Faithful Travelers

by James Dodson

  I was no fool—unfortunately. My failings were far too ordinary, my dissatisfactions too deep, my vanities far too visible for that. But being with Norumbega Girl and her beast like this had brought me a most unexpected peace of mind, and surely that counted for something. Tossing another log on the signal fire, I finally started to write.

  Dear Maggie,

  I’m sorry I’ve never written you a letter before. Guess I goofed. Parents do that from time to time. I know you’re sad about the divorce. Your mom and I are sad, too. But I have faith that with God’s help and a little patience and understanding on our parts, we’ll all come through this just fine. Being with you like this has helped me laugh again and figure out some important things. That’s what families do, you know—help each other laugh and figure out problems that sometimes seem to have no answer.

  Perhaps I should give you some free advice. That’s what fathers are supposed to do in letters to their children. Always remember that free advice is usually worth about as much as the paper it’s written on and this is written on a used paper bag. Even so, I thought I would tell you a few things I’ve learned since I was about your age. Some food for thought, as your grandfather would say.

  Anyway, Mugs, here goes:

  Always be kind to your brother and never hit. The good news is, he’ll always be younger and look up to you. The bad news is, he’ll probably be bigger.

  Travel a lot. Some wise person said travel broadens the mind. Someone wiser said TV broadens the butt.

  Listen to your head but follow your heart. Trust your own judgment. Vote early. Change your oil regularly. Always say thank you. Look both ways before crossing. When in doubt, wash your hands.

  Remember you are what you eat, say, think, do. Put good things in your mind and your stomach and you won’t have to worry what comes out.

  Learn to love weeding, waiting in line, ignoring jerks like Randy Farmer.

  Always take the scenic route. You’ll get there soon enough. You’ll get old soon enough, too. Enjoy being a kid. Learn patience, which comes in handy when you’re weeding, waiting in line, or trying to ignore a jerk.

  Play hard but fair. When you fall, get up and brush yourself off. When you fail, and you will, don’t blame anybody else. When you succeed, and you will, don’t take all the credit. On both counts, you’ll be wiser.

  By the way, do other things that make you happy as well. You’ll know what they are. Take pleasure in small things. Keep writing letters—the world needs more letters. Smile a lot. Your smile makes angels dance.

  Memorize the lyrics to as many Beatles songs as possible in case life’s one big Beatle challenge. Be flexible. Your favorite Beatle song will probably always change.

  Never stop believing in Santa or the tooth fairy. They really do exist. God does, too. A poet I like says God is always waiting for us in the darkness and you’ll find God when it’s time. Or God will find you.

  Pray. I can’t tell you why praying works any more than I can tell you why breathing works. Praying won’t make God feel any better, but you will. Trust me. Better yet, trust God. Breathe and pray.

  Always leave your campsite better than you found it. Measure twice, cut once. If all else fails, put duct tape on it.

  Don’t lie. Your memory isn’t good enough. Don’t cheat. Because you’ll remember.

  Save the world if you want to. At least turn it upside down a bit if you can’t. While you’re at it, save the penny, too. Skip dessert.

  When you get to college, call your mother every Sunday night.

  Realize it’s okay to cry but better to laugh. Especially at yourself. If and when you get married, realize it’s okay if I cry.

  Read everything you can get your hands on and listen to what people tell you. Count on having to figure it out for yourself, though.

  Never bungee-jump. If you do, don’t tell your father.

  Make a major fool of yourself at least once in life, preferably several times. Being a fool is good for what ails you. We live in a serious time. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

  Always wear your seat belt even if I don’t.

  Remember that what you choose to forget may be at least as important as what you choose to remember. Someone very wise once said this to me—but I can’t remember who it was or exactly what it means.

  Admit your mistakes. Forgive everybody else’s.

  Notice the stars but don’t try to be one. Always paint the underside first. Be kind to old people and creatures great and small. Learn to fight but don’t fight unless the other guy throws the first punch.

  Don’t tell your mother about this last piece of advice.

  Learn when it’s time to open your mind and close your mouth. (I’m still working on this one.)

  Lose your heart. But keep your wits.

  Be at least as grateful for your life as I am.

  Despite what you hear, no mistake is permanent and nothing goes unforgiven. God grades on a curve.

  One more thing: Take care of your teeth and don’t worry about how you look. You look just fine. That’s two things, I guess.

  Finally, there’s a story I like about an Indian boy at his time of initiation. As you climb to the mountaintop, the old chief tells his son, you’ll come to a great chasm—a deep split in the earth. It will frighten you. Your heart will pause.

  Jump, says the chief. It’s not as far as you think.

  This is excellent advice for girls, too. Life is wonderful but it will frighten you deeply at times.

  Jump, my love.

  You’ll make it.

  Love, Dad

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Stones in the Passway

  THERE WAS A crack forming in Old Blue’s dash, working its way north to the windshield. I regretted seeing this: the beginning of the end. It meant my beloved old truck was splitting apart. I would soon have to get out the duct tape, and God only knew where that would lead. Soon everything I owned would have duct tape on it, whether it needed it or not.

  We’d had music from a Ukrainian polka festival and a lovely Chopin sonata through the Texas Panhandle followed by the Oklahoma Ag Report (soybeans up, corn steady, hogs down), followed by the noon news, which led with the report of another suicide bombing in the Gaza Strip and the mother of the Palestinian youth suspected of taking thirteen innocent people with him to kingdom come proudly saying: “My son is in Heaven now. He is drinking with his friends and has eleven virgin brides to please him. He is very happy.” Hold the casseroles for that grieving mother, I thought. On the plus side of the aisle it was the fiftieth anniversary of Tide laundry detergent, named by a company executive who was vacationing by the ocean in Maine.

  “Dad,” Maggie asked, combing out the hair of one of her Barbies, “what did she mean that he is happy to be dead now?”

  I tried to explain how ancient religious hatreds, fueled by politics and fear, invariably meant innocent people got caught in the cross fire between madmen. On a happier note, I said, it also meant it was time to jump off the interstate for a cool afternoon drink and quick gas-up. We’d just passed over the Canadian River (low from the drought) and a weathered sign with an American flag on it read: WELCOME TO HINTON. WHERE WE STILL WAVE. I spotted a Texaco sign rising like a lonely beacon at the top of an exit ramp. The vast brown emptiness of west Oklahoma was almost overwhelming and I was actually beginning to doze off. The break would do us all good.

  As we rolled up the exit ramp, I was thinking about the irony of the news report and our destination—the Oklahoma City bombing site, Middle East meets Middle America—when a stray heat-seeking missile suddenly struck the front end of Old Blue. That’s what it seemed like, at any rate. There was a muffled explosion in the engine compartment followed by a large blast, and then the hood suddenly flew up. Black smoke enveloped the front of the truck and the engine lost all power. I pulled hard on the steering wheel and we swerved into the Texaco station, spewing gravel. I jammed on the brakes and grabbed Maggie’s arm, unhooked her shoulder
harness, and yanked her across my seat. I carried her well away from the burning truck and ran back to get Amos, who had moved up to my seat but seemed in no particular rush to evacuate ship. Despite his grumbles, I scooped him up like a sheep and carried him over to Maggie.

  “Dad,” Maggie shrieked. “Susie!”

  “Oh damn. Right.” I ran back and got Susie. The flames in the engine were a foot high. I rushed back and said to my daughter, “Go inside the station and have them call for a fire truck. Don’t come out till I tell you.”

  Then I ran and fetched a rubber hose, cranked on the spigot, and hauled the drooling hose back to my burning truck. A few minutes later, the fire was out and my face and arms were covered by a film of fire grime and flecks of black soot. I dropped the hose and walked slowly into the air-conditioned convenience market, where I found a young woman sitting placidly at the counter with her chin resting in her hand. She didn’t appear to have moved since lunchtime.

  “Reckon you don’t need the fire department,” she drawled pleasantly.

  “Apparently not,” I said, wiping some grit from my left eye. “By any chance is there a Chevrolet place in town?”

  “Naw. They’s a Chevy place in Oklahoma City, though.”

  I nodded, the enormity of what had just happened beginning to land on me like a house. It would take more than duct tape to get Old Blue rolling again.

  “How about a good truck mechanic?”

  “They’s Jerry.”

  “Jerry?”

  “Yeah. He works on big rigs, mostly. I reckon I could call him to come take a look.”

  I thought for a moment. I was half tempted to rent a Ryder truck, shove everything we had inside it, and head straight home, leaving Old Blue to the people of Hinton. Plant a few zinnias in her and she’d make a half-decent municipal flowerpot.

  “Would you do that, please?”

  She nodded; her chin reluctantly parted company with her hand and she picked up a ph one book and began slowly thumbing for a number.

  I walked over to where Maggie was staring into the depths of the drink cooler. She selected a Gatorade and asked if it would take long to fix Old Blue. I explained that we’d just blown an engine and might have to simply leave Old Blue and rent another truck in order to get home on time.

  “I’m not leaving Old Blue,” she said defiantly. “She’s our truck.”

  “Then I’ll put you on a flight home to Mom and I’ll stay with Old Blue till she gets fixed. The last thing I want to do is argue about it.”

  “I’m staying too.” There would be no argument.

  She asked if she could go outside and look at Old Blue and I said she could but to keep a safe distance. The engine compartment was a charred canyon of exposed wires and sizzling metal.

  I stood there myself for a moment staring into the depths of the drink cooler after she was gone, wondering what the hell we should really do. This was my worst fear come to life, I thought: stranded in the middle of God knows where with an old dog and a little girl. WELCOME TO MOTORIST HELL. HAVE A NICE DAY, the sign should have read. Just when you think you’ve got life on the run, life runs you down like a dog.

  Behind me, the clerk helpfully drawled: “Jerry says he’ll be up directly.” I turned and smiled at her, said thank you, then studied the cooler again in case emergency instructions had been left there by the last fool who’d broken down in Hinton. I mentally kicked myself because I remembered that I’d been meaning to check the oil for the past couple thousand miles. Do as I write, Love, I should have added to my letter to Maggie, not as I do.

  “Yonnacappychino?”

  I glanced at the clerk again. She looked seventeen and probably had three kids living in a trailer on the edge of town.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “I said yonnacappychino? We got a new machine that makes it.”

  It took a moment for me to realize what she was asking—pretty odd when you consider I’m a dumb southerner, too.

  I smiled at her. What an age of miracles this was. I’d never bought cappuccino from a machine at a convenience market, but travel, as I always say, broadens the mind. So I ordered one.

  —

  Jerry hitched a ride to see us in his buddy Billy Paul Hughes’s Chevy conversion van. Jerry was a slight white guy with shivery cowboy legs and a two-day growth of beard and Billy Paul was a handsome black guy with an impressive amount of gold jewelry hanging around his neck. Jerry took one glance at Old Blue’s engine, shook his head ruefully, and pronounced her dead. He suggested that Billy Paul take us into town and he’d haul Old Blue down to his shop and make a few phone calls and see what he could figure out. I asked if anybody in town rented cars and he said he thought Rick England Ford might; that was up on the left past the school yard and before you reached the square.

  Billy Paul dropped Jerry off at his shop and gave us a lift two miles into town to the Hinton Motel. His air-conditioned van had gold shag carpeting from the floor to the ceiling and a box on the floor was spilling dozens of blues tapes. Robert Johnson was moaning about stones in the passway to a slide guitar and we learned that Billy Paul was a blues singer, too, presently doing a gig at the Plum Tree Lounge on 36th Street in Oklahoma City.

  “You mean where they blew up that building?” Maggie asked him.

  “That’s right, sweetheart,” Billy Paul said to her softly. “That was some turble, I want to tell you. People still picking up the pieces. Tryin’ to figure how something like that could happen out here in God’s Country.”

  Billy Paul had come out to Hinton for a little bass fishing with Jerry because Jerry knew all the best spots. Due to the drought, he said, the bass fishing was poor so mostly they were hanging around the garage shooting the breeze. Jerry was a heck of a mechanic, Billy Paul wanted us to know, and if anybody could get that truck rollin’ again quick, it was ole Jerry. I turned around and looked at my companions in back. They were sitting side by side, thoroughly enjoying the air-conditioning and slide guitar blues and the nice shag-carpeted ride.

  Billy Paul dropped us off at the only motel in town. Beneath a blistering three o’clock sun, the parking lot of the Hinton Motel was empty and I went into the office, which turned out to be the owners’ private home. A Chihuahua was raising hell and an elderly man was lying on the floor. His legs were shriveled sticks and he was grunting unintelligibly. My first thought was that he’d had a stroke or something. Ignoring the dog, I lifted him up and returned him to his recliner chair. Wheel of Fortune was playing on his TV. He nodded and tried to smile, then turned his skull-like head back to Vanna White. Maggie came in and quieted the dog. A moment later, a large Ford swung into the carport and a woman carrying a grocery bag came into the office, flushed and apologetic. “I had to run out and get him a prescription,” she explained, looking at the man. Her name was Dixie Snow and the man with the shriveled legs was her husband. He’d had Parkinson’s disease, she explained, for nearly thirty years and never sat in one place for long. “Worries me half to death at times. We’ve had him everywhere, even down to Dallas,” she said with a sigh, looking at her husband, who was watching Vanna like a hawk. “Not a whole lot, I suppose, they can do for us now.”

  Mrs. Snow gave us room number nine, which had a joining door to room ten—two rooms for the price of one, a suite for twenty-six bucks a night. The rooms were plain and simple and had no ph ones but were spotlessly clean and featured a pair of window air conditioners that could have chilled a supermarket meat locker. There were also a couple color television sets with forty-two cable channels and a fresh indoor drinking toilet that one member of our expedition made a beeline for. Dog and girl then assumed comfy viewing positions on the beds and I walked down the road to call on Rick England Ford to see about rental wheels.

  It was only a quarter-mile hoof to the dealership, past Jim Seurer Field, where the Hinton High Comets played, the Sooner Superette, and a farm implement lot. I walked past a yellow road sign politely advising me that “Hitchhikers may be
escaping prisoners” and wondered vaguely if people might think I was a guy making a mad dash for freedom at a slow walk. A Dodge truck rolled leisurely past and a man and woman both waved. I remembered I was in a place where people still waved so I waved back.

  While waiting for Rick England to appear, I asked his secretary how many people resided in Hinton. It seemed a tad quiet, the kind of town where nothing but weather much happened and old men like Mr. Snow waited for it to be yesterday. “Not countin’ prisoners,” she said, gently popping her gum, “I reckon about sixteen hundred.”

  Rick England didn’t rent cars, he said, and then he remembered he might have something I could use while we were here. I followed him outside to a mustard-colored, vinyl-roofed Lincoln Town Car, a true relic from the highrolling Ronnie Reagan years of wretched personal excess. Her grillwork looked as impressive as the seal of the U.S. Supreme Court and after Rick England gave her a neat jump start, she ran surprisingly well. “She’s loaded,” Rick said, slipping into salesman persona. “Velour seats, air, power everything, nice radio.” He agreed to rent her to me for $29. “A day?” I said. He smiled. “Well, for however long you need it.” What a deal, I thought, and what a neighborly guy. I borrowed his secretary’s phone to call Jerry the mechanic.

  “I was just fixin’ to come find you,” Jerry said. “I got some bad news and some good news. Which you want first?” I suggested he get the bad news over with. “They want twenty-eight hunnerd dollars to haul your truck to Oklahoma City and pop a new engine in her.” Feeling my pain, he didn’t wait for me to ask for the good news. “But I got this friend named Bill whose son is waitin’ for a kidney transplant and’s got a nice rebuilt three-fifty in his truck. Motor’s got less than eight thousand on her and she runs like new. He wanted seven hunnerd for it but I talked him down to five. Said he’d pull the engine for me this afternoon and have it here in the mornin’. Everything goes right, I figger I could have her up and runnin’ for you by this time tomorrow evenin’. I get five to put in an engine. So I figger with oil and filters and fluids it’ll come out to about eleven hunnerd.”