The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America (29 page)

The closet door is warped and keeps popping open. Light from the lobby filters through the crack. I toss and turn, trying to find a comfortable position. My feet press against the door, and my head rests on the base of the music stand.

I finally doze off.

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep when I hear the building’s automatic door swing open. I listen for the footsteps to turn toward the police station, away from my hideout, but they get louder. Still groggy, I bolt upright.

The closet door is open an inch. A human shadow dances on the closet wall. It gets bigger. I place my feet against the door and try to lock my knees, but I’m too late. Whoever is on the other side barges in.

I spring up, reeling with panic. The intruder lights a cigarette lighter. There’s suddenly an angry black man in my face, attacking me with 80-proof breath.

“What the fuck are you doing in here???!!!” he shouts.

I stumble back into the music stand.

“Who are you?” I say. “Who are you?”

He backs out of the closet without another word. He’s unshaven, and the cuffs of his baggy pants are frayed from dragging on the street. He teeters across the lobby and drops in the doorway of the men’s room. He lays his head on the greasy athletic bag he carries with him.

I shut the closet door and stand in the dark. I try to wedge the two-by-four against the door, but it won’t hold. I place the cushion between my feet and the door, as if that’s going to keep anybody out. I sit up on my sleeping bag. I worry about what’s happening on the other side of the door. I don’t make a sound. I’m afraid to even shift. I don’t want to remind the guy I’m in here. When I hear him snoring, I lie back down.

The building’s automatic door rumbles open a while later.

Suddenly, someone leans on the closet door.

“Hey!” I shout, trying to sound tough.

“Oh, excuse me,” says a man on the other side.

He sits down in the lobby, not far from the man sleeping in the bathroom doorway. He spreads out some newspaper and lies down.

The new man mutters something I can’t hear, waking the first guy.

“There’s a white guy in there,” the first guy says.

The new man is talkative, but he’s hard to understand. I pick up snippets, wondering if any of it pertains to me: “Night of the living dead…Lies in disguise…Revelation, chapter nine…Lies in disguise…”

The new man rambles on, growing loud and belligerent. If he keeps it up, the cops will hear him and come kick us out in the rain.

Sure enough, the police station doors off the lobby open at around one in the morning. I hear the authoritative click of heels start across the floor.

“You can’t sleep here!” a woman barks at the new man.

It must be the sergeant.

“Let me see the chief,” the new man grumbles.

“I’m in charge here tonight,” the sergeant says. “You gotta sleep somewhere else. People come in here and see you, they get scared. Not everyone who comes here is a criminal. There are some people who come here for legitimate reasons.”

“Can’t I just sit here, to avoid the elements?”

“How did you avoid the elements last night?”

“I slept in a friend’s car at his apartment building.”

“Well, I suggest you do the same tonight.”

“He ain’t there.”

“My heart goes out to you, but you can’t stay here.”

The first guy enters the conversation. “We get treated better by white people!” he shouts.

“Who is that talking behind that corner?” the sergeant snaps.

I hear the first guy roll from the bathroom doorway into the sergeant’s view.

He starts in about injustice, but the woman cuts him off.

“Who keeps the bathroom open for you?” she says. “You get on out of here. I don’t want to see you here again. You come back here when there’s white folks working.”

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 not. 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.