On the road
When he’d bidden a suitably subdued farewell to the other mourners and closed the door behind them, Pierre could contain his grief and rage no longer. He’d looked after his grandmother for years without any help from other family members, but they’d all come out of the woodwork when the old lady died. Now his home and most of its contents would have to be sold and the proceeds divided between them all. Damn the Napoleonic Code! He knew that Mémé would have made him her sole heir if French law had allowed it.
There was one thing that had eluded the greedy hands of his cousins, though. Just before she died, the old lady had reached beneath her pillow and handed him a small, round and surprisingly heavy trinket box. “Open this when I’ve gone,” she’d whispered. “I’ve kept them just for you, chéri.” Blinded by tears, Pierre had thrust it into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing at the time and almost forgotten about it until now.
In tears once more, he retrieved the box and twisted off the lid. To his amazement and delight, the box was full of Louis d’or, pre-Revolution gold coins. To avoid publicity, he sold them one at a time to different dealers in Paris and soon had enough money to take the holiday of his dreams. However, just to shame his family, he bought himself a second hand beret and striped shirt and took to riding past their houses on a rusty old bicycle festooned with onions. After the first week, his snooty cousins could stand it no longer. A family council was held and each grudgingly agreed to part with a proportion of their inheritance, on condition that Pierre and his onions disappear forthwith from their neighbourhood.
Gleefully, he took them at their word. Having thrown his recent purchases into the canal, he took the first available flight to New York and booked into a hotel for a few days to plan his grand tour. He could easily have afforded to fly between the areas he wanted to visit but would have missed all the sights in between. The Greyhound buses held no appeal for him. He’d heard from friends that they were often overcrowded and smelly. Beside that, the schedule often left you stranded at ungodly hours in the worst parts of town. Buying a car seemed to be the best solution, but then he lost his heart to a shiny blue and white campervan. The James Cagney sound-alike salesman, who loved a customer with insufficient command of English to haggle, produced a roll of sellotape to attach a SOLD sign and promised to deliver the van to Pierre’s hotel the following morning.
Ah, the joys of the open road! Driving all day and sleeping in the van or under the stars each night, Pierre lacked only one thing. A travelling companion. He had no contacts in the United States and was wary of picking up hitchhikers. By the time he reached Iowa, though, he was desperate for someone to talk to other than gum chewing waitresses in roadside diners. Just past the turn off for Des Moines, he spotted a small figure in white sitting cross legged beside the highway.
She looked up from her copy of the Canterbury Tales as he approached and stuck out a hopeful thumb. “Morning, fellow pilgrim,” she grinned as he pulled up beside her. “Going my way?”
I certainly hope so, Pierre thought. She wasn’t just a pretty face either. As she stood up, his eyes were irresistibly drawn towards her straining T-shirt. The design printed on it was of a water fowl he’d never come across before, black and white with a black bill and a prominent red eye.
The girl laughed and pointed at her ample chest. “They’re called loons,” she said. “You’ll see a lot more of these if you take me up to Minnesota.” Pierre didn’t care what she called them. She’d just made him an offer that no Frenchman could refuse and he welcomed her aboard.