Photo Art By Chris Meadows
By John Atkinson
Memoir
Thumbing across America in the 1950s, midnight traffic slowed to a car here and there. I talked about bedding down to Check dog but someone stopped in a pickup and offered us a ride. Strange Check didn’t hesitate to jump in the back. That was good but he never did that without some effort on my part. I had to coax him. The ride was so unusual I felt something was wrong, yet I got in the cab and spoke to the driver, a gentleman about forty years old. Right away I knew something wasn’t right with the person behind the wheel. I couldn’t smell booze so he wasn’t tying on a drunk. While waiting to learn about a stranger, I listened to the lonesome sounds of the motoring. Then a minor-tone-voice matched the highway hum. The driver talk about the weather but something else was on his mind. It was a star bright night. Minutes later, tired of searching the heavens, I noticed he was gripping the stirring wheel. It took nerve for me to ask but he was hurting.
“What’s troubling you, Mister?” I said in the kindest way I could speak. I didn’t ask for his name because at times like these names are meaningless. What mattered was another person, my fellow man in some kind of trouble.
“I’m dying from cancer,” he said, and the hum of the truck engine changed to music in a spooky movie. The instrument panel dim light lit the cab enough to cast shadows, our small world, a glow without a ray of hope, just two men in a tiny capsule rolling down a highway toward no particular place. In the 1950s cancer was a death sentence.
“How long you got?”
My question was tough, but I’d figured if he could answer, it might help him face his demons, the evil spirits that were ever present in the world outside the cab. I looked at Check through the back window and he was curled up resting. That helped me relax because I knew the gentleman driving was a good guy.
“Not long. About a month or two, my doctor said.”
Gee, that wasn’t much time. He spoke in a voice I’d seldom heard. It was the sound of a person who was spent, so final in tone like a hammer striking an anvil or a judge banging a gavel, “Case closed. Bang!” and a electrical shockwave zips through the body.
What could I do to help him? Who was I to offer him spiritual guidance, a road bum with only youth in my favor? My purpose in life was to find myself. But he was dying before my eyes. He looked old, but anyone around 40 looked that way when you’re near fifteen.
“Got any plans?” I asked. The gentleman kept his eyes on the lonesome road ahead, not a headlight in sight. I wanted to see his face. Would I see the look of death? There wasn’t enough light from the instrument panel for that.
“No.” He hammered so final, the last nail in a wooden coffin of a beloved pet to be put in the ground. He caught me off guard when he asked, “You have any advice?”
“Me? I’m headed north to high ground.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him where I was headed, to a mountaintop Chief had visited before we had automobiles. He’d think I was crazy to speak of such things. He may get angry and try to hurt me. He didn’t have time for foolishness I had to be careful what I said. He was doomed and a man like that could go wrong. I wanted to ease his stress, not add to it.
“Ask the Great Spirit for help.”
I couldn’t believe I said that. I was thinking about my shaman, Chief. He was still fresh in my mind. The driver looked my way and I saw a blank face, not enough light to see his eyes. I waited for headlights, but the road was bare like a ride across the moon. For a main highway this was rare. I took that as an omen because I was riding with a dead-man-soon-to-come person.
“Where’s He?” the driver said, breaking the spell I was in. I drew in a fresh breath. The man had me cornered. I looked through the back window again and Check was still sound asleep. I had to come up with an answer. “He’s inside your head, Mister.”
The driver shot back before I took a second breath. “Is the Great Spirit inside yours?”
Now I was trapped. All the juggling about this and that went out the cab into the stars and came back and landed on my chest. I wasn’t long from Chief’s teaching, the opening of my mind about the six powers and, I was not a shaman. I could only give my take on what I’d experienced in Chief’s Kiva, his sweat lodge. No doubt the Great Spirit dwelled in my soul, but how the driver would take my meaning would be a serious gamble. Did he have the God gene; a person who knows the best part of life was in the giving?
“Yes.” I said. Then without hesitation he asked me to speak to the Great Spirit and ask that his death be a kind one. This knocked me off guard. From embarrassment I felt heat come over me. He wanted me to pray for him like they do in the bell tower churches. I wouldn’t wiggle my way out of this. If only I knew how to read I could send him to Chief for help. It would be foolish of me to say, “Hey, Mister, go to Oklahoma and see my grandfather shaman, Chief. I can’t show you how to get there, but if you can by chance find him, he can fix you up.” And I wasn’t about to share the mescal button meant for me when I got to the Sacred Mountain. Chief had warned me about that. I had a life to look forward to and the driver was old and at his end. But I’d boxed myself in a corner in the tiny cab and it was either put up or become a fraud, a lying ass, as smart Frank, my childhood mentor would put it.
“He’s in your head and heart” I said softly. “You got to find him any way you can, Mister.”
Sadness filled the tiny cab. The man behind the steering wheel said he was condemned to a grave, that he’d made all the arrangements including a preacher that would say nice things about him. He said he needed someone who knew God to get a few answers before he left the world. That he was only 39 years old, not ready to go. I thought that was plenty old and he should have prepared himself better. But I had compassion for him. He was a kind man to offer us a ride in the middle of the night.
He turned to me and spoke his mind, “You know the Great Spirit. That’s why I picked you up. Help me. My time is short.”
I wanted to tell him to let us off, that we were where we wanted to be for the night. That would have been the easy way out. But I knew about doing things like that. By not facing life head on would bring on bad luck. If I got out the truck I would take his problems with us, his illness would be with Check and me. We would have the journey of the outer world too. No, I had to face my fears along with the gentleman behind the wheel, a stranger . . . a near dead man driving a truck down a lonesome road to nowhere. I spoke my heart.
“I can’t show you how to die, Mister. I got to learn that myself. I believe the Great Mystery, God, comes to us as a best friend. He’s the Comforter Christians folks talk about.”
The driver gripped the steering wheel and I looked for anything to happen. If he wanted he could dart off the highway and smash into a tree. He was thinking hard. I glanced through the back window one last time and Check was still resting, a good sign that things were still okay.
The gentleman eased my fear. “I was your age once. I always wanted to do what you are doing, thumbing the roads.”
I said it wasn’t that much fun at times dodging fools and riding with crazy people. I said folk tend to do what they wanted and money was always a factor. I ended my jest with joy. “On America’s highways there’s a lot to see. Give it a shot, Mister. You have time.”
I didn’t tell him one week thumbing could be a lifetime packed together. He wouldn’t have understood. It would be like me telling a double amputee I understood his condition. No, it had to be experienced to know.
Even close to his death the kind man couldn’t change his way of living. I’d learned something from him. Deep ruts of habit hold feet tight on track like a boxcar on the rails. He knew where the track ran and that was playing it safe. He wouldn’t reach out for the things I searched for, things in the spirit world. That took chances, something he wasn’t willing to do. It was no point in me preaching, I was a traveling man, spirited with ground moving under my feet like a river rushing to lands end. I had no control over that and I searched my way to the Sacred Mountain, fool or not.
He turned off the lonesome highway without an oncoming headlight and Check sprang to life. I never did see the dying man’s face. When he let us off I thanked him for our ride and wished him good luck. He said he wished he were in my shoes. I didn’t add to that, just thanked him again.
In some ways I was just as lost as the dying man, yet I felt sorry for him as he drove away. The pickup’s red taillights faded away and I talked to Check who withheld answers to life’s secrets.
“Check, that’s a lonely old man. I’m glad I’m not in his shoes.”
John Atkinson is the author of TIMEKEEPER, a magnificent book about a young boy who fights to overcome illiteracy. Timeekeeper, ISBN 978-0-9776076-5-5, is available in hardcover or paperback .To order your copy call 1-800-228-9316. International orders call: 00-1-831-238-7799 or visit: www.fisherkingpress.com
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