14232
Leaving
I heard her screaming as I ran away. I heard her screaming down the alley, in the car, at the gas station, along the highway. No matter how far I went I heard her. The next day I became dull to it. I did not know where I was going. I was free and far from her and home. We were going to get married, stay together forever, finish high school and go to the same college. Life was set. She wanted children but she said she could wait. Tonight was going to be our first time together. She was a virgin, a good Christian girl. She thought the same of me. Life as I knew it was supposed to end today. I was to become a man with a wife. I was going to stay in Longmeadow, make a family and a home. Whatever I’d done today, running away, breaking hearts and promises, good or bad; I was a fool and alone and free again. The future was unknown and life began again today.
“Mrs. O’Shea, if women were made for love like the goddess Venus is it true that guys are made from snakes and snails and puppy dog tails?” I asked my beleaguered English teacher. The class erupted; it did not take much. She did not answer but I knew I was right. My kind as a whole has not progressed far from that low down salamander that bore us; inside us, there remains a primitive and reckless thing waiting to break and run.
I can see it now, a few million years on the primordial shores of our beginnings, a salamander woke up in his mud hole and decided to go digging through his muddy closet for something to wear. Among his old flippers and slippers he found this queer little thing called a cerebrum and tried it on. This low, wild thing became tame in an instant! To complement his newfound brain anatomy our pal the salamander put on a coat and tie and headed out of his mud hole to convince his buddies to do the same.
There has always been the tame and the wild in opposition to the other, defining the other, hemming the other in. The ones who live in the tame, in the squares by the great fountains and pigeon littered cafes would have you believe they live in the only world and it is new and permanent; home is tame, a small place you fit into snugly. A wild man walks across the mountain tops but in his mind he is lost swimming across the strait to his village. What matters most? Where he is or where he wants to be? The wild man is lost, weary and happy. He is free until he makes it home. At home he is finally safe, he knows where he is and can make his bearings. He comes home for the euphoria of being in a small tame place, in such a place he becomes bigger, He is not such a small thing anymore out in the wild away from fences and walls void of the gentle grasp of his kin. And he would leave again to be free of them again. How long would he be tolerated? How many times can you break the hearts of the ones you love and leave?
Margaret
I have known Margaret ever since the fifth grade. I did not notice her until the start of Freshman year. It was an Indian summer she wore these wonderful little tee shirts. The pink one was my favorite. I watched the backs of her arms that were barely covered. She had wonderful posture. Erect shoulders hung her arms neatly at her sides. I wanted to kiss and squeeze them, and roll up her sleeves to expose her neglected shoulders. The little part of her stomach above her belt and below her shirt hung out neatly without support. Everything seemed so soft. I wanted it all. I was comfortable and warm knowing she was so beautiful.
I know we were happy together. I knew it from the first autumn spent with her, it felt like my first. Drifts of yellow fell over us and the sun lighted it all as if it were the first morning on earth. It was special and new. I’d seen autumn before, seen leaves fall before, but I’d never been able to describe it to myself in just a way that I’d remember it. She lit up the smallest details for me.
I knew Margaret by the funny way she scurried around the corner her arms at her side,
hands flapped up, penguin-style, nervous and hurried. I knew her as a peach sweet, fleshy, fuzzy, and good. I was good when I was with her. I smiled. Commonplace, petty thoughts fell away. She changed the way I knew things. She made everything better for me.
When I was much younger I worked with coarse men, wild ones, near animals. Their world was appealing to a young boy, it was large, full of lust, loud and dirty. I was ten and it was a small pizzeria all too happy to take on a strong boy willing to lie about his age.
I would work most weekdays with Danny and Nguyen. Danny had the most wonderful of curly brown mullets and a belly that hid the biggest and shiniest of his rodeo prize belt buckles. Danny was ageless, a twenty or thirty-something kid. He was terrified of driving, even the thought of it. The only time he showed his age is when he talked about driving; his hands would go up in the air, his eyes would open wide and white, and the happy grin of an over-sexed kid was replaced by the terror of an old man alone and paralyzed in fear. Nguyen was a regular freak of nature on every video game we ever had in the shop. He spent every day on them. His spiky-haired, pimple-faced silhouette became more than real lit up by spacemen and giant moths fight him for a quarter.
“Hey kid watch ‘dis,” Danny growled as he lifted a counter off the ground, “’Dis is what I did to my bitch last night, hey!” and the counter would thunder, bounce, and almost shatter against the cracked linoleum. He’d bite his lip, close his eyes and pucker up as he sidled up to the edge of the counter, bucking his hips in time as the whole mess rattled through the shop. He’d moan for us and give a little screech. Some poor gal had put up with this for a full ten minutes last night.
Nguyen laughed, his eyes were lost when his cheeks reared up to show us the best third-world dentistry had to offer. The whole experience among these men was ugly but it was right to be among them. That’s how things were supposed to be for men, wild and loud. Somehow this made perfect sense to a ten year old.
Margaret showed me the other world, the smaller one closed in by fences and walls filled with friends and happiness, the warm one.
My Mother
My mother spoke quickly about things I’d never heard of. When she was ten, in the old country, she picked cotton. It was fun. She wasn’t paid. She didn’t complain. She didn’t notice anything except being happy amongst her brothers and mother.
The family’s main income was tobacco. This paid the groceries for the year. The needle for tobacco is about a foot long, a half inch wide and flat. The bottom leaves are picked first just when they start to turn yellow on the plant and then the next leaves up, the next and then the next: five rounds of leaf picking. My mother and her folk would stack the leaves onto the needle one at a time. When the needle was full, the tobacco would be passed onto a string hanging off a bamboo stick.
The bamboo stick would stand as high as a man would with string hanging from the top of it tied to the ground, tight. The string was thread through the head of the tobacco needle and one by one, leaves were passed onto the string. Full bamboo sticks were laid outside to dry on horizontal rigs a few feet off the ground.
The family worked quickly. They’d do this in the morning and early afternoon so the heat wouldn’t get to the picked leaves and spoil them as they lay waiting to be stacked onto the bamboo sticks.
“What about the rain?”
During the summer, you knew two things: the sun would rise and it wouldn’t rain.
There was so much work put into preparing the dirt and the seeds. The seeds were so fine and small. They were put into small sacks and kept wet and warm hanging next to the fireplace until they had sprout. When the sprouts were ready, they were mixed with ash to keep the seedlings dispersed.
To protect the seedlings there were square rigs made of bamboo and sticks small enough for a man to handle. One end lay on the ground and the other was propped up by sticks. There were two different sized sticks. The long ones were used during the day to let the sun in. And the short ones were used during the night to protect the seedlings from the wind and animals.
When the seedlings were ready, they were individually transplanted by hand to the fields. They had a little funnel with a handle to push the dirt aside for each seedling and then the funnel would pull away the dirt and pack the seedling in.
These rows were barely two feet apart. Just enough for a person to get by. Land was scarce so every little bit was put to use. At the end of every row, cabbage was planted. We had one every night: fresh and big around as a man.
When those stacks of leaves were dried out in the field on the bamboo, we’d bring them in for pressing. You’d have to spray them with a little mist of water to keep them soft for pressing. The leaves had to stay intact. The press was turned by hand. The same type they’d use for olives and grapes. It was turned on top and the press top came down onto the leaves.
Then those jerks would come to buy. And everyone was so afraid. They’d look over the tobacco and be so fussy. This was your year’s work and if they didn’t like it, they’d give you pennies for it. And that’s how it was.
And that’s how it was for my mother. Somehow growing up in my mother’s house, I didn’t know we had it a little rough. It was just me, her and my sister. Dad lived across town. We’d see him on Sundays.
Years ago, I met an old woman at a funeral. She hugged me by the neck and murmured to me about the tough life I’d had and that she loved me. I hugged back, thanked her and still I wondered why my life seemed so tough to her. I hadn’t noticed.
The Rat House
My first day on the run all I had were my Dad’s ’78 Nova and a couple hundred bucks for tip money. I still had on the tuxedo I’d rented for the happiest day of my life. There was nowhere to run to, anyone I knew would kick my ass and drag me back to Margaret crying her eyes out back at the church. My only chance was Sal Paramy, a good friend that couldn’t give a shit what was right for me, a brother from the mud pond. The last I heard Sal was living in the eastern part of the state just south of Adams. His folks had moved when we were in middle school and then he somehow got himself emancipated as soon as he could. We’d all hear from him or about him every few months or so. He’s the crazy son of a bitch I ever heard of. It wasn’t too hard to find him in a small town. I went to the first gas station/chicken shack I could find and waited. It was around lunchtime and the place was hopping. I watched as everyone came and went. A young mother and her lovely daughter left eating ice cream and carrying a few six packs of Coke. A trio of suits came and left with enough gristle, fat and fried chicken to choke an able whore. These suits were bursting at the seams, happy bellies hung over waistlines long since forgotten, suspenders slipped near their armpits and wool jackets reeked of sweat distilled from bacon and the purest of sloth. Finally, Bulldog showed up.
Bulldog was a man from the south, large, black and Baptist. He works at the local shipyard as a welder and drives a sweet white Dodge Ram truck. I knew he was the man to see about Sal when I saw him walk out with two tallboys of beer, each in its own brown paper bag for easy travel. When I walked up to him asking about Sal, I didn’t even have to mention his last name. Bulldog figured that any white man that would strike up with him in this town had to be a friend of Sal Paramy’s. He gave me a lift since he figured any directions he gave me wouldn’t be good enough and following him through the woods would take all afternoon. Besides, Sal could always give me a lift back.
On the way over Bulldog told me about the shipyards and the motherfuckers. I heard all about the motherfuckers. And Western movies—those motherfuckers could do anything they wanted to back then: no law. The rest was incoherent but still enjoyable and I’m sure he’d say the same of me. He was a warm-hearted guy doing me a great favor. He made me believe again in the friendliness of my fellow man even if I was a son-of-a-bitch that hadn’t deserved it. He dropped me off at Sal’s and wished me well. He would have stayed but he barely had half a beer left and it was a long ride home.
Sal’s place was out in the woods as any man would have it. Paint peeled off it like an old onion. A dead tree had split the front porch in two. Instead of clearing it away from the house, they had hung a tire swing from an end of it and let it be. To get in through the front of the house you had to climb over the trunk and through its wiry branches. It didn’t take long to figure how to get over the tree. The handholds going over it were worn and smooth from the waxy fat that repeated human touch on wood leaves behind. The tuxedo got tore up but I made it through just fine. I climbed on in and called out for Sal.
“Sal. Hey SAL!”
“He ain’t here!” someone called back.
“Really?”
“Yeah man. He split last month. Left us high and dry for two months rent and cable. Nice tux.”
“Thanks, it’s a rental though.”
“They call me Sweet. Don’t get any fuckin’ ideas. They just call me Sweet.”
“Good enough. I’m Jim. I’m in a bind. Thought maybe Sal could help me out.”
“Well, he’s gone. Whadya have in mind?”
“A road-trip. I’m kind of on the run.”
“Sounds cool. I’m getting sick of this fucking place anyways. Goddamn rats.”
“Goddamn rats?”
“Yeah man, it’s their house not ours.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said, dude. We’ve tried everything to get rid of the little fuckers. It all just pisses them off more. We baited traps with peanut butter and some with bacon. Not only did they clear the traps without one of them getting caught but then they went through the cabinets and fridge ate ALL the peanut butter and bacon in the house.”
“Holy shit.”
“Then we tried poison. They ate all that then puked it up all over the house. Have you ever seen mouse puke before? Little bastards hid it, too. It’s why we never close the windows ‘round here. A few days ago Clem brought in his sister’s cat. We haven’t seen it since. And just yesterday we’d heard it in the walls meowing for its dear life.”
“Shut the fuck up, man. You are not ser—“
“I am serious, man. When Clem heard that old cat wailing in the walls he’d just done lost hisself. You ever seen an old country boy just break down and cry? Well, now I’m ready to get the hell outta here, boy. Them sons of bitches left Clem’s sister’s cat in kitchen. Or what’s left of it. If you want to have yourself a look well just go ahead. I’ve just about had enough. Those fuckers can take us any time they want. I ain’t wakin’ up one mornin’ with my face half chewed off. I’ll be waiting outside to give you a ride back to the station.”
And with that sentiment, Sweet started his climb out the front door.
“How’d you know my ride was out at the station?”
“Well, that was ole Bulldog that brung ya back here, wasn’t it? Ole Bull, he’s just like clockwork. He always needs at least two Buds after work to get home to Emma."
A Run-In with the Law
Sweet left his car at the station. Neither of us said a word. I drove us off in the general direction away from home and Margaret. As we pulled out of the station I shrugged towards Sweet waiting for a sign, wondering if he had some great plan to relieve my burden. He shrugged back and off we went. About half an hour later he spoke.
“I remember this old Russian guy. Used to live above my Dad’s place. He told us when he was a boy in Russia, away at boarding school, pre-army training or something, they’d all take off their shirts and jump in the snow. He used to ride horses deep into the forest for days at a time in small groups, sometimes alone, carrying as little as possible. You should have seen the old man tell it! Smiling, his face moving, happy and cold, remembering his wild life so long ago. He urged me to live like he had, to ride horses, to fish, to dive into the snow and feel life. He wanted me to do what he wished he could do again. The old man was sick for a long time. Rarely left his apartment. You should have seen his place it was like an art gallery and museum. He painted. Rocks, Styrofoam plates, chairs, everything! It was incredible. He had his old army things and pictures from his old life. He was a good guy.” Then Sweet was quiet again.
“Right on,” I replied, “that’s the life for me.
And that was enough until we got to a town.
It was around midnight when we got off highway 17 looking for a little fun. We were in upstate New York and this was the first lighted patch of land we’d seen for a while. We found a local taxi stand and decided we could talk some shit with the cabbies and find a party. Actually, it was two cabbie kids in a back alley tagging a dumpster with a high-powered paint gun. Tweetle-Dee and Tweetle-Dum would do nicely.
“Hey, nice grouping,” I called out as Sweet and I approached.
“Thanks. Practice makes perfect.”
“Nice tux,” Dum snickered, “Where’s the funeral?”
“Thanks it’s only a rental, though.”
I really have to get rid of this fucking thing, I thought. There is nothing worse than wearing a worn out tuxedo. What once was sharp and clean this morning was now sagging at the neck and bunched at my belt. Felt as if I was wearing an undersized bear suit.
Sweet cut in, “Where’s the party, man?”
“Huh?”
“Party? Where is it, dude? Don’t ya’ll do anything in this town besides paint trashcans on a Saturday night? We’re looking for a place to tear down, boy.”
“Shit. I don’t know.”
“C’mon boys sometin’s gotta be happenin’ ‘round here,” Sweet demanded. I’d known him for hours now and still I couldn’t place his accent. It seemed as if he barely paid attention to it himself.
“You guys dance? There’s a club on Main called Rumors. It’s run by a bunch of Arabs,” Tweetle-Dee answered.
“Naw, dude they’re black,” Tweetle-Dum chimed in.
“Who gives a fuck? The place is damn expensive. Twenty buck cover but it’s always packed,” Tweetle-Dee replied.
“Would you want to leave if you’d just paid twenty bucks?,” said Tweetle-Dum.
“I bet you boys forty bucks I could tell you the score of tonight’s game before it happens,” I challenged.
Tweetle-dee and dum chomped the bit hooked, line and sinker. And then we split.
“I can’t believe they fell for that shit. The score before the game? Gimme a break!” Sweet said.
“I can’t believe they paid up,” I said.
“Must have been that crow bar in your hand,” Sweet replied.
“Must have.”
There were blacks, Arabs and Hindis working Rumors, sharply dressed. The place was grand, all class. The line to get in went around the corner. We weren’t going to pull any shit to jump the line; like I said, the place was grand, all class. The coat-check man reminded me of an old teacher: a foreigner, proud looking, good posture, clean appearance. He charged me $3 each for my coat and cummerbund with a reassuring smile. I felt like an idiot since I was dressed like one but he was kind and inviting for a paltry six bucks.
The dance floor crowded as the night went on. I didn’t mind. The girls became warmer to the touch. The satin and silk that covered them was soaked through with sweat. We were all happy. Which is why I probably didn’t notice Ganesh until I had to peel Sweet off a nineteen-year-old. There was a whole herd guarding us. They roamed among us on the dance floor quietly carrying away the young ones who’d had too much of a good thing. They were dressed as well as their counterparts at the door, suits pressed, shoes gleaming—but in place of a human head, there sat one of an elephant. The great deities, for there were at least half a dozen incarnations, didn’t seem to move yet somehow they did. It was as if they were too noble for the action of movement yet still they accomplished their goal of keeping peace amongst us beasts in the den. I grabbed up another wonderful woman. She was pretty and soft to the touch. She smiled as she looked back at me over her shoulder. And I knew I was vile and low as such noble beings watched over us. I knew I was better than this, better than this idiot in a tuxedo slouching over another pretty girl. I was ashamed to be in the presence of the deities. I had to leave and so we did, not without company and directions to the next party.
I woke up the next morning in the backseat of Dad’s Nova. Sweet was in the front spooned up with a pretty girl, the both of them sleeping and smiling. Sweet merciful Christ! My tux was gone! I was covered in plaid head to toe. Shit really got out of hand last night but it was worth it getting rid of that tux. I was a hung over ghost of what I was yesterday, not sure where I was or who I was. Margaret had finally stopped screaming. We dropped off Sweet’s girl and headed out of town.
Sweet and I had been on the road for six hours and there are so many times you can listen to the same three CD’s. More girlie-folk to ease into the sunny morning? Speed metal to shake off the fuzz of last night’s festivities? And how exactly do you get those silly things out of the player?
“Fuck.”
“What’s up?”
Either the townies we left behind were setting off fireworks for a hero’s send-off or we were about to be busted. I knew this shit would happen. It always does. Fucker had us good too. It was a trap. Fifty mph then thirty mph then fifty mph-a slow patch to catch out of town yahoos. There was no way to see it coming, especially when I was half dazed trying to figure out the radio; goddamn after-market thing just kept flashing Nintendo graphics at me. Good thing I had just brushed the booze out of my mouth at that pharmacy parking lot. I was still betting the porker could smell it on me or at least pull me out of the car and beat me into the Stone Age for driving barefoot. As he came waddling towards us I knew I couldn’t hold my shit together. I could barely keep my eyes open. I’d barely gotten six hours from Margaret and now I’d landed us both in jail. We were fucked for sure. And then divine providence stepped in. I took a second look back at Sheriff Roscoe just as he was squinting at our license plate. The old fat fuck was the spitting image of Gepetto the woodcarver, Pinocchio’s old man. He was a wonderful meatball of a man hidden under a few tufts of hair and behind the most beautiful Coke bottle spectacles I’d ever seen. Sweet mother Mary if he wasn’t as blind as a bat! So I slammed her into reverse, nudged Sheriff Gepetto into a muddy ditch and let fly holy hell to freedom. Good ole Sweet never batted an eye.
The Cafe
It was long, drawn-out crawl getting out of the northeast. It’s tough to leave what you know; it’s tough to leave home. Yankee boys aren’t used to driving for more than an hour or two at a time and at this rate we weren’t leaving Eastern Standard Time any time soon. I still wasn’t sure where Sweet was from really or why he was on the run with me. It didn’t matter. We were two dogs pent up for too long finally set free not yet used to the idea of being free again. Instead of running we trotted confused looking over our shoulders every few steps and stopping for a sniff behind every third tree.
We were in the Catskills or the Poconos or the Berkshires. I could never tell. Sometimes this country all looked the same. I’d been across before, I’d criss-crossed the northeast more times than I wanted to. A few hours along and it all looked the same, streaming gravel below, a blur of short green trees to the side, multiply that by a few hours then a few days and so on.
It was the middle of the afternoon when we rolled Dad’s Nova down route 2A Business. I still had that plaid get-up on and we both stunk of embarrassing nights with strangers. I figured it was time to grab a coffee at the first tea and doily place we could find. There were plenty of places to choose from, we picked the one with the most useless sweaters. Sweater vests, sweaters tied around the neck, fuzzy Abercrombie’s thinner than a tee shirt, our place had them all and more. Sweet and I rolled in with our noses up in the air figuring we’d have the run of the place in a matter of minutes and it would be a good laugh. Son of a bitch, when I put my nose down to look around the place I almost turn-tail and run for my life the place was a goddamn trauma ward for plastic-surgery junkies. I hadn’t seen so many puss-filled old bags since we visited Margaret’s in-laws in the Keys. And each one of the old trolls had an attitude to match the grotesque blood soaked bags hanging from their necks, faces, guts, arms, everywhere. Holy shit! I told myself. Anywhere these folk could attach a bloody puss bag, they did! We were in hell or one hilarious skit from Saturday Night Live. There was the Coffee Talk lady berating some college kid for putting cream in her half skim half milk latte, little puss bags the size of golf balls dangled underneath either ear. I swear she had a wig on. She was tanned to a hue to match her Versace bag. She had inch long talons that dug deep into that squirmy waiter. She was a mythological harpy and perhaps a distant relative of the Kennedy’s. We sat down at the counter stunned. Just when you think you are the strangest thing in town something has to come along to put you in your place. We had a couple of coffees Sweet poured himself. (Who else would have?) And hightailed it out of the northeast. We were sufficiently motivated.
The dogs were let loose, yet they still lingered confused and unknowing. They sniffed at each other and at the ground but still would not bound away free. Then the gun went off and they dashed for freedom into the great unknown.
Smokey
We made it to Virginia on gas money hustled off some idiot college kids on a “hitch-hiking adventure.” They never did shut the fuck up. I think they were scared shitless. Sweet and I made quite the pair. We both hadn’t seen indoor plumbing in so long it was a sin. And I looked like a refugee from a Scottish asylum, dressed head to toe in mismatched plaid. I had even kept that silly beret with the cotton beanie on top. The ivy-league boys wanted to get acquainted so we’d be less likely to gut them by the side of the road. The second I heard ivy-league come out one fucker’s mouth I knew we’d squeeze them for a good chunk of change. And we did.
The southwestern edge of Virginia along I-81 is some of the best-kept land on this wonderful green Earth. I’d call some parts of Roanoke a ruddy shithole but the Parks Service boys sure do have a strong lobby just south of it. A Yankee boy had never seen so much green or smelled so much clean. You’d never run through so much open land that reeked of that good smell of burning wood keeping folk warm and dry. I knew a place a few miles off the highway where we could camp. And once we were on the country road it got even better. The bucking winds of 90 MPH driving will never let you enjoy this country. She was meant to be traversed by bicycle.
We scored supplies at the last gas station open so late. There was ice outside in an unlocked freezer, fresh vegetables and a Johnny Reb flying high above. I smiled and walked on in. Just about everything was covered in dust and fake wood veneer. I nodded at the kid behind the counter, he replied in kind. There was a wall of faded Polaroids up by the door underneath a bag of water taped and tacked to the wall.
“Hey what’s this bag of water for?” I asked.
“Supposed ta take care of mosquitas.”
“No kiddin’?”
“Well, it don’t work as far as I can tell.”
Still, that bag of water had to be appreciated for its aesthetic value. The Polaroids underneath were of big game kills: deer mostly, young kids baggin’ their first big kill and there were some large mouth bass, too; some were as big as toddlers.
“What kind of fish are these big boys here? Sweet asked. Son of a bitch scared the shit out of me. I’d forgotten him back at the car. He could be quiet as a ghost when he wasn’t shooting his mouth off.
“Largemouth bass. They’re real popular ‘round here. I do a bit of grabbin’ myself.” The counter kid replied.
I was starting to like him. He was cool with all our dipshit tourist questions. I think he rather liked it.
“You dudes know what grabbin’ is?”
“Nah,” I replied. “Tell us, man.”
He gave us a grin that told us we were in for it.
“You see bass and catfish like ta hang out where it’s warm and swanky kinda like my dick.”
I tried not to grimace.
“These fish usually hang out in old hunks of logs sunk into ponds and they just feast on all the rotting shit they can find there. Well, ya see, we sink heaters in the ponds to attract ‘em and when the season is right and they’ve grown good and fat we go and get ‘em.”
“What kind of rod is pulling these monsters out?”
“You ain’t been listening dude. This here is called grabbin’. You know?”
“Grabbin’.”
“Yeah we grab the fuckers. Ya wade in up to your neck shove your hand in there and when she clamps down ya toss her in the boat.”
“Ya toss those toddler size fish? Those fuckers clamp down on your hand and ya just toss ‘em in the boat?”
“Good fun.”
And with that he tossed me and Sweet a old box to do a little shopping. Sweet picked out enough dried meat to kill a mule. He had to sample all the flavors of backwoods; it would be like going to France without eating the cheese. We filled up that box with ham, eggs, ice, beer, bread, tomatoes and cheese to rival the government’s brand. To cook it all our friendly angler found us one of the finest cast iron skillets I had ever laid my eyes on. She was born for an open fire and I was more than happy to oblige her.
We made camp out on an old switchback. I made a fire bigger than I ought to have. The townies in these parts don’t appreciate the plight of the yahoo tourist come to eat, drink and shit in their woods. I didn’t want to be noticed but it had been too long since everything smelled so fresh and pure. I was happy to be out in the wilderness again; I thought my heart would sing until it burst. Sweet sat close in awe sipping a beer. Thick, salty wonderful country ham crackled and my stomach sang along to it, growling in tune to that wonderful popping noise. We ate like kings and for some strange reason sipped only two beers among us. Maybe being out under the swaying trees and sleeping in the dirt was enough to satisfy a salamander.
We fell asleep to wood hissing. We woke up to a bear shouting. Son of a bitch if he wasn’t ten feet tall. And he still wore that funny hat I remembered from when I was a kid. What I didn’t remember were those teeth. He had a mouth full of them! Sharp and raw. It made me wonder if he was part shark. He was pissed. He would have torn us to pieces but fast thinking saved the day. I pulled a bowl out of the bottom of my bag. But I guess it was the top since Smokey had us dangling in the air by our ankles like little pigs in the blanket. And then he spoke.
“Don’t you know only you can prevent forest fires?” the old black bear said.
“C’mon Smokey, we were sleeping next to the fire. If those embers jumped out of the pit we’d be the first ones to know,” I said.
“We’d be the first ones up in flames dude,” Sweet added.
“You both got a point. Pass that bowl over here. Who’s got a lighter?” Smokey said.
Luck be a lady tonight. Not only did we escape the wrath of one of America’s beloved icons but we also gained a great appreciation for him. Once we got him going the old black bear wouldn’t shut up. Told us he’d been eating careless hippies like us for years.
“One day I knew enough was enough. It was the late sixties. The questioning of authority was in vogue. A revolution was blazing across America. Those fucking draft dodgers were heading to the forests in droves, settling in Canada, setting up communes or just ripping up the undergrowth for their hybrid strains. The fuckers used pesticides, they’d trap deer and rabbit that might eat their crops, and they even plugged up our springs to irrigate. Enough was enough.”
Smokey had a few radical ideas for getting rid of these nasty forest pests but the Park Service just held him back with the usual fascist red tape. So here he was, a forest vigilante of sorts. He missed interacting with the kids and all the groupie sex orgies at Yellowstone, but he didn’t miss those fucking lame pants at all. A wild beast should never be put in blue jeans. I think he only kept the hat for name recognition.
We smoked, ate, and laughed good belly laughs with Smokey until dawn. Then he took us back to his cave deep in the woods. The place was a palace of high-tech gear he’d snagged over the years from those Ivy-League Lonely Planet kids. He invited us to stay as long as we liked. He was just like any old man that had been alone too long: full of wisdom, piss and wind.
He told us, “I remember a time when a squirrel could travel from Springer Mountain to Katadhin without touching the ground. Now look at us! Soon there won’t be a place left untouched by gravel and burnt rubber.” We nodded in agreement.
Old Smokey fed us well and played a mean game of disc golf. He had nine holes set up back. We had a grand ole time.
Gunar the Farmer
Those last few days in Virginia with Smokey were a blur. He didn’t want to see us go. Being a man-eating hermit must get lonely. We left there with a carload of supplies from Smokey’s private stash. These days the backwoods hippies are loaded down with the choicest of gear. Thank goodness for those little fuckers. We pawned most of it, even sold some to more hitchhiking kids. Figured we’d get it back next time we saw Smokey. He wouldn’t mind us giving away his gifts; he understood our plight. We were on the run from the lives we’d made for ourselves. We were far from home, outside wandering in the wild, no distance was too great or costly.
We were in one of the quietest places, a man could be in. The lay of the land and the way the sun bore into it in could still the heart of a sprinting jackrabbit. There were miles of crop, straight and narrow roads cutting through and land so flat you could figure to be at the bottom of the world. We were in Mississippi, shooting pool near a catfish factory hoping for more gas money when the whistle blew and the Mexicans came pouring out. Hunks of rusted metal filed up coughing and growling for want of better days. Hundreds of strangers huddled together carrying sacks of clothes, food and children, waiting for a spot on the next truck. Folk were too tired to argue. Everyone just waited for his chance to jump on board and on his way. Young boys crowded up against us holding up sweets, soda and China-shop goods. They said nothing, glanced off to nowhere in particular and waited for any blessed coin that would come their way. A farmer drove up for a few hands to pick okra. It meant a couple of dollars and I could talk us into a home-cooked meal.
It’s called repetitive stress syndrome, line hypnosis, setting the brain to work on the same movements and objective in a continuous and ultimately unhealthy cycle. Music begins to play inside your head, a rhythm appears, and conscious thought falls away. I was with Margaret. I was her man. She was my woman and everything was right. We were having a meal in the forest. I’d finally lost the tuxedo and the plaid golf caddy suit. Nothing was ridiculous anymore, everything was right. I poured her a glass of wine. She was a Botticelli. My heart ached, for her beauty was too much to bear. I kissed her lips, her neck, and her cheek. I wanted to kiss everything of her. I wanted to hold her tiny shoulders. I wanted everything. I wanted to fit right up against her and know my place in the world again. She laughed, long curls of her hair, lit golden by the falling sun, fell aside by her shoulders, rolled together, piled up so soft to touch. I squeezed her arms the way she let me, the way I liked. She was so strong. I held her close. She was home. She hadn’t spoken since I’d left. Life had left our place. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Marriages are meant forever. We were meant forever. Let other lives fall apart, divorce. This wasn’t meant for us. Would she go off to school and forget me? Would the shame of it all break our place in the world forever? Yes. There was no turning back home for me. The fields of okra were off in the distance. The Mexicans ran down the rows slicing the ripe vegetable into their buckets. They kept good pace with each other, each to his or her own row. There were two white men lagging behind, sweating, laughing and practicing some high school Spanish. One of them was me. The daydream of Margaret fell away and the okra started to dance in front of me, not like a ballerina, like a boxer. My eyes followed ahead of my hands, down the row, looking for the sprouts that had grown to just the right size. My arm jabbed into the plant snapping the stem away across my bird finger. My arm began to burn but I easily dismissed it. The plants last defense was a mild allergen. I was having too much fun to hurt. I was at peace listening to the twilight insects, watching the shade of trees and okra pull long shadows, and looking for Venus to come shining out of the dark blue nothing. Besides, Sweet and I were chasing the Mexicans. They were fast and amiable enough. They couldn’t care less that a couple of white boys were hanging out, filling a bucket or two. They were paid by the hour by an extraordinary man.
Our benefactor was a farmer as thick as a strong oak from his square fingers down to his very essence. He was proud and I loved him for it. He was the tallest man of 5’6” I had ever seen. I marveled at him breathing. He used his chest and stomach to breathe; they were thick from work. His nostrils opened and took as much air as he wanted and he wanted it all; it was the stuff of life and he knew how important life was. His eyes were the darkest blue; the whites were clean from the life he led. All of the hair on his body was wire and all of it unkempt save for the thinning tufts on the top of his head. He wore short-sleeved button shirts, thin worn cotton tucked over his thick trunk. He wore shorts, the kind they issued in the army. His legs weren’t for leisure, they were meant to stand days on end in the fields among his workers. He inhaled deeply before he spoke to me.
“You. Hello, I am Goo-narrr,” he said.
“Hello,” I replied.
“Do you want to work?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must work hard. Come.”
So I went. I never knew a man whose face sighed along with him as he breathed. It was a subtle thing. I doubt the old man knew it was happening. Those wild bristles he called eyebrows tensed and relaxed. He was a living, breathing mountain of a man. His gaze fell and rose as if it were on the bow of a boat anchored at harbor, the ocean beating at the boat were the massive lungs that moved his body. I was Jack, just climbed up the beanstalk, sneaking upon the giant at slumber.
Gunar’s wife fed us the most amazing cheese mixed with smoked salmon and capers. She was a fine compliment to the man. It was if both of them held more life than the rest of us. At dinner she told us how earlier that day she had taken a machete and gone down to the trailers in the backfields. They had rented them out to the grown children of old friends. The hope was Gunar and his wife could straighten the little potheads out. They hadn’t yet. The little potheads figured out how to grow weed and were elated to find rich soil on the farm ready to use. They grew weed three meters high until Gunar’s wife came with her machete. She never thought the fat little pork chops could run so fast. Maybe she’d straighten them out yet, if they ever came back. Meanwhile, there was plenty of food left at the dinner table in their absence and Sweet and I were happy for it.
After dinner Gunar loaded up our car with okra and cheese. We left with full bellies and a happy send off. Out of respect we waited out in the woods until they were asleep to fill the trunk with those mutant weeds left at the trailers out back.
Eating Cheerios with the Sledgehammer Kid
We’d heard about an old baseball player who lived a couple of hours from the okra farm. They called him Bammer because that’s what he did for work and pleasure. We had to find him and get a few balls signed. When were we ever going to be down here again? It was easy enough to find his hometown but when we showed up no one had ever heard of him. It was an ordinary Mississippi summer day and the noon sun had just arrived ready to cook us alive if we were stupid enough to stay outside. We found a gas station/fried chicken shack that seemed busy enough and asked around. First, it was an old woman and her teenage daughter. The girl had on a teenie tee shirt that looked as if it could just slide right off her; it was from a Christian school in town. Don’t these folk know what kind of perverts are on the loose? Don’t parents fear for their kids anymore? Don’t they know what’s lurking beyond their borders? We asked them both about Bammer. They didn’t have a clue, never even heard of him. Two more suits popped out and popped right into their power blue Volkswagen. Nothing. They didn’t even give us a second glance. Then an old codger came out with three tall boys of Bud each wrapped up in its own to-go bag. Paydirt.
“Five blocks down Main, a right and then a left. It’s the best looking house in the neighborhood, the one with the barbwire fence,” he said and then cracked one open and put it in its place in the dash.
The fence was locked and there was no way to get anywhere near a doorbell. So we hung around asking street kids were Bammer might be. Nobody would tell us anything. Who the fuck were we but a couple of strange looking dudes reeking of a week on the road and in the woods? Finally, we found his boy Sam. We’d circled around back of Bammer’s to find a place to climb the fence when we happened on him. He was swinging around a sledgehammer in a homemade batting cage, damn fine workout it was. The boy’s forearms were enormous!
Sam kept telling us Bammer would be home anytime now and we were more than welcome to wait. We tossed him fastballs and change-ups and whatever else we could muster until we were winded. We took shifts pitching out to the boy nevertheless we couldn’t keep up. He appreciated the practice and paid us in kind with a place on the couch and a never-ending supply of Cheerios. It was all the kid ever ate. Whenever Sam wasn’t out back working out or in his bed sleeping, he spent his time in front of the television with a comforting bowl of cereal. The kid loved the stuff. He was pure muscle and grit but somehow it was all made out of Cheerios, honey-nut, mostly. The house was a modest ranch. There was a parlor filled with kitsch and fine furnishings. It seemed the living room was Sam’s domain; it was lived-in, messy not dirty. The couch cushions were sunk in from use and there were a few blankets bunched up on the sides. The rest of his home had an untouched museum quality to it. Everything seemed crisp and dusted proper. I welcomed the shower and change of clothes. Bammer wouldn’t mind the loss of a pair of pants and an old jersey. Besides, if we were to hang out back shagging balls for Sam I couldn’t well be shot at. The neighbors could put up with so much and some dirty white dude in plaid was just too much.
We waited five days for Bammer and pitched and caught for Sam in the meantime. For some strange reason I could have stayed there forever. There was something quieting in Sam’s respectful manner and in the place itself: the way the sun was always on; it bore down on the place, filled it up, burned it and washed it all. Neighbors warmed to us slightly. And there was a decent BBQ shack down the street. You’d know lunch was on from the signal billowing from the smoker. The smell of smoked meat was sweet and heavy in the air; it was next to heaven. Bammer never did come home. Some folk just never know what’s good for them; some think they don’t deserve it. We got to know his son Sam, his neighbors, his girlfriend and even his wife. But the old man never showed so we had them all sign a ball and we left. If I never see another bowl of Cheerios again it’ll be too soon.
Minturn, Colorado
This is where I happily shivered with Margaret. This is where we nearly froze watching the stars come out falling in love.
There is a switchback in Colorado that runs up a mountain called Tigwon. We arrived an hour before dark. The drive up the road reminded me of those amusement park rides on the old time cars attached to a track. It was choppy at best. There were some campsites cleared along the mountain. We picked a site near the top just as the dark blue sky faded to black and the brightest planet came into view. It was still warm as we watched the grey wisps of smoke that were clouds float over the mountains across the valley. The sky was a beautiful gridlock of stars and Milky Way mist. I was so happy to share this with Margaret and to know that all of this, Margaret, the mountains and the sky, were mine and I was theirs; it was the greatest sense of belonging I’d ever had out in the big wild. It was Margaret’s fault.
“Hey slick.”
“Hey pretty lady,” I replied.
She looked mean for a second as she built the fire. And then I ran up to her and grabbed her. I couldn’t take it any longer. We laughed and held each other close by the fire watching the sky trying to remember it all before we had to leave and go back to the city. We were bundled up in a couple of sleeping bags and we had on as many clothes as we could layer. The tent would have been warmer. We pitched it just in case we couldn’t take the cold anymore.
“Everything seems so real right now,” I said.
“I know,” she replied.
“Even the air, you notice it more now that it’s so clean. Not like home, you know?”
“I know.”
She let me babble on for at least an hour. I always felt so foolish when I talked so much but it was ok when I was with her. She liked hearing these silly ideas I had in my head about being outside in good, clean country where it was so quiet and everything seemed right and purposeful. We fell asleep wrapped up in each other. The cold woke me up every couple of hours and I’d build the fire back up. The fits of shivering were awful; sleep had stilled the blood in my body, the cold was shocking. It was all the better to wrap myself back into Margaret by a new fire. I will never forget how warm it was with her. I will never forget how cold it was without her.
Ted the Waiter
Mr. Johansen had long ago discovered the fountain of youth: He did not care. He did not care to learn, wonder or muster up the gumption to imagine a world outside Ben’s Food Stop off I-70. This amazing Zen-like quality afforded him the longevity of a sea turtle right down to the green seaweed that grew on the edges of the his horn rimmed spectacles. He ate once a day, everyday and he had done this at Ben’s for the last 800 years. Ted was his waiter.
Eating began with his wife. Or maybe she was one of his children. Nobody knew and Mr. Johansen never asked. Such was his nature. He was content that she went into Ben’s first. He asked nothing else of her. She came in everyday, sat down and began ordering. First, there were to be double hamburgers without the bun and without any cheese. She always stressed the no-cheese stipulation. Then came the chicken fried steak with a white biscuit. Later Mr. Johansen labored in with his oxygen tank in tow. Sometimes his eyes hung uneven depending on if he had been seated at his regular table. This was no indication of emotional tension or tension otherwise since Mr. Johansen possessed none. This was simple physics at work; a Normal force not properly cancelled was the cause, nothing more. His hair was kept square, short and greased properly always. He was as proper as the dirt underneath your feet. And Ted loved him so.
The burgers at Ben’s were awful but cheap. Just the way Mr. Johansen was used to. The meat must have been grilled at one time then left to sit if warm water, a method held high to the standards of cafeterias across this country. The burgers sweat and had those strange, pale dimples boiled patties had. The chicken fried steak was mostly fried breading that was left out long enough to absorb the moisture from the hamburger patties leaving it the consistency of an old sock. And then there was Ted.
When Ted first set foot in Parachute, Colorado he was a young man of twenty-two, he was an aspiring actor, handsome, tall and slim. Parachute was a layover at best, a spot to scrounge up a little cash for the trip ahead. He was on his way to glory on the west coast, the best coast to collect his piece of the American pie. He would have made it, too if he hadn’t met Mr. Johansen. Who knows why lightening strikes where it does and who knows what happened when Ted first laid eyes on his favorite customer. Ted fell spellbound. Maybe it was the pure insanity of Mr. Johansen’s existence, to look at him was to gaze upon the most inane refuse of the last 800 years of man’s existence rolled up in a sweet old man who rolled his oxygen tank across Ben’s parking lot everyday at lunchtime. How could he be? And better yet--why? And that was the trap; Ted had to know why this oddity existed. So he stayed. He was drawn in as some are drawn in to the gruesome horror of a murder scene or a train wreck. He stayed and watched for any clue to an answer. The first few years in Parachute were painful and strewn with denial. Why couldn’t Ted move on? There was nothing holding him back but perverse curiosity. As more years added on so did the pounds and that thinning patch atop Ted’s head. The people of Parachute warmed up to him, he had a roommate, an old bachelor like himself. His was a routine of a mundane life. Acceptance of his situation finally came. There was no answer to Mr. Johansen’s existence. He simply endured for the sake of enduring. He was as powerful as a rock and just as dynamic. He was so special because he was exactly the opposite of anything special.
Sweet and I had run out of Gunar’s cheese and weed and had no other choice for a few hundred more miles of that most beautiful stretch of Colorado rock. So we stopped at Ben’s, ate happily in that air-conditioned café, gave a nod to Mr. Johansen, stiffed Ted on his tip, and left.
Vegas
For some Las Vegas, Nevada is a family vacationing dream, for others it is a shitty, black hole of despair. Sweet and I opted for the latter as we hit the strip the second we got into town. It was two o’clock in the morning and we were looking for some famous, ridiculously cheap steaks the casinos sell you because they so much money off the gamblers. We walked into the first place that said steak and beer in the marquis.
“Mom, did you win anything? Do you have any money? I’m hungry,” some little kid told his transfixed slot-monkey mum.
How the hell were we supposed to eat watching this shit go down? So we left. The next place promised COLD BEER and DIRTY GIRLS. They had neither past twelve o’clock on a weeknight. Finally, we ended up at the Palace. I paid twenty bucks for a chicken Caesar salad; Sweet blew eighty bucks at the black jack table in the time it took him to down a complimentary shot of whiskey. The Palace did have the finest hookers in town, polite ones, too. I turned down one gal before she told me that she would have fucked the both of us if she was for free. In my book, that’s class.
Sweet spent another hundred at the tables trying to learn how to hold on long enough to break even on comps and that’s where I left him. I had to get at least an hour of sleep in the Nova before having to drive the whole next day while he recuperated.
Leaving Vegas
It was ninety degrees in the shade at the Adult Entertainment and Gas Up outside Amargosa and it was barely nine o’clock in the morning. Poor Sweet was fighting the mightiest of hangovers. I’d pulled him off a table just an hour ago. Son of a bitch was still incoherent. We were headed through Death Valley, which I thought was fitting since the poor bastard was near death and I had actually been dead a couple of months ago. I still had the police report to prove it. Dumb cop saw that Ford toss me in the air like a rag doll and marked me down as dead without a second thought. I walked away without a scratch. Officer James Cagney (that’s right Jimmy Cagney) took off for another donut before I came to. It was quite a scene when I walked into the station asking for him. I wanted to know what happened. He couldn’t tell me, just complained about the county’s poor resources and how they didn’t have it in the budget to buy accident reconstruction devices. Then he kept going on about heading to Maryland where the police departments had bigger budgets and the women were so fine. Since we were so close, being in Vegas, I thought I’d grab a rock from Death Valley for Jimmy Cagney to smash his head open with it. Who but a dead man has the right to a rock from Death Valley? But first, we needed some sodas and cold cuts from the Amargosa Adult Entertainment and Gas Up.
The Gas Up was a huge bright white warehouse filled with empty metal shelves. Maybe it was the off-season, being summer, maybe space was cheap so they built it big for a brighter, busier future. They barely had enough goods for sale to fill the back of a pick up. They had what I needed though, it was good, and I was thankful. The old girl behind the counter was cheerful enough. She had an Arkansas hat on.
“You’re from Arkansas?” I asked.
“Yup,” she replied with a smile.
“I’m from Mississippi,” I lied to brighten her morning.
“Really? What part?”
“Greenville.”
“Wow I know that area!” she said with another smile. Her voice cracked a little maybe because it was early, maybe because it echoed through the empty shelves towards the back of the station.
“We had a place in Biloxi until Camille came through.”
“Camille?”
“Hurricane Camille—before your time, the summer of ’69, the worst storm to ever hit land, flattened the coast, whole towns vanished. Camille even took away folks plumbing. She tore up Grandma’s trailer outside Pass Christian and took Grandma with her. We were lucky, she just knocked a tree straight down through our living room. The good thing that came out of that was a nest of flying squirrels fell out of that tree. They were so tiny.” And she cupped her hand almost until it was closed over an imaginary baby flying squirrel. “We didn’t think they’d make it but they did. Mine was Uncle Fudd with two d’s. Had him for six years. Trained them all. They’d fly around the house right onto your shoulder. Must have been the most exotic pets I ever had,” she said with a smile as she gave me my change.
I thanked her for the soda and cold cuts, bid her good morning and took off into Death Valley looking for Jimmy Cagney’s rock. Poor Sweet would sleep all the way until Yosemite. Stupid son of a bitch would wake up with $200 worth of chips in his pockets by the time we made camp. I tried selling them to a couple of gas jockeys and clerks. They laughed me out of town. Told me they lived so far from Vegas so they could never go back. Damn things were plastic so we couldn’t even burn them for kindling.
Yosemite
Finding refuge in a divot on the side of a mountain in Yosemite
Jan Kerouac
I found Jack Kerouac in San Francisco, the most famous salamander of a man that I ever knew of, my hero. He whored, drank, and left behind a slew of broken lives behind him. I had it in my head to become him once, when I was a very stupid young boy; I still might if hell comes my way. Finally, I now consider him more of an icon than a writer. At the City Lights bookstore I found a scrapbook of Kerouac’s Zen meanderings transcribed from dinner napkins and the like, typeset and copied perfectly replete with doodles by the author, wonderfully sized for a coffee table in any proud yuppie’s living room. Kerouac slapped and flopped in the mud louder than any of us, back in the day when we were all ready to listen: my childhood and yours years later. Upstairs, in another book I found a beautiful woman, her picture was from 1978. I found her identity in the index. Jan Kerouac, his only child, had four entries in a 700-page biography of the man. I followed her awful life in those four entries and then in another book down the shelf. She was beautiful and she knew it. She posed so well. She met her father twice as a young girl and never left the shadow of his legend during her short life of drugs, wanderings and second-hand notoriety. I think you never heard of her since she opposed the executors and benefactors of Kerouac’s estate or maybe because her story sullies his. He denied her her whole life. She only knew him through books and some innate feeling inside herself. Two years before her death she still posed well. I was in love with her that afternoon. I looked for her in those books. Excuses were made for him in those books. Maybe he spoke well of her while she was away in Mexico, teenage mother to a stillborn child. I’ve known many delinquent fathers who boast of their children. I might hate Kerouac forever since that afternoon among those City Lights books. He is a childish fool of an icon to all men on the run from their responsibilities, spiritual and otherwise.
Cactus Tracks in Elko, Nevada
I’d rather be a cowboy than Jack Kerouac. I’d rather be a sweet soulful free animal than a manic lonesome street performer. We’d crash landed in Elko, Nevada hoping to find a secluded spot to camp away from little shits that might toss beer cans at us in our sleep. Much to my chagrin, tucked away from the highway was the strip: casinos, clubs and trouble. I’d be peeling Sweet off the black jack tables at five in the morning. Fuck it. The casinos had the cheapest beds in town and I was too tired to scrape the last couple of days from that wonderful skillet.
It had been almost a week since San Francisco. We were headed back east, maybe towards home, maybe north through Canada since we’d never heard about folk going across Canada. Once we found the brightest and cheapest casino in town, we finally found us some of the finest casino cheap steaks in the state of Nevada. The beds were clean, the cable worked, and that was good enough for me. They even had showers and toilets in the rooms. Sweet couldn’t have cared less since he was off to the tables before I got out of the john. I went out to look for him in the hall but it was too late. I’d catch a few hours sleep and find him in the morning. And that’s when I met the cowboy poets. There were wonderful pictures of them all along the hallways. Some were beautiful western folk art posters; the style was reminiscent of campfires and dust of the range. Many of the posters had excerpts of poetry. They prayed for work in the open range far from wall and street. They were warm and kind: dozens of men and women smiling under their Stetsons. The cowboy poets seemed to be good men and women writing with spirits calmed by life on the open range. I swore I would find them tomorrow.
The next day Sweet somehow made it back on his own around six. Then I dragged him up and down Idaho Street looking for the poets. Sadly, no one knew them. We asked in the casinos, the cafes, and then we found an honest to goodness cowgirl. She had a little limp to her right side, maybe she had been thrown from a horse. She wore Hondo boots, cowboy cut jeans and prettiest smile I’d seen in a week. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to rope her. I wanted to know her. I would never be the man for her but somehow I wanted to try. She told us about her favorite cowboy poet, Baxter Black. We wouldn’t find anything in town today since most of the shops were closed and we couldn’t stay another day or Sweet would die from alcohol poisoning at the casinos. The old dog hadn’t learned to win at the tables yet but he could hang on a lot longer for that fantastic comp booze. She suggested ordering some books online. She even wrote down a few more authors to look for. She was wonderful. And then we left.
Lame Deer, Montana
It was near two in the morning when I decided to leave I-90 on barely a quarter tank; driving Dad’s Nova that didn’t mean much. By looking at the map, Highway 212 looked to be a decent straight shot across to Sturgis. I figured at two in the morning a country highway could be driven at interstate speeds. It was too bad about the road construction, the semi-trailers and the complete isolation and lack of gas stations. The first twenty miles we were stuck behind a line of trailers in the dark of middle-of-nowhere Montana. When we hit the road construction bit, that’s where I lost my patience. The tar had been removed and a good couple of storms had torn chunks of the underlying clay away. The dust was thick and the windshield wipers weren’t doing much. I was about to gun it by the first trailer when its horn blew. There must have been trouble up ahead so I pulled back. I waited for a while to see what it was. Nothing. The trouble must have been me. What fool would pass a line of trailers doing sixty over a craterous dirt road in the pitch black of dust-covered Montana backwoods? That fool would be me. I gunned it past the first trailer as the old man wailed on his air horn and flicked his lights at me. It was enough to wake up poor Sweet.
“Holy shit! Where are we man? I can’t see a fucking thing?”
“Relax,” I said, “I can see just fine. There’s a truck in front of us. See its lights? And there’s a truck behind us. See its lights?”
“Where are we? This ain’t I-90. I just lost a fillin’ back there.”
“We’re on a short cut. I just got to get around these porkers and get us to a gas station. We’re almost out.”
“Fuck me. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. There isn’t gas for a good thirty miles. Unless the power just went out, ‘cause I can’t see a fuckin’ thing. Man, we’ll be camping in this dustbowl tonight.”
“Relax, dude. You grow a set of tits on me during this road trip?” I replied.
Then I took her up to ninety and passed the second trailer. We lost the road a bit, skidded out, but everything went fine. The trailer kept blowing his horn at me and flashing his lights. The fucker even sped up. It seemed as if everyone was a bit tense tonight. At the time it made sense to get her up to as fast as she could go with nothing in front of us and when she finally ran out of gas her momentum would take us into the next town. It made sense at the time, at least to me. Sweet didn’t agree. Waking him up from his nap had made him cranky. Too bad I hadn’t figured as much until he had grabbed the wheel.
“What the fuck! Let go! Shit! Shit!”
“Just fuckin’ slow down man! You’re gonna fuckin’ kill us,” Sweet cried out.
“What? Let go of the fuckin’ wheel!”
“No. Pull over!”
We were a pair out of a Playskool commercial, two little blond-haired, overall-wearing tikes driving our plastic dump trucks, the kind you sat on, and honking those big red rubber horns they all had. Nursery rhymes were playing. All the little boys and girls were smiling and singing along while mom sat on the park bench sipping an Irish coffee chatting it up with “Uncle” Bill. Thank goodness that telephone poll put an end to playtime.
The car was totaled. We just got a little glass in our hair. As we crawled out the trailers passed by in time to hoot and flash their lights some more. We gave them a salute and a smile. At least it wasn’t too cold out and the clay wasn’t so hard to sleep on.
“You alright?” I asked.
“I’m fine. You?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Too bad about Dad’s Nova.”
“No worries. She had a cracked head anyways. I’m tired,” I replied.
“Me too. Those rocks look good.”
Those rocks did look good: flat and far enough from the road. We grabbed our last bits of clothes and Jimmy Cagney’s Death Valley rock from the back seat and trunk before she was totally enveloped in flames and head out. We bundled up and splay out on those flat hunks of clay like billy goats. Once the fire died down a show of stars came on. I fell asleep exhausted from the day’s drive watching the Milky Way put on her show.
The next morning we put on as many clothes as would fit. I think I had two pairs of pants on over each other, three tee shirts and a sweater. I didn’t want to lug anything for the walk ahead. I left Jimmy Cagney’s rock hidden under last night’s bed and we headed down the road towards Lame Deer.
It was late when we finally got to town. We were ragged and hallucinating. There was nothing from where we slept the previous night until we happened upon Lame Deer. It could have been ten o’clock at night or two o’clock in the morning. It did not matter for we were almost in heaven: the parking lot of a gas station on the edge of town. At the gates was a young Native American girl, long dark hair, long dark face, beautiful girl all of twelve, smoking a cigarette, and cursing out a pit-bull chained to the back of a truck. She was a heavenly creature tragically flawed. Our senses were heightened in our sun-drenched delirium. The smell of things to eat inside excited us into a dizzying frenzy. Everything slowed and everything moved in rhythm with everything else. All was one. I was held transfixed by that long dark mane of hair swinging in tune with that pit-bull shaking the life out of that little girl which was in tune with those men prying them apart. Everything seemed to move together as if the Rockettes were in town and everybody was trying out for a spot in the show. We stumbled into the station past the cosmic dance and let our noses lead us to Mecca.
I snatched three fat burritos from their heated case and devoured two before I made it to the register, which forced me to head back to the heated case to replace the two I had lost. By the time I got there Sweet was almost done inhaling the last of the jalapeno poppers. All that hot grease and salt begged to be washed down with a cold chocolate milk shake. Thank everything good and right that has made America such a gluttonous country; even in the remote outposts of Lame Deer, Montana a man can gorge himself at the troughs of jalapeno peppers and chocolate milkshakes and be made satisfied and whole again.
When we got out of the shop the girl was free. The dog hadn’t broken her skin. There was no blood. Her arm was wet with slobber, her brow with sweat. She was quiet and still as the men argued over what to do with the dog; she was a little girl, gentle and bewildered, a little Buddha in repose. I asked her what her name was.
“Margie Running Bull,” she replied.
“Do they ever call you Margaret?” I asked.
“Just my mom, when she’s mad or drunk or both.”
“That’s not funny sweetheart.”
“No it aint. Shit happens though.”
“Why do such awful words have to come from such a nice girl?” I asked as she took another drag. “Ten years old and you’re out here at this time of night smoking, teasing pit-bulls and talking to strangers?”
“I’m twelve and they won’t let me in there anymore. They’ve got me on a list. I was fighting last week.”
“Wonderful.”
I could see the last thousand years of this place in her face: majestic and holy, mothers tending to family, sisters hemming in brothers. She was an abomination, an anachronism; she was the pure distillation of the vulgarity of modern poverty and marginalization in the form of countless generations of nobility. There was wisdom hidden inside of her. I wanted it. A princess and a queen hid inside of her: old, preternatural; they were ashamed of this place, this gas station, this cold night spent teasing animals and humoring strangers. While my ancestors raped and killed hers begat the earth and sky; men and salamanders were caught in between lost in the flow of lava and ice.
I turned to leave. It was all pointless. Neither of us would help the other. When I turned away that petty veil of mediocrity had lifted and she spoke. “You are running but you have not run far enough. Everywhere you go you are the same animal of impulse, the same animal you are ashamed of, the same animal you came from. I can’t tell you what you already don’t know. How would you believe me? If you want to be somewhere, go there. If you want to be someone, be him. Don’t lose yourself in this agony of unknowing.”
I turned towards her again and she fell quiet. No swearing, no teasing, no holy mantras or sermons of being. I wanted to know if anybody loved her. I wanted to know if anyone cared. I wanted to know if my Margaret was all right. I wanted to ask so much but I couldn’t. The men had shot the dog quickly and now turned their attentions back to the girl. They were worried about the stranger talking to her. I touched her on the arm and left.
Tomorrow in Lame Deer
I had wandered for hours from the gas station begging God and myself to let me go of this punishment, to end this running, to let me go home a complete man once again. I found Sweet at a bar down the highway. In the matter of hours he had himself a girl Michelle. It was her bar and she had given him a job. Behind the bar stood a clean shaven, well dressed man. There was awkwardness to the situation that only I noticed. Who else here had known him as a vagrant? I would have to leave. There were no goodbyes. There were keys in his jacket. I drove out of town as the sun rose and Sweet stumbled home to Michelle’s. Michelle’s eggplant purple ’94 Plymouth Laser was a fine compensation to get me out of town. She would cool down. Sweet would have his home.
Homecoming
There was an empty place where that shine in his eye used to be, that place where cheerleaders cheered, crowds roared and grown folk slapped him on the back with pride. He was a stranger in his hometown, which meant he was a stranger everywhere now. There was no welcome party waiting for him only cold twilight and a cloud of blue smoke as the last bus blew by. The home he had dreamed about for so long was gone. His family had long since disowned him for what he’d done to Margaret. And Margaret did the best she could have and more, she waited for the man she loved and when she was done waiting she left never to be heard from again. Jim finally came home because he knew of no other place to go. He was done running. He was spent.
The walk from the bus station was long. As night fell, a commotion in the distant emptiness echoed through the neighborhood he knew as a boy, the same one that runs down the spine of all poor neighborhoods. The sirens never stopped and dogs screamed like people, lonely, scared and tired. Jim was dressed in olive drab green, lugging a duffle bag full of dirty laundry and a few keepsakes, the only remnants of the past fifteen years. Though his feet still knew his town, his heart had no idea where he was. He eventually found himself a place to sleep on his side of town; there was just enough room for a cot to sleep on and a chair to sit in. Listening to the life muffled through these close walls made Jim restless. He spent the night out on the stoop in quiet resignation, waiting until blessed exhaustion would bring him to sleep. There is nothing sadder in this world full of people than being alone in the cold night. In this busy town, he was forgotten without a home.
His anger would have to wait until he got home. Thank God angry men do not know what is good for them, because if they did, they would ruin their own lives to spite the happiness they covet. But how could he be totally free of his anger working under another arrogant white kid at the local Sack and Save? The routine was still the same. Jim had a gun and a responsibility to use it if called for. Jim knew his job and did it well. The security job is what paid the bills that first year and Jim was thankful for it—a fact Jim reminded himself of every day on his way to work. Other than another feckless middle manager to answer to, work at the Sack and Save was relatively pleasant. Working among friends made time slip away quickly.
The job only lasted a year. And there were others like it, a string of security jobs. He still kept his day job. He was not in such a hurry to fight anymore. On the road the ease with which he hate was his shield; he became that shield, hard and cold. Finally home he realized how fighting had made him so hard, had taken the life from him. That first job at the Sack and Save brought back so many angry memories from a harsh place it is no wonder he left the way he did.
“You see, there’s nothing worse than a young arrogant man that does not know nothing about nothing. I put up with that for years in the service and I swore I would never do it again once I got back.”
“One pulls him towards good, the other evil: success or failure. Our souls are made in the fire of this struggle. My soul was in such turmoil in those days. I just wanted to punch these arrogant, no good people right in the mouth.” And Jim raised one of his heavy hands, hooked it up in front of his body slowly and it swelled into a fist. His uniform ached under the strain of his Herculean arms.
“When I had to deal with that again, when that first job over at the Sack and Save landed me directly under another arrogant kid, I just could not help but want to smack the taste right out of that boy’s mouth the second he gave me a good enough reason to. I just knew from the moment he laid eyes on me that he had it in for me and sadly I was right. I could not please the man. He watched me like a hawk from the moment I punched in until the blessed moment I would punch out. Nothing could be done right enough for him. Finally the day come when I had had enough. So, I took him by the hand. And I told him he could take these cuffs and stick them where the sun don’t shine, if you know what I mean. And then I took my gun…”
“Your gun?”
“Yeah sure. It was a security job. We were issued guns and handcuffs, the whole nine yards. So, I told him he could shove that straight up, well you know. It wasn’t the best of language.”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, I walked out of there the happiest man on this earth! Brought home two packs of Guinness to celebrate it. Never felt so free. My girlfriend at the time thought I was crazy. We needed that job. How could I be so happy about losing a job? She could not understand it. But it’s just like I told you: every man is a man, first and foremost.”
“Of course.”
