Going for a breath of fresh air

Happy days! Morialekafa is going to Europe for a few days where we hope to get some real news for a change. We know now that Bush's so-called town hall meetings are all choreographed and do not allow any dissent whatsoever. And we also know that the so-called news we are getting from our mainstream media is largely faked and follows whatever script the White House authors. We know that so-called reporters have been paid to tout whatever Bush/Cheney want to promote at the moment. The whole press/tv thing is so corrupt and dishonest there is no point in even tuning in or reading anymore. Thank god for the internet. In any case, there will not be a Morialekafa blog until April 1st. As virtually no one reads Morialekafa this should not come as a
major problem. In the interim here is another short story.

Frenchy Don't-you-know

Frenchy lived on the periphery. That wasn't unusual. All of the unmarried miners lived that way. But Frenchy seemed to personify the type, the classic case, except he wasn't a very good miner, perhaps a little below average. When he wasn't mining he bartended for Frenchy Nadieux, a coincidental Frenchman who lived in our town and owned the Turf Club. I don't know why it was called the Turf Club; the nearest race track was a hundred miles away. Anyway, Frenchy Don't-You-Know wasn't a very good bartender either, although passable when sober. He wasn't an alcoholic, just a binge drinker like most of the other miners. When he was on one of his binges he didn't appear at the Turf Club or next door in the card room where my father worked. He didn't want my father to see him drunk. My father didn't drink. He always felt that gambling and drinking didn't mix. He had no moral scruples about it, he just refrained for business reasons. But as he didn't do it, he didn't like it.
I never understood why Frenchy and my father were such good friends. My father was married, owned a house and a car, had a son, was settled down. He wore suits and ties and a diamond stickpin. Frenchy didn't own much of anything. Sometimes he lived in a cheap boarding house, sometimes in a dingy hotel room. I'm certain he didn't own a suit or a necktie. My father was big, two hundred and thirty pounds. Frenchy was small, maybe one forty at most. Frenchy was soft spoken and timid. My father, because of his occupation as floor man in a card room, was visible and often in fights. He didn't like the fights but he was very strong and they seldom lasted long. One of his nicknames was "The Big Bull," but no one called him that to his face. Frenchy called him "Bull." He was the only person who did so. Having presumably never married, Frenchy had no family. I assumed that if he had a family they must still be in France. My father might have known but he never discussed Frenchy with anyone. Not even with me, except to explain that he was Frenchy Don't-You-Know, emphasizing the last name. Actually, his name was Donchineux or something like that. I think my father believed that Don't-You-Know would amuse a twelve year old. As I loved my father very much I humored him on such matters.
I guess the main thing Frenchy and father had in common was their love for fishing. During the bass and crappy season we went often, Frenchy and my dad, me and my pal Billy. My dad would cast for bass for a while, and then we'd spend the rest of the time trolling for crappies. Frenchy liked that best. He never learned to cast, being content to row the boat for those who did. When the crappies were hitting we'd catch one after another. Frenchy was just as excited when Billy or I caught one as when he did himself. They were nice fish, black crappies, and usually weighed a pound or a pound and a half. They were good to eat. Frenchy didn't eat them though. He didn't like fish so he left his share with us. He'd even help clean them. Billy and I liked Frenchy a lot. He laughed and told corny stories and had a good time while we rowed slowly around in the hot sun. He was never impatient, never complained about anything. He told us once how he'd been on a raft on a river with another fellow and they'd fallen asleep. The raft had come untied during the night so when they woke up they were far down the river. Frenchy said, "Hey Joe, we ain't here, we're five miles from here." He thought that was a very funny story.
We'd usually go to shore for lunch. After eating our bologna sandwiches and drinking our Orange Crush Billy and I would run off to explore the shoreline or sometimes take a quick swim in the lake. My father liked to swim but Frenchy didn't know how so they sat quietly smoking and talking. They never seemed to run out of conversation. Billy and I didn't pay much attention to what they talked about, nor do I know even now what they discussed so long and seriously. After an hour or so we'd all get back into the rented boat and fish until it began to get dark. That was the best time for bass fishing. Frenchy would row and dad would cast for a while and then Billy and I would take turns. Billy was really good at it. I was kind of so-so. We didn't always catch fish, but we had a good time.
Mr. Don't-You-Know didn't pay much attention to Billy and me directly but we knew he was interested in us. He asked my father how we were doing in school, were we playing ball, did we like girls, stuff like that. My father would occasionally report that he had seen Frenchy and he had asked about us. The Frenchman's interest in our lives became more obvious the year Billy and I turned fourteen. We were caught in a rainstorm on one of our fishing trips. The four of us ran for the big maroon Hudson, hoping the rain would stop. As the two men lit their cigarettes Frenchy turned to us extending the pack, "We know you boys smoke," he said, "so you might as well go ahead." We were stunned! We sat speechless, dumbly looking at each other, wondering what to do. How could Frenchy know we smoked? But as my father showed no surprise we lit up, trying to be very grown up but giggling with embarrassment at the same time.
Frenchy didn't drive. And he was a narcoleptic of sorts. Sometimes on the way home, sitting in the darkness in the front seat, Frenchy would fall asleep right in the middle of a sentence. When he woke father would say, "Frenchy, we ain't here, we're five miles from here!" The Frenchman would laugh with pleasure at his own story and we could see his even white teeth shining through the five o'clock shadow that was as much a part of him as his unusual yellow and black mackinaw, the smell of strong tobacco, and the exotic accent.
After we parked we'd carry the fish in to show my mother. Frenchy would stand awkwardly inside the door waiting for dad who always walked with him the three blocks to the center of town. Frenchy would go to his hotel, dad would quickly check the action where he worked and then come home. It was a pattern established over many years from which they never deviated. I didn't understand until many years later that Frenchy was uncomfortable in our house and around my mother. I'm sure he liked her, the little he knew her, and as far as I know she liked him also. But he never came to dinner, never visited, never even carried on a conversation with her beyond a polite hello. I never saw him either, outside of fishing, except occasionally when I paid a quick visit to my father at work to get money or give him a message. Frenchy would be standing there watching a poker game or blackjack, or more rarely playing panguingue to pass the time. He didn't like to gamble. I wouldn't have dared enter the Turf Club. It was dark and narrow, a stand-up bar, crowded with serious drinkers and plainly off limits to teenagers. Sometimes Frenchy Nadieux, who was even shorter than our Frenchy and almost completely round, would wave at me through the window as I passed. He didn't actually know me, just my father, but he waved anyway as if we were friends.
The town was the county seat and the heart of a mining district. The permanent population of the town itself was probably no more than four thousand. But it drew miners from all the surrounding mountains and thus it supported thirty-two bars, several with adjoining card rooms, and five thriving whorehouses. Several churches were scattered in a crude suburban ring with only the most tenuous connection to what went on in the city center. Occasionally one of the church ladies complained about having to pass the whorehouses on the way to one of the two movie theatres, but that was about it. As the whores were not allowed to solicit, or even sit in the windows, no one could understand what all the fuss was about. Miners were not generally invited to homes built near churches.
Frenchy lived like the rest of the miners. They were mostly itinerants: Italians, Finns, Swedes, Irishmen, Germans and Missourians. Missourians were considered a distinct category as they had come originally as strikebreakers and were not well liked. The other miners picked fights with them on Saturday nights. Frenchy wasn't sure where Missouri was and had only a dim comprehension of local history. Frenchmen were rare where we lived, which might explain why Frenchy Nadieux hired our Frenchy, but their relationship was strictly business.
Frenchy Don't-You-Know worked in one mine for a time and then another. Sometimes he was fired for not showing up for work, sometimes he just quit. Whether he worked or not he lived exactly the same. A hotel room was home, the counter at the Bus Depot Cafe his usual choice for meals, the bars and card rooms his diversion. He must have visited the whorehouses although his timidity being what it was made it difficult to imagine. His own conversation being limited, he sat and listened to endless discussions of sports, politics, hunting, whores, and off color
stories, making little contribution of his own. Being French, he was often teased when the conversation turned to women. He just smiled and laughed knowingly. No one knew for sure if he was even interested in women. He never spoke of France unless perhaps to my father. In addition to the fishing trips he sometimes went duck hunting with father and some other men, but he had no desire to hunt and only went along to cook. He wasn't much of a cook but as all they ate was ham and eggs and steak and potatoes it didn't matter. Everyone liked Frenchy Don't-You-Know, but I'm sure when he wasn't immediately present people didn't think of him. To those who didn't know him he was just another hardrock miner, an undistinguished face in an undistinguished crowd, a body occupying space but claiming no territory, a self but not a person.
It was not a great surprise when Frenchy's body was found in the lake. It didn't even rate much discussion after the first day or two. Everyone agreed that Frenchy, on one of his binges, had tried to go fishing and in his drunkenness had fallen out of the boat and drowned. It was common knowledge that he couldn't swim. I don't remember where I first heard the news of Frenchy's death but I remember asking my father with tearful eyes if it was true and him saying that it was. I remember most how he looked at me with an intense expression I had never seen before.
"Frenchy didn't fall out of the boat," he said, speaking to me for the very first time as if I were an adult, "and he wasn't drunk. He did it on purpose...he jumped."