The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America

by McIntyre, Mike

  “Murphy!” Edie says in a voice like gravel. “Boy, you sure are a brave soul. There’s nothing but desert out there.”

  I tell her I’m avoiding the freeways and traveling through small towns.

  “There isn’t even a town there. Murphy!” Then, in the next breath: “Well, you want to have supper with us?”

  The offer comes faster than the one made by the man earlier today. Yet Edie’s weathered face and simple ways convey a raw honesty. I’m not even hungry, but I’m suddenly smitten with this crusty woman. I quickly accept.

  Sue turns into a tract housing development set among dull brown hills without trees. From Edie’s appearance—she’s dressed in baggy sweats and a dirty T-shirt—I expect her place to be a dump. But when we pull into the driveway, I see that hers is the tidiest house on the street. The modest home with white aluminum siding is bordered by a neatly trimmed lawn. Concord grapes hang from a lattice arbor out back. Edie has just been to the farmers’ market, where she sold $10 worth of grapes, which I gather for her is no small sum. When I use the bathroom, I notice the tub is spotless. Decorative baskets adorn the kitchen wall. A collection of antique spoons hangs from a cabinet in the living room.

  Edie invites me to run a load of wash. The laundry room is a sight more welcome than the kitchen table, as my jeans and shirt can probably stand on the side of the road and hitchhike by themselves.

  As Edie fixes dinner, Laura watches her from the kitchen table. She bounces in her chair, a sock dangling from her mouth.

  Edie moves fast in the kitchen, a habit from her early years as a restaurant worker. She peels and mashes potatoes, and boils a pot of water for corn on the cob. Chicken roasts in the oven. I offer to help, but she says sit tight.

  Sue parks her ample behind in an easy chair in the front room. She plunges her hand into a bag of potato chips and swigs from a two-liter bottle of 7-Up. Her three-year-old son Kyle slaps her knee. A ponytail protrudes from his otherwise short-cropped hair.

  “I’m gonna go see Daddy,” he whines.

  “No, you’re not gonna be seein’ Daddy.”

  Sue is married to a man down in Texas. A few days ago, she gathered up Kyle and Katie and left him. For good, she says.

  “I’d like to beat my husband’s face in, make it all bloody, and leave him to die in the street,” she says, grinning wickedly.

  Sue never married Laura’s father, a neighborhood boy who got her pregnant when she was 15. One day, when Laura was a baby, Sue fell asleep in another room while listening to loud music. She didn’t hear her daughter entering the earliest stage of sudden infant death syndrome. When she awoke and saw she wasn’t breathing, she phoned her mother, who worked as an orderly at a hospital. Edie rushed home and performed CPR on Laura. She saved her life, but she had already suffered brain damage.

  Through the years, Sue proved a careless mother, leaving Laura with anybody. Edie hired a lawyer and sued for custody of her granddaughter. She went to school and got a license to care for the severely handicapped. The state now pays Edie to care for Laura at home, a cheaper and better alternative to putting her in an institution.

  Edie sets a plate heaped with food in front of me, and I thank her.

  “We don’t have much, but we don’t mind sharing what we have,” she says. “I know what it’s like to be hungry. There’ve been times when I’ve been down to my last ten cents, but people have always helped me.”

  She asks if I want regular bread or homemade bread.

  “I bet your bread is lots better,” I say.

  “I think so. We grew up making our own bread. We thought store-bought bread was like candy. When we had store-bought bread, we thought we’d died and went to heaven.”

  I saw off a slice from the dense loaf. To economize, Edie substitutes Karo corn syrup for sugar and boiled potato water for milk. It’s delicious.

  Edie cuts kernels from an ear of corn and mashes them in a bowl. She spoon-feeds the mush to Laura, who hums as she chews. Sue fixes herself a plate and goes back into the living room to watch Oprah on TV.

  “She used to be beautiful,” Edie says. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

  Sue has more problems than an expanding waistline and a bad marriage. She’s currently on parole for dealing cocaine. Edie kept Kyle and Katie while Sue served five months in jail.

  I hear a door open down the hall. Edie’s 30-year-old son Jay appears in the kitchen doorway. He wears a black cowboy hat, snakeskin cowboy boots and a belt buckle as big as a saucer. He struts through the kitchen like he’s just come in off the range. Without even a howdy-do, he pours himself a cup of coffee and retreats to his bedroom.

  Jay has an ex-wife and two kids. She got tired of supporting him and kicked him out. He moved back home, where he mooches cigarettes and gas money off Edie. He busted up her Wagoneer four-wheeling in the desert. He’s supposed to be looking for a job to earn the $1,600 it cost Edie to fix the Jeep, but he spends most days in his room smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

  “He thinks the world owes him a living,” Edie says.

  Jay and Sue each draw $400 per month from their father’s disability pension. Sue tells me with glee that the sum jumps to $900 as soon as her dad dies of lung cancer.

  Edie was married to the kids’ father, a hardware salesman, for five years. They were living in Arkansas when he ran out on them. Edie spent her last $20 on a motel room and a baby-sitter, and that night she found a job in a local pizza parlor.

  “I’ve always been able to work, and I’ve always been able to feed my kids,” she says.

  There was no alimony or child support. Edie managed by holding down two jobs. She avoided the welfare rolls and never took a penny of public assistance. She also never remarried, nor got involved with another man. She remains self-sufficient to this day.

  Edie invites me to stay over. “You don’t wanna be out on that road at night,” she says.

  I tell her I’m happy to pitch my tent in her backyard.

  “Or you can stay in here,” she says. “We won’t bother you.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate it.”

  “Well, you look clean-cut,” she says. “You don’t look like one of those killers.”

  Edie wipes Laura’s face with a washrag. She pours some orange liquid in a tube and gently squirts it down her throat. Even with the medicine, Laura suffers two to three grand mal seizures a day, thus the need for her helmet. She can’t talk, but Edie says they communicate fine. She’s her tireless advocate. When doctors told her Laura couldn’t walk because her brain fails to connect with her muscles, Edie refused to listen. She carried her granddaughter to specialist after specialist until she found one that saw Laura lacked certain bones in her feet. She will soon undergo an operation that should allow her to walk. Edie also fought to mainstream Laura into the local school system. She now attends classes with normal 11-year-olds.

  “Okay, Grandma’s gonna give you a bath now, Laura,” Edie says.

  I offer to do the dishes, but Edie insists I make myself at home in the front room. She bathes Laura and puts her in brown pajamas with feet. They sit on the sofa next to me. Edie polishes a silver spoon she bought at a garage sale and watches a documentary about ancient Siam on the Discovery Channel. I almost tell her I’ve been to Thailand, but I don’t want to sound boastful. It suddenly occurs to me how odd it is to be staying in the house of a total stranger. But a moment later I think maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe what’s really unnatural is the great lengths we take to avoid one another.

  After the show, I fold my clothes from the dryer. Edie added fabric softener to the wash, so my shirt smells fresh and clean. She moves Laura to her favorite chair at the kitchen table. She makes a pot of coffee and has a smoke. It’s the first time I’ve seen her relax since we met four hours ago.

  “I admire what you’re doing,” she says. “I wish I would’ve done that when I was your age. I coulda gone to that big concert back East.”

&nbs
p; “Woodstock?” I say.

  “Yeah. And I didn’t go. I coulda been part of something that was almost historic. There were four carloads of kids that went from here. I coulda got a baby-sitter and went, but I didn’t. I could kick myself now. When you get to be my age, you’ll be able to look back and say, ‘I did this.’” She sips her coffee and says wistfully, “Boy, you’re taking me back now.”

  I ask Edie what her dream is. She says that because she’s three-quarters Crow Indian, she was able to obtain a 120-acre parcel on a mountainous reservation in Montana. One day she’d like to sell her house and move there with Laura.

  “I wanna build a log cabin, and I wanna get a horse for her. That’s my plan.” She looks adoringly at her granddaughter. “I love her. She’s special. The doctors said she wouldn’t live past five, but here she is. As long as God gives me the strength, I’m gonna take care of her. I really believe God made her this way so I could have her.”

  For such a decent and caring woman, I’m surprised to learn that Edie had a terrible childhood. Her mother was an alcoholic, murdered at age 65 by the last in a long line of drifters she picked up in bars.

  “She was always drunk, bringing home strange men,” Edie says. “As old as I am, I can still see these scary old men standing over me when I was little. We roamed around the country that way. She’d lock me in a motel room for two or three days ’til she got off her drunk. Sometimes, the police knocked the door down and took me to orphanages. One time we were in Mexicali. She was with this guy and they had a fight. The police came and took us all to jail. They put us in this cell with other people. There was water up to my ankles. The toilet was stopped up and overflowing. There was a mattress on the floor, and when I laid down it was sopping wet. I’ll never forget that, boy. When I had kids, I made a promise to myself that they’d never see that kind of life, and they never have.”

  Edie sets out a sleeping bag for me. She says good night and takes Laura back to her bedroom.

  Sue lounges in the easy chair. She wears a nightgown that could be mistaken for a tent. She fiddles with the cap on a bottle of sleeping pills. She says she was out until three in the morning. I see the giant hickey on her neck and imagine the rest. She has to get up early tomorrow to make a call. One day a year, the city of Boise takes applications for subsidized housing. Appointments are granted over the phone between 7:30 and 8:00. Now that she’s leaving her husband, an affordable apartment is critical to Sue and her kids. She pops a couple of pills, washing them down with 7-Up. She lumbers toward the guest room, ushering Katie and Kyle along with her. Kyle takes his time.

  “Get to bed!” she says. “I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  “Got your alarm set?” I call after her.

  “I don’t need an alarm. These guys are my alarm.”

  I think Sue a fool for taking a chance on such an important call. Then I decide I’m more concerned about it than she is.

  Jay emerges from his room, this time wearing a $150 cowboy shirt designed by the country-western singer Garth Brooks. He opens the front door to let in a bubbly blond woman named Stacey, who has apparently just tapped on his window. Stacey is married, but I gather she spends more time with Jay than with her husband. I watch TV while they play slap-and-tickle at the kitchen table.

  Ricky, a young man from the neighborhood, enters through the back door. The trio smokes and jokes, nobody uttering an intelligent remark. I keep hearing them say, “Eleven.” Something happens at 11 pm, I don’t know what. But it’s only 10. I wish they’d just leave, so I can go to sleep. Finally at the appointed hour, they head out.

  I’m too long for the couch, so I unroll the sleeping bag on the floor and flip out the lights. A half hour later, Jay and his friends are back. I feign sleep. They lollygag in the kitchen, louder than before. I hear them count their money out on the table. They have $2.90 among them. They take turns calling the local Denny’s, trying to learn who’s working. I guess one of their friends gives them food. They leave again, and at last I’m able to sleep.

  In the middle of the night, I’m awakened by the creak of the front door. It’s Jay and Stacey. They giggle as they tiptoe into Jay’s room and shut the door. I hear another door open down the hall, then footsteps.

  “Jay, this is the last time!” Edie growls. “I’m tired of this. You wanna fool around, you do it on your own time!”

  “Back off and fuck off!” Jay yells from the other side of the door.

  I wince in the dark.

  When I come out of the shower in the morning, Edie has breakfast on the table. Fried eggs, potatoes, sausage patties and toast—my fourth meal in the last 24 hours. She feeds Laura, and dresses her for school. I do the dishes over much protest from Edie and help Kyle put on his shoes.

  It’s well past eight when Sue shuffles groggily from her room to resume her position next to the chips and soda. Maybe she’ll get that apartment next year.

  Edie fixes me a bag full of grapes from her backyard, prunes and a loaf of her homemade bread. When I leave, Sue is trying to get through to the housing office, complaining that it hurts her fingers to push the buttons. Jay is still asleep in his room with Stacey.

  “He and I are gonna have a talk,” Edie tells me in the driveway. “He goes and picks up these floozies in the bar and brings ’em back home. He thinks this is his private playground. I don’t do that in my house, and I don’t want him doing that in my house.”

  I guess it’s a story as old as Cain, but I’ve never been able to figure how good people can produce rotten kids. I ache for Edie. She deserves better than Jay and Sue. They can’t see in a lifetime what I know in a day: Their mother is a saint. I think of Laura and how lucky she is to have Edie. And I think of myself, and how fortunate I’ve been to know her, if only for a short while.

  “I wanna give you a good luck piece,” she says. “My friend gave me two of ’em, and I wanna share one with you.”

  She holds out a Canadian dollar, polished to a shine. When she presses the coin into my palm and closes my hand around it with her rough fingers, I feel an emotion that can only be described as love.

  “Carry this with you and you’ll never be broke,” she says.

  For the first time since I met her, Edie’s creased and kind face hints at a smile.

  CHAPTER 11

  I walk down the road, my fingers turning the coin in my pocket. The money is foreign, so I’m still penniless, but I suddenly feel wealthy. I realize that this is no longer my trip alone. If I fail to reach Cape Fear, I’ll let down a growing number of people who find hope in this journey.

  Two young men with dirt bikes in the bed of their pickup drive me to Murphy, the seat of Owyhee County. The region was named for the Hawaiian natives brought over in the early 1800s to trap beaver. Many Hawaiians were sent into the Snake River Valley, never to return, presumably killed by Indians. Owyhee is Idaho’s largest county—the combined size of Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island—yet has only one person per square mile. When my ride drops me in Murphy, it looks like the census takers may have padded that figure.

  None of the town’s alleged 50 citizens are in view. The only sound in this dust-blown land is the drone of hot air colliding with more hot air, and the flap of an orange windsock perched above a lonesome airstrip.

  A woman in the sheriff’s office says I can camp on the lawn in front of the jail. After closing time, I get my first look at the tent Tim and Diane gave me. It’s navy blue and pitches into the shape of a dome. The inside is filled with dirt from Tim’s days at the Nevada mine, and my head and feet touch the corners when I lie down—but it’s home.

  I tear off a hunk of Edie’s homemade bread and break out the bag of trail mix Linda bought me back in northern California. I lie on my back and gaze at the stars through the mesh top of the tent. When I roll over to go to sleep, a coyote in the desert bids me good night.

  In the morning, I shampoo my hair and shave in the sink of the bathroom in the courthouse. When I’m home, I shave only
three times a week, due to a combination of sensitive skin and general laziness. But on this trip, I try to shave daily, so as to put my best face forward to would-be benefactors. My strategy works this day. The fellow who stops for me says he never gives strangers rides, but I look different.

  “I think people still respond to decency,” he says. “I think that’s what you struck in me.”

  Don, a local hay grower, is driving 50 miles east to Mountain Home to get a tire fixed. That will put me at Interstate 84, but I see on my map there’s a two-laner that heads out from there across the gut of Idaho.

  Don asks where I’m from, and lets me know how poorly folks from my home state are regarded in these parts. A Californian is lower than a snake’s belly. The very term “Californian” is synonymous with that local swear word “environmentalist.” There is mounting resentment against Californians who cash out and invade the intermountain states, bringing with them such twisted liberal notions as conservation and imposing them on the natives. Most recently, irrigation in the area was suspended—threatening to bankrupt many a farmer—while environmentalists fought for the rights of a new species of snail discovered in a reservoir.

  “It’s gettin’ to be where a guy who wants to live off the land and raise a family can’t do it anymore,” Don says.

  As if on cue, we pass a spray-painted plea on the blacktop: “Don’t Californicate Idaho!”

  Don doesn’t hold my birthplace against me. He even offers me the can of soda resting on the seat.

  “But what are you going to drink?” I say.

  “Oh, I’ll be by a Pepsi machine before you will,” he laughs.

  He stops at a truck stop in Mountain Home to let me out. Before he drives off, he says, “You know, these days people all think we’re masters of our own destiny. I couldn’t go out and do what you’re doing if I thought like that. I hope you know you couldn’t do what you’re doing unless there’s someone looking over you.”