“You sure you want to go back out into that?” Veronica asked.
“That’s exactly what I am leaving,” Clay said.
“Yes, I see your point. Well, then you better get some rest, Clay.” With that, she got up and excused herself, and as she turned to leave, she looked back over her shoulder and asked, “You a Republican, Clay?”
“Tonight, ma’am, after that meal… I’m whatever you want me to be.”
“I’ll put you down as a political agnostic, which is good enough for me,” and with that she said that she had to go out to run a few errands. She went back into the hall and came out with a bag and told Stephen to watch over their guest. Then she let herself out, and the two of them sat for a bit, watching a few minutes more of TV.
In between the reports from the storm, the talking heads were already looking for the next big story. The election dance was playing itself out in real time, and both sides seemed to be wondering how to best use the destruction and death and suffering to insure their ascension to power. Vladimir Putin in Russia was strengthening his hold on the former Soviet Republics, and political dissidents were joining the press in accusing his government of killing or silencing his opponents. A video showed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trying to thread the needle between these two storylines, saying that Russia was secretly moving to rebuild the former Soviet Union, and that the incumbent candidate leading America would not sit idly by and let that happen. After just a few moments of politics and world news, the scenes shifted back to local destruction and loss and calls for the government to help those who found themselves in dire need.
After a while, shaking his head thoughtfully, Stephen stood up and walked towards the television. “Do you mind if I turn this off?”
“Not one bit,” Clay replied.
“Listen to some music?”
“Sure,” Clay said, as the boy walked over to the stereo and pulled out a CD, slid it into the player, and pushed the button. The somber, soulful cry of Ellington’s Harlem Nocturne came plaintively out of the speakers. The music stood in sharp contrast to the day’s events with its peaceful, swinging somnambulism.
“I figured you liked Duke Ellington.”
“I do,” Clay said.
And the two of them listened to its end.
****
Wednesday
Clay slept like a rock.
When he woke in the morning, he was feeling refreshed and happy, the weariness of yesterday’s travels washed away by peaceful rest. He put his feet over the bed and dropped them to the floor, then put on his jeans and shirt. He pulled a lambswool sweater on and then his socks and boots. He stepped out into the hall and smelled eggs, and the heavenly scent of coffee in the air. Veronica was standing at the stove tending the eggs, humming to herself, doing a lazy sway while she did so. As she heard him enter, she turned around. “Good morning, Mr. Fugitive.”
They sat and ate in a silence—more out of respect for the memory of the night before than for sorrow at their imminent departure. After the meal, they spoke. Clay talked of tending his garden in the spring. Veronica told him that she couldn’t wait that long and that she had to get some newer plants covered in her garden that day. At the end of the meal, Clay began to return to his room to pack for his trip, and Veronica stopped him by holding out the bag that she’d left with the night before.
“I hope you don’t mind. I said I didn’t snoop too much, but when your stuff was out on the bed yesterday I saw that your gear is entirely unsuited for the journey ahead of you, you foolish man.” She winked. “Even with the stuff I got for you, your supplies are insufficient for such a journey,” she hesitated, “…if… if things were to go bad, you see?”
Clay nodded his head. He didn’t want to interrupt, and he figured she was just concerned with his welfare.
“I would hazard a guess that your skillset probably is insufficient as well, Clay, and a stranger should be forgiven for thinking that you’ve embarked on your journey hastily, and ill-prepared…,” she smiled, trying to soften the blow, “…but with the things I’ve added to your pack, I’m hoping that you’ll get home alright.”
Clay nodded again, and returned her smile.
“I like the books you’ve chosen to carry with you, Hemingway in particular. He got at the notion that the earth is more powerful than we imagine. We’ve seen evidence of that recently. But because of that, you can’t go traipsing off into the woods with a single change of clothes and some energy bars and books and nothing else. Take these. I got you some bottles of water for your thirst and a Mylar blanket to keep you warm and a fishing kit to keep you fed. I keep a bunch of wool military blankets on hand for emergencies and cold nights, so I rolled one up for you and put it in your pack with your clothes. You never know what you will find out there, Clay. In case you find something dangerous, here is a knife that belonged to my husband. I put a flashlight in your bag too, and oh, and something else… it’s in the small blue box. Don’t open it until you get home. It won’t do you any good ‘til then, so I wrapped it to keep it dry.”
Clay looked down in the bag and suddenly felt a wave of emotion for this woman who had done so much for him. All he’d done was what should be expected from a man, but she’d really extended herself in hospitality and courtesy. Clay was moved.
“What’s this?” He reached into the bag.
“Oh that. Yes. Well, I have probably overstepped my boundaries. I saw on your bed the stack of poems. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did, and I’m not sorry. I have a friend who once owned the Huemanity Bookstore here in Harlem. One of the last great independent bookstores in the city. The kind of place that, were he around today, you might find Langston Hughes reading his poems to a group of young toughs. A beautiful place. Anyway, she closed the shop down because she realized people wanted to drink coffee more than they wanted to buy books. She’s now opening a café, but she’s still trying to find a way to have both. So, she bought an Espresso Book Machine, the first one in Harlem. It binds your books right on the spot. She’s planning to open in the spring and we were talking about the machine the other day, and then I saw your poems and... she hopes to have people come in and write their books over her coffee and then bind them and go back out into the street. I called her last night and asked her if she minded if I used it. This is the first book bound on it.”
Clay looked at the cover. The Poems of C.L. Richter. A tear formed in his eye.
“I hope you don’t mind. I read a few. I know…”
Clay choked back a tear. “No. I don’t mind,” He looked at her and realized that what she really meant to say was: I know. I’ve lost someone, too.
He put the book back in the bag and stood there for what seemed like the beginning of forever. He smiled and told her that if she ever got to Ithaca, she and Stephen had a home in his forest. She reached out and gave his hand a squeeze, and then they both turned away, him to his packing, her to her gardening.
****
The rest of that day was spent in a blur, as if in a dream. Clay bid Veronica and Stephen good-bye and made his way to the bus line that would carry him up to the George Washington Bridge. He walked across the expanse and, as he had planned, he threw his key in the river, watching its slow mournful arc until it disappeared behind the webbing of girders and concrete and fell through space to land with a splash that no one could hear.
Once he was in New Jersey, he walked for hours and hours along what passed for the back roads, 4 and then 17, past the slow-changing landscape that morphed from urban to suburban. He passed fields and farms and golf courses and shopping malls and industrial wastelands and streams.
At the end of the day he checked into a small hotel just outside of Suffern. He found his room and lay down on his bed and rested his weary feet. Just before he dropped off to sleep, he reached into his bag and pulled out the copy of his book that Veronica had made for him. Opening it to the first page, he noticed that she’d placed in it a folded slip of paper. He opened it
up and read the following poem just prior to slipping away.
Bound No'th Blues, by Langston Hughes
Goin’ down the road, Lawd,
Goin’ down the road.
Down the road, Lawd,
Way, way down the road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.
Road’s in front o’ me,
Nothin’ to do but walk.
Road’s in front of me,
Walk…an’ walk…an’ walk.
I’d like to meet a good friend
To come along an’ talk.
Hates to be lonely,
Lawd, I hates to be sad.
Says I hates to be lonely,
Hates to be lonely an’ sad,
But ever friend you finds seems
Like they try to do you bad.
Road, road, road, O!
Road, road…road…road, road!
Road, road, road, O!
On the no’thern road.
These Mississippi towns ain’t
Fit fer a hoppin’ toad.
CHAPTER 4
Cheryl was twenty-three when he first experienced her in the cafeteria at TC3. TC3 was what everyone called Tompkins Cortland Community College, and so Clay had learned to call it that too. He’d tried, for a while, to get his friends to call it The Cube, and he still liked that nickname, or maybe “TC-cubed” was a better one, but it hadn’t really caught on, so he went along with the flow.
Anyway, Cheryl was working part-time in the cafeteria as a cashier. After four years spent running around Europe with Bohemian girlfriends, staying in hostels and photographing everything in sight, Cheryl had only started college a year earlier at the ripe young age of twenty-two. She caught Clay’s attention one day near the beginning of the fall semester when she was on her first day of work and he was going through the line to pay for his lunch. He always had the same lunch, consisting of one roast beef sandwich (extra mustard), one bag of chips, and a single chocolate chip cookie. He was a creature of habit, but not of stone, and so that day, to mix things up, he’d decided to go through the pay line with the pretty young girl at the cashier counter.
Most love stories start in one of two ways. There is the “Hollywood” way wherein two polar opposites are forced to work together on a job, say, or a bank heist or an unavoidable outing with children. It can be anything really. It doesn’t have to involve a job or a bank or children. It could involve planning brunch for a friend’s wedding party, or setting out on a mission to Mars. The point is the two people involved initially hate one another. With a passion. Until somehow and one day the tension is too much (and too obvious) and they share an awkward kiss. After the kiss, sometimes accidentally achieved while both are specifically trying to avoid having anything to do with each other, they are forced to realize that they are mutually attracted. That’s when the music cues and a love story begins.
The “real world” way that lovers meet, the second kind, usually starts with a shared look from across the room. There is nothing of loathing or hatred in it. In fact, usually, the look is followed by the man being immediately and lethally struck down by the woman’s ethereal beauty. Slayed by Cupid, he can do nothing else, from that point on, but pursue the woman until he captures her heart. There is no soundtrack, save that one in the heart, but in this kind of story, the man’s heart skipping and the woman’s cheek blushing give hint of the music to come.
Or something like that. Either way the story is familiar.
Neither one of these well-worn paths was the route to romance trodden by Cheryl Woolsey and Clay Richter. Instead, it came down to the cost of a roast beef sandwich.
The total price for his meal on that blessed Monday—his first day with Cheryl in his life—was $6.25, and he paid for it with a crisp, new $10 bill. She did her magic with the cash register and promptly handed him his change. $2.75. Looking him directly in the eye and smiling innocently.
He looked at the pile of money in his hand—fully $1.00 short of what he was owed—squinted his eyes threateningly at her, harrumphed, and then moved silently on to a table to eat his meal in defeat. He did not once look back at this thief, this grifter, this circus con-woman with her big floppy Burberry and her skinny long legs and her dark heart hidden behind a too-ready smile. Who wears a Burberry hat, he thought, in-doors? And he ate in a kind of plotting silence.
The next day, Clay, seeing Cheryl perched on her wooden stool at the register on the far end of the lunch line, purposefully placed on his tray the exact same items that he always had and went through the line as he had the day before. Reaching the register, he placed his food before her and, once again, Cheryl smiled at him sweetly while blatantly and fearlessly stealing a dollar from him. He looked down at his $2.75 in change, grimaced indignantly, thrust it into his pocket and went to his table to eat his meal.
It was all he could think about. He was obsessed. He didn’t study that night at all.
The following day, the pattern continued, only this time, after receiving his change minus the dollar Cheryl had again stolen from him, he smiled back at her sweetly, pocketed the change, then reached over and picked up a roll of mints (priced at $1) and stuck them in his pocket with his change. He winked. At that, her eyes narrowed a bit and they shared a long and knowing stare before he finally retreated to his luncheon table.
The fourth day of this unique courtship with Cheryl, Clay loaded his tray with the identical lunch items, and she rang up the sale on the register. He noticed that the bin of mints had been removed from the counter, an obvious sign of one-upsmanship. He could see it behind the counter, just beyond his reach, almost as if someone had calculated his height and the stretch of the fabric he would be wearing that day, and had gone through the motions to calculate the lean of his body, the inclination of the packaging. The mints had been put… just… beyond… his reach.
Without so much as a pause, he reached into his pockets and pulled out the exact amount he owed. $6.25. Nothing more, nothing less. He counted it out quite deliberately making a show of each bill, then slowly dropped the change in the center of the bills, letting the last quarter drop dramatically from his hand and roll slowly in a lazy circle on the formica before it began to spin, increasing its speed as it collapsed, dying slowly and dramatically and rhythmically on the countertop. Clay smiled, nodded his head in victory, and then began his triumphant walk towards his table. It was then that, without warning, he was struck in the back by a hastily thrown roll of mints. He turned around slowly, and balancing his tray in one hand, he casually bent down and picked up the mints. Snapping a single mint out dexterously with one thumb, he popped it into his mouth, winked again at Cheryl, and went to the table to eat his lunch.
Not long after what became known as The Mint War, he met Cheryl in the campus bookstore. He smiled at her and she smiled back and the first word she ever said to him dropped from her lips.
“Jerk.”
“Thief.”
“Meanie.”
“Reprobate.”
They stood and smiled at each other. Smiles of shared affection. The rest, as they say, is history. Not even a year later they were married, and they had a hard and fast rule after that. No stealing. Even if she was only doing it out of psychological curiosity—to see who would notice.
****
Thursday
Twenty years had passed since that meeting, and here he was, a lonely widower, staring up at a filthy, water stained popcorn ceiling in a cheap motel room. The weight of the last few days suddenly hit him. God, or Fate, or inertia or chaos—whatever ruled the world—had led him to this place in a conspiracy of silence, simply standing by and watching as his life transpired. He suddenly felt melancholy, sad, and alone, like he was moving to an end, but the purpose of that end suddenly seemed less clear.
He knew that getting home would help everything. Having just been in a real home with Veronica and Stephen had reminded him of what he was missing. But, he also knew that wi
thout the people in the house to make it a home, he would still be wandering the rooms like before, listening for the sounds of others.
He put this thought out of his head. Sometimes giving in to thoughts makes them become self-fulfilling prophecies. He willfully meditated, instead, about what he would do when he got to Ithaca. Maybe he would get a milk cow—he always liked Jerseys—and some goats and chickens. I could do that, he thought, as he finally began to stir from his reverie, to shake the morning cobwebs from his head. He had no real sense of freedom yet, but the idea that there was a future for him, and that the future involved home and peace, made him smile. Still a bit of a journey, he thought, but the only way to get there is a step at a time.
He took stock of his body, particularly his legs. Tight. Muscles sore, but in a good way. His feet hurt. I should have done this six years ago rather than lock myself away in that urban prison. But, I can still do this. I can. Man, it would be so beautiful to have Cheryl and the girls with me… but I don’t.
He knew there would be no water in the tiny bathroom, but he couldn’t help trying the rusted faucet anyway. After check-in, the managers had brought in a couple of buckets of dirty, rusty water to be used only—they had carefully explained several times—to flush the toilets. He still had the three bottles of water Veronica had given him back in Harlem, so he used a judicious amount out of one bottle to splash water on his face and brush his teeth. There were three energy bars left in his side pocket, so he ate one of them, and for some reason that he couldn’t rightly identify, he wasn’t able to get himself to throw the metallic wrapper away. He folded it carefully and stuffed it into one of the side pockets of the backpack. Why did I do that? He couldn’t really say. There was some need to conserve now, to make everything count, as if whatever materials had come his way had done so for a reason and he had a responsibility to make them count. Or perhaps he was just getting nervous. Maybe what had happened with Sandy was not the end, but just the beginning. Maybe things were going to spiral downhill in the aftermath. He remembered the Christmas blizzard of a few years back, how some of the stores had run out of food in an astoundingly short amount of time, making shopping in them like walking through a Soviet-era bread line. After that storm, you had to be happy with whatever could be found on the shelves and not ask questions—just pay for whatever was available, and be glad you got it.
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