Worms Drowning in the Rain

By Thomas Rohrer

A dysfunctional childhood, Catholic school, and Navy stint dont help a young man through a recession and changing times, and he hops a bus without money or plans just to escape. He fixes up a cabin, clears the land, and gets to know his animal and human neighbors. Its a reprieve, however, because tooth and claw abound everywhere.

As his journey leads him back to New York in the 1980s, Calvin realizes he is not prepared for the challenges lurking in the shadows. Despite landing on his feet in the city, he feels trapped again and looks for a way out. He wonders if his goal of being a writer is a waste of time, and his unpredictable story comes full circle.

Worms Drowning in the Rain shares the poignant tale of a young mans trip through early adulthood as he searches for his identity in a place where nothing is certain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532012723

Thomas Rohrer

THOMAS ROHRER entered the world on a hot summer day in Queens, New York. He is the author of The Driven, the first novel in this trilogy. Although he is alive, he does not live in one place very long.

Book preview

TREES

I

… I remember walking in the snow …

A stiff neck jerks me up, and the aisle stares back, past high blue seats. Nothing’s good after sleep, not here and now, but how could it be? Cadets fear seniors above, luggage on both sides, guiding me to the end like gospel and epistle. Sneakers bite rubber, a thin black tongue nailed to the floor, tripping innocence before strangers. But the few passengers don’t notice. Eyes fill windows, absorbing foreign landscape, waiting for the end. It’s good out there, or it will be this time, keep heading aft. It’s the last pocket of sanity, the hushed library corner devoured by words until night drops, creeping around you, menacing the lonely walk home, no company, just twisted thoughts and shelved books. A door slot promises another vacant episode, and some things are better alone, if you have a choice.

I yank it open, lock it behind, and splatter relief on the shiny metal bottom, a toilet whistling in a closet, an oracle wasted on yellow tides. The loud sucking noise gurgles a wet good-bye, and it’s not profound, merely disturbing. But I’ll get used to it. Frank O’Brian slept on a table at the precinct with the lights on so the rats wouldn’t come out. And I can do this, but the story doesn’t have life, just armies of red ink.

A paper towel dries two hands and a sink, the engine whines underfoot, and slaves row us north to the smell of burnt oil. Flush, exit, navigate a black reef under blue discipline, drop in a cadet’s soft lap, peer at lush green repetition and forget the worms. People of the First Light, southern New England tribes lived in Dawn Land, and what do I see? If you cry too much, you drown alone, sad, depressed, in the glumps.

New Haven is swollen Bayshore, the end of my beginning, pulling our bus off 95. The Greyhound slides in near a clone, racers stalled beyond terminal, vibrating toward imaginary freedom. A few passengers leave, and new ones secrete themselves in the back, never to be seen again. The driver won’t say how long we’re idle, but I don’t venture out to stretch my legs, since he almost left me in Queens. I ran alongside the bus, yelling, banging the side. Both wheelmen jaw in prohibited sunshine, then a gassy Indian releases air, Ha-woosh, and we’re gone.

Heading up the ramp to 91, we sight a basketball court, where black teens float a spinning orange disk toward an empty ring, surrounded by weeds their height. African Round Ball. It occurs to me I forgot a white towel (a flag of surrender?), or remembered it too late, if you need to be positive. False air is chilly, and I open the bag to get a light flannel shirt, a bright boy in small ways. A sign reads No Shoulder 1,000 feet.

Hartford (insurance capital of the world) is like New Haven, or is it only bus terminals? Everything’s new, unless it’s old, then taken for granted. Switch to express, late arrivals double up, hope bags find the coach. They might visit Detroit or Buffalo, more than I’ve done, but I’m going places, right? Others see what I miss, look for better, then I spot him. He plops down next to me, with an odor, but don’t say anything. Soon the bus takes a leg, the Constitution State nice and green, and we cruise more than highway.

Tired of reading, I open the white plastic bin and look out my window, but it’s shut, tinted and closed. A reliable sun chases the back of distant trees, aching red beauty, dying to seal the world, a spilled glass of rosé drowning carpet. I think of wild animals preying for survival, every day and night, but they trained for it. The fuzzy edge of light stops bleeding, quietly, pulling the shade down now and forever, amen. In the torrid zone, across the equator, there’s no twilight. It gets dark, suddenly, the inevitability of gradualness.

Strangers hurtle through unseen country, then white light bleaches two thighs, a night compass. The initial buzz of conversation drops like tired bees, as if transients found each other interesting at first, then realized they preferred silence. No sports and alcohol bind us together, and what else is there? We could hold our breath going through tunnels, have a spelling bee, or sing hymns to chase the night.

After making a sandwich and worrying about spoilage, I choose the dark, finger reaching through space again … Click … Grainy hands rest in pale moonlight milking the glass, and when I offer my copilot ham, he says no thank you.

I’m a vegetarian, he explains.

You never eat meat?

I try not to.

When was the last time you ate? I was curious, after being gracious.

Actually it was quite a while ago, and I really am hungry.

Would you like a piece? I won’t tell anyone, I swear.

All right, but just one.

Acknowledging limits of other people, I hand over a napkin, exactly one slice, and he chews slowly, a food ethic deficient but admirable. The new studies link meat with cancer, animals have rights, too, and do we top the food chain or is that cultured arrogance? I don’t know, but there’s food on my lap, and a hungry man is not a free man.

Jerry works for a publisher in Boston, and he’s going back after a weekend home, but I wonder if his parents know he’s a fairy. He’s thin, androgynous, and has a female roommate. Bus lights case small white letters on distant green shapes, and where are we? My bucket’s sore, and I want to stretch. Clean, functional, planted solidly in the earth, information-bearers don’t hurry their approach, tricking me into believing good things come in time. Uh-huh. Closer, not readable, is it a road sign or an eye exam? Anyway?

It disappears rapidly for the wait endured, it’s not on the map, which crinkles loudly collapsing to its former shape. Fold me up and put me away somewhere, and how many times did I hear, What a morbid young man you are. There are too many speakers, so just remember lines, and pound to fit. I’m thinking as I talk and listen, and that’s rude, but so’s life. I’m trying too hard, not enough, or at the wrong time.

Lighten up, Slick. You’re depressing me – and you are me.

I pump the former vegetarian about agents, publishers and his goals, information I’d have to research in a musty hardcover and boring title. He’ll blab all night, because gay men – girl-talkers, sway-walkers, and lip-crawlers – are always on the prowl, and that’s a fact. But you can’t look it up anywhere. All the good books were banned, burned, or bricked, and usually in Boston (the five Bs). Homos are like women, but even more vicious: they’re in the wrong bodies, can’t have babies, and everybody hates them — worse than Blacks and Jews. It’s not right, but it’s true, and nobody wants to talk about it. If you do, they call you a racist; and if you don’t, you’re too remote. We could argue, and I’d like to, but not right now. I’m busy peeling the shiny part off a gum wrapper, something my father taught me, which means I’m not busy. Maybe he wasn’t, either, but I wouldn’t know. He was never around. Make excuses for art, the critics say, and your parents, too?

In the cradle of liberty I stow bags in a square blue locker, third from the top and fourth from the left, pocket the key, and find a men’s room. I take a leak next to Jerry, and try to catch him peeking, but he’s good. I don’t catch him, and we ascend to the main floor, a pair of bathroom angels. My guide leads clumsily to the Boston Common I’ve heard about for years, and it’s lovely, a word I never use because real men don’t. A knapsack and shoulder bag make Jerry an urban hiker, climbing the sloped pavement and grass slicing clean dark streets, but every time the path reaches an unnamed statue, where pigeons (las palomas) whitewash history, I lean out to circle it. He turns slowly, so I graze his bag, and should I go the other way? I really don’t know much about humans. I’m great analyzing others, then it’s my turn to choke, and I make fun of these primates, but I’m all surface, too. I know better, only there’s nothing to draw from, and I almost ended a sentence on a preposition.

 … Oh, shut up …

Jerry catches the trolley here. He’s in the book under his roommate’s name, and it rhymes with tits, so I think of it all summer. His handshake is ghostly, like his presence, but it’s sad to watch him leave. And the fear of separation is all that unites. Alone, in a strange place, it’s like never before, not even boot camp, a nice place to get spinal meningitis, insomnia, cramps, violent, and discharged. A post-naval drip, a lost package on line to the depot, I should be excited: it’s Boston, but I don’t know anybody, and there’s nowhere to go. For years I was close enough to drive here in a day, always read about the history and great teams, and now I have fifty dollars in my pocket. I think about clothes bought and thrown away, cars repaired and junked anyway, time wasted not saving, and I’m broken. There’s enough strength to move, but you’re a pile of sticks on a map that won’t fold, and the names are strange.

Two lefts, and what’s this, Boylston? Never heard of it, but ground floor shops in tasteful brownstones form a quaint strip, bars, restaurants, tailors, bookstores, varied enterprises where you’d like to be seen buying, selling, and browsing. The young and socially tan cluster outside a building, where unforgiving steps cascade down to a huge doorman (a bouncer), a chucker-outer, who eyeballs my lack of size and outfit. Bigger and better-dressed, he dismisses me rapidly, life summed up in a stranger’s glance. A banner over the cash register, steel plated like the doorman, says Go Celtics. Inside and outside at the same time, my reaction is Huh? Oh yeah, right. The crowd is hip and I expect familiar smiles, but it’s not home and I miss it, wishing I were the type to make friends; could defend myself; knew how to dance; homes everywhere; girls drooling to meet me. Sure, keep it up, and you’ll be like Chris.

… Nonono, please no …

Order cold suds, breathe deep behind soft hands, and it can’t happen to you. Inhale the Beantown overload, and watch it fade through glass, where everything lives. The crowd chants Swai-nee, but only once, a dying gymnasium. And nobody hears, save you, save me.

The meat is healthy and the look casual, striped shirts and jeans, and does everybody dress like this, or just preppies at good schools? Everyone has straight white teeth and a flat stomach, but I’ve got a flannel shirt over a banded one, and it’s getting hot. I’d take it off, but my abs might offend Kip, in his third year at Harvard Law … Your Honor, this man not only has a flabby gut but no home to speak of. He’s a vagrant and a permanent drifter, just like his father, so I ask the maximum penalty for the safety of taxpayers in this great commonwealth … (Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania are the other three states with that designation, but it doesn’t mean anything.)

Relax, drink slowly, but it doesn’t work. You’re uncomfortable. You don’t belong here. The bartender’s yakking with friends, everyone knows Schooner and Muffy, and don’t waste money you don’t have. A man’s his wallet, fact and fiction, now education’s paper and ink. I set the mug down significantly before heading up to street level, and the huge doorman barely notices me, because there’s new meat on the railing, a human shish kebab. He’s thinking of words to impress them, along with his chest and off-white linen jacket, which guys have to wear since the hit show about Miami cops. They all look the same, and it’s not worth it, but I might do it if football was all I had. And what’s yours, Calvin? You’re not even a babe in the woods, not yet.

Lit (lighted?) or dark bookshops are discreetly visible in subterranean townhouses, attractive but not showy, and I belong here or someplace good. Couples stroll with pretzel arms in a moving glaze, block restaurant windows to inspect menus, and their style intimidates empty dungarees. If somebody asked me to change a ten-dollar bill, I’d die, and I won’t compare this place to New York because my own city is foreign to me. In grammar school we took field trips to the Museum of Natural History and Radio City Music Hall, and that was it, besides a few visits to Ian’s place and a JAP with a greedy hatchet stop. Gay couples, dazzling women, Sunday night peace; none of these are mine, but go forward like heaven’s ambassador, searching clouds for a nice soft one.

… Let me fall down, please …

Wandering streets in a historically beautiful town, I left nothing and head the same way, but don’t think about it … Okay … I try, really hard, and it lasts about three seconds. On beam ends, I miss home. I didn’t appreciate certain things, now it’s too late, and do I get another chance?

A young guy sitting in front of a shop considers the pavement between his shoes, and I ask how to get to the bus terminal. It’s not far, but I don’t trust simple things like memory, instinct, or rational thought, and what’s left? He doesn’t answer, spalling concrete with his own problems, another country without a man. And my tenuous grip on the planet continues in a sticky manner, a gumshoe in the wrong precinct, too many suspects and no convictions.

A blank television stares back at me in a plastic seat, and I could buy a friend, but a quarter’s too much. Old Negroes in faded green uniforms push long-handled brooms slowly, and I watch them instead, Lincoln’s grandchildren. People come and go, changeable as floor garbage, and men who look timid arouse my virility until they leave, when I’m just tired and hungry, a scared kid under lights that don’t yield. A community shell allows me to watch the rented TV of a guy with a spare quarter — a grandee of Greyhound, a baronet of buses, a khan of coach — lost under fluorescents. I try to work up enthusiasm for my summer home, but it shifts like flies on a garbage can, and I think about going to my rented locker. Four down and three in, or was it five down and two in, and does it matter? It’s a shakedown cruise, on dry land, something else now. Maybe everything is, and I’m out of school, so I can learn now.

A bridge under construction, my notebook goes in the bag, and I leave the key for a stranger to unlock the future. Scuffmarks and fingerprints connect the mobile and homeless, not hugs and kisses, smiles or phone calls. The lack of communication doesn’t hurt if you’re making money, computer love, or dreaming a beach house friends love to envy, but I don’t belong at this party. I usually end up in a room, watching TV, by myself.

Time is another boss, so I lift bags and trek the bright empty corridor, but people already there instigate panic … Am I late? Will I find a good seat? … No one gives direction, and bags crammed with old life pull arms out of my sockets, building toys snap in and out. Leggo, Eggo. Unhurriedly, I put them down near a uniformed man sliding baggage underneath, but wait — someone offers this bus is going to Maine, not that one, and where could I end up? I’m one of the first on line. My bags find the back of a square metal space, large enough to hide a pair of gorillas, but will I find them (the bags, not the gorillas) when it’s time to go? They won’t give them away, will they? Am I crazy, or just organized? You’re paranoid until it happens, stupid for not acting when you knew better, and rich people don’t get treated this way. I have to make coin, good if it helps you relax, or do you worry about losing it? Death conquers all, so cheer up, buddy.

A rear window beckons to me, and the shivering dog fills with normal people, not the type you’d expect Sunday night. A kid about nineteen stands in the aisle, holding bags awkwardly, not sure where to sit. A small drab man, the bald driver wears plain glasses, and he yells at the kid to move. Everyone looks at the driver and the kid, but nobody does anything, ever. Someone must have more self-esteem than me, but they don’t, and tension dissolves into nothing.

The kid finds a seat, lifts bags to an overhead rack, and disappears in rows of blue cadets. A slim blond kid about the same age wants to leave the bus, but the forty-five-ish driver blocks the aisle with his body, and who’d suspect a rodent of such brass? I’m waiting for someone large, or small and quick, or female and mouthy to stand up for the kid, but we’re all cowards. Philosophy is action, not words and ideas, and I’m stuck with knowledge. The driver recalls my last and only Jewish roommate, Herman Weiner, and somebody has to do something about those people. I always mess everything up, however, if he goes too far …

The driver throws up disgusted hands, meaning Why do people act human all the time? and I know exactly how you feel, but you’re a bunghole, pal. He’s a small man, a big rat, and a lump of hatred sticks in my throat, the way ice cream does summer evenings. Do it again and I’ll take us out of your misery, you little turd, and this jerk might cause an accident. I can see the headlines, when it’s too late, and the wrong kind.

Young Writer Flattened under Bus and Ham Sandwich

Notes indicate genius and a little mayo

Liked rye bread. Died with sneakers on

Lower backache prevents sleep, but towns fade behind a glass veil, and dry interest belies keen fear. Escaping the motherland (Home is where one starts), I haven’t reached my goal, so I’m in the breeze, matey, in between again. I miss Bill Slurtz, Moe, Hattie, and Martha from the Bayshore rooming house years ago, and where are they now, floating in a state hospital or the bottom of a can? I don’t worry about anyone else, and that’s good, because I’m close to the edge. Limits don’t let you stray, and he who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with.

Slink from Boston after eleven, invade towns with high beams and hushed brakes, leave figures at black storefronts on nameless streets; and a shadowed car might be known by headlights, still and bright, twin moons pulled by different gravity, or the eyes of a waiting creature. Bald and angry dives underneath to open the baggage door, pale stick arms swing out lumpy bags and rigid suitcases, then he almost sprints up three steps, happy to dump people on a dark road. We move on, brakes fart Ha-woosh all night, and wasn’t he a Navajo chief?

Earth reappears in a bright Dunkin’ Donuts sign, oozing warmth into a snake coiled in my gut, cold and deadly,a nd I want to share that information, but everyone’s trying to decide plain, glazed, or chocolate. It’s true, and people have laughed at me since I was a kid, so I learned not to speak. Then everyone calls you aloof.

Passengers step down into a cool summer night, blinky humans flood interior glare to palm a white counter, and a donut maker looks out a drab window. He enters the front wiping hands on a dusty rag to help two dead women, and when the rush is over he goes back to work, service without a smile. Rick, the kid from Maryland, tramps to the bus ahead of me, I forgo the window seat, another gracious act, and folks munch quietly in the murky length of bus. I didn’t order jelly or powdered donuts because they’re messy, and I’m sharp, a pudgy nail-bitten finger to my temple, like Chubsy, another loser in my past. Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want, and that’s a quote, but use my name anyway.

Rick talks about home and college, visiting a friend in Quebec and travel, and I fall into the older man trap, telling stories that bring anecdotes, and I sound like Karl Schnitterhause, the human garbage disposal, but I can’t stop. It’s the burden of leadership, being onstage, strong but vulnerable, frightening, without limits, avenues of creation and private achievement. Words will bloom where nothing else does, but they also die in the air, usually in a bar. Our personal best, more than gossip columns, I don’t feel it. I need too much, went too far, and how do you get back? A dark and weary time, my heart races, maybe the sugar. It’s bad for you, too, or that’s what the paper said.

Conversation drops and I look at the headrest in front of me, a leg cross the aisle, occasional visitors to the rear. The tea wasn’t that good, but it has an effect, and I shine the whistling oracle, with burnt oil and wet hands, no stiff neck this time. Umbrellas of light disappear, and the lucky find sleep; if not, search predawn with mortal longing, ransack your thoughts, because this is you. It’s the coldest part of night, I learned on midwatch, disbelieving in dawn. You don’t think it’ll arrive. But it does, somehow, in shades of gray, bringing you along.

Rick is awake, but he answers and no more, so I think about strangers and their dreams. Are they happy? Who have they left behind, and where are they going? I love them all, but couldn’t say it under pain of life, and ¿por que, Callous, why not? Is the answer buried in deep green, will that fall on you, too, or maybe you’re seduced by the voluptuousness of doom?

We ride without purpose or destination, there’s only the journey, and all roads are local. I twist in my seat unknowing if I slept, or just went blank and returned, the feeling you get walking through a funhouse, unbalanced, scary, but good. Foldable scissors threatening major organs, hands under armpits ward off chilly air in a symphony of light snores, whispers, and night tires, wondering if trips end. Worlds away, thrugh a tunnel of gloom, I spot the glowing instrument panel of our driver, happy there’s only road and it’s mostly flat. He likes it, but he’s burned out. He’s just doing his job, and not that well, but I wonder if he goes to church like good hypocrites.

Lively green signs, brigh animal eyes, pull us forward. I wait to check the map, wasting time off the main artery, tracing possible routes and drive-by towns … Population under four thousand. Five churches and three gas stations. Faith and fuel … Everyone knows how much you drink at the Moosehead Inn, and why you don’t go home. Massachusetts falls behind, we slice New Hampshire’s forgotten panhandle quickly, then Maine spritzes fear in my gut. Towns are named for dead people and real animals, and I know a few, but I’ve exhausted all the states. You’re here, and Lee — the guy who lived upstairs in the split level — would say You made it, Slick. Plans are coming true, no mucho, a stopper knot past too many holes. My body tingles, and fame must be near, but I haven’t done much. You scoff at a breadcrumb, but it’s a week’s supply of food to an ant, and he couldn’t lift it if he wasn’t five times stronger than body weight. I need long-term goals, but the next meal is important, and the one after that. Learning the basics shy of twenty-seven years old, I already quit my day job, because man is condemned to be free. People say all work has honor, but they lie most of the time.

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Bangaw, the driver says happily.

I don’t want to move, but everyone stands, so I follow. Slowly. The hairless driver runs out the door and bends over to shine his angry dome on someone’s pants. He sets a few bags down, including my cardboard suitcase, missing a strap on Main Street.

… Ian. Sigoola. Adiós …

A short hunt finds pale jute in the garbage can, and the ex-sailor ties a grip between two gold-faded support rivets, above the obscure initials. Who is, or was, J. B. L., I want to know, and how did his suitcase end up in a secondhand store? Johnson Baines Lyndon? No, and there isn’t a great society, just different struggles all the time. FDR meant well, too, but look how that turned out.

Inside, twenty-four dollars buys a ticket to Limestone, ten duckets less than I was told, plus they’ve heard of it. And when does this madness cease? A blue cop with heavy jowls, pork chops trying to bone under his chin, stands behind the smaller counter man, watching arrivals and departers with an impassive look. When I ask for a restroom and diner, the middle-aged face over a white apron and T-shirt pulls in surprise, and I’ll find out why but it’s not important. I still worry about my effect, avoiding arrest and counter grub, then pussyfoot down clean tiles.

Men shave and brush over white sinks in mirrors that frame a new day, while you soap a getaway face, chest, arms, and run water through the hairiest part of you. Lenses seek a round blue home, eyes sting in a blurry world, and aren’t you the symbolic one? … Whattaya think ya back in English class aw sumthin? Wake up, dooshbag, dis is real life. And don’t glom the soap. Upstairs I cache (a writer’s word) my bags in a locker that needs seventy-five cents, and when the tiny depot stirs, another cycle begins.

Try to leave it clean as you found it, unknown place, and doors let me out. Light, tired, and feverish, obey gentle slopes like an elevator, but cables need grease. It’s good to move again, and I do, I always do. Empty streets curve gentle lines, and there’s the coffee shop, past an outdoor market. I’ll venture this side of town isn’t the best. Buildings are old, signs haven’t changed since the flood dried, every garage an antique store. The diner resembles an old movie theater, with a high crushed-tin ceiling, toneless wallpaper, and a glass chandelier that could do serious damage to the unwary. An upside down seven-layer cake, it hangs in a mercantile sky, and it’s never out of sight — because I’m sharp.

An older brunette, about thirty-two, chooses an aisle seat facing this way. Was that on purpose? Should I bust a move? I toy with the idea of speaking to her, running through possible conversations (none of which happen) when lights pop on, illuminating what’s better left to imagination: art deco interior, not the sharp lines of modern divisionists, more Bette Davis black-and-white. It’s great for old movies, not breakfast, and the chandelier just wobbled. Sure it did, I stay on my toes, a third baseman. A defensive demon, good with the glove, I prayed for the bat. And I ran the bases like I was being chased by Italian kids.

The anemic blond waitress scribbles my order, and she’s about thirty, pleasant but nervous, dinosaur teeth, uncomfortable with men. I know how you feel, honey, but I go back to ruminating about this coy woman reading the paper, or staring at the table through it. I give her credit. She knows how to play the game, but they all do. It’s in the jeans.

Bacon and eggs are hot, tomato juice cold (better than expected), I look at a store across the empty street. A sign reads Down Easter, and maybe they’re fixing the other one, Up Christmas. Pay with your life savings, then explore part of the world, until you feel it in nose and toes. They say change is good, and there’s nothing else, so get used to it. Here it comes, pal, ready or not. Adventure is when everything goes wrong, and where do you go?

Like welfarers heading for government checks, traffic slows highway and bridges past a deli, liquor store, and fast-food huts, swarming the feet of bright Victorians that claim a view. Used cars steer young males in need of a shave, haircut, and new clothes, but flannel shirts and ball caps rule the job site. Older and wider, like most people, the road parallels freight tracks below, but wooden lords and ladies own the hill to my right, wrapped by porches, laced in gingerbread, with turrets and garrets, red scallop shingles, gracile doors and windows. Otherwise same town passed by a race dog on schedule, and residents don’t think it’s special, a reminder of fabled lives, a quiet harvest tied within.

A green knoll looks down at logging cars tracked in the cobblestone freight yard, surprisingly clean, the river behind it flowing like it always has … No reason to get excited, tourist, it always flows … Hungry and fatigued, I go back the same way, hoping not to get lost, or reported by housewives twitching curtains. The walk is refreshing, but I’m sawdust, awaiting a spirit transfusion. Curiosity and legs satisfied, I turn up at the station, a small building with highway access. But I haven’t arrived. I’m just passing through, a New England ghost, a storm trooper on sabbatical.

Inspecting gas prices, rush hour drivers, fashions, and rock walls, I declare everything the same, but slower and cheaper. A temporary self fills the aqua-green shell, sitting down, my gaze falling on the travel board: Macchias. Calais. Bucksport. Maritime Provinces. Not my land, it sounds good, and I fill postcards with blue squiggles, listening to pearls hiding in words.

The Aroostock and Bangor Rail Company waits for us to load, and there’s no rush, only players acting their roles. We have a contract in silent harmony, the pleasure of nothingness; or is it when you accept everything, what’s left is peace? But to me it’s just a word, lugging my bags outside, trying to enjoy an experience that won’t happen again, not if I can help it.

A blind man taps a white-tipped cane to the bus door, and I wait before asking if he needs help. It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s right.

I can do it myself, he says, peevishly.

On the last leg, nowhere to go but up, the new driver is good, pleasant, chatting to the blind man seated behind him. The view is a continuous green, and the best name for God’s beauty, but the worst name is reality. Miles of bushes and trees define single houses, small logging camps, or a clearing with a gun shop, trucks, barns, trailers, motorcycles, and the Church of God. It’s a short story by a writer whose name won’t disappear, unlike his talent, but thwarted genius bears sadistic focus. Corruptio optimi pessima: a corruption of what is best is worst, and politics shows that. You don’t hear Latin in church anymore, just guitars and the ching of money baskets, replacing loaves and fishes.

Lincoln Plaza is the biggest town so far, with a CPA, more than one gas station, a tiny white bank that fit three elves, Radio Shack, scruffy kids loitering in front of the video arcade, tracks rusting under a single black telephone wire in case Binnie or Vern gets a call, and headstones when you’re done with all that. A few houses line the only street before yielding more trees, endless green that relaxes me the same way roads, buildings, and traffic lights stress me. I’ll miss it when I leave, and I’m not even there yet. Windows can’t smile, but sunshine is welcome, draping warm light as the bus rocks me to sleep. Drowsy after a vinyl massage, I wake and then sleep again, islands of rest in anxious country. Rise and shine, mother always said, and I’m still trying.

I’m woken by the two chattering up front, the beautiful world sealed for my own good, but I made it this way and I’ll unmake it, too. My flannel shirt is a pillow, and the diner brunette is somewhere behind me, along with two or three other people. It should be easy to concentrate, but I’m too worried about how I got here, and a racing mind sheds all thought. Others replace them, also incomplete, and I can’t relax. There’s no strength left, or right, and that’s a joke, son. It’s lame, and doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

We pull into a roadhouse (that’s what I call it), and the driver says, Half hour stop for lunch. Locals greet each other, and I pick up threads of sports and politics, gardening and progress. A goat in a fedora says, I only lost by a hundred and thirty votes, and I turn my head to the other side. They beat us in the second game, another one recalls. They had three ball players from University of Maine. We had ’em seven-six in the first game, and they scored four runs in the ninth.

Small families surround red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, a board game missing pieces, and loners drop on red stools at the low counter. Nobody wants to kiss, so I order hamburger with onions, reading the usual sayings on a pine wall behind the rear counter, dark brown knots like woody warts and pimples. There’s a small restroom, past a flower bed in a huge black tire, then I’m inside again. And what is this place, a motel, furnished rooms? I can’t figure it out, and I’m afraid to ask. I gobble the meal down, worried I’ll be left behind, and stretch outside. I’ve just eaten, and feel odd doing it, but that could be anything. There’s nowhere to hide, so I do it quickly, but it doesn’t help.

We move out again, past baseball fields and chicken-wire fences, basketball courts on broken asphalt, and almost every backyard barn has an orange hoop nailed over double doors. Ball and bovines, split logs and antique stores endow a high rolling view, and a sign below a cow picture reads Moo-tel. Gray barns soon to meet the ground demand protection from elements, and work clothes on a line hold the sun in relaxed country semaphore. A few modern cars pass on the two-lane road, but a higher count of old ones litter backyards, like old dogs in the shade. I think about gangsters and getaways, a different era, and people on the road wave happily. The bus driver lifts a genial hand, and I think about staying or waving back, but the moment’s gone.

To my left, a young seminarian has a briefcase propped open on the seat, and I look inside quickly. There’s a thick black book with a red tassel buried inside, and a can of popular shaving cream, like a red-and-white barber’s pole. A slim version of Karl Schnitterhause (Who feeds you, Brother?), he repels me slightly.

The dark-haired woman of internal seduction gets off, a house across the road clean and quiet, where husband and kids must be waiting. I hope you’re happy and don’t even know you, which brings my hero, Archie Bunker: I love humanity, it’s people I can’t stand, but not in this case.

Presque Isle’s a familiar name thanks to Jake and the map, the last big town, and what the heck am I doing here? A movie theater with an old neon marquee shows current films, and there’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken across the street, rivals a few months back. I worked at Chicken Tonight with Frankie the manager, a sawed-off playboy, until I couldn’t do it anymore … Fake it until you break it … The town isn’t dirty, just frozen in time like Bangor, a nod to the present. A snapshot twenty-five years ago would look similar, and it almost feels like the same planet. Signs point to Caribou, the last stop before mine, the two coldest points in the states International Falls, Minnesota, and this large member of the deer family. Dark clouds have turned to rain, and symbolism is for amateurs, though I use it and public transport when needed.

We stop on the road, and the new driver — not the bald crabby one — walks in front of the bus, takes a parcel out of a mailbox, and climbs three black rubber steps. The door closes, Ha-woosh, a comforting sound and possibly a Hopi elder. There’s only one more stop, the finish line, the tape and wire. The home stretch, Mike Kelly always said running, then a new chapter begins. I take a deep breath, lean forward in my seat, and exhale toward high wide glass, interrupted by long slow black wipers, chirping click, whooo, click, whooo, dancing owls caught in a drizzle.

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Limestone, the driver says, loud enough to be heard.

His tone makes it just another place, before he starts eviction, and I’m afraid to leave the seat. I want to scream, cry, wake up somewhere else, and what did I accomplish by running away? Suffering sap, you did it this time, Calistoga. The good driver reaches into the possum belly, bags I indicate without pride, then he straightens up.

Where’s the Tamarack Inn? I ask, as if my life won’t depend on every speck of information.

A few steps around the bus allow a clear view, and I catch up after he points. There it is. Oh no, they’ve changed the name. It’s Coffee’s now.

Is Devon Tanner there?

He bustles in, and I’m dragged behind, leaving bags on the sidewalk. He points to a short fat kid behind the counter. Devon doesn’t work there anymore. He’ll tell you.

Hungry, tired, sweaty, impatient, and disciplined, but ready to explode, I wait for the kid to serve his friend in the minute grocery. You’re thirteen — get the candy and go, will you please?

Do you know where I can find Devon Tanner? I ask again.

He works at Weatherhead Potato.

Do you have a phone?

A pale young arm reaches for the wall, but I stop him, arresting his chubbiness. No, a pay phone.

Right down the street.

The directory is thin, yellow, easy to use, and possibly a harbinger (a small pistol used on docks) of good things. You get lost in a big book, and time is honey, scoop it up. Majesty had a witness that morning, and I watched it set the night before, but the sun lied. It left me hot and sweaty, a diet of empty confusion, unpromising dessert.

An Indian with striking blue eyes and a black ponytail straddles a motorcycle in the road, an iron pony, then a white girl throws a leg over and wraps her arms around his black vest. He’s Crazy Horse drawing fire on a brave run, I’m wondering how Indians get blue eyes, and he’s looking back through glass and history. But I didn’t think of it until later.

They’re not answering the phone down there, a switchboard operator’s voice tells me. That happens when they’re busy. Try again later. They’ll have to pick it up eventually.

At least fifty Parents line the skimpy Aroostock County phone book, but not the right one, and I’ve got a list of names that don’t matter. It burned a hole in my pocket the entire ride, and now it’s more useless than my English degree, if that’s possible.

Shoot.

A crew cut about eighteen shoulders the doorless connecting booth, dials quickly after a lean hard face glances at me, and leaves the shared space. My index finger wastes money circling one more time, ready to quit, then I ask information who turns on electricity. A sweet faceless voice replies, Maine Public, and when I call, they say it’ll be on by five. One job out of the way, I cross the road and enter the Pine Tree Market, thinking — the lights are on, but where’s the house?

It’s small and clean, skinny baskets pull three old ladies through five narrow aisles, and a young guy in a red jacket nods quickly passing me. When a stock boy smiles, I have to wonder, are they friendly or queer? The basics, milk, cereal, iced tea, ground beef, margarine, aluminum foil, are about ten cents lower on the dollar, and I push a skinny red basket toward the front, beating two of the women. There’s one in front of me, but it’s only my first day, and I’m not even trying. The cashier asks the old woman under a flowered hat about the family, rings up her items, and says good-bye.

Hi, how are you? Mabel smiles, reaching for the last groceries I’ll ever buy. She means it, and I’ve never heard it said that way. I say fine, get change from my last twenty, and inquire about leaving bags a few minutes. Sure is another happy word, and I want to come back to study her name tag.

Crossing under a hot sky again, I phone the only taxi company in the book, and it’s eleven dollars from Caribou to Limestone. They charge to come out that far, I wouldn’t have enough for a tip, and I’m a big sport. I hang up and sit on the curb with glute force, looking at the sheet with names and directions, eyes really nearsighted. But I’m a Catholic Calvinist, not a Presbyterian Methodist, in the land of big sticks. Events leading to my situation batter me like a reel-to-reel tape gone wild, and after considering options ask what to do, but doubt I’ll ever settle. Is that negative, or realistic, and how do you know?

It’s the fourth time in twenty minutes I push off the curb and out of the gutter, crossing the road as sun finally bursts through, defeating clouds and throwing hot light on the street. I peel a flannel shirt that won haberdashery awards, in Boston and beyond, and the market’s cool air relieves skin. When customers are preoccupied with canned tomatoes and other important matters, I ask Mabel if I can leave things for an indefinite time, explaining my dilemma: I’m broke and nobody loves me.

Sure, got anything that’ll go bad?

When I hand over chopped meat she blackens my name, wraps brown paper efficiently, and tells me they close at six. I walk up the block and reclaim bags, wrestle them onto Coffee’s sidewalk, and ask a driving young woman for the road.

I don’t know, she says. She reverses the Bronco, a two-year-old girl in the passenger seat, big dumb eyes looking at me. I think you’ll end up like your mother, sweetie, but I hope not.

The stock boy leaves the grocery, arms full, and the same question leaps at him. Necessity is the mother of invention, but desperation is the father, and I am their spawn.

It’s right there, he says politely, holding brown bags.

But the sign says Bridge Street.

I know, but it’s Grand Falls Road.

I’m hoping he’s right as I turn the corner, and a man takes off in a pickup, but his truck goes the wrong way. My limit is forty yards, then I rest angry flesh. The bags need to lose weight. String was a gift, but it brands my palms, and the price of wisdom is above rubies. My shoulders ache, life sucks, and I have to urinate like a madman. But I climb the first hill, then walk a flat road in between, dreading the next. Which is even larger. This being nowhither I go behind a telephone pole, shrouded by weeds stopping combed dirt fields and clean simple houses. A large dog on back legs, a purebred without documents, I splash relief on a tall brown pole, thankful in small ways. I am prepared to go forward without anybody.

The road dips in Asphalt Valley, and I switch hands to begin the hardest part, wishing I was still on the bus. My complaints then were backache and a stiff neck, and spine was a problem, too much and too little. The second cross road should be Thompson, but there’s no sign, which means I’m lost. A woman arcs to the field beyond a white house, and my voice covers the brown distance, because need is an ally. I’m the other moving thing in sight, and are you doing good work, or did you leave it on the pole? Yes it is, she says, curling forward under blue sky vaulting green land, guiding a pilgrim with red mitts and no plan. Think straight lines, Davy Navy, life’s staring you in the poop deck.

If his directions are fairly accurate, Jake’s cabin is three-quarters of a mile once you climb the hill, and that’s intimidating; but I’m stubborn, a trait that gets me in and out of hot water, and back in again. Some like it cold and some like it not. An easy choice with only one, life is simple when it’s hard, and great victories are private. Rubbing hands together lightly, I roll my shoulders and stoop again, wondering how to get back for half my assets. I don’t know, but get this done, and Buddha has nothing on me now. I’m living in the moment, hoping for another, but it doesn’t really matter.

Switching hands every twenty yards, even the lighter bag tortures me, a lost gantry covered in sweat, gobs streaming down back and sides. I turn around to look at distance covered, a storybook road winding into myth, houses scattered, brown fields hemmed in by green eternity. The sky’s perfect except one cloud that must be over Canada, but foreigners are like that, and I don’t remember school facts. Rivers. Capitols. Generals. Reaching the top of the hill makes Everest a cold pimple, nothing more, and small animals provoke the brush. I glimpse a house beyond trees, but that’s all there is, anywhere.

Where’s the cabin? Shouldn’t I be able to see it from here? I’m in real trouble.

Beef ungrounds, mice camp in bags, rabbits chew my hair, and the book dies like worms (las gusanas) drowning in the rain. A sound pushes me downhill, giving the driver time to see my desperate smile, the first hope on a death march. I’ve been swapping hands too often — stop, change, schlep another twenty feet — when brake lights teach me simple things are best, especially when there’s nothing else. A wonderful gray Olds, the car backs up, until I’m even with the passenger window. A woman relaxed in the middle of life gets out the driver’s side, and I realize hello is a good place to begin.

Where you going?

Second house on the left, I think.

I don’t believe there’s anyone home.

There shouldn’t be. My friend’s letting me use it. Jake Fountain, d’ya know’m?

Jake, how is he?

He’s fine, I say, ready to machine gun facts to prove myself.

Actually, Bontemps know him better than me. He spent time with them when he was here.

Penny Bontemps? I ask, trying a new language.

Yeah, she might be home. Just go on over.

The rolling verdure, the empty fullness, a comfortable ride in a safe gray bubble, breathe it in. That lasts a few minutes, then I reach in the backseat, and two bags flatten a road that almost beat me. She says good luck and drives away, her lone journal entry, and I can’t move forward. Losing one day in passage, driven home by the usual concerns, I’m too wiped to go back. Stations of the cross lead to one place, not a good one, and people love you until they hate you. The bags wait like good dogs, and why hesitate before victory, my hidden friend?

It should be the last time I crane bags, trampling weeds about twenty-five steps, to Pan’s cabin. Gray pylons make obscene gestures in a field between houses, and thick cables scribe black lines, unbalancing the sky. Thirty yards left behind the cabin is a hut, Jake said there was no indoor plumbing, and facing it is a two-story barn the same weathered gray. A faint trail leads to the rear door of the house, and dense brush lurks around two structures, but the green monster’s quiet and I go inside.

Honey, I’m home, but I don’t know how long – or what’s for dinner.

A hand moves across the top of the door frame, more lost time, a fumble on the one-yard line. Life really is captured in sex and sports analogies, and everybody’s captured eventually. A plank holds the door shut, against what? Twist it up, unhook a thick chain on two crooked nails, a chastity belt on a pensioned whore. I’ve never seen either one, so it’s a movie line or imagination, and I like it both ways.

Empty, old, and faded, two military work jackets hang in the cramped wooden foyer, men without purpose, and a gray metal bucket waits to be filled. Collapsed and fallen, a ladder rests on the unfinished wall, and above that is frayed yellow rope, a halo scratching a wooden saint, a drunken sailor and a rough blond hole.

Fingers search the invisible at the real entrance, and a high ledge produces the key, a shiny reward. A bright round handle accepts metal teeth, and I twist the golden knob to open new worlds, beginning with a small kitchen. Then a living room, an older stereo and hundreds of books, enough to keep me busy. Stoop under a doorway, then stand up tall, like a ruler’s down your shirt. Nuns love the stick, not the way they should. A bedroom has gray military bunks, a dresser, wood bin, another stove, then a small back room with hand tools and port-a-potty. It’s for cold weather, but I won’t stay long. I never do. A round mirror hangs over a basin on the sturdy dresser, to see if I was tough and functional, and it’s mine for now.

I made it.

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II

You home, Jake?

Outside, a voice called me by a different name ("neither let it be afraid"), and who could this be? Penny and a tall stranger thought the owner returned home, so Drake, older and larger than me, hurried down the road. Sunlight framed him in the doorway, a kitchen saint, a bright unknown presence, the handshake a knucklehead between us. Resting chairs against the back wall and trading information, about ourselves, the mutual contact, and this place, in twelve minutes he answered every question I didn’t ask: he was a writer, athlete, musician, scholar, king of philology (the study of literature and related fields) and a flake. A four-letter man – DUMB – riding his own air, he threw bull like a Spanish athlete.

Bowing out to let me unpack, he returned with big boys, sixteen-ounce Budweiser cans. The beer I usually drank gave me a handle on reality, however slight, and I thought of a marketing slogan: When you’re away from home, and you need a Bud.

Drake would say we did some talking, agreeing with my judgments, a pleasant disturbance. Before six o’clock he dragged a red Pinto up the weeded lane, where Jake must have parked building his retreat, and the short ride over hills mocked an earlier struggle. Mabel smiled when I entered the market, and that didn’t surprise me. I put my traps in the backseat, then Drake reversed and swung a U-turn, pulling up a long driveway to a liquor store. Out of place money changed hands, I waited in the car until he returned with vodka and a six-pack, hog heaven.

He drove like a teenager in his parents’ car, twenty years late, and I couldn’t believe we covered ground so fast. Thinking it was great luck to meet him, I dropped packages on the rough wooden table, the kitchen window a lasting view of road, weeds, and field. The power wasn’t on, but food went in the reef, and you had to press the door shut before releasing the handle, then it caught with a metal tck. I could see Jake steering his truck to flea markets and garage sales, and he furnished the house that way, a committee of one that got things done. About two hundred people work on a Hollywood movie, and nobody ever made a bad one, but they all got paid.

It still hasn’t hit me, but I’m here. No one can touch me now. Only if I let them.

Drake insisted I remain buttocked for the short ride, and he pulled right up to the house, where Penny sat in front of a big kitchen table. Short, not quite olive skinned, less than a hundred pounds, she appeared dry, quiet, and unfriendly. A miniken, the little woman didn’t relax me, and I felt her watching, as if the new kid might not be a suitable companion. Later I discovered she had forty-seven years to his thirty-nine, as a couple they were almost ninety, and that was unthinkable. She was a tiny beetle with pointed glasses, but I tried her famous soup without knowing the ingredients, because it was free.

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When darkness took everything I left to finish unpacking, which could have been done earlier, but everybody says Go with the flow. The complete negritude scared me with thoughts of wild animals, rednecks, slimy things in the grass, and I wondered how to fill the hours, but that wasn’t a problem. Drake tailed me fifty yards from his door to mine, over black road and weed song, climbing steps to unfamiliar darkness.

Remembering candles somewhere, I found three in hiding, and they lit the main room, but I was lighting matches in the dark, stumbling around, hoping for radiance. Shadows danced in corners like goblins, and I hung blankets on nails over windows, then shielded light into the bedroom, where clothes waited for some kind of order. There was plenty of time mañana, and the day after, and they were wrinkled anyway. Drake stayed until almost ten, drinking and talking, some of his yarns already familiar. Then he wobbled out the door and across the lawn, creating a new belief: never trust a man who ties one on, not the first time you meet.

Flick and shine, fireflies lit the night with greenish points of light, wicking the blackness like an early holiday, fireworks that blinked instead of burned,and I was happy just watching. The only grandparent I remembered said his family couldn’t afford toys, so kids played with rocks and sticks, and they were content. Oklahoma dirt poor, so was everybody, and it didn’t matter.

Anything. Anything you need, pardner, Drake’s voice blurred over his shoulder. He began jogging, a dull smudge that faded away, disappearing in a few seconds. Then a door eclipsed light, a pharaoh’s early tomb, sealing him in. Architect of his own destruction, he was Frank Lloyd Wrong, and everything was tilted.

The second time lifting my head off the desk, I put the notebook away, blew out trusty candles, stripped, and hit the sheets. They hadn’t been changed for nine months, but it was still a bed, and I fell asleep quickly. I didn’t remember a thing until I woke at seven, looked at the face of time, and went back to dreamland. At nine I cast off the sheets, unknowing much of anything, great to be naked and curious. I got acquainted with the house, walking around, rooster crowing at the big north woods.

… Oh yes …

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Sponge-bathing in front of the round mirror took a long time compared with a shower, but my skin tingled like never before, even under wrinkled clothes. The few remaining ones slid in drawers after Jake’s moved to the bottom, and booster switches filled the house with classical music. A claw hammer with a blunt end lay on the wood bin, ending long repose to free a stud and open the rear door, and with vision intact I roamed the backyard from outhouse to barn. I did them backward, home to third to first, recalling my younger brother Chris. He and our cousin Bobby (Uncle Bobby’s eldest) did that when they were six, running the bases after my game with crooked hats and beer bellies, just happy to be on the field. It was a good snapshot, a shiny quarter at the bottom of a dirty fountain, and I held the memory. Once he put my athletic cup over his face like an oxygen mask, pictures locked in a camera, no rewind.

Wood planks, old doors, metal pipes, screens, and tires occupied the barn, leaving a neat path to the stairs, and the second floor housed rugs, blankets, towels, a baby carriage, and objects smothered trying to escape. Go to the window, look at the small cabin, then tap down the stairs, more tools by the door, a scythe, rusty clippers, and work gloves. Done scouting for now, go back to the cabin, which already feels like home.

I set my incomplete manuscript on a typewriter holding the floor down, wiped it with a rag, and lifted all three to the desk. Machine front and center, notes and pen alert, the same question blitzed me … Will I make it? Do I have what it takes? … Probly not, Slick, but do it anyway. A book’s a postponed suicide, the month of precious blood looming, and priests bend you over the truth.

A voice followed three knocks, and who could this be again? Drake entered new Eden with two beers and a smile, harmless in a dizzy atmosphere of beginnings. Dee Oh, we’d cry playing sports. Do Over. Time and place, the rigid matrons of organized society, no longer existed, and I’d stopped eyeing the clock after my last bus. I hadn’t realized it then, and if I’d owned a watch it would have been hocked, for two reasons. And what’s important to you, Calvin, what do you need?

A break from all these questions?

An old toaster, like a cheese grater with sides that went down, offered smoking black toast in a minute, there was a tea bag on the floor and sugar (azúcar, a Moorish word that infected Spanish) on a wooden shelf, tied with staples in (not thomas) hardy plastic bags. Drake zipped from one subject to the next, writing, philosophy, men, women, college, each topic serious but incomplete, cracking up with tears recollecting his friend Hairball. The help reserved laughter, I’d hear it again, and his novel just had to be typed. By the time I finished eating, I needed fresh air, and we moved outside.

I really don’t care if it’s published, he said. I really don’t. I just want to know it’s done. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody.

Then why do you keep saying it?

He was finally enjoying life, ran as fast as ever, and Penny was the first woman he’d ever loved. But watching him drink in the shade, I could read the