White City

N 42.4344° W 122.1828°

None of the dog collars at the White City Goodwill are old enough. I'm trying to finish an art project for my sister's birthday three months late, and none of the collars or belts match the pictures I found at the antique store in Tulsa. To my right, a woman makes brief eye contact and returns to looking at the books.

I stop, and look again. She's thin and grey-haired, but her hair has a youthful cut. Her skin is too smooth, I think. I'm stuck trying to figure her out. Snatch another glance. Her arms and shoulders are too young. I'm trying to not be rude. I hate staring at people; it makes me feel gross. But I keep snatching glances. Her hair is definitely grey, but she's definitely too young for it. She's wearing an unflattering brown t-shirt dress, but that wouldn't tell me anything. The long tribal tattoo showing between her shoulder blades at the scoop of the dress, however, does.

I leave. She's still there, in the back of my mind, though. My mind is vacillating. Should I talk to her? What would I say? I circle the whole store. I haven't talked to a woman--not as a single man--for years. If I ever had game, I don't have it now. I walk back over, see she's still looking at books. Anybody who is that dedicated to finding a book can't be a bad person. Right?

"Hey, just curious--"

"Oh!" She turns to face me. She has a nose that is just at the juncture between large and too large. She has soft blue eyes. She looks thirty, and she's beautiful.

"Did you choose grey hair, or did it choose you?" What an awkward opening salvo. She repositions, laughs, and touches her hair.

"It just happened this way, actually."

"I would--"

"It's genetic; my mother went grey the same way, so I was doomed, as it turns out."

"I would choose grey over bald in a heart beat."

"Oh, you're not so bald."

"It's coming. I'm just preparing myself."

"They say it's your mother's brother who determines."

"And he's bald as a cue ball."
"Oh no! At least you have all this." She's smiling. It feels like a human conversation. She's not afraid of me.
"I've been planning on shaving my head and keeping the beard." I pull on it, a thing I never understood when I saw men do it, but which has now become an unconscious habit. "I'll probably look like Jebediah from Iron Man. You know, the villain."

"Well, it's better than no hair at all, right?'
"Right. I chose this look because I'm going to be in a play, and I have to look Civil War."

"Very cool!" She turns to a boy who has approached us. He looks seven. It's monday, and I don't know why he isn't in school. 

"Look at his beard!"

I pull the corner of my mustache up and touch my eyebrow like a goof. We all laugh at how long it is. I say goodbye and walk away.

Ten minutes later, I'm back in the parking lot. I charge inside. I walk through the whole store, just to guarantee it. She's gone. There was a ninety percent chance she was with someone, and I lack the courage to find out until it was too late. I don't mind that she's older than I am, probably, or that she has a son, or that I won't be in the same part of the country for the rest of the summer. I don't drink coffee or tea, but I would ask for her number regardless of my dislike of that cliche first meeting. The entire trip home I develop wild fantasy situations in my head for how badly it could have gone. I re-imagine the conversation the way I want again and again. I keep telling myself that anybody that confident and light-hearted is so certainly in a relationship that my chance of even being on her radar was less than one in a thousand. I have to tell myself this because I forgot to look at her hand. I have to tell myself this because the moment I walked away, I wanted to turn back. I have to tell myself this because this is not the first time I have walked away from someone.

I worked with her at Southern. We shared a tiny office space for the employees of the faculty, and we graded papers every Tuesday at the same time. I remember laughing and talking for so long that her boss walked in and gave me the evil eye for about two minutes, just to make sure I would shut up and work for once. She and I clicked, but by the time I realized what was happening, it was April, and I would be gone for the summer. I kept telling myself that I would ask her out for a date in August, first thing.

That final Tuesday, the last time I saw her my sophomore year (there was no way to know that), it was raining. I walked ten minutes away and decided to cut into the woods behind campus. It was so beautiful and quiet, but all I could think about was the off-hand comment she had made: "I don't like rain." She would like this rain, and maybe she would put up with it because of me. I vacillated for those ten minutes and then decided to try my luck. I ran pell-mell back to the office, ducked into the doorway and saw--an empty seat. She always worked later than I did, but today she must have gotten off early. I was going to ask her. I swear it.

I walked back out into that cloudy drizzle and meandered through the woods for an hour before I got too cold to keep going. I was melancholy, and with good reason. I blew it.

That summer, she met someone and they were steady for nearly a year. I moved on with my life and rarely saw her at work. I'm chased by this memory, still. I'm constantly bothered by "what if." This walk in the rain, this empty office, this moment led me to two relationships and an anguished sigh in a Goodwill book section.

I walk from the store into the blaze of an early summer day. It had taken me five minutes to find the courage to talk to her and ten minutes to remember that we would never see each other again unless I did something about it. It will take me years to forget. She is the first person I would have asked on a date since 2012, and it's still because of the first person I would have ever asked on a date.

My thumb touches my ring finger again, where my wedding band used to live. Old habits.

Pampa

I'm with a gay guy in Pampa. Chris has thin hair on top, long, spindly legs, and a sizable stomach. His hands are pale, and he holds them delicately, like an effete caricature in a film. The light drawl in his vowels is paired with a high ceiling to his tone, but he doesn't sound like you're thinking; he's . . . complex. Human. The sibilant stereotypical "s" isn't his style. He's not overtly camp. He's wearing sandals. Chris is the only Couchsurfer in town, and I'm going to stay at his house tonight.

When I arrived at his house, he sauntered out the front door to meet me in house shoes, tank top and shorts. "You're Robby!"
"Yeah, and you must be Chris. Man, I'm so glad you responded. I mean, it's been a long time since I saw a bed. Very cool of you." I pushed my bicycle off the sidewalk and stuck out my hand.
"No problem." We sized each other up. He must not have been surprised at my appearance, because he didn't react. I was wearing my fading poly exercise shirt and the khaki-colored pants I wore every day. One pants leg was held tightly to my ankle by the darts I put in at camp; the other was held down by Jacki's reflective strap. My helmet had pushed my hair into some short waves I accepted because the other option was my natural board-straight straw. My bicycle was still clean, sort of. If only I knew.
"I've just been down to the White Deer Land Trust museum and through the park--nice town! Oh, is there a place to put my bike in back?"
"Of course, yeah, of course. Just come on around here." As he turned on his heel, my eyes followed him to the gate in the fenced backyard. He opened it and waited for me. I smiled, but I was having trouble getting the size of this man. His glasses were too small for his face, I decided. And shorts were decidedly inappropriate for this weather. He continued the conversation while I pulled a few things from my bags. "Did you like the museum?"
"What? Oh, yeah. It was like walking into the nineteen twenties, very cool. And free, too. Probably the best small-town historical society I've seen on my trip." I had seen two.
When we got inside, Chris pushed a cat out of the way with his feet to show me the bathroom. "There are towels in this dresser, so feel free to use one. The shower . . . well, you probably know how to work a shower, right? Anyway, just don't worry about Grunt. She'll meow at the door because she likes to sit here when I shower. And sorry about the mess, too, please. I'm about halfway through moving." I looked around. Between two doorways, there was a sink. Opposite the toilet was a dresser. On top of the dresser, there was a ceramic rabbit, three mis-matched cups, and a vase filled with plastic flowers, surrounded by a handful of pencils, a stack of plates, a salt and pepper shaker set, and a few coins. The sink had a half dozen other cups and a few decorative plates. Stacked cardboard boxes stood sentry beside the doors, and an assortment of dusty magazines held them down. There was enough room to stand and turn in place.
"It's perfect. I've never been more glad to see a shower."
"I'll be out here when you're done! Holler if you need something."
I looked through to the other room, where boxes sloped down from all four walls to meet a mess of cat food both in and near a set of bowls. Chris may have been halfway through moving, for all I know. But Chris' house is not half-moved. I know the same dark impulse that fomented his mess. It ripples through my family, too. I couldn't see the countertops in his kitchen or the floor beside his bed. Nobody normal stacks clean glasses on top of magazines on top of cardboard boxes in their bathroom.
When I got out and got dressed, Chris shouted from the living room. "You hungry?"

That's why I'm at a Mexican restaurant with a gay man. Chris is telling me about coping with his extensive family, all of whom live in Pampa or Amarillo. Everybody knows everybody else. Nobody can keep any secrets. "Do you know that when my Dad died, we found a lot of secrets in his paperwork? I mean, you'd think that when you know a guy for thirty years, you'd know most everything about him. But we found some paperwork he filed--" at this, Chris leans in, conspiratorially, over his enchiladas. "He was going to adopt my cousin for a while. In the paperwork, it came out that my aunt was using heroin when she was pregnant. I mean, we always knew my cousin was strange, but I wouldn't have thought Dad was going to adopt him. He didn't, anyway."
I can't stop Chris. He rattles off stories about his time in Pampa, generalizes about Texans and tourists. "You saw the cotton, right?" I had. "You pick any? Most people pick the whole boll, but that's not the cotton. You probably picked a boll." I had actually taken the wool out of the clasping crispy leaves very carefully, but I couldn't convince Chris. I just laughed and nodded when he repeated himself. "I went to a good Christian college in Mississippi, and let me tell you! . . ." A young couple came in, dressed to impress, North Texas perfection. His cowboy boots didn't have a lick of mud, and his three-sizes too large cowboy hat made his belt buckle look reasonable by contrast. She had her hair up in back, and where it was pulled back I could see her roots beginning to show through the bottle blonde. I pointed them out and Chris looked at me like I was slow. "You said you're from Texas, right?"
"I mean, I was born in Amarillo."
"And you think that hat is big? You haven't seen a big hat." The hat is remarkably big. The brim's wider than the young man's shoulders. "I used to own a hat that big, but I think I lost it to a guy who used to stay at my house. He probably took it when he moved out." I wisely decide to drop the hat. Chris, I am beginning to discover, has something to say on every subject, and his something is always more impressive than your something. I don't mind. It means I can just listen, and I don't have to say squat about my trip.
We pay our separate tabs as if to prove we weren't on a date, and we set off down the road on foot again towards Chris' house.
Chris rattles on. "I used to be in a relationship for a while. There aren't a lot of us up here, you know, so this guy was from out of state, actually, we'd only been dating for a few months, anyway, and one time when I came home from work he was waiting for me with a collar. I was like 'Help, me Lord! What is this?' and he told me he wanted to wear the collar and have me treat him like a dog. He was gonna do his business in the back yard, would you believe it?" I wouldn't, apparently, because Chris continues. "Anyway, I wasn't into that, necessarily, so that relationship didn't last long. Oh, Lord! The things people get up to. There's a whole lot of kink in this world, and you don't know the half of it." We shuffle across the sidewalk and past the Braum's. The wind kicks up the smell of dust and the light fades. We jog across the road and Chris starts laughing at another memory. "I tell you what, sometimes it's the people you don't expect, actually. I told you we were going through my dad's things, right? You remember. He had a great big black dildo in his house! It was the size of my arm--" and so on. I laugh at all the right places and ask small questions when there's space for them. Back in Chris's house, we talk, or rather he talks until he had to leave for work.
"What time are you going to be out in the morning?"
"I think probably with the sun; I've got a long way to go. I'm trying to go to, uh . . ." I pull out my phone. "Alibates National Monument, I think."
"Oh, the Flint Quarries! That's some fantastic country out there. My cousin and I drove through there just last week and we didn't take the main roads and some of the canyons!" He ploughs through that story and one about his first car, which he purchased from his grandmother and promptly wrecked, before he stands up decisively. "Well, you know where the bed is, don't mind Grunt, and have a safe trip if I don't see you in the morning!"
"Oh! Thanks, uh-- thanks for everything, Chris!"
We don't shake hands, we hug. It seems like what we both expected. He slips into his flip flops and goes to unpack boxes all night at Walmart. I sleep on top of his bed in my own sleeping bag. There are Christmas decorations, a case of water, a stack of blankets, picture frames, an old pair of shoes. The only clean space in the room is the path to the bed and the space where his body hits the sheets. It's strange being in Chris' house and not minding. I fall asleep almost instantly.

Awake again.
Nights are too short.
I make oatmeal, just like every morning, with a spoonful of peanut butter, and by the time I've clipped into the bike again, the morning is just turning gray in the east. It's gonna be nice, I think. It's hard to tell; with nothing to slow down the wind, storms blow up awfully quick around here. But Pampa is the last town of any size until Amarillo, and that's still a few days away. I'm getting too cold at night, and I'm tired of shivering. It's been nearly a month since the first freeze in Missouri. My sleeping bag is essentially paper-thin, and the aluminized blanket around it isn't doing anything but holding in the wet. It's time for long johns, and not any terrible cotton ones, either. Cotton holds in moisture. Cotton is death. I'm not interested. I go to a Carhartt shop, I go to an exercise store, and I'm headed to Wal-Mart. The Carhartt shop owner is extremely kind, even running into the back just to see if she has everything, but of ten pairs of long johns, ten are cotton. They're nice, I'll give you. I bet they would keep me warm, but they wouldn't if they were wet, and that's what I'm afraid of. Everything is cotton, either entirely, or mostly. I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to give up, and then Tractor Supply hoves up into sight. I might as well. The sun is already up and I'm tired of wasting time.
In the Tractor Supply, I look mildly lost for ten seconds, long enough for the saleswoman to ask "Can I help you?"
"Yeah, I was looking for some long johns?"
"Sorry?"
"Like . . . long underwear."
"Oh! Just over there," she says, pointing. I smile, and she smiles back. I jog over and find cotton cotton cotton cotton wool. You won't understand this moment unless you bask in it. Empathize with my month-long search, please. I've looked in Joplin, in Tulsa, in Oklahoma City. I had nearly given up hope, gone on Amazon and had something mailed to a post office ahead of me, and I see the wool/poly blend and legitimately shout with excitement.
I almost run with them to the checkout, where a cute girl is running the register.
"I need to thank you," I say to her.
"What? What for?" She smiles, just a little.
"You have no idea the struggle I have had to find non-cotton long johns. And you and this beautiful store have them." I pull the bag to my lips and give it a hearty, comical kiss. "I will be warm forever, now!"
She laughed. It was half nervous, half relief. I don't give two toots if she thinks I'm weird. I just couchsurfed with a gay half-horder and I have long johns. The world can't keep me down.

Shady Cove

I think my journey isn't over, but my book has somehow fallen off.

I'm in Pampa, Texas, and I have so much to say about Chris, but I'll never do him justice. I stayed at his house for one night, and he talked to me for four hours, and what he said has all run together.
I hate leaving things. I was doing so much better when I wrote as I lived. Trying to remember what happened, to reconstruct the feelings I had at the time, is increasingly difficult. And I'm trying to live life again for the first time in a year or so, rather than putting it off. I took the GRE and applied to substitute teach.
But I want to finish. You don't even know about Todd the vagrant who doesn't wear shoes or the single leaf of pot I own. You haven't heard about Walnut Canyon or the worst road on Earth.


There's a lot of story out there, and I lived part of it. I hope I get a chance to share it with you before we both die.

Allison

35°38'54.5"N 100°00'40.4"W

I have camped somewhere perhaps I oughtn't, but I was so exhausted after my sixty-something mile day that I saw a break in the fence and I practically dove for it. The hammock is up, supper is snatches of granola bars and trail mix, and bed is forthcoming.
But through the wind and the crickets, I can hear them. West first, owing to their wildness and frontier essence, East following, because this far into the continent, there's no distinction. Coyotes. They sound different than I expected, even though I've heard them before many times, and often near my own house in Missouri. I expect the low cry of a wolf or a hound, something loud and strong, something I could make with my own voice. What I hear instead is an altogether higher sound; coyotes are sopranos. When one picks up, they all tend to cry out together, giving the pack the sound of a fountain bubbling out across the wide plain. And it's high. They make the top notes of a song from a different world, one altogether foreign and uncomfortable.
The trees that hold me up are scrubby and short. I've had to use branches on their outside edges, and even so, the nylon at my head is rubbing one trunk, at my feet, the other. When the wind gusts, the edge of the hammock catches like a sail and moves, scraping bark and twigs like the bow of a violin, but the music it makes won't soothe me. Mixed with the coyotes, it's a haunting melody.

My watch alarm wakes me at an ungodly dark hour, and I pull down the hammock without a flashlight. Breakfast is two more granola bars. I can't be trusted to light a stove in the dry brush of my camp. The road is empty. On the horizon, far away to the southwest, a line of flickering red lights blink on and off in unison, marking a distant wind farm. Nothing changes for half an hour but the soft quality of the light. My breathing is mechanical. My feet spin at a nearly perfect rhythm dictated by the near-flatness of the road.
Finally, the road comes to a dead T, and my path turns south. That's when I see it: a sunrise to rival my euphoria at Foss. I start to wonder if I'm getting ungodly lucky, or if sunrises and sunsets are just better on the high plains. My mother always said the sky is bigger in Oklahoma and Texas, and I think she meant it as a joke. In Missouri, where I grew up, there's always some kind of tree to block your view, even further north, away from the river, where the land changes ten feet of elevation for every mile you walk. Even there, farmers have fencerows and solitary giants. But here, where trees don't scrape the sky as much as cower from it, there's nothing between the eye and the horizon. The dawn is allowed to stretch, to yawn and gape, to take its time.
Southbound into Allison, Texas, I keep stealing glances at the sunrise on my left. It keeps getting better. By the time I reach town, the colors are starting to become unrealistic. I'm laughing, because nobody would believe the way gold can fade into purple so fast you don't notice the absurdity of the pink between. I drop my postcards and consider leaving town when I see a truck pull up outside what looks for all the world like an unconventional restaurant. There's no "indoors," but there are picnic tables scattered around. There's a sign that says "Open!" and a service window in the side of a small pre-built structure. I make a gamble that nobody will mind if I borrow one end of a picnic table for breakfast.
The woman inside looks out and sees me before I have a chance to ask for permission.
"Hello, there! You look like you've come a long way!"
I take the time to explain my journey while I pull out my breakfast makings. Peanut butter and oatmeal--preferably Raisin, Date, and Walnut--and a stove to boil the water. This is my every day on the trail, partially because the oatmeal is very cheap, and partially because it's a flavor I haven't gotten sick of yet. A thought occurs to me while explaining that I started in Massachusetts. "I'm wondering if you could boil any water for me? It would save me some fuel and work."
"Of course! Is there anything else I could get you? Toast? Eggs? I haven't set up for the day yet, but if you've got some time . . ."
This is the best idea I've heard in a long time. "Yeah, I would love some eggs and toast, are you kidding? I'm not in too big a hurry. I'm just trying to get to Pampa, and it's only, what? Fifty miles away?"
She shakes her head like fifty miles on a bicycle is the craziest thing she's ever heard. Maybe it is. While she runs water to put on her stove, I've got a moment to look around. I've already dropped by the post office. Across the street, there's an old gas pump that looks like it's mainly rust by now. There's a sign for a church across from a separate church. Add twenty houses and that's Allison. The edges of it are extremely well-defined. You would never have to guess at where the town ends and the prairie begins. Looking east again, I see that the sunrise has clambered up over the horizon and begun to stretch itself luxuriously across the sky. The few clouds that streak it only serve to augment a color palette that would drown in pink otherwise. Now there's a flashing of yellow smeared across the underbelly of every purple cloud, and high overhead the pink of the sun is fading into royal blue as the world wakes up. I walk down past a duo of barking dogs to a place where houses and trees don't obscure my vision. For whatever reason, an old friend comes back to me: "I don't know why all these people keep taking photos, taking photos. All the time!"
I ventured an appeasement: "Maybe they want to remember later." We were standing on a bridge overlooking the Neuschwanstein castle. I had already taken a dozen photographs, searching for one I might be able to put on the wall. I had already bought a watercolor from a man who had picked the perfect spot and set up a stool and easel. I was trying to cling to the moment, and when she thought about it, Shaina's nose crunched up with her eyebrows.
"All they will remember later is taking pictures. I think it is better to just look at the thing and to live that moment."
It's hard to say which sight was subjectively better. The sunrise had the ephemeral feel of all atmospheric tableaux, and the castle had an unfinished permanence. Both sights were on the cusp of perfection, but while the sunrise was constantly growing and changing, the castle was captured in a final moment of near-perfection. The first was alive, the second in stasis. It's hard to say which was subjectively better, but I have no photographs of the sunrise that will never again occur. Simultaneously, I could take you directly to my collection of photographs capturing the same view of the castle that you could pay to see today. Maybe Shaina was on to something, but I applied her advice in a topsy-turvy way.
By the time I return to the little Allison Diner, the proprietor isn't the only person there. She sells two pre-made sandwiches to the man in his dually pickup and brings me two cups of boiling water, two slices of toast, and an egg. Fantastic. As she sets down the food, she throws me a pointed question. "You're not going anywhere, are you? I've got to go pick up Lucy and she'd love to meet you."
"Oh, I'm stuck to the bench until the food is all gone, guaranteed."
"Good." Lucy, it turns out, is having car trouble and needs a ride to work. By the time they've made it back, I'm only through with the eggs and toast. Allison is a small town; it isn't far to go. I repeat my story ("From Massachusetts? Holy heck!") to the new arrival, and an older woman pulls up in her Cadillac DeVille to hear the tall tale too ("Where do you sleep? And aren't you afraid on the road?"). Lucy takes a photo of all of us on her phone, to share the moment on Facebook. "Ain't a lot that happens around here. I bet most everybody already knows. Wow! Bicycling across the country. That's crazy." I write down the address for my blog so they can check it out.
Riding out of Allison, the town abruptly disappears and the grass and cows begin again. The distant windmills are no closer than they seemed when I awoke. The wind isn't overwhelming. The day is nice enough I've shed most of my layers already. The sunrise is gone and the sky is a soft blue. There's a gas station with a proper shop and restroom fifteen miles down the road just past where the road I'm on dodges through the nothing town of Briscoe on its way to the smeared out twin towns of Mobeetie and Old Mobeetie. I'm destined to make Pampa by two in the afternoon, but I don't know it now. I don't know that this account won't be written down for another three months and change. I don't know that the sunrise will still rate among the best I've ever seen, and I don't know the regret of looking through the photographs I've got of my trip and only finding that early morning smear at the corner of County Line and 277 where I first turned south and caught a portent of the colors that would develop later. I don't know the regret of forgetting every person's name in Allison. I don't know the regret of finishing my trip.
But I'm only two thirds done. How could I know?

Foss Lake State Park

N35°33'26.0" W099°13'45.2"
Mouse Creek campsite.
Please remember the name. Visit Foss Lake state park in Oklahoma and stay at the Mouse Creek site. Hope that it is the same for you as it was for me. Take someone with you.

When I get to the ranger station at Foss, there is a fifteen mile-per-hour wind tearing across the plain. One door is bolted because the gusts will slap it open and closed otherwise. On a post nearby, there's a map of the park with a great big circle that says "Bison." I look into the field behind the ranger's house and see rolling grasslands but precious little else. Tipping my bike against the pillars outside, I straighten up and smash my helmet into a piece of wood holding up the low roof. Thwack. I make a mental note to not stand up when I come back to get on the bicycle.
Inside the visitor's center, there's a stuffed white deer in a tasteful diorama, a great shaggy bison head on the wall, and a mammoth tusk (possibly a plaster cast, but possibly not) stretched across one corner. The water from the bathroom sink tastes like old pipes and reminds me of high school, but I fill two bottles anyway. As I leave the bathroom, a receptionist walks out from a back room and catches sight of me.
"Oh, hello! You driving through, or looking for a campsite?"
"I'm trying to camp for the night, yeah." I saunter over to the counter as she rifles through her papers for a map.
"These are our developed campsites with power and water hookups, and these are our primitives. What are you driving?"
"A bike. Like: a bicycle. That one." I lean over and point out the door.
"Oh! You with someone? No? Well, we're glad you decided to come to Foss! I hope you really like the park."
"Hey, listen: the sign outside said there'd be bison. Do you know where I could go to see them?"
She looked at me, then leaned forward over the desk, rotating her torso just a bit to her right, looking out the back window of the visitor's center. "Yeah, I thought so," she said, then stood back up to look me dead in the eye.
I flicked my head to see what she was seeing, and fifty bison standing in the field outside revealed themselves as if by magic.
"Huh."
"Yeah, hard to miss, aren't they?"
The woman looks thoughtful as she ponders Mouse Creek. "You know, I can't think of any wind breaks there. Maybe you'd better find one."
Grandpa always used to say "The wind goes down when the sun goes down," and most of the time he was right. So I'm not worried. Even if I can't find a thicket or a grove between me and the blast, the sun sets in a few hours. I'll be fine. I deal with the wind for a final two-mile sprint to Mouse Creek. As I roll by, I can plainly see no one in the rv parking. I can see no one in the boat ramp. I can see no one in the tent campsites. I'm alone. Hope that it is the same for you.
The toilet, however, is locked for the season. Maybe visit before October 15, in any case.
I wade into the lake. The day is still warm, but it was never hot enough for this kind of shock. My gasp reflexes kick in and don't slow down, and I splash some water on my chest and head to get used to the idea. It takes me five minutes to work up sufficient courage to finally dive out, skimming the surface and getting fully wet. The bottom is still only three feet away, forty feet out. I sit and shiver, just long enough to contemplate Lake Superior and how lucky I am to be in Oklahoma instead. When I do get out of the water, I'm quite pleasantly cold.
Out of the water, the warm, dry wind substitutes for my towel. I'm dry before I finish two postcards. In the West, a few clouds hang low, and a flock of birds in the lake take off in a huff, fly a crazy loop, and land again. The trees over me whistle and shake with a clatter like bones. Once I write to my whole family, I get restless. I find a windbreak. A thicket north of the rv parking blocks enough wind that I can't feel it at all, even though a tree sixty feet away is thrashing in it.
The water at the campsite doesn't work, but one farm faucet is letting off a thin trickle. The electricity is still on. I charge my phone. There's a moment of indecision in me as I watch the sun set. (I periodically and frantically whip out my phone to take pictures as it keeps getting better.) Should I really camp in the thicket? It will definitely be warmer overall, but it's sixty five degrees and the south wind promises no chill. And all my belongings are already by the lake. And I look out across the grass that covers the point to my east. The sound of it—like a thousand thousand leaves gently sliding past each other, the softest white noise in the world—and the sight of it—a patchwork masterpiece of long grass and yucca and tiny sunflowers and sage, a southwest masterpiece never done justice by painter or photographer—convince me to stay. The sunset grips the world around me, a golden hour to end them all, a titanic visual baking the prairie vista into an altogether more rapturous scene, (and one small boy, flipping his phone out to try again to capture it) and the wind gusts nearly constant, changing only to remind you that it is there.

This place, this night, this campground was perfect for sitting up irresponsibly late with a bursting love or a blood-bound friend. I've only had a few perfect nights like this, and I know them: they make talk easy. Very quickly, you realize that the promise of an early bedtime has long since been abandoned and you can't remember the first story you told. Every time the other person speaks, it's sorcery, and every time they pause, you have something to add. If I had someone I cared about knowing, even if I didn't know them, the wind would tear through our fire and make it flutter and sing, and we would stare at it and bare our hearts because this is exactly the night to do such a thing. Maybe we would never speak of it again, maybe we would remember it fondly, but no matter what, no soul can live through such a night without reaching out.
I have known only a handful of such nights in such places. If you visit Mouse Creek, hope that it is the same for you. As for me, I have no one. My grief is well-hidden, I like to think, but in moments like this, it manifests and controls me. I recognized the night, felt its magic, knew its power, and fiddled with my phone instead. I don't write. I don't call a friend, a family member, an ancient crush, a lost connection. I distract myself. I reach out to strangers to make me laugh so I forget how hollow this moment is. The wind tears its way through my hammock all night. I'm sufficiently warm that I don't care; I actually welcome the company.
In the morning when I wake up, it's dark. I gather my camp, I make breakfast, and I sit in silence. But once I look up, I see the most delicate red on the purple of the eastern clouds. I take my breakfast with me and I walk to the top of the ridge, overlooking the sea of grass, overlooking the tongue of the lake in the west. I walk to where I can see the sunrise. Where last night, I had an tempestuous explosion, in the morning I get a careful composition. The attitude of the sky is quiet, almost breathless. The wind, which has been racing all night, dies in the space of five minutes. The world is still. Venus hangs low. The constellations vanish. The clouds gracefully, imperceptibly brighten. The spell is unbroken. I wish I had someone with me who could gasp and point and say nothing.
Please, stay out too late. Find the night just warm enough that you're tempted to build a fire. Feel your heart race as you laugh at someone who desperately wants you to laugh. Tell a story you didn't remember you had. Reach out and find another human soul with you, vibrating with a temorous note, resonant in the darkness and harmonizing with your own. Visit Mouse Creek and hope that it is the same for you as it was for me, but do me one better. Don't let life catch you alone.

Cushing

N 35°58'36.3," W 096°45'55.0"

The light is dying in Cushing before I even eat my sandwich. There's two carnicerias and a ratty looking nail salon nearby, and I watch the grime revealed by sharp yellow light fade and mellow out to gold, to orange, to a rich purple. Seven people order subs while I sit and eat. No one comes in alone, but in groups of two and three. I'm the outlier. I'm the guy traveling across the country on a bicycle.
I know I've probably explained my journey a hundred times or more already. I'm not precisely tired of telling people why I'm running off after adventure, but I have noticed I give a different reason every time. Sometimes, I'm running away from a job I didn't feel was enough to fulfill me, but other times I'm running towards a person I want to be. Sometimes, I tell the person about Delight, and sometimes I make believe that a story read to me in childhood was enough to entice me into this frankly insane quest for--for what? Self-actualization? Healing? Experience? I'm starting to feel extremely lonely. The girl making sandwiches is cute. Not as bone-shakingly cute as the girl I haven't met yet in San Jon at the 24-hour Indian food restaurant. She had a tasteful tattoo and an "I hate this town" hairstyle. She didn't know what a lassi was until the other clerk called it a sweet yogurt. The sandwich girl is not as everyday cute as the gamer on Couchsurfing in Virginia who shocked me by messaging back at all. I was getting desperate with rain coming on and I sent out a dozen feelers. She got back with "Sucks I'm getting on a plane to Australia right now. You seem like we could be friends!" She's just sandwich girl cute. With all my concentration, I'm struggling to focus on nothing, if I can't focus on the sunset. I'm feeling guilty that this woman I don't know is reduced to the floating head and arms I can see above the bar and the smiles she slides across the sandwich fixings. My gut twists at making comparisons between her and other girls I've known or met, at ranking her against my wife. I've just finished reading Thinking Fast and Slow, and my self-directed bile is remarkably intellectual. I lecture myself. Humans rank the unrankable by establishing a heuristic to establish an intensity of feeling. It's the intensity of that feeling I'm ranking, classifying, comparing. How dare you reduce a complex woman to a single attribute? How dare you compare humans? But I can do it because my heuristic today is easy to articulate.
How much does this girl make me miss her?

The biggest park in Cushing is only ten or eleven blocks away to my southwest. As I pedal, I occasionally reach over the handlebars to readjust the headlight so maybe it won't blind the oncoming traffic, but still illuminate the road. I pass a church whose basement lights were on. I pass a grade school that gives me a sharp pang of nostalgia for my own classroom. The road is empty, though. Nothing is happening tonight. As the park rises up in front of me, I skirt the edge, scoping out a copse of trees on the far edge. Two dogs run off a front porch to chase me until the man on the steps barks a short "Hey!" and I slip away into the dark, past the baseball diamonds, to the perfect place. The lights are so far away I know I'll go unnoticed. The paths are all yards away. The parking lots are all further still. I change out of my riding bib down in the bottom of a drainage ditch and set up my hammock. I toss the e-reader in with my sleeping bag and heave a huge sigh. It's only seven, and I'm not tired yet. I'm dissatisfied, and there's nobody interesting to watch.
Only a week prior, I had been laughing at a couple in Seneca, Missouri. That day, I had arrived at the city park that parallels Little Lost Creek. I made macaroni and cheese on my camp stove, and when I lit it, the fireball of igniting gas fumes made a little girl jump and shout "He's starting a fire!" Her three friends all gasped in utter disbelief, and I turned around to face them with a huge frown.
"It's a stove. I'm making mac and cheese." I shook the box.
"Oh." She didn't sound like she believed me.
Ringed around the dozen elementary-aged kids on the playground, a handful of adults languished and sulked. Further away, a single gangly teenager shot up and down the creekside pathway on his skateboard. He didn't seem committed to it. Every time the board slowed on an uphill, he'd kick the tail and grab the nose and carry it to the top of the next rise. He smoked a cigarette like he didn't really enjoy or need it. I didn't really look at him until his girlfriend showed up. Together, they were mesmerizing. She was tall and thin to match his wispy build, her long hair pulled back and tucked behind her ears, her orthopedic boot thumping quietly along the sidewalk. They greeted each other with a hug, and a twelve-year-old girl enthusiastically ran up to him for a fist bump hello. I watched the trio wander back and forth while my meal cooked. Mostly, the skater stayed with his crippled girl, but once or twice, he would woop and the sister would set off at a hot run with him swooping behind, racing her on his board. I took off my shoes and ate with my feet in the water, the shocking cold a kind contrast with the warm October sun. While I was down there, the trio wandered down onto a gravel bed. The boy and the sister tossed rocks to watch the splashes while the cripple leaned against a nearby tree. By the time I was washing the cheese from my pot, the trio was trooping off to their cars, his cigarette dangling between his lips, one foot on his board, the other scooting oh-so-slowly along, his hand twined with hers, the boot on her foot dragging behind at every step, the younger sister leading the way, finally looking very bored. The couple were so concerned with how the other person saw them that nearly every moment was a calculated move: his unnecessary cigarette, her I-can't-play-in-the-creek attitude, his early arrival. But this little parade with their fingers intertwined awkwardly high, with her practically pulling him along behind her on his board, this display wasn't for anyone. They just didn't know how to be together without every moment being important, somehow. I felt a brief spike of something--not jealousy, surely, but nostalgia, maybe? A feeling of missing something important, of having outgrown the heart-shaking feeling of touching knees with a girl under the table in math class. But not jealousy.
Thinking back to the skater and the cripple, that's when I spy the over-confident couple. A hundred and fifty yards away under a streetlamp, there's a man and a woman walking slowly. With sudden aggression, he turns and mashes his face against hers, leaning into her so hard that she bends over. I can see the light flash of her arms as she throws them around his neck. It can't be a gentle experience for either of them. I feel a little voyeuristic, and I know it won't paint me in a positive light, but I throw open my pannier and slide out my binoculars. With the night glasses, I can see them much better. Her body is strained into an arc, hands constantly moving across his back and through his hair. If he dropped her, she would fall over. He's practically lifting her off the ground by her butt, both hands pulling. She's a better kisser than he is. I don't even have to kiss them both to see that already. She's aware of his body, how he must feel what she's doing with hers. She moves her hands because she knows he'll like it, but he just wants to grab her butt. It starts to get gross. I put down the glasses and sit with my back to the tree. With my perspective, I don't even have to try to find reasons why this is idiotic; I can count four teens cutting through the ball field and three teens smoking in the pavilion near the bathroom. The street light overhead washes the couple in light, a beacon that screams "I'm here! Look at me!" I feel something visceral about these two. Not jealousy, certainly. But something I can't quite put into words.
Suddenly, he pulls away. The embrace is over as quickly as it began. She straightens her shirt from when his hand went all the way up inside it, and he takes six steps away and pulls out his phone. I feel a strong spike of empathy for her, but it fades. A minute later, he's satisfied whoever called him (his mom? buddy? girlfriend?) and though they've wandered into the playground, they're at it again under another street lamp. A jogger in a bright yellow vest bounces past them twice while they're licking each other. Now, I don't fancy myself to be a particularly good kisser, but if this is the best we men have on offer, the talent on the shallow end leaves much to be desired. I get bored with his moves after two minutes. The illicit thrill that has kept me going this far fades like a polaroid in direct sunlight.
I still don't feel jealousy, watching the older, more sexual butt-gropers in the park. I've kissed girls in parks before, so it's not my superiority that separates us. It's something else.
Once I finally get to it, I sleep without dreams. The temperature is a respectable warm considering the time of year and the thinness of my bag. I wake and tear down my hammock. The sun isn't even up by the time I'm looking for a picnic table for breakfast. I roll just down the hill to the closest pavilion, and I've got most of my things out and set up for oatmeal before I notice anything strange. Looking up, I see a man get out of one of the two cars in the parking lot. A woman appears from the other side of the SUV and they walk together to the other car. As she gets in, he leans in for a kiss. It goes on. Finally, he steps back and closes the door for her. As she drives away, he walks slowly back to his own vehicle. Just like that, a tryst is revealed to me. The simplicity of it, the brazenness of it, the scrupulous way they both utterly ignored me, all these strike me simultaneously and with swift suddenness.
I'm shocked. I watch him drive away and I start to laugh. Anybody walking by would think I am a more than a little mad--a bearded man sitting with a heavily-laden bicycle making oatmeal in a park as the sun comes up, laughing loudly at nothing at all. It's starting to become ridiculous, I think, these rutting animals all come to the park, and me watching. I think over the couples: the skater and his cripple, the girl and her butt-groper, the woman and her careless kisser. Laid out like that, I can trace the growth of irresponsible love in the park from inception to zenith, and I hate it. It's humorous, certainly, but I hate it anyway because I've been lying to myself this whole time. I am jealous. Even if I know it's unhealthy, even if I know it would destroy me, I want what they've got.

The wind is at my head when I finally set my course west on OK-33. Even my downhill speed suffers greatly. Every mile is a new struggle. In the great flatness, there's nothing particularly good to see. I wrestle with my thoughts until I finally get to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Guthrie.

Verdigris River

N36.1648 W95.6187
I throw my shoulder against the door again, again. Each time, the hollow tonk of the door is overwhelmed by the screach of the metal against the concrete floor. I can't get the handle to latch again. Taking a step back, sighing, I give up. No wind is going to blow that open, anyway. The hammock is already packed, I've already eaten breakfast. I'm staying because I just don't want to leave the rodeo any worse than when I showed up. Locust Grove is a nothing town, but I'm trying to be responsible with my campsites. I nearly tore the handle off the door when I got here, trying to check if the bathroom was still working. Despite the dead bugs in the sink and the cigarette butts on the floor everywhere, my joy was preeminent. Running water for a toilet? Electricity to charge my phone overnight? Sign me up. But now, trying to close everything down, I have to leave the door no better than I found it. Maybe if I find a piece of wood to wedge against it, it won't blow open?
Then, I reach back to touch the back of my neck; it's wet with rain. I look up at the sky to find it dark, cloudy, and racing north. At least the south wind may bring warmer weather. I jog back to the bike where I stashed it by the concession stand, my shoes clicking on the gravel and concrete, when my heart flips in my chest.
I freeze, turn slowly, and see what made the strange explosive sound, as if air escaped from a tire, or a tool, or a pneumatic weapon (my true fear). A deer bounces away into the woods ringing the rodeo. I'm captivated by it, and I wait for my heartbeat to return while I stare in the early sprinkles of the storm.
Leaving Locust Grove, I head west along the old Cherokee Turnpike until the road ahead disappears into the new Turnpike, a four-lane divided highway, home of shipping containers full of food and teddy bears being whisked by from Bentonville to Tulsa and points West. This is my first forced moment on a four-lane highway, and I hate it. The rain is coming down at an angle, and every hole a truck rips in the wind, I fall into, feeling sucked along and toward the road. My little orange flag flaps crazily behind me. I'm wet through.
The ground is mostly flat. There's not much to see here, and I roll past tiny towns just off the highway scattered with signs for local elections without stopping. The rain has really begun in earnest, and I have half-cold water running down my glasses and down from my helmet constantly. My chain has amplified its constant squeak into a squealy scream.
Five hundred yards ahead, an SUV pulls off the road, and the driver gets out. I slow as I approach, and he walks back to see me.
"Hey."
"Hello; you alright, kid?" He's heavyset, powerful-looking despite it. White. Forty.
"Oh! Yeah, I'm fine. Just very wet."
"How far you going?" He sounds genuinely concerned for me.
"Tulsa. Got family there; I'll get to them in a few hours."
"You're good to keep riding in this?"
"Oh, for sure."
"I just saw you, and I got worried. This is crappy weather to be on a bike."
"It's the third time I've gotten rain in two and a half thousand miles, though, so maybe I deserve it."
"Woah! Well. If that's so, then just keep safe, okay?"
"Will do. Thanks."
He turns to get back in his car, and just as he opens his door, it occurs to me.
"Oh!" I yell. "What's your name? I'm Robby."
"Ronnie! Nice to meet you."
"Thanks, Ronnie."
His taillights disappear long before I've gotten back up to speed. I try to run through everything a few times before it disappears, and I distract myself from the miles slipping past by thinking about the kindness of strangers.
I look up, finally, and see signs for construction. Good. It'll slow down the traffic passing me to only double my speed, if I'm lucky (and they follow the laws). But as I whip past cones in the right lane, feeling comfortable for the first time, the road tips up, and I can see the line of cars a half mile away going one-lane over a bridge. And no matter how slowly, they're still going thirty, and uphill. I'll never match it. But the construction machines blocking the right-hand lane leave hope, since I don't know, and there's the chance that I might be able to ride through whatever they've done. As I dismount on the shoulder, even I can see it's hopeless. The dozen workmen standing just beyond the biggest of the machines are working on ripping out the old road surface, and a few of them turn to eye me cautiously. I wave.
"Is there any way past?"
One man cranes his neck to look past his friends, and waves me on.
"I can get through?" He nods. I push my bike over some rebar and step in the wrong place a few times, guided by construction workers. The men quickly vanish into the rain as I crest the bridge, dropping into holes where the exposed rebar of the roadbed soaks in puddles, where my bicycle bounces over every bar. I pause at the crest of the bridge and look out over the Verdigris. Everything fades away into the rain. All colors tend toward grey.
I finally get off the bridge and pull off the road on the near side of Tulsa. My phone tells me that my only option to avoid Interstate 44 will soon be a winding maze of roads, so I want lunch first. Google saves me again, shows me IHOP. The rain lifts a touch by the time I tip my bicycle against the side of the building and struggle through my bags to find some dry shirts. Inside, the waitress gives me a seat and tells me she'll be back for my order. An enormous man to my left complains about his chair and gets moved to a bench at a booth. In front of me, an older gentleman rifles through papers from his bag, his attitude toward his suit disdainful, toward the waitress familiar, toward the restaurant curious. He gets up to examine the chair the other man has vacated, and two other men come out from the kitchen to join him. Oh. From the snatches of their conversation, I get the impression that he's new from corporate and has inherited this region.
When the waitress asks about my bicycle, hears my story, the men listen. The restaurant manager looks at me as if seeing me the first time. His boss, the regional manager, motions to the waitress, gets her attention and asks her for my tab. His boss, the new man from corporate, looks at him with a little curiosity, a little amusement. He probably just wants to look good in front of a new supervisor, surely. But he turns around in his seat to talk to me.
"Where'd you start?"
"Massachusetts. In August."
"Heavens. My son did a trip like this, but on motorcycle. He really loved it."
"I'm having a pretty good time, myself. I keep meeting unexpected friends."
"Good. Stay safe on the road, and if you're ever back through here, just let us know that you made it."
He turns back around to finish talking about the renovation and the staff, the food and the location. I catch snatches of it as I fill up on pancakes and peanut butter. America is a lot nicer than people make it out to be. There's a lot more to it than you see from the back windows of a minivan.

Tulsa

"No, I swear to you it's honest and true. I passed through this little town in Illinois, and there on the side of the gym it said it."
"But Orphans? Who would choose that?"
"The Centralia Orphans: Winningest team in America. I have a picture on my phone, look."
"It's real!"
"I promise it's real."
Hannah rocks back in her chair with a laugh. The tabletop in front of her is littered with illustrations of Ames from above. Looking at them, I can pick out buildings I know: there's the barber's shop where mom dropped Philip and I once for an emergency pre-picture pre-Christmas haircut. There's the corner gas station we used to walk to with a dollar each, only to come away with as much candy as a dollar would buy, most of it terrible sugar chalk and sweet wax. There's the old gymnasium, now a car museum I've never been to, but whose windows I peered through once, at Grandma's funeral. I haven't seen Hannah since my wedding, but I haven't seen Oklahoma since Grandma died.
Just yesterday, I was rolling down an older highway that parallels the tollroad, and just as I topped a rise, the smell of Oklahoma hit me hard. There's some part of sunburnt grass and red clay dust in it, a dry flavor that punches through the haze of memory and brings with it a heatwave feeling even in October.
Hannah reaches for her own phone, lying on the table but not interrupting her work until she needs it. She's stronger than I am. She explains. "So, we'll call the Indian place and order that stuff you mentioned. Justin's going to pick it up on his way home, and he leaves work in ten minutes. So we've planned it out perfectly!" Justin is a strait-laced lawyer with a very dry humor, and he's my newest cousin: Hannah's husband. Hannah's younger sister, Darcy, doesn't like Indian, but she's been outvoted. Besides, it's not her house. She's rooming for a month or two more until her own wedding.
While Hannah's tied up on the phone, I step away from the table for a minute. We've already started the laundry load of my road-grimed clothing. My shoes are lonely in the impeccable entryway, and my bike is stashed in the garage where the only sign of mortality exists: a few things stacked on the counter, waiting to be put away. The few hangings on the wall are Tuohy paintings both Hannah and Aunt Vicki, or mirrors in dark wooden frames. The forty-inch television even looks like it belongs, somehow, hung as it is so flush with the wall above the curio. All the colors are muted or rich, depending on the light or who you ask, but nothing is extravagant. I laugh a little. It's perfectly Hannah and Justin: the luxury of a lawyer with the flair of an artist, and nothing out of place. That's grandma's handiwork sneaking through.
I slop myself onto the couch and wait for Justin and Darcy. When they finally arrive, we eat, and I eat more than my share. I throw some worried eyebrows around before I ask.
"Is it . . . I don't want to steal anybody's plans for leftover lunch."
"Oh my gosh! Go for it. You look really thin, anyway. Make sure you're not hungry." This, from Hannah, whose husband weighs perhaps twenty pounds less than I do and needs to look down at me to lock eyes. Alright.
"Do you like that Navratan Korma? It was the gateway drug for me."
Justin pauses to consider. "It's really good, actually. I don't know if I've ever had it, but I don't think so."
I'm already scooping rice out of the second box as I explain. "Back in the day, Mom and Dad used to take us to this place called the Rasoi. I hated the smell in that place. Oh, it was so strong and strange. So did Philip, and I tell you we refused outright to eat anything they made other than naan." This story is developing around my fully-laden plate of Indian. "We had to stop at Taco Bell before we went inside. This, for years! And then, mom took some Navratan Korma and rolled it up in naan instead of gooping it on rice like so much fancy cat food. That got me hooked, man."
Darcy looks askance at me over her turkey sandwich. "I tried it. I don't like it."
"More for me. All I'm saying is that sometimes your parents aren't as stupid as they look." Everybody sort of laughed the halfway chuckle of is-this-a-joke. "That didn't come out right. I'm just saying maybe brussel sprouts are alright."

By the time I've finished eating, Darcy is already working on her Halloween project in the living room. She's cutting out letters from felt strips without tracing them first, and they're uniform. I'm watching her witchcraft, but I can't figure it out.
"Mom found this bag of felt at Goodwill for like, four dollars," she offers, as if that will explain it. She's making a display for her church's trunk-or-treat over the weekend. It's Charley Brown-themed, and it's very good. The last thing I made with my hands was a fake piano for a funny video. Her handiwork would not be out of place on Etsy. Mine would feel natural on a bonfire. I'm not in the business of comparing myself to people, and this is just one reminder why. So I ask about her church, instead.
"Is Christian doing this, too?"
"Yeah, he and I go to the church near his place. It's only a few blocks down the street." They're getting married on New Year's Eve.
"What about you guys?" I turn to Hannah, who's just come into the room. "Any trunks for you?"
"Oh, no. We've been going to a different church."
My eyebrow slides up.
"Justin and I didn't feel at home at the Church of Christ in this community, so we started looking at other churches in the area. We've sort of fallen into this other church, and the people there were so welcoming that we kind of stuck."
I have to concentrate really hard, now. I'm in territory completely foreign to me and I don't want to trod on anyone.
"It's a good church?" Innocuous.
"Yeah, we really like them. They're very similar to Church of Christ, so it was kind of a natural fit." Hannah is acting really casual. Darcy isn't saying anything yet. I feel like I've unwrapped something I should very much like to put back in a box for now. She continues. "They adopt a less hard-line approach to some things, like drinking or dancing, but the theology is pretty much the same. It's just right for Justin and I, you know?"
I do know. I'm aware of more than just what's been said. Grandma and Grandpa were Church of Christ their entire lives, as far as I'm aware. Every Christmas, we went to the little church in Ames for Sunday service, regardless of the Sabbath our family spent in Enid. Aunt Christy had a little Sunday School lesson ready for the three of us kids, partly because we were her family and partly because her husband John was the pastor of the congregation. There were no other kids there, because every other cousin spent their morning at their own Church of Christ service before they drove the hour or less to the big family dinner in the finished barn. I couldn't name for you a single relation on this whole branch of my family tree that wasn't Church of Christ. I know much more than is being said. I know that there's more to it than a name and a leniency towards "salacious" behavior. I know because there's only ever been five Laubhan relations who don't hold the conviction that Church of Christ is the one true faith, and all five of them lived in our house and shared my last name. So I step lightly.
"I think it's possible . . . " and I pause, either for dramatic effect or just to collect myself, "that God cares less about what you call yourself and more about what's in your heart. I hope so, anyway."
"I think so, too." Hannah doesn't expound on why or how, and I don't ask. Darcy doesn't say anything either way. Justin just listens. We've navigated it like Laubhans, like Germans. The hard truth exists, but it doesn't have to hurt us. It won't even tear us apart if we leave it be and just care for each other.
It strikes me, then, the irony of what has happened just now. I told a story about coming over to my parent's point of view, and Hannah has told a story about walking away from her's. It's stupid, sometimes, how quickly life can build a dichotomy.

Anyway, I don't want to talk religion anymore. Delight was no good at this distinctly Germanic way of dealing with hard truths; she was always French Canadian. When she left, she told me that she felt no religion at all, and that I was far too Godly for her to feel comfortable around. Preposterous. It's like she didn't know me at all.

My cousin, Hannah, is a professional illustrator of children's books (mostly). Many of her works are collaborations with a company to which my Aunt Christy is tied, called Great Expectations, based in Oklahoma City (I think.) But many of her works are available on Amazon, found by following this very conspicuous link.

Gentry

My arms are flecked white above the elbow. It's sweat that's dried on me while I ride. My glasses are greasy and smeared from trying to clean them on old shirts. My helmet is baking my brain. Looking up, I can see a few hundred graves by the long sloping curve in the road. I'm only six miles from Gentry. This is my third state today. It's the only time I'll hit three states in one day on the whole trip, due to the triple point of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The taqueria in Southwest City is closed on account of it's Sunday and all good Catholics are in church. I'm hungry. I've already devoured the cookies I purchased south of Joplin. I'm running out of granola bars, and besides: I'm tired of them. At this point, though, I'm eating everything that doesn't need my gas cooker. I'm about six miles from Gina's house, and it's three hours since lunch. I kick the pedals hard and hear my shoes clip in again. No time to lose.
The six miles feels like forever. I see the familiar water tower rising above the trees, and my phone reminds me to turn left. I'm only a mile away, now. I know the geography, now. I'm almost there. I'm just looking for the street name I'll recognize. I get to the stop sign and pull up my phone to check it. Dead. A bit of a wander left tells me that I'm not on the right street, yet. The plateau drops, yes, just like it does at Gina's, but her house isn't on this street. I'll just skirt the drop and go a little further east, and--there's the road name. There's the mysterious path through the woods. There's the new house going up. There's the driveway. I pull in and lean my bike up against the basketball hoop, take off my helmet, and tuck my safety glasses away. Time to face the Webbs.

The first time I came to the Webb's house, I parked entirely in the driveway. They have nice grass, and I have a big heavy SUV. Delight's head pushed forward in the way people do when they can't believe they have to say this, and she looked at me through narrowed eyes. "You have to put just two wheels on the pavement, otherwise how will anybody drive past you? It's not your driveway, Robby."
"Oh." I'm used to being chided, but how was I supposed to know how to park at someone else's house? The other car had all four wheels on the pavement.
"Obviously, that's Shelby's car. She lives here, and you don't."
I let it drop.
When we went inside, the house had more people inside than I expected, and more kept showing up. Katie and Emily and Anissa and Kat and Shelby and Nelson and Sylvia all seemed to live there with Gina and Danny. About half of them actually did, and I wasn't having an easy time keeping up with specifics. Add in Delight and me and Andy and Karissa and Winston, and around our feet the scurrying clatter of trimmed dog toenails, and the television always on, and I couldn't parse relationships or identities. This was a very high-stakes visit. Delight loves these people kept ringing through my head. Don't screw this up. People who know me don't think I get nervous. I was nervous like a mental patient in a Gothic romance, strung like a poorly-tuned piano.
Six months before my first visit, Delight and I had gone to have dinner at the Mellow Mushroom with Katie and her mother, Kat, Shelby, and Emily. They're almost all nursing students at this point, not actual nurses, and their lives are titrations and anatomies. I know what the xiphoid process is, but not how to spell it. I had no desire to make myself seem idiotic by blowing hot air about trivia I'd picked up, and the only thing else to do was ask questions. "Did she really?" "How should it be done, then?" "What is it like when they call a code? You haven't seen one? Do you want to?" But nobody was answering, even when I did find space to ask. I'm not trying to hide myself, but I don't want to tell you I just read a few articles about video games on my phone. It was the coward's way out. On the way back to Collegedale, Delight laid into me.
"These people are important to me, Robby!"
"I know that--you think I don't?"
"Then why do you treat them like you don't care?"
"I don't understand what I should have done. I don't know what or who they're talking about. I can't add anything to that conversation."
"I know it's about nursing. I get that. But you're around nurses, and that's what they'll talk about. Honestly, when your friends start talking about crap I don't care about, you don't see me pull out my phone like a lifeline. Oh, my god, you really don't get this!"
I signaled to pull over on Apison Pike. The crunch of gravel was loud, and sounded like grinding teeth.
"I didn't think about it. I just did it, but it wasn't meant to hurt you."
"I don't care if you thought--listen to me. The problem is not that you hate my friends and don't care about what they like. The problem is exactly that you didn't think about it. You didn't think, Robby. You never think about me." She got out of the car, then, and slammed the door, hard. I jumped out to follow her, but my eye flicks away to red and blue lights over her shoulder. The cop car slid up, throwing gravel, and his window silently slid down.
"Do you need anything, ma'am?"
"No, thank you."
"Do you need any help?"
"No, we're fine."
Her eyes were puffy and red. My face was stormy and my cheeks were wet. We weren't fine.
A year and a half later, we visited the Webb's again for Karissa's wedding. I put my phone in the room. I left my computer in the bag. I was determined, for once, to make her proud of me. Emily and Anissa live with the Webbs, got it. (I'm still not sure if Emily is adopted formally, but it really doesn't matter.) Everyone disagrees with Nelson's opinions, but he seems to owe Gina a life debt and we all love him anyway, got it. You can make goofs with Danny, but not about him, got it. Mae (the dog) lives here because Danny would make any sacrifice (and it is a sacrifice) for Gina, got it. We cheer for Venesuela or Mexico, but you're sure to get on either Anissa or Nelson's nerves no matter which team you pick, got it. I do pretty well. I do read a book sometimes when everybody's gone to work or shopping, and I watch a few videos on my computer once when the girls are cooking in the kitchen. I'm writing plays, but even so, I catch myself and shut its lid. I want to pay attention; throwing myself into a group this complex and storied is nightmarish. Above it all hangs a stormcloud, threatening to break: Delight loves these people kept ringing through my head. Don't screw this up.
We all drove down to the lakeside bluff where Karissa was getting married. We were late. Everyone in the convoy was speeding. I hate being late. I hate speeding. I hate seeing such nervous stress wash over people I don't know how to comfort. When we arrived, everyone was seated and the marriage party was ready to march. When we went to sit down at the reception, it wasn't clear where we should go, and Delight wasn't around, so I just leaned on the railing and looked at the lake. I spent fifteen minutes without seeing Delight. Kat called to me and saved me. "Hey, Robby! I think this is your seat over here. It says Delight on it? But she's not here yet, so it's yours. Come sit with us!" Thank you, Kat. When the sun was going down, most everyone came outside onto the wide balcony below us, a woman I've never met before or since said some very moving things about the bride, and music swelled and thumped from an impromptu stereo system behind my chair.
"Hey--I wanna dance." Delight leaned in to my ear, her hand on my shoulder. She stood up and waited. She waited because I hadn't known it was a request, not a statement. She was asking. Oh. I stood up and followed her, but slow.
"I don't really dance, Delight. You know that."
"What do you do at weddings?"
"I talk to people. I watch things happen. I don't like dancing;  I'm not very good at it."
"It's not about being good! You just do, and . . . why am I even saying this? Why are we talking about this? Oh, my gosh."
She turned on her heel and left me at the top of the stairs.
I waited, hesitated, balked. I don't like to dance. Each step down the stairs was a renewed commitment. Delight loves these people kept ringing through my head. Don't screw this up. Don't screw this up. My feet finally met the deck boards that shook a little as people jumped near me. I pushed through, my eyes scanned the crowd. Red, black, brown. Shelby, Kat, and, ah. Delight. I pushed near.
"Listen, this is important to you, so it's important to me. I want to dance."
She nodded, and turned away. I danced near her for two songs. She danced away from me. There's a picture of that brief interstitial. My arms are flung out like awkward sticks that God attached with twine. My face is a parody of human emotion: I'm concentrating on how I must look, not feeling free. Friends are around in a circle, laughing, either at or with or for me. Delight looks happy. Maybe she is happy under this flashbulb, this moment. But her happiness doesn't keep; it spoils. I wasn't dancing with her, I danced for her, and she danced alone.
"You didn't even want to dance, Robby. You never want to do things I like."
"I did dance, Delight. I didn't want to at first, you're right. But I danced because it was important to you."
"That's not enough."
I was mystified that she could manage to throw even this back in my face. The brief liminal space between dancing for her and dancing alone evaporated and left only a thin oily residue.

Another year and a half has gone. Our anniversary drifted by us without incident, fanfare, or recognition. Something kept us from celebrating. She wasn't excited about my suggestions. "I have to study for class, Robby." It's August now, and we've driven south again, to G's house, to Yorktown Bay. At the camp, one of the staff turned to the group and asked "You guys wanna go out on the boats?"
"Um, yes!?"
"Sweet! We'll be down there at one, and we'll go out during siesta."
Matt and Nelson were hell-bent on going cliff-jumping. Six of us were littered on or near the docks, waiting for the two staff to get the boat down from the lift, fueled and ready. I stood a little away, feeling strange. Delight didn't want to talk to me. She hadn't all day, not really. The little she talked in the car on the way down was clipped and unfriendly. I decided to not put my foot in it. Play it safe. A man in a truck rumbled down the hill to the docks, had a brief talk with the staff at the boat, and grumbled away again. We put in, and away we flew. I put my arm in the warm water and felt it rip through my fingers. I thought about what the bottom must have looked like before it was a bottom, before there was a dam. I thought about Delight, who was sitting a few seats away, talking to Kat and the driver.
Rising up from the cloudy water, a cliff glowered large above us, fifteen minutes from camp. The boys jumped in to swim over and climb up. The driver, his friend, Matt, Nelson, me. The girls stayed to watch, to laugh, to cheer, to tan. The driver showed us all where to climb up, and I came last. Nelson nearly ripped a plant from the cliff face. The other boys yelled things at each other, psyching themselves up for a good thirty foot plunge. Our pilot flew first. He hung in the air a dreadfully long time before his body disappeared in the green-brown depths. The other staff member cannon-balled right after. Matt and Nelson waited. A cat-call from the boat was met with "You come up here and try it!" from Nelson. I stepped up. "You go, Robby. It's your turn. This is a white boy thing, anyway." I laughed, a short sharp bark. I looked over, stepped back, launched.
My arms always fly out like I'm trying to stop the water from hitting my face. I start with my arms clutching my chest and, given enough time to fall, I flap like a chicken. My hands always sting, and people always crunch up their eyebrows and think "I could do better than that." This time was no different.
I swam around and climbed the cliff again, only to find Nelson and Matt still at the top. The driver is in the boat with his girl. The other staff member is treading water, waiting to lever himself onto the ledge at the stern. I didn't realize I was the only one jumping twice.
"Hey. Where'd you put your feet when you jumped?"
I'm not going to make fun of them. The girls might, but I don't see them up here with us. "I started right here, pushed off of this one, and just jumped normally. You don't have to try very hard to clear the rocks; it's a very good cliff. I think this rock over here looks good, too, and I'm going to try it this time."
"Thanks, man."
I didn't tell him anything he didn't already know. He had watched all three of the other guys jump already. He was just freaking out.
I jumped again. I flapped again. Delight insisted I looked like a skinny bird. My muscles didn't remember flapping, and I protested. It was a stupid technicality; No matter what I did, it wasn't memorable. I didn't flip or twist or pose. Matt and Nelson went off together, holding hands. The girls in the boat went mad. Nobody gave a damn whether I had jumped twice or a thousand times. I really started feeling alone. Since I got in the boat, only Nelson and Matt had treated me like a human, and only that on the top of the cliff.
"I'm so glad we came anyway!" The driver is her boyfriend, and she's blonde and very tan for a blonde girl. "It's so nice to have you all as an excuse."
"I know. I just wish we could come down and save you more often."
I fired the fatal question. "Came anyway? Was there something else to do?"
"Oh, the assistant director came down and tried to get us to stay, but because we had some old staff, we got to go out anyway."
"Yeah, the director tried to make some rule about going out on the boats on Sabbath, but as long as we put the boards away and promised to drive out where we couldn't be seen, he couldn't really stop us."
That explained the man in the grumbly truck. That explains why they took so long fiddling with the boat. That explains why Delight was so cagey with me when we set out. Her eyes met mine as he said this. I folded my arms and slumped back in my seat.
I'm not exactly a rulebreaker.
Back in the room, Delight went on the attack.
"You don't even like these people, do you?"
"What are you talking about?" I'm so confused about how she can turn this on me. "I had a great time! You saw me jumping, swimming. What's wrong?"
"You went, alright, but you don't like them. Why are you so down on them, on going on the boats? We got permission."
"It just sucks that we were treated specially. You get that, right? I don't want to break rules just because I know we can get away with it."
"We're rulebreakers? You think we're rulebreakers, now? Oh my God! You've always hated my friends. Robby, I know you didn't like the popular kids in high school, but you haven't gotten over it. My friends were popular, and you still hate them because of it."
"I did not--"
"You can't just deny it, Robby. You weren't in their crowd. You were different, and you hate them."
She left me with that hanging in the air. The sun was going down soon, and I was tired of fielding her accusations. I unstrapped my canoe from the car and carried it down to the lake. I had my own life jacket, my own paddles. I had already asked the director for permission, and he didn't care. I paddled out maybe a quarter mile, around the point and back again. I wasn't looking for anything, just trying to get centered again. I needed to do something for myself after spending nearly a week thinking through all my actions, all my motivations, just so I wouldn't impinge on her expectations. I wanted some time away from her friends, not because I disliked them, but because I disliked how she treated me around them.
I did go back that evening. I talked with Matt about a disagreement we had over a Biblical idea. He's a pastor; he does this for a living. His answers were institutional, expected. We didn't find consensus.
The gang played a game. I remember playing, but I expect it's just a memory. I doubt very much I was in a mood to play a game that night. I do remember that only one person had a problem with me being there. By the time Delight turned and hissed at me the fifth time, I stood up. I was sitting at the back of the Gina's examination room, and between me and the door was a jungle of legs and bags. "Sorry," I said, over and over. "Excuse me, just trying to get out." I brushed knees and stepped over feet and repeated "Yeah, I'll be back. Don't wait up. I'm just going out."
The night was calm and warm. There were just enough stars overhead to remind me that I was in the country, but the muggy air blotted out so many that it almost wasn't worth looking up. I paced outside the nurse's quarters for five minutes, feeling bad. Why?
The stairs from Gina's to the lake are long and low, and I took huge hurtling strides back to my canoe. It wasn't worth waiting for her to come outside. Ambush wasn't going to solve my heartache. So I chose escape. I lifted the canoe back into the water and pushed the canoe out a few feet from shore. I pushed off with a smooth, practiced glide. All I could hear was the soft slap of water on the bow and the rapid tap tap tap of dripping from my legs. I just lay there, drifting a hundred feet from shore. I didn't move for an hour.

I haven't seen the Webbs since that day. About a week ago, I texted Gina to let her know I was riding through town, to check if I could visit. She was on a trip with students from Ozark, but she said I could definitely stay the night when I got there. So I left my bicycle at the basketball hoop and walked toward the front door. Someone is always at the Webb's. Someone would be able to let me in. Just as I round the corner of the house, Danny and Shelby walk out the front door.
"Robby? Oh, my gosh! What are you doing here?" Shelby throws her arms out for a hug.
"Hey, Shelby. It's been too long--didn't Gina tell you guys . . . didn't she say I was coming?"
"She didn't say anything!"
Danny reaches out to shake my hand. "Robby, it's good to see you. We were just going to a birthday party for Shelby's grandma. What are you doing here?"
"I came through to see you guys. I know Gina's coming in tomorrow, late. She really didn't text you guys?"
"It's a surprise to us." Danny starts to laugh to himself. "I wonder how the girls will react. Come on, let's go inside and surprise them." He turns around and unlocks the door. As the door opens, I can hear someone call from inside.
"That was fast."
"We just had something we forgot. Wanna help us look for it?"
We three walked in. Emily and Anissa jump up from the kitchen table. "What!? Robby!"
Danny and Shelby left with a promise to come back, and I stayed and told my story to the girls. "About fifty miles every day." Mae, the dog, sits on my feet while I scratch her ears. "I left on the thirteenth of August, so . . . two and a half months, now?" Anissa kindly offers me a burrito. It is delicious and more than makes up for the closed-down taqueria. "I sleep a lot in cemeteries and state parks, you know. It's cheaper that way. A week ago, I was on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River." Nelson shows up, and I begin to repeat myself. "Only about two and a half months." Anissa has to go to work. Nelson leaves for a basketball game. The story tapers off and I fall asleep on the couch. I hope I don't snore. When I wake up, Sylvia walks in with Danny and Shelby, and the story starts all over again. "August 13th, I left. That first day was all downhill, and I made a glorious thirty miles without barely trying. The next three thousand haven't been so kind."
The next day, Shelby takes me to the post office to buy stamps and post my mail. Sylvia shows up again with a handful of postcards, all Arkansas-themed. Nelson exhausts my limited knowledge of current sports. I write a blog post on my phone in-between people. Where before I set myself a conscious goal of staying off my phone, this trip I don't worry about it and I'm on it less. Or maybe I just feel less guilty about my time using it because nobody cares. Either way, the effect is the same: I'm much more natural, much more friendly because Delight isn't there making me feel like an outsider. Gina and Danny's clan in Gentry are my friends now.

When Gina finally gets home from a two-week trip on a tour bus, she's exhausted. I can tell she's dying to go to sleep, but she still spends a half hour with Nelson and Emily and I. The questions are similar at first. "The thirteenth of August," but they change quickly. "I don't know exactly what I'll do when I finish. I want to go to school again." Where everyone else danced around our common heartache, Gina addresses it up front. "I'm doing better, I think. I feel better. You know, it's been a year?"
That brings me up short, saying that. It's been a year. All these people are so kind to me, so welcoming, and it's been a year since last we saw each other. My presence isn't the visit of an old friend, either, but a five-visit acquaintance. And Gina's reaction makes it clear that nothing is quite as innocuous as everyone makes it seem. She's still not okay. Her stare is very intense.
"Robby, do you know what she did?" I shake my head. "She hasn't talked to any of us for a year and last May she texted Sylvia. 'Happy birthday! Couldn't forget my birthday twin!' Can you imagine that? Just like nothing has happened?" Honestly, I can imagine it. Better than Gina thinks, actually. I didn't know Delight, I guess, or perhaps she changed. But she's never been good at facing up against things that are difficult. And here in this moment, with the house dark but for the lights in the kitchen, with all her friends asleep in rooms around me, with a woman she called her second mom--I'm forced to admit that I'm just as terrible. I haven't been to see them since Delight left. I've been putting it off because I know they're the last piece of my marriage to face. I haven't wanted to admit that things have obviously changed between us all.
After Gina and Nelson go to bed, I lay sideways in my borrowed bed, on top of the covers, thinking. I think I could have understood everything if Delight had just left me, but she left everyone and everything. She rattles through my imagination: her eyebrows all knit together, her sharp face unafraid, unashamed, angry, slicing through me with the intensity of her emotion. "I feel so alone here, Robby." I can't be everything for her, and I know that. And this distance from her friends sort of happened without planning. Alone in the dark room, I bounce between past and present. I pull my shirt up over my eyes and try not to worry about breakfast. Gina said we would finish talking.

Eventually, Gina gets us to a Waffle House. Nelson is along, for emotional support and free breakfast. The waitress puts us in a back corner of the packed house, and after we order a couple waffles and a breakfast hash bowl for Nelson, she leaves us alone. The noise in the place is very different from the cavernous dark of the house last night, and the sharp sunlight glazes the scene with an intensity very unlike before. We laugh and talk very little before we get down to it. Gina sits across from me again, and her eyes meet mine even when I can't stand to look at her.
"Delight's mom called to let me know . . . Delight is looking to file for divorce."
"You haven't? Robby, what are you doing?"
"I didn't think she had it in her, honestly. And I thought maybe I . . . well, this bike trip. I want to finish it and that's when I'll be able to, you know, decide."
"So why haven't you divorced her?"
I don't say because I love her still, as it would ring like a bell when struck, it's so hollow. It's an armor plating I wear around my neck, suspended by a thin sterling chain. A bronze barrier cast by a broken hearted founder. I don't say because I can't, since there's no legal impediment, only my conscience, bound by an curse as ancient as my religion. I don't say because I don't want to, not that I do, but because I'm afraid of what Gina will think of me. This is the question of the trip. Why haven't I divorced her?
"I'm not ready."
"I can understand that, but don't let it stop you. You know that if you wait long enough, there'll be a moment when you wish you had, and you'll fall in love and still be married." This suggestion seems impossible. "You need to move on, Robby. She has. We have."
I don't believe it. I don't believe that any of us are fully recovered. But then, Gina keeps talking.
"I had a friend who went through something like this. She left her husband and was living on her own. I tried to talk to her, Robby. But she said something I couldn't believe. She said: 'God wouldn't want me to be unhappy like this.' Can you believe that? As if her unhappiness was God's fault somehow, and divorce was the way he designed to fix it? So I told her: 'Divorce was never part of God's plan. If you need to leave your husband, that's your business, but don't try to make your selfishness part of God's plan. You need to seek forgiveness.' And you know what? She won't. She thinks she's doing His will by breaking up a marriage. I'm not sure I can be friends with her anymore, not if she's going to put her sin on God's plate."
Now I know what Gina thinks of Delight. Damn. I finish eating my waffle as Gina talks. I've got so much crammed up in my head it's hard to split it all out and verbalize it. I came here to see friends, I guess, but I had an ulterior motive. I came as an ambassador for Delight, to soothe the pain with reassurances and to bridge the gap. Even if I couldn't do that, I wanted to at least assess the distance between them. Now, Gina has all but spelled out the arbitration. Delight doesn't need to be married to me if she wants to reconnect with Arkansas. But there is a price to pay, and her pride, stubbornness, or fear may stop her. I try to empathize, try to imagine myself from Delight's perspective, and I can't see any way she'll ever talk to Gina again. The cost is precisely the one idea she must refuse to think: it's her fault, this divorce, separation, loss--deep loss of a kind only experienced by social outcasts and pariahs, once the belle and now the beast, smothered by friends and now cleft schist split, upthrust and pitted one against God, the pinnacle of a lonely peak weathering ageless millennia alone. The only sort of solace she can feel is if she smothers those worries and feels a sort of biting indignation. Loneliness is its own armor, if you create it to castigate doubt. Woe is me. I'm the victim. How dare they abuse me this way.
But maybe I'm projecting. Suddenly, the house I've built of imagined cards collapses. I think I'm the victim. Gina, Danny, all my friends--they all took my side, buoyed me up, attacked Delight or expressed despair for me. We ganged up on her.
Gina slides half a waffle away. "Do you want it?" she asks. Of course I want it. I could eat five thousand calories a day and still not gain weight. Some days, I do. She shakes her head. "I hope you don't get sick. How do you eat all that?"
There are no easy answers here.

Epilogue: Flash forward to January 10th, 2017. I haven't finished writing this blog post. The first time I didn't write a post within a week was after I learned Delight was moving to file. Even that delay can't match this month-long gap. I've written the ending from this point three times on my phone, deleting what I've written each time. I've forgotten nearly everything but Gina's expression of intensity, the tone of her voice, how sure she was that she was in the right. I wish I had her conviction.