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SEEKING Civilian

SEEKING CIVILIAN : a work in progress. 

DAWN - prologue:

She lay inside of her sleeping bag waiting for the earth to nudge itself close enough toward the sun so she could see the outline of the physical forms that surrounded her campsite. She pulled her supplies out from underneath her since she had fallen asleep and rolled on top of everything she had. Finding the markers and some well used brushes, she wandered back to the concrete wall where she needed to put the finishing touches on the painting she had been working on these past few days. She noticed that she was being scoped out the previous afternoon by some local kids. Where ever she left a painting incomplete, she always found her way back to that place so she could bring the work closer to completion. Yet she really did not want to come back to this place. Completing this painting  would keep it from beckoning for her return.  Something about the people she met here gave her the creeps.

The painting needed a bit more color so that she could photograph it to send to her kids back east. She was having a lot of fun with this one. It was a wonderful wall. It was a bit of a lean-to so she did not find it necessary to erect her teepee shelter. It had some beautiful curves and some old grafitti that she incorporated into her painting. All of the “Johns and Nancys”  and  ”Taras love Vics” were enhanced and used as graphical elements for the painting that encompassed the entire wall. She never covered over anyone’s else’s marks. Although other artists did not always return the favor. 

Working until the mid-afternoon, she planned on hopping onto a train she knew would be rolling through in the early evening.  

CHAPTER One. After many weeks out on the road, his feet ached and his mind wandered. Their children had ventured out here looking for tell tale signs of their mother’s presence, now it was his turn. The photos of the people she met, letters to the kids and the paintings she left behind became all that he knew of his wife since she left. He wanted to remember the magic in their lives. There was so very much of it. Yet, it seemed that life in their small cozy town with all of its small town pleasures and small time dramas had gotten the best of her.

 

CHAPTER Two. “Need a ride, mister?” A nice looking kid in a beat up red pick-up truck pulled up next to him. Relieved at the prospect of a rest for his tired feet, he smiled wearily and climbed into the cab next to this bright young man. “I can take you about 50 miles west if that’ll help.” The old man nodded.

He remembered when he and his wife drove this way together. Mostly, he drove, and she would read or stare or sleep.

“Hon, can you stop in the next town. I would love to walk around a little bit.” But he didn’t. He rarely did. He was thankful to have the excuse that that he could not find a parking space before he was too far out of town to justify turning back. Thinking back, he could not really remember why he did not look harder for a place to park. There must have been a place to park, somewhere. It just seemed that he could not find a reason to try harder, so he didn’t. Gradually, more and more each year, she withdrew, in every way possible, except physically. Her body was there, but her spirit was already in some other universe. It was the universe of the places in between being there and not being there. It was the place where ideas grew and took shape in her mind. Whenever she managed to carve out the time, these ideas would take shape on canvas or in song. But she rarely shared that with him. He just did not seem interested. She began to thrive upon this illusion of detachment.

“Here’s where I start going north, Mister.” the young man said. The old man climbed out of the cab. They shared a brief wave of the hand and a bit longer than brief glance at the other.

CHAPTER Three. They met in a tavern room so close to a the outbound lanes of a New York City tunnel that if you were outside of the bar, you could probably throw a beer bottle and hit it. Little did either of them realize that this tunnel would serve as a sort of pseudo birth canal for their life together. 

They married under an old oak tree in upstate New York. They had a huge party under a big white tent. And soon thereafter, raised their 2 children in a small Delaware River town.

As the years passed she became adept at living a double life. Ironically, both of those lives demanded her complete attention. She straddled both worlds with one leg always in one and the other simultaneously.  The parts of her brain that were being used for “MOM” things were totally different from the parts of her brain she accessed to think conceptually. None of her dependents seemed to speak much English. She doubted they had noticed her mind was usually preoccupied. But the truth be told, her favorite companion became her dog, mostly because her dog never learned English at all.  

This double life was her fuel. Some days, while taking care of the house and the children, she would actually be able to paint for 8 hours. A two-hour nap in the morning, a little snooze in the afternoon, and a strict 7:30 pm bedtime for those that did not speak English. It worked for a while, anyway.

Yet, it was her inability to detach herself from the smothering infection of unending daily chores that fueled her trek westward. Unable to stop her feet from walking out the door, she relented to her legs as they led her down the road, over the bridge, through the great state of Pennsylvania and eventually on to wherever mild weather promised its blessing.

As they grew, regardless of her physical absence, his children had become enamored with their mother’s seemingly exotic life. This is what they ultimately knew of her. This is what she gave to them. Her absence did not seem to make them feel any less loved by her. Knowing that all of the thoughts, poems, recordings, paintings, videos, photographs that she sent to them over the years were what she considered the best part of herself, they understood her. She wanted her family to know the best of her. Not the person that complained about the laundry, or that person she saw repeating the same old tired lines.. PICK UP YOUR ROOM! DO YOUR LAUNDRY! CLEAR THE TABLE… blah blah blah.. It made her head feel like a muddy mess, and made her feel common and unremarkable.

CHAPTER Four. 

Seeing the cook-fire from across the river, he followed the path revealed by his flashlight toward, what seemed to him, a group of homeless people. They appeared not to be traveling together, yet most of them beckoned for him to join them.  He shared what he had with them, and they with him.

In the morning hours, he revisited a tunnel that caught his attention the previous day.  What he found there was such a dense selection of paintings, drawings, poems… that he wondered how often she came to this place. He spent the remainder of the day taking pictures of the varied selection of drawings inside of the tunnel. Not all were hers, and some were very sophisticated collaborations that evolved over time. 

In the dark of the night, more than half of his fellow campers were claimed by a passing freight train. Following their lead, he hopped aboard a seemingly empty boxcar headed south. This way of life, this boxcar travel, was a throwback to some by-gone era that thrived sometime in the early to mid 20th century. This country was expansive. The railroad travelled through some of the most beautiful landscapes. World weary folks had been dropping out of an over stimulated technologically saturated world to find a simpler state of being for years after the depression.  Some did this full time, and some did this part time. He noticed that this community of “hobos” was alive and well and flourishing in the outskirts of towns and cities along the path of the railroads everywhere he went.  

CHAPTER Five:

As the sun rose over the Colorado Rockies, he noticed something familiar about the handwriting in a group of random graffiti. Along a rocky ledge, hidden from most, a story dated 10-15-07, was emblazoned across a flat stone surface. Luckily, the train slowed enough to accommodate a sharp curve for him to take a photo. It took a full three shots for him to capture the entire graphic. The graphic was dated the same day Ruby died. That day one or all of his family members had sent the news that Ruby’s heart had finally given out.

 

As he recalled their seemingly idyllic life along the River, with their 2 children, 4 cats, and Ruby, he smiled. It was such a lovely way to raise children. Waking up to the shimmering river each morning with the season’s colors and light, whichever season it happened to be was like waking to a dream. At the crack of dawn, for most of their marriage, Ruby would walk with his wife along the dirt road that hugged the river. She always walked south, because that was away from the town. Ruby never wore a leash. His wife could not bear to place a leash on this dog. And as she got older, Ruby’s sense of ownership of this walk inflated, making her a little bit scary when another dog crossed her path. So traveling away from the town where there were fewer dogs, continued to be her preferred direction. 

Because it looked like such fun, most of the 4 cats would attempt to follow along in this morning ritual at varying degrees of commitment. Cats have a sense of ownership of a household with a tilt toward the regal in a way that dogs rarely share. It seemed only fitting that not too far down the tracks, another rock painting bearing her signature became visible soon after the last.

CHAPTER Six: As the sun rose to it’s full strength, he looked around the boxcar and noticed that there were a few piles of hay, and a leg stretched out from beneath one of them. It seemed that the train was so loud he did not hear the snoring of his nighttime companion.  Eventually, they were face to face, trading familiarities, sharing their hopes about the places they were heading and stories about the places they had been. His name was Doc. He looked about 35, and from what he could tell, very strong and quite good looking. He had been on the road for about 2 years, on & off.  He spoke about a woman he met months ago.

“I liked sushi” Doc stated. “And when we caught some trout, she could not stop looking at its eyes. She just could not eat that damn fish because it kept staring her down.” From the inside of his overcoat, he pulled out a folder. Inside of the folder there was a small collection of drawings. They were remarkably well preserved for being jammed inside of an a chest pocket for so long.

CHAPTER Seven:  As the train’s speed reduced to a slow crawl, hitchhikers spilled out from each boxcar’s open doors. There was a bit more than a dozen folks riding this train. He could see the glimmering sea off in the distance and surmised that he had finally reached the coastline. The sun was setting over the glorious Pacific Ocean. California held it’s secrets all too well. Maybe he thought he would find her. Maybe he thought he would find himself. Who knows what he really thought, but he knew he could not bear to go back east, at least not yet.

Eventually, amidst the sun and the surf, the weeks passed as he shed his solitary grief. And, by the example of his children, he embraced the best of her. As the weeks passed, his carriage lifted, his eyes sparkled and his energy returned. A new love would eventually find him, it was inevitable. 

THE END

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