Will the Circle be Unbroken

Come to think of it, this was probably the last long drive that I made by myself. I went from the San Francisco Bay area where I still live to LA to spend Thanksgiving with an old friend.

In the slipshod timeline of my memory it was cars, houses, dogs that serve as the main footholds. The car I was loading being the chocolate Toyota station wagon locates the trip in the nineties. The dog was Mimi Underfoot, a black and white Tibetan Terrier, hanging around the garage, anxiously, waiting to be invited. I was down to one dog.

T-Bone was already dead. A quick search through my journal pinpointed the date. “T-Bone put to sleep Nov. 30 around noon ‘98 .”

It was almost exactly one year after that I ventured upon this trip; since two years later, beset by shoulder and neck problems, I would no longer be able to drive long distances. At the time I was sixty- seven.

Two major routes run down the length of California. Interstate 5 shoots straight down the middle of the interior, featuring an enormous cattle feedlot fouling the air, the land, and the moral sensibilities of passing motorists for many miles. Then there’s the more presentable, touristy 101. For a stretch it even follows the coastline but so briefly that it would be hardly worth the extra drive time.

My brother’s an expert in back roads. “There’s another way down there.” On the map he showed me some faint pink lines that wormed into even lighter grey lines heading, generally south, between the two major freeways. “It’s really beautiful.”

I had a whole day to get down there. The Toyota was as reliable a car as any I’ve ever had and in the back was a whole shoebox full of maps. What could go wrong?

Starting out on 101 I went steadily south until King City where I had a late afternoon lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  Shortly after that I got off the dark red line and got on 198, a lateral route heading east toward the tiny town of Coalinga. It was narrow but still asphalt and two lanes. Somewhere on this road I would veer off into the unknown. “Completely doable,” Max had said. I missed it on the first two passes, getting all the way to the Coalinga town plaza before U turning back and backtracking at a slower and then even slower speed. Not until the third pass did I spot the turn off, a small gravel road, wide enough for one car, heading down a steep slope, then disappearing into bushes.

I shifted into low gear and guided the Toyota slowly over the lip of asphalt onto the crunchy gravel. A sharp turn revealed the dry creek bed at the bottom of the canyon. In between it was washboard. Too late to turn back. Squeezed on both sides by encroaching vegetation, the road was way too steep and way too narrow. So I eased down best I could, taking some scratches on the sides of the car, pumping the brakes, at the bottom hitting a boulder or two in the creek bed, then bucking uphill, up on my feet and posting, dust and gravel flying behind me, hoping I hadn’t damaged anything crucial on the under carriage.

Once up however the road smoothed out, still gravel and single lane but hugging the Cholame Hills, dipping into its hollows, rearing up over its ridges with not another car in sight.  Beautiful old California ranch land studded with enormous, gnarly oaks. Beneath their ancient twisted limbs madrones angled every which way looking for sunlight, revealing their deep mahagony flesh wherever the pale ruffles of skin curled away.  Buckeyes dropped their seeds, some still bound in thick skins, a few, popped, glowed, shiny brown conkers barely visible in the dried grass. It had yet to rain.

The rhythm of the road, the heaving turns, the vegetation thick and thin, the swing and sway of the car, the sound of its engine lulled me into a spell. Time passed quickly. Mimi was sound asleep on a pillow on the backseat. I popped some corn nuts in my mouth. Behind a filigree of leaves and dark branches, a very orange sun set, in and out of sight, as I breathed in layers of wilderness.

I pulled into a small clearing and let Mimi out to relieve herself while I did the same a little further on by a small creek. It had become colder. The sun was no longer visible. When I started driving again I noticed that my gas tank was quite low. No matter. I could not be far from Route 46; in fact I should have been there already; it had not looked that far on the map.

Coming down the hill, rattling across cattle guards I could see below car lights coming and going. By the time I actually hit 46, it was totally dark, starless and moonless. At the stop sign I turned left, joining a sparse line of other cars. My gas gauge showed Empty, but it was not very accurate at the low end. Perhaps there was a little mercy built in.

A few miles later I spotted the lights of a gas station on my right. Just a funky building with an old Texaco gas pump in the middle of nowhere. Junction 46 at the corner of 46 and 33, the road I planned to take for the rest of my trip. I pulled up to the pump and reached behind me to the floor of the back seat for my purse. It was not there. I turned on the interior light, got on my knees for a good look. No purse. I got out of the car, opened the back door, and flipped through my stuff. No purse. I went around the back, raised the back of the station wagon. Mimi jumped out.  I yelled at her angrily. She gave me her superior look and squatted for an interminably long piss in an empty field, then carrying her tail high, curled over her back, showed me her asshole as she slowly came back to the car and jumped in. I got my down jacket out the back and slammed the door. “Stay there!”

Inside the little convenience store an old man with a shock of white hair bent over the glass counter. When I approached I noticed inside a plethora of James Dean paraphernalia. Postcards of his crashed car, stills from his movies, buttons featuring his face, bumper stickers….I realized that he had died on Route 46 where it intersected with 41 which I had just passed.

The old man did not look in any way forbidding which gave me courage to reveal the depth of my problems. When he had listened to my tale of woe, he was silent for a moment and then asked me if I had old receipts of past gas purchases paid for by credit card. In fact my car was littered with old credit card receipts. I dug a handful out of the door bins and gave them to him. They were carbons and not very easy to read, but he pored over them and finally found one that was clear enough–one from the Mexican restaurant at King City. He tried to punch the long string of numbers into his little machine. His fingers were fat and gnarly from arthritis; he kept losing his place and then having to start again….a monumental labor. I helped out by reading the numbers out loud, but even with that his clumsy fingers often slipped and punched the wrong numbers.

A small, tight lipped, middle aged woman, had appeared in the rear of the store, but we were deeply focused on our task.

Even when we thought we had the correct string of numbers, it didn’t work. He sighed. I asked him if I may use the bathroom; he waved me toward the back with his head.  I went past the cold stare of the woman, past shelves of Oreos, Potato chips, Cheezits, reminding myself to buy something when I returned.

When I did come back, I noticed that the kind old man was gone. “He was called out on a plumbing job,”

“When’s he coming back?”

“Might take him hours,” she said, each word an icicle. “You’d best move on, go on down to Lost Hills.”

“My gas tank’s empty. I don’t think I’ll make it.”

“You’ll make it. It’s only about 10 miles.” She could care less.  No use hanging around here. Going out I noticed a sign that said “Blackwell’s Corner” that in a panic over my purse I had missed coming in.

Starting the station wagon I waited for the needle on the gas gauge to respond….even a little. It didn’t. I crunched out of the gravel and turned east, going slowly trying to eke out what fuel was left.

Lost Hills was brilliantly lit up with gas stations and motels, and fast food joints on both sides of the road but not one of them would take a wrinkled receipt in lieu of the card itself. We can’t swipe that. You have to have the card, lady.

Temperature dropping fast in this high desert. Dinner time. Denny’s was crowded with hungry diners, with the heat from the open kitchen, with busy restaurant sounds and smells. I got in line with the others.  When I got to the counter and the cash register, the woman had little time for stories of lost purses. “Step aside please,” she said. “David, table for four!” She led them to the other side of the room and when she returned, she turned to me without looking at me. “Name please?” I told my story again. Finally I asked only to be allowed to use her phone. “There’s a pay phone outside in the gas station.”

“I don’t have any money. Can you lend me some coins and I’ll pay you back when I fetch my purse tomorrow?”
“Name please? How many?” The bitch was the sister of the kind old man’s wife.

I went outside and walked over to the payphone . In the half light by the empty booth was a young woman in halter and shorts. She’d been hitchhiking cross country from New Mexico and had accepted a ride from a bunch of guys who’d become increasingly aggressive until she’d had to escape while they were gettin’ gas so here she was penniless. She’d left her purse in their fuckin’ car. Could I spare some change? I told her I was in the same fix. Shit. I went into the booth and pulled the door behind me so the light would go on. In the ancient phone book hanging there I found an 800 number for the County Sheriff, and dialed it….got the answering machine. When I came out the woman had disappeared. I went out to my car. At least I had a car. And a dog. And one last bran muffin. Wrong. The last bran muffin in a four pack had merged with the dog.

Like a fuckin’ moth banging itself on the lamp shade, I returned to Denny’s. At least it was warm. “Name?”

“Please will you let me use your phone for just one call to the police.”

“We don’t allow anyone to use our office phone.”

“Then would you please call the police for me?”

“Move aside, please. Can’t you see we’re busy?” She was increasingly annoyed.

So was I. “Look I’m not your usual panhandler. I have a car. I’m outta gas. I’m on my way to LA to spend Thanksgiving with a friend. I own a house, but I just happened to have lost my purse back there in the hills. Tomorrow I’ll go get it. I know where I left it. I can pay you back ten times, twenty times….” I waved my old credit card receipts at her.  “Meanwhile I just need some change to call the police.” My tone was getting more and more hysterical. People were beginning to notice. I was well aware of the number of gazes now turning toward me. “What does it cost ya to lend me some coins so I can go and call for some help? Haven’t you ever lost your purse? Have you ever been cold and hungry and lost?” I was working myself up into a froth. My desperation was only part theater. Finally her cash register rang harshly and some coins hit the glass counter.

At the phone booth in the cold forlorn night, I dropped the coins in and dialed Chickie’s number from a scrap of paper pulled from my jean’s pocket on which I had scribbled her address and phone number. Lost Hills was not all that far from her house in the valley; perhaps she could just come and get me. It was ringing. “Hello.”

“Chickie, its me! I’m stranded in—” A bunch of clicks then the line went dead.

I leaned my head on the cold glass. Moments went by; I thought that perhaps Chickie could see the number that had called her and then she would call back, but nothing of the sort happened. I was now way beyond the time that I should have arrived at her house, so she must know that something was wrong. Would she initiate a search? How much of my words had she heard anyway before the clicks?

My forehead was starting to get numb from the cold glass and despite my best efforts a terrifying doubt entered my mind. What if she had heard me and had hung up? After all she had every right to inflict punishment. She was an old friend I had betrayed long ago by having an affair with her husband. There were all kinds of extenuating circumstances that I was used to telling myself to excuse my behavior: such as I had had a relationship with him that preceded hers, and that he had been the one who’d pursued me in these  transgressions…Decades of silence had passed during which she had stonewalled me many times…then Marty died …and she had finally come to visit me with her dog signaling the end of that period of anger. Had she had a sudden unexpected reversal? Was this finally an opportunity for revenge?  I pushed myself out of the phone booth.

I sent her a telepathic message: HELP! I am stranded in Lost Hills; call the police. Call the Highway Patrol!!  The Highway Patrol. The California Highway Patrol who usually carry a container of gas to help motorists who’d run out. Returning to the phone booth, I found another 800 number in the old phone book and dialed it and talked to a human being at last.

I went back to my car which was parked in front of Day’s Inn, and waited. It took them a long time, it seemed, to get there but when they did, they arrived in full glory. Sirens screaming, two patrol cars flanked mine. Never had I been happier to see those black and white cop cars with flashing red lights on top. They did not carry any containers of rescue gas, but one patrolman said he knew a gas station owner who’d probably front me $20 worth of gas–enough to get me to where I thought I had lost my purse. He drove off on his mission.

The second cop began to check the registration of my car, my driver’s license, etc. reading the numbers into his microphone. Somehow the chitchat between us turned to  cell phones. “My son has a cell phone,” I volunteered. “But he’s at Disneyland by now.”

He got all excited. “What’s his number?” It was in my address book in my purse. “What’s his name?” I spelled it for him and he repeated it into his mike. He was sitting at that time in the passenger’s seat with one boot on the ground.

“Actually he passed by here today; he was on his way to Disneyland with his kids.”

He handed me his mobile phone.

“Mom?”

It was Ren. “Ren! Where are you?”

“I’m still on the freeway. We got a late start. What happened?”

“I lost my purse in the hills, and I’m stranded. Where are you?”

“Highway 5…Uh…Wait…Next exit: Lost Hills.”

I was agog.

Then he was walking toward me from the shadows. He must have parked on the other side of the parking lot.

He simply approached and handed me two one hundred dollar bills, crisp new ones. The event took place with a remarkable lack of drama. As though this were the most ordinary transaction in the world, absolutely routine. He had a somewhat wry look on his face and shook his head a little as though quite accustomed to rescuing me from my foibles,  my fiascos, before turning and disappearing in the dark. We have never talked about it again. Quite likely he remembers the event quite differently.

The next thing I recall was pushing through the double doors of Motel 8 where I had been before. The woman at the counter looked at me askance; she must have thought I was about to hit on her again and was preparing the shield of rejection. With enormous satisfaction I slapped a one hundred dollar bill in front of her. She looked at me with suspicion as if I had just robbed a bank. She held the brand new bill up against the light, and then reluctantly handed me a key. “Up the stairs to the right.”

On the way up I noticed a machine that dispensed food and drinks. Too tired to go out again, I ate a little can of beef chili from the machine and then got under the hot shower.

Hair still wet I slipped between the clean crisp sheets of the Taj Mahal and dialed Chickie. This time I got her; the connection was firm; there was absolutely no trace of animosity in her voice. She was my old Berkeley buddy as we marveled and laughed at my unbelievable luck, my fortuitous fiascos. “And it had to be Ren, of course,” she hooted, knowing all about the problematic history between my son and me.

Overnight a dense fog had blanketed the area. I turned on the yellow lights and found myself enveloped in a yellow cloud. The windshield was quickly sprayed with tiny droplets and I turned on the windshield wipers.  I was leaving Lost Hills as slowly as I had when I’d arrived the night before though the circumstances could not have been more different.  I felt myself floating, pushed by some invisible force.

I drove past Blackwell’s Corner in my yellow mist cocoon, but did not go in as the lights were not yet lit.

I flipped through the cassette tapes in a shoebox and slipped in soothing classical guitar music. I envisioned my leather bag by the side of the creek on the rock where I had left it the afternoon before and hoped that no one else had discovered it.

I passed the junction where James Dean had crashed. As I negotiated the right turn to go up the Cholame Road, the guitar music came to an end, the tires jiggled across a cattle guard, and suddenly Tibetan monks began chanting at a high volume. It jolted me; I’d forgotten that the monks came right after Sharon Isbin on the long playing tape that I had made for travel. As the thunderous chants dipped into the lowest registers imaginable, fractured and split into multiple streams, yet another band of voices countered and rose, rumbled and growled, and sent their intense vibrations through my bone marrow into the California hills. The car, quietly droning, climbed and turned and retraced yesterday’s route with seemingly no help from me until I found myself sitting in the same little clearing where I had parked before. I got out and let Mimi out. She sniffed around until she located her previous mark and marked it again.  Retracing my steps, I went straight to the purse on the rock where I had left it. The leather felt a little damp. I opened it and checked the wallet for cash and driver’s license and social security card. Order was restored. On the way back the fog began to thin.

They were both there, he at the front counter and she at the rear of the store. “Good morning.”

“Oh you, I wondered what happened to you,” he said.

“She told me you’d been called out on a plumbing job and for me to move on.”

“No, I didn’t go nowhere. I was just in the back room over there.” The woman said nothing; nor did he look at her. I realized that I had put him in an awkward position.

Quickly I told him my story. “Anyway I just want to stop here to thank you for helping me last night.”

“I wasn’t much help.”

“No, you actually helped me more than you know and I really appreciated your efforts. Thank you for being so kind.” He was embarrassed.

From there I resumed my trip, turned right, and once more headed south. The solid grey of the sky had lightened; distinct clouds were beginning to form. The landscape on both sides became increasingly populated by little bird like oil rigs perpetually pecking at the scorched earth.

As I drove steadily onward, I became aware of a vague uneasy feeling of expectancy, as if the event that had started with the loss of the purse had not ended with its recovery. Maybe there was another shoe yet to be dropped. I checked my dashboard; nothing unusual. Full tank of gas. Mimi was sitting in the back seat looking out the window through nose smudged glass. I had not pushed in another cassette; the Tibetan monks was half popped out.

As I mulled over what had happened, I thought that possibly there was still some shit between me and Chickie.  Was there to be more trouble ahead at that end of my trip? As I drove on, the clouds ahead slowly parted and shafts of dazzling morning sunlight broke through the billows, illuminating the heavens. I felt I had drifted into an Italian renaissance painting. Redemption? I wasn’t sure what the word meant, something Christian. Tears welled up in my eyes and, quite unintentionally, I broke into a song, “Will the circle be unbroken…”. It was the only phrase I knew. I kept repeating it over and over…nearly all the way to the Valley where I arrived for what, indeed, turned out to be a very happy Thanksgiving.

Only recently, upon the writing of this story, did I bother to look up the rest of the lyrics and was surprised that it was not really about redemption, nor did it have to do with my relationship with Chickie. It was the song of a son upon the death of his mother.

I was standing by the window
On one cold and cloudy day
When I saw the hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away.

Will the circle be unbroken
Bye and bye Lord, bye and bye
There’s a better home awaiting
In the sky Lord, in the sky

I said to the Undertaker
Undertaker, please drive slow
For this lady you are carrying
Lord I hate to see her go

Will the circle be unbroken….