A Slice of Life on a Good Day in Old Amiens, France
by Walter Agnew Moore II
28 February, 2002

Do you have any idea how long it has been raining here? I forget myself. But the river is rising, it's always grey and cold, and the prehistoric swamp this town is built on is waking up and plans to take the place back over. It is foggy with slick wet sidewalks, dog-doo dissolving down the gutters.

But not today. It is warming up, and the sun is baking the buildings across the street from my window, outlining crisp shadows under every single brick. There is not a puddle to be seen. Slow breeze, a few thin clouds in a bright sky.

It's time for that bike-ride that Cousin Keith and I have been putting off for weeks.

I roll down the hill on my bike, T'chiot Bleu, to My Goodness Irish Pub. Oh yeah, this is a good day to be out. Grab a ham-and-cheese sandwich from across the way, and go in the bar. Cousin Eddy pours me a cider to go with the food. He's got tired eyes. "How's it goin', Cousin Walter?"

"Pretty good. Hey, is Keith here?"

"Ah, he's passed out upstairs, he got blocked last night after closin'."

"Dude! He needs to wake up, look how nice it is outside—we can go ridin'. I brought the pump for the tires."

A voice comes from over my shoulder: "Awwww... That's so *sweeeet*, our little Walter and our little Keith are goin' on a *bike-ride* together..." It is Cousin Michael, wearing the only denim jacket in France. He has a big plastic bag of Euro coins in each hand.

Eddy jumps in: "Ahh, a *bike-ride*, will you be needin' me to pack you two a nice pic-nic basket?"

Michael circles behind the bar. "No, I think they'll just be talkin', like, and mebbe holdin' hands..."

"Yeah...Va't'faire foutre. Keith's upstairs? I brought the pump. Why don't one o' you bastards go wake him up."

Michael says, "Ah, Eddy, did I just hear Walter say: 'One o' yuz bastids go wake him up'?"

"Close," I say, "close."

Keith staggers through the door behind the bar looking like an unsuccessfully-staked vampire.

"Keith! I got the pump! Let's fix the bike and roll!"

Keith: "Ahm ba guh huuuuuh... wha pump nna know, g'so drunhnh..."

Michael is bending over the back bar rooting around the bags of Euro coins. There's a good month's salary worth of them. He is muttering and complaining. "Jayz, I hate goin' to the bank. Walter, you wanna go to the bank for me? Ah, let's see, like, are there any foreign Euros in here? You'd think there'd be one..."

He means, Euros not from France. Every coin has the same symbol on one side, but then something particular to the E.U. country it was minted for on the other side. The French designs remind me of video-game tokens or shrunken Mardi Gras doubloons. But they spend, and they look better than the Belgian ones, which sport a fat man wearing glasses.

I yell "They're *all* foreign!"

"Yeah, I spose they are... I don't wanna go to the bank... and Eddy doesn't speak French... Keith, you wanna take these to the bank? No? Ah, I hate havin' to walk up there..."

"Michael," I say, "Why don't you take the Taxi?"

Michael stands back up straight, mouth dropped open. "I COULD. It's just up the way, we could be in and out..."

"And Thierry said you could drive it, and you need to, to keep fluids runnin' through the lines..."

He nods. "Let's see, we'll go up there, Keith, you too—"

"I don't wanna go! Why do you need me?"

"Cuz one bloke has to sit in it while the other goes in, and Eddy doesn't speak French... Yeah, yeah, it'll work... So, Cousin Walter, ya comin' with us?"

We three clomp out fast across the hardwood floor while a pair of French girls who were whispering in the corner stop and stare at us wide-eyed.

The Taxi is out on the canal side of the bar, in the sun. It is an actual London cab that Thierry brought over and had painted aqua instead of the original black and then added all sorts of Guinness trappings, toucans flying with pints balanced on their beaks, "My Goodness Irish Pub", etc.

Usually it just sits parked by the place as advertisement. Just last week, Michael told me a secret about it:

The Taxi runs.

"Walter, you know how to drive?"

"Michael, I've never been arrested in France."

We figure out how to unlock the doors and start crawling all over it. Michael is in the driver's seat, yelling at us. "Jayzus are you two shites gonna sit back there and leave me up here like th'fukn cabbie?"

We are ignoring him, kicked back in the huge passenger compartment. Keith pulls down the folding leather seat in front of him and puts his feet up on it. I do the same. It's got that "old car sitting in the sunshine" smell.

"Man, we gotta take this thing on a run to the beach, girls, beer..."

"You could fit eight birds back in here!"

"Ah, what a scam— who WOULDN'T want to ride in this..."

Michael twists back through the open window: "Can yuz hold it down for a sec, there's a wee sound I hafta listen for—"

He turns the key.

KokokokoKROOOM gunggung gunggung gunggung gunggung...

"This sounds like a damn Russian tank!"

"It's a 2.8 liter Diesel."

Michael adjusts the side mirror, and it pops off in his hand. Keith, the engineering-student-taking-a-term-off-in-France, runs in for tools and fixes it in a couple of minutes. We ease off the square-edged stone curb, and we roll, around the corner and through the streets of the St. Leu neighborhood.

The car coming towards us veers and blows its horn. Michael laughs back over his shoulder: "Ah, now what side is it I'm supposed to be on here?"

Keith is leaning forward, barking "The RIGHT, Michael, the RIGHT side!"

"The right? Are ya sure?"

I tighten my seat-belt.

We ease up the hill into the centreville and pull into a no-parking space by the bank. Pedestrians are everywhere, regular workin'-folk, eyeballing us and the Taxi as they walk past.

"So Keith, run on in the bank, and Walter n I will wait for you here."

"Why do *I* have to go in the bank? I HATE goin' in the bank!"

"Because you just DO, that's why, now come on..."

Keith leaves. We sit there with the engine throbbing, windows down, breeze is a little cool, but with the yellow sun everywhere it makes it t-shirt weather inside the Taxi. Lots of people walking by, Michael keeps up a running commentary from the front seat:

"Ah, lovely ladies, lovely ladies... Is that a cop behind us? It is, I do declare... Ah, look at that one Walter, she's bound to look good in her knickers— wait, I know her, Marie... ALORS? MARIE!!!... Ah, is that her new bloke? Jayzus..."

The cop behind us isn't doing anything. Michael switches to a London Cockney accent, to which I reply with a twangy Texas oil-man accent.

"So gov'nor, lovely dye, where you from? First toim in London?"

"YEA-up. Mighty fine town but kinda little. Now Houston, Texas, that there is a good-size town."

"Ah gov'nor, cawn't sye Oi loik the stytes, Oi went there once, and Oi thought they were roight sods..."

"Ah bet yew was up in one o' them YANKEE states. Boy, yew just come on down to TEXAS, an ah'll show yew how it's done. We got a little old place in Bandera and Medina counties, yew come on by, an we'll set yew up. Yew lahk barbecue?"

"Barbecue? That's French, is it? Don't know if—"

"We'll fix yew up a big ol' mess o' Texas-style barbecue, fallin' off th'bone. Yew lahk horses?"

"'Orses loik in the changin' of the Guard? Oi—"

"Why we'll set yew up with a good ol' string o' horses. And steak? T-bone steak ever day."

"Well that's noice, gov'nor, but Oi'm dying for a noice English breakfast, they don't make it properly 'ere, do they? It's all the bloody foreigners, isn't it? Ship 'em all back where they came from, says Oi..."

The cop is still sitting about two feet behind us, doing nothing. We drop the fake accents.

"So Mike, how long did you live in London?"

"About a year. Did you never ride in one of these cabs before? Listen, the next time you're in London, do yourself a favor and go somewhere in one of these cabs. You see so much, and it gives you an excuse to say 'TACK-see?!', then you and your bird have got that big comfortable space to yourselves, and it's not all that expensive..."

He continues: "Now, in Belfast, see, it was different. You'd only have these black cabs in the dodgy areas, the little enclaves where the fightin' goes on. You see a black taxi comin' down the road, chances are it's got some hard guy in it."

"So if I'm ever in Belfast, and get invited to a formal dinner, I don't want to get dropped off in a black taxi?"

"NO."

We keep scanning the sidewalks. "Jayzus, where'd all the pretty birds get off to?" I pull my cap low and soak up sun like a cat.

Keith's back, squinting and pissed-off.

"I HATE the bank. They put me in THREE lines! Hey Mike, you got a cop followin' you."

"Right... let's just ease on around here now... If he stops me, I can't speak any French, that was always Conor's trick..."

"Hey, " I say, "Over by the post-office, that's Gaelle."

Sure is. Little tiny girl who works at the bar once in a blue moon, blonde hair now reddish, scarf and jacket and armor of French Street Seriousness about her. Three guys in a taxi start yelling across the street:

"Gaelle! GAELLE! Get in! Ou-vas tu? Viens! Come on! We'll give you a ride!"

Gaelle keeps walking the same way away from us, but she is dissolving into laughter, staggering, face blushed red looking back over her scarf-draped shoulder.

"Ah, wee Gaelle, now that's somebody..."

We tool our way out of the centreville maze. We turn right onto the boulevard. Cop turns left. We get back down to the flats between all the little canals, St. Leu, buildings yellow in the warm afternoon sun. Groups of college kids grin at us. Some, we know. I undo my seat belt and lean back. We're only doing about 5 miles per hour, we're bigger than most things that could hit us, and, I just don't care.

I am going to miss these days.