Let The River Rise
A TWO-FISTED TALE OF ACTION-ADVENTURE FROM THE WILD WOOLY NORTH
by Walter Agnew Moore II, Daredevil Brawler, Terror of the Canal-Side Bar-District

 23 December 2001, Amiens, France

So lots of people say they've been thrown out of bars. I bet you have been thrown out of a bar yourself—maybe you had a few, got loud, were asked to leave—maybe you argued, maybe they pushed you out gently but firmly...

But you weren't really *thrown* out, were you? Well, last night, I, Walter Agnew Moore II, man of breeding and education, was literally thrown out of the Amazone Bar down by the canal, thrown through the air and out onto the pavement, which is stony-hard, I assure you.

Where to start...

The Amazone. A bar where nothing good has ever happened, and nothing good is ever going to happen. Only a drug-dealer would hang out in the Amazone if there were any other places open to go to. It seems that the Amazone is the catch-trap for all the riff-raff who get run out of near-by bars that close earlier. It is a bad stew.

Only someone who is looped-drunk would agree to go to the Amazone. Well, that's a fair description of my group, and here we are. They shut down My Goodness Irish Pub for the holidays a few minutes earlier, they were giving away drinks as they emptied every keg, Isabelle was standing on a stool bracing her back against the ceiling, swaying in time, leading the singing. Then we are all out in the Oliver Twist street, scooping snow off of parked cars and tossing it at each other. I fall in with Isaac, who really likes hashish. The groups of people straggle down to Amazone.

We are so happy.

At the door we have to check our coats, and I check my bag as well. The Irish are all there already. I could tell you which ones, but the Irish have lost the right to individual names until some future time when I am convinced they deserve them again. A few others from the last bar are there as well, little Gaelle, her friend Valerie who likes one of the Irish, this person; that person. Some are dancing up on the floor, most are down here by the bar. The boss Irishman gets me a whiskey and coke.

I am chatting with the Irish person who is the object of Valerie's flirting. She is next to him doing a fairly silly little look-at-me-look-at-me-I'm-so-cute-look-at-me dance, and the Irish person rolls his eyes.

I say, "Hey, she's pretty full of herself, huh?"

It's a big assumption to think a French girl who an hour earlier was hanging out in an Irish bar doesn't know English. Valerie stops dancing right there and jumps up in my face:

"What did you say to him about me?!?"

"I said you're full of yourself!"

"What...full? What?"

"It's an English expression that means you think you are the center of the universe", I say, and attempting to lighten the mood, I do a vague imitation of her dance style.

She blows up. "Who are you? YOU are full of yourself! You don't know me, you don't have the right to judge me!" She stomps off.

OK. I'm officially a jack-ass. The Irish person and I continue talking. Then I hear sobbing from the other side of me.

It is Valerie, tears rolling down her cheeks, gasping between sobs, talking to the boss-Irishman, who looks at me pleadingly. She is saying: "...no right to judge me. No one has that right. You can't judge others like that..."

I touch her arm, and she stops for a second. "Valerie. I'm sorry. I was an ass, un con, un imbecile. I don't want to judge you. I said something stupid, I thought it would be funny, but it was stupid. Please, I am sorry."

She nods and walks over to her girlfriends.

30 seconds later she crashes to the floor, dragging other girls down with her, thrashing with her eyes rolled back in her head.

My God. I didn't just hurt her feelings, I killed her with my words.

Somebody yells "Epileptic!". Somebody else says to call the pompiers. By the time I get to Valerie, Little Gaelle has emerged as the leader and is directing everyone. Valerie basically fell down on top of her. Now Gaelle has rolled Valerie onto her side, and is behind her on her knees, holding her and supporting her head.

"Gaelle, what can I do?"

"Une cuillere!"

A spoon. Of course. I jump up and go back to the bar. "Une cuillere!"

The idiot hands me a red plastic drink-stirrer, then turns his back. 

I throw it into a corner and go back with the others. Valerie has quit kicking. She is very still. I don't know what you're supposed to do with a person in a seizure, but I vaguely remember something about their teeth.

I check her teeth. They are clenched shut.

We keep her on her side so in case she vomits, maybe she won't choke. Gaelle is sobbing, scared. I tell her I am so ashamed, I had just said a mean thing to Valerie before she passed out.

"Well, maybe so, but at least you are still here... The Irish (and she names them one by one), they saw her fall, and they turned and ran out the door!"

I look up. She is right. The Irish all ran. They are gone. They ran like shites, and I hope one of them reads this and realizes what miserable excuses they were this night. Gaelle is not sobbing because she is scared, she is sobbing because she has been betrayed.

I check to see if Valerie is breathing. I can't tell. I'd like to say I had the presence of mind to check for a pulse, but I didn't. I just hold her head up.

The Amazone staff are closing down early because of all this. One of them keeps coming and trying to make us leave, dragging me up by my arm. As gently as I can, I keep disengaging from his grip. I think you'll agree that abandoning unconscious people on the floors of scummy bars is not the way to go.

Suddenly, Valerie goes limp. Her head lolls, Gaelle jabbers at her in French too fast for me to understand. I hear what sounds like a mumbled response, then she is out cold. Somehow this frightens me worse than when she was rigid. She seems dead now.

The pompiers arrive, and I can't say they inspire me with confidence as they fumble around keystone-cop style, rolling Valerie onto her back and just sort of looking at her. I stand up with the other, non-Irish people who stayed.

And that's when I got thrown out the front door of the Amazone.

As near as I can tell, the staff couldn't be bothered to offer help to a girl who collapsed on their floor, in that classic, it's-not-my-fault style some people have here. But it really burned them that I defied their authority and stayed with that girl, so the little bullet-heads got it in mind to bum-rush me out of the joint.

I never had a chance. They caught me off balance and kept me that way right up to the front door, where I managed to hang on for just a second, yelling "Gimme my coat and my pack you sorry bastards!"

No use. A final heave, and I was out on my back. The metal door slammed shut just as I hit the cobblestones. I was vaguely aware of a crowd of people all around me who had been ejected less dramatically, but I put my full attention to leaping up and kicking the bejeezus over and over out of that door. I hope I bent something.

A scowling man behind me muttered about that "con d'Americain", and other insults directed at me in a nying-nyang whiney voice. The Irish, some of whom had promised to watch my back in any time of trouble, were still away on some pressing business.

So that's how it is. I brush myself off and walk around to the side door. Whiney-Scowly follows me, muttering.

The pompiers have an oxygen-mask on Valerie. She still looks dead. The bouncers spot me, and this time it's the stocky Black one who comes running up to throw me out again. I start talking: "Look, I don't want trouble. I want my coat and my bag. My coat, my bag."

"You can't come in!"

"I don't want to come in. I want my coat and my bag."

He's keeping a solid chest-press going on me, but I press back, not enough to provoke him, but enough where I don't go flying again. He starts listening. Somebody runs and gets my stuff for me. I thank them and turn around, and there stands Whiney-Scowly, talking more trash about the American. For the first time, I address him:

"Va t'faire enculer, 'tit espece d'conard!"

It wasn't polite. Whiney-Scowly goes nuts and starts screaming at me. People rush up and pull us apart. I give him a big old grin and he leans in as far as he can and keeps haranguing me, a real stereotypical, Honest-to-God French American-hater. It's funny, but it's getting old.

People think the best thing about being tall is being able to look over crowds and stuff. That's cool, but what I like best is the phenomenal reach it gives me. Whiney-Scowly is working himself in to a fine verbal frenzy, safe behind his Maginot Line of friends. I relax, and the guys holding me safely out of (his) reach relax too.

SMACK! Ah, but I fetch him such a claque upside his pouty face! My retainers come back to life and pin my arms, but I just howl with laughter at his stunned expression:

"HA hahahaha-- Didn't see THAT coming, did ya, Napoleon? Wha hahahahah--"

POW. The sucker clocks me good on the left cheek-bone. Kinda stings, even. His boys drag him back as I grin. OK. Even-steven. At least he shut up.

The pompiers haul Valerie into the ambulance. No movement. The crowd starts to break up. Calm descends as we talk outside the thankfully closed Amazone. One good part about it being so rancid is that they have more to lose than to gain by calling cops.

There is even peace between me and Whiney-Scowly. Everybody just got a little crazy there for a minute, it happens... see you around, I'll stand you a drink...

A guy named Boris seems to understand everything. Maybe he's Russian. I don't understand it at all.

It's not easy to do when you don't know people's last names or phone numbers, but luckily Amiens is small enough that people at hospital admissions desks remember who came in the night before. Yes, a girl named Valerie was brought in. She left this morning, she was fine.

They have been having more and more floods in the Somme valley lately. If Amazone is not the lowest point in the city of Amiens, I don't know what is. Maybe the river will rise and wash it away, wash it away, wash us all away.