by David Wright
The old guys stiffened up, like they knew what was about to go down, but they kept playing. Except one, who scooted off into one of the buildings. I felt Matt and Moose behind me.
Moose stepped forward. “Cool, mec, cool.” His hand was out toward the hoodie boy. “Y a pas de problème, là. On va à la gare, c’est tout.”
There’s no problem, Moose was telling him. We’re headed to the train station, that’s all.
The other hoodie boys stood stone-cold behind their boy, who was all face-to-face with me but silent now, one hand in his hoodie pocket. I had four inches on this fool, and I saw his hand reaching, but I knew my hands were quicker, whatever it was he had in his pocket. It just depended what his crew did when it popped off, and if Matt and Moose could hold their own.
See, I know gangster. Northside Rollers, East Terrace Mafia, Latin Kingz—we got all that in my ’hood back home. These boys here wasn’t gangster. All Frenchified and whatnot, they were just playing make-believe.
“Karim, on va à la gare, c’est quoi le problem?” Moose was mediating, his hand outstretched.
Aïda too. “Cool, Karim. Cool.”
She put her hand on hoodie boy’s arm, and he snapped it free. “Qu’est-ce que t’as, toi!” he hissed at her—Butt out! What’s the matter with you!—and Matt stepped forward. But hoodie boy was steady all up in my face.
One of his crew started to do the dope-smoker giggle. “Hee-hee. C’est les footballeurs ’Ricains des Diables Rouges.”
The old men, they’d disappeared. Little kids started to gather around, and two others of his crew had started to giggle too.
But not hoodie boy. Karim, Moose and Aïda had called him.
“Dégages.” Karim spat and gave this little nod, like he was dismissing us or some such, letting us pass, and I just steady stood there ’cause I hadn’t asked his permission in the first place.
Matt grabbed my arm, him and Moose and Aïda moving on, and Matt said in English, “Come on, Free.”
Him speaking English caused the other hoodie boys to burst into giggles again, but Karim kept staring at me.
I was steady staring him down too, my eyes like, Nigga, I got your name now. Karim. I got you.
Around the corner, in the parking lot of the next set of high-rises, the little kids buzzed around us, asking if we played for the American football team and would we give them autographs. And now here Moose was, preaching at me in his heavy-accented English: “You just do not understand, mec. In a place like this, everything must always be normal.” He said normal in French—nor-MALL. “How you say? Commonplace. You must act as though everything is commonplace. Some boys are selling drugs, c’est normal. A fight begins. Normal. It is ordinary, nothing that you react to.”
But I was like, Tsst, nigga, please. “Some fool calls you out, you got to stand tall. Got to. Otherwise he come calling every day.”
Moose swatted at the buzzing kids. “Allez, allez! Dégagez!”
Dégager. The same word Karim had thrown at us, in about the same tone of voice, too.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Moose said to me, “but you must understand also these guys are often with weapons, and they are looking for trouble. It is better to ignore them and just pass on.”
“I was ignoring them. Dude bumped up on me.”
We’d rounded onto the main street, just up the way from the train station, and as usual there were police vans on each side of the road. Matt called the ones in the white vans the CRS—the riot police. Wasn’t no riot going on, so I was like, Whatever. But Moose said, “Not this again…” He slowed his pace and put some attitude in his step.
And sure enough, a group of five of them rolled up on us. They wore dark blue jumpsuits and army boots; each had a helmet latched onto his belt and carried a metal baton. One held out a hand toward Moose, another toward me.
“Vos papiers.”
“Américain,” I said, but he shot back, “Allez, tes papiers,” all dismissive.
Moose already had his ID card out. He dropped his bag to the ground, opened it and stepped back. Another cop started going through it. The one on me tapped my bag with his free hand; I dropped it too. Matt opened his equipment bag, but they ignored him. Aïda shoved her hands in her pockets, all attitudinal now, like Moose.
The first cop pretended to inspect our papers, but it was all for show. He was just buying time while his boys rifled through Moose’s and my bags. They dropped stuff on the ground, turned clothes inside out. One got a kick out of my helmet, turning it over and over in his hands. It was clear there wasn’t nothing for them to find, but they kept on all the same, searching pockets, taking things out and leaving everything all over the sidewalk.
One, off to the side, said to Matt, “T’es Américain aussi? What are you doing here?” This cop had a single bar on his shoulder patch—a lieutenant or some such—and acted like he was the ranking officer. His name badge read Petit.
“I’m Canadian,” Matt corrected him. “Québecois.”
“From Montreal?” Lieutenant Petit asked.
Matt nodded.
“Great music town!” Petit said, and he looked all excited. “I spent a month there last summer during the jazz festival, visiting my older brother.” He started imitating this Quebec accent like Matt has: “Aw-stee, j’vais passer prendre une bière toute à l’ahr, Kriss da Caw-leese…”
“Is he a policeman too?” Matt said.
The lieutenant stopped mugging. “Pardon?”
“Your brother,” Matt said.
“He’s a lawyer.”
“Well then, he would tell you that cops in Canada aren’t allowed to stop people on the street for no reason.”
The lieutenant smiled. “Touché,” he said. “Although we are not in Canada here.”
He signaled the others to wrap things up. The one who had our ID papers handed them back, and they all turned and moseyed off, lazy-like, toward their van. No “Sorry,” no “Good day.” They didn’t even replace our stuff in our bags.
“Alors, on se revoit à mon retour dans quelques minutes?” Moose said to them—So, the same drill again in a few minutes then, on my way back?
“Vas-y, petit gars,” one of them snarled. “Dégages.”
That same word. Beat it, it meant, but harsher like, Fuck off.
Moose turned on Matt. “Making new friends?”
Matt ignored him.
Aïda said, “The way the police treat us Beurs, this utter lack of respect, tells us all we need to know about where we stand in France.”
“Beurs?” I asked. I didn’t know the word.
“Slang for North Africans,” said Matt.
I was supposed to be sympathizing, but all I could manage was, “So I can expect more of this crap every time I’m with you?”
“In Villeneuve, probably yes,” Moose said. “Our illustrious minister of the interior, in the newspapers, he called us project residents…racailles?”
“Scum,” Aïda translated, to make sure I’d understood.
“Yes, this. And he vowed to, uh…how you say… nettoyer au Kärcher?”
“It’s like what the industrial cleaner does,” Aïda said, “with a pressure hose.”
Moose said, “You see, after a little child died from a stray bullet, the interior minister vowed to clean out the scum from our neighborhoods. He was referring to the jeunes de la cité…”
“The youths from the projects,” said Aïda.
“The riot police have been here ever since. More than a year now. To them, Karim and me, we are the same.”
We arrived at the station. Matt just stood there, like he was waiting for Moose to say something more or for Aïda to go on expressing outrage, but I just passed on through the turnstile.
“For real,” I said, “I’m glad to be leaving this shithole.”
FREE
Black folks don’t ski—that was all I could think. But there I stood, at the top of a mountain in the Alps, on these long Rossignol skis and under layers
of clothes, watching Georges and his friends dash down ahead of me. I guess I led them to believe I could keep up.
Dang, I thought.
Georges and Françoise had postponed their January trip so that I could go with them and their daughter, Marie. Georges’s friend Jean-Pierre, his wife, Alphonse, and their two kids, Aimée and Guy, who were Marie’s age, had come too. All of them gone now down the hill. Even Françoise didn’t wait. I watched them zigzagging a path through the sun-bright powder, leaving a smoky trail that I guess I was supposed to follow.
I pushed off like I saw them do. My zigs and zags were broader, and I bogged down on each turn, sometimes to a complete stop. I would work my skis around, point them downhill and push off again.
Other skiers, in loud-colored one-piece suits and matching helmets, flew by.
I tightened my turns and, pretty quick-like, I picked up speed. A lot of speed. Suddenly it was like I couldn’t turn hardly at all, my thighs going tight, burning. And my boot-encased feet bounce-bounce-bounced over the little bumps, the moguls, like Wile E. Coyote in a cartoon.
Straight.
Down.
Hill.
That damn Matt had told me I’d pick it up easy! Any half-decent athlete does, he said.
I just laid myself over, the only thing I could think to do. The initial jolt was rough, like getting blindsided on a crackback block (harder than any hit I took against the Ours two days before, when we beat them by four scores). But then the powder was soft, and I was sliding on my back, then spinning in a circle and sliding at the same time, until finally I came to a stop.
Both skis gone. One pole too.
“Nice mustache,” I heard in English—MOOSE-tah-sh.
It was Marie, appearing out of nowhere. She was leaning into her ski poles a few yards above me, wearing this yellow ski suit that shaped her form just so. I expect I had a face full of snow or some such. Suave.
“I suppose we should have started you on an easier slope,” she said.
“Naw, naw. I’m just one fall away from mastering this run.”
She helped me up. “You have never skied before?”
I didn’t answer.
“I will teach you. Climb on.” She pointed behind her. “Place your feet there.”
I did and grabbed her waist, and she skied me to my skis, a little ways down. I clicked my feet into them. She showed me how to snowplow to slow myself, how to squat into my turns. When I was being too cautious, she prodded me by poking my butt with the point of her pole. And in this way, she led me down the mountain.
» » » »
The entire weekend was dope like that. Georges stayed goofy the whole time, telling stories about previous trips and meals they’d had, about the famous people they’d met on their runs and the really hard slopes they’d mastered. There was never a minute when we weren’t doing something—walking around Mont Blanc to see the classic wooden A-frame architecture of the chalets, or building a fire in the fireplace, or going down to the cellar after board games. We played Monopoly (in the French version, it’s the Avenue des Champs-Elysées instead of Park Place) and another I hadn’t ever even heard of, Mille Bornes. And we ate fondue. Two pots on little burners sat in the middle of the table, one of hot oil, the other of melted cheese. Everybody strung raw meat on long skewers and cooked it in the oil or dipped chunks of bread in the melted cheese.
I was telling Matt about it at practice after I got back, still excited, while we watched Michel, the backup QB, try to run the offense.
Matt cut me off mid-sentence. “It was a great trip, I get it. Football practice is just not as fun as skiing in the Alps. But come on, Free. We’ve got the Anges Bleus on Saturday, our first real test since the Jets, and you’ve got to learn the offensive packages before then. Focus.”
But I wanted him to know it all. “And Marie!” I went on, whispering but still emphatic-like now, because I could see Coach Thierry glancing back at us. “She’s twenty-one, at college and whatnot. And a real hottie!”
Matt ignored me. “Mobylette,” he called, pointing to the spot where Mobylette should be.
Coach Thierry added, “Vite, Mobylette, sinon on va être offside!”
It was early March, gray and chilly but crisp. The offense was supposed to be in Trips formation, but Mobylette had lined up in the backfield. He scrambled to the right place, and Michel called the cadence. The offense exploded off the snap, but the receivers were all over the place, bumping into each other. Some real Charlie Chaplin stuff.
“Merde, merde, merde!” Coach Thierry snapped, frustrated by the bungling. “Qu’est-ce qui se passe…?”
He started toward Mobylette. Matt followed, but I grabbed him by the arm. “You think she be trying to mack me, man? A grown woman, jocking me?” It was hard to keep it to a whisper. “Tell me I ain’t for real!”
Matt stopped and kind of glared.
“Free, I swear, if it weren’t for context, I wouldn’t understand half of what you say. You’re always jabbering, but I mean, I’m a Francophone, and, strictly speaking, I speak English better than you.”
“Different,” I told him.
“Different?”
“Different than me,” I said. “Different don’t equate to better. It’s how black Americans speak, how we been speaking since slavery.” I was speaking it heavy right then to make my point. “You saying what you just said is like calling me out of my name. Like me saying you was French when you ain’t.”
“I’m Québecois.”
“Right. You just speak French.”
“Some say a bastardization of it,” Matt said. “Some French people anyway.”
“Right! But you know you’re not lesser on account of the difference.”
“Right,” Matt said, his face gone soft, apologetic.
“Alors, les filles!” Moose called over. “You going to quit with the English jabbering and help us out here?” He looked as annoyed as Matt had just a few moments before.
The other guys had all stopped too. Everybody stared.
» » » »
On the train headed back to Paris, Matt sat silent. Not ignoring me, just not talking. I figured it should be me all mad after what he had said about black English, but he just sat there, stewing.
“You still want to go to that cemetery?” I asked.
Père Lachaise. Jim Morrison’s grave. I didn’t really want to go, but Matt had been talking it up for days. Apparently lots of hippies hung out there, lots of girls, people passed around jugs of wine, and it was generally a party. Myself, I didn’t feel like partying in a cemetery. Especially not in a cemetery.
Still and all, I said, “Well, do you?”
“Not tonight,” Matt said, and I was straight-up relieved.
The RER arrived at Gare du Nord, my transfer point. When I got up, Matt did too; he walked me toward my metro line and I couldn’t figure out why, because the one we had been on led to his cousin’s spot. My look must have stated my question.
“I’ve got an errand to run,” he explained.
We sat side by side on the metro but didn’t speak. A long silence. I thought I knew what was eating him, and it wasn’t just practice. It dated from a little while back. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but Villeneuve is a shithole. Cops everywhere, wannabe gangsters…”
“When you say things like that, you sound more like a Jet than a Diable Rouge. Your ‘shithole’ is Moose’s home.”
“I know,” I said.
I watched the dark tunnel walls stream past the window.
“Listen, I like Moose and all, but he rides me. Always tossing out snarky comments and whatnot. He acts like he’s got something to teach me, but the kid is seventeen, just like me, and hasn’t been balling one-tenth the time I have.”
“He’s the team captain and wants to be a schoolteacher. For him, everything is a potential lesson or a teachable moment.”
“Well, I’m not his pupil, and besides, his teaching method needs work.”
“Moose takes the team very seriously. It’s his life, you know—community pride and all that. Sometimes you act like you’re on vacation.”
I was on vacation, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t bringing it for the team. But I didn’t say that.
We got to my stop, and I stayed seated. “I already told Françoise I wouldn’t be back for dinner,” I said. I figured we should hash this thing through, me and him. “I’ll ride with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Ain’t got nothing else to do.”
He didn’t seem any too pleased, but he didn’t protest either.
I felt like there was something more I should say, to kind of make up for something—for how I’d been acting, being moody and all, or for whatever expectations I wasn’t living up to. But we just sat there, silent. I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t say anything either.
He got off the train a few stops later, at Ternes. I followed him down the platform and up the stairs. “How’s my girl?” I said to lighten the mood. “Is Juliette asking after me?”
He smiled. “Actually, she is. You made quite an impression.”
“I told you so. I’m a killer!”
We got out on the street, and he stopped under the illuminated yellow M metro sign and extended his hand. “Okay, killer. Goodnight.”
And I was like, Huh?
“This is my errand.” He pointed to the hotel across the street from the station. “My dad. He arrived this morning.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. Obviously he’d been brooding over something too.
“He called from the airport and told me to meet him here.”
“With no advance warning?”
“Not a word.”
“Dang.”
“Dang is right,” he said.
He had told me how close he and his pops were. He said his pops had made him who he was. He’d taken Matt to rallies and protests: for Earth Day, against global warming, to oppose the US invasion of Iraq (the last hardly surprised me). But Matt said his pops had been different since Matt ran off.
“Juliette didn’t give you any clues he was coming?” I asked.