the three day friends

 

patrick fealey

5 cove st.

milo, me 04463

207-943-5639

207-943-7416

tomrisk@live.com

 

 

 

 

 

the three day friends

 

 

paris, france,  summer 1990.

 

after a late sunset, the branches overhead cut black ink ghosts into an ultramarine sky. i was returning home to my rose bush in the champ de  mars, walking across the grass, tired, sunburned, with dirty feet. this was the routine that was holding me together. i explored paris by day and retired to the champ de mars because it was a clean and quiet place to sleep. i heard someone shout in english.

  “aye mate!”

  it was australian english and i saw the guy shouting at me.

  “aye mate! you’re drinking with us tonight!”

  three young men were  sitting in the grass smiling at me. i turned for them. they were laughing at my surfboard. arranged on the grass before them was a circle of bottles. there were things i knew and things i didn’t recognize. they had a lot of booze and were eating bread and cheese with their drinks.

  “sit down and have a drink!” his mouth was full, his cheeks rounded out while he chewed.

  “sure,” i said.

  “you’re going to drink with us tonight!”

  “sure.”

  “and tomorrow night!”

  “hell yeah.”

  “how’s the swell?” the  blonde said. they all laughed. while he laughed, a wad of bread shot out of his mouth and landed on the grass. he crawled over and retrieved it with his lips.

  “have a seat, mate!”

  i dropped my surfboard while they smiled. we all knew the nearest break was hundreds miles. the one who had called me over handed me a beer. i cracked it and took a long pull. it went down smooth as spring water. it was the best thing i’d tasted in weeks.

  i said, “the tower is a reef break, the drop is treacherous. but the rip off the champ de mars is good for a ride out to the line-up. the winds blow west to east. you can tell by the smell of spain.”

  “this bloke is cracked!”

  “have a seat, mate?”

  “i have some camembert,” i said.

  “well let’s have it!”

 

we drank for three days, beer and wine and bread and cheese and whiskey into the nights. we played volley ball without a net on the manicured lawn of the champ de mars. they had brought the volleyball with them from seal beach, california, where they had spent one year of their three-year walkabout, working as waiters and surfing. they loved california, but they had to move on. they were in the final year of their journey. then they would be back in australia, back at the jobs they had left waiting for them. they had all gone to college and had worked for a few years before launching themselves into the unknown.

 

paris was having a heat wave and nobody was moving fast, except us clowns playing volleyball. we played without shirts and they were good volleyball players and the net-less games attracted a lot of attention, especially from women who lined up in the shade to watch. the key to the success of a volleyball game without a net was honesty. occasionally one of us would hike into the city and lug back a bag heavy with bottles.

 

it was night and we ate more bread and cheese. we drank and told stories. the hours passed. the more stories they told, the easier it was to let them be true. spyder told about the time he was picked up hitching after he arrived in the united states. he had never been to america. he landed in new york and headed west. he was picked up by a man and a woman in a pick-up who thought they were bonnie & clyde. they had a pistol and were robbing convenience stores and gas stations with spyder in the back of the truck. he didn’t ditch them because he really needed the ride and was entertained by the armed robberies and fast getaways across the country.  spyder clung to the back of the truck, thinking “the movies are true!” it ended with a police chase into the utah desert, where he managed to escape before his hosts were arrested. he was picked up in utah by the sheriff of a small town and given a ride to the nevada border. “son, i don’t know where you say you’re from in atlanis, but do you believe in god?” the sheriff asked him. “yes,” spyder said because he sensed his freedom was on the line. the sheriff bought him oreo cookies and a pint of milk. spyder listened to stories about joseph smith and his miracle eyeglasses.

 

the four of us slept in a circle around a tree with our heads toward the trunk and our bags and liquor tied to the tree. the lights were out on the tower and we were sleeping when la police shouted. i sat up. la police were two urgent shadows in the dark.

  “faites attention a vos sac-a-dos!”

  la police disappeared into the darkness.

  “what was that all about, mate?” ray said.

  “he said to watch out for our bags. there’s a purse snatcher or something in the area.”

  “france woke me up to tell me about a purse-snatcher?”

  “at least that’s all they have.”

 

the sun was hot. it was a brilliant morning. we would have been optimistic had we not been sweating before we got off the ground. people were dying all over europe in a plague of light. something had to be done. we set off across the park to where there was a fountain. the dew on the grass was warm on my feet. people sat on green benches under the shade of impeccably trimmed trees. we carried everything with us. i carried my surfboard while the australians hauled the booze. when we reached the fountain, the australians jumped right in. they stripped, throwing shirts and pants onto the grass and hurled themselves into the water. i dropped my army shorts and took off my t-shirt and climbed in with the raining sculpture. the water was cool and the concrete bottom scratched my ass. i rinsed my hair in the showering water. i had hitched to lisbon and back over two weeks. i had only gotten wet surfing. the australians splashed and pushed one another underwater. a crowd gathered to watch the naked wrestlers. then a young man and a young woman jumped in with us. i saw her full round white breasts and thought i shouldn’t look. then i looked again. her brown nipples were hard and european. then two, three kids and a dog jumped into the fountain. the kids screamed and laughed. there were a dozen people in the fountain, laughing and splashing and getting cool, stripping off their clothes. then the australians decided to go. they climbed out of the fountain and picked up their only clothes. spyder walked naked across the champ de mars with a bag of beer on his shoulder. i followed, disappointed to be leaving this unimaginable scene so soon. i was feeling cool and refreshed for the first time since arriving in the parisian heat wave. as we broke through the gathered onlookers, la police arrived and busted the bathers who had lingered in the fountain. the australians laughed while they escaped back to the eiffel tower, pulling dirty clothes over their happy skin.

 

“what do you do back in the states?” danny asked me.

  “i write.”

  “spyder writes.”

  “he tells good stories.”

  “spyder attracts them.”

  “some people do,” i said.

  “what do you write?”

  “mostly newspapers.”

  “that’s alright, eh?” danny said.

  “i guess. i tried to write a novel.”

  “stay to it, mate. you’re young yet.”

  “to be young and in paris.”

  “paris, paris chews the root. they charge you to piss.” 

 

until danny had asked me about the states, i had not thought about the states. i didn’t miss my family or friends or my room with the fisherman nor the job. i dreaded allowing myself to return to serve a middle-class homogenous fantasy bent on bullying the planet into cultivated boredom. america had big words like equality and freedom and especially truth and justice, but it was the small words that mattered in dreams come true. words like bread. america could not make bread. america would not eat bread. america was best at dispensing ideals like crumbs. nobody was free in america, neither the corrupt nor the victims, but they gave their lives to the word. i saw how america provided freedom to the world at a cost to herself. america was too busy and productive and obligated to be free. america had to have its way with the world, to use and exploit. america was a self-sacrifice.  most of the people didn’t know they were a sacrifice.  they believed they were leaders. the world needed an america, but america was not a place to live. you had to kill to just look free and if you had money, that freedom was not freedom but an extortion from your brother. american freedom came with vexation and guilt. many tried to escape the price by telling themselves they had souls. many others were free because they had no souls. others thought they were free because they had been told so and believed those who talked. in balance for lost souls was something you saw on television. in europe, especially portugal, i had found more people living freely, more openly, more fully,  and on less. joy and peace had not been excised from their lives. life demanded of them the same things, but they were less worried. they were not obsessed with money and murder. money was just currency and murder was murder, not a routine.  they were, to be exact, happier. even the americans in paris were kinder than the americans back home. they had migrated. they had dropped the weapons america required. america paled beside the old world it’s settlers had left behind. the aussies carried their freedom with them. i knew they had carried it from home. they had a moveable freedom and no place could suppress them. it made me want to go to australia. i had always wanted to go to australia. i was almost shipped off to australia when i was a precocious youth. my old man’s friend in sidney was going to straighten me out. that’s what he told my old man. australia would have straightened me out. by the time i was done there i would have been unfit for america. but i refused to go and threatened to run away. i didn’t want to leave my friends. i stayed and listened while the president told me ketchup was a vegetable. the richest planet on earth.

 

on the morning of the third day, spyder announced they would be moving on toward africa. they had seen enough of paris. paris was fine, but they were looking for wild. to them, civilization was a disappointment and irritation. civilization was not engaging. until this morning, any mention of them leaving had been vague. now it was real. they did not know what they were about to do, but they were excited about what they were about to do. north africa lay before them as a  mystery cultivated by poetry and rumor. they were enthusiastically throwing themselves into a place which had no regard for them. they were confident they could change this by force of personality, and perhaps by their regard for the place. there were parting handshakes and laughter spiked with anticipation of change. the australians were doing the right thing for them, but i saw the loss coming. as they wrote their names and addresses with a pencil into my green spiral notebook, i believed i would see them again. they talked about me coming to australia and surfing the waves there. they wanted me to take a break from writing about police blotters. ray had a house on the beach. “you can come and stay anytime, mate, as long as you want.”