June 19, 1976.
Silt Coos Lagoon
is a good place to begin.
Delivered here, the two of us,
among waxmyrtle,
dune grass and sand. We pitch
the Gerry Meadow tent, eat corn,
green beans and tuna ramen noodle soup.
It takes time, the backpacker we’d picked up
climbing Monarch Pass on our way west
had said, hiking the ridge of the Rockies,
rhythmic repetition, to rid pollution
from the brain.
Two Gitane bikes lean against a lodgepole pine,
sunlight fades, the moon goes down,
the Pacific Ocean
withdraws along the Oregon coast.
I’m uneasy now at the fire,
speak little to her,
stir embers, gather wood,
disappointed,
maybe afraid.
June 20.
She settles down
after a shaky start,
her first time with panniers
and handlebar bag full.
I have to watch myself,
too much occupied with her
(four people said last winter they would make the trip,
she’s the only one I was sure would never come along,
never ridden a bicycle in her life,
now the only one, the only one I really didn’t want to come).
Hold back, rest, let her pull ahead across the Siuslaw,
up the first climb over the coastal range.
The narrow, corrugated tunnel, shoulder cobbles,
sharp echoes, automobiles,
the first pure test of nerves and heart.
We stop for lunch in Walton,
the log post office-general store is closed.
An old woman sitting outside in a pickup truck says somebody phoned
there was a bomb.
June 21.
Wrong turn in Springfield,
ten miles out of the way,
frustrated back and forth in heavy traffic on Rt 126.
Finally find Camp Creek Road.
Overcast, cool and still,
the McKenzie River running clear cold blue and green.
After sixty days in a conestoga wagon
you’d be of a mind to say you’d come far enough.
The settlements seem removed,
never heard of Draino or Mr Clean.
Her knee begins to hurt
outside Vida. She’ll never last another day.
We stop to rest,
then ride on toward Camp Ollalie,
eleven miles the other side
of McKenzie Bridge.
The highway is empty, contained,
damp pockets of dark Douglas fir,
the foothills of the Cascades.
A pair of Kenworth tractors overtake us–
flatbed trailers, a load of 3/4 inch plywood–
bellow, bang and rattle by.
Then silence, dusk,
speed chain travels over sprockets,
high pressure tires,
hubs, wire spokes and stainless steel rims
whirring in the air.
June 22.
She is a woman raised with guilt,
god-fearing, Bible-quoting, quilt-mending mother and dour dad.
To fight her way free she became the wife
of a gambling man, drunk, itinerant stagehand,
bore three children so she wouldn’t have to be alone.
Divorced. Returned home,
mother and dad didn’t have to say a word,
but did. She’s a woman who grew ill
whenever she tried to do anything against her parents’ will–
wanted to take her children to Arkansas to visit her mother’s kin,
couldn’t do it, had to turn back, absurd, and try to face them again–
she has never left her kids.
She has chosen me
to change her life.
Sent the two sons and the daughter to their father
so she could cycle across the United States,
a woman whose left knee is killing her,
pinched nerve between her shoulder blades,
only had a few handfuls of peanuts and raisins to eat,
precious little water to drink (an important lesson learned:
when the map shows nothing, assume
nothing’s there) and no encouragement
from me, she
guts out the heat, the twenty-two mile climb
over Santium Pass, the nine mile rush
down the other side–
had to yank the bike four feet to the left to miss
a whitetail deer bolted from the brush–
sitting now quietly at Blue Lake Camp
in smoke near the fire, trying to hide from barking mosquitoes,
nursing pain and mounting pride.
The third day.
The largest metropolis, the steepest pass
behind us.
If you make it through this,
you can make it all the way.
June 23.
Loneliness.
It is solid, extends.
Leave the towns, Sisters, Bend,
behind. A bicycle, the desert.
A vacant twisting tendril of asphalt,
sagebrush, sand and amaranth. Sunflowers colonize
narrow moisture along the margins of the road.
A crow takes off, middle distance, soars, calls, indifferent
to what you are. Roadkill,
mangled deer, chipmunks, ground squirrels flattened, stomachs extruded from the mouth, large intestine squirted out the ass,
raw flesh of your flesh,
the laws of physics
the only laws the highway has.
A pale building up ahead,
a wattled fence, chert, a Texaco sign, pickup,
two gasoline pumps, neon in the window
and nothing else. Millican.
Two women and a man
around a table inside, cowboy hats,
purple-faced, pudgy-fingered fellow, been known to take a drink,
at the counter: cash register, sardines
in mustard sauce, tuna fish, jerky sticks,
a rack of sunglasses, salted nuts,
canned tomatoes, pork n beans,
fruit cocktail, cooking oil and lard,
Snickers, Heath Cup, stacked tins of jack rabbit milk,
boned breast of meadow lark.
Large glass cooler doors:
Lucky Lager, Blatz, Olympia, Coors,
Dr Pepper, Nesbit, Seven Up and Ginger Ale.
They sit, chew toothpicks, snub out cigarettes in a dish,
drink beer, all the empties
scattered, under the counter,
against the wall, been there all day long,
slow-paced talk among themselves,
a habit, looks like. No one takes notice when you walk in,
seem to be the first people they’ve seen all week.
You learn the morning winds blow up the draws,
evenings tumble down, rattlesnakes, their nests,
give Stinking Water Creek its name.
No coin changes hand
when you leave, desert light gone fallow. They
will remain the same
till way past dark.
June 24.
Aggravation, bound up with her.
Her knee, her neck and upper back,
her front derailleur breaks.
Simplex, not worth shit.
I didn’t pack
the tool to try to fix it,
piddle and fiddle, shred the cable,
borrow dikes in Hampton
to replace it, can’t thread the damn thing through
the housing. Have to stay on the big chainwheel
until we get to Burns.
Then it begins to blow
thirty, forty miles an hour
from the west, high gear
is all you need.
Flat ash-gray opalescent earth, dune and stone,
pure durable light, deep cast shadow, a bowl
of silence hung easy in dry wind,
fifteen miles straight
as fast as you can crank.
We stop at noon in Riley.
A last-chance desert town,
another one-sider, the two structures here–
a filling station and the post office-general store–
appear a mirage after arduous travel.
Maybe the first to bring the news that Nixon has resigned,
I go into the garage for fuel, unleaded gasoline
for the Mountain Sport stove, stand,
taken suddenly aback, greasy kid’s stuff, pimple cream,
top-twenty disco, heat, the din loud enough
to hurt your ears.
We eat at a plank picnic table,
galvanized tin roof, gravel and grass burned bone white.
Neither of us talks.
Swallows ride the currents
trying to reach the nest beneath the eaves,
ducking and veering, seeking a soft spot
in the wind, they fight ahead two or three feet,
buffeted, shouting out each to each,
then thrown back.
A smarter blackbird on the ground
walks.
June 25.
We need
a day of rest, recoup
body and soul, repair the bike
in Burns. There is a cycle shop.
It is closed. A man tells us we can get parts
at Woolworths– right.
Learn there where hot goods are cleared:
in plastic sacks, stapled mimeograph labels, distributed out of Seattle. Suntour, Campagnolo, Weinemann, Huret,
front and rear derailleurs, side-pull caliper brakes,
freewheel cluster, bottom bracket,
a leather Ideale saddle, prices are a steal:
four-ninety-five for what costs seventeen
in Wichita.
Wind picks up cold from the north in the afternoon,
portends an evil day tomorrow, the highway turns northeast.
A desolate stretch, Vale a hundred and twelve
miles away. The time off may be good
for the body, but I’m not too sure about the soul.
We lie within the small green hub of the world,
tent walls and rain fly flapping, contained and trapped.
She says her knee’s not getting any better. She can’t go on.
Finally. This is it.
She turns her pale, naked back in the mated ripstop goosedown
sleeping bags. I listen to the wind bluster about the telephone pole
outside, watch dark light flare and gather
between her shoulders, glisten, run
along the spine into the hollow above the buttocks.
Hang in there.
You’ve come too far to quit.
Apply Deep-Heating Rub.
June 26.
Evening, the valley of the Malheur.
I sit on rocky ground in the shadow of the canyon wall
undercut by the river, hear
katydids, crickets, frogs, a few blackbirds clucking,
green water rushing beyond young willows,
now and then a car.
It looks to be a cure by the laying on of hands:
her knee and neck are healed.
She sits on a log near the bikes,
humming to herself,
writing postcards to her kids.
Two passes before noon.
Stinking Water, forty-eight hundred and forty-eight feet,
a hard, uneven climb, false summits
deceive. You lean against buoyant exhaustion,
stare down at shifter levers and cable housing,
revolving toe-clipped shoes, corruscating grit,
white line slip, the silhouette of your fists on the handlebar,
rest there till you break on through it to the other side.
Drinking Water, forty-two twelve,
a constant seven percent grade,
the sun is hot, glad
for the rush of blood, the flow
of liquid and breath, the quick
metabolism of chocolate, raisins, peanuts, the heat,
joints and sinew, muscle fiber, balance, rhythm,
leg bone connected to the foot bone, shout and go like hell.
Mass and space swell and warp, mantle rock, hewn out
above the roadbed, looms and folds, the low, flat
gray valley, ribbon of river, ashy green sage
and spruce. Extension is all there is,
a loose wad of recursive matter,
determined, indifferent, alone.
And mad as a fucking hatter.
Stop to eat lunch beneath enormous cottonwoods
along U.S. 20 in Juntura. Elation
of the morning ride collapses, spent.
I don’t want to leave
the trees. Nothing
for fifty-seven miles.
Drink a whole pint of water in less than an hour,
down our entire two-and-a-half quart supply
before we reach a spring
twenty-two miles away.
Then things look up again:
cold water, original, flowing
from the rock, then
three men from Burns
in an old Dodge
offer us beer, then
a woman and a little girl
give us a couple more where we camp,
the road the wilderness too.
June 27.
Coyotes,
gathered around the tent
yip-yowling up and down the ridge,
wake us in the night.
Dozens of them from the raucous noise of it.
Then the most terrifying of animal sound:
a human cough.
Back among civilization
out here, a campsite in Marsing, Idaho,
close on the Snake by the highway bridge.
A good haul today:
level land outside Vale, furrow irrigation,
siphon tubes and ditches,
sugar beats, onions, hops, occasional
fields of wheat. Japanese
give way to Mexicans working the crops
as you approach the junction with U.S. 95.
My spirit sags.
Six hundred miles of desert yet to go.
And my ass is sore.
After a night camped here,
estranged, burnt ocher, dusty pink concrete,
firecrackers, loud laughter and yells,
desolation may look good again.
June 28.
I’m ready to sacrifice
the first-born daughter for a favorable wind–
it’s turned against us,
hot and dry from the southeast.
Stopped at Murphy, the seat
of Owyhee County,
for our mid-morning calories.
No grocery store.
Decided to eat breakfast again
at the Filling Station-Restaurant-Saloon.
Chuck comes in for a road-shortner, jigger of Scotch.
Down on his luck, hell of a life, been riding herd
near Bruneau Hot Springs and one day
the ax just fell. On his way
to Boise now, where, his brother-in-law tells him,
a job is waiting if he can get there before noon.
Takes a liking to me, and to her,
when he hears we’re traveling through by bike.
Thinks we’re hardscrabble too,
goes out to get the wife, waiting in the car,
to meet us. Offers me one of his last three one-dollar bills,
leans over near from his perch,
stage-whisper, glancing back at the others down the bar:
take good care of her,
if you know what I mean. And winks:
A few good strokes and you pull it out slow
and hold it between her legs on the lips. Then slip it
back on in. Lord. No matter how hard it gets
she’ll never leave you in the lurch.
Drinks another shot and they’re off,
belching smoke in their botched
spray-can pink Fairlane Ford.
We down our second beer, eggs
sunny-side up, bacon, biscuits and pan gravy. The cook
the mayor of the town.
Steep hills,
the broken edge of high, empty table-land
above the Snake,
distant range fires burn
mauve, smoky haze, quick, viscous heat.
A heavy, dumb trance.
Fifteen miles, a house,
close to the road,
to refill water.
We look at each other,
we squint into opaque sky.
She stands indifferent,
a timid containment, obstinacy, leaning on her bike.
We come upon
a single tree, full green,
a shadowed, two-foot deep patch of grass.
Lie down in it. Sleep.
I don’t want to leave it.
Subcutaneous inflamations, furuncles,
bike-buncles, on my ass.
The left hand numb.
Takes five hours to ride thirty miles.
The tavern thermometer outside Grandview reads
a hundred and four, early evening,
when we pull in.
First through thirst
beer gets good.
She buys groceries
in town. I walk across
the old Snake River bridge
down a gravel road too rocky to ride,
to Gary Larson’s place, ask
permission to camp.
We settle by the river in soft dirt.
The wind calms and dies, sunlight thickens,
we can hear things for the first time today:
mating swarms of gnats above bushes along the bank,
redwing blackbirds, blue heron,
the Ferguson tractor on the other side.
Then a high wall of dust across the water
along tall dark-gray cliffs, the floodplain,
tumbling large scattered raindrops, tree branches,
the smooth, deep-running river surface
roils, the tent fly flutters and pops.
It blows over quickly and we strip,
wash each other
at the irrigation boom.
June 29.
A day when
nothing has a name.
Expansion you only later
realize is howling, brutal iridescent light,
high desert sand, range-fire smoke,
pain, the constant churning
of nonsensical words.
Later you know it is your will,
exposed, pounded to a hardened clump
at the ardent center,
anvil for the sun.
Five hours
to pedal twenty-three miles.
We hunker down now in the city park
in Mountain Home
to wait the son of a bitch out.
A band of Great Basin Shoshone,
a man and three women,
approach us where we eat.
He asks for a sandwich,
she refuses– goddammit!
look around you woman,
we ourselves
a split-second away
from absolute reliance.
Give them food.
The man sits down with me.
We eat hard rolls, Virginia ham, Monterey Jack and carrots.
He tells of hunger times,
the cricket stew his grandmothers make,
and laughs.
The wind changes, then dies.
We leave the park late afternoon,
exhausted fires smoldering on all sides across
the slow alluvial rise to the Sawtooth Range,
the asphalt covered by hordes
of strange, four-inch, fat, translucent brown
arthropods, crickets, or the locusts of Brigham Young.
They crunch beneath the tires,
we cringe and pedal on,
they swarm and devour
each other
in our wake.
Start the climb to Tollgate
before dark, the old, twisting stagecoach road,
a deep arroyo along
the dry bed of Rattlesnake Creek.
I stop to piss. Calm,
nothing moves, the moon
is up. The summit to the east
still caught in setting sun. Steep draw
to the right, bedrock tabletop, scree,
tumbled wash, yellow-white
grass and the pungent smell of sage. Silence. Now
and then an owl. Dense lavender,
luminescent gauze of smoke hanging
in the air. A balm
upon the skin. I miss
my friends tonight.
June 30.
Man, you don’t know what lonesome is till you go to herding cows.
Come upon over a thousand head about a mile and a half outside Moonstone. The wranglers eating lunch, the cattle on their own between the fencerows of Route 68. No other choice but to work our way through, high and proud in the saddle, whoop and yell– come along boys and listen to my tale. They trot in rhythm to my singing, every cowboy song I know, hustling black Angus and whiteface Herefords– can tell by your outfit that you are a cowboy, singing loud cowboy songs, a mighty peculiar skinny blue horse you’re riding on though. I get them jogging along at a pretty good pace, which isn’t all that good, of course, all we can do, rump by pannier, to gain on them. Now and again a defiant roan, long-yearling, turns a hard, baleful stare, appalled– I know a greenhorn when I see one, the man got no ten gallon hat, god damn his hide, not going to budge another foot– eye to eye with me till panic overwhelms her, or maybe my singing voice, clatters and spins on the pavement, the whole damn crowd thrown into minor turmoil around us, looks like we’ll have to drive the no-count bufords all the way to Boston. Be hauled before the judge for rustling. Or find the big auger to collect my drover’s pay. But up ahead they reach a cattle guard painted across the highway: stripes hinting at pipes and shadows they cannot navigate. Members of the clan who’ve never seen the real McCoy still know: do not transgress. But what to do with a thousand sisters and neutered brothers pushing on blindly from behind. Confusion. They wait, mill, nudge and press, bunch and split. We break on through the breach to the other side.
July 1.
Crater of the moon
day off
desolation
sink depressions
lava
ropey pahoehoe
and aa.
Left hand numb
three days now no
longer recovers
overnight
middle and ring finger the
heel
weak and listless
insufficient food and
endorphin
deprivation.
Cold turkey she
sits across from me
Blizzard Mountain
volcanic barrenness
rolling cinder river plain
flow
chilly wind
even feeding chipmunks
peanuts
the picture
of glowering health.
The rest
weighs heavy
on us both.
July 2.
Soft, supple Italian leather, stubby fingers, state of the art
bicycling gloves way out here in Arco, well worth the three days
budget, thirteen ninety-five. Too late to prevent the hurt,
but they sure look good upon the hand.
Sixty-seven miles across mostly government land,
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Reservation, watch out
for rattlers warming at the pavement edge, long drive,
not even a pot to piss in, just dry dirt, sunny weather
and cool trailing wind all the way to Idaho Falls.
She calls her kids.
From start to finish
I had it wrong.
July 3.
Hard, brooding climb out of Idaho Falls
into the Caribou Mountains.
Alpine meadows, short, steep ascents,
sudden runs into the valleys.
Then rise into the Snake River Range,
high above the water now, narrow, rapid,
laughter from rubber rafts fractal in the trees,
the Targhee Forest, into Wyoming.
Fight the mosquitoes off
and pitch our camp.
Tell her to leave,
can’t tell her to leave,
you mouthed vapid winter encouragement
when you were lonely,
deserted by the wife,
when you thought she’d never come.
Why keep it up,
one painful crank, hand and ass, brings on another.
Much easier, you’d think, to pull into a parking lot
of rounded glacial stones by some tumbling snow-melt
creek, log tavern, kick the Gitane into the blackberry
brambles, swagger in, supple, lean and muscled,
motley, fill the cool dark inside up, call
for beer and chips. Drink. River guides,
hawk-feathered, reptile-banded hats, talking low
at the bar. Sit and watch a shaft of sun swing west
to east across the pine table top, catch in salt crystals,
thick, wet amber mug, carbon dioxide bubbles, froth, free
of association. Your own damn solitary self–
then hitch a ride in the sag wagon to the nearest bus stop home.
She goads me.
A car swerves by and some asshole throws a Lucky Lager can
clattering past. Their tire blows two hundred yards ahead.
I pedal on by and grin.
Fourth of July.
You know this scene,
wrote it yourself
a few months ago:
the pumpkin roller rodeo,
a clanging bell,
the brahma bull– spinning,
slinging dust and clods, gossamer
Fibonacci spirals of saliva–
wants the world undone.
The bullrider’s hand is caught–
the hondo knot won’t let go–
he’s flopping loose like a rag dummy,
overwhelmed.
You willed this death.
But this is Jackson Hole,
the bicentennial,
TVs in hotel and ice cream parlor windows,
pallid wind-blown
stars and stripes, Walter Cronkite,
national distance in the voice,
all teary-eyed,
this is the largest bunch of folk
ever to gather in this town,
a good time, god damn, fire
bottle rockets through the bars, flush cherry bombs,
eat until the barbecue, buffalo roast,
elk stew, cole slaw and deep-fat fried potatoes
run out, until the spirits are gone,
accountants keeping check on what’s consumed, dance,
sing, beat each other with fists and tire irons and laugh:
it’s overweening arrogance
makes you think you give this mad mother universe
form.
July 5.
The Frenchmen getting mighty horny
when they saw these mountains.
I hardly notice, behind me, Sodom and Gomorrah, can’t look back,
we make our assault from Moran Junction
on the continental divide: Togwotee Pass, 9,658 feet.
It’s hot, the grade not bad, but the asphalt sinks beneath
the tires, a relentless pull, the will and brain also turn
quickly to tarpit goo. Five women
pedal by where we eat beside the road.
We catch them at Togwotee Lodge,
nine mile from the top.
Two elderly caretakers hold down the fort until
new owners arrive from Sapporo.
A somnolent easy confusion overcomes me among barelegged women,
all of us suspended in this large dark cool wood-paneled room,
a sweating cauldron of lemonade, whispers almost, uncertain, my tongue
forms unprovoked nonsense from the thin air (we set out on the Florida coast, wandered through Death Valley desert ) I stutter, start, finally
fall silent, content to never move again from this happy dissolution.
I do learn from the tallest of the women about the ulnar nerve: runs
down behind the internal condyle of the humerus, the funnybone nerve,
supplies the flexor carpi ulnaris, half the flexor profundus digitorum
and most of the muscles of the inner digit and the hand. Pressure
from the handlebar knocks it out. I was unprepared for all this
by the books on long distance cycling I had read.
Make it over the pass about 5:30. Rounding a long flat curve
among stunted pinyon, I see the woman knew all about the ulnar nerve
sifting through rubble in the ditch. I stop, she’s lost her wallet:
sailing down the eastern slope, fifty miles an hour, overcome by lust
for rootbeer float, she pulled the pouch one-handed from the handlebar bag to count if she had the correct change, couldn’t remember Wyoming
sales tax, dropped it skittering along the highway for a hundred yards.
She and I, alone on the divide, take up the search.
I look out across the low meadow at the arc of road
to contemplate the descent, the projected path
of a leather coin purse, see, ninety feet
away, what anybody ever heard of Bullwinkle recognizes
as a moose. I whisper: elk.
And he will not be snuck up upon.
Even stranger in the failing mountain light:
we find the purse.
Climb back on our bikes.
It’s all downhill from here,
more or less, to the Mississippi–
or is it the Gulf of Mexico.
July 6.
The ex-husband, it seems,
liable to be arrested soon,
some gambling rap, leave the kids
alone in the apartment. She says.
She says, sitting by the pop cooler,
she’ll not go back
even then, they’ll get by, her
sisters or mother and dad
take care of them awhile.
lost-wallet woman again today in Dubois– I’d stopped
to get sponges to wrap the handlebars and stuff in the gloves–
standing by the watermelons, quart carton of chocolate
milk resting on her hip. She said that we should ride together
a ways. She’s long and she’s tall, a good day, the slight headwind
when we turn south on U.S. 287 overcome by the downhill
run, clear, hot sun, high gear. Could pick up the pace,
ninety strokes
a minute, leave everybody else
miles behind.
I look at her sitting by the pop cooler
in Hruska’s Rock Shop, sipping Cream Soda
comes with our $2.00 hay meadow campsite.
Calm. It’s obvious her mind
has been boggled. Consider
the narrow life, waiting, the restricted house,
alone, dinner dishes, the two boys, the girl
asleep in the back bedrooms.
The world
looked the same
no matter how many years
ahead she thought.
Now this vast
unbordered sky strewn with
distant convection thunderstorms,
enormous red rock jutting from
rumpled valley floors, now
she doesn’t even know each morning
where she’ll spend the night.
She lies awake sometimes
huddled inside fragile ripstop, listens to
howling all around
an unimagined wilderness.
Tool of the devil, instigator
of this revolutionary
summer, like it
or not,
who am I
to say she can’t go on.
We stroll
down the long hill
swatting mosquitoes–
pierce right through
your jeans, love,
drunk on, Deepwoods Off–
to the tent to
get our towels.
Hruska says there’s all
the hot water
we can use.
July 7.
Hell of a climb into Sweetwater,
thirty-two miles long and hot,
a steady low-gear rhythm change the way you think.
Lay over in Jeffrey City, maybe fifty bikes,
buckets and bags loaded, lined along the general store wall.
A dusty front bouncing tumbleweeds blows through.
At four o’clock we head on to Muddy Gap.
When I turn south toward Lamont
the wind has died, a prong-horned antelope
grazing in the ditch. I stop,
stalk to within ten yards, the sun at my back
slant across sagebrush plateau,
watch her eat: the light
caught fallow in her coat, her concentration
intense, the white-ribbed grass,
whether I stand there and see or not.
The Lamont Cafe red neon,
sign larger than the town.
White sandy soil and an empty, narrow asphalt
ribbon across the evening.
A large, ancient, inert barkeep, stolid frown, says nothing– his
sullen notion to place beer, crackers and cheese
where we happen to sit– inexplicably lurches to the door
when we ask where we might pitch our tent.
Follow across the tarmac past the pumps
to the edge of starry night. He
raises both arms to the distance, silent, turns
slowly a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
July 8.
Crisis of some kind last night. I keep
probing it, can’t leave it alone, like bikebuncles on the ass,
the other side of pain in the hands, her and me. I finally hit
upon the kids– maybe not so good to leave them so long for the first
time, alone, with their worthless father. I’d done it for sure, she
burst out crying, ripstop too small to contain anguish, anger,
guilt– not for leaving them, for leaving without guilt– she’ll quit
the bike, catch the next thing smoking out of here, but not for home,
somewhere else, San Francisco, Oskaloosa, Katmandu.
I tell her (silence wouldn’t do) don’t be ridiculous, if you don’t
go home, keep on down the highway.
The next public transportation
not till Kansas City anyway. Asshole
that I am, it’s not the kids.
It’s that everybody thinks
we are together– and
of course
they’re right.
A hot and gusty wind before noon, my Gitane
blows over in front of a grocery store in Rawlins, bent
a pedal shaft, the only shade for a nap beneath the Interstate-80 bridge
at the Walcott exit. Fitful dreams full of rumbling
eighteen wheelers overhead and dust. By early evening
an exhausted, dusky gray-blue desolation,
and we’re out of water. Hanna, dull shimmering purple array,
spectral structure among low mountains two miles off
the road. A lethal distance if we decide
to go and nothing’s there. We push on
nineteen miles to Medicine Bow. All day
she’s been grim and determined, hunched
over handlebars like she’s hounded by demons–
the only thing behind her in this effete isolation
is me.
July 9.
Day-off doldrums.
She called her kids.
Told them she’ll come home
on August first.
Maybe now I can let it rest.
Awake from fitful sleep,
the hot tent, the city park,
the air is still
after thundershowers stir
along the foothills of the Medicine Bow Range
to the southeast.
Children’s voices scatter
somewhere among the houses,
the maintenance man
is mowing the football field,
a German shepard pup chews
whatever he can grasp.
A desultory
lust I refuse
to expend on her.
July 10.
Coasting uphill
the climb from Tie Siding
to the border lands
transition
wintry south wind
purly rain comes round
to the northwest
and blows
the front away.
The dream of movement
body floating as the mind
alone
photon quanta sodium ions
H20 and oxygen
over two miles
illusion
across the top of the world.
Cache la Poudra watershed
granite, gravity
refracted light
Mount Ethel, Little Bald,
Lone Tree, Lookout
mountains, remnant clouds
recede
converge
impinge upon this compact bundle
1400 cubic centimeters
caged in bone.
July 11.
Out of the Colorado Rocky Mountains last evening,
through Fort Collins, dusk, dark tall poplars along
the section lines, alfalfa fields, onto the plains. What
I’d been waiting for: southwest winds, forty miles an hour,
blow us all the way to the Mississippi River, never
even have to turn a crank.
I was two-thirds right:
forty miles an hour, south.
But east, not west. Head wind.
An offended
god.
We rest now on State Highway 14 in Buckingham,
a ghost town, in the shade
and wind shadow of a run-down shed.
I hurt. Seems today all
I’ve ever been doing,
brittle white prairie,
brome and prickly pear, no tree
to lie under, no bar
for beer, the Pawnee Grassland
slowly rises, domed, tending
to the east, compels
you to go on, the journey
a test to see how much pain
you can endure.
She pulls me up,
ties a bandanna over her red, chapped face,
and we ride on nine more miles,
like those crazy
fuckers scaling
Everest, keep on
even when the fingers and
toes freeze off,
to Raymer.
Everything (a one-room grocery) is closed
but the Apco station. Nothing between here
and Sterling, thirty-five miles away. We buy
Heath bars, cheese and peanut butter crackers, potato chips,
throw together what noodles,
jerky, Cup-a-Soup we’ve got left,
pretty thin stew. Could read
the road map right through it.
Sit by the tent and listen
to dry wind toss native elm in the park, the buffalo grass
uncut, iron pickets, five houses
on three sides, Victorian,
American Homestead, old farmer couple
in a porch swing sipping iced tea, a man
walks a shepherd dog. A few degrees of coolness
along sandy streets beneath
an oblique sun, dust,
kicked up 30,000 feet, flows and floats,
and catches light.
July 12.
Harvest!
Not like it used to be–
no hardluck Okies, run-down
International, fourteen foot header barge,
baling-wired together, red Dodge
pickup billowing oil smoke, no
twelve foot house trailer, quick-witted
woman turning out fried chicken,
scalloped potatoes and apple pie
on a two-burner propane stove, no
defiant skinner, khaki shirt
cut off at the shoulders, glaring through
chaff and oat dust at the immediate sun,
monotonous gasoline percussion, reel slats,
sicklebar, auger, drive belt, speed chain,
slip clutch rattle, bang and whine,
singing improvised harvesting ballads.
They got twenty-four foot headers now, operator
enclosed in steel and Plexiglas
cubicles, a slick 72 degrees, muffled,
cupped in by a stereo headset,
CB radio communications,
the Kenworth tractor trailer,
45 foot hoppers waiting to unload,
keeping up
on the futures trade.
And I hurt.
Kong-approaching-Tokyo-from-the-south syndrome:
what kills Kong makes Godzilla strong. Hunch forward to ease
the load on the butt, the weight thrown onto the arms.
The Gitane pitches and lunges in the wind,
back and forth, hand and ass.
Stop at a laundromat outside Sterling,
the Pizza Hut salad bar and beer. Buy
more sponges for gloves and handlebars,
ask the clerk for the best damn baby-bottom
antifungal, antibacterial diaper rash ointment
she’s got. Gives me Desitin.
Drop drawers out on the highway for an application–
flat as a snooker table, no place to hide–
what looked like a truck coming on from the east
turns out to be a Winnebago camper full of girl scouts.
Almost capsizes going by, the sudden shift
of passengers to the port side. Can hear
them giggling half a mile on down the road.
The eastern slope. Dry gray-green sage, prickly pear and yucca,
prairie swells and ebbs, unruly ocean, shimmers viscous sun and dust.
Can hear it, drawn out from the cramped visual bubble beneath
the bill of my hat, a momentary lucid awareness: absolute loneliness
the palpable essence of the world. I let out a primal scream.
Every gear shift, every saddle-twisting surge of wind.
Top of the lungs. Whipped to nothingness, indifferent
ground squirrels, chipmunks in the ditches
whistle and scamper for cover as I pass. Fall in
behind her, pulled along in her draft.
Dumb, dull bonding. Spokes, rims, tires rolling inches apart,
orange panniers, fastening strap flapping in unstable air, her
buttock raised in the saddle, backs of her thighs, shank
muscles, calves glistening sun-bleached hair, sweat, constant
turning of the crank.
July 13.
A small, rural park, green iron hand pump
at the well, aquifer water. Sunlight lingers at the rim
of the prairie, the wind, residual
brain chemicals oxidize a central calm.
This could go on
forever.
We are on the road by 6:45,
a quart of milk and fruit tarts in Holyoke,
thirty miles away, by 9:15. Could
rack up record distance, but what’s the rush,
this is Nebraska now at harvest time.
10:30, beef jerky, peanuts and raisins
just past the state line, a redwood table set
among enormous cottonwoods,
the only humans for a hundred miles.
The Imperial City Park by 1:00 p.m., a pint of blueberries
and a half-gallon of French vanilla ice cream (your duty
to eat everything you can lay your numb hands on,
over 6,000 calories a day) sleep
on our towels beneath the hackberry trees.
The last ten miles to Enders
the road gets bumpy, the sky dark
in the northwest, cumulus nimbus.
We pitch the tent
beside the reservoir. No wind yet,
the elevator back in town
caught up in swirling billows of dust
illuminated against the deep blue storm.
It crosses the highway just as we try to light the stove.
Thundershowers pass to either side,
the Gerry Meadow snaps and shivers,
it blows a solid hour. Then
a little rain. Then calm.
I hunker naked by the lake
after we eat, sun just gone down, a broken
spectrum scattered within the clouds,
lightning along the horizon.
Redwing blackbirds and grackles prepare
for evening, hurried flight low across choppy water.
Thin silence marbles
bird calls and words spoken
from the last boats putting in
the otherside of weeping willow trees.
July 14.
McCook
Nebraska.
Bill’s Bike Shop.
Her rear derailleur has given out,
spring in the tension cage broke, still
able to shift, but the chain hangs slack
from the small chainwheel and freewheel cluster. Nice
to stop and talk to people, stop
in the little towns, viable now
as we come east, Wauneta, Palisade, Culberton,
Indianola, stop
and look out across
the plains.
July 15.
A black dog
watches over us all night
in front of the tent.
Barks at everything
that gets too close.
Dark in the morning. Milk
and bananas in Holbrook, hole up
in the park pagoda until the storm
blows over. Lightning and thunder, but no rain.
We head on through Arapahoe, the sky in the north closing in
again, purple and green, wind quickens, goes cold.
It begins to rain at the junction with 136. We turn
south toward Edison, blown along the leading edge, turbulence
boundry, two lane blacktop, stronger surges toss and twist
soybeans, corn in the fields, hear it, see it – water
crashes down on leaves, grasses, sunflowers
flattened rippling along the ditches, thunderclaps, air rushes
through fencerows and highlines, tumbles low
rolling hills, wet black humus, loam– the precise loneliness
contained within uncertain weather. Easy,
separate, undisturbed vehicle,
ecstasy within the quiet caul.
The road winds into town, precipitation splattering
through the trees above the pavement. A defunct bank building,
the front wall long gone, a stack of prairie hay inside. We
lie on top of the bales and sleep. A little girl across the street,
painted on a weathered, wooden screen door, a slice of Rainbo
Bread, beckons come for sustenance
when the weather clears.
She says her brother-in-law’s brother lives near Naponee.
Hot baths in a lion-clawed tub, home-butchered beef.
We ride along the Republican, mottled sun,
sycamore and cottonwood, still, deep green,
dusty river surface tension, a boat dock, tavern,
air full of floating seeds, gnats and damselflies.
Men and women sit inside
at round tables, drink beer from tapered glasses,
play dominoes, shoot nine-ball at the dark
far end of the room.
We ride gravel roads cut through washes, along low hilltops,
farm houses, barns, coops and silos across the shallow watershed,
twelve miles, and not a brother-in-law to be found.
Sun gone down by the time we wheel back to the highway.
It’s dark when we reach Bloomington town square. Empty,
the only lumination the bar.
Bathe in cold pump water,
sardines and soda crackers for our meal.
July 16.
Harry Obitz
is the man to see
in Red Cloud.
Used to play golf
with Ike, has some stories
to tell. That’s what
Bill Smith, the postmaster
in Franklin, says.
The grain elevator appears
miles away, maybe six,
lean into the wind and take out for it.
Count section lines,
one, two, the elevator
still maybe six miles off,
three, four and still no closer, five,
some sense of bearing down–
eight, nine miles, the Rural Water District tank,
railroad tracks across the road, houses at
the last reaches of the town.
Then roses and petunias, mowed
fescue and maple trees, children playing in the yards.
Humidity rises when you come in
from grasslands, terraced wheatstubble fields
all around.
This is the place
where Willa Cather lived.
July 17.
Rolling thunder, easy rain early in the morning, then sun.
We wait for the ex-husband, maybe one step ahead of the law,
to arrive with the kids. I oil the chains, brake and derailleur cables, adjust the calipers. Climb an old cottonwood to read
set theory, strong southeast wind rattles the leaves, all color–
the grass, her puttering below to get the camp in order– faded
except red-headed woodpecker moving tree to tree.
Everybody pulls in late afternoon. Barbecue pork chops, drink beer,
a raucous reunion, peculiar family gathering when you stop to think
about it. The sons sleep in the Gerry Meadow, she’s with the daughter
in the old VW tent the father brought along. I lie
by the picnic table, first time
in open air, amazed how many luminous stars
are hovering close around to see.
July 18.
She combs the children’s hair. They go
easily, excited at her ride, then hug each other, cry.
The ex-husband paws dirt with the paint-splattered toe of his boot, waiting at the driver’s door. She stands
by the water pump at the well,
that hang-dog look we’ve known her by
no longer there.
We make it on to Hebron.
NO CAMPING posted in the park.
End up in town to ask
at the Thayer County Jail.
The jailer, tall man, dressed in black,
lint adhering to bulky shoulders,
block-faced, soothing bass voice, tells us
how to reach the fair grounds. We
pitch the tent. He pulls up
in a government car to take us back
to jail
for showers
in the women’s cell.
The front aluminum I-pole of the Gerry Meadow is snapped
when we get back, fly and tent body sagging useless
from the rear guylines and pole. Grim assessment,
get to work with my Swiss Army knife whittling a dowel
from an oak branch, a pin to splint the hollow metal tube, wrap it
with electrician’s tape. Notice
about an eight-year-old boy lying mighty low
at the Airstream trailer old dad has parked
across the grounds.
July 19.
Southwest wind, the push
we need. I’m maybe on the mend–
picked up my Lederhosen the other day
at the Franklin P.O., sent by the estranged wife
from Cincinnati,
got the buncles on the run.
A man standing in front of Bob’s Upholstery Shop in Fairbury
calls out for me to stop for coffee. Maybe Bob himself. I don’t
do coffee, but any excuse, my role now to talk
along the way. He’s got
the cup already poured by the time
I’ve hove about. I sip and tell the standard
stories– miles per day, temperature,
the cargo list. He looks on amazed
I do not wear a watch.
Unscheduled, the only duty is to go.
Turns back to his upholstery knife,
trace envy turned grudging contentment:
somebody in this life is out there, liminal
and on the loose.
July 20.
The floodplain is wide, reveals
geologic history for the Middle Branch
of the Big Nemaha, the flat, fertile fields
around the hill
where Salem sits.
Almost medieval, wood and stone
storefronts, tin awnings, benches
both sides of brick, parabola-humped Main.
Isolation made of altitude,
inadvertent discovery
along the detour of Highway 73–
U.S. 75 and now Route 8–
where you turn up winding blacktop
to the town.
Sit and talk with farmers. They chew tobacco,
remove Cargill caps to wipe away the sweat,
speak metaphor built for hard times
and close grubbing in the earth.
Stories hung in idleness,
sun-saturated haze above
row crops, the river and the road.
Then they yawn, stretch and say
they gotta go.
Climb up into cabs
of four-wheel-drive
articulated John Deere diesel tractors,
switch on Mr Cool, strap the stereo headset
over the ears and pull
folded twelve-bottom plows
on out of town.
Enter Missouri
across the Missouri River trestlework bridge
the other side of Rulo. State Highway 111 dug
from the flanks of river bluffs
at the floodplain’s edge,
thick, tall, green corn,
black river-bottom soil,
water vapor chokes the air.
We stop in Forest City
for the night. Brick warehouses
constructed within a few years of one another
along exposed limestone strata, boarded up now, empty
storefronts decay. A man
in the beer joint tells us
the place prospered once,
river port, commerce, trading center,
money to invest, develop, build, until
one morning they all woke up
and the river was
gone.
The city park is by the railroad tracks,
wrought iron gate and fences rotting,
overgrown, encroaching river life,
moisture heavy in the air.
I step on a warren setting up the tent. Kill
a baby rabbit. Others scatter in the dark. Darkness
swelters, mosquitoes wait
their chances. The only thing
that moves is the ground
when freight trains rumble by.
July 21.
Thirty-five years old
today. And nobody in the world
knows where I am
but her. Sitting cross-legged
by the cannon in the side yard
of the Dekalb County Courthouse
in Maysville, Missouri, eating
sauerkraut and kippers.
Rising compulsion to get somewhere–
tonight to Cameron and my aunt and uncle’s farm,
then Bloomington, Indiana, friend Jim, then Boston.
Rumpled hills, low overcast, everything is wet. Constant shifting,
the big chainwheel warped, rip-rup, rip-rup against
the sides of the front derailleur cage, the ride
a means to a meaningless end.
July 22.
We have our separate rooms
upstairs. Aunt, uncle, cousins
sleep below sprawled on couches, air mattresses
spread before the television. Ice tea glasses,
popcorn bowls, empty bottles of beer, late night
Olympics, weather and the news.
Heat lightning flashes at the windows, discharges
through billowing lace curtain weave, scatters
outside leaf and branch across
the papered walls. She comes to me. Remembers
the training rides in Kansas–
back when I’d first showed up
from Cincinnati,
a broken marriage– how
harsh I seemed, distant,
driving her, heat and cold, wind,
sand roads and highways. Disabused
her of all pastoral notions of this passage.
Ask her how it’s been on the open road, she says
much worse than that.
July 23.
D-9 Cat
works the fallow forty acres
above the house,
yellow on the black earth,
pushing dirt, a terrace
to form the waterflow.
July 24.
Uncle Leo passes his dill pickles around,
last year’s batch–
that’s it! he says.
And we all agree.
July 25.
Croquet balls, Chinese Checker
marbles, Missouri,
Oklahoma homestead, all the outbuildings, sisters,
brothers, cousins, sons and daughters,
dust storm and greenbug infestation,
that year and this–
Aunt Lois looks on and says
it’s all just one big wad
of home-churned butter.
July 26.
It’s repetition does it–
the Bedouin, camels
on a high desert trade route,
gunnysacks of salt,
makes mint tea thick with sugar
at the end of the day.
Ritual. We’re on the road again, the highway,
the town, people along the way,
our mutual loneliness and longing
all part of an exotic strangeness.
Lay out the tent,
unfurl sleeping bags,
gather water, put the stove together, arrange
the nested aluminum bowls,
the clipped spoons, forks and knives
from the plastic sheath.
A physical cycle far beyond
any small act of will, burst well beyond
the grasp of words.
Outside Chillicothe on old 36, WPA concrete
humped and heaved with the hills. Get my front wheel
in a crack, slung from the saddle– the broken collarbone, finally
I can quit!– hit the ground and roll. A few abrasions
on the left knee, the Gitane’s left pedal
bent a little more. When she comes upon me,
still lying on my back on the pavement, numb
hands folded across the chest, she tells
how it had looked
and laughs.
July 27.
The triple-trailer truck is outlawed
in Iowa, over-the-road-long-distance haulers
on the northern route drop down to U.S. 36.
We have to fight our way east against extreme excitement,
engines bellow diesel smoke, oil, highway dust, expended
rubber tread. They give you
your crumbling six inches
along the outer edge,
Consolidated Freight, Navaho Express, some over sixty feet long,
it’s up to you to hold.
Stay collected, contained, astral calm, focus fixed
on tandem duels, shoulder high,
your convex reflection
from chrome-plated hubs
bouncing, banging by a foot away.
two lane stretch, a North American Van Lines coming west,
Co-op gasoline tanker wants to pass him dead ahead,
eleven hundred feet per second, the same twelve-inch leeway,
hunch low, hang on tight and watch it come, airhorn,
left front tire, the sudden explosion of displaced air.
By the end of the day
you’re ready to rest.
July 28.
Cross the Mississippi River
on the Hannibal bridge.
West wind
and Illinois.
A little tepid water
and some shade.
What more do you want
in life–
besides a hand with feeling,
and an ass with none.
July 29.
The plate-glass window
overlooks the Auburn town square,
the pavilion, sidewalks and hawthorn trees.
A long, narrow taproom,
pressed tin ceiling, fans, twisted brass-wire bar stools,
dark wood paneling and booths.
The waitress is tall and lean,
her bangs bleached blond.
She brings hamburgers, deep-fat fried russet potatoes,
crosscut dills, sliced Vidalia onions, iceberg lettuce, Big Boy tomatoes
and Colby cheese.
July 30.
The world is contained. Silent,
linear, heavy, hazy, green and warm.
A narrow, moving strip of concrete,
rhythmic thumping over expansion joints,
eight-foot Dekalb corn planted right up to the pavement,
monoculture, miles go by, time, like this.
Then chaos: two-and-a-half ton Yellow Line ahead,
pneumatic horn behind, cattletruck Ford, all of us converging at
the same skinny place, black Labrador from the cornfield,
Chevy honks, banty roosters flap across, Cadillac
runs an on-coming Packard clean off the highway, dog
barks and snaps at my front wheel
a dozen more yards. Then stops
at the limits of his terrain. Goes quiet.
He recedes with the rest,
the empty stretch of expended county road.
That’s the Route 16 traffic update for the day.
July 31.
She dawdles at her daily chores,
stares at the hissing blue unleaded-gas-stove flame
heating water for oatmeal and Ovaltine.
Watch her pack the panniers, each item
in its ordered place, the sum
total of our physical culture,
damp nylon, cotton, leather, eiderdown
and wool. She examines the green plastic measuring cup
in her finger tips, how the flatware fits,
the aluminum bowls one into the other,
slowly, zips and unzips the tent door flap listening to the sound.
Her next-to-the-last day on the road.
I want to hug her, if such a gesture
would not mislead, give her to think
I’m not such an asshole (buncled)
to ride with after all.
Demented strangers on the road increase, they drive by
slowly, hang out the windows, pound the sides of the car,
growling, gurgling, sticking out their tongues.
We drop down to U.S. 40 into Indiana,
pass the limestone Vigo County Courthouse in Terre Haute,
go south on Fruitridge Avenue
then east to the KOA.
She pedals on,
inexorable miles, this moment
burst onto the next, each
roadway brick, concrete slab,
blacktop heave of the highway.
August 1.
We sit, friend Jim, she and I, in an empty bar and grill
by the Bloomington bus station, late afternoon.
We found a bicycle box, removed
her pedals, saddle, twisted the handlebars,
packed it panniers and all and sealed it up with strapping tape.
She has her clothes in a Colombian gunny coffee sack
from friend Jim’s shop, the ticket
back to Kansas between us by the salt and pepper mill.
She is angry, tears gathered on her lower eyelids: Never
should have come, what good
to ride this damn far to have you
make me leave, you told me in Wyoming,
come this far and quit! I sit there in the corner,
contemplate her long bus trip home,
resist the urge to say I didn’t say that you should stop,
call the kids, pay phone beside the toilet,
tell them you’re not coming.
Friend Jim beams, he loves this kind of thing,
throws his hands out on the table top:
Not bad though, you’ll have to admit,
for someone just a year ago
never had her thighs around the top tube of a ten-speed
in her life. What’s Boston got for destination we don’t have
in Indiana. Taps and stuffs his briar pipe, glances quick
at me and licks his broken tooth: Nice of him to take you along.
She looks up from her beer glass
cradled between her hands. Seems to grin and snaps:
I took my own damn self.
Outside the Greyhound bus pulls in.