He still doesn’t know why he left, what triggered the decision. Maybe it was the weight of college applications, football scholarship talk, and constant badgering of why he wasn’t in a relationship. The college applications were stacked up in his bedroom. His mother had printed them all off and left them in neat little manila envelopes on his desk. The pile grew everyday until one day the tower collapsed, scattering them across his desk, chair, floor, and garbage can. He didn’t bother taking those out. Nor did he bother stacking the others up again. It seemed fitting somehow to have them chaotically strewn about.
As a freshman, he made Varsity. He didn’t get to play much, as the juniors and seniors played first and second string, but for some reason the title of Varsity player was better than actually playing the game. By sophomore year, he finally got his chance to shine, and man, did he shine bright. The coaches realized what they had been missing out on and quickly moved him up to first string, often playing above angry seniors. By the time junior year rolled around, he was the school’s star athlete. Girls threw themselves at him. Boys glared across the classroom at him. Teachers oddly encouraged a careless behavior much sought after by the other students. He never understood it. When senior year showed its cocky head, the guidance counselor’s talked with him about his future, what he wanted to do. Of course, they encouraged further learning and the coaches didn’t dispute it, as long as that further learning facility came equipped with a highly regarded football team. But the scholarship offers didn’t flood in like they were supposed to. The scouts didn’t visit like he was told they would. The buzz around him slowly died down and then graduation finally arrived. He didn’t attend any of the parties he was invited to. His friends stopped calling. The girls had long vanished. The guidance counselors had given up and his coaches were already absorbed in next year’s wonder kid. He didn’t participate in any of the school functions and by summer, he barely left his house. His parents grew concerned with their son, often poking their head in his bedroom, checking for the rise and fall of the sheets. But it didn’t really hit until fall rolled around. He could keep making excuses for himself in the summer but now his peers were packing up and heading off to college. He had no more excuses. Unsatisfied with his life, sick of his parent’s constant nagging, and yearning to leave the small town he had lived all his life, he set off for the road.
When his older sister had left for college three years earlier, she had also left her bowel movement brown Datsun sitting in the driveway. His bags of clothes, his shoes, his shaver, toothbrush, deodorant, a small cooler, worn sleeping bag, and used tent were crammed in the back seat and his graduation money was crammed in his pocket. He was gone. His parents received no fair warning. His nonexistent friends were already in a different place. His dog was the only witness to his departure, watching him pull out of the driveway, whining, knowing that her faithful owner was not coming back. He had no plan. Just a simple map. He had been on a few family vacations as a child but could barely remember where. Travel had never been encouraged in his family. His whole extended family all lived together in the same town and seemed perfectly content staying put. He wasn’t buying it. He knew there was more out there. He didn’t know what. But he was satisfied just knowing that it was there and he was going to see it. The romantic side of him liked the spontaneity of it all. The unknowing. The adventure. He had read ‘On the Road’, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, and all the others just like everyone else. Feeling the generational gap, he empathized with the literature. He felt like they felt. So with the beatnik dream holding steady in his head, he drove.
It wasn’t until seven hours down the road that he decided to look at a map. He had made it across state lines and with that came a small sense of achievement he hadn’t felt since sacking Julius Brown in the semi-finals last year. Already the evergreen trees cascading over the Appalachian mountains looked a world apart from the suburban hum drum that he had just escaped from. He felt lighter, but still retained a sense of loyalty to his worried family. He never meant to hurt his parents and his stomach twisted at the thought of them worried at home. Even if he had gone to college, he would be gone now, but it wasn’t the same. He was really gone now and, along with the guilt, he felt the weight of his decision grow as he drove. The silence in the car didn’t help, swirling his thoughts around and around, morphing into new thoughts and regrets. But still he moved forward. As they say, there was no turning back now.
The first week went by slowly. He hadn’t quite adjusted to life in a car or the whole camping thing either. Though he had always been somewhat of a loner, his ego had expanded so much at high school, that being alone was really setting in. Though he had spent a majority of the summer alone, he still always knew his parents were there. Now he was really alone. Often whole days went by where he wouldn’t talk to another human being. He rattled off gibberish in the car just to reassure himself that he could still physically talk. He would drive all day, stopping if he wanted a closer look or just found something interesting. When the sun would start to set, he pulled off the highway, found the nearest camp ground and set up camp. The first day took him awhile. He struggled with the thing. Sticking poles through it, staking parts into the ground, trying to hold up three sides at once. After all, he never pitched a tent by himself before. In fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time he slept in a tent. Finally, it was up, in one way or another, and he slept, or at least tried to. The first few nights were not easy. Every noise he heard woke him up. Any rustle in the brush, any crunch on the leaves, any hoot from a tree. It was not that he was frightened, but rather that he was not accustomed to these noises. It was just so quiet out there. No familiar sounds of traffic, ceiling fans, doors opening and closing. He couldn’t even hear a peep out of the other campers scattered throughout the camp ground. When he would pull into the new camp ground each night, everyone was very friendly. He didn’t know how to respond. He had always been a pretty shy kid, but he could fake his way through any conversation. Now without the protection of reputation, he didn’t know what to do. It was like all the campers where in on some camper secret and he was left out. He didn’t know the codes yet, the slang, the etiquette. He largely still kept to himself, only waving when forced to and gesturing when needed. The thought of showering didn’t even occur to him until he realized that not many campgrounds came equipped with showers. The first week, he was very smelly. He had no one to express their disdain for his odor, so he didn’t mind that much. But by the end of the week, he really felt the grit and grime of sitting in his own filth. He finally sucked it up and hurriedly showered in the first trucker stop he saw. It was evident to everyone around him that he was a newbie at this, a virgin, a greenhorn. The gas station attendants, the camp ground managers, the restaurant owners. Everyone could see it in his worried, scared eyes and he didn’t try to make them think otherwise.
The second week wasn’t much better. He only knew where was by the green signs along the highway. Occasionally he would see a welcome sign and then he knew he had crossed a border. He rarely looked at the map. He could be driving in circles for all he cared. The initial excitement of freedom was still present in his mind. He grew friendlier with the natives, asking gas station attendants how their day was going. Not that he cared, but was beginning to yearn for human contact. He never thought he would, but it was slowly creeping in. He was thankful that he wasn’t stuck on a deserted island. This way, he had the best of the two worlds. The solitary confinement enacted by himself and the brief quips with the locals. As he grew more confident in his camping skills, his waving skills to became more confident. He knew how to put the tent up now without looking like a tourist. He even began to cook for himself, buying a travel sized stove top and a foldable pan. He cooked potatoes and beans and rice and canned vegetables, all of the things he had seen in movies and read about in books. He was glad to be anything that wasn’t fast food. He didn’t bother putting the food on plates or in bowls, feeling more authentic scraping it out of the pan or can with a plastic fork he grabbed at a McDonalds. He saw John Wayne do it and now he was doing it too.
By the third week, he was a camping pro, mimicking the lingo. He could erect the tent in forty five seconds flat. He counted. His diet remained consistent and he could tell he was losing weight. His pants felt looser. After bulking up for the past four years to ram his force into oncoming players, to be leaner felt good. He slept in some of the most beautiful places he had ever seen, overlooking plains, next to gushing rivers, under the forest canopy. By the fourth week, he was an old pro, often instigating greetings to the new campers. He constructed a fishing line and caught two fish in a stream on his very first day. With it came a sense of belonging and by the fifth week he truly felt a part of the land. He barely even thought about his old life but still a feeling of dread stuck in his stomach, knowing that he would have to return to it someday. But for now, he was the modern cowboy, carousing the landscape, passing through the Badlands and Black Hills. He felt like he belonged here. The land was his to protect. He had become one with the surroundings. They were his home. Trees became his skyscrapers. Rivers became his showers. Grass became his carpet and logs became his couches. Wildlife became his pets. The vast land became his television and he had the best seat in the house.
The weeks went by and turned into months. The seasons changed and like a migrating flock of birds, he went wherever was warmest. When his cash started to dwindle down, he knocked on the door of factories and temp agencies. Using his one main skill, his strength, he picked up odd jobs, lifting heavy boxes, examining machinery, and cleaning floors. He canoodled with the natives at local watering holes, making new friends every night only to leave them again in the morning. His shyness had all but been suppressed. He enjoyed the company for the time being and knew at the end of the night, that he had his hideaway to return to. The stars had never seemed so bright. This was it. This is what Kerouac was talking about. This was the dream, the ideal. For the first time ever, he was living the life. He hiked along the Pacific Coast Trail, he walked through the Redwoods. He swam in the 52 degree Lake Tahoe. He admired the close family of elk in Wyoming. He marveled at the Grand Canyon, unable to grasp its stunning presence. He slept soundly under the night’s blanket of stars for 361 days in a row. This was the America everyone had talked about. Almost everything about his old self had vanished, his deliberation, his anxiety, his reputation. He was a new man and he had never been so genuinely happy. Of course, that realization could only be found in retrospect. As the months had passed, he simply carried on, not stopping to evaluate his own feelings. He hadn’t forced the evolution of his spirit. He took each day as it came. Never planning ahead of time where he would stop for the night. Never absorbing the extent of his adventure. He didn’t even think of it as an adventure anymore. Now it was life. The only thing he did think about was not thinking.
But as the months accumulated, the year anniversary of his departure irked around the corner. He had seen a great portion of the country at this point. Parts of the country off the asphalt highways, away from signs of human life, miles from any chain restaurant or retailer, ugly reminders of western civilization. Those places were hard to find, but he had found them, tiny pockets hidden away in forgotten crevices. And now he was torn. He felt the pull of his mother’s invisible umbilical cord. He felt the future rapture of his father. The little boy in him felt the returned longing for security. The months had been wonderful, but had also been long and brutal. The Datsun coughed like an old man every time it tried to turn over. He never knew if the car would start in the mornings. Despite his meager way of life, his money was almost completely gone. He felt the first breezes of autumn approaching and though he knew a year was just an arbitrary number, it seemed fitting for him to return home.
It took him two whole days of driving to return to his hometown. As soon as he saw the familiar smokestacks and smelt the ingrained aromas of the city, his stomach turned over on itself and questioned his decision to return. When he reached his parent’s neighborhood, he sat in his car, hidden around the corner for close to an hour before finding the strength to pull in the driveway. It was an out of body experience after that. He remembers his parent’s hugging him, his mom kissing him repeatedly on the cheek, tears, questions, half-assed answers, food, running water. He somehow went through the motions of unpacking his car, replacing the tent in the basement like it was a relic and gathering all of the receipts, ticket stubs, and brochures scattered around his car and throwing them in a shoe box. His parents talking over his shoulder. He couldn’t hear what they were saying and he didn’t ask them to repeat it. He put his clothes in the washing machine and stared at the spinning wheel in a daze for close to twenty minutes before his mom stepped in and asked him what he was doing. He now knew that he was different. He finally understood the saying ‘you can never go home again.’ That place had long disappeared. The dinners his mom prepared for him were inedible, over seasoned and over cooked. His stomach retaliated against him, pushing the food out as quickly as it could. He couldn’t sleep anymore. The bed that was so comfortable a year ago that he wouldn’t even get out it, was now lumpy, too soft. The ceiling was too high in the bedroom. It hadn’t changed in measurement since he left. It was just too high now. There was too much open space around him while he slept. The glow in the dark stars he had stuck on the ceiling as a child now mocked him, laughing in his face. He spent many a night stifling his tears. He had never been so homesick before in his life.
A week passed that he can’t even remember now. Something about colleges and jobs and answering excited questions spewed forth by his parent’s friends. He never answered them truthfully. He couldn’t. They wouldn’t understand and if they did, they wouldn’t have asked them in the first place because they would have known that there were no answers. Memories of his trip began to fade. He struggled to remember the little details, the way it smells in Washington, the way an Idahoan’s accent sounds. The details became innuendos, suggestions of the truth. He missed the people he had met along the way, some in family Rvs, some lone travelers. He didn’t even know those people but he knew enough. They were the best friends he had ever had in his life. As the television blared from downstairs, he had never felt so distanced from something, so separated from an origin. He staggered around like a zombie, a human body without a soul. Finally he could take it no longer. He didn’t know who he was anymore and neither did anyone else. The dog even knew, her worst fear confirmed.
When his parents left to go to a neighbor’s cocktail party, he watched from the safety of his bedroom window as they faded away down the driveway, walking hand in hand. He followed them as they knocked on the neighbor’s door, greeting each other with that fake suburban smile. He watched them hug and shake hands, just like they’re supposed to do, and then he watched them go inside, the door closing behind them. The warm yellow lights of the neighbor’s house glowed from the inside. The handful of couples mingled. He could only imagine what they were saying to each other. They were puppets in his own foggy world. It was time to act. He went into the basement, determined to find a particular thing. Just where he left it. He ran back up the stairs and walked into the backyard, box in hand. An immediate sense of relief overcame him and he knew he was home. It took him forty one seconds this time to get the tent up.
