Ride Away Home

by William Wells

  That is interesting, but I want nothing more at this point than to freshen up and find something to eat; to be polite I ask, “How do you and your wife like it?”

  “Absolutely hate it,” Garrett answers with a laugh. “We’re working harder than we did at our old jobs. Or at least it seems harder because it’s mostly boring. We’ve got the place up for sale and are moving back to Chicago at the end of the month, whether it sells or not. I’ll do some marketing consulting. Marissa has lined up a position at Alinea.”

  Before heading upstairs to my room, I say, “I suppose I missed dinner?”

  “Too bad you didn’t get here an hour ago,” Garrett answers. “Marissa served a nice spread. The guests seemed to enjoy it.”

  “That’s okay. I can go back to the Cracker Barrel.”

  “Cracker Barrel? No way! Marissa would kill me if I let you do that. She’s still in the kitchen. She’ll whip up something from the larder. Freshen up and come down whenever you’re ready.”

  Garrett leads me up a creaky wooden staircase to a room on the second floor, insisting on carrying my saddlebags. There is no room key, which is one of a rural B&B’s charms, but I have that city dweller’s habit of wanting to lock up my stuff. Garrett pushes open the door, flips on the lights, puts the saddlebags onto a webbed suitcase stand at the foot of the bed and departs, reminding me again to come down to the kitchen when I’m ready.

  I take in the room, which has a small connecting bathroom. It could be a model for a feature spread in Bed and Breakfast Business magazine, which probably does exist; there are specialty magazines for everything. Chintz curtains; lace doilies on every available surface; a four-poster bed with a lace canopy; an antique oak dry sink with a flow-blue bowl and water pitcher. Jenna has a flow-blue collection, which is why I know the term. I wish she was here with me, and that Hope was in school, and we were a family again.

  I peel off the leathers, tee shirt, jeans, boots, and the insulated underwear, and stand under a steaming hot shower—unlike many B&Bs the Arcadia has good water pressure—and afterward feel better, physically and mentally. I slip on a white golf shirt, wrinkled from being rolled up in the saddlebags, jeans, and running shoes I brought along, and reflexively look for the nonexistent room key.

  I find the back stairway at the end of the hall, which, I assume, will lead me toward the kitchen. As soon as I start down the stairs, I can smell the warm, yeasty aroma of baking bread. If there is a more wholesome, comforting, inviting smell in the world, I don’t know what it is.

  I follow the aroma down the stairs, along a hallway, and around a corner into the kitchen, which has white walls, black-and-white checked tile on the floor, stainless steel counter-tops, a scarred butcher block, the kind of cast-iron gas range that’s always lit, and hanging copper pots that look like they actually get used, unlike the pots in our kitchen, which are for display purposes only.

  Marissa Kirkland is bending over in front of the oven, taking out a metal tray holding four bread pans, oven mitts on both hands. She puts the tray on the butcher block, turns, and smiles at me. She is wearing a faded denim shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. Her soft auburn hair falls to her shoulders; she shakes a strand from her face. She is slim and pretty, maybe in her mid- to late-fifties, one of those women who seem to improve with age. I can see threads of silver in her hair and fine lines around her eyes, which are the color of cornflowers. And she can cook. Garrett is a lucky devil.

  “Hi there,” she says, shaking off the mitts so she can take my hand. “I’m Marissa. You must be Jack. Garrett said you might stop by for a snack.”

  “That bread smells amazing,” I say. “I’d tell you it reminds me of my youth, except our family ate Wonder Bread.”

  “Sourdough, from starter I brought from Chicago,” she tells me as she flips one of the bread pans upside down, taps the bottom with the handle of a chef’s knife, slides the loaf out and cuts a thick end slice, which she slathers with soft yellow butter from a dish on the counter.

  “Here,” she says, handing the bread to me. “I prefer the end pieces. See what you think.”

  I take a bite. Pure heaven.

  “Wow, this is fantastic. It’s like I’ve never tasted bread before.”

  Marissa seems pleased.

  “Pull one of those stools up to the counter and I’ll see what I can throw together.”

  As I perch on the stool, she swings open the refrigerator door and scans the shelves, saying “mmm … ah … yes …” as she pulls out various items, setting them on the butcher block: some field greens in a plastic bag, a red onion, a tomato, something that looks like a withered black mushroom, eggs in a bowl and a brick of yellow cheese.

  “We’ll do something light, so you can get a good night’s sleep,” she says as she shakes out the lettuce into a wooden salad bowl. “I think an omelet and green salad will do the trick.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I say, resting my elbows on the counter as she’s whisking eggs in a bowl as butter is melting in an omelet pan on a gas burner. The butter is sputtering as she pours in the eggs and uses a grater to add the cheese. She folds the omelet over onto itself, waits a moment, then slides it onto a big white china plate. She spoons some salad onto the plate and grates slivers of the black mushroom onto the top of the omelet.

  “Black truffle,” she explains. “Gives a cheese omelet a nice finish.”

  She takes a bottle of red wine from a rack under the butcher block, extracts the cork and pours some into two stemmed glasses. She hands one to me and lifts the other in a toast: “Bon appétit, Jack. A fruity pinot noir, I think, goes well with eggs.” She displays the label. “Stag’s Leap in the Napa Valley. The vintner’s a friend of mine.”

  She holds the glass to her nose, sniffs, takes a sip, swirls it in her mouth, and swallows. “Very nice. A hint of sassafras, rosemary, and cinnamon, with a light veneer of oak. Mildly assertive, yet not pushy. I’d have to say its presumption amuses me.”

  I take a sip and shrug.

  “Just tastes like a nice red wine to me.”

  Marissa grins.

  “Ha! It tastes like that to me, too! I was just putting you on with that pretentious wine blather. I’ve seen blind tastings where the so-called experts can’t tell the difference between a fifty-dollar French and a ten-dollar California. Or even Two Buck Chuck.”

  I laugh and dig into my meal with gusto, famished.

  “This is wonderful,” I tell her.

  Marissa cuts another hunk of bread for me, and one for herself, and sits on a stool beside me, spreads butter on her bread and takes a bite. I consider licking my plate. She finds a rhubarb tart in the refrigerator and draws us both little cups of espresso from an antique copper and steel machine she tells me she found in Tuscany.

  “So, Jack, if you don’t mind me asking, where are you heading on that motorcycle,” she says.

  Once again, as I did back at the roadside diner, I have the urge to blurt everything out. But this time I think I owe Marissa Kirkland something for the great meal. And, warmed by the meal, the wine, and the company of this interesting and attractive woman, I realize that I am terribly lonely.

  Marissa sits silently as I tell it all, every bit of it, feeling a sense of relief, of a burden being lifted from my back, perhaps like a Catholic in the confessional seeking forgiveness for his sins. Jack the blabbermouth. Why burden this nice woman with my personal problems just because she made a nice meal for me?

  She stands, gives me a hug, and says, “Oh Jack, bless you, and bless Jenna, and bless Hope. May you all be together again.”

  I’m deeply moved, and manage to say only, “Thank you.”

  She begins putting the dirty dishes into the sink, and tells me, “If you’re not quite ready for bed you can find Garrett down on the dock. He usually has an extra cigar.”

  A BRILLIANT moon hangs in the night sky as I make my way along a fieldstone path running down to the lake. The temperature has dropped into the 20s; I’m wearing my leather jac
ket and a knit cap I brought along. I come to a sand swimming beach. The lake is still frozen. Garrett is seated on a wooden bench, puffing a cigar whose end glows like a firefly in the night. He’s wearing jeans, a red plaid lumberjack coat, a Chicago Cubs baseball cap, and cowboy boots.

  “Hey Jack,” he says. “Join me in a Cohiba?”

  I sit on the bench, accept the contraband Cuban cigar, a cutter and box of wooden kitchen matches, snip off the end of the cigar, light it, and take several long draws to get it going. I’m not a cigar smoker, but I have had a few over the years and don’t want to refuse Garrett’s hospitality.

  “The perfect end to a perfect meal,” I tell him, adding, “I think I’ve never eaten so well. Your wife is a fantastic chef.”

  “They say hunger is the best sauce, but yes, she certainly is that,” Garrett agrees, exhaling a long puff of smoke. We enjoy the silence for a while, sitting there under the moon and a blanket of stars. I notice for the first time a little grouping of ice-fishing shacks out on the frozen lake, about fifty yards offshore. When his cigar is down to the yellow and black-checkered band, Garrett stubs it out in a metal bucket full of sand on the ground beside the bench. I hand him mine and he does the same with it.

  We stroll back up to the house. I’m feeling a sense of contentment that I haven’t felt in a long time, and I’m grateful to the Kirklands for that.

  “Sleep well,” he says as he opens the screen door for me. “Breakfast’s at seven, but feel free to sleep in. Marissa will take care of you whenever you come down.”

  IN THE morning, I wake early and enjoy a good breakfast with the three couples staying at the Arcadia who are from St. Louis, Cleveland, and Chicago (friends of the Kirklands’). Then I say good-bye on the front porch to Garrett and Marissa, with her giving me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and I’m back on the road.

  So far, this journey has been more about reliving my past life than about new experiences, but I’ve still got plenty of road ahead of me.

  9

  What I remember about the accident is cruising along I-70 East, an hour out of Columbus, late morning, under an overcast sky, when a light snow began to fall. The snow was melting as it hit the pavement so the cycle’s tires were still getting traction. If I could make it to the next exit, I’d find a motel and wait for better weather.

  I turned on my headlight and slowed to ten mph. The Zanesville exit two miles ahead, according to a sign. Fortunately, there was no traffic behind me.

  Suddenly, the Harley’s rear wheel lost traction, and began to slip sideways, the cycle out of control, heading toward a guardrail. The cycle hit the metal rail and I was airborne, turning ass over teakettle, landing on my back in a frozen farm field.

  I remained conscious. I don’t remember how long I lay there, feeling no serious pain after I regained my breath, but unwilling to try to get up right away in case I’d broken something. Someone, a passing motorist, must have called 911 because after a while I heard sirens, then saw the flashing lights of an Ohio State Highway Patrol cruiser, which pulled over and stopped. The trooper made his way over the guardrail and through the field, knelt beside me and eased up my helmet visor. “Can you hear me, sir?” he asked.

  He looked to be about my age, flecks of grey in his hair, which seemed old for someone still on highway patrol.

  “Yes …”

  “Can you move?”

  “Don’t know, haven’t tried.”

  “Okay, don’t move. An EMS van is on the way.”

  “My motorcycle?” I asked.

  Dumb question. If I’m going to die or be paralyzed, who cares about a motorcycle?

  “Looks like it isn’t too bad,” the trooper said. “We’ll attend to it after we get you on the way to the hospital.”

  The EMS crew arrived; one of the two medical attendants, a young woman, slipped off my helmet, and the other one, a young man, checked my vital signs, and put a brace on my neck. They eased me sideways onto a gurney, and transported me to Muskingum County Hospital in Zanesville, where I was examined, kept overnight, and released the next morning, suffering only from some bruising and a sore back and ribs. I spent the next several hours in a Ramada Inn, taking prescription pain killer pills and soaking in the hotel’s hot tub by the outdoor swimming pool. The state highway patrol had arranged for my Harley to be trucked to a mechanic.

  To continue or not to continue, that is the question. No one could fault me for abandoning the trip, or at least not continuing it on a motorcycle. No one but me. I realize that this is foolish, but at this point in my life, foolish is what I have left, and rational hasn’t been working all that well. The thought of going home, or of arriving in Key West without benefit of the kind of trip I’ve planned, is simply not acceptable.

  I TAKE a taxi from the hotel to Bob’s Garage on Adair Avenue in Zanesville. I find Bob, a man in his fifties with a grey crew cut and grease on his hands, in one of the bays working under the hood of a beige AMC Gremlin that looks almost new.

  I introduce myself as the guy who owns the Harley. Bob wipes his hands on his coveralls and returns the shake.

  “Glad you’re up and around already,” he says.

  He notices that I’m looking at the Gremlin.

  “Probably the ugliest car ever made,” he says with a grin. “Looks like a pregnant gerbil. It’s owned by a farmer who bought it new in ’71 for his wife. His wife promptly gave it back to him, so he parked it in the barn, with thirty-two miles on it, the distance from the dealer to home. His grandson found it there and wants it, beats walking I guess, so I’ve been checking it out for him.”

  He cocks his head toward a corner of the garage, behind the second bay.

  “Your cycle’s over there. Let’s take a look.”

  We walk over. My Harley is leaning against the wall, looking … sad.

  He shakes his head. “You and your bike are lucky some car or truck wasn’t coming up on you when it happened. Otherwise, we’d be selling you both for parts.”

  “I know.”

  “So, what we have is a bent handlebar, broken foot peg, shattered headlight lens, and broken turn signal, and assorted scrapes and dents. Not too bad under the circumstances. I checked, and I can get the parts from the Harley dealer in Columbus. Owner’s a friend. Or, if you’d rather, he can send a truck to take the cycle there for the repairs. Fine with me, either way.”

  I consider this, then ask, “Have you ever worked on motorcycles before?” Then regret this rude question.

  Bob smiles.

  “There’s a dirt track over by Bloomfield, where they race cycles on weekends. In my younger days, I used to race there. Now, they bring me the broken ones to fix. No Harleys, but I’ve had a few in the shop, too. But, as I said, I’m fine either way.”

  The smart thing is probably to have the work done by the Harley dealer. But for some reason, I want to give Bob the business. I like the look of the repair shop, and of Bob. This little rural operation is like something from another age, back when attendants pumped your gas and cleaned your windshield, and people—at least in towns like this one—didn’t lock their front doors and left the keys in their cars. In addition to the nostalgia, the factory warranty won’t apply.

  “I’m good right here,” I tell Bob.

  “All right then. I’ll write up an estimate for your insurance company.”

  I know that getting an insurance adjuster way out here will take who knows how much time, and I’m eager to get going.

  “Just tell me how much and I’ll submit the bill to the insurance company later,” I say.

  “I’d say we’re looking at five or six hundred dollars, give or take.”

  “That’s fine. How long will it take?”

  “Oh, I can have the parts here later this afternoon, I’ll go get them. I’ll have it ready by morning, unless I run into a problem.”

  “Okay, let’s do it,” I tell him.

  “Meanwhile, you can drive my car. I’ve got the truck.”

  Bo
b’s car turns out to be a mint-condition 1964 red Corvette convertible, which Bob found in another farmer’s barn. These barns are apparently vintage-auto gold mines.

  So I stay at the Ramada that night, grateful for the additional time to recover from my aches and pains. When Bob is done, my motorcycle runs perfectly, although, he said, I’d need a body shop to fix the dents and paint job.

  Maybe later. For now, I’m back on I-70 East toward Virginia, the weather forecast promising sunny skies all the way.

  10

  “How’s the house, Jack?” Jenna asks as she finds me in the lobby of The Sanctuary’s main building in McLean and gives me a kiss on the mouth. Now that I’m in Virginia, the temperature is up in the sixties, so weather is no longer a problem.

  “A Ritz-Carleton for head cases,” Jenna had termed the hospital when I brought her here just more than eight months ago.

  “The house is fine. It’ll need painting this summer. It’s been six years. The icemaker on the Sub-Zero is broken again, so I’ll have to call the repair guy when I get home …”

  I’m about to tell her something equally mundane about the roof shingles being damaged by the ice and snow when she interrupts me.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Jenna says. “Did you bring pictures?”

  I’m surprised. Jenna has not asked about our house, or about anything else about our life in Edina, since arriving here.

  “Sorry, I didn’t think of it,” I tell her. “I will next time.”

  At first, I began visiting weekly, flying into Dulles every Saturday and renting a car. But it soon became clear that my visits were upsetting Jenna, and me as well. I hated seeing her in an institution, no matter how nice the furniture was. So I started coming less often, once a month or so. Jenna never seems to care how often I come. At least she hasn’t said so.