The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America

by McIntyre, Mike

  The two men gather their things and leave.

  “You think this is funny,” the new man says to the sergeant on his way out the door.

  “No, I don’t, I think it’s sad,” she says. “All the black people who died fighting for civil rights, and you ending up like this.”

  “Civil rights! Whatta you done for civil rights? I marched in Mississippi for civil rights! You ain’t done nothin’ for civil rights! Don’t go talkin’ to me ’bout civil rights!”

  The argument carries on out into the street. I listen through the closet wall. My fellow vagrants don’t rat me out. When the sergeant walks back into the police station, I try to get some sleep.

  It’s not long before the two homeless men return. They try to keep quiet, but their voices echo like they’re camping in the Taj Mahal.

  The automatic door keeps swinging open as more bums stagger in. A few try the closet door.

  “Hey!” I shout over and over.

  Finally the commotion is too great. I hear the sergeant march back into the lobby. This time she has help. The officers escort everybody in the lobby out of the building.

  The night is again quiet. I breathe easy.

  Then somebody pushes on my door.

  “Who is that in there?” the sergeant growls.

  “Me,” I say.

  “Who’s me?”

  “Mike McIntyre.”

  “Come on out of there!”

  I walk out of the closet, rubbing my eyes. The sergeant glares at me. The officer who told me to crash in the closet stands behind her.

  “How long you been in there?” the sergeant says.

  “Since about ten,” I say.

  “What are you doing coming in and sleeping in the building without telling anyone you’re here? You could be cited.”

  I don’t squeal on the officer.

  “Damn, he knows the building better than I do,” the officer says with convincing amazement.

  I drag my sleeping bag and backpack out of the closet. I put on some dry socks and step back into my wet boots.

  “Where are you from?” the sergeant says.

  “California,” I say.

  “California?! And you end up in Wilmington?”

  “Yep, it’s the end of the line.”

  “California,” she says, shaking her head.

  It seems like a good time to laugh. And we do.

  The rain has stopped when I leave the police station. I’ve got a few hours to kill before the post office opens. I walk along the river. Wind whips clouds across a slate gray sky over water the color of gunmetal.

  I peer through the window of a newsrack at today’s paper.

  The lead headline is no surprise: It rained seven inches in 12 hours yesterday. A new record.

  Another story recounts a tragic incident in Chicago. Two youths dropped a five-year-old boy from a fourteenth-story window because he wouldn’t steal candy for them.

  I’m sickened to the core. I’m also racked with guilt. All the time I’ve wasted in my life. The boredom and despair. The false starts and the times I never started at all. I may never get it right. But I’m still here. There’s hope for me yet, and that now seems so unfair.

  I grieve for the boy who will never see Cape Fear.

  CHAPTER 40

  The biggest scare on the road to Cape Fear comes at the hands of the United States Postal Service.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but nothing has arrived for you,” the clerk at the Wilmington post office says when I reach the counter.

  That’s impossible, I tell him. Anne sent my ATM card by two-day priority mail. It should have arrived yesterday at the latest.

  The man shakes his head. He looks beyond me at the next person in line.

  I worried this might happen, but I’m not prepared for the letdown. In my mind, the trip was over and I had already rejoined the world of solvency. I only had to touch the Atlantic Ocean. Then it was going to be a straight shot to a cash machine, a motel room, a cheeseburger and a plane ticket home.

  I’ve come penniless across America, but the journey won’t end. I now face two more days without money.

  I ask the clerk to take another look. Please.

  I want to jump the counter and hug him when he returns with the red, white and blue envelope.

  I place the envelope in my pack and head for Cape Fear.

  North Carolina has been bad for rides. I don’t have the patience to wait. I also don’t want to take any chances now that I’m so close. I decide to walk the last 12 miles.

  I hike east on Market Street. It stretches more than 50 blocks—past fast food joints, gas stations, discount tire centers, cheap motels and endless strip malls.

  The commercial area ends and I continue east on Route 74, flanked by pine trees.

  It starts to sprinkle. I tighten my shoulder straps and break into a run.

  The side of the road is wide and flat. Sand appears in the grass. I know I’m near the end.

  But these last few miles become the hardest part of the journey. My thighs ache and my feet throb. I’m mentally exhausted. I have to stop.

  I sit atop the concrete railing of a bridge, gazing at the horizon of a place that now seems out of reach.

  I once ran a marathon. Twenty-six point two miles. Until this trip, it was the biggest challenge of my life. I’d never run more than a mile before. I didn’t train for the race. I bought a new pair of shoes, and when the starter’s gun fired, I simply put one foot in front of the other. After 10 miles, it felt like I broke my left foot, so I started to favor it. After 13 miles, it felt like I broke my right foot, so I favored it. I kept running. When I crossed the finish line, I was struck by two opposing thoughts: I always knew I was going to make it, yet I was amazed that I had.

  It’s with these two opposing thoughts in mind that I hobble into Cape Fear.

  The first thing I notice is a bank. Then another, and another still. There’s money everywhere. BMWs and Mercedes Benzes glide past me. White yachts cruise the Intracoastal Waterway. High-rise luxury condominiums tower above.

  It’s a funny spot to end a penniless journey.

  I arrive at the Atlantic Ocean. The sky is gray but it’s stopped raining. The few people on the beach are bundled up in coats. I’m the only person with hiking boots and a backpack.

  I step to the water’s edge. Wind whips sand in my face. A group of older women stroll by. I ask one if she will snap my picture, and I hand her my camera. She appears to be a tourist from up north. She wears gaudy jewelry and boasts enormous fake fingernails painted a loud purple.

  The ocean is roily and brown. The waves look restless. Like me, they tossed and turned all night. It hasn’t been an easy trip. But here we are at last, deposited by some unseen force onto this distant shore.

  I strike a pose. There are no people in the background. No buildings. No boats. Only me and the endless sea.

  “Try and capture the nothingness of it,” I say to the woman taking my picture.

  “The nothingness, huh? Okay.”

  As she’s about to click the camera, three men appear behind her, walking down the beach. They sweep metal detectors over the sand. They are seeking treasure. I have to laugh.

  Inside the visitors center, a local historian explains how Cape Fear got its name, and it floors me:

  When European explorers discovered this coast in the 1500s, Latin was still the language of mapmakers. This bulge of land appeared on maps as “Cape Faire.” When the maps were later translated into English, it became “Cape Fear.” The scary name has no basis in reality, if this one explanation is to be believed. It was all a mistake.

  The name is as misplaced as my own fears. I see now that I’ve always been afraid of the wrong things. My great shame is not my fear of death, but my fear of life.

  The local historian shares another surprising fact:

  Cape Fear doesn’t exist. Not really.

  When I spotted Cape Fear on the map, I assumed it was a town. But it’s n
ot. Cape Fear is the name of a region in southeastern North Carolina. It’s not one specific point. There is no such place as Cape Fear.

  Cape Fear is nowhere. And everywhere.

  I gaze to the west. Six weeks ago, I emptied my pockets of money and went looking for change. Somewhere along the way, I crossed over. I never found Cape Fear, but I did find the place I was looking for: The point of no return. And though I know I will board a plane tomorrow for San Francisco, I also know I can never go back.

  EPILOGUE

  They once called this country “Faire.” It’s been more than that.

  I tally the trip: 4,223 miles, 14 states, 82 rides, 78 meals, five loads of laundry, one round of golf.

  A million thanks.

  I return to Wilmington, where I open the envelope Anne mailed me. My ATM card is inside.

  Moments later, I tremble before a cash machine. Part of me is afraid my ATM card won’t work. Another part of me is afraid it will.

  I punch in the numbers, and the ATM rumbles to life. It groans as it spits out a stack of twenties. I stuff the green wad in my pocket and somehow feel poorer.

  I buy a sack of fast food and check into a motel.

  In the morning, I fly back to San Francisco.

  I don’t have my key, so I wait on the sidewalk for Anne to return from work.

  Anne turns the corner a little past five. I know there’s something wrong the second our eyes meet.

  I’ve stayed with strangers all across America. Now I feel like a stranger in my own home.

  Anne has been on an inner journey of her own while I’ve been away. She’s decided she wants to go it alone.

  “I just want to be twenty-four again,” she says.

  I can’t blame her. I’d like to be 24 again myself.

  Life may not be too short, but it’s short enough. I grab my travel alarm clock and wish Anne well.

  I head for the place I feel most at home: the road.

  Thanksgiving approaches. I don’t know where I’ll be this year, but I know I’ll be grateful.

  Wherever I am, I will remember my continental leap of faith—and the country that caught me.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I never lied on this journey, but I rarely volunteered that I was a journalist writing a book. Withholding that fact, I figured, would yield a more accurate measure of the state of kindness in America. Most of the people who helped me assumed I was a down-and-out drifter, and I let them.

  For this reason, the names and identifying details of some of these kind strangers have been changed to protect their privacy. The rest of it—their lives, their stories, their quotes—is completely true.

  I’m deeply grateful to the folks who appear in these pages. I will forever be in awe of their generosity and trust. This book is a product of their efforts far more than mine.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  An award-winning journalist, Mike McIntyre has worked as a theater columnist for The Washington Post, a travel columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a feature writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune and a reporter for the Budapest Sun and the Marin Independent Journal. He has also published articles in Golf Digest, Smithsonian Air & Space and Powder magazines.

  The Kindness of Strangers has been excerpted in two editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Reader’s Digest and The Road Within: True Stories of Transformation.

  His second travelogue, The Wander Year: One Couple’s Journey Around the World, recounts a 22-country, 6-continent adventure he took with his wife, Andrea.

  He is also the author of a crime novel, The Scavenger’s Daughter: A Tyler West Mystery.

  He lives in San Diego.

  For an extended sample from The Wander Year: One Couple’s Journey Around the World, continue reading…

  THE WANDER YEAR:

  ONE COUPLE’S JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD

  By MIKE MCINTYRE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In January 2000, my longtime girlfriend, Andrea Boyles, and I departed on a yearlong journey around the world. We were in our early 40s and wanted to take a break from our routines. We rented out our San Diego house—furniture and pets included—and flew off.

  Before we left, the Los Angeles Times, a publication I’d written for in the past, hired me to file a weekly column about our travels. We agreed to call it “The Wander Year.”

  The travel editor’s only request was to make the stories “really personal and really honest.” She wanted to hear about squabbles, homesickness and food poisoning—as well as the many moments of wonder, adventure and awe.

  This e-book version of “The Wander Year” differs somewhat from the newspaper series. Many of the columns have been expanded. (The original series is available for purchase from the Times for about $200.)

  Looking back on the odyssey, it’s easy to recall how it started:

  With a globe…and an inflatable clothes hanger.

  Part One:

  Planning and Packing

  Destination: The World

  SAN DIEGO — There are two kinds of vagabonds: those who make room in their backpacks for an inflatable clothes hanger, and those who don’t.

  The around-the-world journey my girlfriend, Andrea, and I are about to start will feature members of both camps. Andrea deems the plastic blow-up device essential, whereas the first thing I plan to pack is a sense of humor. That’s not to suggest there is nothing funny about an inflatable hanger. In fact, we may need to pull it out for a laugh should we succumb to dysentery in Kathmandu, say, or misplace our passports in a Saharan sand dune.

  Our split over the best method of drying hand-washed attire is no small matter, as it may point to friction farther down the road. Sure, Andrea and I have been great friends for a dozen years, living together the last five. We have shared vacations in Ireland, France, Scotland, Guatemala and Ecuador without a single argument.

  But prolonged travel through the cramped developing world—where we expect to be during much of our trip—is another animal entirely. Like a stint on a submarine, it tends to force all character flaws to the surface.

  It’s me I worry about, not Andrea. She is easygoing, bordering on serene. But before we clear U.S. Customs a year from now, I know I will somehow compel her to whack me upside the head with her inflatable hanger.

  Our goal is to spend 2000 circling the globe, starting from our house in San Diego and heading west. We’ve penciled in an itinerary, but we’re carrying a big eraser. No blueprints for this trip. We intend to pass through the South Pacific, Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Europe and North Africa, but we’ll make most plans on the fly. Countries will be added, others dropped, and there’s always a chance we’ll end up somewhere we never considered, like Tierra del Fuego in South America.

  If we sound a bit aimless, it’s because we pretty much are. There is no grand purpose or point to our journey. The heaviest part of it, I suspect, will be our backpacks. We are not out to find ourselves, or even to lose ourselves. We’re merely seeking a pause in our routines. Call it the Wander Year.

  “I’m willing to take the risk, professionally,” says Andrea, who is leaving a lucrative career. “I don’t want to wait until I’m 65 to do the things I want to do. I may not live that long, and I may not want to do them then anyway. I just want a break.”

  Andrea is 40; I’m 42. Neither of us has been married, nor do we have children. That makes this next year less risky than it would be for many people. The $40,000 we’ve budgeted for the trip won’t come out of a youngster’s college fund. If ditching work during a booming economy proves a boneheaded move and we wind up flipping burgers into our 80s, we will have hurt only ourselves.

  Andrea’s most recent position was sales manager for the San Diego office of a major health insurance company. Her longest time off in 15 years of work was three weeks, and that was only once. Last month, after seven years of night school, she finished her master’s degree in public health at San Diego State University. She figures she has earned a respite.

&nbs
p; It’s harder for me to rationalize my involvement in our year abroad. My résumé already includes a lengthy gap. In 1992 I jumped at a buyout offer from the San Diego Union, where I worked as a feature writer, when it merged with the Tribune. The buyout money allowed me to roam through Central America, Mexico and the U.S. for the next two years.

  The danger of chucking a career to travel—which I have pointed out to Andrea—is that it’s tough to return to the workaday world. I lasted four months in my next journalism job before despair led me to quit abruptly and hitchhike coast to coast with no money.

  Crazy, I know, but I was lucky. I actually made a profit on my midlife crisis, turning the experience into a book called The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America. A few years later, it’s a new rut, but this time the demons I flee are far less melodramatic—prime-time television and Häaggen-Dazs ice cream.

  We got the idea to travel for a year in December 1998, when another major insurance company bought Andrea’s employer. There was a good chance her job would be eliminated and she would get a substantial severance package. Images of exotic destinations flashed in her head. Months later, when the sale went through, she was sad to learn she had a job with the new company. There would be no golden handshake. But by then the fantasy had taken hold, and she decided to quit anyway.

  Our initial plan was to take several trips over the course of a year, returning home between them. We concluded this was impractical since we needed to generate rental income from our house and it’s hard to find tenants willing to sign a two-month lease. It made more sense to leave for a whole year.

  Suddenly we went from studying individual pages in our atlas to spinning our globe. Andrea and I have traveled extensively throughout the Western Hemisphere and Europe, and we expect to go back to those parts of the world on future vacations. But one objective of this journey is to visit harder-to-reach countries, places that we may never have the chance to return to.