Monday, September 1, 2008

Garden City

I'm staying, now, in Garden City. My parents emailed me, a few days ago, with a possible contact here - Danna and Bill Jones - and gave me their number to call, and I did. When I got to the edge of town, yesterday, Danna came and picked me up and took me back to their house. I showered and cleaned up, and after a while we went out to eat at a local Mexican place. Danna works at the animal shelter, here in Garden City, and one of her fellow workers, Tony, and his girlfriend Heather met us for dinner.
Afterwards, we all came back to the house and Bill showed us his classic cars and we ate peach pie, and put Build a Bear sweaters on their chihuahuas.

There seems to be a balance, out here on the road. As if someone has perched me up on a weighted scale, and watches to see that I don't spend too long swinging one way or the other. Not that they keep me steady, but that when the balance takes a shift they swing me about. A mediocre day is mediocre all the way through, whereas a good morning might have a bad night, or a great night might be the result of a terrible morning. Whatever the weight, its opposite is applied to bring me back to level.
I crossed into Kansas on Thursday. Ate dinner in the little town of Coolidge and walked until ten, then pulled over in the ditch. In the morning I made it to Syracuse. Found a gas station and had breakfast, then watched a movie at the Hamilton County Library. I didn't leave town until five thirty in the afternoon, when the heat seemed to be dropping away. Within an hour, just a few miles out, clouds started rolling in behind me, and lightning started to flare in the west. Another hour and the rain was blowing in, and the thunder was all around. I pulled off in the ditch, when the lightning seemed too close, and pulled my poncho over everything, and spent the next few hours with rain pounding through and lightning touching my ears. And I got lonely. Got really lonely. Sitting in a ditch, wet and cold in a thunderstorm, two hundred and some odd miles from home. Lonely lonely lonely.
When the storm finally let up I shivered away the cold and started walking. Made another ten or twelve miles in the dark, with the headlights of passing cars gleaming, and the white line running away, forever to the east.
In the morning I walked to Lakin. The sun came out and turned all of the puddles into heat, and it seemed absurd to think of the cold, just the night before. When I got to town I found a gas station and drank through 44 ounces of Lemonade/Dr. Pepper mix and ate two blueberry muffins and a man came over to talk, as I sat. Latino, fairly thin, a short goatee and a blue baseball cap.
"Where you headed?" he says, with such a strong accent that I barely made out the words.
"Florida."
"Florida?" He squints. "Why you wanna go down there, man?"
"Just a destination," I say. "Just want to get to the ocean."
He nods. "You need a place to stay, man?"
I don't, exactly, being that it's midday, but I say 'sure' and pack up my things.
We climb into a little, green pickup truck and he pulls out slowly.
"Es not mine," he says, of the vehicle. "Mine is broken, now." He forgets to push in the clutch when he stops to shift out of reverse and the engine dies. He grins and turns it back on. "I don't drive a stick," he says, "but I try to learn."
We go shakily down the street and pull up in front of his house. I unload my pack, inside, and then we get back in the truck to take it back to his brother. "What is your name, man?" he asks, and I tell him. "I am Carlos," he says. "Do you drink the beer?" he asks, and I shake my head. "No? That's too bad, amigo. Where we are going there will be lots of beer." He says it dreamily.
We pull into a trailer park and he stops the truck. A man and a woman are sitting in lawn chairs, nearby, with a twenty four pack open. Carlos grabs one as we walk up and introduces me.
"I find this guy at the gas station," he says. "He is a good guy but he does not drink the beer." He turns to me. "This is Rury," he says, pointing at the man, "and this is my sister in law, Sonia."
After a while we go inside the trailer. There's a seventy two inch t.v. along one wall, and a speaker system that looks like it's from the Pepsi Center. Sonia puts in a cd and some kind of Spanish music blasts out. We start dancing around the coffee table. The first few songs don't really seem to have any steps, and I just try to mimic what they do. We spin in circles and they pretend to grope each other. Carlos and Rury somehow start wrestling on the floor. But as another song comes on, Sonia says "Oooh. Salsa," and motions to me to follow her steps. "One two three," she says. "One two three. One two three. And step. And step. One two three, step. One two three, step." She shakes her head at my attempt, grabs my hips, and tries to correct me. I get it down at a slow pace, but lose it again when she says "Faster, go faster" and I end up kicking Carlos in the shin and falling on the floor. It's a great time.
After a while we switch trailers. I get confused about whose is whose, but I think we go to his brother's. It's empty, compared to the first one. Just a couch and a t.v. and a goldfish bowl and a refrigerator.
"So you are walking," Rury says to me, as we sit on the couch. I nod. "What is your point?"
I tell him that I just wanted to get out and do something, that I just want to see the country, and he doesn't seem to understand. "But what is your point?" he says, again. "Do you have a job? Do you work? What is your point?" We go around the issue for a while, without making any head way. After a while he tells about himself.
"I grew up in Chihuahua," he says. "I took a train into the U.S.A. Risked my life to get here. For a while I tried to get up in the world," he says. "Cocaine and dope. I sold them all over. But I was always looking over my shoulders. Now," he says "I don't try to get up. I just try to stay the same. Just try to put a meal on the table. Not go up or down but stay the same. Just working to stay the same. That is the American dream, no? Just working and working to stay the same? The American dream. Our dream. Nuestro sueno. Trabajando y trabajando. Working and working. And I am living the American dream," he says. "Because I can put food on the table for my family."
We sit and he talks and I listen. Sometimes he goes off on tangents entirely in Spanish and I have no idea what he's saying. But I listen, anyway.
"We are all brothers," he says. "You and I and all of us. We are all the same. I don't care if you are black or white or brown or anything. We are all the same. Eat and drink and living. All of us just working to stay the same."
After a long time Rury gets up to leave, and Sonia goes, too, and Carlos and I walk back to his house.
"I don't know your thing, man. I don't know what you did, but you can always say sorry. Just say, 'Mom and Dad, I am sorry' and they will forgive you. My mother," he says, "my mother never told me she loved me, in her whole life, until she was dying. She say, 'Carlos, I love you,' and then she died in my arms. Your parents love you, amigo."
I try to tell him that I'm not out here because I ran away, or because I did anything wrong. But I can't get through. We come from very different places.
"I can get you a job," he says. "Sixteen dollars an hour. That is where I am working," he says, "and they will hire you. You have i.d. and social security? They will hire you and pay you sixteen dollars an hour. You can stay here with me until you get some money for an apartment. You can stay on the couch and we will go to work together. You can start making some money and then if you want, you can rent a room from me. You are wasting your life with your pack," he says, motioning at it, leaning up against the couch. "Do not live on the streets, anymore, amigo. Stay here with me and make some money. And then you can get a wife and make a family and you can take care of them."
When I leave Lakin it's late in the afternoon. 'I have to go,' I told Carlos, and he said 'yes' but he had sad eyes as I pulled on my pack.
'We are all the same,' Rury told me. But we are so different.
A long while ago - I don't remember where, exactly - someone asked me if I was walking for career or walking for vacation, and I didn't know what to say. But now I feel that this is, on the whole, just a trip. Just a vacation. Because no matter how long I'm away, or how many storms I sit out in ditches, or how lonely I feel, I'm out here by my own choice.
So many people that I meet have worked their entire lives, have risked their lives, even, to get to where they are. To get to the point where they can sit in their trailers and drink 'the beer' and say that they are living the American dream. Working and working. Trabajando y trabajando.
Me? I'm just walking.

1 comment:

LynnA said...

Hi. How's things going? I heard that you were in Dodge City Saturday. I think that is about half way from your house to ours. We met your Dad there some years back since it was close to half way and he brought us a bench that Barbara had requested him to make for her. We then turned around and headed back to our homes.

Sounds like you're still a week or two from our house. Looking forward to seeing you.

I'm envious of your journey; being on the road and meeting a variety of new people and getting new experiences. We're so used to taking the interstate highways that we miss seeing much that you're seeing.

I'll bet I speak for many when I say you need to post more often, if you can. I check this space several times a day hoping for to find a new blog posting.

See ya soon. Lynn