Pieces of Iowa Pt. I

And into Iowa, where the people are kind, open, sympathetic, and inviting all around. Just outside Cedar Rapids I, on a hot day, stopped at a highway corner and opened my map for finding the way forward. A lady in a van pulled slowly by, slowing and halting, and called out to me from her open window, “You need help? Know where ya are?” so I dismounted my bicycle on the shoulder and went over, map in hand. She showed me with her finger precisely how to get where I was going, passed on a cold liter root beer gift, and parted with farewells.

By these directions finding my way past the little towns surrounding, I came into Cedar Rapids, from the east, and got in contact with some people living here who I'd found through a travel network. All afternoon I rode through the big town's stretch of summer heat and construction, with shoulders all torn up and the street signs gone, trying by might to get to the outdoor shop on the west side where I'd get a new can of stove fuel, as mine was long ago empty. After finding this I retrod my long hectic path to arrive at these peoples' place in the late day. I had got good directions from them over the phone to the middle of town where they resided, but managed to make myself thoroughly lost anyway. Like I've said before, highway navigation is one thing, but cities are a different beast, especially Cedar Rapids in the disorienting swelter of summer. They charitably decided to come pick me up instead, finding and stopping lost, confused me as I was ignorantly pedaling into the north-of-town countryside.

Teresa was the mother of the house. She showed me into the room, where she said I could stay as long as I needed, and asked me if I'd want a shower or to eat first. Also met Joel, a kid in the upper years of high school. He was taking time off from everything in his preparation for upcoming travel to Israel with his brother, a medic in Afghanistan. Joel was reserved, but kind and easy to be around, and made a deliberate effort to host while I was around. Josiah, the little brother was around shortly, with his good mannered young charm. The father, Jerry, who had picked me up in their truck, wanted to hear all about the travels, and to tell how proud he was of the kids and their own adventures.

I got a quick shower and ate a late dinner at their table (mashed potatoes ribs, and veggies) being further introduced to the company. With a belly full and a plate finally emptied, one of Joel's friends came over and they wanted to smoke pipes. I was happy to join for a post-meal smoke. We went out all barefoot on asphalt with our pipes, tobacco, matches, and lighters to walk the streets in the yellow lamp lit dusk. We went into the neighborhood night, sharing all fashion of our traveling pasts, Joel telling of his times from beginning in Jordan, to the ancient mystic Petra, Israel and his brief stint in Paris in the end, with impromptu explorations and the chance fortunate acquaintances that travel necessarily introduces.

Next day was without much event, morning writing, then got out in the late afternoon, Joel treating me to a burrito, and then off to a bookstore for more writing and back for dinner. I'd gotten sunburned a couple of days before from riding with my shirt off too long in the unimpeded peak heat of summer solstice, so my back now looked like the swollen ripe inside of a watermelon, and all this rest time was greatly appreciated by me. That night it was back to the soft, quiet bed to sleep a long, dreamless, pristine sleep, meaning for morning departure being entirely rested and recomposed.

Awoke and had a breakfast, saying goodbye to everybody as they left off to their chores, except Teresa who was staying in for the day. I busied around the room gathering my things and tidying the bed. After getting my bags together, and pulling my bike to the living room to go, Teresa sat me down in the wooden chair for a final goodbye talk. She reclined beside me in a padded armchair with the yellow light from the lamp between us falling golden on her face. Noon light blazed behind from the patio's glass door, circling around her figure in a bright, radial, glowing blaze like Our Lady of Guadalupe as she squashes the serpent underfoot. She told me her story of a sullen, godless childhood and the revelations revealed to her in the time of need, imparting to me the root, the source, of all her eternal immortal joys, being all concerned about my afterlife, and reaching over to touch softly my arm as she discoursed. I took it all in quiet confidence, sitting enthralled, and listening about the myriad miracles, and angels, and tongues. When she'd finished the memoir she said to me, “Now I've fire-hosed you before you go on continuing your adventure.” I recognized the reverence in the story and was glad to hear, but in my mind I thought, “Am I the only one not so worried bout my soul?”

I thanked her for everything as she'd really given to me more deeply than I could ever have asked, and she said she was glad and hoped I had gained from it.

After a midsummer's ride north I was in Independence Iowa while a storm blew in, pattering rain falling down through the air, each bead refracting a late white sun against dark blue balloon clouds rolling from the east. A pickup truck pulled up by me while I was riding through a park looking to get out of the rains. A thin old guy smiling in its window, from a big wild beard, called out and motioned me over. He asked where I was from with a bike so packed and I told him my story in brief form. The building right by us was his repair shop, he said. He invited me in, pulled his truck around, lifted up the garage door from the entrance, and then he introduced himself to me as Hoskie. In this little town, home of all his life, he did tree trimming and stump removal, and all other various handyman tasks for all the folk. The side of his truck declared, “We get high legally!” in reference to the tree climbing.

“Like that? I thought it was a good one.” he laughed. I asked about the town and if he had any place to recommend for camping free since it was getting late. “If you're out on a ride and like to see interesting things, you know there's a whole clan of Amish people just north a-here, if you want to go out that way and make a quick stop for some sights.” I was interested and he said he could give a brief tour of the route to me via truck drive and then I'd know the way. He was incredibly amiable so I hopped in the passenger seat.

We pulled out along outside town dirt roads as the sun was lowering dangerously in the west meaning I'd have no time before full dark to ride here after the return drive. Throughout the drive Hoskie introduced me to the nuances of small town Independence life, talking about the locales we passed and inserting his dirty jokes and anecdotes from a bottomless supply. In courteous Midwestern manner, he'd lift up two fingers from the wheel to wave to every car going in the other lane.

He pulled out a menthol, lit it, and cranked his window down a crack. “Hafta watch for cops round here. They really got a stick in their ass, but I've gotten away with some crazy stuff. Oh, now here's a story for ya: I got drunk once and saw the chief's car was unlocked, so, naturally, I decided to take a little joyride in it before anybody'd caught up with me,” He took a drag off the cigarette, ashed out the window and chuckled with a grin, “I told 'em, 'I was just checkin to make sure it ran alright, guys.' They know me well, and somehow I got away with it without any trouble, too. Can you believe that?” I did believe him. Then seeing the town cemetery on the left, he pointed it out with habitual sarcasm, “Oh, everybody's just dying to get in there.”

We came to the Amish country road and then began retracing our path. On the right Hoskie saw a couple guys out front of a house who he knew, slowed, and pulled down their dirt drive. Sitting in the truck we each had a couple beers with the company of the two farmers, who were both already evening drunk. With flowing upward inflections punctuating every sentence in their native Iowan dialect, they exchanged their own dirty jokes and weekday current events among us. A little dog and kid pranced around each other in the front yard under the dimming dusk light, and the farmer's wife yelled out from the yellow-filled front window, “Supper's ready!” so we started out the driveway and back toward town again.

No light remained in the sky. Stepping out from the truck into the shop, Hoskie apparently recognized the predicament I was in and in a moment had invited me to follow down the street to his house for a grilled dinner with the family, which I did. I felt somewhat stuck and was anxious, still being bedless in a dark town unknown, but was grateful all the same for his hospitality. We sat in the living room after dinner watching TV, me tentatively resting my bones. His son Josh, who earlier I'd been introduced to cashiering at a gas station, stepped into the flickering light through the square door frame of the living room and asked if I wanted to stay the night at his place. Outside my own intention, the night's events flowed seamlessly from one to the next and I now had a couch for the night, all my restless worries instantly dissolving like tiny salt grains in a vast uncontrived, recalcitrant sea.

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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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