Chapter 1
What was the worst day of your life?
For me, it was November 23rd,2008 -- the day of my custody hearing in my parents’ epic, three-year divorce battle. Instead of heading home for Thanksgiving like everyone else that day, I had to appear in court.
There’s a lot of things I would have done differently if I had the chance to go back. Let’s say, I could get into that silver DeLorean in Back to the Future and go back to that day.
First, I would have gotten my own damn lawyer, someone who was looking out for me. Second, I wouldn’t have done so many painkillers. I’d taken a Vicodin first thing in the morning, and then another one right before the start of the hearing. So, I was pretty much zoned-out the whole time the court was deciding my fate. Not the most genius move. Science, please get your shit together and invent time travel so I can go back and fix 11/23/08!
The judge called the court to order. He was your basic old white dude with gray hair and dorky glasses. There were two lawyers at the table beside me: Mr. Wolf, my mom’s lawyer and Mr. Kaplan, the lawyer for my dad.
“Where are the boy’s parents?” the judge said.
“His mother is in Paris. She’s ill and is seeking care in a clinic,” Mr. Wolf said.
“There is no point in hiding the fact that Mrs. Turner has gone into rehab for the third time,” Mr. Kaplan said.
“The nature of my client’s illness is immaterial. Why isn’t Mr. Turner in court today? Perhaps because he is too busy travelling the world with his new girlfriend?” Mr. Wolf said.
“Your honor, Mr. Turner is a pilot for Qantas Airlines. He is in Sydney on legitimate business, and his travelling companion is neither here nor there.”
“It sounds like the parents are neither here nor there,” Judge Dinnerstein said. “Who is the guardian to this young man?”
“No guardian has been agreed upon. That’s the problem, your honor,” Mr. Kaplan said. “Charles Turner had been in the care of Thayer Academy in Braintree.”
I watched numbly as the judge flipped through some documents in front of him. He didn’t seem to know any of the details about the case.
He wanted to know why I couldn’t stay at Thayer over the holidays. Because I got expelled, OK? I got caught stealing meds from the school infirmary. The judge perked up over that – he wanted to know why wasn’t I being processed into the juvenile detention system?
Mr. Wolf told him that no one wanted to press charges, especially not Thayer. The school was afraid that any scandal like this would hurt recruiting. You could basically buy a new Mercedes for what it cost to send a kid to there for a year. Thayer’s enrollment had been way down the past few years after the recession hit and everything.
“I don’t see any good options here. The parents are negligent. The school is cowardly. The boy must be placed somewhere. What about the rest of his family? Brothers? Sisters? Grandparents?”
“Charles Turner is an only child,” Wolf said.
“All of the grandparents are deceased, your honor. There are no living relations in American. There is, however, one option that might be a solution,” Kaplan said. “A great uncle and aunt on the father’s side. If my colleague might be flexible on this matter…”
“We object to the father’s family being granted custody, you honor. That would be prejudicial to the long-term placement of the boy, who, for his own well-being should be with his mother, Mrs. Miranda Turner,” Wolf said.
“Is Mrs. Miranda Turner in any position to take custody of the boy today?” the judge said.
“No, your honor,” Mr. Wolf said.
“Tell me more about the great uncle and aunt, Mr Kaplan. Have they been contacted about this matter?”
“Yes, your honor. George and Georgette Bonet…”
I had never met them before. In fact, that was the first time I ever heard their names.
“They live in Northern France. In a small town called Sangatte just outside of Calais. They’ve agreed to be guardians of the last resort.”
“Well, if this isn’t the last resort, I don’t know what is,” the judge said.
He searched through the paperwork again. When he looked back up, he was focused on me.
The judge said something I didn’t catch. My mind was drifting. The whole hearing had felt unreal from the start, like I was watching an episode of Law & Order instead of living my life. Probably, that was the effect of the drugs.
“Mr. Turner?” the judge said.
“Your honor?” I said.
“Young man, I asked you a question. Who would you prefer to live with, your mother or your father?”
“Um…that’s a hard decision, sir. Your honor. In a perfect world, I wish my mom and dad could be together again, like a normal family. But, that’s probably not in the cards, so, I guess I would rather live with my mom. But, like you said, she isn’t really in a position... So, my dad. I’m not really as close to him, but I guess it would be OK. Except he’s based in LA now, I think.”
“Your honor, the man has abandoned his family and by all accounts has started a new one. Is that really the right placement for the boy?” Mr. Wolf said.
The judge looked tired. He had probably been a judge for a long time. He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses. He put them back on and looked over at the clock. It was getting late.
“Gentlemen, approach the bench. Let’s take a look at the options before us.”
Kaplan and Wolf went up to the judge. The judge did most of the talking. I could see Mr. Wolf arguing with the judge for a while, but, finally he shut up and seemed to give in.
Kaplan and Wolf came back to stand on either side of me. Everyone stood up as the judge spoke:
“Hearing no further objections, this court hereby remands the minor before us, Charles Turner, to the guardianship of Mr. George Bonet of Sangatte, France. Court adjourned,” he said with another smack of his gavel.
I stood there in a daze as everyone got up and sped toward the exits, toward their holiday plans and their families.
And that’s how this whole nightmare started…
Chapter 2
The lawyers flipped a coin to see who would take me to the airport. Kaplan lost. We got in his BMW and he drove me to Logan Airport.
“There will be a ticket for you at Air France. George Bonet will meet you at the gate in Paris. Good luck, kid,” Kaplan said when he dumped me at the curb.
I kind of like airports. I know most people would rather get a root canal than spend any extra time in an airport. But not me. First of all, my dad is a pilot. He spent years in the Air Force before becoming a commercial pilot. He works for Quantas now, flying the LA - Sydney route. Growing up, some of the best times I I spent with my dad was around airports. I always thought being a pilot would be the coolest thing you could ever become.
My dad had an old Piper Saratoga that he used to keep at Teeterboro Airport in New Jersey. Every other weekend when I was younger, we would take the plane out and fly. We’d fly up to Cape Cod, down along the Jersey Shore to Atlantic City, up the Hudson River or into Pennsylvania, over mountains and rivers and forests. I think that’s when my dream of being a pilot really started.
Also, I’m a major airplane geek. While I was waiting for my flight, I was happy to find a spot where I could watch the planes land and take off. I knew all of the modern jumbo jets by sight: the L10-111s, the Airbus models, and the Boeing 747s and 777s. To be honest, they all kind of bore me. I’m more into vintage planes, like planes from World War II: the P-51 Mustang, the B-17 and the British Spitfires. That was a great era for airplane design!
In the past year, I had become obsessed with FlightSim. It’s a hyper-realistic flight simulation videogame. I mean, the Air Force could use it in their training it’s so realistic. I sat there, lost in the game. It was easy to lose track of time when I got deep into FlightSim. For a couple of hours it was just me alone in the cockpit of an F-16, soaring through the virtual wild blue yonder. The real world, and all of the crap from the past week – stealing the pills, getting expelled and now getting sent off to France – faded away.
After a while, I realized I was starving. I hadn’t eaten all day, so I put my laptop into my backpack and went to the food court for lunch. Couple of hot dogs, nachos, Mountain Dew.
I felt kind of weird after I ate.
Maybe it’s just the painkillers wearing off, I thought.
I tried to call my dad again. When I had tried earlier in the day the call had gone straight to voice mail. This time he still wasn’t picking up.
Why the hell isn’t he calling me back?
I went into a bathroom to take a leak.
What time was it in Australia, anyway?
I googled it: 3:00 am.
“Shit! Why is it always three a.m. in Australia?”
There was this small metal trashcan at my feet. I was pissed off about my dad but also about everything, about my whole pathetic life. On an impulse, I grabbed the little trashcan and chucked it across the room.
It bounced off a sink and shattered one of the mirrors into a zillion pieces. I stood there in shock, trying to process what had just happened. Then, in a panic, I grabbed my backpack and ran. I was afraid they would send me to juvenile detention now if I got caught. So, I ran through the terminal, trying to get as far way from the scene of the crime as possible.
I was out of breath and on the verge of puking when I finally stopped running. I was in a long hall full of people riding on moving walkways.
I thought everyone was staring at me. All those respectable people, heading home for the holidays with family and friends. They all knew I’d been kicked out of school. That I was a loser who was being sent away. Now, I really did have to throw up. I made it to the nearest bathroom just in time. Chewed up nachos, hot dog chunks and yellow bile spewed into the toilet, everything coming up in four furious heaves.
Afterwards, I sat on the floor of the bathroom. I was as depressed as I ever had been in my life. The flight to France left in forty-five minutes. I wished there was some way out of this whole situation. But I had no money and nowhere to go. There was no way out.
I don’t know why I do shit like busting up that mirror. Sometimes I just act out without thinking. I feel like crap afterwards. I don’t know if I have some kind of disorder, or if it just comes from being a sixteen year-old guy who doesn’t think things through? I don’t think I’m a bad person. I think I’m a good person… who sometimes does stupid shit.
I made my way to the gate and got aboard Air France flight #74, non-stop to Paris. In the morning I would be in France.
Chapter 3
FUN CHARLIE FACT #1: I have this condition called dyslexia (no doubt you’ve heard about it) where people have trouble reading and etc. The words look all jumbled up sometimes and you have to try and put them back in the right order in your head. Some dyslexics are just written off as stupid. We aren’t stupid, our brains are just wired different than yours. Over time, you can eventually learn to read just as good (as well I mean!) as anyone else. I used to hate to read when I was young and I couldn’t understand why my brain didn’t work right. But I’ve gotten a lot better over time and now I actually like to read.
***DYSLEXIA TRIVIA (bonus fun fact!): Lots of successful and famous people have had dyslexia – Picasso, Steven Speilberg, Ted Turner, Anderson Cooper, (maybe) Albert Einstein and Keanu Reeves. Einstein and Keanu Reeves have more in common that you might think!
FUN CHARLIE FACT #2: when I was a kid we lived in a hotel. Not the Plaza like Eloise, but in a place my dad used to call the “bohemian flophouse,” whatever that meant. I think he meant there were too many actors and artists and people without steady jobs living there. This was the Hotel Wyndham on West 58th Street. It had this cool old-fashioned elevator. And an actual guy (Gus during the day, Jose at night) whose job it was to run the elevator. The rooms had this crazy décor. Our place had red shag carpeting in every room except the bathroom. The Theater District was a ten-minute walk. My childhood was the Wyndham, ice skating at Wollam Rink, the Met (especially the Temple of Dendur), the Natural History Museum, Rizzoli Bookstore on West 66th, bagels and hot chocolate from Fluffy’s, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, MoMA. My mom was way into the Arts and Broadway and all that jazz, and she always dragged me along.
FUN CHARLIE FACT #3: if the first ten years of my life were a dream (see above), the last six years have been a nightmare (see below.)
My dad hated the Wyndham. It was just too weird for him. He was a middle-class, straight-arrow, suburban guy from Minnesota who had spent most of his adult life in the Air Force. The Wyndham, and my mother’s artsy world, was not his style at all. He just didn’t get it. So, he made us move to a sleek, modern co-op in mid-town. Very practical. Very convenient to Grand Central so he could get out to JFK quickly if he was needed on a flight. He was an “on-call” pilot for Delta Airlines back then. My mom hated the new apartment. She called it a prison. And she started drinking. OK, she drank before the move, but after the move, it seemed like all she did was drink. My dad got a promotion but it meant doing international routes. My mom didn’t want him to take it. It was more money. It was a way to move up the ranks. That’s how life works, my dad said. Couldn’t she see that? But it meant he would be away from the family for weeks at a time. No, my mom couldn’t see it. This was about the time I got sent to my first boarding school, Camden Academy. It’s the same military prep school my dad went to. I got kicked out after a year.
***EDUCTATIONAL CHARLIE TRIVIA CONTEST: Can you name all seven of the schools I’ve attended in the past five years? Camden Military Academy, The Hyde School, Westminster, Storm King, Canterbury, Diamond Ranch and, most recently, Thayer Academy. (10 points if you got them all!) I never fit in at any of them. And I either quit or got expelled from them all.
FUN CHARLIE FACT #4: at Thayer I had two friends, both named Kevin. Straight Kevin and Gay Kevin. Urban legend has it that Gay Kevin gave me a Blow Job. Yes, he was crying in my lap at that party. He was always over the moon about some stupid, unapproachable guy. And I was wasted, sure, but I think I would remember something like that if it had actually happened! I’m totally cool with the gay thing. Who a gives shit? But I just want to clear the record and confirm that NOTHING ever happened between me and Gay Kevin. I’m just saying, don’t believe what you might have heard.
Holiday Granger, did once give me a hand-job in the back of her dad’s Hummer. I thought that was pretty awesome until I found out she had done it as part of a competition with this other girl. It was some super-slut dare to see who could mess around with the most guys. You got a bangle of bracelet for each guy you messed around with. I was just another bangle on Holly’s wrist. It didn’t mean anything to her. (Later I found out she did the same thing with both Kevins!) So, the only time I ever did anything with a girl and it turned out to be a complete joke.
OK. Now you know everything worth knowing about me—
Chapter 4
Charles de Gaulle airport, 7:00 am.
I followed the other passengers off the plane. We went down some stairs, through a long corridor, up an escalator, along a moving walkway and finally into a huge room where people were lined up for customs.
It took forever to go through the line. Finally, I came to the security checkpoint. There were soldiers with Uzis nearby. They looked pretty intense.
The guy at the security checkpoint looked at my passport. Then he looked at me. He seemed like the kind of person who is permanently in a bad mood.
"Why you are coming to France?" the guy said. "You are coming for holiday?"
"No,” I said.
"You are coming for business?"
"No."
"You go to university?"
"No."
"Do I look like I’m in the mood to joke around here?” the guy said. One of the Uzi-toting guards clocked this. He came over to the security desk.
"I’m not joking around,” I said. “I’m going to stay with my aunt and uncle. George and Georgette Bonet. In Sangatte. They’re my guardians. It should all be there in my documents."
I almost blurted out the truth: I’m here because I have nowhere else to go.
The agent went through my documents again. Then, he checked something on the computer one last time before he stamped my passport and allowed me into France.
After I made it through customs, I took a wrong turn and got lost. I wandered around trying to find the exit.
The airport was pretty cool. I recognized it from an old U2 video. I didn’t speak any French and I was too nervous to ask for directions. I didn’t know where to meet George. I didn’t even know what George looked like.
Finally, I made my way out to the main lobby. In the crowd, I saw a middle-aged guy holding a piece of paper with CHARLIE MARTIN written on it. I went over to him.
“George?”
“Charles?” George said.
I nodded.
"Allez!” George said.
We walked to the parking lot and got into George’s old truck. We drove for a long time in silence. Traffic was heavy and we were stuck behind a big van farting black smoke from its tailpipe. The sky seemed to be one huge cloud. It rained off and on. I stared out the window at billboards for French products and weird brands I’d never heard of before.
"You are speaking some French, no?" George said.
“No,” I said.
I wasn’t in the mood to talk so I took out my i-pod and put on my headphones. I played Roky Ericson’s I Walked with a Zombie.
I turned it up loud and put it on repeat.
I listened to I Walked with a Zombie 47 times in a row as we drove to Sangatte.
Chapter 5
Sangatte is 123 miles north of Paris, just west of Calais on the English Channel.
Population 4,591. Main industries -- farming, fishing and mining. That was all the information I had found on Google.
By the time we got to Sangatte it was late afternoon. We pulled up in front of an old farmhouse with a red tile roof. A blue tarp covered a section of the roof, its edges flapping in the breeze. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I have to admit, I was expecting something more than this shabby little house in the middle of nowhere.
The front door opened and a large woman came out to greet us. This was my Aunt Georgette. She kissed me on both cheeks. She spoke French very fast. I couldn’t understand a word she said.
“He doesn’t speak French,” George said to Georgette. “Not sure he speaks much English either. I couldn’t get two words out of him all the way from Paris.”
The house was small, with two bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and living room downstairs. My room was the smaller upstairs bedroom. It looked like it had been used for a storage for a long time. I noticed water stains on the ceiling and realized that this room was under the blue tarp I had seen outside.
Afterwards, George showed me around the farm. We started in the garden behind the house.
“Georgette’s garden,” George said. “Most of our meals come out of this humble plot.”
I couldn’t imagine a meal of any kind, not even a decent salad, coming out this muddy patch of weeds. Beyond the garden, the land opened up into larger fields and an orchard. There was even a pond. But the fields were empty, and the trees in the orchard were bare at that time of year. It looked pretty grim.
“Sugar beets, that’s our cash crop," George said. “We also grow onions, potatoes, turnips, leeks. In the orchard…pears and apples. Chickens in the coop. Rabbits in these hutches here.”
I was only half-listening. I was exhausted and jet-lagged. I looked at the row of fluffy brown rabbits in their pens. Everything seemed unreal, like I was having a bad dream.
“Well, that concludes the grand tour,” George said, leading the way along a high wooden fence.
Just then, I heard something on the other side. It sounded like a large animal of some sort, maybe even several of them, crowding up against the fence. George took no notice of it.
“What the heck was that?” I said.
“Nothing. Some…creatures that happen to live next door,” George said.
Then a head poked above the fence – it had two big eyes and a large beak. It looked at me then ducked back down.
“Whoa!” I said. “Was that…? Was that an ostrich or something?”
After a moment, a second ostrich head popped up, and then a third and a fourth and a fifth, until a dozen ostriches were staring over the fence at me, their heads swiveling and bobbing. Their necks were long and rubbery. I thought they were goofy-looking, more like cartoon characters than real animals.
“They didn’t tell me you lived on an ostrich farm,” I said.
George spun around to face me.
“I do not live on an ostrich farm. This is my farm. Over here I grow beets, potatoes, leeks and turnips. On the other side of the fence is a property my wife happened to inherit from her family. They keep ostriches. Not me. Comprendez-vous?”
I got a flash of the big gold tooth in George’s mouth. I hadn’t noticed it before. It was unexpected to see this hunk of bling gleaming in George’s teeth. It was like finding out he once been a pirate or rap star. Not sure which would be more ridiculous.
The ostriches looked over the fence at me, squawking hungrily.
“They’re so weird looking. What do they eat? Do they really bury their heads in the sand?” I asked.
"Learn to speak French and Georgette will be pleased to tell you all about it," George said, stalking away.
The jet lag hit me hard at dinner. I could barely keep my eyes open.
On my plate there was some kind of mystery meat and lumpy vegetables covered in a mud-brown sauce.
“Excuse me. W-what is this?” I asked after trying a few spoonfuls.
“Le ragout lapin,” Georgette said proudly.
“Rabbit stew,” George translated.
I felt queasy. I’m not vegan or anything like that, but, the thought of eating one of those cute little bunnies from out back me lose my appetite. I excused myself and went up to my room.
I went to bed and slept for twelve hours straight.
Chapter 6.
I spent the first week on the farm mostly in my room. I played FlightSIM for hours on end, and when I got bored with that, I read zombie books.
At the time, I was obsessed with zombies. I had gone through most of the books I’d brought with me from home: Plague of the Dead, Reign of the Dead and the War of the Dead series. After that I only had Dead Fellas and Brain Eaters Nightmare left. My supply of painkillers was also running low. Taking a pill a day, I had managed to remain semi-stoned the entire week.
I really only wanted to leave my room to eat and use the bathroom. I asked George if it would OK if I ate dinner in my room, too.
“You will eat dinner with the rest of us. There are rules in this house and as long as you live in it, you will follow the rules!” George said, his face turning red.
That was the first time I noticed that George sort of looked like my dad. I could see the family resemblance: they both had thick, wavy hair and big heads, heads that seemed too big for their bodies. They looked like bobble-head dolls when they got worked up over something.
I sat at the table for dinner. We started with beet soup. Turnips, beets and onions were in just about every meal. I hate turnips, beets and onions almost as much as I hate broccoli. And broccoli really sucks.
After the beet soup, Georgette served the entrée.
“Um…are those…snails?” I asked.
“Oui. Escargot in butter. This is a real treat,” George said, tucking in.
Snails? You gotta be kidding me.
Gross as it sounded, I thought I should be a good sport and at least try one. How bad could it be? So, I pulled the meat out of the little snail shell. I tried to pretend it was something else, but it was so rubbery and oily, that no amount of pretending could hide the fact that I was actually eating a snail. I just couldn’t choke it down without gagging.
I really wanted to go back to my room, but I thought better of it after George’s red-faced outburst earlier. So, I stayed at the table, moving the snails around on my plate, trying to make it look like I had eaten more than I really had. At least I got some extra bread so I wouldn’t go to sleep hungry again.
The following morning, Georgette got me out of bed at dawn and outfitted me for work with boots, gloves and an old jacket of George’s.
I followed her through the gate that separated the farm from the ostrich ranch. Georgette was a big woman; big hips, big hands, big breasts. Her knees were made of titanium. They had been replaced a couple of years earlier and they ached when it got cold, George told me.
“She can predict rain or snow better than the weatherman,” he said.
The cottage on Georgette’s property had been turned into an office. It was made of butter-yellow stone. Moss grew on the red-tiled roof. I thought it looked more like a home for hobbits than any kind of office.
Inside the cottage, I met the ranch manager, Voltaire. He was a short black man with a cowboy hat. He spoke English with a South African accent.
“Monsieur Voltaire, recontre Monsieur Charlie,” Georgette said.
“She calls me Voltaire because she thinks I’m a philosopher,” he said.
“What should I call you?” I asked him.
“Best call me Voltaire, mate. Everyone round about here does,” he said.
I followed Voltaire and Georgette out to the hatchery. Voltaire told me he had worked on ostrich ranches in South Africa before immigrating to Europe.
“We have about two hundred birds all in all,” Voltaire said.
In a long wooden hut, they showed me the nests and the incubators for the eggs. Georgette saw that three fresh eggs had been laid over night. She was very excited. She said there was a shop in Paris that gave her twenty euros per egg.
"Merci Eloise, merci Albertine, merci Colette..." Georgette said as she gathered the eggs in a wicker basket.
Georgette held up a big white ostrich egg to show me.
"Les oeufs" she said.
I nodded. Lezoo = egg. I get it.
“The males can get as big as nine feet tall and three hundred pounds,” Voltaire said when we were outside again.
I noticed that the males had black and white feathers; the females were a drab brown color. I liked their leathery, two-toed legs. They looked like dinosaur legs or something.
“Now, they may look harmless, but believe me…they can be very aggressive when they want. Their kick packs quite a wallop. I’ve seen them kill lions in the wild,” Voltaire said.
Voltaire had grown up speaking an African click language. He made a double-clicking sound with his tongue and an old ostrich hobbled over to the fence and reached his long neck toward me.
“That’s old One-Eye,” Voltaire said. “Oldest male on the farm.”
The bird had one good eye and one milky-white dead eye. He nudged at my hand. I stroked the bird’s neck.
“Georgette tells me you’re gonna help us out for a while,” Voltaire said.
“Yeah, I guess…” I said.
Voltaire grabbed my hands and looked at them.
“Just as I suspected. A spoiled city boy who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life,” Voltaire said.
I yanked my hands free. I’m not sure why Voltaire was so hostile toward me.
“Look, dude…Mr. Voltaire, I don’t wanna be here any more than you want me here,” I said. “Why don’t you tell the old lady that I’m useless and then maybe she’ll leave me alone, huh?”
Voltaire spat tobacco juice at my feet, squinting at me with a menacing stare. “You’re not getting’ off that easy, you little wanker. Let’s go,” Voltaire said.
I spent the whole day working on the ranch. I shoveled manure out the pens, cleared brush from along the outer fence and nailed up fresh boards around the hatchery. Later, Voltaire and I moved a wounded female into the hospital pen so she could get treatment on a broken wing.
I was on my feet all day, working non-stop. By dusk I was exhausted and hungry, my back stiff, my legs sore. Voltaire was right, I wasn’t used to manual labor like this. I was about ready to fall over, but I wasn’t going to let him see how exhausted I was.
“I guess we’ll see you tomorrow,” Voltaire said. He seemed disappointed that I hadn’t quit or complained.
“I guess so…” was all I could manage in return as I headed back to the farm for dinner.
Chapter 7.
I got into a routine on the farm: first thing in the morning, I fed the ostriches. I filled the orange buckets along the fence with food pellets, then I stood back to watch the feeding frenzy.
The ostriches had a funny way of eating – first, they filled their mouths with pellets then they tilted their heads back to let the food run down their long throats. One-Eye always got muscled out by the younger birds, so I made sure to hand-feed him. I felt sorry for One-Eye with his ratty feathers and gnarly legs.
I spent the mornings working on the ostrich ranch. There were fences or pens to repair, trash to haul, feed bags to unload and ostrich products to box up. But it seemed like half of my time was spent shoveling ostrich manure out of the pens.
If mud was a cash crop, they’d be millionaires. Everywhere I went there was mud. In the pens, mud and ostrich shit got mixed together into a sticky foul-smelling paste as thick as cake batter. At night, I took long hot showers to get all of that mud and shit off my body.
Some days, I helped Georgette in the cottage, boxing up eggs, feathers and ostrich hides for shipping. Georgette’s real money came from fashion houses in Paris and Milan: hat makers, designers and artists who used ostrich feathers, companies that used ostrich leather for their handbags, wallets and gloves. Even a few big-name car companies used her ostrich leather for their interior trim.
I was kind of impressed: out of this quaint little cottage, Georgette was running an international business with clients like Armani, Porsche and Chanel.
At the end of a long day, I stood at the edge of the hatchery and looked out at the fields beyond. I liked watching the ostriches run free on the open range. Three young males were running full out, chasing each other in the fading winter sunlight. They looked so awkward when they were walking, but running, they were beautiful and athletic.
Not far away, I knew, on the other side of that hill, there was a train line to Paris. My mother was there, back in rehab. She hadn’t returned my emails in months. And her last phone number was dead. My father was off in Australia with his new girlfriend. Sometimes I thought about running away. But, I knew I wouldn’t get very far without any money. Face it, I was stuck here, like it or not. When I thought about that for too long, I got depressed.
Voltaire came up beside me. He had his hat pulled down low over his eyes, looking like a black, pint-sized Clint Eastwood.
“I like watching them, too. Fastest thing on two legs. They can get up to forty miles an hour,” Voltaire said. “I know what you’re thinking. Why would god make a bird that can’t fly?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I had not been thinking that at all.
“Everything has a place and a purpose. It’s not always obvious what it is,” Voltaire said, spitting out tobacco on the ground.
Why does anyone think this ostrich cowboy is a philosopher? He’s a nut-job.
In the afternoons, I went back to George’s and helped out on the farm. There wasn’t much to do at that time of year, so I spent most of my time in George’s workshop. It was my favorite place on the farm. George kept all of the farm equipment in good repair and he took in odd jobs from people around town, supplementing the farm’s income. He was well known in Sangatte as a carpenter and master mechanic.
I’ve always loved taking things apart and putting them back together again. Ever since I was little, I was fascinated by machines, by how things worked. I loved shop class. I guess you could say I was kind of a natural tinkerer. I enjoyed working with my hands, but my parents always looked down on that. I guess it was too blue-collar for them or something.
“You don’t want to grow up to be a grease-monkey, do you?” my mom would say. Are you kidding? I’d take that any day over being stuck in a lame nine to five office job every stinking day of your life.
George’s workshop was in their converted garage. It was warm and cozy and smelled of sawdust, motor oil and wet dog. George’s dog, Javert, lived in the shop. Georgette didn’t allow him in the house.
“How old is he?” I asked George.
“Who knows? I found him at the farmer’s market about ten years ago. Tried to steal some ostrich meat. He got on Georgette’s bad side from the start. No tags, and no owner turned up when we posted signs. So we kept him.”
“Why do you call him Javert?”
“From Les Miserables, of course! He searches all day for scraps of food like Inspector Javert searching for Jean Valjean! He’s relentless.”
The old dog rolled over on his back and let me rub his belly. My parents had never let me have a dog as a kid.
“How come you and Georgette never had any kids?” I asked.
George kind of stiffened and he went quiet for a moment.
“It’s a long story...” he said.
Obviously, I had made a mistake by bringing up the topic.
“Let’s just say…things didn’t work out for us that way,” George said.
“What are you working on today?” I said, trying to change the subject.
At the workbench, George showed me a vacuum cleaner he was repairing.
“One of the neighbors brought it by to see if I could fix it,” he said.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s old, that’s what’s wrong. People around here are too cheap or too poor to buy new stuff. They want me to work miracles to keep their old machines alive. Machines have life-spans just like people, you know.”
I examined the vacuum, it was a Hoover.
“That’s an American brand,” I said.
“Yes. Not so easy to get the parts over here.”
I opened it up and took a look.
“The air compressor is broken,” I said.
“I know that. They have not made this model in ten years. It’s hopeless. They should throw this out and buy a new one.”
“Can I look at it? We had one just like this when I was a kid.”
“Be my guest,” George said.
I picked up a screwdriver and went to work on the vacuum. It didn’t take me long to take apart the compressor and find a broken metal clip that was blocking the in-take valve.
“Do you have a soldering iron?” I asked.
“Over there,” George said. He seemed amused that I knew what I was doing.
I soldered the metal clip back together, cleaning up the edge with a file and then sliding it back into place where it had broken inside the compressor. I put it all back together, plugged it in and turned it on. The Hoover ran perfectly.
George was impressed. But I could tell he didn’t want me to know that, so he just shrugged and went back to reading his paper.
Chapter 8.
A letter came one day about my education.
In it, the lawyers laid out the program I’d have to follow in order to complete the year. As usual, I had no say about the classes I took.
I was supposed to take French and art history courses in Sangatte. Core curriculum like Math, Science and English Lit. would be done online. I hated math and science unless it related to something practical like building things. I had worked a long time to deal with my dyslexia and become someone who likes books. But, only if the book involved zombies, vampires, the end of the world or some combination of all three. Maybe The Catcher in the Rye didn’t totally suck, but it was usually a struggle for me to get through so-called “classics.”
Georgette took me into town to sign up for French classes at the local community college. We had to visit no less than three different government offices and produce multiple copies of my passport, visa and the legal documents that proved George and Georgette were my court-appointed guardians. It took most of the morning just to get my carte d’ sejour. That’s the document that would allow me to go to school in France.
There was more red tape to deal with at the school, once I got my carte d’ sejour, so Georgette sent me off to buy a baguette and walk around town.
I walked along the main street of the town. It wasn’t much to look at. I had read that a lot of Calais had had the shit bombed out of it during World War II. It looked like it had been rebuilt on the cheap and it had all the charm of downtown Newark, if you ask me.
I bought a couple of baguettes at a bakery and walked towards the Hotel de Ville, the city hall. The fancy architecture of the city hall building and the red-brick clock tower looked like it belonged at Disneyland. Had this building survived the bombing or did they rebuild it afterwards? I wondered.
An ice rink had been set up next to city hall and a dozen people were out skating in the late afternoon light. The winter days in France were short and twilight started early. By four-thirty, it would be dark.
I sat down on a bench to watch the skaters while I waited for Georgette. Out on the ice there was one girl who caught my eye. The way her hair flowed behind made her look like an actress in a shampoo commercial.
I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that she was graceful and elegant and natural in everything she did. And it wasn’t just that she was hot. She was hot for sure, but more than regular hotness, she had this special quality that somehow just made her seem, I don’t know, more alive than everyone else. I couldn’t stop watching her.
I sat there on the bench, watching the beautiful girl ice skating and I lost all track of time. I was surprised when Georgette tapped me on the shoulder.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” she said, following my gaze out to the ice rink.
“Nothing. I’m ready. Let’s go,” I said. I got up hastily and brushed breadcrumbs off my jacket.
For dinner that night Georgette made ostrich in red wine sauce.
I stared at my plate doubtfully. Ostrich, really? The idea kind of freaked me out.
“That’s all you are getting. Now shut up and eat,” George said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but you were thinking it.” George said. “Eat!”
I picked up my knife and fork. It was bad enough eating a rabbit but this was worse. The ostriches had names and personalities. They seemed more like pets than livestock to me
“Do you have any ketchup?” I asked.
“Ketchup? No, we don’t have ketchup,” George said dismissively.
Georgette asked George something in French.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She said shut up and eat,” George said.
I cut a small piece from the gray-brown lump of meat on my plate. I examined it on the end of my fork for a moment, then put it in my mouth and started to chew. To my surprise, I liked it. I liked it a lot. Ostrich meat tasted kind of like steak and I scarfed it down hungrily, cleaning my plate.
“Voulez-vous des secondes?” Georgette asked.
“She wants to know if you’d like seconds,” George translated.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
“Oui, s’il vous plait,” George corrected me.
“Ok…Oui, s’il vous plait,” I repeated, handing over my plate.
Georgette smiled at me as she put another helping of ostrich on the plate.
Chapter 9.
A week before Christmas, I got a letter from my mom.
Dear Charlie:
They finally let me write to you! I feel like a prisoner in here, but I know it’s for my own good. I’m sure you’ve heard your father’s side of the story, but I wanted you to know from me that what happened was truly an accident. I forgot all about taking those pills earlier in the day and when I got upset and started drinking, it was the combination of booze and pills that caused me to collapse.
I wasn’t trying to kill myself. And I wasn’t trying to get your father’s attention or win his love back or anything like that. I just wanted to numb the pain, that’s all. I know it must be hard to believe, but that is the honest to God truth.
Darling, I think about you all the time. My lawyer is working day and night to bring this ridiculous custody battle to an end so we can be a family again. Please believe that!
One day I hope to be strong enough to be out in the world again and strong enough to be your mother again, too. That is what I want most of all in life!
Mr. Kaplan tells me that you are living in France now. And not so far from Paris! I’m not allowed to call or email in the first 45 days, but after that I can. At some point I’m sure I can have visitors too! So maybe you could come and see me here?
With all my love,
-- Mom
Chapter 9.
Every year on Christmas Eve, George and Georgette attended midnight mass. They insisted that I go with them.
"I don’t want to go," I said.
"You go. Allez," George said.
“I’m not into the whole religion thing.”
“I don’t care if you are into it or not. The whole family goes to church on Christmas Eve. You are part of this family whether you like it or not. Understand?”
I got dressed, reluctantly. I put on my black jeans, a Rob Zombie t-shirt and my old Doc Martens combat boots.
“You cannot go to church looking like Sid Vicious,” George said when I came down.
"It’s all I’ve got," I said and stormed past him.
I sat in the backseat of Georgette’s old Renault, sulking. George drove us out to another village and we stopped at a small run-down looking apartment complex. George went in and came back with a little boy who was dressed up in a Batman costume.
The kid was about five and his name was Jean-Hippolyte. They called him Hippo and he had all the manic energy and high-spirits of most kids that age. He seems more like a puppy than a child, I thought. George and Georgette adored him.
We drove back to Bleriot-Plage (the next village over from Sangatte) to the Notre Dame du Blanc Nez.
The church was full. People were staring at me, at my spiked hair and my black goth clothes. It made me feel like a freak. I tried to ignore the stares and pulled out my Gameboy to play FlightSIM.
The service started. George told me to put it away. I pretended not to hear him. Come on, dude, just let me play my game. Finally, George reached over and took the Gameboy away from me, which sucked.
The service was in French and I couldn’t follow along. It was so boring. My mind drifted and I began to look around at the old church. It’s nothing compared to St. Patrick’s back in New York. You could fit ten of these dinky little cathedrals inside of St. Patrick’s, I thought.
After a while, I got tired of looking at the church, so I looked at the people instead. Everyone was dressed conservatively. Even the teenagers were dressed like old people. I’ll never fit in here.
I sat there, bored out of my mind, as the priest droned on and on in French. And then I saw her, three rows up on the aisle -- the beautiful girl from the ice rink. I couldn’t believe it.
Now, I may not be the most experienced guy in the world, but I’ve seen lots of pretty girls in my life. I’ve seen models and movie stars in the flesh in New York and L.A. I had gone to school with some very beautiful girls, too, the kind of girls who would probably grow up and become models and movie stars themselves.
But, this was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. She had this kind of Natalie Portman thing going on, I thought. Maybe if Natalie Portman had a beautiful little French sister she would be this girl. But what the hell is the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my life doing in this godforsaken little town in the north of France?
I thought about trying to meet her, trying to speak to her. But my French was non-existent, so how could I talk to her? And even if I worked up the courage to speak to her in French, what was the point? I didn’t have a car. Didn’t have any money. I was basically a foreigner serving out a court-ordered sentence in George Bonet’s minimum security prison. It was pretty much hopeless.
While I was thinking about this, the service ended and the crowd of people all stood up to leave the church. I was stuck in the back of the church as the crowd carried her away and the girl was lost in the crowd.
Outside, I looked everywhere for her as people got into cars, onto buses or started walking away down the road, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 11.
Christmas morning. I looked out my window. Overnight, the farm had been covered with a fresh layer of snow. It was so ridiculously winter-wonderland-perfect. You could take a picture, slap it on a Christmas card and make a million bucks, I thought, bitterly.
It made me lonely, looking at the view. I didn’t have my family around. I didn’t have any friends. And, even though I was getting more used to life on the farm, I still felt like a stranger in a strange land.
I checked my stash of painkillers. There was nothing left. I‘d used up all the pills I’d stolen from school. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through the day without one.
I heard George and Georgette moving downstairs, setting up for Christmas morning. Hippo was down there too, bouncing around like a hyperactive puppy.
I had an idea. I crept down the hall and into George and Georgette’s bedroom. In their bathroom I went straight to the medicine cabinet. There were about a dozen prescription bottles among the clutter of lotion, shaving cream and make up jars.
I checked the prescriptions one by one. I may not have been able to read French, but I knew my prescription meds inside out. More than one of my classmates had joked that I ought to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals.
Codeine, that’s the stuff. I opened the bottle and saw there were about fifteen pills left. I figured I could take about five or six without Georgette noticing.
"Charles?" Georgette called out from below.
I froze. And my heart skipped a beat when I heard Georgette start up the creaky wooden stairs.
Holy shit, I thought, and in a moment of panic I shoved the entire bottle of pills into my pocket and rushed back toward my room. I only made it back to my door just as Georgette rounded the corner.
"Oui, Georgette?" I said, sure she was about to bust me. But she was too full of Christmas spirit to notice anything.
"Joyeux Noel, Charles. Allez," Georgette said with a warmth worthy of Mrs. Claus herself as I followed her downstairs with a sigh of relief.
I hadn’t spent Christmas with my family in years. The holidays used to be my favorite time of the year. But as I got older and my parent’s marriage came unglued, the holidays became a time of drunken scenes, cancelled plans and broken promises.
When I turned eleven, I was sent away to the first of my boarding schools. At school, I was that sad forgotten kid at Christmas time who stays behind instead of getting to go home for the holidays. I had not had a "real" Christmas in a long time.
I helped Georgette in the kitchen. George’s dog Javert had gotten into the house and he was underfoot, snuffling around under the edge of the cabinets.
“Get your mutt out of my kitchen, George,” Georgette said.
“It’s Christmas day. Can’t he stay inside?”
“Non!” she spat.
“Javert. Come on,” George said. But the dog would not budge, fixated on a scrap of food under the counter. Georgette gave Javert a nudge with her foot.
“Javert!” George yelled to no avail.
Finally, George had to go into the kitchen, pick the dog up in his arms like a child and carry him back to the garage. Javert whimpered in George’s arms.
The Christmas tree took up about half the room – it was wide around the bottom and chopped off on top in order to fit into the low-ceilinged room.
The tree was decorated with strings of popcorn, candy canes and ribbons of tinsel. Instead of an angel on top, there was a big red bow. Knitted stockings hung by the fireplace. It was all very corny and old fashioned.
George came in from the yard with extra wood for the fireplace. He put the logs down and brushed snowflakes off his shoulders, stamping his feet to get warm.
George made a fire, the wood crackling and popping as it came to life and warmed up the room. I could see snow falling now outside through the front window. It felt warm and cozy to be inside by the fire on a winter day like that.
Hippo trundled in wearing his Batman costume. He jumped up on the couch beside me. I thought he took the cos-play thing a little too seriously, even for a little kid. Does he have any regular clothes or is he Batman 24/7?
Georgette made hot chocolate. Hippo and I drank it out of bowls so big Hippo needed two hands to drink it. It was without a doubt the best hot chocolate I had ever tasted. Hippo gulped his down, a big chocolate milk moustache left on his face.
In a little while, George and Hippo passed out the gifts from under the tree. George and Georgette gathered a pile of four or five gifts apiece. Hippo had the lion’s share, with about ten presents.
I wasn’t really expecting anything. I had only been there a month. I certainly hadn’t gotten presents for anyone.
I was hoping, however, that a package would have come from my dad. He could have sent something from Australia or the States. There was one more box left under the tree. Hippo took it and walked over to me. He handed it to me shyly.
"Merci, Hippo,” I said.
Then George handed me an unwrapped gift in a brown paper bag. So, now I had two presents. Hippo sat beside me, bursting with excitement, not sure which of his gifts to open first. I shifted in my seat and the pills rattled in my pocket.
"Commence," George said and Hippo ripped into his first present.
I watched as the little boy tore through the wrapping paper to reveal a Batman Lego set. It was the one where you make the Batmobile. Hippo beamed with delight. George and Georgette smiled at the kid.
Everyone opened their gifts. George got a sweater, Georgette a necklace. I got a hand-knitted scarf. Georgette gestured for me to put it on and I wrapped the scarf around my neck. Everyone smiled at me.
"Merci, Georgette," I said.
My other gift was from George -- a French-English dictionary and a set of Rosetta Stone CDs. I smiled. I would could definitely use them.
"Merci, George," I said.
They were making an effort to make me feel like part of the family. I was starting to feel guilty. I wondered if I could slip away and put the pills back in the medicine cabinet without getting caught.
"Joyeux Noel, Charles," George said, sincerely.
"Joyeux Noel," I said.
Chapter 12.
A feast was laid on for Christmas dinner. To start, there were oysters and champagne. I tried an oyster and almost gagged. It tasted like a pickled slug. I needed an extra glass of champagne to wash away the taste. After the second glass, I had a nice buzz going and forgot all about the pickled slug.
There was a cheese course, and then it was time for the Christmas goose. The goose was almost as big as an American turkey. It tasted a little smokier than turkey, but it was very good. I ate three big helpings. Alongside the goose were stuffing and chestnuts. Stuffing is my favorite holiday food.
I really pigged-out on that meal.
“Why can’t we eat like this every night?” Charlie said, my mouth full.
George and Georgette just laughed. I could tell that George and Georgette were concerned by my eating habits, and worried that I hated all of the basic staples from the farm: beets, turnips, leeks, rabbit.
Dinner lasted all evening. Everyone was in a good mood at the end of the night and I almost felt like a part of the family. It was the best Christmas I could remember for a long time.
Hippo went to bed early, his toys spread out around him. Georgette had been on her feet all day. Her ankles had swollen and the arthritis in her knees was acting up. She asked George to go upstairs for one of her painkillers. In the bathroom, George searched for the pills.
George marched into my room. I was reading a zombie book.
"Where are the pills?" George said.
"Huh?"
"You took some painkillers from the medicine cabinet," George said.
"I...don’t know what you’re talking about..." I said.
George began to search the room. In a few minutes he was wrestling with me. George was pretty strong for an old guy. He got the pills out of my pocket.
"Still don’t know what I’m talking about?" he said, holding up the bottle. George was breathing hard, his face red.
"No one wants you. We take you into our house," he said. “And this is how you repay us? This is wrong. Do you know right from wrong? We should have never taken you. Maybe we should send you back to America and let the lawyers take care of you! Why should we give a damn? Eh?" George said. “Ungrateful brat!”
After that, George seemed to run out of English words. But he continued to rage against me in French.
I just stared at the floor and took it. There was nothing to say. I should have put the pills back. OK, I should never have stolen them in the first place. George stomped out, slamming the door so hard behind him that a picture fell off the wall. I had never felt so ashamed in my entire life.
After midnight, when George and Georgette and Hippo had all gone to bed, I packed my things and crept quietly out of the house.
Outside it was cold as hell. Even with my heavy coat on the wind cut right through me. I went down the long gravel driveway to the road that led into town. It was a long walk and it was very cold. After a while, I put my suitcase down by the side of the road and called my dad. I’d been getting voicemail for the past hour. Finally, someone picked up:
"Dad, it’s Charlie!”
A woman’s voice said: "This is Susan.”
"Put my dad on the phone," I said.
"He’s taking a shower right now. He’ll call you back," Susan said.
"I need to talk to him. It’s important. Just go and get him. Please..."
"I told you...he’s in the shower.”
"PUT MY DAD ON THE PHONE, DAMMIT!"
I heard Susan sigh and then I heard her steps walking away: the sound of high heels on tile. Five minutes later, my father was on the line.
"Charlie, what’s going on? Are you in trouble?" my father said.
"No. I mean, yes. I need to get out of here. I wanna come home."
"Home? Charlie… Susan and I are looking for a new place to live."
"What? Really? Well…can’t I come stay with you?" I said.
There was a long pause.
"I don’t think that would work out. What’s going on over there? Did something happen? Did you get into trouble?"
"No!" I said. Why did my father always assume the worst? "I just don’t fit in. I need to get out of here. Can’t you just send me a ticket back to the States?"
"I can’t do that, Charlie. We have to go by the court’s ruling. If I sent you a ticket right now – as much as I want to – the lawyers would use it against me. And then I’d never get custody of you. I’m sorry, son, but we have to play by the rules."
I couldn’t believe it. My father wasn’t going to help.
"Are you still there?" he said.
"I’m here," I said. I was trying hard not to cry.
"It’ll go quick. I promise. Once the divorce gets settled and I have custody, I’ll send you a ticket and you can come live with us. Okay, Charlie? I have to go now."
"Dad?"
"What?"
"Merry Christmas," I said.
"Oh, yeah. Merry Christmas, Charlie.”
The line went dead. I stood alone on the empty road. I picked up my suitcase and started toward Calais. The wind was picking up and it was colder than ever. The road, ran along the coast from Sangatte, through Bleriot-Plage and into Calais. The wind was coming right off the channel.
As I walked, I dreamed up a plan: I’d get on a train or a bus and go to Paris. I would call my mother’s lawyer, Mr. Wolf, tell him it was an emergency. My mom would take care of me. At the very least, she’d give me some money. Enough money to get back to the states.
I stopped walking. I knew this plan wouldn’t work. First of all, Mr. Wolf probably didn’t give a shit and he would never go against the judge. And second of all… my mom couldn’t even take care of herself right now, let alone me. There wasn’t much point to tracking her down in Paris.
Calais was still about a mile away. I could make out the lights of George’s farmhouse in the distance behind me. I stood there in the cold. I could see my breath and my feet were starting to go numb. I could smell wood burning, coming from the chimneys of houses nearby. It seemed like everyone else in the world was home in bed, safe and warm and surrounded by family. It was Christmas night after all.
Paris was hopeless. My mother was no use. And my dad, too. What the hell am I gonna do now?
I stood there looking down the road. I didn’t really have a choice, did I?
I’d have to go back to the farm. I’d have to suck it up and try to make the best of this nightmare until the year was up or something changed with the whole custody situation.
I picked up my suitcase, turned around and started back on the long walk to George’s.
Chapter 12.
In punishment for stealing Georgette’s pills, my chores were doubled. After I fed and watered the ostriches in the morning, I had to clean out their pens, shoveling ostrich manure into a wheelbarrow, dumping it onto a compost pile near the back of the fields. Then, I went to George’s farm where I cleaned out the rabbit pens.
Ostrich shit. Rabbit shit. My whole life is shit, I thought.
One day, George took me back into the orchard and showed me how to prune the apple trees. The next day, there was a collapsed irrigation ditch that needed to be repaired. He gave me a shovel and had me dig it out.
An icy rain had fallen the night before and all the pretty white Christmas snow had turned into dirty grey slush. The ground was frozen. George gave me a pick-ax to chop through the topsoil. Underneath it was not frozen, just heavy clay that I had to shovel out of the ditch. It was a back-breaking job and the day was hella cold. After a while, I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet. I enjoyed working with my hands, but this was slave labor. That night I collapsed in bed, every muscle in my body aching.
There was an old barn on the property that George had wanted to clear out for ages. Right before New Year’s, he gave the job to me. The barn had been used as a storehouse for a hundred years or so. I opened the doors and looked at the mess: piles of decomposing hay in one section, old boards, broken tools, rusted machinery stacked up in another. In the rafters, pigeons and doves had made nests. Try to picture what a century of pigeon shit caked over the top of this mess looked like. Now, try to imagine the smell.
It was pretty damn obvious that it would take weeks to empty out the barn, separate the good from the bad and then clean it all up. In the States, this would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
"I need a trash container. I mean, like, a huge dumpster," I told George.
The next morning, I stood out by the barn and watched as a dumpster the size of a school bus was delivered and wheeled in next to the barn.
"There is your trash can. Anything else you need?" George said.
"No. Merci. Beau. Coup," I said.
The barn was like an archaeological site with layer upon layer of junk built up over the years. The top layer was dirt and debris covered over by a thick layer of pigeon crap. I spent a full day just shoveling pigeon droppings, dirt and rotten wood out of the barn.
(This might have been the second suckiest day of my entire life – I rank it #2 overall because I wouldn’t have even been there if it wasn’t for my #1 SUCKIEST day of all time – the hearing day!)
As I dug deeper, I came across some interesting artifacts. A tractor from the 1950’s. An ancient washing machine. A ten-speed bike. I had no idea how old the bike was, but it seemed intact, though it was crusted with mud and rust. I brushed away a thick layer of dirt on the crossbar and found a PEUGEOT label and a logo with a lion on it and the words MADE IN FRANCE. I put the bike aside.
The next day a heavy frost had settled in. Frozen grass crunched under my feet as he walked out to the barn in the morning. My hands hurt and my feet went numb, but, I found that by working steadily, I could keep myself pretty warm. I spent all morning digging through the rubbish and pigeon crap.
In the afternoon, I found something unusual. A beautifully shaped piece of wood covered in canvas. I tried to pull it out of the garbage pile, but it was stuck. I pulled harder and harder until it finally came loose. It looked like a gigantic ski. The canvas was rotting way. I ran my hand over it and the canvas turned to dust.
I looked at the pile and saw another piece of wood like the first one. I tugged it out. Then I found another and another. Whatever they were, they had been lovingly made many years ago.
Underneath this pile of rubbish were more pieces of finely crafted poles and slats and lengths of wood with tongue and groove fittings that slotted together perfectly. These were made out of good hardwood and they had held up over time. No rotting. No water damage. Maybe being at the bottom of all that trash had protected them.
I laid them aside and went back to the pile to look for more. I felt like I was digging out the tomb of some Pharaoh inside a pyramid. There, under the rubble of one hundred years of neglect was a small engine. It looked like a lawnmower engine or something. I was intrigued, but it wasn’t until I saw the propeller that I got it: It’s an AIRPLANE!
My heart soared and as I pulled piece after piece out of the rubble, I became more excited. To me this was more valuable than any Pharaoh’s gold! I began to see how the pieces fit together. The giant skis connected and became wings! There were struts and ties and ribs. Long straight pieces that formed the backbone of the fuselage! It’s an airplane! A hundred year old airplane! I couldn’t believe it.
The canvas on one of the wings didn’t turn to dust when I ran my hand over them. The call letters were faded but still visible: C–Z–F 0-9-5
"Charlie-Zulu-Foxtrot," I said aloud as I looked at the vintage airplane parts with wonder.
Chapter 13.
I spent New Year’s Eve alone in my room, watching one of those cheesy “New Years Rockin’ Eve” shows. At midnight, I watched as the ball dropped in Times Square on my laptop. There were thousands of happy smiling people all huddled together, having a great time ringing in 2009 in my hometown. I don’t know why it all made me feel so down, but I felt more miserable and pathetic than ever before.
I had to start school a few days later. Georgette drove me into town and dropped me off at the Community College. My class was listed on a board in the lobby: Beginning French Tutorial -- Room A-17.
I was a little nervous about this class. I was never the kind of guy who liked school. In fact, I used to get panic attacks at school when I was younger.
I was hunting around for room A-17. It turned out to be a standard-issue schoolroom with a generic whiteboard, generic desks and a generic linoleum floor. The teacher was writing on the board, with her back to the door when I came in.
“Bonjour,” she said, “Monsieur Turner?”
She turned around. I couldn’t believe it -- it was the beautiful girl from the ice rink! She was the last person on earth I had ever expected to find in Room A-17.
“You are the American boy for French lessons, no?” she said.
“Yes. I mean, oui. I am. That’s me,” I said.
There were three other students already in the room – a pair of ghostly-pale twin girls with unpronounceable Eastern-European names and a douchey-looking English guy named Roland.
“Well, don’t stand over there. Let us begin. Je m’appelle Adele. Your name is Charles, non? You would say, Je m’appelle Charles,” she wrote it out on the whiteboard. “Repeat after me, please. Je m’appelle Charles.”
“Juh-Ma-Pell Charles,” I said.
“Sharl,” she corrected me. “We had a King Sharl in France, you know. Charlemagne. D’accord! Let us begin with some everyday phrases. S’il vous plais. It means please.”
She was diving right in.
“Um…See-Voo-PLAY,” I said, trying to keep up.
An hour later, Adele said: “Bon. Our time is up for today.”
The lesson had gone by in a flash. The twins and Roland shuffled out of class quickly. I stayed behind.
“You seem kind of young for a teacher. I mean, I think you’re doing a great job, but it’s just…” I said.
“I’m seventeen. Dix-set. We’ll do numbers next time. But, yes, I am the youngest tutor in the program. It’s good for my college CV. I’m finishing my applications now. Next year, I’ll be at university in Paris or London. What about you? A semester abroad to put some language skills on your college CV?”
I hadn’t thought about college at all. I was having a hard enough time getting through high school with all the trouble I’d been in. And, like I said, school had never really been my thing. But, Adele was obviously into it and I didn’t want her to think I was a loser.
“Me? Um…well, see…I’m in a kind of a weird situation. I mean…I think I still have some time before I start the process. I’ve got my target schools all figured out, of course,” I said, lying my ass off, which, I’m sorry to say, is kind of my default position when I’m stressed.
“Really? How old are you?” she asked.
“I’m almost seventeen,” I said.
“Oh….I thought you were younger.”
“Really? Why?”
She looked at my black jeans and boots, my Nine Inch Nails T-shirt (also black.)
“Well... your vetements. Perhaps kids go through their goth phase earlier here,” Adele said.
Perfect. The hottest girl in France already thinks I’m a loser. I managed that in record time.
When I got back to the farm, I couldn’t stop thinking about Adele. I was crushing on her. I’d felt that way about a couple of girls before in the past. Nothing had happened beyond a couple of sloppy make-out sessions. I’ve never had any luck with girls.
Now, Adele. She was so far out of my league. And, I’m too much of a wuss to ever ask her out. How do you say wuss in French? I wondered.
Chapter 14
I thought I should keep the plane a secret for a while longer.
I was still on George’s shit-list after stealing those pills. So, I thought I better wait until things cooled off before telling him about the Charlie-Zulu-Foxtrot plane.
A week later there was a holiday, La Fete des Rois. English translation = Three Kings Day. Sounded to me like something out of a Game of Thrones book. But apparently it’s a big thing over here.
Everyone came over to the farm for dinner that night: Voltaire, Hippo and his mother, Suzette, Georgette’s sister Virginie, plus several Bonet cousins or aunts whose names I don’t remember. The house was full.
I was on my best behavior. Hippo was in his Batboy costume as usual. I talked a little with Suzette. Her English was just OK, but it was a lot easier than trying to talk to Georgette or some of the others.
I found out that George and Georgette were Hippo’s godparents. I couldn’t really follow the rest of Suzette’s story. Something had happened with Hippo’s father a few years ago. He was disparu, Suzette said. I thought that might mean disappeared or desperate. I’d have to look up disparu later on. I was guessing that the dad had run off at some point, basically. My own father was kind of disparu, so I sympathized with them.
We all sat down to a big holiday dinner. We even held hands and Suzzette said grace. Hippo/Batboy was on my left and he held tightly onto my thumb with his pudgy little bat-fingers.
Wine was passed around and by the time the turkey was served, I was semi-buzzed. Everyone else seemed to be getting a little tipsy, too.
For dessert, they brought out this thing called a King Cake, a Gallete de Roi. George explained that they baked something inside the cake and that the person who found it was crowned king for the day.
George put a golden cardboard crown in the middle of the table. Then, Hippo got down off his chair and ducked under the table. Georgette cut a small slice of the King Cake.
“Qui sera le roi?” Georgette said.
“Who will be the king?” George translated.
From under the table, Hippo called out, “George!”
Georgette passed the slice of cake to George. He poked his fork into the cake, then took a big bite. He chewed on it carefully, then shook his head.
Georgette cut another slice of king cake.
“Qui sera le roi?” Georgette said.
“Maman,” Hippo called, giggling under the table.
Suzette got the next slice. But she didn’t get the prize either.
“Qui sera le roi?”
“Charles,” the kid said.
I bit into my piece of king cake. It was kinda like a cross between a croissant and an apple pie, only instead of apple inside there was this almond filling. It was really good.
I was almost done when I bit down on something hard. There was a small plastic figure inside the cake, about the size of a nickel. I held up the little figurine to show everyone.
“Ah, oui! Charles est le roi!” Georgette said.
George put the cardboard crown on my head. Everyone applauded.
“King Charles,” Suzette said.
“Charlemagne,” Voltaire said.
I felt like an idiot, but so what, everyone was having a fun time.
After dinner, I thought the timing might be right to tell George about the plane. Everyone was in such a good mood and all. Plus George was just drunk enough to be less grouchy than normal.
I took him out to the barn. I had laid out all of the pieces of the airplane I had found so far and covered them up under a tarp. I pulled the tarp aside. Viola. George just stared at it all.
"What is it?” I asked him.
"I think it’s an airplane," George said.
"I know it’s an airplane. What’s it doing in your barn?"
"Probably belonged to my grand-pere. He was quite eccentric,” George said. He looked over the airplane parts. “This belongs in a museum. It’s so old—“
“I don’t think it belongs in a museum. Wouldn’t it be cool if we restored this thing and actually flew it?” I said.
“C’est impossible," George said. "Comprenez-vous what I’m saying?"
"Nothing’s impossible. All we need are the plans. We could do it!"
“Vous etes fou!” George said. “Even if you find the plans, which are locked away in a museum somewhere, you need much, much more. Where do you get parts? Huh? You don’t just go to the hardware store. Do you think the Arts & Metiers Museum will lend you parts for your plane?"
"No, we’ll probably have to fabricate a lot of that stuff ourselves. You’re a master mechanic, George," I said.
"You over-estimate my skills. This would cost a fortune to restore. Look around. We scrape and scratch for every euro here. My pitiful farm? I barely break even. I take on small repair jobs to get by. A vacuum cleaner. An old tractor. Fifty euros a job if I’m lucky. You know where we really make money? Those goddamn birds! Georgette’s ostriches keep us out of the poor house."
"I could get a job,” I said.
"You’re dreaming. Who would hire you?” George scoffed. “Do you speak French? Non. Do you have experience? Non. Unemployment is twenty percent around here. You’re crazy!”
George walked back toward the house, leaving me alone.
Maybe I was crazy. Crazy to think that George might give a damn about helping me put the plane back together, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I’d just have to figure out a way to do it on my own.