Bernie stood behind me when it was my turn to step into the stand. I was second in line, and my first single was a crossing shot from left-to-right. I got myself comfortable on the gun and just before I called for the target, I tried to remember to relax and not think. When I yelled “pull,” that clarity went right out the window, and I was back to the nanosecond second-guessing, the shifting of focus back and forth, listening to my own thoughts. Bernie yelled from behind me after I missed. “Stop thinking and shoot!,” he said, like a high school wrestling coach. The message was clear: get out of my head and get out of my own way. I took two deep breaths as the shots went down the line, muttered “just focus on the target,” and made a conscious effort to do nothing consciously. I hit my first double of the day and the whole world changed. I stopped trying to manage the shooting. I stopped thinking about the carpet and ceiling. I stopped worrying about taking notes in my head and focused on nothing more than the edge of the target. The gun, which had been heavy and unwieldy all day, became an invisible extension of my body, weightless.
I didn’t hit all the rest of the twenty-two targets that made up my round of five stand, but I hit enough to more than triple my morning percentage. The ones I hit felt as natural as a flinch, instinct. The ones I missed I forgot about instantly. No berating. No second-guessing. I missed one—whatever. I’ll get the next one, and half the time I did. By the time the game ended, I wanted more. I wanted to keep shooting. I felt like a different person—confident, awake, unfazed for the first time in a long time.
John put his hand on my shoulder as I was walking away from the stands and back toward the tent. “Great shooting today,” he said. He was right. I may not have hit very many targets, but the shooting was fantastic. I asked an older student to take a picture of me with the instructors, and in it I’m smiling in a way I haven’t for a long time. For all the guilt or anxiety I feel about fixing things, about being away, about work, I realized right then how important it is to have an escape, to have something to change your focus. It’s pretty easy to get wrapped up in the everyday. A guy like me (and so many others I know) has to go in a lot of different directions, to keep a lot of balls in the air. The constant demand for multilensed focus, the strident pressure to handle so many things—it can break you down, make you lose sleep and a piece of yourself. Sometimes you just need to forget about all those things. To focus on something new—to see the edges of the target and concentrate on nothing else. You need to let your body move without thought, to allow your instincts to take over.
Sometimes you need to stop thinking and just shoot.
I was on a high of sorts as I snapped a few photos on my phone and climbed back into my rental car, having no idea what I was going to do. I had been in Freeport for eighteen hours, the longest I had ever been in that perfect little town without visiting Bean’s flagship store, and I was tempted to head straight there. But I was also wet from the persistent drizzle, my feet hurt, and I needed a shower, so I headed back over to my hotel for a fresh set of clothes, a steaming hot rinse, and some Advil for my aching joints. I remembered reading about these classes in the catalogs of my youth and having just completed one, it felt like a circle coming to a close.
The sun was already almost down in the gray New England sky by the time I got back out to my rental car. I always forget how much earlier it gets dark when you’re that far east, and the rain had returned, this time in full, big drops that thwatted on my coat as I sprinted across the parking lot. I followed the main road into town and found it awash in the soft glow of store windows. From the outside, Bean seemed to glow like a warm fire and I had a feeling like nostalgia. The last time I had pulled into the parking lot, I was in a spat with the woman who was about to become my fiancée. It had been ten years and four days earlier and a lot had changed. Bean had gone from a single rambling store to a campus of buildings housing individual departments. The town, which had been small and felt like a Main Street, had grown tremendously, if not in size, then in commercial prestige. The old schoolhouse was now an Abercrombie & Fitch. The little shops along the main thoroughfare now bore the emblems of Gucci and Patagonia. It amazed me to think that a hundred years before, the real Leon Leonwood Bean had just wanted to make a better hunting boot and he had spawned a retail destination.
I parked and ran into the closest door I could find, the one leading to the brand-new Hunting and Fishing wing of the old flagship building. I had forgotten that there are no locks on the doors at Bean. The store is open 24/7/365, so there is no need. I don’t want to get weepy or overly sentimental, but it felt oddly like a homecoming to return to this place. The last time I had been there, I proposed to my wife. Our life had not even begun yet. There was no Jack, no Dylan, no Molly. There was no credit card and college debt, no years of struggling just to get by and wondering if I would have enough money for gas or if I would have to call in poor to work. I had not yet left Virginia and we had not even considered a move to Cincinnati. So much had changed. So much had gone right and so much had gone wrong. So much had simply gone. It’s funny that a store can generate such a feeling of milestone, such a sense of accomplishment and regret, pride and embarrassment. Of course it had nothing to do with the store itself. That was just a building. A rapidly expanding building. But that particular store had represented the dreams I had in my youth, the ideas I had had for my future, visions that did not, could not, and would not come to fruition.
I wandered aimlessly for nearly two hours before I realized I was hungry. Since I had left Cincinnati the previous afternoon, I had only had a few bites of bad airport Chinese food, a few cups of coffee, and the sandwich provided by the class. I wanted something good. I wanted lobster and found it a block away at a place that from the outside looked promising, but inside felt like an old Kentucky Fried Chicken. But they served fresh Maine lobster, local beer, and a chowder that had won a regional competition that very afternoon.
Tucking into my meal, which was brought to my table on a cheap plastic tray and in paper-lined baskets, I fell into listening in on the conversations taking place around me. There was a family I had seen earlier in the boot section. Mom, Dad, and three teenaged kids. It sounded like they were from Boston and were up doing some shopping for clothes. The entire booth next to them was filled with familiar brown Bean bags and the kids were talking about Adderall use among the members of the lacrosse team.
“I don’t get what the big deal is,” said one of the boys.
“The big deal is that they are prescription drugs and should not be taken without a prescription,” said mom.
“I only do it when I have to study,” the boy said.
“Or when you want to party,” said the girl, who was probably the middle child.
“No,” he said.
“Honey?” said the mom. “Are you gonna chime in here?”
“Don’t take drugs,” said the dad, who seemed much more interested and concerned with the last claw of his twin lobsters than his child’s dalliances with prescription drugs. The whole conversation had been so casual, it terrified me. I remember not feeling that comfortable admitting to my parents that I was signing up for marching band, let alone telling them that I had scored some absconded drugs and was taking them to help me study. I had a terrified vision of my future. Would this be our family someday?
I shook my head and turned my attention to a couple from Ohio sitting at the table on the other side of me. They were young, perhaps in their midtwenties, and had gotten married the day before. They were spending their honeymoon in Maine, a place she had never been and he had always loved. They had that dewy gleam of potential about them, and that too felt familiar. I felt like I was having a Scrooge moment, as if I had just been visited by the ghosts of family future and past. For so long, I had assumed my love for Maine and Bean were unique. I had assumed our story of getting engaged there was special. But it could not be. The company would have folded long ago if it had been rely
ing on my sales. I took a certain comfort in the realization though and sort of enjoyed the moment of “Craig Heimbuch, this is your life.”
So much to ruminate upon, so much fodder for cogitation, I drank two beers, finished my lobster, and stopped just short of licking the Styrofoam bowl my chowder had been delivered in. It was getting late, around ten, but I wasn’t ready to go back to my cheap hotel room and watch CSI reruns, so I went back to the store and wandered around, picking up and putting down a million things I wanted to buy. I called Rebecca and over the phone we picked out a fleece jacket for her to replace the one I had bought the night we got engaged. I paid for it and walked around the store until my feet were tired, until after one in the morning, when I finally gave up and went back to my hotel to fall perfectly, comfortably to sleep.
The next morning, I had naively hoped to go for a long hike. Just before leaving the store, I had bought a guide book, a flashlight, a new pair of socks, and a couple of Power Bars. I woke and picked a couple of parks up the coast to check out, but when I went outside, the rain was heavier than it had been the previous day. Thick, deep, soaking rain, and the sky hung low, mingling with the tops of the everywhere pine trees. It was a Sunday and I had nothing to do. I wasn’t flying out until Monday evening and I weighed my options. I thought about driving four hours up the coast to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park and considered the idea of doing nothing but walking around the store again. It was early. I was up and showered, dressed, and in the car by seven, which gave me an entire day of possibility. I stopped for a breakfast sandwich at a little bistro across the street from Bean and decided that even though the weather was cold and wet, I didn’t want to be inside. I wanted to drive, just drive, and that’s what I did.
I had been dreaming for ten years about having a day with nothing to do in Maine. Down East, on the coast. No schedule, no expectations. All alone with a rental car, limited only by my own willingness.
I drove for an hour and a half before a detour gave me pause to stop. I had driven through Rockland before. A decade ago. Five years before that too. But I can’t remember ever having stopped. Hunger, boredom, a general need to get out and move around must have come over me, and I decided to stop and wander the rain-drenched streets of Rockland, Maine.
I looked at the menus hanging in the windows of all the little mom-and-pop shops, the sandwich joints, the corner bars that interrupt the street-side flow of art galleries and curio shops. Rockland is for the tourists, sure. It’s right on US 1 between Portland, where people fly into or where the train from Boston arrives, and Acadia National Park—one of the busiest and most-visited in the country. During the summer, this stretch of road is one long tangled mass of cars with out-of-state plates. Same thing later in the fall when the leaves turn and the “peepers” come out like cockroaches to take pictures, buy maple syrup, and wear their new wool sweaters. But on this rainy day in early October, the leaves are still mostly green and the summer crowds have all but disappeared. So Rockland may be built to accommodate tourists, but the shops, the galleries, and the little restaurants are all still open. They are all still there. A local economy built on people from other places that has retained a semblance of soul, community.
I’m not normally one to scrutinize menus for very long. I’m not all that particular, to be honest. But I looked because I wanted something a little different at a place that accepted American Express. I was nearing the end of the central downtown block when I caught a sign out of the corner of my eye. A small, cottagelike building had a giant wraparound sign that read something like TRY THE CLUB SANDWICH THAT BEAT BOBBY FLAY.
The owners of The Brass Compass Cafe are obviously very proud of the fact that the celebrity chef and host of, among other shows, Throwdown came to town one unsuspecting summer day to challenge them to a lobster club sandwich challenge. Even more proud that they won. So proud that the story of the affair is printed in bold type on the cover of their menu. Ordinarily this sort of opportunity to dine two steps from fame wouldn’t mean much to me, but there was something about this place that drew me in. Plus, the menu posted on the window had the AmEx blue shield on the bottom. And the idea of eating a club sandwich piled high with Maine lobster meat while meandering up the coast of that state? Forget about it. I had to try it.
I ordered coffee to warm my chattering bones and told the server I’d have the special—the lobster club and fries. The place was small and cozy with a kitchen that opened into the dining room. It was still Sunday morning, so there were some leftover postchurch diners about and more than a couple of tables filled with the burly, thick-fingered kind of guys who looked like they made their living in the harbor, about two hundred yards to my rear as I sat with my back to the window, eagerly anticipating what was sure to be a unique dining experience.
I watched the cook—chef isn’t the right word for a guy wearing a T-shirt that read something like IT’S NOT THAT YOU’RE BORING, IT’S JUST THAT I’M AWESOME—grab whole handfuls of precooked bacon and pile them on the homemade wheat bread that was still warm from the oven. A woman used what looked like a soup ladle to pile thick chunks of mayo-drenched lobster on top of that. When the server brought my plate out and set it down on the worn wood table, it made the kind of thump you’d expect to hear as a peg-legged sea captain paces the deck of a ship. It wasn’t just that the plate was heavy, but the food—oh God, the food—was rich and thick and filling.
I half considered splitting the sandwich—taking the lobster and bread layer off the bottom bacon, tomato, and lettuce layer—but I decided I must soldier on to gain full appreciation of the pseudofamous sandwich. One messy, ill-executed bite—who hasn’t dreamed of lobster raining down onto their plate like delicious manna?—and I understood immediately why this sandwich beat down Bobby Flay. In the story printed on the menu, Flay’s recipe is described with derision as having included “exotic spices like cumin” in order to add a flavorful bump. And I thought, why? Why ruin such a perfect thing? The sweet, creamy lobster, the smoky and salty bacon, the savory burst of tomatoes impossibly fresh for the time of year. It was better than almost anything I had ever eaten. That the bread was homemade and delicious, that the portion was beanstalk giant, that the fries were fresh cut and steaming hot—bonuses all. This sandwich could have been served on a month-old hot dog bun with some freezer-burned Ore-Idas and still be wet-dream-inducing good.
After I was finished, I stared for a bit, absorbing the warmth of the small café, the rain clacking on the window behind me, appreciating the moment. I don’t get away all that often. Not like this. I travel for work. I travel with my family. But rarely do I fully immerse myself in a sense of escape. I’m usually too hardwired for productivity, too worried about what needs to be done. But that moment, the rain, the coffee, the sated feeling and sense that I really had nothing to do, no better place to be, it was as if I were sitting in a daydream, a completely constructed reality I could never really have imagined.
I went to pay the bill only to find out The Brass Compass does not, in fact, take American Express. Whatever, I thought. I handed the woman some of the small stash of cash I carry when traveling, and when she asked me if everything was okay, I told her it was excellent. I say this all the time. I’ve said it at the cash register at Dunkin’ Donuts and, really, has an experience there ever been excellent? But I meant it this time. I really did. I spent the rest of the day driving and wandering. Wandering and driving. Stopping when the notion to stop came to me. Moving on when I felt like moving on.
I felt the most satisfying sense of exploration, the kind of thing you can’t do during your daily commute, between getting dinner on the table, the dishes done, and the kids in bed. I needed it. I think most of us do. But we have to be willing to wander, if only for a day. We have to be willing to follow a whim, not a schedule or a to-do list. It makes us better in the long run, better in our daily lives. That sandwich was the best meal I’ve had in a long time. Not just the food, t
he meal. It was the kind of thing that can only happen to an open-minded traveler—an experience better than the sum of its succulent parts.
I got as far north as Camden, maybe a little farther on, where I stopped and walked along a pebbly beach, took some pictures, and looked out across the water. The channel islands, the low sky, the lobster boats and sailboats moored in the rolling tide. It was a postcard. So enthralled was I by the whole scene, I hardly noticed that I was soaked and my skin was covered in goose pimples. Or maybe I did, but I just didn’t care. I wanted to soak in every moment, every drop, and just before I turned around for my return trip to Freeport, I realized that I wished my family were there with me. I wish my kids were kicking sand on my boots and my wife was there wanting more coffee. I wished they had been there for that sandwich, that drive, the whole experience. But it needed to be this way. I needed to be alone in order to realize how much I appreciated them.
A lot had happened in the decade since the last time I had been in Maine and I had hardly taken the time to notice. That’s the way it is with life sometimes. You get so focused on the stuff you need, the things you don’t have, the stress, the ambition, the obligation, that you forget to look around. You forget to appreciate what you’ve got. I know that sounds schlocky and trite, but turning back onto US 1 South, I knew it was true.
PART IV
FALL
And Now We Shall Do Manly Things Page 16