A Bone-Crunching Tale of Terror in the Boggy Fields of Picardy
by Walter Agnew Moore II, Boy Wonder
17 January, 2002, the village of Longpré, down by the Somme, France

I have two slightly-sprained wrists, a split lip, a grass-burn on the right side of my head, mule-kick-bruises forming all over my body, including one smack on top of that old hair-line fracture in my left shin, and cleat-marks on my inner thigh just inches away from a really bad place to get stomped by cleats. There is a thick layer of clingy black mud up and down my legs, arms, back, chest, and head. I can barely see without my glasses in the dazzle of the fields lights, it's all a blur until they start moving, and they are moving now: several large gentlemen running straight at me. Running fast.

It's called Rugby Practice.

How did I get here? What am I doing? I've never played a game of Rugby in my life. I don't know the rules. I don't even know how many people are supposed to be on each side. Athletic? I never played High School Football, or even PeeWee Soccer. My idea of a great team sport to go for a hike by myself.

So let's go back a little. I think I told you that once in a liquid-induced state of high suggestibility down at My Goodness Irish Pub, I ran into Fabrice, the French guy who worked with me back in Texas. Fabrice got it in his head that I should play Rugby with his team, I agreed, and now the day of doom is finally here. He comes around in his car this afternoon, we're late, he's been having a miserable time with the heathen punks he teaches at the tech school, but we get me decked out with playing gear: a red jersey, blue shorts, purple tube socks, and black leather shoes with bright metal cleats. We jump back in his VW Golf and go tearing off.

"So Fabrice, what team do we play for?"

"Long."

"Long what?"

"Just Long."

"What the hell does that mean, Long?"

"Same thing it does in English: Long."

Who's on first. Turns out we are driving way out in the country to a tiny village named—wait for it—Long. We are the defenders of the Rugby honor of the good villagers of Long. There is a team in Amiens, Fabrice says, "They are really good, but they have 'la grosse tete', do you understand? So I play with Long."

"The big head. Oh yeah. I know a team like that back home."

We drive down west along the Somme. It is black night now. We'll be going most of the way towards Abbeville. We leave the main route at a giant reproduction menhir that advertises a living-history Gaulish settlement called Samara and shoot through the fog on driveway-sized back-roads.

Like unto Moses, I am not allowed to enter the promised land of Long. We will be practicing at another village just shy of it called "Longpré", "long-meadow". Fabrice starts quizzing me about French political parties:

"Walter, do you know about a party called the CPNT?"

"I think I heard of them, but I don't know what they stand for."

"It is a local party, it means Chasse-Peche-Nature-Tradition, that is, hunt-fish-nature-tradition. They are only here in Picardy, they are against Europe. They are against the Greens. They hunt these birds, migratory birds that are protected because they are dying out, but they don't believe it. They say it is their right because it is their tradition."

"OK tradition if you got lots of birds."

"But we don't. But you can't go against what they say here in Longpré. You see that cafe?"

I look down the street at the only lights in town, glowing green and red.

"That is a big CPNT hangout. It's not so good to go there if they don't know you."

"Hey Fabrice, isn't this the same town that was underwater for 2 whole months during the floods last year?"

"Try 4 months!"

We get dressed at the club-house, I meet the other guys. I have a complaint to file with the US Department of Stereotypes: French guys are supposed to be little-bitty sissy-types that any American worth his double-cheeseburgers could knock over. Maybe some are. But these guys, it's like Cousin Michael the Bartender warned me, they've got some monsters on the team. Not just tall, but really big burly heads and shoulders, like buffalo walking around on their hind legs. The medium-size guys tend towards bruiser-weight as well. And the little guys... well, there just aren't any little guys.

There's this one big-ol' potato-fed red-headed giant who looks like he was born to swing a spiked mace. Lord have mercy.

We crunch in our cleats down the Longpré lanes, and at the lit-up field we start running without any more fuss. Fabrice told me they'd run a little first, that's OK with me, I can run a little.

The running will never end. The mud is thick and sloppy and 4 inches deep near the goals. Around and around we go. My borrowed shoes are too tight. Around we go. I feel like I am going to shit and puke at the same time. Around we go. Thank God it's cold and misty. Around we go. Every time we get next to the Sumo-wrestler coach, we are supposed to sprint a ways. I try. Around we go.

You thought it was over? NO! Around we go. There are only two things keeping me going at this point: I don't want anybody smirking if the American falls out of the run, but after about eight laps I don't give a wet slap about America. All that keeps me moving, really, is that I don't want Fabrice to look bad in front of his friends for having invited me.

Fabrice has lapped me twice. He's pretty fast, and I'm pretty slow. He runs past and pulls up, running in place. "Come on, Walter, only 2 more minutes!"

"Two minutes! I can do anything for just two minutes!" I say, which is not quite true: I can run, or I can talk. I run, snorting like a steam engine, and manage one feeble last sprint by the coach as he blows his whistle.

"Running a little" in Longpré means 25 minutes. For some of you, that's just a warm-up, but for me, it's a marathon.

Things get better for a little while, we stretch as our coach briefs us on what we'll be doing tonight. It goes something like this, delivered in a Full-Metal-Jacket Drill Instructor style:

"Bonsoir, my fine gentlemen, tonight we will be (technical Rugby term that I don't understand) in groups of three vs. two and (French slang that I don't know), so look out! You must (more French that I don't catch) or I will (something that doesn't sound appealing), and rest assured, gentlemen, whoever fails to properly (technical Rugby term that I don't understand), that person will be EXTRACTING MY BOOT FROM HIS NETHER REGIONS; Any questions?"

I'm sticking as close as I can to Fabrice, going "What'd he say what'd he say?", feeling like a Slovak peasant drafted into the 1914 Austro-Hungarian Army and understanding just enough to know that there are many ways I will get in trouble.

It starts out OK. There are several colors of jerseys, I guess they don't wear their good stuff to practice. Coach divides us into the White/Blue team, and the Red/Black team. The White/Blue guys yell "Commies!" at us. So far so good.

Then some running line abreast, slowly, up and down the field passing the ball back and forth along the line. This is easy and relaxing, a lot like laterals in football. I don't mess up too bad. Legs are still wobbly.

Then we "play" a little, the two teams against each other. It's only touch at this point, no tackling. Seems exciting at the time though. This is when I find out that the big guys are really fast, and the slightly-smaller big guys run like scalded dogs. I can't get a hand on them.

I manage to execute three beautiful passes to the Red-Headed Giant. He tears through the crowd with the ball every time. He is also on the other team. Oops.

Fabrice says his old knee injury is slowing him down. I'd hate to see how fast he used to be. He says the coach, who is also a player, is the one who tore up his knee.

"How did he do that?"

"You will see."

Now it's three-on-three, full tackle, or as they say here, "plaquer" (plack-kay), which is the same word for riveting big plates of metal onto the hull of a ship. Fabrice, I, and some other guy in a leather helmet are on the attack. This is when I meet up with Mr.Kill Walter.

Now, I've seen my share of prison movies. I'm the new kid. I knew this guy would show up. He body-slams me in the mud when I don't get the pass off to Fabrice fast enough. He body-slams me in the mud when I do get the pass off. Coach blows the whistle to stop for a second, and then this guy body-slams me in the mud yet again, a two or three second late-hit.

I jump up trying to play it off. Fabrice snarls and mutters: "That guy is a *con*, Walter..."

"Ah, I'm not worried about him..."

Fabrice stares at me.

"...unless he keeps knocking the slop out of me."

He laughs: "That's what I thought you meant!"

Now they attack us. Mr.Kill Walter just happens to be the one who is always headed my way. I decide right there that this is going to be an endless night of torture if I don't make something happen, and quick. Let's see, he weighs more, is faster, and has forgotten more Rugby tricks than I'll ever know. What cards do I have? Well, I'm crazy.

I start making it my personal mission to run as fast as I can straight at Mr. Kill Walter every time they start their attack, whether he has the ball or not.

Now I know you saw Rocky, and heard those damn bells and saw Rocky jump up and start whaling on the big Russian, right? That was what Mr. Todd Berger calls a "movie". This is "real life", or my approximation of it. Mr. Kill Walter keeps popping me like a zit, but after the third or fourth time I flail into him, it starts changing from vicious tackles to just regular tackles. One time I even make him work for it before he makes me one with the earth. The Team President, a large (OK, rotund) older gentleman sees that from the sidelines and remarks that I am catching on.

Then we drink water, play pass-practice some more, and then Coach says something I don't understand, and the guys start snarling and stamping the ground. We are going to go as full-out as we can now, no holds barred, White vs. Red.

I am so wobbly by now I can't do the least thing fancy, or even move fast in a straight line. I figure the least I can do is to try to keep from screwing up by leaving a big gap in the line. I pay close attention to my guys to the right and left.

Then I see the White player with the ball hurtling straight for me like a killer asteroid, I think it's one of the Jeromes, Red guys trying to tackle him and going slinging off behind, he's got his head down like a bull right for me I'm gonna die—

POOM

"Bien plaqué, Walter!"

That's Coach, he says I did a good tackle! I don't remember doing it, I get up out of the mud, and we're moving again, a few seconds later, this time it's Fabien, the housepainter, he is coming right at me with crazy green eyes wide open...

POOM

He's down. I go to help him up, Fabrice is: "Leave him, come on!" and we run back up the field after the ball.

And so, Gentle Reader, it was that Walter, the slow, the stumbling, the short-winded, finds the one thing he is able to do: tackle, or as I prefer to call it, plaquer. I look at the mud for three steps to my right, three steps to my left, and I know good and well I'm not going to be scoring or busting out dazzling plays, but this narrow stretch of mud is MY mud, my land, my Verdun, and no one is going to cross it. Ils ne passeront pas!

And they don't. My plaquer-technique is rudimentary, of that I am sure. I bash myself up more than I do them. I am glad my Football-Scholarship Brother-in Law doesn't have to see it. But I put them down. My move is to get hold of them high, and throw myself down under them, coincidentally spinning them on the way down and keeping them from passing accurately.

I even get the Red-Headed Giant a couple of times... with help from my friends.

Then a funny thing happens:

I start getting hungry for blood. I get almost angry, that they would dare to try to grab the ball and run with it past me. That is MY ball. I want it, and I want to flatten anybody who's not wearing red or black who tries to touch it. Hell, I want to get the ball and EAT it.

I start getting full of energy, my legs are not tired. I go on the attack. I don't accomplish much for my team, this is real life, remember, and I'm still a big slow guy who doesn't know the game. But I am having a blast.

"I knew you'd like it!"

Hey, that's not a French accent... I turn around, and there stands my guardian angel once again, the ghost of my 'Bama Grandaddy Billy McKenzie. He looks younger than I remember, in a 1920's leather football helmet, and a red jersey a little shade darker than mine.

"Now get on back in there, boy, it's not over yet!"

And then he shoots past me up the field, and without my glasses, he soon gets lost in the blur of other players.

-------------------------------------

EPILOGUE: Walter and the other boys played some more, and then they joked around and got cleaned up. When Walter walked out of the showers, they pointed at him and laughed, but it turns out that it was because he had missed a giant patch of dried mud on the back of his right arm. Then they all left Longpré because they did not feel welcome at the CPNT hang-out, and it turned out that, this one time, they didn't all go out to have a beer together in Amiens. Well, Walter had a beer, one beer, at My Goodness Irish Pub where they seemed happy to see him alive. For this kindness, Walter decided that the Irish (Michael, Eddy, and Keith) were once more worthy of individual names, which they had lost after the Fiasco of the Epileptic Woman. Then Veer from Liverpool bought Walter a second pint, as Walter was about to pass out dead-log tired at the bar. They were having a lottery at the bar, with a ticket for each pint you bought. That is the only reason Walter stayed even a little while longer, he had even tried to give his tickets to other people and leave, but no one would take them. Michael had Marie the Fiddle-Player draw the numbers, and soon, number 328 came up, which was the number printed on the ticket Walter received when Veer bought him the second pint. Walter won a nice black Guinness t-shirt, which he put on then and there, and wore for three days, because it was the cleanest thing he had; half the laundromats were closed to change over to the Euro, and thus everyone was packed into the ones still open, making it impossible to do laundry.