The Stars Fell On . .
“When you leave here may your journey be safe. We are all travelers. From birth to death we travel between the eternities. May these days be pleasant for you, profitable to society, helpful to those you meeet, and a joy to those who know and love you best.” So says Elaine Sharp, via the heartfelt message on the placard propped up against my pillow, a deep investment for a $46.95 motel stay in middleclass Alabama. It almost makes the peeling carpet and pervading scent of cigarette smoke worth it, even if the HBO channel is still fuzzy and there’s no antenna. But it’s comforting to know that Mark Wahlberg is just as handsome here in the forgotten backwoods of the messy south, even with half his face fading into drifting cable snow.
It’s really the smartest thing you can do, watch more television, when you’ve realized that the manager of the motel suite is a better writer than you’ve been in weeks. Months. Okay, maybe ever. Those two sentences are pretty great. It makes me want to figure out what the hell the rest of this dialogue references, something about ‘The Stranger Within Our Gates.’ I bet it has to do with the Bible, but I don’t dare to guess. Wouldn’t you know the Bible is the one book that never made it on my top twenty-five.
It occurs to me that I could start to read up on it now, as the Bible and more oft than not the Book of Mormon have been my steady companions in the bottom drawers of hotels, but I hesitate because I fear it might start a false precedent. I wouldn’t want God to get the wrong idea, that it took a headache and a lack of available gin to turn me on to The Genesis.
I said a few prayers already, last night, when I thought I could hear someone heavy walking back and forth in front of my hotel room that faced a back lot. It was windy here, a little rain and a lot of jet lag mixing a powerful cocktail for delirium and strange dreams. My dreams really have been far out there lately. I tell myself it’s the humid Alabama air, the pressurized cabins of the recent flights.
I’ll tell myself anything at this point.
When I thought I might die yesterday, from the man I thought I heard rustling near the window in the rain, or just because I watched too much Law & Order, I found out something interesting. I told myself to roll out of bed and grab a knife from the tiny kitchenette in my room. Check out the peephole for confirmation of disturbances and call the office. Instead I just rolled over and buried my head in the pillow, awake but too lazy to save myself.
Of course I remember thinking, “I will definitely move if I hear one more sound.” And then after a muffled cough and some scraping from outside, “Maybe if the door knob starts jiggling, I’ll move.” But I just don’t remember the doorknob being jiggled. I passed out, eventually.
A couple hours of sleep later, I was dragging myself into a pair of old jeans to head west on the US-72. My rental car does not take speed bumps well, it is a lesson I learned the hard way. Alabama is so green, I never thought I’d see the end of so many trees. I try to force myself on token venues, but there is something about the confederate flag flying high over the “Knives and More” shop that simply does not convey security. Why Knives and More? What “more” could one possibly need, especially with “Guns and Tackle” right across the street? I don’t go in to find out.
I am disappointed when I meet people who don’t have the southern accent, and I meet more people who don’t than those who do. There are more ethnic restaurants than I thought there would be, there are more ethnic people, and my fears of an all white lynch mob are unfounded, at least in the bigger cities. There is little trail of the South I thought I would find, except for those at waffle house, of course. But logic dictates there would be some locus for all the blue eyeliner and grit cakes with gravy.
The busier parts of Alabama don’t satisfy me, but I think there are parts of it, the untouched parts, that might be able to. I glimpse them on a long stretch of two-lane freeway in the north, where I hoped they might be, where the signs fall off and the turn outs are dirt and gravel, the cars giving way to the rusted pickup and the toted RV. I see the turn off towards Chattanooga, and I get excited, silly.
I want more time, I would need weeks to trade in the shiny rental for the truck, take it all the way to Chattanooga and back, then deep down into Mississippi. It’s on the schedule board, to give the South the lazy days and warm lemonade it deserves, sometime before I get to France, maybe after New York.
I stop twice on the 72, at the park I find on a map that matches the one I had typed on paper months before. I make friends with a hopping terrier and hesitate only a little past the entrance sign, warning me its guarded by shot guns three days out of the week, offering me a sporting chance to guess which three they could be.
Later I turn out at a gas station, a mini mart where a tired old timer is pumping gas and puffing a cigarette at the same time, forget the fire hazard.
It takes me a minute to realize he is talking to me, asking to fill up. I don’t need any gas, or I would take him up on it. It’s been a long time close to never since someone seriously offered to pump my gas. He asks me if I want something else, following me inside. I say yes, but the smoke is so heavy it sticks to the candy in the aisles and I’m sure everything will taste like an ashtray. I buy some anyway and pretend not to notice the curious stare he’s giving me.
I am interested in the stories he has, but maybe not enough to sit down in the back with the smoke and his chronic cough. I hear deep accents rolling out from the back. The gas station and mini mart triples as a cheap restaurant, but biscuits and gravy are all that are on the menu. It is enough to hold the interest of the swollen women who marinate there, laughing over tinkling ice cubes and cindering lungs. I wish I had more time.
From birth to death, we travel between the eternities. We are all travelers.
It’s really the smartest thing you can do, watch more television, when you’ve realized that the manager of the motel suite is a better writer than you’ve been in weeks. Months. Okay, maybe ever. Those two sentences are pretty great. It makes me want to figure out what the hell the rest of this dialogue references, something about ‘The Stranger Within Our Gates.’ I bet it has to do with the Bible, but I don’t dare to guess. Wouldn’t you know the Bible is the one book that never made it on my top twenty-five.
It occurs to me that I could start to read up on it now, as the Bible and more oft than not the Book of Mormon have been my steady companions in the bottom drawers of hotels, but I hesitate because I fear it might start a false precedent. I wouldn’t want God to get the wrong idea, that it took a headache and a lack of available gin to turn me on to The Genesis.
I said a few prayers already, last night, when I thought I could hear someone heavy walking back and forth in front of my hotel room that faced a back lot. It was windy here, a little rain and a lot of jet lag mixing a powerful cocktail for delirium and strange dreams. My dreams really have been far out there lately. I tell myself it’s the humid Alabama air, the pressurized cabins of the recent flights.
I’ll tell myself anything at this point.
When I thought I might die yesterday, from the man I thought I heard rustling near the window in the rain, or just because I watched too much Law & Order, I found out something interesting. I told myself to roll out of bed and grab a knife from the tiny kitchenette in my room. Check out the peephole for confirmation of disturbances and call the office. Instead I just rolled over and buried my head in the pillow, awake but too lazy to save myself.
Of course I remember thinking, “I will definitely move if I hear one more sound.” And then after a muffled cough and some scraping from outside, “Maybe if the door knob starts jiggling, I’ll move.” But I just don’t remember the doorknob being jiggled. I passed out, eventually.
A couple hours of sleep later, I was dragging myself into a pair of old jeans to head west on the US-72. My rental car does not take speed bumps well, it is a lesson I learned the hard way. Alabama is so green, I never thought I’d see the end of so many trees. I try to force myself on token venues, but there is something about the confederate flag flying high over the “Knives and More” shop that simply does not convey security. Why Knives and More? What “more” could one possibly need, especially with “Guns and Tackle” right across the street? I don’t go in to find out.
I am disappointed when I meet people who don’t have the southern accent, and I meet more people who don’t than those who do. There are more ethnic restaurants than I thought there would be, there are more ethnic people, and my fears of an all white lynch mob are unfounded, at least in the bigger cities. There is little trail of the South I thought I would find, except for those at waffle house, of course. But logic dictates there would be some locus for all the blue eyeliner and grit cakes with gravy.
The busier parts of Alabama don’t satisfy me, but I think there are parts of it, the untouched parts, that might be able to. I glimpse them on a long stretch of two-lane freeway in the north, where I hoped they might be, where the signs fall off and the turn outs are dirt and gravel, the cars giving way to the rusted pickup and the toted RV. I see the turn off towards Chattanooga, and I get excited, silly.
I want more time, I would need weeks to trade in the shiny rental for the truck, take it all the way to Chattanooga and back, then deep down into Mississippi. It’s on the schedule board, to give the South the lazy days and warm lemonade it deserves, sometime before I get to France, maybe after New York.
I stop twice on the 72, at the park I find on a map that matches the one I had typed on paper months before. I make friends with a hopping terrier and hesitate only a little past the entrance sign, warning me its guarded by shot guns three days out of the week, offering me a sporting chance to guess which three they could be.
Later I turn out at a gas station, a mini mart where a tired old timer is pumping gas and puffing a cigarette at the same time, forget the fire hazard.
It takes me a minute to realize he is talking to me, asking to fill up. I don’t need any gas, or I would take him up on it. It’s been a long time close to never since someone seriously offered to pump my gas. He asks me if I want something else, following me inside. I say yes, but the smoke is so heavy it sticks to the candy in the aisles and I’m sure everything will taste like an ashtray. I buy some anyway and pretend not to notice the curious stare he’s giving me.
I am interested in the stories he has, but maybe not enough to sit down in the back with the smoke and his chronic cough. I hear deep accents rolling out from the back. The gas station and mini mart triples as a cheap restaurant, but biscuits and gravy are all that are on the menu. It is enough to hold the interest of the swollen women who marinate there, laughing over tinkling ice cubes and cindering lungs. I wish I had more time.
From birth to death, we travel between the eternities. We are all travelers.
posted by R.T. at
11:02 AM
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