The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America (25 page)

A moment later I hear footsteps. I look up.

“Hey,” Rex says.

“Hey.”

We make small talk in the dark. There’s an awkward silence.

Finally Rex says, “Where you sleepin’ tonight?”

“I figured I might lie down right here,” I say, patting the table.

“Well, you’re welcome to come upstairs and sleep, if you don’t mind sleepin’ on the couch.”

A man is talking on the payphone when we reach the market.

“Hey, Rex,” he says.

It’s got to be a tough situation for Rex. Lots of folks saw us sitting together on the curb. It’s a small town. There’s bound to be talk. I admire Rex’s kind gesture.

The front door of his apartment lacks a knob. Rex fishes a key from his pocket and unlocks a padlock.

Inside he ties a string from the door handle to a nail on the jamb. A double-barreled shotgun rests against the wall.

“It ain’t fancy,” he says. “Plop down where you like.”

A threadbare rose-colored sofa and matching chair face each other in the cramped living room. I sink into the chair, which has popped a couple of buttons.

Rex disappears behind a wall into the kitchen. I hear the microwave run. He walks back out and hands me a cup of tea. When I hear the microwave start up again, I figure it’s for Rex’s tea. But he returns and hands me a mini sausage pizza. When he comes out of the kitchen for the last time, he carries tea and pizza for himself.

Rex flips on a portable TV sitting on a table in the corner of the room. A documentary on aviation plays on TNT. Neither of us pays any attention. We quietly munch on our pizzas, our feet nearly touching in the space between the furniture.

The walls are crowded with sketches and paintings of Native Americans. Among them hang framed collections of arrowheads. Rex’s grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee. Her hair grew to the floor, plus another two feet. She raised Rex from the age of three, when his mother passed away. Rex’s father was always off chasing work. Rex’s grandmother died when he was 13, and he was on his own.

“I notice you was writin’ down there,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m keeping track of where I’ve been.”

“I had a heart attack here ’bout four years ago that set me down for a good while. I wrote a story then.”

He rummages through a pile of papers on the floor beneath an end table.

“I ain’t got a good education,” he says, handing me the object of his search. “You probably can’t even read it.”

I unfold the two sheets of white ruled paper. “The Boy,” as the story is titled, is written with smudged pencil in a child’s scrawl. The grammar and spelling are awful, yet it’s a touching tale about a poor lad of 10 in New York City. As snow falls on him, he stares enviously through a department store window at a display of shoes. A rich woman in a chauffeur-driven limousine pulls up to the curb and asks the boy what he’s doing. He tells her he’s asking God for a new pair of shoes. The woman takes the boy into the store and buys him a new pair of shoes. The story ends when the boy asks the woman, “Are you God’s wife?”

When Rex’s grandmother died, he dropped out of the eighth grade to find work. “I know that’s why I haven’t been able to get better payin’ jobs.” As a father, he made sure all eight of his kids graduated from high school.

Rex removes a gold chain from around his neck. A gold arrowhead dangles from the end. He twirls the necklace around his finger and then unwinds it, over and over.

He says he has no regrets.

“If I die tonight, well, I’ve had a full life. I’ve had good things and I’ve had bad things.”

“What bad things?” I say.

“Oh, just bad things.”

Rex slumps on his side on the couch, as if it’s uncomfortable for him to sit upright. He slips one of his rough hands under his suspenders and holds his belly.

“I lost a girl,” he says. “She was fifteen months old. I get up one day to go to work. I picked her up from her crib to set her in bed with her mother like I always did. I noticed she wasn’t crying like she usually was. It was four in the morning, dark still. I went out to the kitchen to make some coffee. Then I heard a sound like nuthin’ I’ve heard in this life. Jo was screamin’, ‘Nancy’s dead!’”

Rex pauses.

“She had an enlarged heart. We never knew. It just burst in her sleep. Jo clutched that girl for four hours. Sat in a rocking chair, wouldn’t let no one near her. Finally, the doctor came over. He talked to her ’til he was able to get up close to her. Then he give her an injection in the arm and she went to sleep. Then we took the baby over to the coroner’s office. Jo never did get over that. I kinda think she blamed me for it.”

Rex shifts his weight on the couch. He stares at the far wall, but I don’t think he’s looking at arrowheads.

I’m lost for words. Before I say anything, he starts in again.

“The worst thing that ever happened to me, I was over in Milton. I was in the coffee shop, drinking coffee. A man come in from up near Indianapolis. He had a little girl ’bout three. Cute thing with brown hair. She was bouncing around the restaurant like a rubber ball. He come over to talk to me. Says his wife is divorcing him. Says he won’t ever get to see his little girl again. ‘No, they can’t do that,’ I tell him. ‘Yes they can,’ he says. He says, ‘Will you do me a favor?’ I tell him, ‘Well, if I can.’ He says, ‘Follow me ’cross the bridge into Indiana.’ So I get in my truck and follow him over the bridge. Then ’bout halfway ’cross, he stops his car. Before I know it, he’s got his little girl clutched in his arms, and he jumps off the bridge into the river.”

I feel my cheeks and ears tingle.

“They dragged them up before dark,” Rex continues. “His arms were still wrapped around the girl.” Rex hugs the air to show me. “Boy, I’ve seen that picture a thousand times. It’s been twenty years and I still have nightmares. If he’da told me he was gonna kill himself, I don’t know if I woulda stopped him from jumping off that bridge or not. But I’da saved that girl. When you lose one a your own…” he begins, then trails off. “I saw him stop and I figured he was comin’ back to tell me somethin’. I didn’t even have time to get outta my truck. Why he had to kill that girl, I don’t know. I’ve played it over in my mind a thousand times, tryin’ to see what I coulda done dif’rent. I don’t know why that had to happen.”

I had taken Rex for a simpleton. But now I see that his simple ways mask a deep soul. And because his anguish has come from out of nowhere, his revelations are all the more haunting.

I sit in the chair, numb.

“There are some things in this world that just can’t be explained,” I say, groping for words. “Some things just happen for no good reason. There’s not a thing different you could have done.”

After he goes to bed, I curl up under a blanket on the couch. Rain pelts the window, but I’m dry and safe and warm.

I wonder what the night holds for Rex, if the demons will visit his dreams.

I arrived a stranger in Rex’s humble home and I will leave that way. He doesn’t know I’m traveling without a penny. He didn’t ask what brought me over the bridge today. No need to worry about the ones who make it all the way across.

CHAPTER 34

Rex leaves for work at seven on this Sunday morning. It’s too early and too cold for traveling, so I write in my journal in the lobby of the post office.

A young, gregarious man wearing a tie comes in and offers me a ride to New Castle, 20 miles down the road. He’s the pastor of a church there.

When we reach New Castle, he says I can finish writing in his office above the rectory.

The pastor, Matthew, and his wife, Shelley, check on me an hour later. They ask about my penniless journey. I mention that several kind strangers have been Christians. I see the light go on above Matthew’s head, and I’m soon agreeing to speak to his congregation.

I tailor my speech to the audience. I tell the flock that many of the people who have fed, sheltered and transported me have been good God-fearing folks like themselves.

After the service, the faithful hover around me. I feel a hand dip into my pants pocket. I reach in and pull out a ten-dollar bill. I stare at the money in horror. I press it into the palm of a man with slicked-back hair and long sideburns.

“I can’t take your money,” I say. “I’m doing this trip without a penny.”

He tries to force the money back into my pocket.

As a struggle ensues, another hand slips into my other front pocket. I whirl. I pull out a five and return it to a man in a powder blue suit.

“I can’t accept money,” I say.

I back away from the two men, who keep lunging at me with the bills.

My retreat is interrupted by a third hand, bony and veiny, that stuffs a twenty in my shirt pocket.

“No, please, I can’t take it,” I tell the old woman.

“But you’ve got to stay
somewhere
,” she says.

During my talk, I told the crowd several times that I’m traveling penniless. Either they didn’t understand or they didn’t believe me. Or maybe they took my allusions to the kindness of Christian strangers as a personal challenge.

They keep coming at me. I back away between the pews, deflecting the laying on of moneyed hands. I want to run, but I’m cornered. I’m the lion being fed to the Christians.

I manage to escape penniless only after agreeing to accompany the congregation next door to a coffee shop.

I take a seat next to a perky choir member named Tammy. She and the others order pumpkin pie. She asks if I want lunch. I’m hungry but I decline. I’m sure many of the churchgoers thought I took the money. I don’t want to appear greedy, like some fraudulent televangelist. When Tammy persists, I accept a piece of pumpkin pie.

A man walks up and slaps me on the back.

“Be sure he eats some lunch,” he says to the table.

“We offered him lunch,” Tammy says, “but he wants pie.”

Someone introduces me to Dean, a teddy bear of a man. He’s not from the same church; he’s a Lutheran. He just happens to be in the restaurant.

“We’ve got a guest room that doesn’t get used often enough,” he says.

And just like that, the question of tonight’s lodging is settled.

We drive out to Dean’s place, where I meet his beautiful wife, Marla, a florist, and their adorable nine-year-old daughter, Emily. They live in a house straight out of
Southern Living
magazine, rich with antiques and a mahogany baby grand piano.

Dean is an executive with a large Kentucky corporation. His ancestors settled in the area two centuries ago. Many of New Castle’s buildings bear his family name.

Dean is a man in love with his town. In his spare time he heads a one-man beautification project. He has planted thousands of flowers and trees in the last five years. He strings lights every Christmas in the town square. He started a local harvest festival, which now draws 10,000 people per year. He and Marla also give money and cars to several of the area’s disadvantaged college students.

“I grew up here, I was educated here, and I just want to give something back to the community,” he says.

Dean plans to spend this Sunday afternoon planting flowers on the courthouse lawn. I offer to give him a hand.

We stop for sodas at the convenience store.

“Hey, Dean,” says a fellow by the refrigerator.

“Hey, Buddy,” Dean says. “Stay out of trouble. And if you get in trouble, give me a call. I’ll help you out.”

“That go for me too, Dean?” says another man in the store.

“Yeah, Bobby, as long as you don’t cost me too much.”

I like how Dean knows everybody. Back in the truck, I tell him I’m doing my best to travel through small towns.

“Television tells us that New York and L.A. and Miami are America,” Dean says. “That’s not America. This is the real fabric of the country out here.”

We kneel in the dirt, tearing up the dying petunias around the courthouse lawn. As Dean digs holes with a trowel, I drop in tulip bulbs, alternating rows of red and gold.

“I’m not building a monument to myself, but I’d like to think that I can leave something that will outlast me,” Dean says. “If I died this winter and never got to see these tulips come up, I hope that folks would see these bulbs and say, ‘Hey, I miss Dean.’”

When we get back to the house, Marla and Emily have gone to church for choir practice. Dean and I wash up and drive into town for dinner.

We discuss religion over plates of shrimp and twice-baked potatoes.

I ask Dean the eternal riddle: Why does God bother putting us here if there’s only one right answer?

“You know, you’re so nice, Mike. I haven’t heard you say a negative thing. You don’t swear. You’re sincere and personable. It’s hard for me to believe that’s possible without you being a Christian. “

He looks genuinely puzzled. I feel the Bible Belt cinch a little tighter around my journey.

Marla and Emily aren’t back from church when we get home. I pull my clothes from the dryer and fold them in the guest room. Dean walks in.

“Can I give you a hug?” he says.

Earlier at the coffee shop, Tammy hugged me when she stood to leave. When Dean and I were driving around later, he asked if that surprised me. Yes, I said, a little. “I’m a hugger,” Dean said. I let the remark pass then. Now I wish I hadn’t.

Some men are huggers. I’m a firm handshake kind of guy.

Dean may hug everyone he meets. It’s probably no big deal. But because I’ve known him all of six hours, I’m not positive about his intentions, and I can only think the worst.

I tighten as Dean embraces me. It’s a simple hug, over soon and free of anything untoward. Yet it changes everything. I no longer feel comfortable in Dean’s house. I hope his family gets home soon.

Later, when Marla and Emily have gone to bed, Dean returns to my room. I’m sitting on the bed, setting the alarm clock.

Dean sits down beside me. He wears long underwear and a red V-neck sweater.

“Let’s pray, Mike.”

He takes my hand in his and prays aloud. I can’t hear the words because I’m distracted by the sight of my hand held tightly to Dean’s leg. Dean squeezes and rubs my fingers as he prays.

Again, I fail to see the innocence of his gesture.