beelines

and then i was in cannon beach, oregon; i had just turned left while katie and adam turned right. you can define ends and beginnings however you want, i suppose, but i couldn’t count on seeing either of them again at any near point, and that’s a marked difference from the past two months.

i was going to san francisco, with an aching in my heart, or flowers in my hair, or something. actually, those somethings consisted entirely of one change of clothes (unless you count the two changes of spandex i still had), a camera, and a lot of water bottles. i was going to hitchhike as a sort of consolation prize for selling my bike and not riding down the famed highway 101. the county had cheap local bus service, however, and i elected to take it as far south as i could.

sandy had a aggregate weakness of body and mind that made it difficult to tell her age; she carried a child’s pink backpack and a tattered duffel bag and she was suddenly one more person in a waiting room that i had previously practically owned. the other sudden occupiers were a child, who pointed to me and said “stranger! that man’s a stranger,” and its mother who replied “yes. yes he is.” thus began my conversation with sandy.

“you know, i think more children have gotten in trouble because they’re taught to not ask ‘strangers’ for help than have been abducted by people in vans,” i mentioned. “i used to get lost in the grocery store all the time.”

sandy immediately turned her bulk as towards me as the bench permitted. “i think they should start charging, you know, maybe five cents more for a pop. because a pop is a luxury. and they could use that money to pay for, you know, doctors or whatever. and beer. they should put taxes on beer too.”

in situations like this, i often use a fictional grandfather as a sort of oscar-wilde-esque mouthpiece to give an opinion, in this case one supporting small businesses (like oregon’s many microbreweries). politics are dangerous to talk about with strangers, especially ones that are going to be trapped on a small bus with you for the next few hours. fortunately, i soon realized that sandy threaded her conversations together with nouns rather than more esoteric concepts, preferring tangibility to any sort of logical progression.

“i keep all my nickels in a jar. it’s good to have money in case something bad happens. like if your credit card doesn’t work or i have to pay my rent i can pay it in nickels. if you save your money in fifties and hundreds people will think you’re rich but not if you pay them in nickels.”

i didn’t know what to say. that made one of us.

“i was doing laundry the other day and guess how old of a quarter i found.”

easy response. “1995.”

“no. guess again.”

“1963.”

“no, you’re still wrong. older”

i lowballed her. “1894.”

“no. it was a 1944. i think it’s valuable. mr peterson offered to give me a dollar for it but its more valuable than that. i was lucky because i was doing my laundry and i saw it and i almost put it in the machine but it was old so i saved it. i probably used a thousand quarters last year and this one was old.”

in richard adams’ watership down, the protagonist rabbits have words only for the numbers one through four (never mind that one of the main characters is named “fiver”) and a thousand, which functions as a catchall for larger quantities. i found the book in powell’s bookshop in portland, which is the largest bookstore in the world, apparently. i hadn’t read it in maybe 18 years, and when i picked it up it became apparent that i hadn’t actually read it then, either, so much as i had made my eyes rigorously touch every word.

sandy and i got on the bus. we passed some bikers. “they should make bikers pay taxes for the roads because they use them too,” she said. “just, you know, a dollar or so.”

i kept my mouth shut.

*     *     *

mike stopped his ’93 subaru hatchback as quickly as he could. he yanked a string tied to some interior linkage in the door that had long since divorced the handle, and i hopped in. the first thirty seconds in a stranger’s car are the most awkward: your bags are stacked in your lap and between your legs, so your knee is right where third gear is; you’re both falling over and echoing each other’s words; in this case, you’re trying to graciously decline of the offer of a bowl hit while concealing your worry that he had recently indulged.

mike was a nice guy with lots of good advice. “if you ever want to get rid of some pot plants, sprinkle ‘em with slug bait.” or, “if your granddad leaves you lots of cool shit when he dies, bury it quick because your in-laws are going to try to come steal it.”

noted. mike’s best narrative, however, involved why he will never go to tillamook again (hence our detour around it off the highway). about five years ago, he was in town with some buddies and rented a couple of movies from the local mom ‘n pop video store. unfortunately, his buddy’s mom got sick, and they all drove back to portland without thinking of the movies. about a week later, the shop called him up to ask about the movies. “you need to bring them back.”

“listen, guys, my buddy’s mom got sick, i don’t have a car, i’ll get down there when i can. it might be a few weeks, just charge me the late fees or whatever.”

“no, you don’t understand, we’re a small movie shop. you have to bring the movies back now.”

“look, i’ll buy new ones on amazon or whatever. i just can’t get down there.”

“no, you have to bring us back our movies now.”

mike told them where to put their movies. a year later, he’s hanging out with some friends and their dogs in a park. a cop shows up to tell them dogs aren’t allowed, and proceeds to run mike’s friends ID and give him a ticket–only, mike’s friend had an outstanding warrant for “some bullshit”, and into the cruiser he goes. the trooper decides to run everyone’s IDs, and it turns out mike, too has an outstanding warrant.

“for what?”

illegal possession of stolen property. mike spends two weeks in jail and eight hundred dollars in fees ‘n fines for two movies. don’t f#$k around with mom ‘n pop.

*     *     *

jake picks me up at the bus station at 3:00 in the morning with a bike he had slung over his shoulder, a bottle of jameson, and a can of sparks. i sleep on a windowsill and fall off at seven in the morning when my phone rings. i go back to sleep and wake up to screaming on the street: some girl and her phone having an argument. “don’t you dare laugh at me!” she cries. “how dare you!”

how dare i, indeed. and now i have to find a job, and an apartment, and a bike, and things.