t care, either, and I feel so darn happy.

Chris and I stare at our flight papers in disbelief. We fly tomorrow, not today. Whoops. We stand in the middle of the airport remarking at how bad we are, how we are nooblets at traveling and that we should just go home. We aren’t mad, though, we think it is just so funny and embarrassing. We laugh at how silly we look to ourselves, to our good friend that was so kind to drive us to the airport, and to the clerk that just found out we came to the terminal twenty-five hours in advance.

We make the decision to drive to the ocean- it is only a mere forty minutes away. We load our bags in the trunk and eat some banana chips. We get in the car. We cruise with the windows down and soak up the Bordeaux sun that we thought we were leaving for good. I’m in the front seat and we spin through another round-about. A truck is in front of us. In the other lane, a car swerves, just slightly. Boom. I’m yelling, “Holy fuck. Shit. Shit. Jesus.” as our friend slams on the breaks and pulls to the side of the road. The car hasn’t stopped yet, but Chris and I burst out of the doors and sprint toward the sedan. Oil drenches the asphalt. Debris, dead car parts, are scattered everywhere. We reach the car and see an old man. His scalp is torn and sliced, his eyes are lifeless. He’s pinned, hard, into the heated metal of the car and the plastic of his steering wheel. He’s bleeding. Shit. Shit. Chris reaches for his pulse and I bolt toward the other vehicle, the truck that drove off the side of the road.

It is wrapped around a fence.  The driver is dazed. There are cuts under his eyes and on his forehead, but he’s alright. He’s in shock, but he’s alright. A French man comes up with me and we try and pry the fence off his door. No luck, it’s melded onto the metal. We rush around to the passenger door, grip the chain-link hard in the palms of our hand, and yank it down with the power only adrenaline can grant. It’s off. We call to the driver inside and he confirms that he is alright. He gets on his radio and starts talking to an authority.

After the clean-up begins. The sedan, to the left of the man, the debris to his right.

I go back to the first car, jumping over metal chunks and letting my shoes slide on the slippery liquids. I turn to Chris. His shirt is off. There is a guy next to him, looking troubled. I look inside the car and see the old man again. Dead. Gone. Nothing left and certainly no pulse any more. Chris takes his shirt from his hand and puts it over the man’s head to hide his face, to offer him that slight courtesy of respect.

Shit. This isn’t like the movies or the news stories. There isn’t anything we can do. For the first time I watch a man’s life get ripped from his chest. The instant, that accident, feels so normal. Like toast coming out of the toaster kind of normal. But the aftermath is what is unreal. Seeing the nothingness on the man’s face, the panic in the truck driver’s expression, the will to help in the movements of those that came to the scene after Chris and I. I don’t think I’m scared of death, but I’m scared of my life getting torn away like that.

I hand the attendant my boarding pass and empty my pockets into the bucket for an x-ray check. I’m wondering how goodbyes are so hard and so easy and how you can leave people who have come to mean so much to you by just walking fifty steps in the other direction. I look through the glass panel and I suppress the urge to run back and grab her hand and sneak her through security and on the plane and find some way that she can join me. But, I put my bag on the conveyor belt. I tap my pockets one last time. I pass through the doorway of the metal-detector and fumble with the clove of garlic her sister gave me an hour ago as a present.

I’m at a desk on the third story of a brick building in Brussels. Again, I am sliding my bare feet against the wooden planks of the floor. These ones are clean and smooth. Music fills my ears from my worn headphones. Orange light, from the streets below, tries to make it to the edge of the window but it can’t quite make it inside. The breeze can, though, and it does.

Here is where I try to mix nostalgia and reality so they blend into just the right cocktail. These are just a few of the thoughts rolling across the meadows of my mind. The ingredients are all there, somewhere. I just need to figure out how to get my bartender’s license…

Au revoir.

Sam

PS: Pictures and videos are updated from 7/22 (July 23rd). Chris and I are in Brussels and all is very well. We will leave for Amsterdam by bus on Saturday, where we will rent a car and sleep in it for a few days as we explore the city and the countryside. We fly out for Ireland on the 30th from Eindhoven.