He bought a used car from a local dealership wreathed in flag bunting. He was dragged away from his new purchase by a long walk, and afterward looped back without sleeping. His body cried out for rest but he was determined to trump its dumb singular want by keeping constant attention on the pain of the living death he would suffer until he found his way back to her.
But he was too tired to drive straight to New York and did not make it a hundred miles before falling asleep. The road curved around while he kept straight. He went through a wire fence into a field where he struck a cow. The car undercut its hind legs and lifted the animal off the ground. It hit the hood and the windshield shattered into a cobweb. He slammed on the brakes and the beast caromed off. He stepped out, bleeding and dazed, and approached the animal, which lay flat, legs broken, and stared back at him with an unblinking eye that began to drip blood. He bent down and put both hands on it as if trying to keep the life inside, but the movement of its moist nostrils died out, and with it any final hope that he might make it back home.
He grabbed the pack and abandoned the car with the door hanging open as the rest of the scattered herd lowed at him, agitated and alive. He grew smaller in the shimmering distance and soon disappeared around the bend.
She called and called again. He let the phone ring into voice mail. He let the battery die. His right eye closed up from conjunctivitis and the pharmacist recommended that he see an ophthalmologist, but he settled for nonprescription drops that took effect slowly. Passing a downtown bank with an electronic clock, he noticed the date. He counted backward. Sixteen days earlier, it had been his birthday.
He recharged the battery using the men’s-room outlet in a visitor center. He discovered fourteen messages waiting for him. One was from Becka wishing him a happy birthday. The others were from Jane. He had meant to be self-preserving, not cruel, in not calling her back, but he understood now that he could not have it both ways.
Still, he waited. The sun infused the green skin of the tent. He was staring up at it, preparing himself to rise and pack, when the phone rang. He answered in a voice he hadn’t heard in days, maybe weeks. She spoke faster than he was accustomed to.
“Do you think I wanted this to happen? I wanted you. How many times have I called you since I came back from France? Twenty? I’m not trying to be heartless. This thing with Michael, it just happened. These things happen. Do you know how long you’ve been gone? Do you know it gets lonely? It gets so lonely. I didn’t intend this. I kept telling you to come home. You told me to remarry. Go on with your life, you said. Well, that’s what I did, I went on with my life. I went to France with a man I like. Can you blame me for that? You can’t because you told me to. I’m not in the wrong here. All you had to do was come home, Tim. I kept telling you that. Come home. I’m telling you now. None of this matters. France, it doesn’t matter. It was nice being taken care of for a while, that’s all. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t nice. But it’s not what I want. I want you. Say you’ll come home, and I’m yours. I’ll come get you. I’ve always been willing to come get you. Are you there?”
He didn’t reply.
“Say something. You won’t call me back and when you finally pick up the phone you won’t even talk. Say something, please. Say what you’re thinking.”
“I’m happy for you, banana.”
She began to cry into the phone. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I never imagined one of us taking a vacation without the other.”
Her sob came from deep down in her chest. He told her she had nothing to be sorry for. She was exactly right. He had told her to do it.
“Can’t you come home?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“I honestly can’t,” he said.
The call ended. He had told her to go on with her life only because her love and constancy had been so true for so long, he never dreamed they would actually be taken away.
She called a few months later to see if he would agree to make their separation official. Michael had asked her to marry him.
He was quiet. Finally he said that a few days prior, he had passed a Mail Boxes Etc., where he thought he could open up a mailbox. She could have the paperwork sent there.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
“Maybe the lawyer can just fax it.”
“Either way,” he said.
He spent a few days walking back to the Mail Boxes Etc. during his downtime and then called her with the fax number.
“I’m not asking for anything,” she told him.
He didn’t understand. Then it dawned on him that she meant money.
“You should take what you need,” he said. “I’ll sign whatever you send me.”
“I don’t need anything,” she said.
He walked, and after he woke he returned to the Mail Boxes Etc. and found the fax waiting for him. The woman at the counter was also a notary public and together they signed the paperwork. Then he paid to have it faxed back to the lawyer.
He stopped in the alleyway and removed the phone from his pocket. The battery was dead and he hadn’t bothered to recharge it for some time, maybe two months. He stood considering it awhile before tossing it inside a hollow dumpster where it hit with a cheap and lonely echo. He moved off, past the kids playing catch. He turned right and his presence was replaced by that window of space, no longer than a car’s length, in which cars passed one another all day long, shooting off little sunbursts of glare.
He watched her from the back of the crowd. He wore his beard and snow cap and backpack, as if his age were not sufficient to set him apart. He was drowsy.
He had stayed put, approximately, near this ground zero, going on ten days. When he found himself twelve or fifteen miles out, he fought the urge to crash, turned around and walked back. Deprived of sleep, his body was pliable. It was his again. It was also sleep-deprived, and he struggled to retrace the dozen miles. He was not only tired on the return but weak and hungry, too.
She wore army-surplus pants and a denim jacket and a faded T-shirt that said Heavenly Lake Tahoe. She was moody and focused and she punished the mike stand. She moved around with iconic revolt as if the world that contained her was that murky bluish stage and she was thrashing and screaming for release. She removed her denim jacket and her T-shirt was soaked at the pits. She had gained back her weight and more.
He drifted over to where the crowd was thinner and rested his head against the wall and dozed standing despite the enormous sound.
To his surprise, she clung to him desperately outside the venue. She broke down in his arms while he worried that his clothes might smell.
“I’m sorry that it’s been so long.”
“You’re so thin,” she said, releasing him, but gripping his arms as if she feared that he might slip away.
They sat in a booth along the far wall of a Greek diner. Periodic voltage drops grayed the gold fixtures and darkened the cake display. Everyone at some point looked ceilingward.
She asked him if it was gone, and he said it wasn’t.
“Then how did you make the show?”
“I’ve been circling the city since you posted the tour dates. I turn around and walk back.”
“Without sleeping?”
“Part of the challenge, not sleeping.”
“When do you sleep?”
“When I get close enough.”
“And what do you do with your downtime?”
“Get closer.”
“And then you walk away again?”
He nodded.
“Isn’t that exhausting?”
He shrugged. “Gives the day its purpose,” he said.
It was an act of willful defiance, looping, circling back, keeping within a certain perimeter. It imposed a pattern on the random arrivals and departures, even if that pattern was just to see a show, or to pick up a few pieces of mail from a p.o.
box. He was collecting p.o. boxes, he told her, all across the country.
“Speaking of which,” he said.
He unzipped the pack and brought out a freezer bag. He removed the two CDs he had ordered over the Internet. He showed her that he had uploaded them to his iPod as well. “I also have a concert tee and a poster of the show you did in San Francisco.”
She was surprised and touched. “You’re a good dad,” she said.
He demurred. “Just a fan.”
“I thought you only liked David Bowie.”
“That was in the room,” he said, remembering the months he spent in the hospital bed and the music she had introduced him to. “Out here I listen to everything.”
He put the CDs back in the freezer bag and returned them to the pack. The power dropped out again and didn’t return. There was a stir as people murmured and faded to shadows and shifted unsurely in the murk, as if from this point forward they would require absolute guidance as to how to proceed.
The waitress came over. “Your order didn’t go through, hon.”
“That’s okay,” said Becka. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“I’m okay.”
“Can we just have some more coffee?”
He wondered, in the dim light, if his eyes had played tricks on him. The sundress was gone. There was nothing skinny about her.
“The last time we saw each other,” he said. “When was that?”
“I don’t remember,” she said.
“You were with your mom and Fritz.”
She shook her head slowly in the darkness. “I wasn’t with them.”
“You look wonderful,” he said.
“There’s more of me, anyway.”
He didn’t reply immediately. Then he said, “Does it still bother you?”
She puffed out her cheeks like someone about to burst, eyes popping wide. Then she settled into a grin shaded with resignation. “It’s my one go-around,” she said. “What do you do—hate yourself till the bitter end?”
“I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“You’ve always been biased.”
“I’m glad you don’t hate yourself.”
“Acceptance,” she said. She shrugged. “It’s a bitch.”
Out in the parking lot she offered to give him a ride but he needed to be no place. Occasionally he stayed the night in a motel or at the YMCA and she tried to encourage him to do so that night but he said it was easy to fall back into the custom of television and a real bed, which later made his nights in the tent harder to reckon with. He was happier avoiding those places. And he no longer did cars.
“What does that mean, you don’t do cars?”
“They’re not an option,” he said. “If I need to be somewhere, I walk.”
“Not an option?” She rattled her enormous collection of keys in an unspoken admission that what he said was deeply strange to her. “Well, will you at least sit in the front seat with me a minute?” she asked. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Her mother was sick. She had debated a long time over whether it made sense telling him. She knew his limitations and she didn’t want him to feel guilty about what was out of his hands.
“Is it serious?”
“It’s cancer.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he said.
“You don’t know what cancer means?”
“No, of course I know. I’ve just lost track.”
“Lost track of what?”
He paused. “What does the man say?”
“What man?”
“The man she married.”
“Michael?” she said. “She never married Michael.”
“She didn’t?” He was taken aback. “Why not?”
“I don’t know the details, Dad. She broke things off.”
How long had it been? He had lost track.
He looked out the window and down at the parking lot, a frivolous patch of blacktop into which one sprung toward a better destination or from which one departed in an onward spirit. But he would do neither. He would soon get out of the car and remain. Becka would drive away, and an empty evening ache would press down. And there was nothing he could do for either of them, for any of them.
He turned to look at his daughter. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to do anything. I just thought you’d want to know.”
He shook his head. “I don’t,” he said.
He entered a town of cattle murals and savings banks where he bought a mocha frappuccino. He walked with the coffee drink between a double row of single-story houses, many of which were for sale. The gate to one hung open. The realty sign was strangled under an unmown thicket and a stained mattress lay on the front porch.
He stretched out on the mattress and finished the mocha while watching a black squirrel with a frayed tail fitfully stalk the trees. A man with a cane came out of the house opposite. He sat on the porch and turned to his left, then to his right, then to his left again, with the cane between his legs and his hands on top of the brass handle. Then he stood, and with the deliberation of a man whose life had narrowed to a single task, he broomed pooled water from the porch. He sat down again to inspect the neighborhood. Eventually he went back inside.
Tim rose from the mattress and left the yard. He went back into town, passing the murals on the sides of the buildings, mostly of cattle and horses but one of Native Americans. He stopped in a camping supply store and bought another pair of boots, adhesive reflector strips, a new tent, rain gear, energy bars, an additional base layer and pullover, and a compass. He replaced the old goods with his new purchases inside the pack.
To be more than the sum of his urges. Part of the challenge, not sleeping. Something guaranteed to expend his considerable energies and lend purpose to the day. He loved her. He had always loved her. To return to her before she died—that would be the last thing ever required of him.
He started off at the end of his next walk. He turned sluggishly until the compass pointed him east. He crossed the road at its instruction and angled across a field of forage grass to a creek and walked along the bank against the downstream current. The water rippled white. He wanted to sleep. His exhaustion was that of a field soldier who debated whether or not living was worthwhile under such circumstances. But it was only his first day. He couldn’t quit on his first day. He skirted a reservoir slower than shadow moves across a room. The black range in the distance stood against the sky like a spiked dinosaur.
He made it to the scenic drive. He fell to his knees in the rock beside the road. He told himself to get up. Don’t fall asleep, he said. Tourists were gathered at the fence to behold the wonder. The green valley cut a snaking halfpipe through the brown monoliths of the canyon. He could curl up in one of their backseats, or in the aspen grove that sprouted above the ravine past the row of parked cars, or inside the room of the La Quinta Inn just down the road. But he stood up and continued on his way along the shoulder of the highway.
The tree was a terrible luxury. He leaned up against it and fell asleep. It was meant to be a quick respite, but as soon as he woke he fell asleep again. It was a lone willow in a field. He woke and slept, woke and slept, and every time he woke, he considered lying down between two of the willow’s sinewy roots. But he slept upright for hours because to lie down would be indistinguishable from quitting.
He was taken far afield without water. Above him, daubs and strokes of rainless clouds. He came across a ranch house on a sloping dirt road nestled between sagebrush hills and knocked at the door. With a mouthful of dust, slow to conjure the name of the thing he needed, he said to the woman, who circled wide around him because he was a stranger and he sat on her porch with his back to her, “Water.” The woman went back inside and returned. She watched him clutch the glass with his primitive assortment of fingers and gulp the water down before spitting it out and vomiting the rest. “You have to take it slow,�
�� she said.
It was a two-lane highway of blind curves and bent guardrails. The darkness was so absolute that headlights leapt over the paved summits to the effect of a poor man’s aurora. He sleepwalked from the shoulder into the lane. The car behind him flicked its brights on to find him drifting over. The driver swerved just as a pickup cleared the blind in the opposite lane, twenty yards away, and the two vehicles headed directly into each other. The truck lurched to a full stop close to the guardrail, only a foot from the drop-off. The car’s raging horn woke him. He stumbled back to the shoulder. The driver went around slowly, leaned into the passenger-side window and flipped him the bird to convey how offended he was by this show of dumb negligence. Then the truck pulled out and he was alone again on the highway.
A caravan of cyclists whirred past him in the slanting rain, leaving him in the wake of their fine, fast community. Their passing talk pierced him with longing. Geese with the white underbellies of bowling pins squawked overhead.
He sat in the back of a bar in a recess of tables with a half-finished beer in front of him, vaguely aware of a foosball game going on a few feet away. He fell asleep on the table. The bartender woke him at closing time. He went outside and resumed walking.
“Please don’t tell her I’m coming,” he wrote to Becka the next day, from a computer at a public library. “I don’t think I can make it.”
He broke a rule and spent a night in a rented room. He reentered a white world where scant traffic was treading delicately in the icy fall. It was a sanatorium of snow. Flurries mocked visibility and found cracks in his best gear. He did not make it east two miles when his will was pulled out from under him and he was forced to walk in a different direction. He woke later inside the tent and felt the pressing urge to make up for lost time. When he decamped, the sun was out and the snow had melted into a pristine damp that mellowed the earth like a trickling stream. He walked half the day only to come upon the same motel where he’d spent the night twenty-four hours earlier. His heart sank.
The glow in the distance appeared to intensify in pulse and color, it beat blood and energy like a diseased heart. The sun, reversing course, might have been setting in the east just over the edge of the lower range. He didn’t know what it was. Night had fallen, and the snow was thriving after hours of indifferent drift. The glow was situated directly in his path. Two men on horseback came at him at a trot, followed by a tether of additional horses.
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