see for miles

September 13

Midmorning, I lie on the bed on my side looking out my window at the Mississippi River, hiding from the high temperature. I’ve gotten my cheese Danish and grapefruit wedge from the courtyard buffet, and Brian is still down there, perusing the newspaper along with a few other wayward guests. He’s already talked to the airline about relinquishing our seats on the flight from Memphis, if it goes, three days from now. It was a short phone call. The Delta representative, every light of her phone probably flashing frantically, was relieved, and now we have ticket vouchers for the next trip to Vegas or elsewhere. 

            Things are quiet. My duffel is zipped up, Café du Monde beans and beignet mix tucked into the side pocket. Brian’s key card clicks in and out of the door and he joins me on the bed. Then there’s a sound in the sky and we’re both standing at the window. Below us in the street pedestrians have stopped, looking up, some pointing. A plane is flying over us. And you never realized that you never even noticed most of the million planes passing over your head, until you hear what it’s like to not have heard a single one in over 48 hours. Everyone is tracking its progress and maybe, like me, shivering in the revelation, even in the heavy bayou heat.

            “Military,” says Brian, turning away from the window.

            I’m ready to go home.

            “But you are reserved for tonight as well, Sir.”

            “Yes,” Brian says to the name tag on the red velvet lapel, “But we are leaving today.”

            “I’m going to the shops next door for a second,” I cut in. In gift shop number one I finger every trinket I can, with no intention of buying anything. I study hard, but the only distinction I see in shop number two is the male clerk, as opposed to number one’s female. And actually I suspect they may be husband and wife.

            When I return to the lobby, I meet Anne, a Swedish young woman most recently from Munich, stranded en route to her brother’s apartment in Memphis. Brian lent her his cell phone when he heard her cursing in German at her own expired prepaid card, and then he offered her a ride with us. She carries nothing but a backpack over her tank-topped shoulders. I assume he’s taken by her because she’s a tan lanky blonde with whom he can practice his German, but even more by the idea of his beloved van escorting an exotic stranger between outposts in the middle of a global event. As if we’re on the way to Woodstock or something.

            “Hi,” she addresses me from a few inches above. “It’s okay with you?”

            “Why not…” It’s only for this afternoon. Keep the diversions coming, sure. Brian leads her down to the parking lot and the van; I trail behind. He tosses my duffle in after her backpack with a macho swing, and tells her to help herself to whatever sundries we have left. She folds herself illegally into a nook against the cooler behind his seat; I hand her my musty pillow to provide a softer backrest. And we’re off.

            Leaving New Orleans on highway 55, which cleaves lakes Ponchartrain and Maurepas, we listen to the morning talk radio and the response of our objective new friend. Anne is gracious and gregarious. She appreciates the patriotism and pain of this moment as well as the resentment of other countries toward the US. Ultimately, as a shrewd explorer she believes that such an act of terrorism is way off the mark.

            “I saw that, New York City, so much there. Some places people are jealous, but why? I come here; if you want America you come here. You don’t burn it.”  

            I don’t think she’s placating us, but neither does she want to start seriously unpacking the plight of the Middle East or considering a disaster like Tuesday’s from the perspective of places where such things happen regularly. She prefers to learn about the weather in Seattle, “You ski?" and hum along to top forty as I spin the dial, “You like Eminem?” We do, so I turn up the volume and let his affected ranting take over for awhile. I don’t want to start seriously unpacking anything; the details feel thoroughly hashed out already and the implications are beginning to reek.

            There might be oil under the sheds of whoever did this us, and we need oil, especially in this mogul administration. That may be why they let our old enemy walk away after the last war, and why the president seems to already be friends with the family of our new one. Conspiracy theory festers from all angles, in the media and in the pubs where we’ve been eavesdropping. Flight 93 did not crash but was shot down to prevent its striking the Capitol. The World Trade Center basements were wired with demolition charges that would make them fall straight down. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afganistan and Pakistan are indistinguishable, the Muslim world our common enemy, the boogeyman a brown and white abstraction.

            Meanwhile, between songs the radio buzzes out concrete numbers, none of them uplifting: less than a dozen survivors recovered from the Pentagon and ruined Twin Towers, only 141 identifiable dead (in addition to all 45 passengers consumed by the field in Sommerset County), thousands missing. Thousands. Missing. What a nicer word that is than melted or demolished. How horrific to be a friend or family member, already exploring it that more precise way for two days and two haunted nights. How stupid to be us, driving away from an outrageous city, having lost nothing but our false sense of security and a protracted drive up the Mississippi, where I had looked forward to camping tonight at Vicksburg.

            I did mostly miss the beautiful Big Easy, a place I had yearned to see for so long prior to this trip—a yearning that was shaken like a snow globe on Tuesday. It’s inconsequential compared to many thousands of others’ loss, but it rattles against the cage in my chest as we leave Louisiana in the dust behind us. Along this road there are battle plaques and burial grounds, signs for the scenic route 65 and the riverboats, more stories of the fragrant ragged old south. Now we’ll miss it all. I sit glumly in my seat and pout.

          How appealing the markings of past massacre have become. The ownership of brother killing brother on the soil they sprouted from—it’s almost romantic compared to strangers, from places I would never visit, sneaking in behind the sunrise to steal the skyline. Our own battles, on our land, were building something. But was it this future, where such ill-mannered warfare feels like a fly in the machine, a glitch in the whole system? Where young soldiers die oceans away from home and citizens are starving on MLK Boulevards across America? My privileged perspective has been rocked meanly in its cradle.

          But Anne from Sweden doesn’t need to talk about that now, and Brian never did, and so neither do I. We move up Mississippi's major pipeline at high speed in a haze. We eat lunch at an Arby’s outside Jackson, where, surrounded by red plastic walls and special sauce, I think about Eudora Welty, who lived here for almost a century and died here just a few weeks ago. I had wanted to take a trip to find the souls of my favorite authors, and I have ended up instead with a dull headache and a heat-lamped roast beef sandwich. Anne has a healthy turkey-on-wheat, and afterward naps unselfconsciously behind us among the blankets in the sun, from Canton to Batesville. It’s a lost afternoon, and then Mississippi is gone again.

            We’re back in downtown Memphis and it looks better to me than it did before, I guess because two Sundays ago looks better than now. Bleary-eyed Anne directs us to her brother’s brick apartment building, near Beale Street, with a tip-toe view of the river. I want to go inside with her and have a 7up, or at least walk around town for awhile, but abruptly everyone is in a hurry. Brian leans out the window and gives her his business card; she rummages through her pack and comes out with a glass vase in a cardboard gift box, which she hands me—obviously a gift intended for someone else, maybe her brother, but she insists I take it. Brian will be sad to never hear from her.

            The plan was to sleep at Don’s house another night when we got back here; he gave us a key. But Tennessee can’t hold us, despite plan or fatigue. Before we leave it for good, though, Brian must pay respects to his grandparents. My downtown map is missing several arterials and it’s a goose chase to find the family cemetery. The roads are unmarked and muddy, lined with combines, cattle and listless poplars, and we grow desperate as the light wanes. Finally we see the half closed gates. Brian peels into the gravel lot and dashes inside for a map to the plots. A group emerges from the building and lingers at their cars all around me while I hunch down in my seat. The whole party is dressed in dark blue and black, of course, what else would they be here for?

            When they are not visited purely for historical reference in the bright light of midday adventuring, cemeteries make it impossible to push their purpose out of my life, and consequently make me very uncomfortable. It’s selfish of me, but it’s supposedly okay with Brian if I stay in the van. The funeral group disperses; first stars creep into the violet sky. I try journaling but can’t keep my eyes off the clock, or the rearview mirror, gauging my distance from any actual graves.

            Hurry up if you can, Honey.

            He returns a little teary, so I find some sympathy, hug him and say into his neck, “I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend more time with your family. Are you sure you’re good with not staying at Don’s tonight.”

            “Yeah, let’s not.” The nostalgic grandson has somewhere along the road today reached the same resignation as me: the South is over for us this time. We return to Don’s just to put the van back together, donating the cooler and sleeping bags to the garage, wolfing down the last peanut butter crackers and granola bars in the deteriorating grocery bags. Don is still in Gulf Shores, maybe getting more hot rolls thrown at him, so we don’t even have to say goodbye.

            Then it’s back to the airport, which looms like an accidental villain. We’re just in time to be the last customers at the Hertz office, where they inspect the van and we wave as it disappears into a car wash. Brian explains our situation to the clerk: do they have anything compact that we can drive one way to Seattle? We’re not going to camp and we want to make it in four days, by the same Monday we’d planned on returning originally. The rental guy nods and shows us to four small sedan choices, which we peer at through drizzle under the weak yellow lights. Two of the license plate frames are from a Hertz in Boston. 

            “That’s asking for a jinx.” I’m thinking of the departure point of Tuesday’s fuel bombs.

            “Well,” says Brian with a frazzled laugh, “the others are from New York or Miami.”

            “Ha.”

            The rental guy backs away from us, still nodding.

            “I guess we’ll go with Florida.” Fitting, since it's technically the far point we will have driven home from. A white Chevy Malibu replaces the precious moon-gray Venture. Rental Guy gets his papers signed and his deposit stashed away so he can close up shop, and we’re driving, like déjà vu, out of the wet lot, Brian adjusting his seat, me organizing the cramped cockpit.

            According to my meticulous routing, we need to cross the big river back at the downtown bridge to get into Arkansas. Just as we did on our first afternoon in Memphis, for the hell of it, with no intention of ever driving all the way out of town in this direction. The city sparkles in the night rain, and the crossing over, leaving this axis place behind, seems big. I flip through the CD book for proper accompaniment, and find Springsteen’s Born in the USA. I am starting to examine Arkansas through the darkness when the third track on the CD begins—a fun song called “Darlington County,” in which a pair of union boys scrape together party money and talk two uptown girls into joining them. As I sing along, my anticipation of the lyrics catches in my throat:

            Girl, you’re lookin’ at two big spenders; why, the world don’t know what me and Wayne might do...our Pas each own one of the World Trade Centers, and for a kiss and a smile I’ll give mine all to you.

            Fuck. An icon so embedded in the cultural blueprint, gone. I’m sure everyone comes to miss it at a different moment; mine is driving beyond the Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge, hearing it in this song I have loved that is now a relic. I’m weeping quietly, and Brian doesn’t ask why. All of our society before Tuesday strikes me as just a reference in the next generation’s history book. The cacophonous novelty of New Orleans made it easier to push away the dread, but now it reigns free in the vast rolling dark of the middle of nowhere. 

            Even if people live out there, it’s nowhere to everyone else. The night road is the great equalizer: same trance of illuminated lines before the tires, same rustling nothing out the windows on both sides. Having to fill all the details in is such a burden, the empty distance without detail such a deep well, and all that weight falling into all that emptiness breaks my heart. Through my tears, the stars twinkle as they tug all the darkness out toward them. I’m thinking of how everything everywhere might always come from and snuff back to the same spark.

            Kitty Hawk, 1903, the brilliant Wright Brothers in their wooden-winged craft teetering off a dirt runway, overlooking the sea. Only a century later the wings are made of steel, and they keep 20,000 gallons of fuel afloat along with a little bit of luggage and people. You can look down out the window of your plane and see for miles, just like I could from the hill at Kitty Hawk. Did the men who took the pilots’ seats on Tuesday morning see all that clear blue sky and smile like some people can’t help doing, just to be up there? Did they see those miles of eastern seaboard, foam on the shore, trees and trampolines and pools in backyards, miniature chains of cars along the freeway, sun glinting off the skyscrapers? Or did they look into miles of night and nothingness, knowing only where they would end?

            At the witching hour, Brian reaches his limit on the outskirts of Little Rock, where a Value Motel is still lit. He gets a key on a plastic triangle and parks the car under our second- floor window. We take only toothbrushes and t-shirts up the stairs with us, and once he evacuates the cricket crawling across the ceiling of our room, we fall asleep directly. There will be no scenic Little Rock, no hunting down Bill Clinton’s boyhood landmarks or the modern library he’s building, no commemorative plaques and no more photographs. The stopping points on this trip are no longer illustrious milestones or distracting attractions, just places to rest so that we can keep going.