End of the Nation

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.  That will be the beginning. –Louis L’Amour

Bethel, Maine

            Chris gripped a calloused palm around the point of the boulder, hoisting himself atop it.  I copied his movements and followed his path up the rock face.  With a cool wind pushing the sweat from our shirtless bodies, we stood at the top of  Tumbledown Mountain.

            “I told you it was beautiful up here,” he said.

            I’d met Chris a day earlier at my show in Lewiston.  He was twenty-nine years old, had once been a homeowner engaged to be married, and in a few months would be leaving on an 11,000 mile walk across the perimeter of the United States.  When he offered to lead me around his home state I followed.

            Twin birds flew over the mountain peak and seemed to be eying us.  I followed their path and found myself looking west at the great bulge of America that roared endlessly in valley, mountain, and desert into the Pacific Ocean.   Turning around there was just the green wilderness of Maine perched upon cliffs overlooking the Atlantic.  I’d seen it all.  There was nowhere else to go. 

            The only thing left to do was to find a pier on the Atlantic coast, ride the motorcycle over the dilapidated boards and listen to the engine roar as I soared through the air for one shining moment and then…splash!  The bike would be swallowed by the blue salt water and as it sank to its sandy grave I would swim as fast and as far as I could—maybe miles into the eastern sea—until my arms burned with fatigue and my shallow breaths filled with water.  I would sink, exhaustedly and acceptingly, allowing the earth to take me, to drag me to the ocean floor where my body, like the bike, would biodegrade.  The salt water would erode the motorcycle’s rusty chrome.  The fish would feast on my decaying flesh until my body was no more than bones.  Over the course of a century my skeleton would crumble, the bike would decay in half-lives and we’d mix with the ocean water until finally, finally the particles of my soul and the remaining molecules of the motorcycle would be lifted in rough seas and, on a riptide breaker, ejected from the ocean to blow in a stormy breeze back across the American soil. 

            The birds circled back around, landing on a rock near Chris’s feet.

            “America was once all wilderness,” he said.  “People like us go exploring it.  There’s a bit of the frontiersman left in us all.”

            I’d met throngs of travelers throughout my odyssey.  Was it just destiny to meet so many like myself?  Or is the primal urge to move and to seek so buried within the national spirit that it overtakes every American, regardless of race and gender?  We are a nation founded by travelers.  Over the final week of my trek I met handfuls of them.

Brattleboro, Vermont

            A blonde boy with a crew cut screamed as he was spit from the waterslide, plunking into the cold pool with a splash.  A black girl in a blue one-piece cannon-balled off the diving board.  A brunette on the lifeguard stand tweeted her whistle.  A mother lifted her toddler from the baby pool.  On the deck, two nine-year old boys sucked on ice cream cones.

            I swam to the ladder and lifted myself from the water, its beads dripping from my shorts as I walked barefoot onto the hot black pavement of the Vermont parking lot.  Between two pickup trucks, my handlebars reflected the blinding rays of the sun.  Pulling my helmet from the right handgrip I found a note inside, written on the back of a business card. 

            “I too am a renegade traveler,” it read.  “Call me for a place to crash.”

            On the business side of the card were only the printed initials “T.B.” above the title “Adventurer” and a phone number. 

            I imagined T.B. waiting by a phone somewhere, knowing that a person like me was victim to curiosity and unable to turn down any mysterious invitation.

            Moments later I was on the phone, scribbling his directions for our rendezvous.

            T.B. was a twenty-four year old photographer with a degree from the University of Connecticut.  He was 6’2” with a strong build not unlike my own and a commanding presence of self-confidence.  He’d hitchhiked around the southwest a few times and up to Alaska once.  He was planning a big trip somewhere and in the meantime was living in an old cabin, funding himself by building a barn on a nearby farm. 

            He shook my bunk bed to wake me in the morning and drove us to the farm where he got me hired for a day’s work walling the barn’s second story. 

            I left with an extra hundred and forty dollars in my pocket, enough to continue east for my final two states and my final five days.

Concord, New Hampshire

            She waved from the window of her Jeep, signaling me to the shoulder on the New Hampshire road.

            Stepping from her driver’s seat, the gorgeous brunette shimmered like gold in the sun.  The energy radiated from her as she approached, ever hotter with every step in the sweaty afternoon.

            “Are you camping?” She asked, pointing at the sleeping bag strapped to my bike.

            The words fluttered off her tongue, light gleamed from her eyes.  She was in love.  Not with me, but with what I represented: freedom.

            I didn’t have to say a word—didn’t have to mention the forty-eight or the many months on the road or all the cut ties.  She knew. 

            “Take me with you,” her eyes begged.  “I want so badly to go everywhere,” she said.

            She told me she was a college student at the University of New Hampshire.  She wanted to travel for no other reason than to do it.  She had vague plans that she feared would never be realized.

            She was one among the many I’d already met.  The college girls, the married women, the businessmen, the construction workers, the retired couples…everyone wanting to leave any Here, no matter how nice, to travel to any There. 

            Sometimes people told me directly.  Sometimes they told me with their eyes.  It was the same wonder, the same spirit.  The same flame I could spark in glances at children as I passed their parents’ cars on the highway, raising my hand in a wave as the kids smashed their faces adoringly against the glass.

            Freedom has a strange affect on people.  Some fear it and angrily defend the bars of their prison.  Some run to it with open arms.  Others spot it on the highway, flag it down and embrace it without question.

            The brunette spun her hair on her finger, biting her lower lip as she awed over my machine.  Sometimes these people just wanted to talk.  Sometimes they just wanted to take me to dinner.  Sometimes they just wanted to buy me a drink.  Sometimes they just wanted to take me home.

Lubec, Maine

            The rocky beach was empty—no sun burnt faces tanning on the shore, no children playing in the sand.  No seagulls squawked overhead.  No insects chirped in the bushes.  There was nothing but the collision of waves against the continent.

            America was over.  I was out of real estate.  There was nothing more, not even a dock to drive off.

             A whole nation was behind me.  A place where children cry against the mold stained walls of New Orleans shelters.   A place where Spanish speaking laborers arrive at night school to learn English after fifteen hour workdays.  A place where one man fears he’ll lose his lifestyle to another.  A place where men choose to hate one-another based on that fear. 

            Where bodies sit before televisions.  Where national emergencies are one broadcast away.  Where people raise arms above heads and cheer when their team scores a goal.

            A place where a poor child believes he’ll become a millionaire.  A place where old men are evicted while awaiting public assistance checks.   A place where optimistic entrepreneurs launch businesses on the slightest of hopes. 

             A nation of inequality, where the wealthy few double and triple their chances, shouting with a louder microphone and buying more airtime.

            A nation scared to death of terrorism.

            A nation where racism has been cured topically and wiped clean from the skin, only to leave an infection deep in the belly.   A nation where everyone, regardless of race, bears the cross of slavery.

            But a nation where everyone has a chance—just some more than others. 

            A nation of hope.

            A land of opportunity.

            Where would I go?  What would I do?  It didn’t matter, just as long as I kept evolving and kept writing.

            I was, after all, exactly what I’d set out to be.  I ‘d wallowed through the depths of the nation, struggled in personal poverty, sweated out four AM shifts in a New York City kitchen, and stayed in slum motels with drug dealers and prostitutes.  I’d stayed with the wealthy, with the young, and with the old.  I’d been the victim of crime and I’d been treated as a criminal.  But throughout my journey I had been writing a book of short stories, a novel, and a travelogue.  I was an author.  And I had books to promote.

            I was a storyteller and had an audience to reach.  The wave of my following had been mounting and now I had a 300 seat venue for my performance in the nation’s capitol.  Washington, DC was six weeks away.

            I was an expeditionary with a whole world of adventure ahead of me.

            Just as I had when I embarked on this journey, 396 days ago, I could hear destiny calling.

            Once again, it was time to answer.

What do ya know about America?

America lives in the heart of every man who wishes to work out his destiny as he chooses.  –Woodrow Wilson

            An olive skin man stepped out the office door and lit a cigarette in the drizzling rain.

            “I thought you were my brother,” he said, looking at the shiny pipes of my bike.

            I cut the engine and stepped off the two-wheeler.

            “My brother, he rides a motorbike like yours.  He s’posed to come see us today.  Look at that, you’ve got my kids coming to the window looking for their uncle.”

            Through the glass of the innkeeper’s quarters six child eyes stared disappointingly at the man who wasn’t their uncle.

            “Where are you coming from?” he asked.  “Looks like you’ve traveled a long ways.”

            He took a seat on the curb.  I crouched beside him and we engaged in the same conversation I’d had a thousand times with a thousand other innkeepers in forty-some states.

            The inns were all different but all the same.  The innkeepers too. 

            In Idaho, an old white woman had bragged to me that her state was the only one without Indian operated motels.  “They’re taking over my industry,” she’d barked.  “84% of the motels in America are run by east Indians.”

            There was no telling where she’d gotten her statistic but from my experience 84% seemed low.

            “Have you been through Oklahoma City?” asked the innkeeper between puffs on his cigarette.

            The smoke rings curled above my head in the damp evening.  “I have,” I told him.

            “That’s where I’m from.”

            I looked at him curiously. 

            “I ran a motel there after I moved from India.  My wife made us move back east.  She wanted to raise the kids here.”  He paused.  “So tell me, what do you know now about America?”

            The office creaked open and a black-haired, three-foot child ran out barefoot.  “Daddy! Daddy, come here.” 

            The child grabbed her father’s hand and led him inside as he flicked his cigarette to the wet concrete.

            A thunderbolt cracked the sky, giving way to a thousand raindrops dancing on the on the cement.

            I sat getting bathed in the rain.  I was in upstate New York, just six states away from completing the bulge of the American continent.  I was soaked through.  Saturated.  Unable to absorb any more.  I was meeting the people it seemed I’d met so many times before: the Indian innkeeper living behind the office with his family, the truck driver who’d spent four years in the Army, the musician who’d dropped out of college, the unhappy office employee, the excited twenty-something blonde engaged to be married…

            I reclined on the sidewalk and closed my eyes.  I was tired. Tired of being a stranger everywhere I went; shaking a dozen hands a day, knowing that in twenty-four hours I’d be shaking a dozen others in a different town, having forgotten the names and faces that went along with those of yesterday.

            With my clothes and hair drenched clean in fresh rain—my sweat washed out of them—I opened my eyes to the northeastern surroundings.  On the adjacent highway cars sped by—a little more quickly and a little more recklessly than they did in the Midwest.  The landscape had changed too—the hills steeper, the trees taller, the grass a darker green. 

            As I walked to my motel room a man shouted from the parking lot, “Ah you the one with motohcycle?  Not much of a day fa ridin’ ay?”      

            I shook my head.  The people spoke differently here—more quicky and with sharper pronunciations of r’s and o’s.

            There were still things to observe.  Ahead of me were just two weeks: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.  It would’ve been easy to shut down, lose focus, and worry about the future.  After all, I had no plans for what I’d do at the end of this country.  And after all this, I knew so little about the nation.

Lunch and an Interview

            Bud dropped two grease-soaked paper bags on our table then flopped open a steno pad, sat down and began his questions. 

            From the bags he withdrew two cheeseburgers and two orders of fries, placed one of each in front of me and continued our interview.

            “By the way, this burger joint, Five Guys, you ever heard of it?”

            I had.  It was a growing chain that had started near my mother’s neighborhood in Virginia.

            “I take any excuse to eat here,” he said.  “Otherwise I feel like this food will kill me.  Know what I mean?” 

            I nodded.

            He continued with his questions, pausing between bites of his french fries to jot notes on his pad

            Bud was a columnist with a Hartford newspaper.  He’d insisted on meeting me at the Connecticut border and riding with me through the state.  He’d taken a photo of me in front of the Welcome to Connecticut sign.  He’d shown me the thriving small towns on the outskirts of Hartford; places that in other states would’ve been suburban housing developments and shopping malls.  He’d even bought my lunch.

            He asked about places I stayed, people I’d met, jobs I’d done, and roads I ridden.  He asked about my story-telling performances and how I booked venues.  Then he asked more difficult questions.

            “How do you see yourself?” he asked.

            It was clear he’d never seen anything like me and didn’t know what to make of it.

            I told him I saw myself as a torchbearer—someone carrying on the traditions of a working story-teller, following in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie and Louis l’Amour, John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac.

            “What will you do after the 48^th state?”  He said.

            I hadn’t asked myself this question and didn’t know quite what to say.  I told him I had nothing to go back to, that everything I owned was strapped to the bike, and that no one awaited my return.  All I knew was that I was to be an author.  And that meant pursuing no other trade, earning just enough of a living to keep myself free.

            “One more question,” he said.  “What have you learned about our nation?”

            I told him about the millionaires I’d met, the homeless shelters I’d stayed in, the racism I’d seen, the poverty, the wealth, the opportunity, and the heartbreaking tales of the underprivileged.  But really, what did I know?  It was a whirlwind of tales and experiences, painted with my imperfect brush, obscured by my weak memory, and biased by the leanings I’ll never know I have.  I started off on this trip with questions and they were only answered by more questions—the onion that unpeels only to reveal infinite layers, each seemingly the last, each more potent in taste and smell.

            I shook his hand as we left the table and couldn’t help but think of all the other hands I’d shaken in all the towns across this country.

Here I am, Homeless in Providence

            In the dim light of the bar a few college drunks watched the Red Sox game on a flat screen TV.  In the background a gray haired man with manicured sideburns sang Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” from a Karaoke machine. 

            I nursed a Jack and Coke and stared at the reflective red, white and blue of the motorcycle helmet I balanced on my knee. 

            “This must be your song,” a man yelled in my ear.  He swept the hair from his bloodshot eyes and screamed the lyrics, “Here I am, on the road again.  Here I am, up on the stage.  There I go, playing the star again.  There I go, turn the page.”

            He took the barstool beside me, balanced his beer on his folded knee, and reached out to shake hands.  “What you’re doing is terrific,” he shouted.  “Absolutely amazing!”

            He waved a hand at the bartender and ordered me a drink.

            “I just got fired.  So I’m taking my unemployment checks and moving west with my girlfriend,” he said.  “You seem like you are the west.  Like a real cowboy.  I wanna be like that.”

            He wiped the cigarette ashes from his jeans and continued.  “I was a chemist.  Can you believe it!” he cursed and shook his head.  “What a waste.  I’m almost thirty-five years old.”

            The beer fell from his knee and splashed to the shadows of the floor.  He cursed again and frantically dropped on all fours to clear the glass.

            I looked once more to the doorway but no one entered.  I’d been waiting two hours for someone who’d promised me a couch for the night.  As the bartender announced last call it was clear they weren’t returning.

            Walking onto the Providence street, looking around at the tall buildings glimmering in the rain and shining in the streetlights, I wondered where I’d take refuge for the night.

            Just then a blonde came running after me, her tattooed arms flailing and her small body shaking with the effervescence that fueled her quick speech.  “Hey,” she yelled.  “What’s your name?  You need to come to my party this weekend.  Will you be in Massachusetts?  That’s where I live.  Here.  Take this,” she handed me a slip of paper with an address.  “Show up on Saturday afternoon.  I’ll see you there.”  She gave me a hug and ran back inside.

            I walked into the night of a new town, knowing no one, having nowhere to go, and thinking only of the famous Rhode Island mansions that I would see in Newport the following day; places like The Breakers, the famous Vanderbilt mansion with its thirty-six unoccupied bedrooms, each like a dream to me in my homeless Providence night. 

The Home Team

            On the corner of Yawkey Way they moved like sharks circling bloody prey.  “Who needs tickets?” one screamed, hoisting a fistful of the paper stubs in the air.  Another one jammed his white fist into his jeans, eyed a handful of cash then waved his tickets into the air.

            Throngs circled the two scalpers—old men with horseshoes of gray hair, teenagers in red and blue shirts, fathers with one hand clutching sons.  Like Wall Street brokers the scalpers began the transactions.  “How much?  Depends on what you want to spend!  I got box seats, nosebleeds, club level.  Whattaya want?”

            “Got seats for sixty.  For forty.  Hundred bucks a piece.  Whattaya want? Whattaya want?”

            Cash and tickets swapped hands, vendor to customer and back again.  The scalpers were in their element, eskimos in the snow, litigators in the courtroom, preachers on their pulpits. 

            “Hey, check out this guy,” shouted the scalper in front of me.  “Where ya comin’ from?”

            He turned to the scalper behind him.  “Get a load of this guy.  All the way from Texas.”

            The other scalper pushed his way through the gaggle to look at my helmet and shake my hand.  “Give him face value,” he said to his friend.  “You come up all this way, we’ll hook you up.”  He handed me a ticket.  “You enjoy Fenway man.  Best ballpark in the country.”

Here for the Party

            “Quit smoking, what the hell would you want to do that for?”  The twenty-two year old lit his cigarette and slapped a mosquito off his tattooed shoulder. 

            The girl across from him just shrugged and stared into the fire glowing orange in the dark night.  “Well I’ve gotten clean from everything else.  Meth.  Heroine.  I quit drinking ten months—” then she shrieked, “Oh my God!”

            A plastic chair flew across the patio smashing against the grill. 

            On the other side of the backyard a broad-shouldered man stood with the glow of a torch lamp illuminating his face. 

            “You got a problem with the coastguard?” he shouted.  “You think just because you were a marine you’re better than me.”

            The twenty-two year old tossed his cigarette into the fire and ran toward the action.  The marine had charged the chair-throwing coastguardsman and the two grappled as they fell into the pool.

            “You see what people do here in Mass.?” said the Asian kid beside me.  “We fight about the coastguard and the marines,” he laughed.  “My brother will break it up.”

            His ‘brother’ was really his foster brother.  And the girl who was planning to quit smoking was his foster sister, Nikki—the tattooed blonde who’d ran out of the Providence bar to invite me to this party.  Why she’d done it I’ll never know.  That curiosity had brought me here.  The only explanation I got was of Nikki and her siblings.

            “We all moved here when we were little kids,” Nikki told me.  “We’re all grown up and we still live with mom.”

            ‘We’ included eleven foster kids of different races, now all over the age of twenty and still living together as one family.  They were tattooed and pierced.  They worked as DJs and masonry workers.  Two of them attended community college.  Three or four of them had been in and out of rehab for crack and heroine.  Before going to bed, the ‘mother,’ a heavy white woman of about fifty, came out on the patio and smoked a joint with some of the partiers.

            When she returned to the backdoor it was only to see what all the noise was about.

            “Hey!” she shouted, clanking a metal serving spoon against a frying pan.  The backyard went quiet as everyone stared at her round silhouette in the lit doorway.  “If you can’t play nice, you need to leave the party!”

            The coastguardsman climbed from the pool, his t-shirt and jeans dripping with water as he walked for the door.

            “The both of you are real suckers,” shouted a deep voice from the dark yard.  “You’re both patsies for the government.  And now you fight over who’s the bigger idiot.”

            Again the yard went quite.

            “Well it was good meeting you, Woodrow,” the coastguardsman said, shaking my hand as he made his exit.

            “You too,” I said and stared into the dancing purple flames of the campfire.  I would spend the night in a tent in the backyard, eat breakfast with ‘the family’ in the morning, and travel on to my final three states.

            I was heading into the final week.  After that, no map would lead me further. 

            Nothing made sense.  That was all I knew.

Thoughts while Driving

This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.  –Ken Kesey

            A deer scurried over the two lane Illinois road, her cotton ball of white tail the last I saw of her as she camouflaged back into the forest.  From the gravel shoulder, the flat metal surfaces of wood-post signs screamed their instructions:  Maintain Minimum Speed, No Stopping. 

            Green signs over bridges announced rivers—discovered and named long before my birth.  Blue signs proclaimed streets and intersections—paved and titled without my consent.  I navigated from a map someone else had drawn, drove over a land others had conquered.  Disaffected.

             For states I’d been watching the people of my generation work for companies they didn’t care for, obsess over celebrity lives they weren’t living, and agonize over news too sensational for concern.  Cataleptic.

            At a truck stop in Milwaukee the brown feet of a sleeping man dangled from a sedan’s window at sunrise.  Car doors opened and slammed behind the weary bodies of poor travelers walking into the lounge for a morning shower amongst the truckers.  They dug deep into pockets to pay for their cup of coffee.  They hauled the carload of their life to wherever they were traveling—modern Joads searching for their fields of plenty.  The truck stop was their community center, the blacktop their home.  Transient.

            A Chicago girl, her brown hair wound in dreadlocks, told me impassionedly of the problems of urban sprawl, world hunger, racism, war, and fear.  “Thinking of that makes it so hard to be happy,” she said.  Overanxious.   

            As I pressed my two wheels to the eastbound road my brain simmered with the liquid of uncertainty, expanding until my incompatible thoughts coalesced in a wet cloud. 

            I had but six states to cover.                                                      

            I’d seen friends shipped off to war.  I’d heard the laugh of a new baby.  I’d seen angry police officers lecture their accosted on the merits of tax paying and the horrors of terrorism.  I’d seen the gap-tooth smile of a kid earning his first job.  I’d seen the hungry men waiting in line at the shelters, rubbing their dirty beards.  I’d seen the happy people rubbing full bellies and the sad people tugging ashamedly at their fat.

            I’d seen the people squatting in the remnants of their homes, wondering if the government would allow them to reclaim their hurricane ravaged properties.  I’d seen the sun reflecting off the first time home-buyer, the grin of the unsheltered as he stepped from the rain. 

            I’d seen the last arguments of the divorcing couple, heard the early rants of the new immigrant, smoked the last drag with a jail bound felon, witnessed the power elite struggling to protect themselves.  I’d watched the cocaine destroy its user, smelt the three-star meal prepared by the men who snuck illegally across the border, heard the epics of the transcontinental truckers. 

            I saw the secret weapon transformed into the Achilles heel. I looked at a flag that could burn itself.  Ironic.

            One day my silk skin will turn to leather.  The hair will leave my head.  I will fade to gray.  My cheeks will sag like limp sheets over the steal rod of my jaw.  My joints will ache.  My vision will fade.  My heart of fire will burn cold.  Worn.

            Would I one day find a home?  Comfortable and domestic.  Would my world be stationary and simple?  My mind limited to routine?  Would I one day be thrown in jail?  Beaten and sodomized.  Would my life be treated as a game?  My body as an animal carcass?   Would I one day be stricken mentally ill?  My memory a tie-die blur.  Would my faculties diminish but my reservoir remain full?  Tragic.

            Would I never discover the unfound frontier?  Never name my river or blaze my trail?  Would I never draw my map or write the words unwritten?  Would I do no more than sing the songs I’d been sung, elect the officials already nominated, repeat the message I’d been told, fight the battles fought before?  Would I follow the instruction on each roadside post?  Heartbreaking.

            One day I would die, leaving my dreams to the efforts I gave them.  Certain.

            Crossing through Michigan in the rain, en route to my final six states, I was asked the question for the millionth time: what inspired you to do this?

            This took no inspiration.  The earth spins. The wind blows.  The waves crash.  Time passes.  The mind rushes on.

News and a Year through America

The only thing I can think of crazier than what I do is to live in a city and work in an office.  –Laird Hamilton

Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota

            A bikini clad blonde splashed through the waist-deep alley of water between boats.  “I dropped my beer,” she shouted to friends.  But her scream was lost in the thumping bass of a boat’s stereo, hidden behind both the music and the throng of drunken conversations a thousand voices strong. 

            From the boat behind us an inebriated chorus began to sing: Happy birthday to you…haaaappy birthdayyy dear Amerrricaa…

            It was the Fourth of July.  Above was the blue sky that would soon turn to a dark screen lit with fireworks.  Above was the orange sun that sparkled on the rippling water of Lake Minnetonka.  Above was the warm breeze that breathed over the green water, over the golden fields, the rich pastures, tall buildings, black tar highways, snow-capped mountains, red deserts, and on and on over the sprawling mass of the American continent. 

            It had taken something to get here—the cost of 365 days of survival, the cost of 21,000 miles over two tires, the cost of time, the cost of change, the price of a year.

July 4, 2006—Alabama and western Florida

Sign of the Times

            I stopped to refuel en route to my grandparents’ in western Florida.  I was just days into the trip.

            Inside the MiniMart I flipped through magazines as I finished my slurpee.  In People Jessica Simpson was sharing the secrets of a healing heart.  In US Tom Cruise wanted to let the world know about the joy of parenthood.  Cosmopolitan had a guaranteed method to lose 15lbs for the perfect swimsuit fit, Men’s Health had an ultimate relationship guide, and Time had a method to rescue personal finances.

            Reading the magazine headlines you would’ve thought their pages held the answers to all of life’s problems.

            The front page of the USA Today was a quick reminder otherwise: Gas prices sky-rocketing, wildfires burning out of control, and children dying in swimming pool accidents.

            A man in an American flag t-shirt slapped his wallet on the counter and paid to refuel his boat.  “Gonna be a great 4^th!  Lotta steaks to grill tonight,” he shouted to the clerk in an Alabama accent.  He grabbed a few cases of Miller Lite and handed the cashier his credit card.

            From the looks of things you would’ve never known we were a nation at war. 

            It wasn’t like we were rationing goods to send to the front lines.  No women were going to work in the riveting plants, no parents were worrying about their sons’ draft cards.  For the most part the war wasn’t even a topic of conversation.

            Except, of course, for people like my grandfather who watched Fox News everyday: 

            “I don’t know what people are griping about,” he said, leaning forward in his leather recliner.  “If the troops didn’t want to be there, they wouldn’t have joined.”

            I crossed my arms over my chest, using them as a blanket in the chill of the air-conditioning.

            “Someone needs to stop the Muslims,” he said.  For several years my grandfather worked in the Middle East for Hughes Aircraft.  “They refuse to coexist.  That’s why Spain tried to kick them out.”

            The television flashed a multi-color graph of enlistment figures. 

            “It’s an all volunteer military,” said my grandfather, “if the troops didn’t want to be there, they wouldn’t have joined.”

            The broadcast switched to a story on Britney Spears and a second pregnancy.

            “Come on,” he said, flipping off the television, “it’s time to drink some wine on the patio.”

            My grandfather was right, not just about the wine.  It was a volunteer military.  And it was filled with volunteers like me—young, patriotic, adventuresome, and so willing to experience the action and bravery of war that we wouldn’t question the intent or intelligence of a government that offered us the opportunity to be heroes.  Many of my friends were over there and if not for an injury I would have been there too.

October 6, 2006—Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Nightly News

            The stadium lights made shadows of us on the sidelines.  A few yards down field a seventeen year-old fullback plowed over a defensive lineman and, with the smack of a shoulder pad against a helmet, dove past a linebacker and into the end zone.

            Mike, still on one knee, jotted some notes onto his paper then waved to his cameraman that it was time to leave.  They had a local sports broadcast to prepare for the eleven o’clock news and had been nice enough to let me observe them.

            “Hey,” Mike tapped my shoulder as we walked off the field, “see that lady in pink.  That’s one of our anchors.”

            We walked toward her, “I’ll introduce you.”

            I shook her hand and we made a minute’s small talk before I followed Mike to the news van.

            As we stepped into the vehicle, sitting down before the board of miniature television screens and editing equipment, Mike turned to me, “Ya know the five Amish girls who were shot in that schoolhouse Monday?”

            I nodded.

            “We got a bunch of angry letters because that anchor wore a pink dress when she covered the story.”

October 31, 2006—New York City, New York

Undercover Police, 26 Days Before

            In the chill of a New York City autumn I pulled the ring of keys from my pocket and began testing them in the apartment’s door—one after the next, there must’ve been a dozen of them and in the dimness of the streetlight I could barely see the lock.

            On the street was the buzzing conversation of costumed partiers heading out for Halloween.  As a cold wind whistled against my ears I pulled both arms warm against my body and clinched more tightly to the contents in my left hand.  I continued trying keys in the lock—then felt the presence of someone behind me.

            “What are doing here?” he barked.

            And as I turned around to learn the identity of the man, I saw the silver flash of a badge and heard: “Don’t move!  Undercover police officer.”  He paused.  “Drop what’s in your hand!”

            The shaving razor and deodorant clanked on the cement.

            “I’m just trying to get into a friend’s apartment,” I said.  “She sent me out to go to the store.”

            The officer stepped back, apologized then walked away with the two men who’d been behind him.

            Twenty-six days later three NYPD Undercover Officers fired fifty bullets at three unarmed men, killing one and maiming another.

January 31, 2007—New Jersey

Much Ado about Nothing

            The olive skin man rubbed his hands together in front of the TV, blowing on them and flexing his fingers to bring back the blood flow after shoveling the motel’s walk.

            With a jingle of a metal bell on a glass door I walked in from the frigid outdoors, my boots leaving snow prints on the carpet.

            “You got to see this,” said the innkeeper in a Middle Eastern accent.  “Terrorist in Boston.”

            I turned to watch the CNN broadcast on his television.

            I checked into the motel after only a hundred mile’s gain in a four hour ride through the snow and went to my room to learn more about the situation in Boston.

            After spending a day in front of CNN, we learned it wasn’t terrorists at all but a gorilla ad campaign for a show on Cartoon Network. 

February 9, 2007—Virginia

Have You Heard the News?

            The waitress reached a jiggly arm across the table and retrieved a menu.  Staring at the floor she walked to my table and without looking up she asked if I’d heard the news.

            She dropped the menu in front of me and it was clear that she’d been crying.  Her make-up had smeared in black trails below her eyes. 

            Whatever the news was it was something horrible: an assassination, a terrorist attack, a repeal of the 21^st amendment…

            She looked up, scrunching her cheeks to hold back the tears.  She sniffled as she forced out the words, “Anna Nicole Smith died.”

April 16, 2007—Los Angeles, California

The Election and News from the East

            “What will be so remarkable about this election is that it would be an easy victory for the democrats,” he said, “except that their two front-running candidates are two people that have never been elected president before—a woman,” he paused, “and an African American!”

            Caroline leaned over to me, “Are you enjoying this?”

            She was a Professor at Occidental College and had invited me to listen to a former presidential advisor speak about the 2008 election.

            I nodded.

            The speaker continued, “…So, can the Republican Party find a candidate—”

            My phone began to vibrate and I left the room. 

            It was my sister in Virginia.  A gunman had just murdered a few dozen people at Virginia Tech, where our cousin was a student.

            A day later, back on the Occidental campus, I would be escorted off by anxious Campus Police fearing I was a suspicious person.

May 12, 2007—Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

            Jesse tossed the newspaper on my lap as he shifted gears in the pickup truck.  “That’s the paper I saw you in,” he said.  Jesse had read about me in the newspaper, met me on the street, offered me his couch for the night and gotten me a job for the afternoon. 

            I’d seen the article but thumbed the pages anyway.

            “Man!” I said, reading a headline, “Couer d’Alene soldier loses legs in Iraq.”

            “That’s the price of war,” he said. 

            “20 years old,” I read a part of the article aloud. 

            Then some other parts, “‘We hadn’t heard from him in a few weeks’ said his mother, ‘then he called home crying so hard we could barely hear him…he said he lost both his legs…he’d never walk again’…he’ll be home in mid-may.”

            I stared blankly at the article.

            “Shouldn’t have signed up,” Jesse said.

July 4, 2007—Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota

Fireworks

            The sun had set and the sky had gone black, the water mixing with the horizon.  The noise had dissipated to whispers and soft music over the faint sounds of the lake splashing against the boat.  At the front of the craft my hosts sipped beer and wrapped arms around their girlfriends.

            They had work tomorrow and bills to pay, cars to wash, clubs to frequent, fantasy sports leagues to join, golf to play. 

            I had memories to work through—a day at the old Maytag plant in Newton, Iowa, a service in a patriotic Baptist church in Missouri, an hour at the Brown Vs Board of Education Memorial in Topeka, KS….

            I had eight more states of traveling and a lifetime of wondering.  Could I make sense of any of this?

            With a bang and a flash the fireworks lit the sky.

Another Cheap Motel

All of life is a foreign country. –Jack Kerouac

            Three cop cars sped in behind one another, halting jaggedly across the yellow lines of the motel’s parking lot.  With three door slams and a few dozen quick steps the officers were circled around a Hispanic maid who stood behind her cart of towels smoking a cigarette.

            I couldn’t hear what they were saying.  The maid pointed at the door of room 103.  The officers raised their arms in unison, stuck index fingers toward the door and all at once looked back at the maid. It was probably an eviction; most likely an old drunk who couldn’t make another night’s pay. 

            That was the type of motel this was.  I’d stayed at these places in Arkansas, Kentucky, Florida…on and on across the nation.   In Mississippi I’d been solicited by a prostitute living in the room next door.  In New Mexico the police ran a drug raid on the room opposite mine, hauling out a middle age black man in handcuffs and leaning him against the trunk of a squad car.  Occasionally I’d seen rough bearded old white guys carrying armfuls of black trash bags after coming up short on the daily or weekly fee. 

            Pellets of water, larger than ordinary raindrops, danced on the roofs of the police cruisers as I ran past, watching the three officers, one armed with a camera, push open the door of 103 and slowly enter the room.  The pouring rain soaked me immediately as I jogged out for a little exercise.  Only a moment later a siren disrupted the patter of raindrops on sidewalk puddles.  A moment after that the blue, red, and yellow lights of an ambulance interrupted the gray cloudlight of the stormy day.

Days Earlier

            It was only a few hundred miles ago that I was in Nebraska City, Nebraska, a guest of the owner of the Whispering Pines Bed & Breakfast.  She’d seen me in the paper and had invited me to stay a few days—taking me for meals at local restaurants and for sightseeing at the town’s few tourist attractions.  Had I known rain would hold me hostage in Kansas, I might’ve stayed dry and safe at the B&B a few more days, eating the free meals and browsing the nearby museums, making small talk every evening with the old farmer, Dean Handy (that was really his name), who worked as the inn’s handyman. 

            But I’d been too comfortable.  I’d become accustomed to being on my own, being exposed to my own poverty, being unsheltered both in the pits of America’s wounds and on the pinnacles of its dreams.   

            So I’d hit the road again; to the plains highways of Nebraska and Kansas, only to be halted a couple hundred miles later by a ferocious rainstorm. 

Fear at the Door

            I’d only been back in my room for a moment and was still dripping with hot sweat and cold rain from an hour’s run when a fist slammed my door three times.  I opened it shirtless.

            “Olathe Police Department,” he flashed me a badge then tucked it back into his sport coat, grabbing a pen from the clipboard he held with his other hand.  “I need to ask you a few questions about what happened in the room below you.”

            “What happened downstairs?”

            “A murder.”

            The rainwater glistened on his forehead.  His gray eyes didn’t blink as he stared at my face—my eyes wide, my mouth open. 

            “A murder?” I said.

            “Well not a murder yet.  He’s still in ICU.”

            Pause.

            “You hear anything last night?”

            I shook my head.

            “A gunshot?  Any yelling?  Did you ever see the guy around here?  He was an old man.”

            I shook my head again.

            As he scribbled my phone number onto his police report I had nightmarish visions of an old man fighting for his life on the dirty sheets of a motel bed…a muzzle blast…a yell of horror…blood rushing out of him—staining the bedspread and carpet in scarlet pools; his room littered with the fast food wrappers and half smoked cigarettes that sit on the bedside tables and dressers of every dumpy motel in America. 

            Did he have kids somewhere abused in a foster home?  An uncle somewhere who once worked for the phone company and spent his retirement patching junk cars in Indiana?  An estranged nephew who climbed the ranks as an officer in the Air Force?  An oddball aunt who home schooled her ten children, not allowing them to speak to anyone outside the church?  A distant cousin who, confused and misguided, collected graduate degrees at the University of Alabama?  A mother who worked as a substitute teacher?  A best friend that had walked out on him?

            This was a man.  Someone who had parents.  Someone who once had a life.  For whatever reason, he’d been shot. 

            I’d been stuck in Olathe for a few days due to rain, dwelling on the bad weather and the news that Karina would soon be married.  My inspiration was waning—until the murder anyway.

            Fear is a great motivator.  Terror is even better. 

            The officer shook my hand—probably feeling my heartbeat vibrating through my frightened body—and told me to keep the door locked.

            “I’ll call you if we have any further questions,” he said as he walked away.  “Be safe on your trip.”

            Rain or no rain it was time to leave that motel.

Broken Promises of Youth

So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned.  Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Neverland! –J.M. Barrie

            A line of motorcycles revved their engines in the parking lot.  Atop them, mounted like cowboys on steeds, a gaggle of men—tattoos exposed from tank tops, knee-length boots concealed under jeans—wrapped their palms around their handlebars.

            I sat with my bike in neutral waiting for a sign to go.  Having never been to a bike rally before, I had no idea why we were waiting.

            A muffle of conversation hummed over the engines—bikers talking about the military or about custom exhausts or arguing Harleys vs. Triumphs.

            From a car door two dozen yards away stepped a long legged brunette, her eyes hidden beneath a cowboy hat, her wedding ring beaming in the mid-day sun.

            Was it the long legs?  The brown hair?   The wedding ring?  I’d just gotten off the phone with Karina, a long time friend and former girlfriend who’d ended things a few months back when I was in San Francisco.  She’d called to announce her engagement.

            It was exciting news.  I would’ve never imagined she’d be getting married to someone other than me, but I couldn’t have been happier for her.  The only nagging pain was the reminder that people were growing up.  Everyon