chapter 1.
i meet a fallen angel
... Beatific? No. Beat and broken was closer to the truth. He’d peed himself in the truck. He stunk of piss and sweat and booze. He wore a dirty, blue blazer. One of the sleeves was coming off at the shoulder. Not enough coat for the road. I knew what it was like. On the road, after a few days without enough sleep and food, you get cold. Cold even with the sun shining down. I was learning.
He was breathing. He wasn’t dead. The fall didn’t kill him. The driver had tossed him from the shotgun side of a cab-over. It must have been a good six feet. “Here catch,” the driver yelled after ejecting me without ceremony. I tried to protest. I didn’t have anything to do with him. Didn’t even know he was in the sleeper till he’d pissed himself. I had assumed that the stench in the cab was the driver. Or maybe me, I’d been a few days without a shower.
“Catch,” and the trucker kicked my pack out the door. The old man followed. I didn’t catch. I dodged. Glad to have my stuff. Amazed at my new companion.
The truck pulled off. Two shifts up the road the door opened. I ran up. The driver had reconsidered. I didn’t want to get stuck out here. He was a good guy. I was relieved. I hadn’t seen another car for quite a while. No farms, no stores, gas stations, nothing. Barely even pavement on the old road. It was getting dark. I huffed up, and the driver leaned out. “Catch.” The old man’s pack flew out. The door closed, and the big cab bounced away. Shift. Shift. Shift. Shift. And gone.
I didn’t know what the hell to do. I should have just shouldered my pack and walked away. Left the sonofabitch lying there. But I didn’t, couldn’t. I was young and full of the romance of the road.
The drunk had a ragged rucksack with an old-style, quilted sleeping bag strapped on. I saw his canteen and figured, that’s what you did to revive someone, splash some water on their face. So I did.
He woke up fast.
“JesusMaryJoseph. What the hell? What the hell ya doing? Wasting good booze. Gimme that. What ya doing with my stuff?”
He was standing in a flash—ready to do battle, prepared to meet whatever challenge life threw at him. Wiping his face, licking his hand. “Gimme that!” His eyes were beautiful, wild, feral. He fixed on me, breathing hard.
Then his body relaxed, eyes softened. He looked at me and smiled. I suppose he saw that I was benign. Or maybe just weak.
He looked me up and down, took a swig from his canteen, looked up and down the road. “Got a smoke?” I did and gave him one and lit one myself. He lit his match by folding the cover over and pulling the match out and flicking it to fire with one hand, then brought the flame up to trembling lips—the dancing cigarette steadied with his other hand braced against his chin. It was a neat trick. A trick I would practice, and later adopt, right down to the trembling lips.
He took another swig.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked.
“In the woods,” I answered.
He looked me up and down again. “Stupid?” he asked.
I didn’t reply.
“Stupid. Ya think I’m stupid?
“Trees. Trees! I can see the damn wood!” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a comb and ran it through his hair from front to back as a sort of pause to consider his situation. Then, “What the hell? Where we headed?”
I hesitated. He didn’t wait for my reply.
“Don’t matter. Where don’t matter. Shanghaied is as Shanghaied does. When’s the only thing. When we goin’ get going?”
He brushed himself off. He picked up his pack and looked at it, then at me. “Must be some place just up the road. Where’d you say?”
“I don’t know.” I really didn’t know where we were, not exactly. “The driver said something about a shortcut. He said that he used to haul cranberries. Then we got here out in the gravel. The road kinda fell apart. The pavement … I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Cranberries? Cranberries? The hell.”
“That’s what he said, ‘Cranberries.’”
The old man shook his head.
“Which way we going?”
I pointed east. The old man looked up the road, then turned and looked west toward a majestic line of thunderheads. A spring storm was headed our way.
“Didn’t see nothing back there?”
“Just trees.”
“Whew … trees … trees again.
“Hey. You ain’t no Frenchie. I was in some cafe. Cafe nice an’ cozy. Man had a bottle. Can-a-dee. Montréal. Where the hell?”
“No, we’re not in Montréal.” We were a long way from Montréal, so far I couldn’t imagine him asking about it. “We’re not even in Canada,” I added. “We’re in Jersey, South Jersey, Pine Barrens.”
“I’ll be damned and delivered. Don’t look like no Jersey to me. How the hell? No matter. See any cars out here?”
“No, nothing.”
“Hell of a thing, stuck out here in nowhere with some stupid kid. Whew. I need a nip.
“Hoist the hook an’ cast her off.
“Cast her off to Hell.”
He took a swig, then tucked his canteen in his rucksack and hoisted it on his shoulder and started walking east. Broken pavement and dusty gravel stretched through walls of low pines, straight and empty. I fell in beside him.
“What ya doing there?
“Don’t know nothing, do ya? Get over there on the other side.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t know. Maybe I smelled bad? Maybe, who knows? He saw me hesitate.
“You know Mutt and Jeff?”
I didn’t. And he saw I didn’t.
“Burns and Allen? You know ‘em?
“Abbot and Costello?
“Adam and Eve?”
I didn’t see the point.
“Team, boy. They’s a team. We’s a team. You gotta look. Share and share alike.”
He went on to tell me to walk down the other side of the road and to look for stuff on the ground that people had lost or thrown out of cars. “Found a diamond ring once,” he explained. “Set me up for two weeks. Bunked in a real nice hotel right next to the old Trocadero. Two weeks. Whiskey. Wine. Women. Good times. Good booze.
“Gotta be a story in that ring. Eh?
“You see a car, you stick out your thumb.”
“What if it’s going the wrong way?”
“No wrong way. No wrong way out here. Squall ah coming. Which way don’t matter.”
I supposed that he was right. Who knew where this road led? Or which direction was mine? I walked on, looking for whatever I might find. After all, that was the whole point, right? To find Jack and Neal’s It somewhere on my road. Who knew what road it would be?
“Found a fifty dollar bill once,” he said. “Fifty dollar bill in the grass.
“Imagine some good ol’ boy was lookin’ at his fifty dollar bill, and ‘Oops’ out the window she goes.
“Didn’t even look back.
“Maybe he did. Maybe he circled around and looked but he just couldn’t find it. Good for me. Eh?
“Found a gold tooth. Gold tooth shining in the sun. Sitting in a gutter. Got some money for that one. Gold, set me up for two weeks. Hotel on Vine. Block from the Troc. That’s burlesque boy. Gurly-girls. Two weeks on that gold tooth.
“Gotta be a story in that tooth.”
I didn’t respond. My new partner didn’t enjoy silence.
“Found me a whole set of dentures. Dentures laying in the road. Gold tooth too! Man driving down the road and ‘Oops,’ opens his mouth and out they go. Think he’d go back. Get em. Eh?”
He was like a feral, third-world dog doing all its tricks to get your attention so you’d give it the heel of your sandwich. I had no patience. I was young and not a little perturbed at the situation. This wasn’t working out like the book. I said, “Maybe someone smacked him and knocked those teeth out of his head? Eh?”
“Knocked ‘em out? Knocked ‘em out?” He stopped walking and looked at me hard. “Why you got to be so mean? Just making conversation. Passing the time.”
“You’re scaring off the cars,” I said.
We walked, and we walked, and there was nothing but road and trees and the thunderheads at our backs.
“WooWee. Lookiee here.”
He’d found something.
“What?”
He laughed. “Dog shit. Pile of dog shit. Watch yo’ step. Dog shit.”
“How do you know it’s from a dog?” I asked.
“I know my shit,” he said and thought himself so funny that he said it again. “I know my shit boy. I know my shit.”
I should have known better. I should have jumped out of the truck when it turned off the main road. But it was a good ride. This driver didn’t say much. He mostly listened to the radio and drove mile after mile. I liked that. Sometimes they wanted conversation. Some wanted you just to listen. Some of them were pretty angry about the war, angry about the hippies and the long hair. Some were hippies and wanted you to roll them a joint. Some had good stories. Some of them wanted to freak you out with their stories. One guy had me take the wheel and whipped it out. When I drew back—and let-go of the wheel—he put my hand back on the wheel and said, “I gotta pee. You either hold the wheel or something else.” I held the wheel while he peed into a gallon jug. He was an okay guy, bought me a burger later, and we laughed about it. This latest one was just a guy who wanted to go home, deadheading, sans trailer, bobtail. I guess that’s why he risked the broken pavement of our lonely backroad. But I didn’t know about the other passenger, didn‘t know he’d previously picked up my new teammate.
“There’re no dogs out here.”
He nudged it with his toe. “Looks fresh.” He turned to me with great sincerity. He smiled and flashed his eyes. “Since this here is a brand new partnership. And since youse the junior partner. I’m gonna be generous and give you this first prize we got.”
We kept walking. Looking. He couldn’t not talk.
“Fresh dog shit. Must be a house or a farm or somethin’ here. Maybe we can get a bite to eat? Maybe get a ride outta here?
“Maybe find a roadhouse?
“Maybe find a bar?”
“Maybe find a diamond,” I said back sarcastically. “Eh?”
I could feel the storm at my back. Thunderheads building fast in the west. Typical spring weather pattern. We’d be getting wet before sunset. We hadn’t seen any cars at all. Who drove out here?
“You got an umbrella?”
“What?”
“Umbrella. Gonna be getting some rain. Where’s that farm them dogs come from? Hell, maybe we’s going the wrong way? Maybe we should turn ‘round? Find that farm and them dogs.”
I had an anorak in my pack. Not much good in anything more than a mist. A downpour two days before soaked me. Freezing rain had saturated it before I’d gotten under an overpass. No overpasses here, nothing to pass over. The pine on both sides didn’t look like much protection either. Maybe we’d get a ride? Easier to get rides in bad weather, but it would be hard to see us out here in the rain and dark. We could have used a streetlight or two. Too bad I had the old guy with me. It would be harder to get rides with two, harder still with a shabby, old stumblebum. Impossible when there weren’t even any cars.
“Lookiee here.”
I could see that there was a break in the trees. The ghost of a track ran off to the north, two snaking impressions in the ground where tires had lately rolled. It was overgrown with brush and saplings. I crossed over to take a look. The young pines had been bent down fairly recently. Their broken stems showed bright yellow. Their needles were still green. Somebody in a car or pickup had driven over it and knocked down the fresh growth. I walked a few feet in, but couldn’t see anything. It was just a two-rut track, probably went to nothing.
The squall line stretched across the western horizon, tremendous, heroic thunderheads rising out of it, the highest already beginning to flatten in the upper atmosphere. Dead west, a tower climbed toward the sun—dense with malevolent intent to blot out the day. The sun’s corona held on, seemed to explode over the edge of the cloud with rays crimson against an azure sky, defiant against the cruel, dark tower. And then the sun was gone. I looked down, and the old man was holding up a big, wooden arrow. He was shaking it and pointing down the overgrown track like a character in a cartoon. Was this all an insane dream in the back of some rolling ride? No, not a cartoon dream. The arrow was a wrecked sign he had found in the underbrush. A bit of white paint still clung to it. He shook it once more and tossed it down. It was growing dark, but the storm was still a while off. We had some time. I wanted to stay on the road. Maybe a ride? But the old man was already headed off up the old track. “What ya looking at?” he said impatiently. I was looking at the surreal sign. He stopped. “Them dogs. This here’s where they live. That’s a farm road. Farm up the road.” He unshouldered his rucksack and opened it and took a swig from his canteen. “You coming boy?”
I wasn’t so keen about walking in on some farmer—folks didn’t settle here because they wanted to be sociable. I could have just kept on walking. I’d been cold and wet and alone before, but that was out on the highway with cars passing and lights in the distance. Here in the pines, not a soul around, it was desolate and lonely, and even a beat-up drunk seemed like some connection to the world. Besides, we were a team, right?
“Hey, hey, get a move on,” he called. “Come on there, boy. We gotta find us some shelter at the farm.” His fiction of the farm became his reality. A few steps and he turned back to see if I was following. “Ain’t got all day. God damn it, boy.” I could tell he was scared. I could see flashes in the clouds. Too far still for thunder. “Jesus, come on.”
I didn’t leave him.
The trees closed in on us. This little track was overtopped by branches. Two rows of tall, slender trees lined the route. It was like being in a long hallway, much darker than the gravel road. “Never go into dark woods,” someone had warned me when I was a kid. That’s what came to mind as I followed the flopping, old boozer.
“Hail clouds,” he said. “Hell boy. It’s hail. Hell hail. Get it?” He laughed at his joke, joyous to see me following. A warm breeze from the east kissed my cheek. The clouds were sucking in air. Too warm, too humid, I could feel the pressure-drop in my soul. The thunderheads had taken my sunlight, now they wanted my air—greedy bastards of sky and darkness.
“Hail! Hell! Seen a whole herd of longhorns in Dakota struck down dead. Hailstones big as balls. Big as balls. Balls big as baseballs. Raining down death on them poor critters. Seen it with my own eyes. Kill ya dead. Raining death on them poor sonsofbitches.” There was desperation in his voice. He reached out to pull my arm and speed me, thought better of touching me and stopped. Looked at me pleading, “Come on boy, hurry.”
He was a scared, old man who didn’t want to be alone in the storm. What could I do? So I ran with him down the track. I didn’t want to be alone either. His fear was infectious. It was getting very dark. Just a couple of days before I’d seen the aftermath of a tornado in Wisconsin—a surreal patch where the trees had been knocked over. A broad swath of destruction, fifty yards wide crossing the highway, disappearing into the woods in both directions—trees flattened like stalks of grass, big trees, old, second-growth. It was like a giant hand had gone thru and brushed the pines aside.
“Paul Bunyan,” I had joked with the guy who had given me a ride.
I had just passed through Minocqua, Paul and his Blue Ox, Babe, were on my mind.
“Finger of God,” said my ride, a local, dressed head-to-toe in white, driving an orange Pinto. “That’s what the meteorologists call it, The Finger of God. It was an F5,” he went on to explain. “Top of the friggin’ scale.” When he had seen me he had slammed on the brakes and slid onto the shoulder and skidded like hell soon as his wheels left the pavement. I sprinted up to him. Hesitated when I saw how he was dressed. I thought he was an inmate escaped from the asylum or an acolyte from the Krishna. It turned out that he was a baker headed home from work. He needed someone to roll one while he drove. “God’s way of reminding you who’s in charge,” he said in reference to the swath of destruction. “Nothing you can do about it.”
At the time I had thought the Finger was simply a reference to the destruction, the sweep of a great digit across the landscape that destroyed everything. Running from the storm with the old man I found another, more philosophical meaning—a little message from God perhaps? A Finger for the unbelievers? A demonstration of what He can do when He wants to?
The old drunk stopped. “What now?” Someone had emptied a pickup truck load of construction debris in the middle of the track—drywall, odd scraps of plywood, bits of 2x4, pink insulation—not demo, but what was left after a fresh build. Others had added to it with household trash, garbage bags spilling out coffee filters and milk cartons, stuffed animals and faded plastic children’s toys. Off to the side I saw a couch and a toilet bowl. Party trash had been dumped too, beer cans, butts, bottle cases, pizza boxes, whatever. A couple of yards beyond was another, an older pile with plaster and lath and window frames and again, a discarded toilet. Small trees had been given time to grow through this ancient debris, quite a little dump, enough to stop any traffic. But not us. The old man scampered around the pile, driven by fear of the storm.
The hallway of tall trees ran on in the dark woods. This track on the far side of the dump was well overgrown, but we could follow where it had once been a road. Some fallen pines had to be scrambled over, down and dead a long time ago, their branches brittle and needles brown. I didn’t want to lose the old man. We went on and on, the track twisting, the old man pausing for a moment to follow it and then go on. He kept peering ahead, jogging with an odd step to keep his pack from slipping off his shoulder. Then there was a lake and a cabin, barn, pilings, the skeleton of a pier. It had been something once. Antlers nailed over the door of the cabin said it was a hunting camp. And the lake? Good fishing? The place was old and overgrown, abandoned years, perhaps decades, before.
The old man had stopped, but he wasn’t looking at the camp—he was looking at his shoe.
“Dog shit. Shit.” I looked down. I’d just missed a pile. There was a lot, some dried-out old, some fresh. The old man was leaning on a tree. He had a stick and was scraping shit off his heel.
“There’s nobody here. Nobody’s been here for a long time. There’re no dogs. Just some deer,” I was saying, referencing the abundant excrement. “It’s from some deer or raccoons or something.”
“It’s dog shit, boy. I know my shit. Know my shit,” he was giddy, suddenly laughing, drunk with salvation. Happy now that we’d found shelter. We were saved. And I didn’t know it then, but he knew he had an extra bottle stashed in his pack to get him through the night. That was what mattered to him. We’d found a place, a cabin where he could drink and sleep it off. That’s all he wanted. Just a few more hours. “Maybe it’s from some coyotes, or foxes, or a pack of wolves coming to eat ya,” he said with a smile. “Maybe it’s that Jersey Devil folks always talking about. Maybe we done found his secret camp.” He threw down the shit-scraping stick and took a swig from his canteen. “Hell. What ya waiting for. Let’s go inside an’ introduce ourselves.” He headed to the cabin.
“Watch your step,” he added with an, “Eh?”
The cabin door was closed with a padlock and hasp. Clearly there was no one home to introduce ourselves to. My traveling companion gave a few knocks, then a couple of pounds with his fist, and then a few shoves. He put his weight into it a couple of times. Then, suddenly concerned, he violently threw himself into it. The door came off at the hinges, the lock and hasp holding. “Ain’t nobody home.”
The windows were covered with wooden shutters. In the dim I could just make out a table and chairs, an iron stove in the corner. To let in some light, I pulled open a window and released the clasp on its shutter and swung the wood outward. It didn’t help much. The sky was dark. The old man struck a match and lit a big, white candle that was on the table. “Kinda cozy,” he said. With the candlelight, I could see that it was as if the owner had just stepped out a minute ago. But my finger touched to the table’s dusty top spoke of a long absence. Somebody had left and never had the chance to return. And people had forgotten about it.
On the back wall, above a counter with tin sink and cast iron pump, was a cabinet closed with a small padlock and hasp. The old man went right to it and gave it a tug. “Wonder what they got locked up?” he said knowingly. “Let’s see here.” He looked around and stopped his eyes on the poker for the stove. In a second he was prying off the hasp. “There we go. WooWee.” He held out a half-bottle of whiskey. “Regular liquor store in here. Top shelf.” I looked in. There were a half-dozen bottles with varying degrees of liquor. The old man took a swig from the one in his hand. “Gotta find us some glasses. Got another smoke, son?”
I gave him a cigarette and lit one for myself. A gust of wind blew through the doorway. The storm was really coming on. There was a lantern on the counter and next to it a can with screw-top spout, Kerosene painted on its side. Whoever had left this place couldn’t have made things easier for us. I got the lantern going as another gust came in and extinguished the candle. “Just in time,” the old man said. “Now ‘bout them glasses?
“Regular summer camp,” he said and sat at the table. I opened another cabinet, not locked this time. There were a couple of big jars with saltines and another with some kind of cereal, maybe oatmeal that had seen better days. There were some cans with crumbling paper labels, others drab green with words printed in black, but I was looking for glasses. Next cabinet held the plates, cups, bowls, glasses. I got two of the latter, and he poured us each a shot.
Noticeably colder, another gust shook the door and the shutters and the cabin and the trees. I looked outside. The first big drops were falling. It was dark. What the hell. I was trapped for now. I drank my whiskey down in a gulp. It was a Jack Kerouac moment. It was the adventure I had been seeking. The road. The whiskey. The storm. The cabin. I didn’t consider how it had ended for Jack and Neal. This was a romance of youth–-On The Road not Big Sur. Dharma Bums not Satori in Paris. Fear of the storm gave way to relief. The whiskey burned as it went down. I choked and spit a little up. The old man looked at me sympathetically. “You need a little creek water in that, son. Why don’t you get us a splash before the rain.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an order of sorts. The old man was taking charge now. He was loaded enough to have his confidence. Sitting at the table with his bottle of Old Grand-Dad, he was home.
There was an enameled pitcher ready on the counter. I put it under the pump and pumped hard. For my trouble I got nothing but creaks from the old iron. “Gotta prime it boy.” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Gotta get some water from the lake. I‘ll show ya.” He pointed to the door and the lake.
I took up the pitcher and stepped into that surreal darkness that precedes a strong storm. It wasn’t night, but it was dark and damp with the smell of rotting spring. The air was dead, the big drops had stopped for the moment, all the world was still but for distant flashes in the west. I walked to the lakeshore and turned toward the cabin, faced the west. The tree tops were silhouetted in silver bursts too far to hear. Then as I stood with my back to the lake and watched, the distant thunder came low and long, its crack flattened by time and distance.
I remember that calm, then the wind in the pines like the roar of trucks on the interstate. That’s what it reminded me of, the roar of the interstate, and I had to get the water. The wind came through the pines and ripped across the lake in random gusts. There was no direction. All at once, gusts like bombs exploded around me. Big, well-spaced drops of cold rain fell on me and splashed in the water and cratered the white sand, and I thought of the old man’s story of the hail and the white-suited baker’s Finger of God—whose aftermath I had seen with my own eyes. Maybe it was the whiskey’s doing, entranced, I was taking it all in like a dream. I watched a gust in the distance blow up a line of whitecaps. Another gust flattened out the little cove by the cabin. There was a float pulled up on the shore, its 50-gallon drums rusted and collapsed. By the edge of the ruined pier I saw a dog watching me. So the old man was right about the shit. Here was the shaggy culprit—a dog, the ugly mutt that surprisingly saves the day—a fine companion for our adventure.
“Hey pooch,” I called. “Hey little buddy,” called as I moved toward it.
The dog stared at me for a heartbeat, then raised its hair and snarled. I’d never seen a dog so ferocious. Not more that 20 pounds, but with a growl and baring of teeth that set me back on my heels. The world flashed and cracked at the same moment—the storm was on us—like a scene in a movie where the lightning reveals the beast. Another flash, the dog was gone. And the rain was on me.
My hair and shirt were soaked in the sprint to the cabin door. I was dripping.
“Just asked ya for a drop. Not the whole damn pond.”
He was totally unconcerned. “Let me see a touch of that spring water.” He poured an inch of whiskey in his glass and topped it with a half-inch of water. I did the same and took a sip.
“Just like summer camp. Eh?"
I stood and leaned on the wrecked doorframe and looked out. In the flashes I watched the trees. Slim trunks swayed to and fro while branches dipped and rushed in a frenzy. Safe now, I could watch it for hours, the ultimate power of the sky, of nature at her best and at her worst. I wanted to find the answer in it. If I could just look at it long enough, see it clearly without the filters of past storms and of future storms and of metaphors of storms and winds and rains and flashes of insight, if I could only see it purely, I knew there was something important in it that I could believe. I wanted so desperately to believe. I thought of Jack and his time on Desolation Peak. I peered into the darkness between the bright bursts. I felt the rain splashing, the wind on my cheek. What had he seen there?
But I didn’t have the patience. I got bored and went back to the old drunk and the bottle.
I drank more drinks. I didn’t eat much. I had some granola in a bag. We shared in handfuls. “Tomorrow we’ll catch a mess of fish,” he promised. “Snare rabbits. I can skin ‘em good. Just like taking off a glove.” I believed him. “We’ll live like kings.” I figured he knew what he was talking about. The road had worn me out. It had only been a couple of days, but I was beat. I was accustomed to regular meals and a good sleep in my own bed every night. And I wasn’t used to drinking hard liquor. The whiskey was going to my head. I didn’t want to think or talk anymore, just to stop. There was a second room, small, with four bunks on the walls, two and two with a space between. I told him goodnight and put my pack up and climbed to an upper one, slid into my sleeping bag and listened to the old man quietly telling himself his stories while the now-gentle rain tapped the roof.
I slept soundly.
Years later I was in a bar telling them about the old man, and the company I was keeping agreed that I was crazy, naïve, stupid, “Hell, that odd cuss could have stuck a knife in ya, and ya’d never know ya never woke up.” But he didn’t, or I wouldn’t have been drinking in that bar, nor would I now be telling you this story of my salvation.
Copyright: 2017 gene engelman
Photos: gene engelman
