Me Talk Pretty One Day (23 page)

The cows in question were lean, long-horned teenagers known as vachettes. Bullish in both appearance and temperament, they’re
the juvenile delinquents of the cow family, the hardscrabble cousins who sleep in trailers and fight like men. Offer a vachette
a shot of liquor, and she’ll probably take it. Mention a vachette to one of the local Normand dairy cows, and she’ll roll
her long-lashed eyes, saying, “Well, really.”

The woman at the gate explained that should Hugh and I volunteer to participate, that is, to spend time with one of these
angry young cows, our admission fees would be waived. All we needed to do was sign a few simple documents, effectively clearing
the festival organizers of any liability. Being a volunteer meant that in exchange for a possible spinal cord injury, we could
each save the equivalent of four American dollars. “Come on,” the woman said, “it’ll be fun.”

I pictured a handsome French doctor explaining the standard colostomy procedure, and then I disappointed the woman at the
gate by pulling out my wallet. We paid our admission and joined the hundred-odd spectators seated on the collapsible bleachers.
They were our neighbors, the people we saw while standing in line at the bakery and the hardware store. The mayor breezed
by, followed by the postman and the train conductor, and each of them stopped to say hello. While others might find it stifling,
I like the storybook quality intrinsic to village life. The butcher, the stonemason, the sheep farmer, and the schoolmarm:
it’s as though these figures came in a box along with pint-size storefronts and little stone houses. In a world where everyone
is known by their occupations, Hugh and I are consistently referred to as “the Americans,” as if possessing a blue passport
was so much work that it left us with no time for anything else. As with the English and the Parisians, we’re the figurines
who move into the little stone houses once the tailor flies out the car window or the cabinetmaker has his head chewed off
by the teething dog. Sold separately, we are greeted with an equal mix of curiosity, civility, and resignation.

The bleachers had been erected in what was normally a pasture, and they afforded a view of a spacious plywood arena in which
a dozen young men engaged in a game of soccer. I thought maybe we’d arrived too late and had missed the main attraction, but
then someone opened the door of the cattle trailer and a vachette raced down the ramp and pounded onto the field. She paused
briefly to get her bearings and then she attacked, astounding the audience with her speed and single-minded sense of purpose.
Unburdened by a dairy cow’s timidity and great bother of fat, she charged the soccer players as if seeking revenge in the
name of oppressed cattle the world over. The young men scattered and ran for cover, occasionally darting from their protective
barricades to give the ball another fleeting whack. This was pretty much the way things went for the rest of the afternoon.
The vachettes charged, the volunteers ran for their lives, and the audience cheered. It differed from a bullfight in that
there was no element of skill or pretense of two equally matched opponents. The playing field was clearly uneven, both figuratively
and literally. A vachette might chip a horn or pull a neck muscle while throwing a volunteer over her head. She might scuff
a hoof kicking someone in the skull, but otherwise she risked no real danger. The ambulance parked beside the concession stand
was clearly not waiting for her, and she seemed to know it. On the other hand, it was hard to work up much sympathy for the
volunteers who had knowingly agreed to torment a dangerous animal.

The afternoon had just begun, but already I was wondering how I might feel if someone were to get seriously hurt — maybe not
killed or paralyzed — but definitely injured. Just as important, how would I feel if someone didn’t get hurt? Wasn’t that
the promise of spending time with a vachette? If it was cuteness we were after, they’d be playing soccer against a newborn
kitten. My hopes had nothing to do with these men in particular. I had nothing against any of them and did not actively wish
them harm. I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

My conscience had been bothering me for about a month, ever since the evening Hugh and I had attended a large, headachy fair
held each year in Paris. We’d been walking down the midway when I noticed one of the rides frozen in mid motion, several of
the passengers just sort of dangling there. This didn’t strike me as unusual, as the creators of these rides seemed to have
taken the extra step in making their attractions just that much more hideous than they needed to be. If something whipped
back and forth, it also needed to spin on an axis, bob up and down, and hurl through a jet spray of filthy water. Every effort
had been made to leave the passengers as nauseous as possible, and the crowds seemed to love it. On first seeing the broken
ride, I’d assumed it was designed to pause at frequent intervals, allowing those onboard to feel the full effect of their
discomfort. I turned to watch a blue-faced teenager projectile vomit against the side of a taffy stand, and when I looked
back up, I noticed that the ride was still not moving and that a crowd had begun to gather.

I don’t know what happens to people when this ride is working, but when it isn’t, the passengers hang in the air at odd angles,
harnessed into legless metal love seats. A couple lay twelve feet off the ground, their seat back stuck in a horizontal position,
staring up at the sky as if undergoing some kind of examination. Higher up, maybe fifty feet in the air, a young woman with
long blond hair was hanging facedown, held in place by nothing but the harness that now strained against her weight. The couple
at least had each other; it was the young woman who seemed the most likely candidate for tragedy. The crowd moved closer,
and if the other three to four hundred people were anything like me, they watched the young woman and thought of the gruesome
story they’d eventually relate to friends over drinks or dinner. In the not-too-distant future, whenever the conversation
turned to the subject of fairs or amusement parks, I’d wait until my companions had finished their mediocre anecdotes and
then, at just the right moment, almost as an afterthought, I’d say, “I once saw a girl fall to her death from one of those
rides.”

I estimated the hush that might follow my opening sentence and felt my future listeners leaning forward, just slightly, in
their seats. The dead woman was nobody I knew personally, and this would free my audience from having to feel awkward or embarrassed
for having broached the subject in the first place. They’d ask questions, and my detailed answers would leave them feeling
shaken and oddly satisfied. I voiced these thoughts to Hugh, who denounced both me and the crowd, unironically characterizing
the atmosphere as “carnival-like.” He left the midway, and I moved closer to the foot of the ride, pressing against others
who, like me, watched the night sky while wearing an expression most people reserve for fireworks. The blond woman’s shoe
came off, and we watched it fall to the ground. “And then one of her shoes came off,” I heard myself saying. I don’t know
that I’ve ever felt so cheap, but I rationalized it by reminding myself that it wasn’t my fault this person was trapped. I
hadn’t told her to go on the ride. The management clearly had no plan for getting her down, but that wasn’t my fault, either.
I told myself that my interest was compassionate and that my presence amounted to a demonstration of support. I didn’t know
about the others, but I was needed.

The police arrived, and I took offense when they shouted that this was not a show.
Well of course it’s not
, I thought.
But that shouldn’t diminish my investment
. I’d been there much longer than they had. I’d been waiting patiently for something to happen, and it wasn’t fair for them
to herd me away just to make room for some alleged firetruck or ambulance. The crowd stood its ground, and then more policemen
arrived, shoving and herding us back out onto the midway, where our view was soon blocked by emergency vehicles. I was ready
to start crying, but everyone else seemed to take their disappointment in stride. The mob dispersed, and people headed off
to other, equally dangerous rides where they were strapped into harnesses and jerked into the sky to tempt their own untimely
deaths. On the way home that night I practiced saying, “I almost saw this girl get killed.” I tried it both in French and
in English but found my enthusiasm waned after the word almost. Who cares about almost seeing someone die? I blamed the police
for ruining my evening and tried to imagine what I might have felt if I
had
seen the young woman fall.

Morally speaking, the vachette arena felt a lot less muddy than the carnival midway. I wasn’t sitting in the stands because
someone had been hurt. I was simply watching a scheduled event alongside other members of the community. If someone were to
get killed, I wouldn’t be rubbernecking but just plain old flesh necking.

I never quite understood the soccer match. The volunteers weren’t playing against the cow, they were just attempting to play
in her presence. Nobody scored any goals, and I felt nothing but confusion when time was called and another, equally puzzling
activity was introduced. In round two the contestants were given dozens of inner tubes and instructed to stack them into tall,
puffy towers, which were immediately knocked down by the afternoon’s second vachette. Something about the inner tubes seemed
to disturb her deeply, and she attacked them with frightening gusto. The young men raced about the field attempting to construct
their separate towers. They tried to keep ahead of the animal, but when the clock ran out, they had nothing to show for their
efforts.

A break was called, and I was introduced to the man seated beside me, a retired roofer who explained that the vachettes were
from a small town in southern France, not far from the Spanish border. Bred for hostility, they traveled from town to town
performing what was called “the traditional vachette program.” It was the word
traditional
that got to me, the thought that inner-tube towers had been constructed for years and that it just wouldn’t be the same without
them. I don’t know who came up with the traditional vachette program, but I’m willing to bet that he had some outstanding
drug connections. How else could a person come up with this stuff? One game involved trying to pull a decorative bow from
a vachette’s head, and another seemed to amount to nothing more than name-calling. The only ones who appeared to understand
the rules were the vachettes themselves, whose instructions seemed pretty straightforward: attack, attack, attack. It wasn’t
until the sixth event of the afternoon that two of the contestants were finally injured. For reasons that made no sense whatsoever,
a sizable pool had been constructed in the center of the arena, made by laying a great sheet of plastic over a square foundation
of hay bales. An enormous truck had been brought in, the pool had been filled, and the volunteers had been trying to coax
their latest vachette into the water. She’d kept the majority of her opponents cowering behind their barricades until the
last few minutes of the event, when a young man in a floppy hat decided to make a run for it. The vachette looked the other
way, pretending to admire a herd of friendly cows grazing in the distance, and then, her head lowered, she charged, catching
the contestant in the lower back and jabbing him, tossing him with her long, crooked horns. As the young man fell to the ground,
I involuntarily grabbed the knees of both Hugh and the retired roofer. I grabbed them and then gave out a little high-pitched
cry, similar to that of a rabbit. A second volunteer ran onto the field, hoping to create a distraction, and the vachette
ran him over, returning moments later to deliver a few swift kicks that effectively broke two of the young man’s ribs. She
looked ready to disembowel him and might have done so had her handlers not lured her back into her trailer.

The fact that the roofer had to pry my hand off his knee is proof that my inner vachette was not nearly as vicious as I’d
imagined her to be. The show over, I sat trembling in the stands, watching the contestants who now gathered around the concession
booth showing their battle scars to anyone who would look. The horn-in-the-back injury wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined.
The victim had to lower his trousers in order to exhibit the wound, which amounted to little more than an angry red welt located
just to the right of his crack. Wincing slightly, the fellow with the broken ribs decided he would wait until morning to visit
the hospital. He and the others were enjoying their moment in the sun and saw no reason to cut it short. Surrounded by their
admiring neighbors, they reenacted the more dramatic moments of the afternoon and speculated on how they might do things differently
the next time. They drank and joked and were still at it when Hugh and I returned later that evening for the fireworks display.
It wasn’t much in terms of a spectacle. I’ve seen more elaborate pyrotechnics at the grand openings of grocery stores, but
the audience was kind and everyone made an effort to pretend that the display was magnificent. Between the puny pops of Roman
candles and the hisses of launching rockets, we could hear the vachettes bitterly lowing from within their nearby trailer.
They would leave the following morning to wreak their havoc at some other backwater festival, where another set of figures
would end their evening gathered before their perfect matchbox village, pointing to the sky and whispering, “Ohhh. Ahhh.”

The incident at the fair had caused me to worry that perhaps my vachometer was reading a little higher than anyone else’s,
and it pleased me to realize that, at the time they were hit, I’d been rooting for the young men down on the field. Their
injuries turned out to be relatively minor, but still I’d felt no pleasure witnessing their misfortune. I wondered how I might
have reacted had somebody been killed, but then I dismissed the thought as overly dramatic. Watching even the sorriest of
sporting events bears no resemblance to coming upon an accident and hoping to exploit it for your own personal gain. Anyway,
it had been the young blond woman who’d wound up with the most disturbing story. We might have watched her, hanging by a strap
umpteen feet in the air, but, even worse, she had been forced to watch us. Squinting down at our hideous, expectant faces,
she probably saw no real reason to return to earth and reclaim her life among scumbags like us. For all I know, she might
still be there, hovering above Paris and kicking, scratching at anyone who tries to get near her.