An excerpt from Seldom
Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains
Copyright
Patrick Dobson and personally recommended press 2003
Chapter Two
"Don't worry, kid.
You'll be all right. I walked in cold and wet my whole life."
Bonner Springs, Lawrence,
Topeka, St. Marys, Wamego
Phil
asked me through the steam off his coffee if I wanted a ride. Rain had fallen
all night. I had not slept well. After months of wanting to get underway, to get
out of town, I said yes. It was time to break completely with ground and past
intimately known. The unfamiliar roads and the inhabitants that lived along
them had stories to tell, which, I suspected, would start putting things into
perspective.
We
took off in Phil’s pickup past the last gas stations and convenience stores at
the edge of town. The windshield wipers beat a melancholy rhythm against the
rain as we followed the Kansas River under a blanket of fog in a wide alley of
dark woods. Old farmhouses, red and white, and dilapidated barns punctuated
junkyards and the remnants of old mills and antique shops until we entered a
stretch of blank road.
At
Bonner Springs, a small town southwest of Kansas City, we pulled into a parking
lot on a dreary business strip. Fear had me frozen to the seat. Phil looked at
me over a cigarette and smiled. “It’s always gonna be just one thing, you
know,” he said. “You do just one thing, anything, and then you do another.
That’s what’ll get you down the road.”
I
looked out through the drops on the windshield. It was spooky, walking out
there, wondering what dangers might lie over the next hill and where I might
lay my head at night. The entire trip coursed through my head every minute,
would I come through safe? Would I be secure? Would I live through it?
I
looked over at Phil, who was smiling, and thought for a second about what he
said. Taking the next step wasn’t so bad. I pulled on my nylon rain gear.
"You
know my number," he said as he pulled his hood up against the rain. He
gave me a hug and stepped back and lit a cigarette, his hands trembling in the
cold. “Wherever you are, just call. I can’t come get you from bumfuck, but we
can make sure you get back somehow.” He shoved his hands up underneath his arms
and gazed out over the trees toward the river.
Even
as Phil drove away, the waterproof nylon pants shed rain into my boots. I
turned and walked out of the parking lot. One step after another, the first
mile eased the bone-deep chill. Oncoming traffic threw up dirty spray. But none
of it penetrated a new sense of confidence that came with just one more step.
Another yard, another block.
Soon,
I began to see up and out of the foggy mess of my own worry. The day was gray
and dim, but it added a dimension, a depth to the newly shod trees and narrow
strips of grass on the other sides of the parking lots and guardrails. Soon the
main street through town climbed up out of the valley. Away from the main
highway, Bonner Springs was a slow and pretty place, quiet and lonely in the
rain. I could imagine red-white-and-blue parades and festive banners as I
walked past the city hall and through the city center. But I could see that
this bucolic, almost 19th century straw-hat beauty would be its end.
Hordes of suburbanites had begun to populate the fringes and being a bedroom
community infiltration that threatening to turn the town into everyplace else.
Then,
I focused on my feet again, and one step, then another. And for the moment,
Bonner Springs retained the look and feel a small town, a moment to be enjoyed
before it withered of its own grace.
Kansas
32 ran through the town, which was prettier and lonelier in the rain, to an
elementary school at the edge of town. The school, a 1930s-era building of
earth-tone brick that herringboned around the facade and rose into a
five-pointed star above the entrance, had cracked windows and flaking glazing,
brick in need of pointing, peeling paint. But it retained a timeless stability
and dignity. Beyond, lightning spidered across gray horizon. The highway rolled
past the school and down a long incline to a gray-brown stream at the bottom of
a grass-lined bowl rimmed with oak and hickory. The solitude was immense. A
high school track and a factory stood on opposites sides of the valley. Over
the slight slosh of the creek, the only sounds were the rain and a hum from the
factory.
The
ribbon of pavement played out over the hills and was easy to walk. Rain came
and went in passages of light and dark. The highway, known by locals as the
Linwood Road, rolled between black fields, where spikes of corn barely peaked
above the clods. Vast blue-green carpets of wheat swayed on the horizon. Near
Linwood, the rain ended, but the sky closed behind a curtain of blue steel that
cloaked everything in dim blue-gray and the wind blew cold. A convenience
store/gas station in Linwood was alive with neon and seemed a warm place to dry
out. My rain gear had become a wet suit that drained into my socks.
I
wrung out and changed in the bathroom, stuffing wet gear into the pack. When I
came out, the woman behind the counter invited me to the chairs in the front
window for video keno players. When she turned her head, an imposing pile of
hair turned with it. I sat down with a cup of coffee.
The
man seated at the counter had been a mailman in the area his entire career. He
looked down at my shoes, which bubbled and sloshed at the seams. "Yeah, I
gave that up 'cause of days like today," he said with a laugh.
"Really…I'm retired. I looked forward to retirement my whole life. Only,
once I was retired I didn't know what to do. I sometimes walk, just for the
hell of it. At least I know how to walk."
"Don't
let him kid you," the woman said. "He's in here every day 'cause he
keeps winning that damn keno." A new number came up on the video screen
that hung above the window. Both took up pencils and checked their cards.
"I
hope you're slow enough to miss the snow," said the clerk, not looking up
from her game. "Blizzard blew through Nebraska yesterday, big news."
"I
hope it will be better when I get there."
"I'll
be cold and wet," the mailman said. He looked serious for a moment and
then giggled and slapped me on the back as he checked his keno card again with
a new number. "Don't worry, kid. You'll be all right. I walked in cold and
wet my whole life. Look at me." He leaned back to reveal a well-healed
paunch, which he grabbed with both hands.
Outside,
the rain had stopped, and the sky opened again. A new, stiff wind whipped the
trees. The brisk sting on my face was refreshing. Spring had produced deep and
fertile greens in the landscape that seeped into the deepest corners of my
being. Walking, I felt the rhythm I remembered from younger days, before I
could drive, when I had walked everywhere and seemed to have had the entire
world to myself. I whistled long forgotten tunes and made up my own, that I
wrested into silly melodies that made me laugh out loud. At first, I felt
ridiculous. Then, realizing no one was around to witness my absurdity, I felt
even greater license to talk to myself, make jokes, repeat phrases that turned
into harebrained aphorisms, “An apple a day keeps girlies at bay,” “Red eye for
fright put you out for the night,” and “Cold hands, hot weenie.” I rested on
guardrails, where stands of trees swayed over little creeks.
The
unanchored fear I had felt earlier in the day came and went, almost as the sky
lightened and darkened. But as the sky changed from washed-out gray to blue and
the day warmed, I remembered lines from Whitman's "Song of the Open
Road":
Afoot and light-hearted I take to open
road
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading
wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I am
myself good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no
more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries,
querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open
road...
Kansas
32 dropped out of the wooded hills into the Kansas River valley, an expanse of
corn and wheat level as a plate. Trees stood in knots in the yards of
farmhouses sprinkled over the black and brown fields. Where there was no
traffic, suddenly flowed a stream of cars. The shoulder shrunk to a narrow
rattle of pavement. Drivers did not sway from the white line. Some seemed to creep
closer as they approached. I moved to the grass, where the path became tough,
as my feet had begun to hurt again. It was torture, one step at a time.
Just
north of Lawrence, a concrete tipi stood in a small grove of oaks near a
crossroad. Built in the 1920s, the three-story building had been a prototype
for a gas station chain whose founders dreamed of dotting the nation along new
highways crossing the nation. But the Indian-themed gas station chain
floundered in the Depression. The concrete tipi was now as tipis were meant to
be: It was a house.
Just
down from the tipi, K32 met Massachusetts Street, which I took south into town.
The strip beamed a neon message that, indeed, winners wrote history. The street
wound past a motel, gas station, auto body shop, and a moving and storage
company all named Jayhawk, after the Union sympathizers that had populated the
Free-State town of Lawrence. The Kansas University athletic teams were all
Jayhawks, their fans, Jayhawkers. There were no Bushwhackers (the name of
Confederate partisans) or Indians anywhere.
Jennifer
Lutz, a friend of a friend who'd agreed to put me up for the night, wasn't
home. I sat on her porch and listened to the crickets in the grass. I freed my
hot and swollen feet from my boots. Later, when I climbed into Jennifer's
bathtub, I thought I could actually see my feet, set on the rim, throb and
pulse.
The
next day, Jennifer invited me to stay on until the blisters, now the size of
quarters and half dollars, had healed. She was a lively woman with dark
shoulder-length hair and intense eyes. She ran a house- and office-cleaning
business, and was gone everyday, she said, from early morning until late
evening. I considered my feet—and took the offer.
The
next morning, people move slowly along brick streets under the towering oak and
sycamore as I sipped coffee on the porch. Later, I limped into downtown to the
shoe store. Busy storefronts lined the streets, cars parked diagonally before
them. Throngs of students who attended the university on Mt. Oread above solved
the world's problems at coffeehouse tables. I stopped at a couple of cafés to
have a coffee and write, and to listen. It was good to hear students had not
changed from years before, when, just as idealistically, my friends and set out
from coffee house tables to make the world a better place.
But
more important than the state of the world was the state of my feet. My hiking
boots were intended for dirt paths and rocky terrain and not for hard, flat
pavement. The soles were stiff and had little cushion. The leather uppers
supported my ankles, but hindered a good stride. I bought shoes with
air-cushioned soles and went out again to listen to young people save the
nation.
My
feet, if not my soul, felt wonderful the next day. At dawn, I bounced down
Farmer's Turnpike out of Lawrence. The road took me between forested hilltops
and flowing wheat. Clouds billowed across the sky, trailing tentacles of mist.
Intermittent rain and cloud-induced darkness washed over a landscape blue green
with new wheat and budding plants.
The
landscape was peaceful and pretty, and it was with great exuberance I breathed
prairie breezes. But as I walked the road toward the next town, Lecompton, I
thought of the history of this stunning beautiful country. For a time after the
establishment of the Kansas Territory, it had been the scene of bloody and
ruthless strife.
Starting
in 1854, slave-state activists established the territorial capital at
Lecompton, proclaiming Kansas to be slave-holding territory. The sectional struggle
had already begun. And while Lecompton’s politicians’ claim lasted only a few
months, it made the town an epicenter of an ugly border struggle. With the
Kansas/Nebraska Act, which fashioned the territory next to Missouri out of
former Indian lands, anti-slavery Jayhawkers and pro-slavery Bushwhackers—both
thieving, bitter, rabble rousing, guerillas—began a decade long running battle
along the Missouri-Kansas border, and then well into the Civil War.
Men
who called themselves Free-Staters and Slave-Staters were activists, writers,
newspapermen, and politicians who observed the niceties of civil society; such
as it was, most of the time. But Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers were a different
breed that gave little heed to civility. These partisans perpetrated agonies
and atrocities, lived from the adrenalin of conflict and from the fear (and
supplies) of common people who had once known them as neighbors. Hundreds died. About the safest thing
to be in this pretty country along the Kansas River in the decade and a half
after 1854 was a horse. Both sides prized a good mount and strong work animal.
In
the climax of this mean-spirited conflict, Confederate agitator William
Quantrill broke camp on the Blackwater River in Johnson County, Missouri, Aug. 21,
1863. He and a contingent of Confederate sympathizers headed across the border
toward Lawrence, gathering men and arms on the way. Many who joined the band
had raided anti-slavery households before, and some had been interloping Border
Ruffians that ruined the first territorial election in Kansas in 1856. (The
Kansas-Nebraska Act had made slavery an election issue, and some 400
Missourians who became known as Border Ruffians crossed into Kansas to vote in
the election.) By the time Quantrill rode into Lawrence, he had headed a force
of 450 Bushwhackers and ordered them to kill every man who could handle a gun.
The band sacked Lawrence, looted stores and residences, and started fires that
raced through the wooden commercial and residential buildings. Then, Quantrill
and his men lined up the men and boys they hadn't yet killed along the downtown
boardwalk. The raiders then massacred them in a bloodletting rivaled only by
the Indian Wars (1854-1890). When the Bushwhackers melted back into the
Missouri forests, the town of 2,000 had almost completely burned to the ground.
One hundred fifty men and boys were dead. Property damages reached the unheard
of sum of $2 million.
For
the duration of the war and sometime after, feuding among pro- and anti-slavery
forces in this area continued. Jayhawkers executed Bushwhackers; Bushwhackers
executed Jayhawkers. Both killed legitimate political figures on both sides of
the slave debate and innocents in between. Farms, businesses, buggies, and
stables went up in flames.
Out
of spite, lawmakers after the Civil War established Kansas' first state
university in the formerly Confederate-sympathizing Lecompton, an act of
backhanded generosity. They named the school after James Lane, a leader of
Kansas 7th Regiment—a ruthless and bloodthirsty bunch of Jayhawkers. Time,
state funds, and the tender pockets of students soon removed Confederate
sympathy from the town, and Lane University flourished for a while. Dwight
Eisenhower met Mamie here. A host of agriculturalists attended the school and
later spread wheat into western Kansas.
By
the beginning of the 20th century, however, Union vengeance over Lecompton's
Confederate past would no longer sustain interest in a school far from the
trading and crossroads at Lawrence. Kansas University in Lawrence eclipsed
James Lane, both in the minds of legislators and of Kansans in general, and the
school in Lecompton languished. The native-limestone building served awhile as
the town high school before it was abandoned. Finally, in the 1970s, residents,
interested in staving off their town's demise in the wake of farm
consolidation, preserved the sandstone structure. Since, the former college had
become the site of town and county festivals and fairs.
I
walked though the center of town, under the dimness of the elms and oaks. A
marker in front of the defunct Oddfellows Hall stated that Confederates had
once populated Lecompton and that the town was the capital of Slaveholding
Kansas. Other than this marker, little around the pretty, quiet town indicated
its contentious past.
Gary
and Linda Kroeger ran a general store down the street from the old university
that had become the center of daily life in the town. Linda brewed a fresh pot
of coffee for me and poured three mugs and set them on a map. While I had not
brought it up, she and Gary mulled over what they would do if they were looking
for a place to camp. Lake Perry was not far from Lecompton. Lake Shawnee was
nearer to Topeka. Linda went to answer the telephone. Gary insisted Lake
Shawnee was nearby. I followed his directions south out of town.
The
Lecompton Road shot straight as a rod south between farms and over hills. It
was a pretty, narrow lane with no shoulder. Puffy clouds thickened to a
thunderstorm. Darkness settled on long rows of trees in windbreaks. Gusts sent
fluttering creases across the wheat, now dark blue-green in the dimness. After
a two-and-a-half mile walk Gary said would be a mile, I knocked at the door of
a small house next to the road. Small bunches of crocuses bloomed at the base
of leafy rose bushes in the neatly mown lawn. A short gravel drive led to a
front porch littered with plastic children's toys.
A
woman cracked the door with caution. Then she smiled, and her strong, matronly
face framed in white, curly hair brightened. I told her about Gary's
directions.
"You
know," she said, "we love that man. But..." She indicated he was
good with a lot of things, but not directions. Lake Shawnee and Topeka, she
said, were still 15 miles distant. There was no short cut.
The
Lecompton Road ended at U.S. 40. At the intersection, I walked into a small
park crowded with pin oaks. A creek dribbled at the bottom of a small draw.
Cold wind blew rain through the little brick and wood shelter and over the
concrete picnic table in the middle. I shivered, wet and sitting still. But it
was a site better than having my boots fill with water. The wind let up after a
while and the rain came straight down. My breath hung in puffs in the tiny
shelter. I changed my clothes and put my feet up in the chill to air the
blisters and dry my feet before heading west again.
U.S.
40 was as narrow as the Lecompton Road, but traffic was heavier, the curves
blind, and hills unending. A thin, muddy line of gravel formed a shoulder that
disappeared at road cuts. The pavement wound through narrow valleys and small
stands of woods. The weather swung low and sputtered. After five or six miles
of dodging trucks and sliding around on loose shoulder, I stuck out my thumb.
A
young kid in a pickup stopped after a short time. Richard wore a ball cap and
had a smooth, hairless face framed with horn-rimmed glasses. Muscular arms
bulged out of the sleeves of his T-shirt. He had just finished active duty with
the Army Reserve in Missouri and was headed back to school at Kansas State
University in Manhattan, another 60 miles on. "I passed you a little bit
ago and almost didn't turn around again. This road's so narrow."
"Yeah.
It's a fun road to drive."
"But
not to walk. I don't usually pick up anyone, but you have good-looking stuff,
and you're pretty clean yourself. Funny how you feel all right pickin' up a guy
who looks like he doesn't need much help, but drive right on by the guy who
probably does. You aren't just out wandering, looks like."
"No,
I'm not." I told him a little of what I was doing.
“Man,
I wish I could go with you,” he said. “I’d do anything to do that sometime.
Leave, you know. Go out on the road like you are. It’s sort of a dream everyone
has, doncha think?”
“To
tell you the truth, Richard, it doesn’t seem like much of a dream in the rain.”
“It
will, though. I bet it will.”
Richard
offered a ride to Manhattan—“Why walk when you can ride?” he asked.
“There’s
too much to see between Topeka and Manhattan,” I said.
“You
know, I bet your right. All the stuff you never see when you drive.”
“And
the people like you.”
He
dropped me where the road widened and sidewalks lined the street. Broken
prairie had turned into suburbs, and suburban landscape changed into ramshackle
urban lots. Makeshift businesses and used-car lots, recycling and junk
businesses and storefront churches slouched next to abandoned and broken
buildings, empty lots and broken cars along potholed streets.
My
daughter was eating ice cream when I called her from a pay phone in a grocery
store parking lot. My feet stung again. The rain had not stopped. Topeka seemed
like a very large town.
"Why're
you crying, dad?" she asked.
"Well,
I love you, honey."
"I
love you too, Daddy." She licked her ice cream-chocolate and vanilla.
"But why're you crying?"
"Because
I miss you, Sydney, I miss you a lot."
"I
miss you too, Dad, but I'm not crying."
Down
the street, two boys sat on a barbershop stoop. They looked bored and restless.
From inside, their dad, an African American barber, eyed me with suspicion. The
boys were eight and five years old.
"What're
you doing?" the young boy said.
"Hiking,
on a trip," I said.
"To
the mountains?" his brother said.
"Sort
of. I'm going to Helena, Montana. You know where that is?"
"Sure,"
said the older boy said. "It's in Montana."
"You
know where Montana is?"
"It's
by the mountains," he said. "It's a long way from here. What're you
gonna do there?"
"Well,
if I get there, I want to put a canoe on the Missouri River and come back to Kansas
City."
"Man,"
he said, "it sounds fun. But I wouldn't wanna walk all that way."
"Sometimes
I don't either."
"Why
are you, then?" The younger boy smiled. "Our dad took us for a canoe
ride once."
"It's
just something I have to do."
"I
know what you mean," the older brother said.
I
checked into the Ramada near downtown. The desk clerk discounted the room
because I had no car. In the room, I hung clothes on light sconces to dry. The
pack stove sputtered and flamed on the sidewalk, warming dinner. The wind
picked up. It sleeted. I went to the motel's hot tub. A toothless man with a
cigarette between his lips handed out towels. "Make you feel alive,
man" he said. "I love them bubbles. I'd sit in there all night if I
had enough water...to drink, I mean."
The
sky had cleared the next morning. The rain had scoured the streets clean, and
there wasn’t a person or car about. The air was fresh and crisp, and it would
be a perfect day for walking. I stopped to ask directions at a liquor store,
the only place open in downtown on a Saturday morning. The owner was large,
fleshy, and pale, as if he never went outside. He seemed friendly enough at
first but soon became dour.
"It's
a long walk outta town," he said. "I don't know if I'd do it. Once ya
get to the highway, it's always got traffic and the road's narrow as they come.
I wouldn't do it. It's kinda crazy what you're doin'. You’re gonna have a tough
time of it."
He
went on like this and became aggressive. He was still grumbling when I stumbled
back out into the sunshine, feeling assaulted. But anger soon dissipated, and
within a few minutes, columns of diesel smoke rose under my feet on the
mile-long bridge over the Kansas River and Topeka rail yards. A man at a
convenience store at the end of the bridge pointed across the street to the
Silver Lake Road as best and easiest way out of town.
The
road was flat and straight and without traffic. Oregon Trail Historic Trail
signs marked the road every half-mile under lines of towering cottonwood trees
on the bank of the Kansas River. Long batteries of grain elevators lined
railroads tracks next to the river. Trains filled with grain and mail headed
west. Others snaked by them hauling mounds of Wyoming coal. The country was
green and sodden, and frogs burped in every ditch and glittering puddle.
The
day soon warmed and breeze rattled cottonwood leaves and delivered cool wisps
of transpiration. A big, fast growing tree, the cottonwood provided ample shade
on hot summer days. Although riparian, few cottonwoods would have grown along
the river in the settlers' time. Hooves of migrating bison herds and the
frequent fires that cleansed the prairies of hardwood and brush would have
confined the trees to isolated tufts at the base of bluffs and in steep
drainages. Once the bison was gone, the settlers let the trees grow and stayed
away from them in storms. They were little use in building anything more than
fences. The wood warped easily and was brittle. Lightning or hard wind busted
the seemingly strong limbs and thick trunks into splinters.
The
road meandered out of the shade of cottonwood groves and into flat expanses of
plowed field spread over the wide valley. Clapboard farmhouses sprung from
mounds of cedar and oak. In the distance, radio masts and an occasional house
spiked the top of scantly forested hills. The road shimmered in the heat.
Slight breezes became a wind, coarse against my lips and eyes. It whipped a
copse of oak on the roadside where a farmhouse once stood. I imagined children
running through the yard. I wanted to climb into the shade and nap but kept on.
At
the settlement of Kiro, the road intersected U.S. 24 and the Union Pacific
Railroad tracks. I took off my pack and leaned against a stop sign near a house
with a fenced yard. I felt good and tired. Sweat had turned to salt on my skin.
My legs ached in a way that made me feel alive.
After
a few minutes, a Bassett hound lumbered out of a little door on the screened
porch and across the yard. It stopped under a catalpa at the fence and moaned,
slinging slobber in wide arcs. It howled, grew bored, and retreated to the
porch. Then, it seemed to remember a man wasn't supposed to be sitting against
the stop sign and returned to moan again. Finally, it gave up and sat with just
its nose and floppy ears hanging out of the little door.
Soon
the owner came out and introduced himself. Mike was tall. Red hair sprayed from
beneath a yellow Allis-Chalmers ball cap. The dog started howling again. Mike leaned
on the fence. "Flash thinks he's a lotta dog. But he's just a pushover.
You come outta Topeka?"
"Yeah,
really Kansas City. I’m hopin’ to make St. Marys today."
"Well,
you're ambitious." He shook my hand. "Kiro's just a spot. Useta be a
waterin' station for steam trains. It's a nice place, middla nowhere." He
invited me into the house while he filled my water bottles. We walked through a
small mudroom hung with garden implements and lined with boots. Frilled,
cream-colored curtains covered the kitchen windows. We sat at a small
Formica-topped table, where he spread a road atlas. His wife walked in.
"I
reeled in somebody," he said over his shoulder. "We're just gonna
look at the map a minute."
"You
boys'll like some tea," she said and turned to fill glasses with ice. She
set the glasses, already sweaty in the heat, on the flowered tablecloth.
"Don't mind the kitchen. Me and Mike just had lunch." The kitchen was
worn but spotless.
"Silver
Lake’s further on," Mike said. "The road useta lead outta Topeka to
Silver Lake, but that was a long time ago, before the highway." He traced
his finger along the map, seeing things there I couldn't. "You'll wanna
take the highway. It ain't bad walkin'. Shoulder's wide and traffic ain't bad.”
“A
guy in Topeka told me it was a nightmare.”
“’Parrently,
he don’t know what he’s talkin’ about. I hadda walk it a few times when my car
broke down. Seems like it was the only time I walked, and I don't anymore now
that I gotta decent car." He laughed, and his eyes squinted in a merry
way.
"I
had a friend who navigated the Kansas River in a canoe and floated some rivers
in British Columbia by himself,” he said. “I went out with him on the Kaw a
couple of times, and he wanted me to go north. But that takes more guts than I'm
willin' to admit I got."
He
and Flash, now more sedate and little less slobbered, stood by the fence as I
walked away. Mike tipped up his cap, and swatches of red hair flittered it the
breeze.
At
Rossville, a young man in a rusted white Camaro stopped and asked if he could
give me a ride. People had stopped at the side of the road and offered rides
since Kansas City, nearly all of which I had turned away. While the people
seemed friendly and safe enough, I had intended to walk the entire route to Helena.
But I had begun to learn from the few rides I did accept that these simple
relationships would reveal more of the inner topography of this land than just
walking over it. The man lifted his face up to the sun, eyes closed, and pulled
his long, wavy hair back. Cornfields and little bumps of farmsteads spread
beneath the sky behind the Camaro.
Bruce
was from Claycomo, a small town built around a Ford plant north of Kansas City,
Missouri. "I live there part of the time, and used to work at the car
factory. Now I got a little place up in a town by the Nebraska boarder. If you
want, I turn north at Wamego and can take you up that way. I wouldn't mind
putting you up for a few days."
I
wanted to accept his offer, but the deep contradictions of St. Marys called. It
was a pretty and well-kept place. The streets formed a perfect grid on the face
of the prairie, with a park and a little business strip along the highway.
Still, tension lurked under the loveliness of the place. People had been
unfriendly and standoffish when the times I had been through before. I had to
see, on foot this time, the nature of this uneasiness.
“No
thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the ride, but I don’t want to get too far ahead
of myself, start missing things, you know.”
“I
get it. But as much I wanna do what yer doin’, I wouldn’t do it. Too much time
and energy. Plus, I’d feel like I had to have my gun with me all the time.”
Bruce
let me out near the edge of St. Marys. Intervening years had not changed the
town into a welcoming place. The cops did not allow overnighters in the
picture-book city park. The convenience store clerk laughed when asked about a
motel or rooming house. I called St. Mary's College, a group of old brick
buildings that had been, in the distant past, an Indian mission.
The
man who answered identified himself as a priest and gave the home number for
the school secretary. A woman answered that number and was guarded at first,
then frantic. "Who gave you this number?" she said. There was a tinge
of fear in her voice. "Who are you?"
"I'm
walking through and need a place to stay. I wanted to see if I could rent a
dorm room since summer's begun and the students are out. A lot of colleges have
empty dorm rooms. I’d just thought I check and see."
"Well,
I see...Well, we don't do that. No, I don't think we do that. You'll have to
call or go see Mr. Cain." She gave me an address and dropped the phone on
the hook.
I
walked through the pretty, tree-lined streets to Mr. Cain's one-story clapboard
on the edge of town. No one answered the door. Inside was dark. Age had settled
in and around ornate furniture profiled against chintz drapes. A large plant
withered in the window next to the door.
Next
door, a man was working on his yard.
"I
was trying to reach Mr. Cain," I said.
"Well,
he was just out working on his shrubs. He didn't answer?"
"No,"
I said. "There doesn't appear to be anyone home."
"He's
there. Come inside and use the phone."
I
looked up Cain’s number in the phone book. An old man answered, suspicion in
his voice.
"Mr.
Cain, this is Patrick Dobson. The secretary at the school gave me your name and
said you might rent me a room for the night."
"Yes,"
he said, a little warmer. "You say the secretary gave you my name. What
exactly are you doing here?"
"Well,
I'm walking through. Since there're no motels in town, I called the school to
see about a student room."
"And
she gave you my name?" Mr. Cain's voice tightened again. "Who are you
with?"
"Well,
just myself."
"I
mean, what group are you with?"
"No
group, Mr. Cain. I'm on my own."
"Well,"
he said with a rasp. "I'm not a hotel you know. You'll just have to look
somewhere else." He was nervous and angry. "No grace without God. No
salvation without the true church." He slammed the phone down-isolated
clicks and snaps.
I
was tired. My feet really hurt. I was ready to sleep in the bushes. But
curiosity gripped me. The secretary was disturbed and frightened when I called
back.
"You
mean Cain didn't have a room?" she asked.
"Not
that he'd let me stay in."
"Oh
my God! Hold on."
She
talked to someone for a minute, muffled sounds through a hand.
"You'll
take a ride to Wamego," she snapped. Wamego was 15 miles west. I had never
been ridden out of town before.
"Meet
my husband at the gas station."
A
rusting Chevy van drove into the station. The bandy-legged driver wore faded
jeans and curled cowboy boots. His old cowboy hat was festooned with Texas flag
pins. He plugged the pump nozzle into the van's tank and strode over. He stood
on his hip and offered his hand, but didn't introduce himself.
"You
the fella walkin' acrost the cuntry?" he said. He tipped up his hat and
smiled. "Lemme git a little gas here and we'll head out."
When
he had paid and climbed behind the wheel, he didn't speak. He drove with both
hands on the top of the steering wheel. He adjusted his hat and wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. Then, he began to pray out loud. He called on patron
saints of travel, roads, weather, and crops. "We thank the Lord an' Savior
Jesus Christ for all the greatness of the land an' of this day. We pray for the
redemption of sinners an' guidance to those that'd harm us." He invited me
to say the "Our Father" with him. I wanted to keep the peace, so I
did.
"You
Catholic?" he said at the end of the prayer. The sun cast yellow and red
over the wheat fields. The swollen Kansas River eased by the overgrown grass
next to the highway.
"I
went to Catholic grade school and high school," I said. I didn't say I
hadn't been to church except to look at art or to see a concert for fifteen
years, or that I was an unmarried father. But to have said none of it was his
business might have been worse. I felt it was important to save my heathen
skin.
He
turned suddenly, and with a mean-spirited grimace, grated out some Latin. I
shrugged my shoulders.
"You
don't know what that means, do ya'?"
"I
never studied Latin."
"So,
yer a New Catholic." He tightened his lips and nodded, like he had just
found me out.
"New
Catholic?"
"Yeah,
a Catholic raised up in the apostasy of Vatican II." He wanted a fight. I
was going to be compliant and easy to live with.
"What?"
Facing
forward, he cocked his head and squinted his eyes. His hands tightened on the
wheel. "Vatican II, in case you don't know, is part of the Jewish
conspiracy to rob the true church of its power. Jews, atheists, an' comminists,
and their friends in the gov'ment know weakenin' the church and convincin'
people it is right to do so is the first step in taking over."
"No
kiddin'? Taking over what?"
"Why,
the world. Bringin' on the reign of Satan. Inundatin' the world in vice an'
evil. Everyone should know about it. But you can't blame yerself. It's the
fault of the media. They're a part of it, too. The gov'ment is an agent of
Satan." His voice rose; spit flew from his lips. "The press and
gov’ment bureaucracy and law take the true religion from Catholics and rob them
of a place in heaven. Loss of school prayer, the secular state, sepperation of
church and state, gov'ment regulations, environmentalism, an' workplace safety
are all part of its methods. But Jesus' time an' the way of the cross will come
again soon an' the sinners will be driven through the gates of Hell."
Jesus
had a loaded plate, I thought, and wished Wamego were a little closer. Outside
sang a chorus of frogs. The sun squeezed into the horizon like a magician's
egg. The bandy legged man, introduced now as Mr. Thomas, pulled into a
convenience-store parking lot in Wamego and was suddenly calm and friendly, almost
self-conscious. "Here you got yer motel. An' over there is yer Taco Bell
an' yer McDonald's."
The
silvered windows of Mr. Thomas' van flashed red and orange as he sped back
toward St. Marys. Inside the convenience store, coffee was fresh and the clerk
friendly. Children and adolescents crowded around a few video games and pinball
machines. A few furrow-faced farmers sat at molded plastic tables and benches
near the front door drinking coffee and pop with calloused and stained hands.
Outside, highway travelers and teens out for the night pulled up to the gas
pumps in the fading light.
The
backpack stuck out in the crowd. Officer William Moore of the Wamego Police
Department asked if he could help. Checking me out, he hooked his thumbs into
his gun belt and smiled when he talked. When he figured out I wasn't into
mischief, he went to a back room to call local motels.
"Well,
they're full," he said when he came back. He sat down and slid a cup of
coffee across the table to me. "I hope it's good. They got cream and sugar
over there...I think you should go talk to Father Phil. He lives right behind
here and usually has a room free in the rectory. Just tell him what you told me
and that I sent you."
Wamego,
a town of 2,500, spread between rolling hills and sprawling corn and wheat
fields. Neatly trimmed lawns surrounded picturesque public buildings. Parks
stretched between rows of Victorian homes. Trim yards under tall and strong oak
and elm made the place look like an English garden.
Father
Phil was cautious, peering from behind a glass storm door. But after a moment,
he stepped out and shook my hand. Guests had arrived for the weekend, he
explained, and he did not have a place. He apologized profusely.
Back
at the convenience store, Officer Moore sat behind his cup of coffee looking
out at the fields across the street. He had been raised in Kansas and decided
to return after a stint in the Army in Vietnam, where he was injured and still
walked with a limp. He was glad he had come back after college. He had raised
his family in Wamego. He smiled at the story of what just happened in St.
Marys.
"Well,
they're strange birds," he said. "Some say those people at the school
have been excommunicated or something for rejecting Vatican II and the Pope.
But you know how those things go—rumors are what they are. They have about 400
students of all ages. Their school isn't accredited, and they really don't
care. That doesn't matter much. I say believe what you want.
"Usually,
they keep to themselves." He looked into his coffee cup. "But there
has been talk of militia groups, heavy arms, radical activity in around
Rossville, St. Marys, and Herrington. With the bombing of the federal building
in Oklahoma City three weeks ago, there are feds all over central Kansas. I
thought they must be jumpy in St. Marys, but they must have it pretty bad.
You're lucky, kid. They didn't know whether you were press or FBI, or whatever.
I bet that's why they wanted you out of town."
A
patrol car pulled up in front of the store. The officer on duty waved. Moore
had called him after hearing that Father Phil had no room. We walked up to the
car.
"Hello,
Nick Flores," said the officer, offering a strong hand out the window.
"What
do you think about putting this guy up in the park?" Moore said.
"Sure,
I don't see why not. You just can't put up a tent. Do you mind?"
Both
Moore and Flores looked self-conscious, like they were sorry they could not
find anything better.
"Well,
no," I said, "not at all."
Officer
Moore put the backpack in the back seat of the patrol car. "My God,"
he chuckled, "I'm glad you're carrying this thing."
Flores
pulled the cruiser into the dappled evening. He talked highly of his town as we
drove through Wamego. He waved at pedestrians and stopped to joke with a woman
about her errant husband. It was good, at the end of a strange day, to be with
a man like Flores.
"You
know," I said, "this is the first time I've ever been in a patrol car
and not been under arrest."
"Some
people," he said, "never get so lucky."
A
Dutch-style windmill stood on a mound to one side of the park. The mill had
been built on a farm outside of town in the 1880s, where it was used for nearly
50 years. Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain (and the Roman working class by
extension) smiled from a carved limestone lintel above the door. The town
council bought the dilapidated mill in the 1950s and moved it to the park.
While the grinding mechanism still functioned, the wind machinery didn't work
any longer. On weekends, volunteers flipped a switch to grind local wheat into
flour small bags for tourists.
"I
hope you'll be comfortable," Flores said. "I know it's not much. Call
me if you need anything. I'll be around all night. The station's just over that
rise. Come on over if you want to use the phone to call home."
Oak,
elm, and sycamore dominated the park, which was situated in a quiet
neighborhood of large Victorian houses. The last twilight skittered through the
leaves. Geese drifted in the hourglass-shaped pond. A fountain flowed from
beneath a statue of Venus on four sea-shell-flanked columns on a little island.
A few kids fished for bluegill, their bobbers twirling in the bubbles from the
fountain. The faux vanes of the windmill creaked in the breeze. Tracks for a
little choo-choo, put away for the night, bent around the lake and through the
park under the green canopy.
I
walked to the police station to call my daughter. The woman behind the
bulletproof glass in the basement offices knew of me. She opened the door and
showed me to the police chief's office. In the wood paneled room, a picture of
the chief's family in a small frame leaned against legal and procedure manuals
and drafts of city ordinances. Law-enforcement awards stood on the computers
and radio. Certificates and degrees hung on the wall. Wamego was a small town,
but it wasn't Mayberry.
Sodium
lamps in the shelter bathed the concrete floor and tables with orange light. I
arranged my mattress so my head was in the shadow of a picnic bench. The geese
splashed, their honks echoed up under the timbers of the picnic-shelter roof.
With cats after goslings, the night was no time to sleep.
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