Chapter Twelve
It didn’t take much for me to become remorseful, to don my hair shirt in a way that would seem a touch vigorous for even the most contrite man. I believed too gravely that amends weren’t always easily made. However, what can be done, I wondered, with a brain that was losing ground daily.
I was no longer sure exactly what I’d done or exactly when I’d transgressed. That we had lost touch was just one snippet of her and me that I felt guilty about. I could have tried to kiss her. I could have heaped more praise on her poetry than it deserved. I could have complimented her more and given her gifts that I could afford on a busboy’s wage. I heaped the weight of that and more on my shoulders where it sat, a bully. I thought about her and her feelings all the time. I’d never thought of myself as a bad man who would want nothing more than to hurt women like her, yet I believed I had in some way damaged her.
I should have called her; I may have hurt her tender feelings by not doing so. Or, I wondered, ignoring the feeling of my ego being tweaked unpleasantly, had she decided it would be best to scratch loving me from her to-do list and deliberately done so by not coming to the restaurant? Should I somehow try to make things right? Round and round it went. At least you respected her, I thought, at least you didn’t try to take advantage of her when her guard was down.
Whatever the reasoning, it became plain to me that I was in debt to the overall scheme of things. I decided as penance to forsake what had become a reasonably soft and comfortable existence with Bob and friends and to hit the road again with the cosmopolitan city of Vancouver as my destination. I decided I would take no medicine and, as a further expression of remorse, I would allow myself but one very small bag for clothing and anything deemed essential. It was Friday and in three days, I would be gone, dragging a brand of righteousness gotten through self-penalization, behind me. On a whim I would also take my clarinet.
The weekend went by quickly. I told my housemates on Saturday that I was going. I left out the reason behind the rhyme. The truth was personal. Please, I wanted to ask them, don’t wonder why.
I knew my name; people had always called me Carmen. I understood that some people also knew me as a fool when I told them the logic behind some of the ways I thought, or things I said or did. That being said, in my mind I was sure I’d done something fundamentally evil. I believed I had neglected someone who had counted on me for a type of friendship I had offered and had not been good for. I was convinced in a larger-than-life way that I had put some terrible hurt on a woman who had been vulnerable. I didn’t try to explain that to anyone. In truth I barely understood the logic myself.
My brain was manipulating my emotions while it backfired, while it was losing its flimsy hold on reality. Any reasonableness I had left was in the process of being dismantled by a disease that was turning out to be more serious than I had ever believed it would be. In a few weeks, my muddled psyche would deteriorate further and I would become more disturbed than I had ever been. Over the next few weeks, I’d spiral downwards and then nosedive into the pea soup heaviness of utter confusion.
I was having a breakdown. There was no looking back. I didn’t have any time for the professional help I badly needed. I had to stay the course and repent, for I had transgressed against that without which there would be no life – love.
Things would never be the same. As I left parts of myself scattered behind me on that trip I, not surprisingly, felt less and less like myself. Still, I believed I was doing the right thing and I held onto that like a man lost at sea holds onto the most secure piece of flotsam he can find. Self-sacrifice pays off down the road, I told myself. All would be right. Maybe self-sacrifice would lead me to an emotive healing and I’d be better than ever. Say, how do you spell Messiah complex, anyways?
I caught a ride on the first day of my trip with a man and woman who were going to Vancouver. “That’s fantastic,” I said, “can I go all the way with you? Could you take me with you?”
“I don’t see why not,” the woman answered.
I sensed that she held most of the good cards in the deck and that she always would. Her boyfriend seemed to play a minimal role.
The Captain and Tenille, Sonny and Cher, Lucy and what’s his name. I thought I’d try to remember as many man/woman duos as I could. Mork and Mindy, Romeo and Juliette, Fred and Ginger, Oedipus and his mother… Mercifully, a joint was handed to me and I lost my train of thought.
It seemed that joints were passed around forever. I was looking out of a window at a sky that spread up and out gloriously when someone rolled said window down and fresh air flooded the vehicle. I looked down and saw my clarinet, assembled and cradled in my loving arms and wondered how it had got there and who had assembled it. I began to play. I closed my eyes and played, intensely, yet soft and with feeling, melodically yet without reason. I stopped and rubbed a cheek dry.
“It’s like a poster, isn’t it?” said the lady with all the power.
“You said it,” I said, though I didn’t have a clue as to what she meant.
She laughed, we all laughed. In time I fell asleep with my head resting uncomfortably on a hard, vinyl covered armrest. The last thing I saw was an overflowing ashtray. Not surprisingly, I dreamt about cigarettes. Some would call it a nightmare, but I called it a good dream for in it there was always someone at the ready to hand me a smoke when I needed one. I would always have one handy and never have to bum again.
I woke. Day turned to dusk and then night. As far as I knew the earth had always worked the lights that way, though part of me wondered if there wasn’t another way that was kept hidden from me. Who really knew what went on when you were sleeping or in a town once you’d left it?
I got used to the darkness and the feeling of security it provided. I was laying still in the backseat, collecting my wits as I relaxed. The radio was playing softly while I absently wondered if I would be able to sleep through the night. We turned off the highway and began to bump along a crude road. I grew a little nervous and was about to stick my head up when we came to a stop.
“Well,” the woman said to her friend, who, I learned, was Roger, “make your fire.”
“Sure,” he replied, and I thought I heard some dejection in his voice.
I sat up and pushed on the car’s heavy metal door, jumped out and ran back and forth stretching my legs a bit before approaching Roger and offering my services.
“How’d you know I was going to make a fire,” asked Roger, who had just been standing, staring at the ground. He was still sullen or so it seemed.
“I heard you,” I replied, unaware that anyone would call what I had been doing eavesdropping.
“Well,” he muttered while looking at me, “you shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations. You never know what you’re going to hear.”
I walked away. I heard him call for me to come back but I kept going. Let him build his own damned fire.
I checked the surrounding campsites for signs of other life forms but none could be found – no humans, aliens, wolves or bears. What was it with those two, I wondered, they don’t seem very close. I trudged back in their direction. I was beat and just wanted to curl up in the back seat with an extra sweater keeping me warm. On arriving at our digs for the night, I saw Roger lying on the ground, under some blankets, near his pathetic fire
“What’s up, Rog,” I asked, “Aren’t you the man of the family?”
“ She’s not family, man,” he grumbled, “she picked me up about an hour before she stopped for you.”
The next day the sparse glow of dawn’s light had barely had time to come and go, when I woke to language that would make the swarthiest sailor blush.
“What in the hell’s going on?”
“She’s left us, man, out here in the middle of nowhere.”
His frenzied behaviour startled me into remembering the night before, when I had looked at a sky full of stars and questioned myself. What are you doing out here, nowhere in particular, surrounded by nothing but critters and ghosts? Sleeping on the ground is irresponsible; there are people worried about you. I had then laughed because I couldn’t readily think of anyone who would be too concerned. After awhile, as the fire feebly hissed and cracked as though it lacked confidence, I felt I was exactly where I belonged. I had fallen asleep with twigs in my hair and stars in my eyes as Roger muttered in his sleep. And lo, the next morning, I found myself left high and dry, abandoned with a stranger.
I gave Roger, who, it seemed I was stuck with, a cigarette and lit it for him.
“Go smoke,” I advised, “walk around the campgrounds and see what you find. She might still be around.”
“Sure boss,” he said and he looked like he meant it. I shuddered against my will.
I couldn’t blame the young lady for ditching us in the dark, but I didn’t like how I was secretly blaming Roger for our misfortune. I was no better than him. Sure he was a little dirtier, a touch on the ripe side, but who knew his story anyways?
All of a sudden somebody struck fear into me as they grabbed my head and twisted slowly, making as if to break my neck. I struggled.
“Bang, bang, you’re dead!”
Breaking free I whirled around.
“Jeez, Roger, don’t do that again. You want me to have a heart attack? ”
“Okay, boss,” he said and straightening up to an impressive height, he saluted me mockingly.
We hit the road none too soon, heading west. Over the day or so that I knew him, Roger and I sold my clarinet in a bar, spent all the proceeds on beer in a few different bars, and hopped a freight train, a feat that nearly led to my decapitation. We slept, we argued, Roger propositioned me and I jumped off the train. Three hours after jumping I was in Vancouver.