The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America

by McIntyre, Mike

  I wish I shared Don’s blind faith. Life would be simpler. But in a way he’s right. While I worry about dying—and even conjure grisly scenarios involving my demise on the Road to Cape Fear—I simultaneously believe that on this journey I’m immune to death. Perhaps it’s no more than a mental trick that allows me to hop into cars with total strangers. Or maybe it’s proof positive that I’m not an atheist.

  The next car that comes along picks me up. Casey, a recent college graduate, buys me a hot dog at a convenience store, but he isn’t much for conversation. It’s a silent 200-mile shot across the state to Idaho Falls. We blow by the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Arco, the first nuclear-powered city in the U.S. About all Casey has to say is that the Mormon Church is a cult. Like Utah, southern Idaho has a heavy Mormon population. Casey says you’re either with them or against them. So when we reach Idaho Falls, I’m surprised when he drops me in the parking lot of the Mormon temple.

  Everyone in my girlfriend Anne’s immediate family is a practicing Mormon, except for Anne. As long as I’m here, I figure I’ll have my picture snapped in front of the temple and give it to Anne’s mom when I get home. A couple of women volunteers from the visitors center see me standing in front of the temple with a camera, and they come outside. They’re both wearing dresses that almost reach the sidewalk. One of them asks if I want my picture taken in front of the temple, and I say yes.

  “Where are the men?” she says to the other woman. “See if one of them can take his picture.”

  I wonder why a man is needed, and so must the other woman, who says, “Well, I can take his picture.”

  The women invite me into the visitors center, where I lean my pack against the wall. My eyes dart to a table with some cake and punch, but it’s not that easy. I’m first handed off to one of the men. The guy looks about dead. You could put a fist in the space between the knot of his tie and his shriveled neck. He speaks in a thin-lipped monotone, yet he’s as subtle as a jackhammer.

  “Have you ever considered missionary studies?”

  He leads me around the room, stopping in front of pictures of places inside the temple I’m not allowed to see because I’m not a member. In one picture, statues of 12 oxen support a whirlpool tank. This is where Mormon ancestors who lived before the founding of the church are belatedly baptized. Another picture shows the Sealing Room, where couples are married—not until death do they part, but for all eternity. There’s also a picture of the childhood home of Joseph Smith, founder of the religion. The story goes that God revealed the Book of Mormon through a stack of gold plates Smith found buried in a New York mountain. That was in 1827, but the plates were somehow lost. This is what troubles me about organized religions: The crucial evidence is always missing.

  The man hands me a pencil and asks me to fill out a card. I don’t know why, but I actually put down my real name and address. Now some missionary in San Francisco won’t rest until he personally places a copy of the Book of Mormon in my hands.

  At least now I get cake and punch.

  The volunteers ask what I’m up to, and I tell them. Surely, one of them will seize the opportunity to drag a sinner home and show him the appeal of the wholesome Mormon life. But I get no offers. They already know where I live. I’m already in the factory, somewhere down the assembly line. I leave the temple, marveling at the efficiency of the salvation industry.

  I hike through town along the Snake River. There’s a wooden raft anchored to the bank, and I consider playing Huck Finn for the night. But it’s out in the open, leaving me an easy target for cops and robbers. I continue along the shore until I come to a private campground.

  “Are you the manager?” I say to the teenaged girl inside the office.

  “No, I just work here, but I’m pretty important.”

  I offer my labor in return for a campsite.

  “Oh, I couldn’t decide that,” the girl says.

  “I thought you said you were important,” I tease.

  “The owner’s gotta decide that. She’ll be in after five.”

  “What do you think she’ll say?”

  “Probably no.”

  I return to the office a half hour later, and a woman with a warm, friendly smile greets me. But when I run my pitch by her, the smile melts faster than a snowball in August. I see myself sleeping out on that raft yet.

  “I’ve got hired men who do all my work, and they’re through for the day,” she says.

  I tell her I’m passing through and I don’t even need a whole spot. A patch of grass will do.

  “Well, I hate to see you be without a place to stay,” she says. “Why don’t you take one of those tent sites over there.”

  As it turns out, the woman is a recent transplant from northern California. She’s from the Alexander Valley, the very place where Chief let me camp on the first night of my journey.

  There’s a play area in the back of the campground. I spot a pair of swings, and I sit in one. The rubber and canvas seat cradling my behind feels familiar, yet it’s been at least 25 years since I’ve sat in a swing. When I was a little boy, the first poem I remember my mother reading to me was called “The Swing.” It was in a book of children’s literature she kept by her bed, and I often begged her to read it to me. I was enthralled with the image of flight. Of all the toys in the playground, the swing was my favorite. It was magical. And now I ask myself how I ever let a quarter century pass without sitting in a swing. If I had not embarked on this journey, would the swing have been lost to me forever? I give the ground a shove with my foot and start swinging. It all comes back. The muscles don’t forget. I pull hard on the links of chain and climb higher. I throw my head back and look down at the ground. You’re never alone on a swing. A swing swings back. Together you make music. There is the creak of the bolts, the scrape of your shoes dragging in the dirt. I pull harder, climb higher. I see the sun setting over where I’ve been, the moon coming up over where I’m going. I scoot to the edge of the seat. Soaring ever higher, I wonder: Do I still remember how to jump?

  CHAPTER 12

  I make West Yellowstone, Montana, by noon the next day. I was last here in 1988, covering the devastating forest fire in the national park for my newspaper. It’s odd how the profane is never far from the beautiful. With its phalanx of souvenir shops and burger stands, West Yellowstone is a blight on the land worse than the charred remains of the famous park across the state line in Wyoming.

  I figure kindness may be a rare commodity in a town that needs to sell so many T-shirts. I stay only long enough to hear one joke. A local citizen asks if I know the difference between a black bear and a grizzly.

  “If you climb a tree and the bear climbs after you, it’s a black bear,” the man says. “A grizzly just knocks the tree down.”

  With this unsettling image in my mind, I press farther north into Montana.

  The Big Sky State is enjoying an Indian summer, with temperatures in the 80s. My ride drops me in Bozeman, a rustic college town of sun-splashed brick buildings, charming bookstores and cheerful cafes. It’s a town I’d like to linger in—if I had any money.

  I promise myself I won’t settle for a campsite tonight. But I’m pacing the main drag well past dark on a Friday night and a kind stranger has yet to approach me.

  I stand outside a coffeehouse called the Leaf and Bean. A band has launched into its first set. The place is empty. Two young women sitting behind a cash box inside the front door gesture at me to come in. They point at the cash box, as if to say, “We really need the money.”

  A sign in the window reads, “Please Don’t Stand in the Doorway.” A third woman inside now walks briskly toward me. She must be the owner or manager, coming to shoo me away.

  “Are you going to come in and see the show?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, taking a step down the sidewalk.

  “Because you don’t have any money?”

  “Yeah,” I smile with embarrassment.

  “Come in,” s
he says, grabbing me by the arm.

  The band’s name is Fear Politik. They’re quite loud, so I can’t hear what the woman says to her employees when we walk by the cash box. I just smile and give the women a thumbs-up. It’s only when Fear Politik takes a break that I can hear again and learn that my sponsor doesn’t work at the coffeehouse.

  “I tell them that if someone is standing at the window, the only reason that they don’t come in is that they don’t have any money,” she says. “If they let people in early for free, it encourages other people to come in.”

  Her name is Barbara, and she says she’s a folk singer. She’s 40 and has the air of a Bohemian. A green beret sits atop her gray-streaked hair. She’s extremely hyper, ready to fly off her stool. She speaks in a rapid New England accent.

  “Do you need a place to stay?”

  “That’d be great.”

  “You’re not Ted Bundy, are you?”

  “No,” I say, reminding her that the infamous serial killer was executed several years ago.

  Barbara talks nonstop. At one point she catches her breath and says, “Enough about me, what about me?” and babbles on. I strain to keep up. But with the heavy-duty decibels of Fear Politik assaulting my ears, Barbara may as well be whispering her life story to me in Albanian.

  I piece together the tragic tale during the next break. Barbara is one of 11 children from a Catholic family in New Hampshire. One of her brothers was killed in a car crash. She married a carpenter and had two daughters. He left five years ago, refusing to pay alimony or child support. Lena, 17, lives in Connecticut with her father’s sister. Alicia, 14, lives with Barbara in Bozeman.

  After her divorce, Barbara worked as a nanny in Maine. There she met a laborer turned musician from Minnesota. After a three-week courtship, they married. The new husband turned brutal and abusive, once dragging Barbara by the hair down a dirt road. She wouldn’t leave; he finally did. While she was driving to Connecticut to visit Lena, Barbara’s car was rear-ended. She injured her head and now suffers seizures. She later hurt her back while trying to lift a woman in a wheelchair. While laid up, she taught herself to play guitar and wrote some songs. She’s almost as broke as me. To make the rent recently, she pawned her treasured Guild guitar for $700. Now she plays a borrowed guitar. She moved to Bozeman nine months ago to help her younger sister, Colleen, who was recovering from a car accident of her own. Barbara plans to record a CD with Colleen.

  After Fear Politik wraps up its last set, Barbara heaps praise on the young nihilists. We walk down the wide streets of Bozeman, past spacious houses with wraparound porches. Barbara confides that she recently fell and hit her head. She warns me that she has dizzy spells. She may pass out on the walk home. I should be ready to catch her.

  Barbara wears me out. I’m spent. The pack on my back feels like an anvil. All I want to do is fall into bed. Now Barbara is telling me she’s lost. We cut circles in the dark until we arrive at a corner she thinks looks familiar.

  She and her daughter live in the converted basement of a house. The room is cluttered with mismatched thrift store furniture. There’s a fish tank with no fish. Barbara’s five-month-old Australian shepherd Maya has further trashed the place in her absence, knocking over a plant and crapping on the floor.

  It’s past midnight, but Alicia isn’t home.

  The apartment’s lone bedroom belongs to Alicia. Barbara sleeps in a twin bed against the wall in the living room. A mattress lies on the floor beneath the kitchen counter. The pillow is covered with a Dick Tracy pillowcase. This is my bed for the night.

  I unroll my sleeping bag and crawl in. Barbara asks if I’d mind if she plays the guitar. I tell her not at all, as anything will be an improvement over her incessant chatter. She sings a song she wrote called “Sunset Park.” It’s about her abusive second husband. Her voice is pleasant though unremarkable. I fall asleep as Maya chews on my foot through my sleeping bag. I wonder if I’ll awake in a storm of duck feathers.

  In the middle of the night, I hear Barbara at the front door. “There’s a famous man here,” she whispers. “He’s traveling across the country with no money.”

  “Mom, I’m tired,” Alicia says. “I’m going to bed.”

  When I wake in the morning, Barbara has already showered.

  The bathroom is pitch dark, with no light bulb or window. I unscrew the bare bulb from the living room ceiling and put it in the bathroom. A plastic garbage bag serves as the shower curtain. When I’m getting dressed, I hear Alicia talking to two girlfriends in the living room.

  “I’m about to meet the famous guy.”

  I can practically see her rolling her eyes.

  I come out to meet the teenagers. Amber is all arms and legs; she wears bowling shoes. Cindy is a butterball with braces. Alicia is sad and beautiful. A goofy country song about Elvis and Shakespeare plays on the radio. The girls dance around the room.

  They leave after the song, Barbara failing in her mission to get her daughter to eat, not that there’s much in the way of food. I finished Edie’s bread yesterday in West Yellowstone and now feel woozy. I’ve been reluctant to eat the canned goods Pastor Larry gave me, as I’ll need them should the trip turn sour. Barbara labors in the kitchen to fix me a pair of apple pancakes. It’s an agonizingly slow process interrupted often by her ongoing commentary. She doesn’t own a spatula. When she finally sets my breakfast before me, the pancakes are a pathetic pile of pieces. They taste like sand, but they fill the hole in my stomach.

  Barbara’s sister Colleen comes over. She’s younger than Barbara by nine months.

  “I warmed the womb for her,” Barbara says.

  Colleen is six feet tall and four months pregnant. Unlike her sister, she’s as mellow as a dose of Valium, with a voice full of whisky and cigarettes. She came west to Montana 16 years ago with an all-girl rock band and never left.

  “This is Michael, he’s traveling across the country with no money,” Barbara says.

  Colleen stage whispers behind her hand, “Barb, a stranger. A stranger, Barb.”

  “I asked him last night if he was Ted Bundy and he said no. Look at him. He’s so sweet.”

  “Barb, serial killers are all nice guys.”

  “He didn’t kill me all night long,” Barbara says, smiling at me. “And if I was gonna get killed, I’d want him to do it.”

  Colleen begs Barbara to go get coffee with her. She gave up caffeine when she got pregnant, but today she has an unshakable java jones. She will pay Barbara to come and even offers to buy me a cup. Barbara agrees on the condition that Colleen sing a song with her. I listen politely through another rendition of “Sunset Park.”

  We climb into Colleen’s beat-up Subaru station wagon. I smell a strong gas leak, which I think would harm Colleen and her unborn baby more than caffeine. The coffee shop is scrapped in favor of the doctor’s office. Colleen has a risky pregnancy. At 39, she’s on the old side to be having her first child. Also, she severed an artery in her thigh during the car accident. She goes to the doctor daily for an injection that thins her blood and prevents clotting.

  While Colleen gets her shot, Barbara tells me I should spend the weekend. I’m only 12 days into the trip, but it feels like it’s been 12 months. Though rewarding, this journey is like a 24-hour-a-day job. I’m zapped. Barbara’s is not the ideal sanctuary, but I need a place to regroup, free from the draining questions of where I’m going to sleep and how I’m going to eat.

  Colleen drives us to her place, a tidy house on the other side of Bozeman. An Indian medicine wheel adorned with blue feathers hangs from the living room wall. Colleen uses the bathroom and comes back out with her hair in a ponytail and her face streaked with rouge as thick as war paint. I chop celery and Colleen fixes a bowl of tuna and makes me two sandwiches.

  Her husband Mark comes home for lunch. He’s a finisher at a guitar factory outside town. His hands are orange from staining a custom guitar for Bob Dylan. Mark is nine years younger than Colleen. He’s a fan of th
e conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, and he takes the inevitable swipe at my penniless journey. But once he learns that I don’t accept money, Mark is intrigued by my mission and allows me a guilt-free free lunch.

  The doorbell rings. It’s a carpet cleaner named Hans, a German, who has come to give Mark and Colleen an estimate. When he’s not cleaning carpets, Hans is a devoted member of the Montana-based doomsday cult the Church Universal Triumphant. He also plays guitar.

  He mentions in passing that the pawnshop sold Barbara’s Guild guitar.

  “My guitar has been sold?” Barbara says.

  Hans nods.

  “Oh no!” Barbara shrieks.

  She bolts out the door, holding her hands to her mouth. She stops at the sidewalk and turns back. “Oh no! My beautiful, beautiful guitar has been sold!” She runs down the street and disappears around the corner.

  “She’s gone,” I say.

  “She’ll be back,” Colleen says. “This is what you call a flight of drama.”

  Barbara returns in five minutes, the owner of a new personality.

  “I decided it’s okay,” she says, all smiles. “Someone else can enjoy my beautiful guitar now.”

  When we get back to her place, Barbara confesses the obvious. She’s a manic-depressive.

  She sits in the yard playing her borrowed guitar while I write in my journal at the kitchen table.

  Barbara comes back inside as the sun starts to set.

  “I was thinking about your trip. It makes me sad because I was thinking about all the people who haven’t had twelve days of kindness in their whole life. People tell me I’m the unluckiest person in the world, but I feel so blessed. I have appreciation. I have gifts. I should be a homeless person. I should be starving. I should be in an institution. I live for all those people who don’t have the will to live.”