Cafe Babanussa by Karen Hill

away.
    Emma slept over the night before they left, and both of them were brimming with excitement when they took the subway and the bus at dawn down past Grunewald towards the highway and check point. They planned to hitchhike to France to save money. They figured they could make it to Alsace in ten hours and then to Burgundy in another threeor four hours. Ruby was carrying a can of mace. They agreed, somewhat naively, that the safest rides would be with truckers; because the drivers were working, the girls assumed that they were somewhat less likely to commit a crime.
    They got their first ride after an hour with an old man in a beat-up Benz. He asked them a lot of questions about where they were going and poked fun at their German. He was heading for Frankfurt. That would take them close to Alsace, a few hours from Strasbourg. He dropped them off at a rest station outside Frankfurt, and there, Emma flagged down a couple in a red Audi with French licence plates who agreed to take them to the border. When they hit the autobahn, Ruby lay her head down on Emma’s lap, she was so afraid of the speed and the lane-swerving. She almost threw up when they got out at the border, still a ways north of Strasbourg. Pretty soon after that they caught a lift with a truck driver. The going would be slower, but Ruby was happier. From Alsace to Burgundy, low-lying, densely forested hills grazed the sky as the river Oise flowed alongside, and relief bubbled up now that she was in France. Here she was escaping Werner, her surrogate father. No one would tell her what to do every day, and she would be able to speak and hear her mother’s language once again.
    After arriving in Mâcon in the early evening, they stood in line with a motley assortment of people seeking fruit-picking jobs. One African fellow didn’t have all his papers, and the official at the desk began yelling at him. Then a tall man around forty years old, with straggly red hair and beard,stepped out of the line. His sly grin revealed several missing front teeth.
    â€œMais qu’est ce que vous faites? Vous devez avoir honte de traiter les gens comme ça!”
    When several others echoed the tall man, saying the official should be ashamed of treating people like that, the official shrugged and simply asked the African to come back the next day with all his papers. The redhead remained boisterous in the line, complaining constantly about the wait to his much quieter companion, a brown-skinned, black-haired teenager wearing a David Crosby–type fringed suede jacket. It seemed so seventies and out of place in this new era.
    When Ruby and Emma turned in their papers, they were told that there was a potential job for them if they returned the next day. They were handed tickets to use at a campground half an hour away by foot. As they stood mulling their options, the tall redhead began speaking to Emma, also a redhead, in broken English.
    â€œLadies, I ask you, where are you from?”
    â€œCanada . . . England,” was their joint response.
    â€œWell, well. Pleased to meet you. I am Jean-Claude and this”—he gestured to his friend—“is Willie. May we take you to the campground in our car?”
    Ruby wasn’t sure about these two characters, but Emma jumped at the chance. As the foursome walked over to the road, Ruby recoiled when she saw a bright red sports car with a sprawling naked woman spray-painted in silver across the hood. The side and rear windows were covered in foil.
    â€œEmma, no, we can’t go anywhere in that !”
    Emma replied rather testily, “We’re just getting a ride. Nothing’s going to happen.”
    Ruby climbed reluctantly into the back seat with the teenager. In the front, Jean-Claude and Emma hit it off instantly, nattering endlessly, while Willie and Ruby did not speak a word. At the campsite, they pitched their tents and shared some fruit and cheese, sausage and bread. Jean-Claude and