September 2004

“Tell everyone I love them very much,” I say, as the car slows to a stop, and I slip my arms through the straps of my backpack. I’m crying. I can’t help but cry. For five years I’ve collapsed in tears, at times like this, and spoken in this broken voice. Times of wreck, and censure. Times when I’ve transgressed and can’t defend myself. I duck out of the shotgun seat and turn towards the highway.

Highway 64 West. Lewisburg, West Virginia. The highway sign is black and white and shield-shaped, meaning it’s an interstate but not a major one, meaning I won’t risk arrest if I hitch-hike or tread its edges.

I am finished. I am history. I am blasted, ripped, bled, leveled. I have my clothing and ten dollars. I have one hour before dark. I have faith in my thumb. I turn east, in the dim gloom, and raise it to whoever will come.

After hitching rides with a Christian woman and a hunting man, and a twitchy young father who gives me his daughter to hold, then runs over a cat, I get stranded at an on ramp. Only two pairs of headlights pass in a half hour, and those on the frontage road. The show is over at this exit, at this time of night, in this scant part of this hard state. I stand beneath two signs, both iridescent green with white letters. One points towards “Pax,” the other towards “New Hope.” In the chill of late September I laugh without joy at the joke.

I recall my first rule of hitch-hiking: Don’t wait more than ten minutes. I’ve broken it, and I’m cold. I figure I might not cover much distance tonight, but at least if I walk I won’t freeze. And I’ll be closer to Charleston—closer to the warmth of California—by morning.

I’m not sure if he’s stopping for me. He might be pulling his truck over on the shoulder to check his brakes or his tires and I do not wish to climb the steps to his cab only to find I am not his purpose. I trail the guard rail to the passenger door but avert my eyes from his rearview mirror so he won’t know I’m hoping. I know I am his purpose when the door opens from the inside.

He is round and middle-aged. He is the kind of man I would expect to stop for me—out of fatherly regard or lascivious interest. I don’t know which yet so I step up on the running board to interview him.

“How far are you going?” I ask.

“Parkersburg tonight,” he says, “and on to Atlanta in the morning.”

“Are you going through Charleston?” I ask.

“Yep, Charleston’s just about an hour down the road, then Parkersburg’s another couple hours north.”

“Okay,” I say. No creepy vibes so far. I climb into the cab.

“You can put your bag in the back,” he offers.

“That’s okay,” I say, stowing it at my feet. “I’d rather keep it with me.”

My backpack holds twenty-five hundred cubic inches. I’ve had it for seven years, since my summer job in Idaho. I brought it with me when I moved to the farm in North Carolina and then—with everyone—to the new place in West Virginia. I’ve held onto it. There aren’t many things I’ve held onto. It’s filled, but not stuffed: I prefer leaving things behind to wrestling with zippers. Of my time at the farm, the five years past, I’ve taken no markers, no reminders. I’ve relinquished my collection of “Stop Bitching Start a Revolution” shirts. I’ve surrendered my Scriptures Book. I’ve cut the embroidered patch (purple and orange and gold, lovingly sewn) from my jacket. I’ve removed the amulet from my neck. I carry nothing to show where I’ve come from, nothing that might raise troubling questions. Every item I have with me could have come from somewhere else.