In the Moon

by Alan Holmes

  Madame Baichant gave her a large bowl of milk and a massive slab of bread. As Michelle dunked large chunks of the bread into her milk and spooned them up with much slurping and gusto, she and her mother went over a list of chores that awaited Michelle after she finished her bread and milk.

  Michelle asked her mother about the carrots she wanted her to gather. From which of the planting beds should she take them? How many did she want?

  Madame Baichant also reminded her that she needed four dozen eggs collected, and that the mare had to be brought out of her stall and taken to the barn for hitching to the cart. Finally, as she opened the door to leave, Madame Baichant announced, “I’m taking Mémé back to the pasture.” It all seemed part of a daily routine and only the specifics of this particular morning were under discussion.

  I already knew Madame Baichant from our two previous summers in Hardelot. She ran a “general” farm which supplied eggs, milk, poultry, and vegetables six days a week to the summer residents staying at the seaside resort. Françoise relied heavily on Madame Baichant’s horse-drawn cart loaded with its colorful assortment of homegrown, freshly picked vegetables—so much fresher than anything from the greengrocer. From her cart, Madame Baichant also sold eggs individually from a basket lined with straw, and milk she ladled from a huge milk can straight into her customer’s pitcher.

  On the morning of my hunt for the missing Ploof, Madame Baichant was winding up her preparations for a round of deliveries.

  After Michelle had finished breakfast, she invited me to join her in the collecting of carrots and eggs, and told me to wait while she went to her room to dress. Without delay, she disappeared through the door from which she had first appeared.

  As I waited, I noticed that sunlight was finally streaming through the small windows so that I could now discern other details of the kitchen. A large galvanized tub served as kitchen sink as it sat on two sawhorses beneath the spout of a hand pump. Numerous shelves along the walls held plates, porcelain platters, cooking pots, kitchen utensils, and tools of all kinds. A cauldron and a large cast-iron kettle hung from racks inside the fireplace, directly over the fire. Neatly braided bunches of onions and garlic hung from the ceiling beams, as did several oil lamps.

  The room was devoid of any decoration, except a wall crucifix, and was simply furnished with a massive kitchen table, a large chest of drawers, and a dozen or so straight-backed chairs, most of them pushed against the wall. Coveralls, rain gear and various farming implements hung from large wooden pegs along the wall closest to the entrance. The room served every conceivable purpose except sleeping.

  Michelle soon reappeared wearing a plain, dark gray smock and small wooden sabots on her unsocked feet.

  “Viens,” she said, taking my hand and dragging me out through the back door that led into a large vegetable garden. To my surprise and delight, she was already acting as though we were lifelong friends and, in contrast to her mother, she was using the familiar “tu” instead of the formal “vous.”

  With Michelle pulling five carrots for every one I pulled, we soon had the required sixty, their greens still attached, all piled neatly into a shallow wooden hand basket.

  Egg gathering proved more challenging. We found most of them in chicken hutches that were under a roof overhang of the barn. Michelle counted the eggs twice, coming up with thirty-one the first time, and on the second try, forty-five. She was hopeless at counting. As she counted aloud, I noted her numerous errors, but she was rattling the numbers off with such determination and speed that I couldn’t find a spot to jump in and correct her. Compounding her counting difficulty was that the eggs were at least three-layers-deep in the basket. I proposed that we go into the barn, where we could count the eggs as we removed them from the basket and set them on a bed of hay. Michelle conceded this would be a good idea.

  In the barn, she still insisted on being the one who did the counting, but this time when she skipped the number sixteen, I was able to stop and correct her. She steadfastly maintained that seventeen came after fifteen. A brief argument ensued, but Michelle eventually capitulated and let me do the counting. Then she had the audacity to quarrel with my order of counting.

  Madame Baichant was within earshot, and I heard her call out to Michelle that she wanted Alain to do the counting and that Michelle was to stop interrupting me. My tally revealed that we still needed nine eggs. We had emptied every hutch, and I wondered where we would find more.

  “This way!” Michelle exclaimed, leading me by the hand to the vegetable garden and along a thick bramble hedge that bordered the entire west side of the vegetable garden. As we walked, she suddenly stopped, stooped over and reached into the brambles, bringing out an egg as if by magic. Michelle seemed to know the telltale marks of a secret chicken nest. A few hens apparently preferred the peace and quiet of a country hedge to the busy city life of the hutches beneath the barn roof overhang. From some of the nests in the hedge, a disgruntled chicken fluttered out, squawking raucously after Michelle nudged her off the nest to get at the egg.

  After retrieving the required number of eggs, we headed back to the stable to get Lili, a gigantic Boulonais mare. Here, too, Michelle proved adept and sure of herself as she climbed easily onto a diagonal beam in the horse’s stall in order to pass a halter over Lili’s head. She then led the huge horse out of the stall and across the basse-cour (barnyard) to the barn.

  Madame Baichant was in the barn sorting and arranging the baskets containing her produce. The barn served as a garage for the horse-drawn cart, whose two shafts were supported horizontally by means of ropes tied to the rafters. This arrangement allowed Madame Baichant to guide the horse backwards between the two shafts and then to put the massive collar on the patient mare. Michelle helped her mother with the leather harness straps that went over, around, and under Lili—Michelle doing the work needed at the lower levels and Madame Baichant working at the straps that were out of Michelle’s reach.

  The two-wheeled cart was little more than a rectangular box about eight feet long by five feet wide, surmounted by four upright steel hoops supporting a pale green canvas roof. A padded bench mounted at the front end of the box had side handles to keep passengers from sliding off when the cart went around a bend.

  Outside the box and beneath the bench at the front of the cart was a footrest with an elegantly curved front panel to protect the driver’s feet from road splash. The body of the cart was painted dark green, and the spokes and hubs of the two wheels were fire-engine red. These huge wheels placed the body of the cart—the rectangular box—at my eye level. A single step at the end of a gracefully curved iron shaft dangled from the cart. It was probably of some help to any long-legged—and supple—adult attempting to mount the vehicle.

  Michelle and I now formed a bucket brigade to hand vegetable baskets up to her mother, who stood in the cart placing them according to what seemed to be some preordained plan.

  In short order, they were ready to go. Madame Baichant reached down and, holding onto Michelle by one hand, gave a mighty upward heave boosting her daughter to where she could set one foot onto the step. From there, a second heave lifted Michelle aboard, where she sat down beside her mother. As they said goodbye, they thanked me for my help.

  Madame Baichant handed the buggy whip to Michelle, who gave the horse’s croup a light tap. Lili clopped slowly out of the barn. As they emerged from the barn, the horse and cart were suddenly outlined crisply, shining brightly in the early morning sun. Upon reaching the gate, Lili made a sharp left turn onto the grassy track and broke into a trot. I closed the barnyard gate as I had been instructed and watched the cart disappear after it rounded the bend at the end of the grassy track.

  Reflecting on my enchanted morning as I walked home, I reached our front gate before I remembered my unsuccessful search for Ploof. Madame Baichant and Michelle had made a strong impression on me, and her kind offer to let
me feed her ducks had assuaged my earlier despair and disappointment over Ploof’s disappearance.

  Through the kitchen window, I saw Raimond and Françoise at breakfast. I walked in on them feeling as if I’d just returned from a long and adventurous journey. Raimond sensed my mood right away, saying, “Well, Monsieur Alain, you look very pleased with yourself. It’s so early. What have you been up to?” I looked at the wall clock, which said a quarter to seven. There was still a whole hour before the time of my usual morning appearance downstairs.

  “Ploof has disappeared. I went all over looking for him,” I declared, “and I didn’t find him.” There was a gasp as Françoise put a hand over her mouth in a gesture of horror and uttered the words, “Mon Dieu!”

  Raimond looked at me, then at Françoise. It wasn’t quite a guilty look, but there was something in his expression that suggested he already knew the bad news.

  It was Françoise who broke the tense silence. “You deliberately set free Monsieur Alain’s duck!” she said contentiously to Raimond. “You did it because you didn’t want me to cook that bird!” She walked briskly to a counter where she had some pans, and Raimond beat a hasty retreat through the door. A skillet flew across the room and hit the door as it closed behind him, landing noisily on the tiled floor.

  “No, Françoise! That’s not what happened,” I said, trying to sound calm. “I just talked to Madame Baichant, who told me we should have clipped Ploof’s wings if we didn’t want him to fly away. She said all ducks fly away from a new home if not clipped. And she knows that Gypsies never clip the wings of ducks they give as prizes because they know the ducks will fly back to them the next day.” I was stretching the truth somewhat in a trial use of a white lie.

  “Raimond knows about ducks and about Gypsies and should have done as Madame Baichant said,” replied Françoise, still fulminating. “Je vais encore l’attraper, celui là!” (“I’ll catch him yet, that one!”) This remark prompted me to realize that there were more things I needed to do if Raimond were to be spared being hit by a frying pan or some other flying object upon his return to the kitchen.

  I went to Mother’s room and woke her out of a sound sleep. She wasn’t pleased, but when she had somewhat recovered, I described the morning’s activities and the crisis. I had to repeat the story twice for her, for she was still groggy and a bit overwhelmed by my avalanche of details. “We absolutely have to save Raimond—he’s in grave danger!” I said, winding up my recital.

  “All right,” she replied, “but stay here and tell me more about this early morning visit to the Baichant farm. Françoise will be here any minute with my coffee, and I’ll see what I can do to intervene on Raimond’s behalf.”

  Again, I went over Madame Baichant’s explanation of Ploof’s escape and, as I started in on the events in the kitchen, there was a knock at the door. Without waiting to be invited in, Françoise barged in with the coffee tray.

  “Bonjour Madame, vous avez bien dormi, j’espère?” (“Good morning ma’am, you slept well, I trust?”) said Françoise in a tone of forced cheerfulness.

  Mother seized the bull by the horns and minced no words. “Françoise, you need to know that it was I who specifically instructed Raimond not to trim the duck’s wings. It was obvious the bird would then escape, but that’s exactly what I wanted. I knew you were determined to slaughter the duck so you could serve it to us. I didn’t want Alain to see this happen, and the only way I could avoid the problem was to have the duck fly away. Alain must now find consolation in the fact that the duck is free and living in the wild where it is much happier. I think Alain will find that a lot easier than having to eat his own beloved duck. I will buy you another duck the next time I go marketing. It will be plucked and ready for you to cook, which Ploof was not. Raimond was only following my orders. Is that quite clear, Françoise?” Mother could be eloquent when she spoke French.

  “Oui, Madame,” Françoise said, sounding displeased and looking surly as she left the room.

  Mother had been so convincing in her speech to Françoise that I asked her, “Did you really know about clipping the wings and tell Raimond not to do it?”

  “Well, more or less,” she replied. “Yes, I knew long ago that all barnyard ducks have to have their wings clipped, but I didn’t really think of it last night, nor did I tell Raimond to do anything. I simply didn’t give the matter any thought and, for once, my carelessness has produced a fortunate result. And yes, I told Françoise a white lie. However, it was all part of the greater good, which in this case, means saving Raimond. Moreover, another part of the greater good is you not having your beloved duck plucked and popped into the oven, don’t you think? You know Françoise, Alain. She would have done it at the first opportunity. She can’t be trusted not to cook anything that’s edible, and Ploof was eminently edible.”

  The glow from my experience at the Baichant farm still lingered, so I remained reasonably placated, despite the overwhelming deluge of white lies, greater goods, conjectures, and facts unflattering to Gypsies. When I joined Brenda at breakfast and told her my saga, she couldn’t make heads or tails out of my morning’s adventures and seemed surprisingly indifferent to the loss of Ploof.

  Raimond, too, was confused by the morning’s events. He could hardly believe his restoration in the eyes of Françoise, for it seems Mother neglected to tell him of the white lie she had told on his behalf. Raimond now asked me for my version of the morning’s events, which I recounted in full, including the matter of my own and Mother’s white lie to Françoise.

  Somehow, my narration upset and displeased Raimond and put him in a state I had never seen before. Was he embarrassed by being found ignorant about the need for wing clipping, or had he known about it and now felt guilty for neglecting to act on his knowledge? I wondered where the truth really lay.

  Late in the morning, Raimond’s inner turmoil came to a boil, and he told me, rather abruptly, that later on he would go to the fair and give that Gypsy a piece of his mind, and he was inviting me to join him.

  After lunch and Raimond’s Sunday siesta, the two of us set out on foot for the fair. I had the vague feeling that Raimond might succeed in making the Gypsy give me back my duck, which left me with mixed feelings. Raimond, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was after. He wanted to see justice done. As we walked briskly along, Raimond asked me if Ploof had any special identifying marks, and I told him about the missing web on one of his yellow feet.

  When we reached the fair, Raimond and I went straight to the stall where the rabbit race was held. The same Gypsy was there, touting bets on his rabbits. Raimond went up to the man and told him he wanted to inspect the ducks in the cages because he had reason to believe one of them was ours.

  “Anybody can tell me a story like that and think he has the right to walk away with a duck that is rightfully mine,” replied the Gypsy testily.

  “I have proof,” said Raimond solemnly, “but I must see the duck up close to show you the proof.” But the Gypsy was adamant in his opposition and wouldn’t let us go near the cages, which contained several ducks, including three mallards, the same number as had been there yesterday before the race.

  His voice now tinged with anger, Raimond said, “All I want to do is take a close look at your mallards’ feet—if no webs are missing, none of the ducks is ours, and I will go away and leave you alone.” A crowd was gathering to watch the men argue.

  “I see,” said the Gypsy. “A duck somehow loses one of the webs on his feet, and he automatically becomes yours!” replied the Gypsy derisively. The assembled crowd laughed, and Raimond’s face flushed with anger. A few taunting words from the onlookers suggested that the crowd wanted the two men to fight it out.

  The Gypsy was a sinister, tough-looking type, and a big, burly fellow. Raimond, a man of short stature and slight build, was no match for the Gypsy, I was sure. I didn’t like the look of things and kne
w something had to be done.

  Suddenly, I had an idea. “There’s Ploof! I see him! I see him! Over there!” I exclaimed excitedly. Pointing to a distant stall across the pasture, I shouted, “Come with me, Raimond! It’s my duck all right!”

  I grabbed Raimond’s hand with both of mine and tugged it forcefully. Raimond came reluctantly, muttering to the Gypsy over his shoulder, something to the effect that he’d be back to settle the score.

  When we had reached a safe distance from the Gypsy, Raimond protested, “I was trying to get your duck back, Monsieur Alain!”

  “It’s all right, Raimond. I know I can’t have Ploof if Françoise is going to cook him the first chance she gets. Besides, Madame Baichant has promised me she will let me feed her mallards anytime I want. I can admire and play with her ducks all I want, and Françoise won’t come and kill them,” I said.

  But Raimond wasn’t listening. “That Gypsy is a sneak thief who steals from little boys. I won’t let him get away with his tricks,” he said, still seething.

  “You’re going to get badly hurt if you fight with that Gypsy, Raimond. He’s twice as big as you are, and he looks ferocious to me! Please don’t go back there, Raimond. I don’t want you hurt because of a duck I can’t even have—please, Raimond!” I pleaded, starting to cry.

  At the sight of my tears, Raimond calmed down, took my hand, and we set off for home in silence. He was walking fast, too fast for me, and I had to trot to keep up with him. I could see by Raimond’s grim face that he was still tied in knots. Trying to break the silence, I said, “Perhaps Madame Baichant was wrong, Raimond, and perhaps Ploof didn’t fly back to the Gypsy. And perhaps Ploof is free, down by the lake in the meadow with all the wild ducks that always hang around down there.”

  Raimond slowed down noticeably and, after several more paces, he started to talk about the two fish he had caught the day before and the wild ducks he had seen on the lake. “I’ll keep an eye out for Ploof and tell you if I see him,” he said, smiling at me for the first time that day.