Everybody Has an Opinion

Lunch time Friday, I popped into the weekly market to grab some food for the weekend. I headed home, happy with my haul of amazing vegetables and a fresh cut NY Strip. Though the French call it a faux filet. Go figure. It never ceases to amaze me how much goodness you can grab at this open-air market in ten minutes.

As I slowed down for the roundabout, ready to take the right into our little village, I heard a noise I’d never heard from a car before. Something in the back sounded like it came loose, dropped, then popped back up smacking into my undercarriage.

What the hell is that?

I made the turn, stepped on the gas, and the noise disappeared. Huh. I kept driving.

The next morning, I took the car to the grocery store, then drove over to look at the house Monty and Rachel were thinking about buying. On the way back, the banging started again. Louder this time. Something's wrong with this thing.

When I got home, I knew I had to do something about it, but then life happened. D let the boys out of the house. They came toward the car and, as I opened my door, both lunged their front paws onto my lap. Plus, my head was in the middle of finishing off the last edits, I hoped, of the book I have been telling everyone is coming. It is, but people smarter than me are proposing some really good edits. Somewhere between all of that, I forgot about the car.

A few days later, I was running an errand in town when I remembered that I ought to find out about that noise. I stopped by our mechanic David's garage.

“It's making a loud banging sound. When I accelerate, I don't hear it. But when I slow down, it starts banging again. Almost like something is hitting the metal underneath the car.”

I don't think David had any idea what I was describing. He offered something in French, saw the look on my face, then tried English.

“Maybe it is the… I don't know the word in English.”

I figured I could help. I ran through the names of every part in the back of a car that I knew.

“Just drop it off when you can,” he said.

The next morning, I asked Denise what her day looked like. She didn’t have much going on.

“Cool,” I said. “Would you mind following me over to David’s garage?”

“What’s wrong with the car now?” as she looked me dead in the eye.

“I don’t know. I hope nothing big.”

“If it is, we’re getting rid of it.”

I winced as she said it. The truth is, I love that car. It is perfect for what I need. Peppy enough for fun, and old enough that I don’t worry about someone bumping into it. The last time something was wrong with it, D had the guillotine out for it. I don’t blame her either. At this point we have spent more in repairs for it than we actually paid for it. I suppose that comes with the territory when you have a 16-year-old car and still drive it like a teenager.

Back at the beginning of the summer, I thought for sure I was going to have to sell it. So much so that I cleaned it one last time before I brought it over to the garage. I knew that if it were anything major, I was going to have to part ways with my toy. But it survived to live another day. But the next time something major happened, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to protect it from Denise.

Just after lunch, we headed over for the garage. D and the boys were in her car behind me. I decided to take the back roads in case anything happened, I didn’t want to be on the busy highway headed toward town and have the car break down. We just needed to get to town, pop over the bridge into Montrichard and David’s place was less than a mile away. Then he can deal with it.

The car felt different since I drove it the other day. The rear end of the car was lot noisier, practically screaming at me. Hang in there pal. Three or four more minutes was all we needed.

As I approached the bridge into town it was closed. Great. This isn’t a big town. And for weeks we had been getting notices about the changes on the bridge into Montrichard. But it was supposed to be done Monday. It was Wednesday. The town bigwigs were worried about its future. Engineers had discovered cracks in several of its arches. They were going to narrow the crossing to a single lane down the center of the bridge, with traffic lights at either end taking turns letting cars through.

I couldn't say I was surprised about the cracks. I doubt the guys who built the thing ever imagined a steady parade of forty-thousand-pound trucks crossing it. More than once, I'd found myself sitting at the light on the bridge, watching one of those beasts approach from the other direction, wondering whether it could squeeze past without taking half my car with it.

I took a sharp left onto the road that runs alongside the Cher, figuring I'd find somewhere to turn around and head for the next bridge at the next town up.

It's a beautiful stretch of river. The Cher moves slowly by, its color reflects the sky’s mood. Today it was a rich blue. There are grassy banks and enormous old trees on either side of the river, hanging over the roads that run alongside it. Across the water, Montrichard looks like a postcard, its pale stone houses sit below what’s left of a medieval fortress. The old stone bridge, with its arches reflected in the water, connects you to town.

On a nice day, it's the kind of place where you want to park the car, find a bench under one of those trees, and watch the world go by.

About 300 yards down, the car collapsed. Did my rear axle just drop?

I jumped out of the car and headed back toward D’s car behind me. As she rolled down her window I blurted out “I think my rear axle just broke.”

“I thought something looked funny.”

“What?”

“The wheels. They were moving back and forth.”

“Why didn’t you call me, babe?”

“I thought you knew.”

The bridge being closed had caught people by surprise. There were four or five drivers trying to get past me so they could turn around too. They were all giving me the hairy eyeball for deciding to stop my car in the middle of the road.

“What are you going to do?” Denise asked.

“I’m going to text Celine at Davids shop, see if they can give me a tow.”

Heading back to my car, the top part of the left rear wheel was leaning at an angle that didn’t look good. And one of the wheel’s lug nuts was lying about a foot from the tire. I looked at the wheel itself. There was only one lugnut still there. And it was barely hanging on. You drop an axle and the wheel falls off? Where were the rest of the lugnuts?

Celine got back to me quickly by text. Have your assistant bring the car over is what her message said. My assistant? What? That’s how my phone translated her text. The French use words in a funny way.

So, I texted Pascal “Hey, do you know a towing company I could call?”

“What happened?”

“I think I dropped the axle on the old car. I’m stuck down by the river.”

“I’m coming over.”

“You don’t have to do that. I just need a number.”

“No. I’m coming over. Where are you?”

“I am on the road on the way to the beach. You can’t miss me.”

I headed back toward D to give her the scoop. My phone beeped, it was Celine: “David is going to come get you. Please send me a picture of where you are.”

I took a couple of pictures of the cars sitting the Cher and sent them to Céline. I wasn't sure how much more specific I could be. In a town this small, you could probably tell someone you were under the big tree by the river, and they'd know exactly where to find you.

Over at La Plage, people were swimming in the river, enjoying what was left of summer. From where I stood, I could watch them splashing around in the water, without a care in the world. At least someone was having fun.

I looked back at my car.

Denise came up to me “What’s the latest?”

“Pascal is coming over to take a look at it.”

“That’s good.”

“And Celine said David is going to come over to tow it back to his shop.”

She looked at me.

“Yea, I’m not sure.”

Pascal could reach us in about five minutes. David was going to need to head to the next town to get over a bridge, then double back. Plus, who knows how long it was going to take for him to get moving.

I figured Pascal would arrive first, assess the damage, and we could tell David whether or not he still needed to come.

“Why don’t you sit in the car with us?” Denise said. She was right. It was hot as balls. It was nearing the end of September, but summer wasn’t letting go.

Having the air conditioning blowing on me in the front seat did feel good. How was this happening? I started thinking about what had happened earlier in the year.

Earlier in the summer, the Mercedes had started running rough. It sounded like a diesel engine. David took a look and told me it might be something minor, or we might need to replace the engine. The only way to know was to open it up, which was going to cost me money whether they found anything or not. I spent a week contemplating life as a one-car family before finally telling him to go ahead.

When I finally went to pick it up, David invited me into his office. He was smiling. “Is it okay?” I asked. “Ooooouuuui,” he said, stretching the word out while continuing to smile.

“What was wrong with it? And how much?” He then launched into a twenty-five-minute dissertation on how he and his team had approached the problem, how their professionalism and determination had ultimately led them to a successful outcome. At one point, he even thanked me for not calling and pestering him, because it had given his team the time to work through the problem. Buddy, I didn't call because I was afraid of what you were going to tell me.

The whole time he was talking, all I wanted to know was how much it was going to cost me.

Eventually, David told me what I owed him. Two oil changes, two oil-line flushes, and two filters. A few hundred euros. I still had my car.

“Here comes Pascal,” D said as she was looking in the rear-view mirror.

He drove past us then turned right over the curb and on to the grass next to the river. For a second I was wondering what he was doing. Then I understood. It’s hot. He found some shade.

Pascal got out, gave Denise a couple of bises, looked at me, then shook my hand. So formal.

He motioned for D to move her car. “La” he said pointing toward the trees next to the river. It was a shaded patch of grass running toward the water. To get there, Denise was going to have to drive over a curb, and the Cher was about 15 feet past where he wanted her to park.

He began waving her forward. “Allez! Alez!”

I looked at the curb. Then at D in a two-ton SUV. Then at the river.

“Vraiment?” I said looking at Pascal.

He just nodded.

Now, that is not a small vehicle. Getting it over that curb requires some enthusiasm with the accelerator. I had a sudden image of D giving it just a little too much enthusiasm and ending up in the river with the boys.

“Pascal, je ne sais pas.”

He continued waving. Denise eased forward. The front wheels climbed the curb. Then the rear wheels. And mercifully, she stopped in the shade. Sully and Viggo popped their heads out of the right rear window. Perfectly comfortable, enjoying the A/C. Oblivious to what was going on around them.

Pascal turned his attention to the injured vehicle. He bent down, looked at the rear wheel, and said several things quickly in French that I could not understand. He made a pantomime of someone using a jack. I grabbed it out of the back of the car.

He took it from me and immediately started lifting the car. I asked him what he was doing. He pointed at the wheel. While he worked on that, I wandered back up toward the bridge, looked around the corner on the routed we’d been on, looking for missing lugnuts. I didn’t see anything.

By the time I returned, Pascal had managed to get the wheel back into position. He had the one bolt that was somehow in the wheel and the one I'd found on the pavement. He tightened them, then put his weight on the lug wrench, practically jumping on it to make sure they were tight.

“Pascal, I can't think of a single reason why four lug bolts would just fall off a wheel.”

“Because they weren't tightened,” he said.

He didn't hesitate. Not even for a second. Then he said, “On y va.”

“Where?”

“Boutet”. That is David’s garage.

“Vraiment?”

“Oui.”

I wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Then I saw David coming down the street toward us in his flatbed town truck. Oh, thank God.

He pulled up ahead of my car and backed the truck toward it. He hopped out and headed back to inspect what was going on. Before he got halfway to the car, I saw Pascal going to meet him. I saw him introduce himself. They shook hands and began talking in French.

I couldn't follow much of the conversation, but I didn't need to understand the words to see what was happening. Pascal had been there first. He'd found the problem, jacked up the car, and got the wheel back into position. He'd come to help his friends, and he wasn't about to surrender the scene simply because the professional had arrived.

David, meanwhile, had come to rescue his customer and found another man standing beside the car, explaining what was wrong with it. I watched David's face as Pascal talked. There was a look that seemed to say, and who the hell are you?

Pascal was standing a little taller now, maybe five foot two, gesturing toward the wheel. I knew exactly what he thought had happened. Someone at David's garage hadn't tightened the bolts properly. And from the way Pascal was talking, I had a pretty good idea he was sharing that opinion with David.

David is a pretty mellow guy. He listened, but I could see his expression changing. It reminded me of two roosters meeting in the same barnyard. Neither one had come looking for a fight, but now that they were standing there, somebody was going to have to establish who was in charge.

I stayed out of it. My French wasn't nearly good enough to referee, and besides, I was enjoying the show.

David walked back to inspect the wheel. I pointed at the four missing bolts. He bent down for a closer look. Then he told me that another customer had experienced something similar. Someone may have tried to steal the wheels.

Pascal was pointing at the wheel again, saying something to David in French. I couldn't make out everything, but I had a pretty good idea what he was telling him. David went back to his truck and began preparing to load the Mercedes.

I went back to Denise.

“I have no idea where the other four lugnuts went.”

“Sabotage.”

“What?”

“Somebody sabotaged the car.”

“Why?”

Denise has always been the voice of reason in our relationship. I have a remarkable ability to take the smallest problem and turn it into a complete catastrophe in my head. She's usually the one who talks me down.

But there's another side to Denise. I call her Jerry, after Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory. Most days, Jerry stays quietly in the background. Mention contrails, and things can get interesting.

And now Jerry had four missing lugnuts to work with.

Heading back toward the little summit by the flatbed, David had the car up on it. He tightened the straps on the driver’s side, then went over to the passenger’s side to tighten those straps.

“Paul,” he said waving me over to his side. I think Denise felt it meant her. She had been percolating ever since she arrived at her theory.

Pointing at the rear tire on that side, David said, “there is another one missing.”

Over my shoulder D said, “I knew it!”

Pascal came over. “Look at that,” I said pointing at another missing bolt.

“They did it again,” he said.

“Pascal, those tires have been there for over six months. I’ve driven the autoroute over and over again at 130kmh.”

“That’s how it happens. Over time.”

David told me he would take it over to his garage and let me know what his guys think. Pascal let out a low snort. I thanked David for making the long trip around the river. Then turned to Pascal to thank him for coming to our rescue.

“Ce n'est rien” he said, looking me in the eye. We both knew it wasn’t.

Denise and I got back in her car and headed home. By the time we were halfway there, I was beginning to reconsider everything that had happened Friday. Maybe Denise was right? I'd stopped at the market for a short visit.

When I returned to the Mercedes, I remembered a van parked nearby, with a few guys sitting inside. At the time, I hadn't given them a second thought. But now I remembered that the knocking had started only a few minutes after I left the market.

“Maybe somebody was trying to steal my tires.” I said to Denise.

“Maybe you surprised them. Maybe they had loosened the bolts when you came back toward your car.” She was already committed to the theory. Now, she had a motive, a timeline and a suspicious van. By the time we got back to the house, she had practically solved the case.

In the end, whether Denise was right, Pascal was right, or David had nothing to do with it, I never found out.

What I did find out was that the whole adventure cost me a thousand euros for a new wheel and two rear tires.

And the more I thought about it, the more I felt like an idiot. I'd heard the banging on Friday. Heard it again on Saturday, louder this time. Then I'd driven the car toward Montrichard with the rear end making enough noise to wake the dead.

Not once did I think of checking whether the wheels were still attached properly.