the westward turn

September 10

The first shadowy hours of Monday morning waver. Were I alone, this tender old-world room could hold me in oblivious slumber indefinitely. But Brian stumbles through the diffusion of blue-gray light from the bed to the window or the bathroom almost continuously it seems, suffering, he is sure, from mild malaria. I believe him when I see the new sum of mosquito welts that blossom across his calves and elbows. We lay atop the wrinkled quilt, studying them through furry eyes until the sun strikes the edge of the window. 

The clock is ticking. 

I am loath to leave Savannah already, persuaded to do so only by the promise of more white beaches across the panhandle. There will be better camping and beyond that, the circus streets of New Orleans—the capital star in the map of this trip, a place with history to spare, and where I expect to be drinking my two-foot frozen daiquiri in the street.

            I drift into another pair of cut off jeans and grimy flip flops, another packing of the duffel bag and replacing of the tiny tape reel in the video camera. My hand trails behind me across the banister, pauses on the brass pineapple handle of the door as we leave the Marshall House. We stop at an internet café on the way down the MLK Boulevard that leads out of this particular town. More technology shock: my first computer and first detailed contact with home in ten days. I log in for a list of messages confirming business as usual for friends about to start another new week in their Seattle offices. It costs five bucks to use the broadband service for fifteen minutes, but I waste a lot of time savoring my chocolate croissant and cappuccino, and staring over the screen at the magnolias outside.

            Back in the van, Brian passes on to me his electronic gossip and I distract myself with the CD case as he drives us out of my magic city and back to the highway. Most of coastal Georgia swirls past Interstate 95 at 70 miles an hour. And another hour and another. There’s a drag on the line that we’ve cast south toward the state border. Except for the Spanish moss, the window dressing is no longer exceptional, and we aren’t moving ahead fast enough, so I never glance at whatever diversions the map might offer. We grab Taco Bell and vacuum the van at a mammoth truck stop. The clouds slide out of the picture above us, exposing a flat hearty blue; the draping foliage thins into tidy grassland and tropical shrubbery.

Mid-afternoon, we pull into the crowded lot of the fanciest rest stop I’ve ever seen behind the WELCOME to FLORIDA sign. It sells gas for $1.22 a gallon and has manicured lawns of thick Bermuda grass. The wildflower beds are not to be disturbed; all pets other than guide dogs are prohibited from roaming. The air has dried out a bit under the famously unfettered sunshine; everything now has sharper edges. By preparing to turn west we have commenced a third distinct arc of the voyage. To induct this one, we finally decide on a tourist stop, at the Budweiser plant on the north edge of Jacksonville. We weren’t looking for a brewery; it just shoots up out of the palm trees at our interchange onto Highway 10W. I don’t even drink beer, but it’s the brashest exposition we’ve seen since Myrtle Beach, and maybe the only random excuse to stretch our legs all day. We bound out of the van and cavort with the plastic Clydesdales in the patio before pushing through the front doors.

The first passageways are air-conditioned, and full of the familiar sepia photo-biopic spread over the walls. 10,000 beers are bottled per minute here, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Eight million barrels of Anheuser-Busch suds are distributed annually. Exhibit A is a room full of soggy heat wherein yeast ferments all around us behind an amber glow. A voice drips from the ceiling with explanations of how the barley is malting and mashing and morphing glucose into alcohol, but really, who cares. In another passageway we look down onto a vast assembly loop of conveyors, bottle droppers and can turners, small people in white coats and hats shuffling about the echoing orange room.

“It looks like a train,” I observe.

“It is. It’s a beer train!”

The couple behind us waddles efficiently by, and before they are out the next set of doors, I’m doing knee bends, bopping up and down in front of the window.

“Shlamiel! Shlamozel! Hozenpepper Incorporated!”
            Brian joins in, “Doin’ it our way…"

“Give us any chance we’ll take it, read us any rule we’ll break it, we’re gonna make

our dreams come true…” We continue Laverne and Shirley through the chorus, despite the clucking visitors who pass behind us at a deliberately safe distance. We are admittedly punchy, but I do believe this is a more appropriate venue for impromptu song than Forsyth park was. Spuds MacKenzie is doing the Bud Light Slide in the next room's marketing archive. Commercials from the last five decades play on screens framed by life-size cardboard girls in progressively shrinking white swim suits scrawled with the red cursive Budweiser logo. I recognize the 1980’s girls from the door of the old refrigerator in my dad’s garage.

             “Gift Shop!” pipes Brian, definitely high on fermentation and malarial residue. We add more to our trove of alcohol-theme t-shirts and pint glasses, and talk weather with a Miami man in a Hawaiian blouse. All in all, it is the ideal driving break in what will become a long and tedious westward run toward Tallahassee. 

I'm not sure you really know Florida until you’ve driven across the scrub-covered top of it. This unglamorous edge is as wide as the whole state is long, festooned with Wax Myrtle, roadside cattle, shallow lakes, stucco walls and red-tile roofs, all crackling slowly under relentless sun. We reach the capital city with only a vague recollection of how we got here.

“That’s where the fixer lives.” Brian says, gesturing toward the Tallahassee skyline. He’s referring to last year's sketchy election results perhaps being orchestrated by Governor Jeb, but I am still in denial about my blasted idealism and my Pinocchio president; such a landmark does not make a worthy detour. We’ve really no intention of more than pit-stopping again until big water re-emerges, now named the Gulf of Mexico, and we meet route 98W, the road we’ve set all the day’s expectations on.

            The lush scenery that has stolen my heart returns. Narrowing lanes curl through overgrown fishing towns with monikers like Panacea and Sopchoppy, where we see signs for a worm-grubbin’ festival at the same moment “Low Rider” comes on the radio. For real.

 “Sopchoppy Elementary School,” reads Brian. “Home of the Yellowjackets.”

“Terrific. Don’t roll down the windows.”

He loads a wad of tobacco into his lower lip and spits into an empty water bottle.

“Where’d you get that?”

“When in Rome…” he says, without actually answering. He’s about as committed to dipping tobacco as he is to smoking it; whereas I, speciously loyal to the latter habit, find the former repulsive. I turn away with the video camera to capture rusty signs and bent, sweaty citizens, pinning laundry to wires and knocking wrenches against outboard motors in their ragged lawns. Eventually I do roll down the windows to let in the salty breeze. Half submerged power lines recede off the bare edge of floating bridges. At a peninsula called Alligator Point, the channels give way to the beach, and we pause at a mom-n-pop grocery store. We’re low on ice and jerky. 

I stay in the van, thinking ten minutes of separation might be smart. While Brian is inside, I am treated to a show from the sagging Lincoln Continental parked in front of me. All four doors are open, with the five travelers apparently confused about whether they’re coming or going. But what captures me, all through the lens of the zoomed-in video camera, is the teeniest orange kitten, pacing across the platform at the sedan’s rear window. A wild scene in the faux suburbia of a wild setting. 

“Wait ‘til you see what I’ve got,” I say, eye still stuck in my zoom lens, when Brian opens our driver’s side door.

“No, wait ‘til you see what I’ve got,” he replies, putting a paper sack in my lap. “You should have come in; they had an entire aisle of bug spray in there.”

I shut off the camera and point to the kitten.

“Nice,” he says, and then goes to work smashing ice bags against the asphalt. I look into the grocery sack: a four-pack of Jack Daniels Lynchburg Lemonade, my favorite.

“Nice!” I pass them back to him to add to the cooler, and put away the camera. The sun feels great for a minute on my closed eyelids as I loll my head, and the air smells delicious, if not gourmet. I’m convinced that the best parts of the trip are still right ahead of us, despite how far we have left to go before sunset.

We only make it another half hour before the color of the sand compels us to pull over. It is shockingly white. I realize that Georgia sand had only looked so sugary compared to the bronzed California grit I was used to. The shell and coral ground down by the gulf here is whiter still, hardly a dark fleck upsets the flat, fair expanse, and beyond the sand the water has the most exotic turquoise undertones we’ve seen yet. We’ve stumbled onto Carrabelle Beach and Dog Island, a WWII training site for the 4^th infantry division. They did their amphibious preparation for the shores of Normandy here, their last stop before shipping off to England and saving the world. We scamper across the sand to test the gulf water with our toes, and stand in the warm tide until our feet are buried.

 We have another beach all to ourselves at Carrabelle, but we can’t stay—the light is waning. As we drive on, I keep my eyes glued to the shore though, and to the vacation rentals that occupy it. Red streaks grow between gray ones in the low sky. There are no hills, no overpasses. Buildings don’t top two stories, including the stilts, and business is mostly family-owned bars, video stores and many real estate offices. There is an inflated giraffe at the entrance to a trailer park, between restaurants called The Joint and Sharky’s which both look like fun. The pastel houses and condos are steps from the high tide line; they have glass front doors and round picture windows through which we can see the water. Charmed, we now fickly decide that if we could only return for vacation to one place it would be here, we have outdone ourselves again.

Except we haven’t, because we’re not actually getting out of the van yet. And why not? I wish we'd made it a more Outer Banks casual kind of stopover. Was covering so much ground today required for the sake of New Orleans tomorrow? We'll have three nights in that big, shiny showroom; why couldn't we have given this evening to sandcastles, fish tacos, mojitos, a gale-free surf-side stroll; to learning something about the discretely fine Florida Gulf?

Panama City erupts around us as an more vigorous, more populated resort than the last town. The commerce of little sky-scrapers, a couple of flashy clubs, my old friends the marvelous swim superstores. The reflection of sunset twinkles against their glass walls. 

“This isn’t where we camp, is it?” Brian asks, slowing for a stop light.

“No, we’re supposed to go to Fort Walton State Beach.” While consulting the map, I notice the pink time zone divider and reach up to set the dashboard clock back an hour. 7pm.

            “No camping here?” He is tired. He’s put in ten driving hours today. Yes, this routing was a mistake. 

“I'm not sure. Do you need to stop?”

“I think I’ve got another hour in me.”

“It’s not even that far,” I reassure, rubbing his shoulders, and then my own. 

Fort Walton is a grave disappointment though. Never mind the promise that had been evoked -- so arbitrary!--by a camp on a thin isthmus with only a single road called the Miracle Strip Parkway. Like Tybee Island, the sites here are delineated by leafy stalls taller than a tall person; the entire grounds are separated from the beach by a thicket of Pipestem. From our spot we can’t see anything but the empty truck parked across from us. There is no shower, no office, no amenities whatsoever. God, how the Carolinas spoiled us. Even Rocky Mount was four-star compared to this.

Once we’re situated, petulance creeps upon me, and then clutches while Brian is in the Honey Bucket. I take two Lynchburg bottles from the cooler and tramp through the bushes to a picnic table on the sand. It is that captivating white gulf sand, and the swish of that novel salty water lapping it; but there is not a single other person out here, no laughing children, no fire pit starting to crackle as shadow creeps over the beach. When I want the salve of privacy I am assailed; when I want the affirmation of community, I am isolated. Picking with a stubby thumb nail at the once-green paint splintering off the picnic table, I knock back my malt liquor and light a second cigarette right off the first.

“I’m sorry, seriously, but this place sucks compared to everything else down here,” I shake my head as Brian approaches with a beer. “It’s not making the most of our only night. There’s nobody here; like, where are we?”

“I don’t know...a state park?!” His sharpness suggests he’s been chewing on the same bitter pill. Whatever solidarity we have about the best ways to spend our time is smeared by frustration for lack on intel, miscalculation, not having enough time to spare to get it wrong, not having any one else to take it out on. “What do you want me to do about it?!”

Just like that, we are at odds. And there is no place on this forsaken beach to hide.

“How about try somewhere else, I don’t know. You drove all day; I’m not going to ask you to do anything more, at this hour.” But I am asking for that, in this rotten way, I’m asking him to rescue me. And to intuitively know how, so that I can get it without having to admit I’m asking. I recognize in the terse pitch of my own voice how this makes me difficult. But then I can’t believe that’s me. It must be him making me this way, making us this way. I need to boomerang the anger back to him.

“Do you want to stay here?” I ask.

“No.”

“Do you want to go back to Destin? Seemed like a lot of good campgrounds.”

“Yep.” The monosyllable punctuates the inevitable sting of of backtracking (which he must know will unnerve me even more than it will exhaust him), and of maybe getting stranded without a reservation during the last frantic week of summer. At the Fort Walton entrance, the 8pm gate is now closed and the guy in charge is leaving, but Brian persuades him to give us back our $15 and let us out. I’m stone-faced, jaw clenched, and the gate guy can't argue with this kind of tension clawing at him, trying to escape through the van window.

Nine miles back across Okaloosa Island, Brian swerves off the road into the first RV park we see, next to a church, and leaves me without a word to go inside the office and “make a call” once more. He returns with a car pass for spot 805. 

“It was 50 bucks,” he says, shoving his wallet into the cup holder.

“Steep,” I reply, guiltier than I’m going to show. “It must be pretty cool.”

In the dark it’s hard to see exactly how cool, but it is definitely an enormous property.  On the way to spot 805 we pass a pizza place, recreation room, swimming pool, casting lake, picnic area, three bathrooms with laundry, and hundreds of other campers with RV awnings up and grills smoldering. The brochure that guides us brags, you can’t get any closer than this! and when we finally come upon our designated spot we can’t argue. 

“How was this open?” I marvel.

“Last minute cancellation. Lucky,” he says, not congratulatory. But we surely are. Someone has given up prime property at the back of the park—one row of vehicles nosed against wood curbs that mark off the sand, a soft white carpet rolled out to the iridescent waves sloshing not ten yards away. It is the best camp site of the whole trip. The grandest facilities, the least barriers between me and the beach...each other site has led to this one, which will also be, in further spite of our planning, the last one.

We back the van up to the curb to make the Gulf our headboard. I shift everything to the front seats in the usual way and then toss dirty clothes onto my towel. I put a roll of quarters and a bag of baby carrots on top of the pile, tie it up and sling it over my shoulder like Santa’s sack, and say, as I’m already walking, “Laundry.” I think I hear Brian say, “Fine." It’s a trek uphill, and why am I the only one who cares enough to schlep these dirty clothes, and then sit with them for probably more than an hour, since it’s not worth going back and forth more than once? And why have I not eaten anything but Taco Bell today?

A steady mist is falling and the bench outside the laundry room door is damp, but the air inside the room is too warm to tolerate. The one vacant machine only fits half the stuff I’ve got. I put the towel on the bench and sit chewing each carrot to a tasteless pulp. I keep thinking Brian will show up to relieve me, to relieve us. But with the sound of happy campers all around me, my only company is a couple of dragonflies in their alien glow, hovering under the eave where it’s dry. I cry until the first load is finished drying. After I put the second load into the dryer, I can’t stand it any more and trudge back to the van with a stack of clean clothes. Brian is on the phone with his sister again, foot propped on the running board, smoking. I want to spit at him. Instead I neatly re-pack the clothes and have one more smoke of my own. When he finally hangs up the phone, he looks at me but says nothing. A lightening storm crackles behind him over the Gulf, beautiful, wasted on us.

Up the slope I go again, and when I return with the rest of the laundry, the back hatch of the van is open and Brian is sitting on the bumper in his pajama pants, filming the surf and sky. When I join him, he turns off the video camera and we both sit looking out at the view. It’s black except for the lightening threads and the silver foam that rides steadily into the shore. I put my head on his shoulder. His response is a slight lean into me.

“It’s so incredible here…I don’t know why it had to be a fight,” I offer, knowing in truth that it's something about control, emancipation, privilege. Something that has evolved and festered through the whole trip, through the whole four years we’ve been together.

“I don’t know why either.” He puts his hand on top of my head and pats. “I think it’s your fault though.”

I wonder if he even knows whether he means it as playful or not. I shake him off and turn to lie down, pretending that the temperature in the van is not still ten degrees above comfortable, and that I will be able to sleep. That’s when I see the giant cockroach chilling out on the bumper, inches from my pillow.

“Fuck!” I shriek too loudly as I vault forward onto the sand. Brian sees the roach and jumps out also. I’m running around to the side door, crawling back in that way, and about to slam the hatch closed on both of them from inside; he grabs one of his shoes from the ground and uses it to flick the roach off the van. And then we are both locked inside with just a wisp of air and the splash of waves filtering through the window cracks. I wrap the sheet around every exposed body part, including my head and especially my ears (where roaches always burrow in scary movies), overwhelmed by the idea of how long the door was wide open and how many other intolerable pests wandered in.

We lie in rigid silence, the stress so palpable we may as well be talking about it. For awhile I hear it reeling in his brain as loudly as in my own, and though he falls asleep long before me, as he usually so maddeningly does, I can feel it in his manic twitches throughout the restless night.