Ballad of the Lost Man

May 15

I felt better by morning, but Justin's leg persisted in pain. We rode toward the next town, there being no use in resigning ourselves to tents for another full day. Justin's leg gave a few times on the hills and he had to walk it twice, but soon we'd made it fifteen miles and entered Crossville.

Around the town we searched for an outlet for charging my computer a while, but in the end we weren't able. Justin called his parents while we sat outside a grocery store, telling them we made it to town and that's when they informed him that they'd already left. They were in their car with bike rack ready, on their way to pick us up. Voluntarily and out of assumed parental obligation they'd set out first thing in the morning, thinking that I'd spent yesterday throwing up and that Justin was completely incapacitated. If the situation hadn't already been poked so full of insecurities they may have been met with a bit of opposition, but, being as unsure as we both were about what to do, this came as something of a welcome resolution even if it was accompanied by a tinge of surrender.

Within a few hours they'd arrive so in the afternoon to escape the cold Justin and I buffeted, passing time in some semblance of a farewell feast. We ate three hours in a Peking restaurant, resting boothed in the warmth until a plethora of had plates passed. Then ice cream bowls were stacked tall, stretching both stomachs and seams. Perhaps the yellow-lit signs which had proudly offered “all you can eat” had not been intended for tired venturing cyclists at the end of a thirty-six hour fast, but we obeyed them all the same and then bid bye to the friendly heat, bundling up in search of a library.

Justin and I found it with a man huddled outside on a bench in a zipped-up sweater, computer in lap. That was exactly the sign I'd hoped for, telling of open internet access. Soon another hour had passed and Justin's parents drove up, parking alongside the curb.

They greeted us with eyes of unanswered questions and curiosity. All Justin's things were packed up and Justin sat down in the back left seat, hurt leg stretching lonesome across the rest of the back seat. His parents offered me some granola bars and a sports drink (to rehydrate, again they thought I'd been sicker than I'd been) and Justin's dad offered me money for a hotel which I could never have accepted and asked if there was anything else I could use. Once everyone had been appeased with hugs they went off on their hours of a drive to Greenville. At my final look into Justin's face his expression told of a combination of frustration and indignant resignation. At once upon sitting down, he'd later say, he'd been filled to the brim with longing and the need to be back on his bicycle. But alas all things don't cater to our individual plans.

While I was getting my things together to ride the man on the bench inquired about the travels. His name was Tom and he said he'd been in the navy. Having visited forty countries while sailing, he now had settled momentarily in Crossville. When he told me forty countries I asked him in awe which ones and he must've listed about twenty just from the top of his head, spanning nearly every continent. I wasn't sure exactly where I would be going that night and, becoming the implement of the traveler's blessing, Tom extended an invitation to the town's mission.

He warned me first, “It's a Christian place. I have my own beliefs and nobody's going to force theirs on me, but when we get there you might have to sit through evening mass.” He was stern and serious when he talked. I told him I didn't mind and walked with him a few blocks down the road.

We approached an unassuming white building on the left and walked around the rear to a sheltered porch, inside a line of chairs against each wall and coffee buckets at the foot of each for cigarette butts. There were a few guys sitting inside smoking and talking. Tom asked one, an old guy, shortish and thin, wearing a cap, if I'd be able to stay as an over-nighter. The man said I'd have to check in after supper.

Everyone soon began to shuffle up the building's front stairs into the upper floor. It was a room with pews on both sides, pulpit in front, and tie-dye stained glass windows lining the walls – a typical one-room church house.

“Have a seat wherever,” Tom told me.

A four person band stood at front, guitar, bass, electric percussion, keyboard, and mics for each. The next hour consisted of them playing songs, mostly lyrical hymns that had been patched over the tunes of rock songs. The twenty-odd onlookers all sat in the back pews and watched, a couple singing along with memorized words and an occasional interjection of “Thank Jesus!” Praise of the Almighty variously interpreted through a crowd of eyes.

Afterward everyone staying the night returned to the back porch and then the dinner bell rang. Volunteer high school kids said a prayer for all then stood behind a counter and served everybody down the line what burgers, dogs, chips, and your choice of cake or cookies you could eat. The people here ate well and were well and happy for it. Above each window sill and doorway, and every space between the walls proclaimed “Jesus is the bread of life.”

I gathered what I'd need with me from my bike after I'd eaten and went to sign in with the man from before. He was a caretaker of sorts, calm, soft-spoken, and inviting. He showed me around while he recited the rules, taking me upstairs to the church room and showing me my cot, the blankets, sheets and pillow provided. It was rules to take a shower each night, so I did and then afterward returned to the porch to smoke and talk with the rest.

They had their own business to speak about mostly – the tasks of finding work, what developments had unfolded in the lives of each. Speech on the porch was to be kept wholesome (rules were posted on the door) and so it was. Portraying these sorts of situations is always difficult with there being infinite complexity and flowing dynamics noticed only when one scrutinizes in detail the characters about as they interact with one another against the progressively revealed background of past interactions. Some of the men here had been here for months and the kind of play you might see among family members made an occasional appeared. They cared for one another and each others' situations and the individual pursuit of resolution.

There was Tom with his 40 countries, originally from “Joy-zee” - that's William Nathaniel Bailey II, goes by Nathan, poking fun at Tom. He wore khaki pants and a white button-up shirt untucked, brown hair a medium-length and tidy mess.

“That's the way they say it in Jersey, right? With the accent, you know, isn't that right, Tom?” He was just a kid. A tidy kid, warm and kindly-hearted to everybody.

“It's Jer-zee. Hear that? Jer-zee. Don't tell me they say 'joy,'” Tom rebutted with a tinge of feigned frustration entering his voice.

One man strayed in past dark, too late to be signed in, after a day-job all frustrated and surly. He had scraggly hair spreading out in all directions from underneath a trucker's cap, and began to passively make a ruckus.

“Well I guess if I can't get checked in then I'm trespassin' ain't I? Now I ain't tryin' to argue. I'm just saying that what you want from me is to have a real job (as you rightly said).” He directed his speech at the caretaker-man and his southern accent began picking up hostility and volume, “Now I just come back from a day's hard work with that repo-man. You all know him and you know he's an honest fella, and now you're telling me that's not a good day's work and so I need to be signed in on a daily basis. So what you're telling me is nothing I do is good enough!” Now the group surrounding, each sitting in their chairs collectively raised their hands against him.

“Don't get loud on this porch. You take that outside. This is a place of peace,” says Nathan, looking him in the eye.

Serenely, having been through it all before the caretaker-man said, “I didn't say anything like that. That's what you're saying. There's Frank, now. You go talk to him.” Frank was the owner and had just parked his truck outside, here to do last-minute business.

Things died down after that.

“I hate to see the bad apples like that, but sometimes you get them,” the caretaker-man said later.

A man in a tie-dye shirt and leather jacket warned, “And as they say 'they spoil the bunch.'”

I went up to my cot. Maybe an hour after I had fallen asleep someone else was brought in and laid down in the cot beside me. He commenced to saw the loudest logs I ever heard and now even trying to sleep in warmth became tiresome.

May 16

Inevitably, morning arrived at six and I woke to do some chores as per the rules. Mostly the regulars were already taking care of everything. Me and the snoring man shuffled around uselessly, eventually finding ourselves with everyone else on the back porch.

Weather had remained cold for the morning and rainy with a forecast of more rain and high fifty degrees. I found myself a cup of coffee then returned to talking. A few people already began leaving for a day-job at around six-thirty. On the porch a man named Daniel sat across from me and spoke with Fred, the snorer, about football. Daniel was a tall man, well built and middle-aged. He humbly brushed off comments with a smile about how he could've made it like one of the players he knew so much about.

“Oh, I used to be skinny when I played, nothing like those guys.”

The conversation meandered, leading from the places people'd been to where they hoped to go and everything in between.

Clanging from the breakfast bell shot through the air and everybody immediately got themselves up and into the dining room. After the prayer I shifted through the line with everyone else, picked out a donut, poured myself some cereal and took a seat. The room kept mostly silent. I got some seconds and then I started supposing it was about time to collect my things and get. Everybody was sifting out for the day and I said goodbye to the few still around. I held my bicycle by the handlebars and set to walking down the street. All the buildings and lights were sapped of color by a sunless sky.

Forward to the main drag and I was northbound. It felt to me like a strange while since I'd ridden anywhere as I went on down the road away from the town. Buildings turned to faded gray hills, windows were replaced by animals speckling the distant grass, bowing their heads to the plain and the trees. Rolling along by farmhouse, truck, silo, the soft touch of the dangling cloud struck cool on my face. I reflected on the past day in my roadside solitude and the meditation put on me by pedaling's repetition. I understood as I thought: these men with their troubles and magnanimous faces hold a more accurate understanding of their own context and circumstance than most care to realize or recognize. I and you put away our preconceptions and stigmas; trading in all pity for sympathy or empathy. They know more than you and I of themselves and strive.

Along came the song of a lone bird wading through the afternoon haze, reaching through my thoughts as an echo and seeming to be the ballad of the lost man – overwhelmed and under-emphasized. The song remained clear and beautiful through the softly weeping sky.

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