Got a six pack of beer from the sandwich shop and walked back across the road to the tree line. Longer than a football field. Half the grass is mowed and the other half is up to my knees. Bare trees. Fallen leaves. Gorgeously bleak. Ground is frozen. Thistles stick to the cuff of my pants. There's a woman in Chicago that I asked out on a date. Said she would call me today. What the fuck am I going to say to her? To the company that booked me for tomorrow morning? I've been in Snow Shoe now for roughly a day. On my way from New York city to Chicago for a job. She died out on the highway last night. I rode her damn hard. Wanted to make it to the Allegheny National Forrest before it got too late. Sun setting on the hill sides. Blue turning to pink. Warm light enveloping everything. I try not to drive at night, not very visible and it just gets cold. Knuckles clenched hard on the throttle. Blue smoke spewing from my exhaust. Oil sputtering out on my shoes. Pushed her up hill for a while but I knew it was five miles. Some things only make sense in the dark. When you're mind is so clouded that it mine as well be pitch black outside. Set off walking down the shoulder. Put my headlamp on red and turned it to the back of my head. I wanted adventure, thought my life was getting boring again, craved that sense of excitement, but this? Walk through the night. The headlights going past. It's pitch black without them. The stars are magnificent. I have a little whiskey left. Take a swig. I'm thinking about the women in my life. What I want more than anything else is a hug and a kiss. Smile. Sweet words of encouragement. My relationships with women are so complicated. I don't understand why they're so angry with me. I can't necessarily be the man that they want me to be. A car pulls over up ahead. Asks me if that was my bike back there. He's a construction worker, knows the mechanic in town. Car pilled high with boots, papers, tools. I tell him that I'm just glad that he stopped. He drops me off at the gas station. 4 liters of oil. Old man behind the counter. Overalls flannel shirt, baseball hat and a warm face. Cut through the field, the trees. Grass gets high. I'm looking for a way to cut through the brambles up to my chest and over the fence back out to the highway. It's a long walk in the dark. The bag tears and the oil falls to the ground. One bottle springs a leak. Realize that I lost one of them along the way. I carry them in my hands carefully. Arms already tired. Lights shinning in my face. State trooper. Talking through the passenger window. He tells me that he can't turn off the lights because we might get hit. I'm in his cab. He takes me back around to my girl. I tell him about the job and about the girl. Ask what I do and get's excited. His teenage son loves photography. We talk for a while. He's a good man, better father. He recommends places that I could camp. Assures me that nobody would care. He sits behind me and shines his lights while I try to get her to start. Tells me he has to leave, another trooper will take his place. Pull my tools out of my saddle bag and get to work. I try everything that I can but she's just not starting. My fingers cold. Running low on battery power. Another trooper shows up. He's driving me to Snow Shoe, We talk about bike's. Tells me about the four that he owns. He's an asshole. I wish the other trooper was still there. He's insistent that I go in to the gas station to wash up and tells me about the shower in the truck stop. He doesn't understand why I don't care. Man driven to the point of exhaustion stranded on the side of the highway. Dirt under my fingernails was the least of my problems. I set up my tent in the field behind the gas station with the old man. It's out in the open but I'm too tired to care. I go in to ask him if I can charge my battery. He tells me that I can stay there to warm up if I liked. I thank him but tell him that I have a very good sleeping bag. I tear into the summer sausage and finish off the last of the whiskey. The ground is frozen. Put my jacket under my sleeping bag. Sleep.
It's morning. There's frost on everything. White dots on my helmet, saddlebags. Open the tent and see a field of white covered grass. Get the battery and coffee. Bring my tools and helmet. Cut the same path through the field and find my lost bottle of oil. Five miles down back down the highway. It's beautiful country. Bare trees, forrest floor covered with leaves. Frost everywhere. The sun is rising through the branches. Under better circumstances I would do this for fun. As I walk I'm singing to myself to pass the time. "I can walk 5 miles, and I can walk 5 miles more, just to be the man, who walked 10 miles to get to work on Monday." A man stops to ask if I need help. Ask him how far she is and tell him thank you but it's not that much further. I'm always glad to know that there are still good people in this country. Willing to stop and help a stranger. Get back to her. Set about my very familiar work. Trying to figure out why she won't start. Combustion = gas + spark + compression. She rumbles a little but then it dies out. Going through the logic. Fix one problem and then move on to the next. I even pulled the carbs to check for oil in the float bowels. I've all but given up. Pull the plugs again and let them dry out one more time. I've got a little bit of battery power left and I crank her with everything that I've got left. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. A little rumble. Nothing. Try again. Nothing. Try again. Rumble…
She ran like hell. Sluggish. No power. Smoke coming from the exhaust. I rode down the shoulder. Limped back to the gas station. Grab my manual and get a burger at the diner. I'm the only person there under sixty. I must look haggard, get a lot of stares. Ask the waitress some questions. Drink another cup of coffee. Pay. Go to the gas station to ask some more. The owner of the mechanics shop is there. Tells me that he doesn't know anything about motorcycles. Treats me with contempt usually reserved for the man who slept with your wife. He does help a little. Calls to see if the bus that used to stop two towns over still runs. He just wanted to get rid of me as fast as possible. Small town contempt for big city boys. Just plain ignorance. Back to her, pull her into the sun to work on her. Check some things. Oil. Plugs. Carbs. She runs but like hell. A couple of older guys stop to talk. One guy pulls up in a pick up. Offers to buy her if she was a 900cc. For his nephews. We talk about maintenance. He asks about the plugs, they looked like hell and I wanted to replace them. I know it's a long shot but I'm willing to try anything. Tells me to try the hardware store. Another guy pulls up in a pickup behind him. They talk from their trucks while I put her back together. Start her and still no luck. The mechanic rides past in his go kart and doesn't even look at me. He's the only mechanic in Snow Shoe. Walking through the town. On the side of a hill. It's run down but gorgeous. Broken down old cars. Tractors. Half the houses are falling down. Once this town was prosperous but those days are long forgotten. The sun is setting. This marks a full day spent stranded in Snow Shoe. Get's very cold here at night. This is the highest elevation east of the mississippi. I want to be ready for it. Gather my things and move my tent beyond the field and into the trees. Want to be out of view and the leaves on the ground will protect me from frost. I'm struggling to remain positive. It's become painfully obvious that the only way out of town is to hitch hike. But what of my girl? Leave her here? How would I even get back here?
"Still not running?" he said. I looked up to see him walking over to the table in front of me. I ordered an omelette. "She runs just not very well. Oil is leaking into the exhaust pipes." "Must be the pistons, O rings…" He rattles off a couple of things but I can't understand his accent. "That's what I was afraid of." He sits down at the table in front of me. Back to me. Pin stripped blue shirt. Crown of hair around his head. He's not rude, far from it. That's just the custom here. Rude to talk to a man's face.
I can hear the mice chirping in my tent. Close by. Maybe babies. The forrest floor is so loud. Even a mouse can be heard in the leaves. I stop to listen, shut my laptop and the glow it shines. A person? We're too big and clumsy. Deer are still to big. Cat, possum. Relax. Take another swig of beer. Watch my breath vaporize into the cold winter night.
The sun is setting on another beautiful day in Snow Shoe. Got up and had breakfast at the diner. The food is awful but I'm becoming a regular. Burgers, fried chicken, breaded pork chops with gravy and soggy mixed vegetables. It's the biggest business in town. The truck stop, gas station and diner. She's about sixty. The waitress. Grey hair, round face, wearing scrubs. All the waitresses wear hospital scrubs. I'm reading my repair manual. She tells me that she knows that I've broken down and can go sit in the back room. I do to be polite. Don't want to turn down her kindness. Drink coffee and read about taking apart the engine. Each step one at a time. Walked through town. Discouraged. I know deep down that there's nothing that I can do. Thinking about the problem logically. The symptoms. Going over every minute detail in my thoughts. I've never cracked an engine casing open before. Have a clear understanding of what goes on inside but have never touched a piston with my bare hands before. As she is I can limp a short ways but she would never make it the rest of the way back to Chicago. Another 500 miles. I could crack her open and try to diagnose the problem myself. Order the parts and do the work but that could take weeks. I heard there's a motorcycle mechanic in the next town over. An old man told me. I forget which one, I've talked to so many. Look it up on my phone but they're closed today. Eat half a jar of peanut butter and wash it down with a beer. Lay down in my warm down bag and take a nap. I've been reading and rereading a quote that a friend sent me.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat."
-Teddy Roosevelt
I'm running out of things to try. My knowledge reservoir only goes so deep and I've decided that taking apart the engine here would be a mistake. Could take me days possibly weeks to do it and I don't have anyplace to work. Frost in the morning, maybe rain later in the week? And if I need to order parts? But at the end of the day I've at least got to try. Even if I know deep down that what I do know how to do won't fix her. Regardless I still have to do something. Get up out of my tent and face the day.
I've only seen a hand full of kids. Not a single person in their twenties. There's nothing here. No businesses. Just the diner and the pizza place. Don't even think there's a bar in town. Asked the guy at the gas station where a man could get a bottle of whiskey. "Down the road, take a right at the stop sign and a left at the post office." I cut through the woods and leave my tools and spare battery by my tent hidden in the tree line. Each foot step crunch, crunch. Reminds me every time of when me and Brandon camped in the Shawnee Forrest. Walking through the canyon. Rocks jutting out of the soft earth. Afraid of a golden ember hitting the leaf covered ground. I had just been dumped the night before we left. Sitting on the back porch of her apartment. Dark. Cold. She was chain smoking cigarettes. Told her that it wasn't fair to make me sit in the woods wondering, waiting for her reply. She wanted to move back to Kansas City and go back to school. Be closer to her family again. I wasn't at a point in my life where I was ready to have that kind of a relationship and neither was she. Looking back I respect her for having had the where with all the go ahead and end it. Most women don't. In a funny kind of way I think she cared more than I realized. Back on the road. Up the hill. Legs tired and it's a steep climb. The town is old. A few new buildings but most will fall down when their owners pass. Big mansions that will crumble once the funeral is over. Lots of for sale signs. It's erie. Quiet. Just the distant sound of the highway. Dogs barking. Chained up in most yards. Two dogs, chains not close enough to reach each other. The old one barks like crazy. Old. Grey muzzle. All bark and no bite. It's the young silent one that I should worry about. The muni is closed. Only open three days a week. I will never understand state run liquor stores. Store across the street only sells cases. She tells me to go to the sandwich shop by the highway. No businesses in town and the few that are are empty. Reminded of the construction worker from the highway. Driving 80 miles one way to work. Walk back up the road to the sandwich shop and my tent hidden in the trees. Down sleeping bag awaits. This country is changing. Towns like this are going to be a thing of the past. Long after the inhabitants are in the ground. Fallen down and forgotten. Ghost towns. Children off in Pittsburg, Philadelphia, New York.
Raise their kids there and places like this will only exist in photographs. Midwest is slowly dying. Ghost towns of America's once great manufacturing center. Cut once again across the field, to the trees and back down the hill to my tent. Get prepared for the cold night ahead. Its only six. Climb in my bag. Put on the thin glove liners to type and the fingerless gloves on top to hold my beer. Cold beer in the cold doesn't make any sense. Pull out my laptop and start typing. Ironically this is exactly the sort of thing me and the guys do for fun. Hike for a couple of miles through the snow. The time we made the fire out of creosote logs. Compressed sawdust soaked in kerosine. We smelled awful the next day but the Wisconsin ground was covered in a foot of snow. The Kettle Moraine. Too dark and long ago for my childhood memories to catch up to our long strides through the snow. Memories of several trips as a child. It's cold here but not that cold. I'm thankful. Sleep.
On the road. Driving the rental truck back to Brooklyn. The winding Pennsylvania roads. Sun setting on the bare tree covered hillsides. It all disappears once the sun sets. Just the headlights. Tail lights. Thinking. My mind free to wander. The last three days stranded in Show Shoe. I stopped at a diner to eat and charge my phone. Talked to Ed about work while I waited for my burger. I have so much to say to him. But I was so hungry. Told him that I would call him back from the road. But when I got back in the cab. I needed the time. Just me and my thoughts. Thinking back. Playing with Champ out in the yard. Racing to pack up my tent hidden beyond the tree line. Gather my things. Meeting Doug and talking with him on the drive to Milesburg. I'm not sure that I could explain our day long relationship. Friend, father figure, rival? I called him after breakfast at the diner. Western omelette and half cooked scrapple. The waitress greets me by saying "still stranded?" She avoids me but that could be because of the smell. Haven't showered since Brooklyn. Dirt and blood cover my hands. As soon as I leave I call the motorcycle shop that the old man recommended.
Next exit off the highway. He agrees to come pick me up, warns me over the phone that she's probably a lost cause. Pack up my tent quick. Walk back to my bike. He's there quick. I greet Champ in the car, his golden retriever. Try to start my bike to show him. "Don't worry about it son." My bike in his trailer. I mostly talk on the way back to his shop. Tell him about the job, the girl, fixing up my bike when I first bought her, camping trip last summer with the guys, my buddy in the navy, his deployment in Romania. It's awkward but I feel very comfortable talking with him. We're too much alike. I'm out in the yard playing with Champ. Throwing his toy to him again and again. Out into the tall grass. Let him do his work back in the shop. The sun finally came out. The hill beyond is bleak. I walk. Broken down tractor in the yard. Trailer park beyond the train tracks but I still can't help but think how beautiful it all is. Walk back the dirt path to the shop. The news is bleak but I knew it would be. I see the scope sitting on my saddle, two plugs removed. Hole in my piston. More damage beneath? 2500$? I only have 2000$ invested in her. I walk outside for a minute. Sit down on the steps. Think. He presented me an option. Fix her or abandon her. Leave her with him. He'll dispose of her properly. Asks me about the title. I know she's worth at least 2,000$ in parts alone. If It's possible could fix her myself for a couple of hundred. Neither of us mention it but I know that he wants her for parts. I know what she's worth and he's not making an offer. I had come about a price even before we met. Just in case. I don't blame him. Everything that he's done. Help and guidance. But he's a business man too. I understand, his own son in college. State College. The nature of being a man. For my son I would do the same. I gave him my credit card and asked him to "charge me what he owed me." "40$." "I know your time is worth more than that." I asked him several times after that. He only said: "I've been stranded before." Hitch hiking to the nearest truck rental place would have taken me a day alone. I would still be in Snow Shoe if not for his help. He's helping me ratchet down my bike. I have the strap in backwards and he takes it and puts it on right. Asks me if I live in Manhattan. We talk about New York. He tells me that I seem more at home in the woods than the city. Tell him that I go where the work is. World is changing very fast. He tells me that when he was my age you could get a job anywhere in Pennsylvania. Living the life that he lived is no longer an option. I'm trying to figure out what it means to be a man. An adult. The old archetypes no longer apply. Learning that it's my personal responsibility to know when to ask for help. Recently moved back to Brooklyn. Showed up one day on my motorcycle and rented a room. Came to get my things from my ex's apartment, the one that we shared together and start over. Trying to rewrite my life and myself the way I want it to read. I'm yelling at idiots from my Uhaul. The ride through Jersey is retarded. Why are there so many god damn stop lights? Lay on the horn and yell at the asshole who blindly pulled in front of me. Listening to jazz along the way. Cuts in and out on the radio in-between the hills. One of the main arteries into the capitol of the world and it's shit? New York is the city of the future.There's a construction site across from my place tomorrow. Ask them for help? Unload my baby? There will be other jobs. Don't know when I'll be back in Chicago again. If I'm only out money. There's always more money. Just have to work for it. Find a new job first. Life's too complicated.
No comments:
Post a Comment