Bon Courage by Ken McAdams

Author:Ken McAdams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Ox Press
Published: 2010-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

DOWN A ROAD LESS

TRAVELED

THE STATUE of Liberty, designed by the Frenchman Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, was dedicated to the homeless huddled masses yearning to be free. It didn’t escape us that there was some irony in the situation we found ourselves in—evicted, huddled, and yearning for the artistic freedom promised by a Frenchman who was himself actively shoving us into that huddled mass status.

As Saturday’s dawn was breaking, I fantasized about going to la mairie, the town hall, which was open till noon, and applying for village idiot status. Perhaps there was a Ministère des Idiots du Village that would put a roof over our heads. There was one for everything else it seemed.

Other than hotels, where could we live? Bing grabbed a phonebook and discovered gîtes—country rentals available by the week or month—a booming business in a country perpetually on holiday.

As I’d mentioned earlier, one gets the feeling the goal of the French government, certainly the politicians, is to have 365 work-free days per year. They’re about halfway there right now. Even the educational system helps. Schools are out much of the time, though each département has specific control of its breaks, which are coordinated with the adjoining jurisdictions. For the area around Black Mountain, three different school systems could be vacationing one after the other driving local gîte prices to high-season levels three times longer than elsewhere. Having so many families looking for places could make it difficult for us. Plus trying to negotiate in French over the telephone … good grief, we were in way over out heads. We needed a linguist who knew something about this kind of stuff—and knew about something huddled masses too.

“Adrian. He’d know about gîtes,” Bing suggested. “And if he has the boat back at Port Lauragais we might even stay on it for a few days while we get located.”

I was glad Bing thought to call Adrian. We’d been so focused on the mess we were in we’d lost sight of the far worse mess he was in. The phone had a speaker button so Bing and I were able to jump in together once we had him on the line.

“Notre cher ami,” we began, quickly exhausting our tip-of-the-tongue salutations. “How have you been? Is your family all right? We tried to reach you before we left for the States. And now, amazingly enough, we are back. We’ve been very worried and felt guilty for losing touch.”

The barrage of questions and confessions gave Adrian his own opportunity to apologize for not responding to our messages.

“Dear Ken, Bing, I owe you the apology. I destroyed your special honeymoon,” he said, real concern flooding his voice. “I burdened you with worry for my family troubles. I did not get back to you only because I had nothing substantial to report, and that would have added unnecessarily to your concern.”

“What news do you have of your son?” Bing jumped in.

“It took me forever to find him,” Adrian said. “He really had run away. I found him in Paris.

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