Disembark gently: Trout is taken into custody. It turns out that the colorful specks in the sand—in brilliant shades of red, yellow, orange and blue—were beach umbrellas. But from my vantage-point sitting atop one ISO container among thousands sailing along the coast of Normandy, they seemed like a mirage to me. In my 22 days of surreptitious and serendipitous residence aboard the Danish-flagged M/V Emma Maersk, I had plenty of time to dream about what my first sight of land would look like, but it never occurred to me that it would be umbrellas.  Just behind the hundreds of beach umbrellas was a bustling little seaside resort. The only legible writing I could make out from that distance was the façade of a tall, white building which read “Trouville Palace.” In my relatively short time in France, many things have boggled my ill-prepared mind and this was the first, before I even reached the shore: why would a big white building—probably an apartment complex by the looks of it—be called a palace? My second thought—equally troubling to me at the time—was, why would anyone name a town “Holetown”? This should have been adequate warning to me that not everything in my new life here in France would exactly make sense. Foreign country or not, I sensed I was in familiar surroundings when we entered the port of Le Havre.
Foreign country or not, I sensed I was in familiar surroundings when we entered the port of Le Havre. 
Every port city in the world, including my home town of Pointe de la Hache, Louisiana (where the women chew just as much tobacco as the men and spit it twice as far), is a Petri dish of sorts—one in which organisms that were never intended to meet in the outside world are thrown together, at least briefly, resulting in an unpredictable series of biological interactions with profound consequences for all involved.  As my feet touched solid ground for the first time in weeks, I immediately felt the disorienting effect of standing completely still. I realized that after weeks of literally vegging out in my truckload of okra, I had become accustomed to the constant rolling motion of the ship and struggled to stand straight. As I peered along the pier, I saw someone watching me from the far end, approaching cautiously, with an air of presumptuous authority. As any hobo will tell you, whenever a hobo stumbles or stutters or is otherwise even slightly askew, an authority figure will appear to point out that fact. Apparently some rules are universal.
As any hobo will tell you, whenever a hobo stumbles or stutters or is otherwise even slightly askew, an authority figure will appear to point out that fact. Apparently some rules are universal.
And this time, the police officer in question misinterpreted my imbalance for intoxication—a conclusion that would have been far more to my liking than her second theory, the one she reached upon speaking with me. Back onboard the Emma Maersk, when I realized that I was headed for France, I was relieved that I was at least going to a country whose language I speak. But on land, talking to this cop, I was not so sure. I had spent my childhood speaking French in Louisiana—a version of French that did me no good now that I was in France. As I answered the police officer’s questions, she looked at me in complete bewilderment. She repeated the same questions as if I had not responded at all. Eventually, exasperated with her own inability to understand me, she gestured to the back seat of a red, white and blue police car and off we went.
|
