The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America

by McIntyre, Mike

  I tailor my speech to the audience. I tell the flock that many of the people who have fed, sheltered and transported me have been good God-fearing folks like themselves.

  After the service, the faithful hover around me. I feel a hand dip into my pants pocket. I reach in and pull out a ten-dollar bill. I stare at the money in horror. I press it into the palm of a man with slicked-back hair and long sideburns.

  “I can’t take your money,” I say. “I’m doing this trip without a penny.”

  He tries to force the money back into my pocket.

  As a struggle ensues, another hand slips into my other front pocket. I whirl. I pull out a five and return it to a man in a powder blue suit.

  “I can’t accept money,” I say.

  I back away from the two men, who keep lunging at me with the bills.

  My retreat is interrupted by a third hand, bony and veiny, that stuffs a twenty in my shirt pocket.

  “No, please, I can’t take it,” I tell the old woman.

  “But you’ve got to stay somewhere,” she says.

  During my talk, I told the crowd several times that I’m traveling penniless. Either they didn’t understand or they didn’t believe me. Or maybe they took my allusions to the kindness of Christian strangers as a personal challenge.

  They keep coming at me. I back away between the pews, deflecting the laying on of moneyed hands. I want to run, but I’m cornered. I’m the lion being fed to the Christians.

  I manage to escape penniless only after agreeing to accompany the congregation next door to a coffee shop.

  I take a seat next to a perky choir member named Tammy. She and the others order pumpkin pie. She asks if I want lunch. I’m hungry but I decline. I’m sure many of the churchgoers thought I took the money. I don’t want to appear greedy, like some fraudulent televangelist. When Tammy persists, I accept a piece of pumpkin pie.

  A man walks up and slaps me on the back.

  “Be sure he eats some lunch,” he says to the table.

  “We offered him lunch,” Tammy says, “but he wants pie.”

  Someone introduces me to Dean, a teddy bear of a man. He’s not from the same church; he’s a Lutheran. He just happens to be in the restaurant.

  “We’ve got a guest room that doesn’t get used often enough,” he says.

  And just like that, the question of tonight’s lodging is settled.

  We drive out to Dean’s place, where I meet his beautiful wife, Marla, a florist, and their adorable nine-year-old daughter, Emily. They live in a house straight out of Southern Living magazine, rich with antiques and a mahogany baby grand piano.

  Dean is an executive with a large Kentucky corporation. His ancestors settled in the area two centuries ago. Many of New Castle’s buildings bear his family name.

  Dean is a man in love with his town. In his spare time he heads a one-man beautification project. He has planted thousands of flowers and trees in the last five years. He strings lights every Christmas in the town square. He started a local harvest festival, which now draws 10,000 people per year. He and Marla also give money and cars to several of the area’s disadvantaged college students.

  “I grew up here, I was educated here, and I just want to give something back to the community,” he says.

  Dean plans to spend this Sunday afternoon planting flowers on the courthouse lawn. I offer to give him a hand.

  We stop for sodas at the convenience store.

  “Hey, Dean,” says a fellow by the refrigerator.

  “Hey, Buddy,” Dean says. “Stay out of trouble. And if you get in trouble, give me a call. I’ll help you out.”

  “That go for me too, Dean?” says another man in the store.

  “Yeah, Bobby, as long as you don’t cost me too much.”

  I like how Dean knows everybody. Back in the truck, I tell him I’m doing my best to travel through small towns.

  “Television tells us that New York and L.A. and Miami are America,” Dean says. “That’s not America. This is the real fabric of the country out here.”

  We kneel in the dirt, tearing up the dying petunias around the courthouse lawn. As Dean digs holes with a trowel, I drop in tulip bulbs, alternating rows of red and gold.

  “I’m not building a monument to myself, but I’d like to think that I can leave something that will outlast me,” Dean says. “If I died this winter and never got to see these tulips come up, I hope that folks would see these bulbs and say, ‘Hey, I miss Dean.’”

  When we get back to the house, Marla and Emily have gone to church for choir practice. Dean and I wash up and drive into town for dinner.

  We discuss religion over plates of shrimp and twice-baked potatoes.

  I ask Dean the eternal riddle: Why does God bother putting us here if there’s only one right answer?

  “You know, you’re so nice, Mike. I haven’t heard you say a negative thing. You don’t swear. You’re sincere and personable. It’s hard for me to believe that’s possible without you being a Christian. “

  He looks genuinely puzzled. I feel the Bible Belt cinch a little tighter around my journey.

  Marla and Emily aren’t back from church when we get home. I pull my clothes from the dryer and fold them in the guest room. Dean walks in.

  “Can I give you a hug?” he says.

  Earlier at the coffee shop, Tammy hugged me when she stood to leave. When Dean and I were driving around later, he asked if that surprised me. Yes, I said, a little. “I’m a hugger,” Dean said. I let the remark pass then. Now I wish I hadn’t.

  Some men are huggers. I’m a firm handshake kind of guy.

  Dean may hug everyone he meets. It’s probably no big deal. But because I’ve known him all of six hours, I’m not positive about his intentions, and I can only think the worst.

  I tighten as Dean embraces me. It’s a simple hug, over soon and free of anything untoward. Yet it changes everything. I no longer feel comfortable in Dean’s house. I hope his family gets home soon.

  Later, when Marla and Emily have gone to bed, Dean returns to my room. I’m sitting on the bed, setting the alarm clock.

  Dean sits down beside me. He wears long underwear and a red V-neck sweater.

  “Let’s pray, Mike.”

  He takes my hand in his and prays aloud. I can’t hear the words because I’m distracted by the sight of my hand held tightly to Dean’s leg. Dean squeezes and rubs my fingers as he prays.

  Again, I fail to see the innocence of his gesture.

  When Dean leaves the room, I turn out the light. But it’s a long while before I sleep.

  It’s still dark out the next morning when Dean drives me into town. We’re meeting a friend of his who works in Frankfort, the state capital. He’s my next ride.

  Neither of us speaks. I think Dean senses my discomfort. He finally breaks the pregnant silence.

  “I’ve never had a brother, Mike. If I would have had one, I wish it could have been you.”

  We shake hands goodbye and I get into his friend’s truck.

  “Well, you just stayed with the Samaritan of New Castle,” Dean’s friend says, driving along Route 421. “There’s not a finer person in Henry County. Yeah, old Dean doesn’t know a stranger.”

  At the start of this journey I wondered if America was too suspicious to let a stranger into its heart. But on this day I wonder if it’s the stranger who’s too suspicious to allow America into his heart.

  CHAPTER 35

  A trucker who hasn’t picked up a hitchhiker in 10 years stops for me in Danville, Kentucky. I don’t even have a sign out. Just another kind day in America.

  Burley is driving to Macon, Georgia, to deliver a load of shortening to a restaurant chain. Route 127 twists through the Cumberland Mountains. Men with bushy beards stare from shacks on the side of the road.

  “Look at them ’billies,” Burley says.

  Across the Tennessee line, signs are nailed to every telephone pole. “Jesus Is Coming,” they read. “R U Ready?”

>   I step down from Burley’s truck on the loop outside of Jamestown, 19 miles south of the border. Burley sends me packing with a bag of lemon drops, an apple and a cluster of grapes.

  Jamestown lies in Fentress County, one of the poorest in the nation. The screen at the drive-in movie is overgrown with vines. A mobile home dealer on the edge of town advertises trailers for as low as $129 a month. “Making Your Dreams Come True,” the sign says.

  The Chamber of Commerce occupies the former jail, a stone building from the 1800s. I try the door but it’s locked. I see a man inside jump up from a cluttered desk.

  “Come on into my house,” he says with a smile.

  The Chamber president, Baxter, is 59. He wears a tweed coat, khaki pants and a plaid tie. His dark, curly hair touches the collar of his blue, button-down shirt. A plaque given to him by the Rotary Club reads: “To a chicken fightin’, chicken pluckin’, over the fire barbecue expert.”

  I ask him about camping in the area.

  Baxter unfolds a map of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, 10 miles away. When I hesitate, he hands me a brochure for a campground closer in. I see it costs $12. He hands me another flyer.

  I thank him.

  He follows me out the door and sees my pack sitting on the porch.

  “Would you like me to call one of those campgrounds for you?”

  “Oh no, that’s all right. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, just checking things out.”

  Baxter looks me in the eye.

  “Most anybody around here will let you pitch a tent on their land, if that’s what you want.”

  Now we’re talking.

  “Any particular direction?” I say.

  “Tell you what, I’ve got a big farm about ten miles south of here. I’ve got to pick my son up at football practice, but if you’re here at five-thirty, you can ride out with me. Then you can ride into town with me in the morning.” He smiles. “We may even find a barn for you to sleep in.”

  I wait across the street at the Mark Twain Park. It sits in view of Mark Twain Street, near the Mark Twain Inn and Mark Twain Apparel. Twain’s father was a Fentress County judge before moving west. And though the famous author was born in Missouri, locals proudly claim he was conceived in Jamestown.

  Baxter returns for me at his office an hour later.

  “Practice isn’t over, but I knew you’d be sitting out here in the cold,” he says.

  I get in his truck, a collection of rusted dents rumbling through its second quarter-million miles. We drive to the York Institute. The state-supported high school was the dream of Sgt. Alvin C. York, the World War I hero who killed 26 Germans and captured 132. He was born in nearby Pall Mall.

  Baxter’s son Bryan is 12. His older brothers are 25, 32 and 33. The doctor told Baxter’s wife Carol she’d better sit down when he told her Bryan was on the way.

  We drive along a pine-studded plateau out to Banner Springs.

  The entrance to Baxter’s farm is marked by a harvest display of pumpkins, gourds and corn, wrapped with an orange bow. A dirt road leads to a magnificent country house perched on the edge of a gorge. I can hear the Clear Fork River rushing 80 feet below.

  Sam, a rottweiler-boxer mix, bounds up and nearly knocks me over. He holds himself up against my chest and licks my face.

  Baxter says come on in. I follow him along a porch that wraps clear around the two-story house. There isn’t a barn in sight. I realize he has just invited me to spend the night.

  The bed in the guest room belonged to Baxter’s great-grandparents. Confederate soldiers commandeered their house during the Civil War. A Union bullet is still lodged in the bed’s headboard.

  Carol is cooking pot roast when we walk into the kitchen.

  Baxter dons an apron and makes a sheet of biscuits from scratch, using a chilled wine bottle for a rolling pin. He and Carol have been married 35 years but seem like newlyweds.

  Carol is a seventh-grade science teacher. She’s the picture of Southern grace and charm. She’s nine years younger than her husband. Baxter was Carol’s Sunday school teacher. He often showed up at her family’s farm under the pretext of helping her dad and brothers.

  “He scared all those other boys away,” Carol says, beaming at Baxter.

  “It worked, it worked,” Baxter says.

  The family is an anomaly in these parts. Both Baxter and Carol have college degrees. The only television allowed on in the house is the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. And while they may not be the wealthiest people in Tennessee, it’s obvious they skew the per capita income of impoverished Fentress County.

  This fall, Baxter took 29 local youths to a Tennessee Tech football game in Cookeville, an hour south. Only four of the boys had ever been out of the county before—all of them with Baxter to a previous game.

  Baxter calls folks around here “mountain stay-at-home people.” He considers himself one of them.

  “We rarely entertain in our house,” he says. “When we do, it’s usually kin.”

  The revelation makes my night here all the more special.

  I ask Baxter what he likes best about his part of the country.

  “The people,” he says. “If you come here and say you’re the King of Siam, that’s who you are—’til you screw up.”

  Baxter leases out his land to Mennonite farmers. He’s run the Chamber of Commerce for the last nine years.

  “They fire me every so often, then they ask me back.”

  After dinner, we go for a walk in the woods with Carol’s sister and her husband. The night is clear and crisp. The bright stars look close enough to grab and put in my pocket.

  The simple pleasures of country living.

  When I come downstairs in the morning, Baxter is frying sausage and eggs while Carol grades papers at the kitchen table.

  Carol asks if I’ll come to school today and tell her class about my trip. I’m worried I’ll give her students the wrong message. I don’t want to prompt seventh-graders to hitchhike across the United States.

  But Carol says the kids should be exposed to what else is out there. “They need to know.” She wants me to tell them the good and the bad.

  She teaches at the elementary school in Allardt, an old German community outside of Jamestown. Baxter swings me by at nine.

  I prove a hit with Carol’s students, so she asks if I’ll stay and talk to Bryan’s class. Before long, I’ve agreed to talk to every class in the school.

  The kids are well mannered and attentive. I pull down the U.S. map above the blackboard and show them my route. I ask how many of them have been to California. Hardly a hand goes up all day.

  The questions keep coming: Where are people the kindest? How many pairs of shoes do I have? Am I carrying a gun? Has anybody tried to run me over? Is there racism in other states? Are the pigs’ feet as good in other parts of the country? Have I fallen in love with anyone? What am I most afraid of?

  And my favorite question, from a meek little girl with glasses and freckles, who raises her hand and says, “Yew wanna eat lunch with us?”

  The women in the cafeteria load me up with a huge tray of chicken strips, macaroni and cheese, two rolls, Jell-O with whipped cream, green beans, milk and an ice cream sandwich. Carol introduces me to the school principal, a thin man with white hair and long brown sideburns.

  “Mike, when you’re through with your trip, maybe you oughta come back and settle right here,” he says. “We’ll treat you so many ways, you’re bound to like one or two.”

  “I just might do that.”

  Carol tells me that one of the kids I spoke to is slightly retarded. He’s ordinarily quite shy. But she says he came up to her in the cafeteria and said, “I want to grow up to be a journalist and go all the places he’s been.”

  I’m touched by the story, but I’m also concerned that I’ve made such a strong impression on someone. When I left San Francisco, I was thinking only of myself. I never thought this trip would impact a child in Allardt, Tennessee.
I’m reminded that no matter how hard we try, nothing we do is in a vacuum.

  A patriotic tone runs through the talks I give in the afternoon. I tell the students how my faith in America has been renewed. I tell them how proud I am to live in a country where people are still willing to help out a stranger.

  I keep looking at the U.S. map. I see “Cape Fear” written in the blue part, where the country bumps up against the Atlantic Ocean. My journey is almost over. Only one more state to go. I’m excited. And sad.

  All at once a realization hits me. It’s so simple: It took giving up money to have the richest experience of my life.

  At the end of the day, kids press around me. They wish me luck. Some ask for my autograph.

  After I say goodbye and walk out the door, one boy pays me the highest compliment conferred in elementary school. I’m in the hallway when I hear the boy tell his classmates, “He’s cool!”

  CHAPTER 36

  My celebrity lasts until the curb, where I turn back into a nobody. Drivers eye me with suspicion. My school lecture stop means a short travel day, and I lose another hour crossing into the Eastern Time Zone. By nightfall, I’m lucky to make it 30 miles closer to Cape Fear.

  Huntsville, Tennessee, is home of former U.S. Senator Howard Baker. His house is easy to spot. It’s the one with the front yard the size of a golf course. I consider pitching my tent on his lawn, then decide it’s smarter to tell local law officials they have a new vagrant in town.

  The deputy chief of police is straight out of central casting. His gut hangs over a belt that holds his badge. The gun in his holster almost reaches his armpit. When I ask him where I can camp, he keeps me waiting for an hour on a sofa outside the jail. I’d settle for a cell, until I learn that the cozy stone jail houses an overflow of murderers and rapists from the state prison system.

  A road worker who shares the couch with me asks where I’m going.

  “North Carolina.”

  “You better cross them Smokies durin’ the day, boy!” he says, referring to the Great Smoky Mountains. “Them Smokies get cold.”