The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America (11 page)

“I’ve been in Montana five days.”

“Any drug or alcohol problems?”

“Nope,” I say, trying my best to look sober.

An old whiskered man enters the office. “My mattress has been pissed on,” he says.

“Ernie, all those beds been pissed on.”

The houseman turns to me and asks his last question. “Do you consider yourself homeless?”

I have to think on this one. I know I’ve got a home I can go back to any time I want. I also know that at least part of the reason I’m standing here relates to my work as a writer. But at this moment, I don’t feel any more special than old Ernie here and his pissed-on mattress.

“Tonight, yes,” I say.

A bed costs $3 or four hours of work in the morning. I consider myself lucky to draw laundry detail. The houseman hands me my bed number, and I go upstairs.

The dorm room is wall-to-wall bunks. The beds are covered with funky patch quilts. I find my bunk, a top one. The mattress is ripped and sunken and yellow. An empty soda can and two hair-clogged razors are stuffed underneath. I wonder if Ernie wants to trade.

“Whattaya gonna do with that pack?” someone calls out to me from the sea of bunks.

“I don’t know.” It dawns on me that my pack is worth more than the combined possessions of my bunkmates.

Flabby men with tallowy legs and stained underwear step from the communal showers. A few guys read atop their bunks. One bearded man with greasy hair and a moronic look stares at me while picking his feet. There are no windows. The smell is awful.

I leave my pack and shoes on the floor and climb into my bunk. I curl up in a ball to keep my feet from kicking the head of the guy to my south, and my head from touching the feet of the guy to my north.

“Lights out!” the houseman barks over the intercom.

I fall asleep to a symphony of wheezes, coughs, snores and farts.

The morning pancakes are burnt, but they taste better than Barbara’s. I sit across from the only woman in the cafeteria. She sleeps in her car and eats at the shelter. She has a black eye.

“As soon as my old man’s outta jail, we’re gonna go to Florida,” she says.

I ask why her boyfriend is in jail. She makes a fist and presses it to her black eye.

I report to laundry duty and learn that I’ve been reclassified. The supervisor, Jimmy, hands me a push broom. I guide it up and down between the rows of bunks. Jimmy whistles a lonesome cowboy tune.

When I finish sweeping, Jimmy rolls out a bucket and mop. He tells me to change the water every two rows, and don’t let anybody track my work up. He comes out from the laundry room every so often to reposition a fan that blows dry the spots I’ve already mopped.

The man with one leg I saw in the TV room sits on the dorm floor, scraping gunk off the trim with a putty knife. When I get to him, I mop over the tiles where his leg is supposed to be, and remind myself to go back later for the rest.

A skinny tattooed man brings my mopping operation to a halt in row six. He takes his time getting dressed. I don’t want him muddying my good work. He puts on every article of clothing he owns—five layers and two pairs of gloves. He transforms from Spider Man into the Incredible Hulk.

Jimmy chases the man out and I finish mopping. I empty the trash and sweep the stairway. Jimmy hands me a Brillo pad. He says to wipe up the tar stains tracked in by the homeless men who have day jobs as construction grunts. It’s harder than mopping, but I hunt down every bit of tar. Jimmy seems the type to check.

I finish at 9:30, two hours ahead of schedule. Jimmy praises my work. He says I’m always welcome on his detail. I tell him I’m heading east. Still, it’s nice to know I’ve got something to fall back on.

It’s cold and rainy when I hit the street. I turn around and walk back through the mission door. As they say, there’s no place like home.

CHAPTER 15

I leave the shelter the next morning, intent on reaching South Dakota by day’s end. I’ve always wanted to see Mt. Rushmore. All the places I’ve been, I don’t know why I’ve never been there. There were times when I actually got in a car and headed in that direction. But I always got sidetracked. I figure today’s the day.

I walk east out of Billings, Montana, along the interstate. My sign is not out because the freeway splits a few miles ahead. There’s not much of a shoulder, and the cars blowing past almost topple me down the embankment.

An old pickup with a camper shell stops ahead of me in the middle of the road.

“Where yew goin’?” an old man says when I reach the window.

“South Dakota. Where are you headed?”

“Albuquerque!”

I throw my pack in back and climb in. I can hop out in northeast Wyoming and cut over to Mt. Rushmore.

Lester is 63. His white hair and mustache pokes out in every direction. His black horn-rimmed bifocals rest on a nose that resembles a strawberry, with little hairs sprouting off it. He’s been visiting his grown step-granddaughter near Helena. He worked on her house a bit, then backpacked for nine days in the Beartooth Wilderness, sleeping under a piece of plastic. He comes from a family of 13 kids in southern Missouri. He pronounces it “Misery.”

Lester asks what’s up and I tell him.

“Yer not that feller I read about in the Bozeman paper, are yew?”

Before I left Barbara’s, she took me down to the local paper and told the editor I’d make a good story. I was surprised when a reporter interviewed me for two hours, and amused when I saw my picture splashed across the front page the next day.

“Yep,” I say.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit.”

Lester points to a loaf of homemade bread resting on the seat.

“Tear me off a hunk of that bread, will yew. I gotta get rid of this heartburn. Have yerself a piece, then take the rest with yew. I’ll contribute that much to your trip.”

Lester is a backgammon fanatic. He’s on the road much of the year, traveling to tournaments from California to New Mexico. Before that, he laid sewer lines in Albuquerque.

“I spent forty-one years in a ditch. I been buried, hit on the head by a backhoe bucket, cursed at by drivers, invited a few to step outta their cars—none of ’em ever got out. I’ve had a full life. “

The freeway bends south toward Wyoming, and I can see a dusting of snow on the Bighorn Mountains in the distance. The willow trees are turning from green to yellow, with some already a burnt orange. Antelope galore graze on both sides of the interstate.

Lester pulls into a rest stop.

“This is a good place to piss. I gotta piss out this coffee. When yew get to be my age, yew don’t buy coffee and beer, yew just rent it for a while.”

Back on the road, Lester says, “If yew make it as far as Casper with me, I’ll buy yew lunch. And to show yew my heart’s in the right place, I’ll let yew order anything on the menu—long as it’s not more’n thirty-five cents.”

He grins.

Casper, Wyoming, is nearly 300 miles away. If I ride that far, I can kiss off Mt. Rushmore again. Still, my gut says stick with Lester. Unlike Mt. Rushmore, my itinerary is not carved in stone.

We cross the state line and gas up in Sheridan, Wyoming. I slide into the driver’s seat. I haven’t driven a car in three weeks, and the old truck’s steering wheel feels squirrelly in my hands. But I’m glad to be helping out.

Lester doesn’t have any kids. He was married for 31 years.

“I got a divorce last April. Got tired of the ass chewin’. Cost me a hundred fifty thousand dollars, and it was worth it!”

He turns to me. “Yew married?”

“Nope.”

“Good! Keep it that way. I saw no point to it in the end.”

“Why were you with her thirty-one years then?”

“I don’t know!” Lester says, shaking his head. “Her first husband couldn’t keep a job, so she threw him out. Then I work every day and I get thirty-one years of ass chewin’ for my thanks. It didn’t matter what I said, I was wrong. Even when I didn’t say a thing, I was wrong.”

Before he divorced, Lester bought a mobile home under a friend’s name so his wife couldn’t get at it during the settlement.

“I told the feller that if I go and kick the bucket, sell the trailer and throw a party.”

The trees disappear and the sheep have eaten the grass down to the dirt. It hasn’t rained since spring. The interstate stretches out across the land like a ribbon wrapped around an unwanted gift.

Lester tells me he was supposed to be back in Albuquerque three days ago, but the fishing was too good in Montana.

“I’ll wait a couple days, then call my girlfriend,” he says. “Yew don’t wanna spoil ’em.”

“How long you been with your girlfriend?”

“Been seein’ her about fifteen years.”

“But I thought you just got divorced.”

“I couldn’t get any at home. When they shut yew down, no point in arguin’. Just go get it somewheres else.”

“How old is your girlfriend?”

“Fifty-two.”

“A young one.”

“Hell, I got one that’s forty I pat on the butt once in a while.”

We reach Casper, where the peaks of the Laramie Range are blanketed with snow. Lester guides me to a diner on the truck loop.

He flirts with the waitress and jaws with some old-timers about the weather. We both order fried chicken, which comes with lentil soup, salad, fries and rolls. Lester downs five cups of coffee. He orders a butterscotch sundae and berates me for not doing the same.

I ride with him another 60 miles and get out at a rest stop at the intersection of Highway 20.

“If you could do something different now, what would it be?” I ask Lester.

“Not a thing. Yew are lookin’ at the most contented man in the world.”

“What’s your secret?”

“I guess I make the most of what comes and the least of what goes.”

Someone told me at the mission that hitchhiking is illegal in Wyoming. I’m only 75 miles west of Nebraska. If the cops give me any problems, I can walk to the state line. But when I clear the first rise in the road, I see I don’t have to worry about the law. There’s nothing out here but me and the wind.

I don’t see a car for a half hour. An 18-wheeler blows by and just about rips the sign from my hands.

The next car isn’t for another 15 minutes. A white Lincoln Continental with a single woman driver. Not a chance.

I start looking around for a place to camp in case I get stranded.

I turn around and see the Lincoln stopped on the shoulder a couple hundred yards up the road. I don’t think she stopped for me. She’s too far away. I keep looking, waiting for her to drive off. After a few minutes, she backs up. I guess she was weighing the odds.

“I never pick up hitchhikers, but you had such a forlorn look on your face,” the woman says.

Jennifer is 32. She’s a tall, attractive brunette, dressed in a fancy warm-up suit. She’s going to Mt. Rushmore.

“What a coincidence. That was my original destination, but I got sidetracked.”

“There are no coincidences,” Jennifer says.

Riding with Jennifer means a 150-mile detour north into South Dakota—negating half of Lester’s ride—but I guess I’m destined to see Mt. Rushmore.

Jennifer is a dentist from Wisconsin. She’s been vacationing through the West in the rented Lincoln. She was traveling with her boyfriend, a banker from England, but she kicked him out last week in Big Sur because he called her “a self-absorbed baby.”

Within five minutes, Jennifer tells me she graduated from college in two and a half years, flies her own plane, owns a Mercedes, lectures around the world, sits on the boards of several associations and treats the Amish at night for free. By the time she concludes her verbal résumé, I’m feeling sympathetic toward the English banker.

I flip through one of Jennifer’s tour books, reading aloud about Mt. Rushmore. It’s open at night. “And it’s free,” I say.

“Hey, even you can afford that,” Jennifer says.

It’s pitch dark when we cross into South Dakota and drive up into the Black Hills. A tacky tourist town clogged with souvenir shops announces the entrance to the monument. I don’t know why, but I pictured Mt. Rushmore as being out in the middle of nowhere. We drive around a curve and then, boom, there it is. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt—all lit up like the Fourth of July.

Jennifer parks the car and walks up a path. I almost have to run to keep up. We walk down into the amphitheater. I gaze up at the magnificent faces. Finally, after all these years. What a spectacular sight.

“Ready?” Jennifer says as she turns to leave.

We drive down the hill toward Rapid City. Jennifer plans to see the Badlands in the morning. I see lights in the distance. The city is bigger than I thought. My stomach churns. I remember how Mo dropped me back in Ashland, Oregon, after I thought I had a place to stay. I decide to take the initiative.

“So, what’s your plan here?” I say.

“I’m going to get a motel, have some dinner, then crash out,” Jennifer says. There is an agonizingly long pause before she adds, “I can get two rooms if you’re uncomfortable.”

I exhale with relief. “One’s fine,” I say.

We stop at a coffee shop. Jennifer special orders steamed vegetables and rice. She offers to buy me dinner, but I’m still full from the lunch Lester bought me.

“Just water for me,” I tell the waitress. “I’m on a liquid diet.”

“Are you the Invisible Man?” the waitress says.

She’s 20 but looks 12. Giggly and blond.

“Nope, who’s that?”

“You didn’t see that movie?”

“I haven’t seen a movie in a while.”

“What’s the last movie you saw?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Did you see
Natural Born Killers?”

The question jars me. I flash on what might be waiting for me out on the road.

“Yeah, that was the one,” I say quietly.

I want off this subject.

“So what do people do in Rapid City?” I ask the waitress.

“There’s a meat packing plant. The Coke plant. If you make seven dollars an hour here, that’s a good job. My dad’s been out of work two months.”

I ask her to tell me more about her hometown.

“Gangs have moved in.”

“Gangs?”

“Yeah, but they’re not real ones. They don’t kill anyone. There’s about one person a year here that gets killed. That’s not much.”