consolationland

The house was a plain white clapboard, built in 1930 give or take, insulated with a layer of horsehair embedded in the plaster. At $250 per month, my studiolette was a cozy work/sleep room lined up with a smaller kitchen and smaller bathroom, all with tall narrow windows facing north. For bathing, there was a claw-foot tub with a convenience called a Danish — a yard of rubber tubing to hold overhead, fitted to a small outlet for bathwater. The floor had a metal spade-shaped door that could open in winter to let a burst of warm air whoosh through the house every 15 minutes. In summer, air conditioning came from hand-sewed muslin dipped in water and hung over the curtain rods.

This was summer, and no question. My new vegetable garden baked out no matter how much dishwater and tub water I carried outside to pour on the cracked ground; nothing would grow but devil’s claw and very toxic pokeweed. The candles melted. The freezer filled up with ice every day, which I chipped off with a wooden spoon to place inside the warm refrigerator. At least the heat was useful for drying food; I tacked a lot of strings across the kitchen windows, and wove in a carload of fiber-rich daikon radish greens brought from Arkansas upon request by a good pal on an agriculture internship. And at least my quarters didn’t spring the surprises that one charming stone farmhouse did just outside town; a fellow student came downstairs one morning to a wriggling living room floor, where many bitty rattlesnake hatchlings were exploring the brave new world.

We relied on the county bank with its big thermometer outside, and its recorded telephone line with an elated male voice proclaiming time and temperature. The radio gave us the Comfort Index, like a wind chill factor in reverse, calculating just how miserable we felt. It also broadcast Livestock Emergency Alerts, letting farmers know when to get the cows in the barn, or out of it, or whatever cows need to cool off. Storm warning time was late afternoon, when NPR ran an especially popular show (probably “All Things Considered,” but I’ll check and make sure). I switched on public radio only to get bulletins when the sky turned green, so to this day its perky theme music makes me edgy.

Still, the town had real summer charm. To the south we had a fire watch tower with room for conversation and lunch on top, and a view of fields for miles around. On the north, the broad sand river levee was perfect for strolling and picking watercress. On the west, the hilltop had a tiny historic cemetery, a good place to admire sunsets and watch clouds of fireflies and eat mulberries off some nearby trees. The wonderful downtown history museum was a cultured refuge with a gazebo garden and winding path of vintage bricks. The central playground had a vintage locomotive for the kids to climb and scream on, and a popular library. The campus carillon tower played chimes on a hillside blooming with clouds of redbud trees every spring. There were evening band concerts in the park for picnicking families and friends.  Local artisans produced a tempting array of sprouts, fresh-baked sourdough breads, and tofu made the same day; one of them opened a popular micro-brewery in the fully restored historic opera house. The politically progressive food coop sold just-picked produce, some of it from their own garden. Their free giveaway box supplied many of my clothes and household goods; even their compost heap offered perfectly usable items for dinner.

The townspeople made the best of those arduous summers. The 4th of July parade included a tame llama, and food coop cashiers in an annual display of synchronized shopping-cart marching. A dear talented buddy had a fine time hanging half out his window to record severe thunder for his brilliant computerized music compositions. The ladies at the retirement home got in a friendly bet about whether it really was hot enough to “fry an egg on the sidewalk”; they made the front page of the city paper by cracking an egg on the pavement and then laughing at its behavior. The doughnut shop flashed a neon sign at 3:00 a.m., when the fresh batches were put on the racks, and students would throng in the door for a snack in the cool of the wee hours. The local Buddhist temple chose 3:00 a.m. too for their three-hour Sunday service; their little Zen Center house offered rides to anyone who called, and starting at 1:00 the monks in their feed caps would set out in a truck to pick up people for meditation. One afternoon some fellow students brought a truck inner tube to a pond and went swimming. To enjoy the breeze they sat on their towels just as they were for the drive back into town. Then at the drive-in burger stand they wished a little late that they’d put on a stitch or two before pulling up below the cute girl at the microphone.

One third of my income that year (the total annual gross was $6,700; I just checked the tax return) came from proofreading science journals. Each author submitted a typed manuscript, and the publishing house covered it with format markings, then reprinted it as a glossy galley proof. Proofreaders had to make sure that every marking was correctly carried out in the galleys, and complied with the detailed style sheet for that particular journal. For the sake of accuracy, we were not allowed to visually compare the two texts. Instead we had to read the author’s pages out loud into a tape recorder, describing every editing mark: “Capitalize this letter D in mid-word” or “end boldface Courier 10 point text here” or “add opening double curly braces.” Then we listened to our taped recital of editing instructions while reading and marking up the galley with soft red pencils. We were paid a base rate for the job, plus a 12 cent bonus every time we reported a mistake. (One astute proofreader realized that in an article of numeric tables, every last zero had been type-set as a capital letter O. That jackpot must have kept her in 3:00 a.m. doughnuts for a long time.)

The topics included mathematical calculations of crystal structures, prolific chemical equations with calculus symbols and Greek letters, and one about a type of bird which hatches chicks and then carries the chick droppings long distances in its beak, so that prowling predators would follow these little clues away from the nest. (Researchers followed the parents on many housecleaning trips, graphing the time of day, distance, and direction of all droppings dropped.) Another expedition team found that genetic distinctions within one species of spider could be ascertained easily by measuring the thickness of the individual hairs on the spider’s legs.

To save time and to stay awake through all those formulas and equations and literature citations, I devised representational sound effects as shorthand. High falsetto meant italic, growl was boldface, Donald Duck voice was underline. I worked out punctuation taps, yips, beeps, tongue clicks, glottal stops, whistles, and trills. I should have kept the tapes; they sounded like Science Hour with Spike Jones.

In the noonday sun, that horsehair plaster could do only so much insulating and no more. I’d have to take breaks to wet the muslin curtains, sip some roasted brown-rice tea, and take a nap on the wood floor wrapped in a wet towel with both feet in a bowl of water. When the heat was too much for working, I’d recreate the Russian sauna effect. I’d ride my bicycle hard up the main hill, come home, draw a hot hip bath of daikon radish greens (said to help expel toxins, but who knows?), then get out and wrap up in a sheet and blanket and pass out on the floor for a good sweat. Twenty minutes later I’d wake up refreshed, rinse off the sweat under The Danish, throw the water and greens on the garden, wash the blanket and sheet to hang at the window, and pour some more rice tea. (Note: I would never try a wacky extreme stunt like this in a heat wave now, and neither should you.)

Did we mention the neighbors?

They moved in as tenants of the stately Victorian house next door. That summer there were 6 or so students, strapping he-men with optional shirts and shoes. Regularly I gave a friendly nod or wave while passing the house, and tried saying hello a few times, just in the capacity of a neighbor using the same neighborhood. But it was like a squirrel trying to hail the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales; they never responded or seemed to know I was there. Instead their gusto level ran to drinking wagers, stereo parties, auto revving, sports on TV, sunbathing on the roof with the radio, and visitors day and night who tended to drive or walk by, shouting long complex messages instead of knocking on the door and going inside.

All my windows faced their south windows 20 feet away, offering the full gamut of personal sound effects. At one 3:00 a.m. party, someone turned the stereo to the repeat setting for a couple of hours of a new Janet Jackson hit. The decibel level was actually enough to ricochet distortion against the houses across the street. I thought of calling the police, but couldn’t hear my own dial tone and figured the precinct dispatcher wouldn’t hear anything but “Nasty! Ugh. Nasty boys. Deet! Deet! Doodley-Doot & Dee Dee.”

To be fair, the fellas might have a blog today about their stress living next door to an arachnophile who talked, chirped, and beeped all day long in various voices all to herself about leg hair on spiders. Maybe it drove them to drink. Except, their windows faced four sides, and mine faced one. Besides, they were bigger and more loud.

You already see where this is going.

In following their bliss, the boys and their sports cheers, peppery language, and other visceral sound bites were drowning out my recorded hours of painstaking falsetto, tongue clicks, and whistle editing code. One especially hot night while testing a folk remedy for fever (= place green-leaf compresses on the sufferer’s brow), I found that a 60 minute recording of numerals was unusable because of ambient racket. Soon I was weeping hopelessly over my lost numeric tables, pacing the room with a lot of dripping cabbage on my head.

I prayed steadily over this all along, remembering to “Give thanks in all things.” After all, Corrie and Betsy ten Boom did just that in The Hiding Place. They offered praise even for the fleas in the concentration camp barrack, and later learned it was the fleas that had repelled the guards away from their Bible study. So, I began raising every candid noise as an offering, every time. That meant prayer while tape-recording with my head and upper body and tape deck under the futon for soundproofing; prayer during a rare quiet stroll one Sunday morning after a keg party, through hundreds of styrofoam cups rotating all over the street, bouncing pok-pok-pok in the breeze; and, prayer while chopping carrots at suppertime one day.

The carrot greens were washed and ready to strip from their stems and mince for the skillet. The carrots were lined up on the wood cutting board. During some TV match of the century next door, with goals scored and heated suggestions that the referee be given what-for and heave-ho, I was murmuring a prayer while dragging my tired dispirited mind through one even angled knife stroke, then the next even stroke, then the next.

And then, to the rhythm of the prayer, the strokes added up to some kind of rhythm and symmetry and rightness. The knife cuts took no effort at all. It felt as if there were no I, exerting my own force on the knife. Instead, the energy of the sunlight in the window flashed through the knife and then flowed through the carrot pieces. All the elements — light, metal, vegetable, wood — expressed their essences in freedom and balance. For an instant my mind let go of the havoc next door. And then a whole new prayer came to mind: “Thank you for letting me hear my neighbors. Because some day, one of those boys will say something that I need to know.”

Right then, two things happened.
One, the light from the window took on a striking soft gold glow on the maple cutting board, the beautiful saffron tones of the carrots, and the sparkling water drops in the feathery emerald greens.
Two, next door everything fell absolutely silent.

“HEY! Hey they interrupted the –” a voice protested, then instantly fell to a thoughtful mumble. “Whuzzat? ‘Tor-na-do warn-ing, seek shelter immediately.’ Huh.”

I gasped, flicking on the radio in my dash to the front porch. Outside, there was no breath of wind. The birds fell silent. That fond gold light took on a brass jaundice tint while the clouds sagged in darkening quilted patches. Sure enough: the local weather broadcast announced a tornado in air, heading toward town.

I turned off the gas stove and radio, yanked the plug from the tape recorder, and bolted to the dark storm cellar. There I perched with pounding heart on a broken wheelbarrow. We had a bit of hail, then a soft rain. Then the sun came out and the birds began to sing in a fresh breeze, so I tiptoed upstairs and looked around, wiping cobwebs off my face. The storm front was already racing away. My spike of fright melted in an endorphin rush of elation. I kicked off my sandals and drew in the energy of the melting hailstones through my feet, breathing deeply, marveling at the delicate clearing sunset.

My neighbors had taken the safety warning seriously by seeking shelter on their roof, with binoculars and a couple of six packs. The gold light flowing through my carrots was the same gold as the clearing sky, pouring itself over the boys and their flaxen rumpled hair, their tan skin, even the frosty beers in their hands.

Then, it all seemed so simple. Their candid noises, wakeful nights, raised glasses, pounding stereo, girls shrieking with hilarity — in this fallen post-Eden world, it was just one more human striving toward a paradise birthright of celebration, communion, and pleasure. We were all going to the Kingdom.

“Thank you,” I called up to them, putting down my sandals. “You could have saved my life.”
They stared down at me.
“What?” said one of them. “I’ve never even seen you before.”
“The special bulletin. ‘Tornado warning, seek shelter.'”
They blinked.
“What were you doing inside our house?” said one, curling his lip. (How drunk was I last night?)
I pointed to my room. “I’ve never been in your house. But those are my windows, there; I was fixing supper.”
“You heard me say that? Through the window?”
Their jaws dropped. So did the beer cans, nearly.
I just stood there, rapt in how beautiful they were. All that life force! How glorious!

Folding my hands I bowed to them and took my sandals inside.

Right after that, a letter came in the mail. My department on campus awarded me a summer scholarship for Polish Language. It paid more money than proofreading. But, there was one condition: to study full time, I had to give up all outside employment. So I finished the spider leg hair article, and the Press was very kind about giving me a two-month break. That meant leaving the studiolette behind each day for an air conditioned library and language lab, and edifying chats with kindly faculty in their pleasant shady offices.

And after that evening, noise from next door just made me think “Oh, they sound in good health, God love ’em.” Something shifted on their side too. It’s not like they started bringing me pie and Awake! Magazine. But the guys moved the TV room to the other side of the house. When the young ladies came over, they went up to the gable rooms and started closing the windows and even pulling down the shades. The parties ended. One of the guys came out one day and clipped the hedge. Even their outbursts were different: “Oh, sugar!” “What the Fritz are you trying to do?” “Well, ferrr — Christmas sakes!” or my favorite, a roar of “GAAAAAAAAAAAAA Jack, that keg fell right on my shoe, I wish you would be more careful!”

It was raining the last day of my summer term. I came home and saw that the stately Victorian was empty. It was purchased by two earnest women investing in a fixer-upper. For their fixing-upping they rose early each day, and we exchanged waves as I headed to my new additional campus job teaching English as a Second Language.

“But what about the carrots?” someone will ask. They turned out fine. Bit of sesame oil, garlic, shake of tamari & ginger. Not bad.

“We called you The Fish,” he told her, when the storm was over.

He was one of six bright young grad students with privileged credentials and gorgeous English who came a long long way to the U.S. for a winter internship. She was the co-ed in campus housing next door who saw them arrive. She knew about these distinguished awaited university guests. She imagined how homesick her new fellow students must be in a different culture. So she left the floor mopping to run out into the wind in her t-shirt and jeans, calling greetings in their language. She stayed to help them and the moving men unload their van. That evening she baked them an apple pie and delivered it to their Reception desk. A week later when the youngest one of them had flu, she brought her specially concocted hot golden chicken-vegetable broth in a big jar wrapped in plastic bags, and left that for their unimpressed building manager. When the grocery store showed Bicentennial spirit by selling tiny cherry-sapling sticks for Washington’s Birthday, she planted one at their curbside out front while the Security guards watched through the window. She did not not stop to think that in most countries planet-wide, a modest decent girl does not tote moving boxes for strange men, deliver home cooking to their door, or dig up their garden dirt while singing Shaker hymns. But the interns did. They showed a range of reactions whenever the group met her at seminars and shops. The youngest one in particular always hailed her with humorous pleasantries; the oldest would keep his distance, looking pensive and saying nothing at all.

Then the six interns were included as guests of honor at an awards ceremony in Alumni Hall. For the occasion her roommates staged a cosmetic intervention to dress up her image. They teased and moussed her hair and decked her out in their makeup, perfume, and a sleeveless slit-side clingy silver gown.

She felt off-center in all that array, so she spent the ceremony evening near the auditorium wall beside a potted palm with her usual khaki knapsack and best brown cardigan. But her roommates were right: she was in fact noticed. The American lads from her building got to bantering with the youngest intern and some guests from his country, all about the escalated eagerness of her new vamp costume. One quip led to another, in a chain of assumptions that complicated her life for the next several months. After the players left the country she pieced together the situation, and salvaged the one good memory: an ally that she didn’t expect.

But behind the potted palm, she heard just enough. She heard her hospitable overtures valued like the fortune cookie at a feast, a party favor to crack open and toss as a mistranslated joke. In 1976 she didn’t know that young men might like to compete in thinking up  off-handed remarks about girls when they don’t know who is listening. She didn’t know that once the guffaws died down, her own peers in post-Woodstock America really gave very little hoot about her welcome wagon hobby. But she did live by the tradition that a girl’s crowning gem is her irreplaceable Good Name, and that night she went home believing that hers was lost forever.

Her well-meaning roommates, who thought the Good Name idea was so much piffle, tried to cheer her melancholic gloom with teasing, pep talks, scolding, and hot brownie sundaes. But for the rest of the winter while the ripples rocked the rumor mill, she stayed quiet and subdued, mostly at home. Above all, she dropped any contact with the new neighbors. Coming and going, she even walked the long way round the block to avoid seeing their building or being seen by them.

On a spring night she got off the bus with her commuter reading and knapsack, and trudged uphill to the apartment. At the home stretch, along a brick wall running for several blocks, she broke into a run ahead of a thunderstorm rolling in from the south. A car swooped in beside her. She recognized the driver as the pensive laconic oldest intern. She darted behind his car to run across the street.

Other drivers honked at him to move along. Lightning cracked across the sky.
“Sister!” He shouted through the thunder, waving her toward the car, and threw open the passenger door.
She hesitated a moment while the first hail stones hit the ground.
He drew something from his jacket pocket, held it overhead out the window.
And that clinched it.

“This isn’t looking good,” he apologized as she jumped in and they took off. “Might as well drop you at the — hold on!” He braked (throwing the back of his hand out in front of her) as traffic stopped.  Fire trucks seesawed through the street behind them. The sky turned yellow-green. Hail hammered and bounced on the windshield. The wind rocked the trees and electrical wires.
“Hello,” he murmured, glancing over his shoulder. He took a sharp turn off the main street and up the driveway to the Cathedral. Tapping his brakes to test them, he parked in the downwind side of the building. “Shouldn’t drive in this,” he explained, both hands still on the wheel. “It’s a fast moving front; let’s give it five minutes.”
“Good idea, thank you.” She wondered what else to say that wouldn’t sound forward and wrong. “I appreciate it.”

The hail turned to solid rain, blocking out the view through the windshield.
“So. What’s the book?” he asked. “Bus reading?”
“Yes! Here: Wind, Sand, and Stars. Have you read it?”
“Why, St. Exupery.” He read the chapter titles. “Wait — this is Terre des hommes! I read this as a boy. Amazing — imagine finding it again here. What are you doing, reading this?”
“Well, it’s…” She thought it over. “A reminder. How even flying alone — midnight, desert, storm — there’s always some sign in the sky or land to guide us. Even in desolate places. Often something quite beautiful.”
“Navigational philosophy.” He smiled in recognition at some passage on a page, and glanced up at her. “How is it working?”
“I don’t work it very well. As half the school knows by now.”
He gave the book back. “No, that storm blew over. Too.”

The rain eased up just enough for them to see the Cathedral as it loomed on and off, traced by the lightning.
He leaned closer to the windshield, and pointed through the glass as a creature in wet-pointed fur hauled itself up on the pavement and stopped, gaping into the headlights.”Look who’s come to call.”
“Oh!” She swayed a little for a better look through the raindrops. “The biggest rat I’ve ever seen.”
“Rat? No, it’s…” He tapped his forehead. “Ah: Opossum. We’re intruders in his country now, and he’s dazzled by our commotion.” He switched off the headlights, then cranked down his window and leaned out into the rain. “There he goes. He’ll be fine.”

She cranked her window too a bit, listening. “Around the corner of the building, if there’s a wind high up we might hear the bells in the tower.”
“Well. Shall we then?” He turned off the engine and set the emergency brake. They closed the windows, and she groped for the door handle.
Instead of reaching across her he leaped out and opened the door from outside. They sprinted around the corner to stand under an arch, with the city lights sparkling off to one side and the dark gardens sloping down before.

The rain was a calm steady downpour three feet away, a solid falling veil hemming them in.
“Warm enough?” he asked her, preparing to shrug off the jacket.
“Oh, keep it, really — this is fine, it’s nice.”
They listened to the bells breathe long-drawn chimes, shifting tones with the wind. A startled pigeon tumbled from the tower and soared back up again.

Somehow, on their own in the storm, they felt their way into talking.
“You did have me puzzled,” he confided. “The week we arrived, what was that big jar? Were you behind that plan?”
“My special chicken health broth. I told the manager!”
“He just left it at our door. We had no idea. And you keep Washington’s Birthday, the president who never told a lie. Wouldn’t you celebrate by chopping down the cherry trees, instead of putting them in?”
“Had to start somewhere first. Chop it down next year if you like.”
“Can’t, leaving in two weeks. Besides, it’s got little leaves now. Or what’s…? Pre-leaves.”
“Buds. I forgot that tree. It’s alive?”
“It is. Someone might have watered it. A time or two.”

He reached in his jacket pocket again, and this time dropped the rosary in her hands.
“This is wonderful.” She looked it over. “I’ve had this rosary since I was a little girl. I thought it was gone for good.”
“I was going to leave it in an envelope with your name, at your department office. But, I thought you just might cross paths somewhere around.” He did not trouble to mention that he’d kept it to show a few of the regulars around the department (refugee cleaning crew, a reference librarian, night staff at the language lab, friendly priest from the chapel near the classrooms). He made a few discreet inquiries about her. He drew out his willing sources, then when he was satisfied reported his findings to the local elders from his country, people with all the right social clout to intervene with the rest of the interns. Stopping the domino wall of pointless slander cost him trouble and time and a falling-out with his people, and it gained him nothing. But he did it anyway. “And then there you were. Walking wrapped in your storm and your book.”

“Wherever did you find my beads?”
“Alumni Hall.”
“Ah, their evening bag — the clasp was loose. See, I was lost without all my usual pockets; the dress they picked out didn’t have any.”
“Picked out?” He gave her an instant’s lookover, and narrowed his eyes. “Who picked out what?”
“My roommates picked out the dress. They wanted to smarten me up. They tried so hard, I didn’t have the heart to hurt their feelings. But the makeup and clothes, and all? It was their stuff and their idea.”
“Theirs. Goodness.” He whistled in through his teeth and covered his eyes. “Oh dear. Oh I am sorry.”

He took three steps away for a long minute, jingling the car keys and looking out over the gardens. “Neither evil tongues,” he said, “Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall e’er prevail against us.” He came back under the arch again. “Or disturb our cheerful faith, that all which we behold is full of blessings.”

She was pleased and heartened by his words and his lovely style of recitation. This was what people did in his country, she knew — recited great amounts of classical epics and chronicles and narratives, and then quoted them on all occasions. True, it seemed unusual that he’d learned this poem in particular; a young man at the top of his career, bright future ahead, winning awards — what could it mean to him? But she felt happy that he told it to her anyway.

“Star.” He pointed. The clouds were already blowing away. “Navigation for the journey home.”
The rain ended in a soft breeze. The elm trees showered their papery heart flowers over the grass and his windshield.
Hands in his pockets he circled looking at the ground, scuffing his heels in the elm flowers. “Can I go back to my unfortunate portion of the Third World, and remember you as being all right again?”
She thought that over, breathing the fresh storm air. True, a complex mindless practical joke had dis-illusioned her natural admiration of men as men. But instead she had this, a gift of time and an arch of shelter from a man who decided to believe in her. “Yes, thank you.” It was her first spark of understanding that in grace, it is never too late to begin amending a reputation.

Back at the car, he walked around checking around the tires. “Let’s make sure our little friend didn’t come back under the car…”
He opened her door. On the back seat floor he found an ice brush and wiped the elm flowers off the windshield. He handled the emergency brake and headlights and ignition. He drove her to her front entry and pulled in under the driveway canopy, waiting to make sure she got in the lobby door. Then he drove off and soon departed for his country, to a storm of man-made workings far more terrible than weather under any sky. For six young men with ties to America, survival was not likely at all.

Did he have a premonition of it, even then? On their way back he recited the rest of that poem for her.

…Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake.

“We called you The Fish,” he explained, shifting into Neutral. “That’s the name we settled on, to talk about you. It’s the only explanation we could find.”
“Fish as in cold heart?” Her own heart sank a bit.
“Fish as in no passport, no borderland. Foreign more or less, at home more or less; now this country, now that language. But try to pin her down, and she slips through your hands. Silver and gleam. Back to the sea.”

He got out and opened her door. “Farewell. God bless you.”
“And you.” She handed him the book. “I would like you to keep this, if you please. Thank you for talking to me.” She held out her hand, then realized, one instant too late: handshake across genders; her final cultural error.
“Welcome.” He ducked his head, smoothing back his hair. But, he made his decision and reached out, clasping three of her fingertips for a moment before getting back in the car.

“That poem is splendid,” she called. “Did you translate that? One of your classics?”
“One of yours. Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey,” he called back. “Everything I said, and everything I didn’t. Sister.”

The moral of this story is not that people born outside the U.S. are inclined toward bewilderment or learned helplessness. (Rest assured that in most life skills, the majority of people the world over could rocket figure eights all around my level of competence.) This vignette is only an example of a parallel conversation — times when you think and I think that we are describing the same picture, when in fact we are looking at two different views. Parallel conversations are a mainstay of comedy shows and cross-cultural mishaps of all kinds. Onward.

On a clear summer evening the bus rolled along through open fields, heading for our small town. Over wild blackberry and yellow Scots Broom and crying killdeer, the sun was setting in a clear apricot sky.

The town was a resettlement area for a wonderful array of refugee families. For this white Anglo lady, it was a great interest and pleasure to take in the scene among fellow commuters: thin bronzed wiry young men speaking Spanish, women with grocery bags speaking Ukrainian, teenage girls veiled in graceful hijab gesturing with henna-patterned hands speaking Arabic, senior citizens with splendid silver mustaches and Sikh turbans speaking… Punjabi?

The bus driver turned off the highway toward our little transit center on the green, at the heart of the historic downtown. Just then, a police car behind us switched on its siren and pulled us over, parking in front of our bus. A second car with siren came flying, and parked in back. One officer approached the driver’s window. From the first seat I heard him mention the Justice Center, a local landmark several blocks from downtown: “… So, pull in there, in the back parking lot. They’ll just have to walk the rest of the way.”

Later, the neighbors told me why. At our bus terminal, a high school student from out of town came for the first day of the annual Street Fair; he exchanged words with some local teens. One of them had a gun, and the gun went off. Fortunately, no one was hurt. In the alarm and confusion on the street, police took the teenagers in for questioning, diverted the traffic, and roped off the area to watch out for further incidents.

Meanwhile, the police officer boarded our bus. (One of the teenagers smoothed her veil closer, hiding the baby girl in her arms.) The officer tucked his thumbs in his belt and shouted an announcement. “This bus is coming out of service. We’ve cleared the downtown.  Station’s closed off.” He waved his arms at us in a herding gesture. “Last stop will be up here, on account-a the rioting, okay?” He looked around at his listeners, all sitting very silent and very still. “Riots, riots,” he repeated for their benefit, and left the bus.

Passengers whispered from seat to seat. “Riots? Ri-ots?” I crossed the aisle to the Ukrainian women and explained in Russian that the police were there only for our safety, to inform us of “some fighting” downtown. (To my chagrin, the only word for “riot” that came to mind was забастовка, and that applies to the Pugachev Rebellion of the late 1700s.) Then I explained to the Spanish speakers, again having no idea of the correct word, and hoping that peleando was close enough for describing argumentative trouble. The passengers had the same problem I did: “riot” is not a high frequency word in anybody’s language class, and for the other languages on this bus my  vocabulary would be no help at all.

At first, when the sirens first pulled up, the families and friends looked so tense that they might have been wondering whether one of them would be pulled off the bus by these pursuing police. But now it dawned on them all: the squad cars were escorting the lot of us straight up the driveway to the County Jail!

To this day, years later, it’s a heartache to think back on the fear and helplessness that crossed their faces. Most sat stolid and resolute. A few covered their eyes, or leaned their heads on one another’s shoulders, or shook their heads and whispered whatever words came to mind during that three minute trip up the driveway.

Then, we heard a child’s cry from the back of the bus. “Mira, Papi! Look, Dad!” he shouted in Spanish, bouncing in his seat. “He said RIDES! RIDES!” The passengers turned to stare at the little boy, then looked outside. Oh! Clever kid. Rides, sure enough! Once we pulled behind the building, there they were in plain sight — a Ferris wheel and carousel, and a little roller coaster. There was a stage too, with folk singing and dancing, all kinds of amusements and concession stands with ethnic foods, an ice cream truck playing “Bicycle Built for Two,” and all of it up in lights.

The driver braked and flung open the door. He pointed out the way, saying he was sorry for the inconvenience and wishing us all a hearty good night. The passengers burst out with clapping and laughter. “Rides!” they sang out. Imagine, the U.S. police showing up just to tell everybody about a Fair! They scrambled for their groceries and lunch pails and diaper bags and poured out of the bus like it was dry land on Ararat.

I struck out alone into the grass near the train tracks, with goldfinches skimming all around me. Once I turned back for a last look. The travelers, hand in hand with their skipping children, hurried toward the celebration across blackberries and Scotch Broom, under the apricot sky.

His house was safe mooring for curios adrift.

The lineup of objects in his yard was implausible, yet somehow inviting: stone birdbath draped in lemonbalm, marble cherub in peppermint, oakwood church pew in grapevines, cast-iron weather vane in lavender, bas-relief clay tiles in basil, barbells under reeds grown plumed in copper and pearl like the mane of an Assateague pony. All of it was salvage, all of it found or left behind. Even the wind chimes were rescued from the estate sale of neighbor Glorie, who in her housebound final days welcomed his visits to swap plant cuttings and muffin recipes. The yard had such a population of artifacts that one day the letter-carrier was pleased to deliver one letter addressed to “White house on N. Street with all the Stuff in the yard.”

In his weekday life he worked in sales. In the window of his business downtown he managed phones and accounts, always in a fresh looking white shirt and tasteful tie. His savvy sunburnt long-term customers drove up in their dusty pickup trucks, clinching cash on the barrelhead with a gentleman’s handshake. I never stopped in and interrupted, but one time he stepped outside and waved me in to see his new Facsimile Machine. “It can transmit a letter over phone lines,” he explained, writing his name on a slip of paper and then faxing it to himself while I looked on in admiration. “This is going to change the face of modern business.”

But on evenings and weekends he was free, tending a lush little world where timelessness was of the essence. There, edible flowers and flowering fruit twined over stakes and down stone arches or bicycle wheels or hanging baskets or glazed jardinieres or terra-cotta troughs. In the open back doorway, outdoor foliage met indoor flora, parsley and chives, aloe vera, blooming jade. The snug house had clean sloping wood floors and thick walls. And like a Gordon Lightfoot song, it held both ghost and wishing well. The well was the original water source, a disconcerting shaft just visible right between the bathroom baseboards. The ghost was known to neighbors as the previous occupant, who passed away upstairs and sometimes brooded here and there beyond the corner of one’s eye. I never got to see it, but the present owner did and left it respectfully alone to rest in peace.

He was a host in constant systematic motion, from the massive restaurant cast-off gas stove with several ovens to the butcher block cutting board to the seasoned iron skillets to the coffee grinder. Darting from post to post with tools in hand, he’d toss helpful tips over his shoulder and samples in my hand or mouth: yellow cherry tomatoes, river watercress, kumquat marmalade, roasted pecans, hot slabs of bread. He was 40 or so then, average height, trim and fit with muscled shoulders. After a day at work he favored jeans and flannel shirts and a black leather jacket for errands, or no shirt at all for garden chores. He had good chiseled features, thick dark hair just sparking silver, heated blue-green eyes; when he strode past, men and women swiveled for a longer look.

His temperament was simple and generous, with a steady dignity. He greeted everyone on the street, but brushed aside those pacing in sandwich boards with warnings about the fires of hell. (He told me about three years of crop failure back on the family farm, and the day his father could no longer pay his 10% tithe at church. The preacher called the head of the house to the altar, and condemned him in front of the congregation. “Last time I ever set foot in a church,” he concluded. “The day the preacher made my father break down and cry.”) He was always happy to see me. He expected me to drop by any time and help myself to food and books. One evening as I pored through his record collection he said “Stay as long as you desire. I’m off to bed; shut the door when you go.” For me he had only one ironclad boundary; twice when I replied to some kitchen instruction with a cheery “Yes Sir,” he turned on me like a steel trap. “Do not,” he blazed his eyes, “ever call me that.”

“Oh, that’s from Vietnam,” said Niels, my neighbor and good buddy. “He served with honor, but he’ll never talk about it.” It was Niels who introduced us, insisting that I make friends with the gardener of N. Street. One night after a lecture at the public library Niels walked me home, and we passed a white house with a lot of Stuff on the porch. The kitchen light was still on. I was too shy for a drop-by visit at 10:00 p.m., but our host opened the door and waved us right in, taking off his baking mitt to shake hands with me. He plumped the sofa cushions and brought me chicken pate on French bread. Soon the two men with their wine glasses were hornlocked in happy debate at the stereo, about the German lyrics in Carmina Burana.

Host and garden took me in as one more permanent fixture. While he worked out recipes from various gourmet magazines, I helped fetch his utensils and seasonings. We collected and told each other our favorite stories, often about overlooked people with underrated lives, remembrances salvaged and cleaned like eyelet linen spread to bleach on sunny grass. Once I found him in tears listening to a radio commentator; we didn’t catch his name, but judging by the topic it might well have been author Daniel Pinkwater. The narrator took his dying Malamute to the veterinarian, and ordered his dog to Stand-Stay on the table while the vet administered the last injection. He and the doctor were horrified when the staggering animal endured dose after dose of euthanasia drugs. At last, the commentator realized the problem. “At ease, boy. OK to lie down now.” At that command the dog finally collapsed.
My companion put down his mortar and pestle to dry his eyes. “Who doesn’t need that?” he murmured. “Somebody beside us to tell us it’s okay to leave.”

One day we sat on the back steps with our toes near the sprinkler, trimming string beans. He brought me an apron, five vitamin pills, and a spoonful of mead from a stone bottle in the pantry to wash them down. “There’s all your B Vitamins. For depression. Or whatever that is, weighing on your mind these days.”
I shrugged and took the pills with mead and put the apron on. But soon I was staring off at honeybees instead of helping out, and confessed everything on my mind.

I was worried about our friend Niels. A few days before, Niels had made some casual side mention of being gay. It was the shock of my life. As a girl, I’d been warned about that ominous big-city subculture of catcalling men on street corners who throw tantrums and high heels. Thank goodness, so far in life I’d been able to avoid ever running into any of them. But, how could such a thing have happened to our Niels? “Niels is in that research lab night and day,” I reminded my host. “Where did they even find him to put those notions in his head? And if he’s like that, how will he ever get married? Who’s going to take care of him and fix his dinner now?” I was heartsick at the thought of our friend going through life with no wife to pick up his socks or even pat his hair and read the thermometer when he was ill. The truth was that I would have liked the dinner-fixing and sickbay job myself, though Niels was neat as a pin, enjoyed radiant health, cooked beautifully, and in lieu of dinner preferred a green apple and saltines at midnight right at his humming mainframe.

What really distressed me was a sense of guilt. Doctors explained that the cause of Being That Way was aggressive or overbearing female figures in a man’s formative years. Well, that would be me. All year I’d been nudging my pal’s shoulder on the street, snatching off his stocking cap to fling it at him in the snow, even hugging him with backpats last Christmas when he brought me a gift. Clearly my manhandling revolted sweet owlish little Niels and sent him over the edge. And if a wholesome boy like him could consider that exotic lifestyle, then who was safe from it? “What if any other people in my life are like that?” I fretted out loud. “If it happened to him, then no one is safe from turning out that way — not even me.”

My host listened, gazing intently over the ornamental plume reeds into the distance. Then he got up to smoothe a kink in the hose. He broke off a thick handful of blue lavender, warmed its volatile oils with a brisk chafing, and handed it to me. He took back the string beans and trimmed them himself. He picked some cherry tomatoes and sugar peas and lettuce and nasturtium flowers and herb sprigs here and there, then went to dish up the poached salmon and new potatoes. He brought my plate outside. As I ate in the lovely garden, he turned off the sprinkler and settled beside me with the hand barbell, putting in a few thoughtful arm curls. The afternoon calmed in toward day’s end with its fragrance of lavender and warm brioche, sun-flicker through the arbor vines, Glorie’s chimes, bees in balm. 

When the dishes were done he threw on a flannel shirt and grabbed his black leather jacket and the car keys. He drove us over gentle hills through open country, drawing me out of myself with thoughtful insights about the native trees and grasses all along the way to the Lake. He parked on a scenic sunset overlook. He put Mozart on the tape deck. When I started hiccuping with sobs, he put me on his shoulder for a little cry.

Over the next year, he did a lot more listening. When I had questions about relationships he would dole out answers, carefully chosen healthful insights, cooked up in manageable portions for an ignorant panicked 25 year old. They were all about relationships and safety first and excellent self-care and integrity and honesty and honor, and appreciation for small and ordinary blessings on the way. After I grew a few wits of my own and two feet to stand on, he began to share trusting confidences about his own experience of making his way in the world as a young man. It was a privilege to hear his wisdom seasoned with dry yet daffy humor.
But that evening he said only one thing. “Well, whichever way you are, your life is not over. I’m gay, and my life isn’t over; I’m right here.”

That tied my tongue for minutes on end. Him? How did that happen? He grew up in cornfields and served with honor in the Army! Now I had two of them! They even knew each other. What were the odds of that?

Well, one thing I’d always learned is that women mustn’t crowd men like that. But here was I leaning right up to his arm. I clambered upright to give him some proper space. But he opened his jacket and gathered me closer. “I’m right here,” he said again.
And he was. He had a few years to go until his heart attack. Then it was Niels himself, a professor by then back at home overseas, who called me with the news that we’d lost him.

But for that night my host held the pain in someone else’s heart instead. We sat with sunflowers and stars, the hay-sweet breeze off the lake, the far plaint of coyotes and the near creak of leather at my ear.

“How do people sort it all out?” I asked him. “How does anybody find anybody? Where do they start?”

He settled a palm on my hair and gave me my next step. “First? Breathe.”

I’d be happy to give his name here.

But he wouldn’t see the point of that. People who truly help, that’s how they are. If anybody needs them, then they’ll stop, set things straight, move on to the next indicated thing. And if you come back years along to thank them, they won’t remember or see why. To them, it was just walking through their day.

At the time, though, I wanted nothing to do with the guy. In fact, I stalled all the way. But Rick (we’ll call him that) would not let go. “I know you’ve given up the whole idea. And yes, you’ve tried for years,” he conceded. “But you haven’t tried it here. And you will. I’m picking you up at the commuter station. Saturday, 6:30.”

Rick was still in seminary then, in 2001. He was sent to a parish to assist the Pastor. Once he got to know how Father lived and worked, Rick got this bonnet bee that his friend Mary was going to give Confession one more try.

Me, I was through with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, through with trying to tell things to a new priest who would either be annoyed, laugh, or think I was making it up.
So all that week I was upset and apprehensive about Saturday night. Several times I picked up the phone to cancel. But I also composed a comprehensive orderly outline, a script of what to say. And somehow on Saturday I showed up at South Station. For distraction I stopped at Rosie’s Bakery, and bought a splendid chocolate cake as a present for the church rectory.

Proceeding to the train platform, I glanced down at the box and noticed the label. In proud ornate letters, it proclaimed that my gift to my new confessor was called a “Chocolate Orgasm.” Tears sprang to my eyes; what a terrible omen of the state of my soul! Father would be horrified. He’d never agree to see me now! This could be my last chance on earth to make a good confession, and here I’d wrecked it all by being too nervous to read the little sign in a bakery display case.

As the train pulled in to the station, I fled back to Rosie’s, weeping my heart out. The counter staff and customers in line listened in concern and alarm. All they could make of my lamentation was I was in trouble and a priest was mixed up in it somewhere. They absolutely rushed to take back the cake, readily exchanged it for some chocolate chip cookies, gave me coins in change and pats on the shoulder, and waved as I ran for my train. (Rosie’s South Station must many anxious Catholic customers on their way to confession; a check of their website shows that they’ve renamed the cake.)

Father met us at the rectory after evening Mass. He was welcoming and unassuming and calm. Gathering my courage, I piped up with my first concern. “Can we talk outside? Instead of inside a confessional?”
He led the way right out to the yard and handed me two folding lawn chairs, to place wherever I wanted.

Confession took a long time. My careful outline, written over and over and packed in the knapsack with the cookies, completely slipped my mind. Instead I first blurted out the story of a major life obligation, when I didn’t show up and stayed home instead.
Father locked his attention on the words, watched me tell the whole thing, and stated, “You had to protect yourself somehow.”
I stared at him as it dawned on me that his take on the situation was absolutely correct. His perspective cracked years of burden off my conscience. It called to mind the flamingoes who walk around in alkaline salt flats until balls of salt form shackles on the poor birds, weighing them down to a slow death by starvation. Then whack! volunteers come along and tap the salt away, and the birds fly away. At those words of his everything shifted; the light on the grass, the way I breathed air.

After that the words just flew at him for over an hour.
He took in all of it. He did not interrupt, admonish, contradict, doubt, belittle, or ridicule a thing. He did raise a hand several times with “Now that is not a sin, and here is why,” or “That’s not a Church law at all,” or “That was not your responsibility in the first place.” He did ask a few questions to draw me out, and a few more to make sure that my life now was safe. Then to my surprise he gave me general absolution, not only for the sins I’d confessed but for all the sins of the past.
“Really?” I dried my eyes. “All of them? What if I forgot to mention them? What if I forgot them altogether?”
He smiled. “All gone now. You only get to keep the sins you really want.”

After Confession, Father put away the lawn chairs and headed for his room. His walk looked tired. Later on I learned that my visit interrupted his packing for the airport, for an assignment in Rome.

In the cozy rectory kitchen, Rick and another seminarian were studying hard, and ready for a break. They welcomed me in for tea and a chat. Soon we were laughing happily. When Father appeared in the doorway I shrank a little. Maybe we were making too much noise. Maybe he would not like to see a girl here laughing with his seminarians. Maybe he would think my good time meant an unrepentant heart. But he smiled kindly at our harmless fun, poured himself a cup of tea, and went back to his packing.

Then, I remembered to unpack my present.
“You brought us cookies!” said Rick. “Thank you!”
“Chocolate chip, my favorite,” said his study partner. “Ooh, look, they’re from ROSIE’S! Do you know what’s our absolute favorite of all? Sometimes when we’re hitting the books until late, we drive to Rosie’s to bring back…” He stopped short, and the two exchanged bashful looks. “Well, never mind. The name of the cake is pretty outlandish. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“Let me guess,” I said.

At the end of Confession, the priest assigns a penance. It’s some spiritual exercise of repentance and mindfulness to help us focus on amending our path and charting our course for the future. I waited for Father to assign one to me. But he didn’t. Instead, in closing, for a moment his centered calm flickered; there was a catch in his throat, and his eyes misted over. “Pray for hope!” he exclaimed, leaning toward me. “Pray for hope, every day of your life!”

Father, I still do.

Late last week at 3:00 a.m., along came two whole different nightmares about the misty far-off past, leaving me wide awake and wondering “What does it all mean? How am I supposed to cheer up enough to go face the day?”

Then intuition got to work, trying to think up of some friendly tidings for a situation like this. Eureka! It delivered a special message. This one was in a secret code — a sequence of 10 sweet rising notes:

G-D (and)-B, G-D (and)-B, G-E (and)-C, A…

What lyrics go with that? What is it? Think. Keyboard? Woodwind? Strings? The vocals floated to the surface then, gender, timbre, accent. And there it was:

The + Ghost + In + You

Huh. Psychedelic Furs. Well… yes. No doubt. For extra moral support, I took out Father’s prayer book. (Father gave it to me in 2006 as a present when I stopped in at a local Orthodox church to say hello. He took it off the shelf and handed it over just like that.) I leafed open to the short penitential prayers of John Chrysostom. There are 24 of them, one for each hour of the day and night.

The short prayers of John Chrysostom always seemed a dreary lot before. And they didn’t seem a cheerful idea on a shaken up morning before sunrise. But I worked with them anyway, one prayer at a time, breathing each one every 60 minutes of the day. And they were just the right thing. That’s what it took, to let those prayers bloom open and to let me walk out of those dreams.

My proofreading assignment of the day was about treatment of wounds in communicable diseases — tetanus microorganisms in punctures, typhus from lice, rabies from dog bites. The treatment plan was never “It’s the louse’s fault. Make the vermin take the medicine instead.” The first step, no matter who caused what, was to attend to the patient by cleaning out that wound from the inside out. It struck me then. Penance wasn’t all about what victim deserved what they got, or who’s lower than anybody else. Maybe it was more about shaking off what weighs us down and climbing the mercy to get back into the sense of ordinary grace.

For me, wound cleaning on the psychic level also meant reaching out, or leaning out really, to other people here and now. It meant going to the co-worker down the hall whose name I’ve forgotten two times now, and asking for her name again please and this time writing it down. It meant going to the volunteer job and apologizing in person for being sick and missing so many chances to help. It meant finally stopping to meet that nice neighbor and wee dog who ride the bus every day. It meant bringing that funny news article to the team upstairs so they could make me laugh. It meant asking the bus driver what he likes to do on his spare time, and getting to hear about his 3 year old son, whose little world has been blasted open with excitement after his very first ride on Dad’s bus!! (Now he knows why Dad keeps leaving him behind with Mom! So now instead of crying when Dad puts on his uniform to go away, the little guy starts dancing and clapping.) It meant going back to the drugstore and asking yesterday’s cashier whether her daughter found her lost loaner viola. (Yes! Somebody turned it in to the school.) And all of those people, including the wee dog one, were just so welcoming about it. That turned a dark day into a good rich one.

Maybe having a ghost is not a bad thing. Maybe ghosts are not the harm itself, and they only seem harmful when we slam them into closets and ignore them. Maybe ghosts are there to say “Pst. Time for more clean water and sun and air and some new gauze.” So at home I looked up “The Ghost in You .” Humming along, “Inside you the time moves and she don’t fade; the ghost in you, she don’t fade…,” I picked up my copy of The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, to pack it for work so my colleague can borrow it. The book flipped open to a sentence in Chapter 1, about his childhood and later work. “My ghosts,” he concluded, “had become my teachers.”

The Land of Enchantment has a quiet voice. It’s patience in adversity, and the sound of past stories over and forgotten. The place for hearing it is ear to ground, kneeling on hardpan or sotol brush or the cracked concrete of some abandoned homestead. Anything will hush this voice — any inkling of derision or disparagement or quips that there is no There There. I hope for another chance to go and listen in reverence.

One way to tune the ear is reading Willa Cather in advance, Death Comes for the Archbishop. After that, it’s just attending to the random things that fly or mill around or fall apart in pieces. There are cotton balls from harvests long ago. Red dust that snakes across the road. Mirages. Glare. Dogs in chain link barking down the day. A far-off cloud that sent a black chisel of rain over the Texas border. Three turkey vultures who circled over my head until a neighbor called from his house “You gotta move quicker’n that. Them buzzards are gainin’ on ya.” Or this little pony shoe from the middle of Main Street:

waiting for the other shoes to drop

But the heart of the trip, making it all possible, were Hostess and Host. They’ve adapted to the place on their poised tightrope of detachment, watchfulness, intellectual and cultural pursuits, socially creative connections, and humor. They were my trusty native informants, spelling out for me at every step the signals of society and nature.

Hostess waited at the airport with a tall drinkspout cup of lemon water! She even served a lavish head of organic lettuce and a stash of rice milk with my breakfast next morning; she brought them back for me from Albuquerque hours away. Her hospitality thought of everything. Like the perfectly new bar of Bronner’s Castile soap waiting in the shower (I didn’t have the heart to open it, it looked so pretty). Or the abundance of fluffy towels, home-cooked meals, and the extra blankie on the bed.

Our Host, faced with a spouse’s college galfriend from 25 years yore, could have said “Hello she’s mentioned you, have fun catching up this week, knock yourself out to anything in the fridge.” I expected him to shake hands over his evening paper, with perhaps a friendly nod at mealtimes. But, no. First, Host did an exorbitant amount of driving for five days, to claim, entertain, and then return said friend, one who kept hollering “Look! Wait! Can we pull over? Can I take a picture? Is that a tumbleweed? Prairie dog? Sagebrush? Purple Finch? Dust cloud? Barbed wire? Cotton ball?” He made a point of detouring to an improbably placed Middle Eastern restaurant with carpet shop, and to a fabulous Thai restaurant serving huge portions of fresh-cooked vegetables. During all five days he wracked his mental database for all topics of common interest, including the Orthodox Church, the Russian language, vegetarianism, Irish community of Boston, Todd Rundgren music, on and on. He sent off to Netflix for a movie about Russia. He left the Christmas lights on in the yard for my photo-taking glee. He got up out of a sound sleep in some wee hour to cheerfully re-install my entire window when from another floor on another side of the house he heard me clumsily try to open it and accidentally dislodge and unhinge the frame screen sash weights and thingabobs all falling out of plumb in a 100-year-old handbuilt house with handbuilt detailing.

Hostess meanwhile planned us an excursion to a special archaeology site. But due to a cut in the state’s budget for petrified bone displays, we missed their open day. So she took me to the natural history museum, and in good humor waited for me to frolic about yipping with excitement. I pushed the black-light button to ooh and aah over glowy minerals. I admired the stuffed songbirds mounted on snack sticks. Best of all, I stood mesmerized by the tanks of assorted local rattlesnakes, listening to their rattles and buzzing. A young staff member came and gave us the most helpful companionable tour imaginable. “And when you hear that rattle in the grass,” he advised, “Why that is not a friendly sound to us. The fields here are full of rattlers. My dog has a special bark for them. Means she’s cornered or treed one, and then I have to go kill it.”

Host has the long-established custom of leading neighborhood walks with his elaborately carved walking stick from one of his years in Africa. The stick is to intermediate between the walking party and the local pit bulls. (In one of the Africa house portraits, he is strolling happily with a cheetah on a leash. “That cheetah,” he observed, “was considerably better-behaved and more predictable than these pit bulls.”) On windless moments when we sallied forth, Host led the way with stick in hand, a striking figure marching in dark glasses and long hair. This is when it struck me: instead of classifying me as a distraction in his family routine (which I was), he was shepherding me along as an extension of the flock. And only once did I break formation: to clamor for an early return to the house, spooked by that chisel of rain over the Texas border. (He explained patiently that the cloud was too distant to overtake us any time soon, and he was right.)

Hostess keeps a morning room, stocked with lush flowering plants. The windows, golden wood floors, and white plaster walls make it indescribably inviting. Outside, the immense Grackles and the Eurasian Ring-Necked Doves set up a fantastic human-sounding racket: “Who cooks for you? Who? Who? Oh…” or “Gak! Turn off the water, Clyde. CLYDE!” Every day as the first ray of sun sparkles in at the flowers and glass, Hostess and Host settle down for tea, and take turns reading books to one another. It did my heart such good to perch in a corner and hear them. What a blessing, to have and to hold a custom like that!

Then after sunset, with supper over and the dishes put away, they would settle the rocking chairs on the front porch. We would sit out listening to feral cats and pickup trucks driving in circles on the main drag, and under a carpet of stars talk about the meaning of life.

I miss them.

This is Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and I am pretty good & sick. Deep calliope cough. Some fever. It changes perspective in an interesting way: every detail seems equally important and overwhelming, down to the most random bits of color or conversation.

For instance.
“No matter how high we fly,” said a lady in a seat nearby, laughing to her companion, “Or how far we go — we always come back home again to you.”

Now that, clearly, is part of a prayer.
Is she carrying a Church Slavonic prayer book too? Because I am sure that statement is in there someplace. Maybe the Morning Office? I flip a few pages, but can’t find her prayer anywhere. Why not? Am I losing my mind?

Crash! What is that racket?
Oh. Crushed ice, lots of it, cascading out of a machine into drink cups at Starbuck’s as a clear avalanche of noise. But look, nobody else can hear it! They just rush right by with their wheeled luggage cards. And the blue LED light at this here cell phone recharging station — is anybody else dazzled by that? It’s brighter than bright, it floats right out in air and into my nerves. I have to turn away from it just to concentrate on the window on my phone (charged 72%, 74%, 75%…).

Back to these Slavonic prayers.
But now there’s something’s wrong with the Cyrillic alphabet in the text. I can only focus on one word at a time; they’re not linking up to form meaningful sentences. And that’s not praying. Is it? Even though the words are beautiful all on their own and one at a time (небесный, слава, серафим; heavenly, glory, Seraphim). Maybe that is prayer after all. Who knows?

Back in New Mexico, my concerned and caring hosts tried to warn me. “Careful — don’t go walking out there today. We’ve got a 20 mile-an-hour wind.” Really? How bad can that be? I never get hay fever any more. So off I went walking.

Yeahbut this air is not full of hay. It’s powdered manure from grassless shadeless cattle stockyards all around town, and veal calves in metal sheds the size of a phone booth as far as the eye can see, all baking in the sun after three years of drought. A century ago, this area was a Paradise, with abundant water springs and magnificent topsoil. But mankind and his land stewardship changed all that. Now the land is red dust that snakes in waves across the road and piles up through closed windows on people’s desks at work. We took one short delightful drive (windows closed, AC off) through splendid scenery to a fantastic ethnic restaurant down the highway. But on the way back a fuzzy feeling crept into my lungs, with a cough that feels like hot coals. Last night there were high-speed sleigh bells in my ears, and gibberish in my own voice kept waking me up.

That’s the travel lesson. When the local people warn you, do what they say.

Early this morning we said goodbye. My kind Host drove me to Lubbock Airport for my 16-hour trip. That was a 2 hour drive under open full-glory sun. I was thrilled by the view, longing to stop and romp around with my camera: antelope sagebrush barbed wire prairie dog antelope sagebrush barbed wire prairie dog. But to save on air and keep from coughing I only sat still, answering my Host in little monosyllabic murmurings. Host purchased parking just so he could leave the car and stand at the gate to see me past Security; how nice is that? Then he did something especially endearing and unique: gave me a hug with our heads over each other’s left shoulders, then he gave me a whole second hug with our heads over each other’s right shoulders! That’s not an American thing. Maybe he learned it from his studies and work in Africa? I was so touched by it, that on impulse I turned to give him a peck on the cheek. Unfortunately after two hours of trying to not cough inside Host Car, I suddenly wrenched a huge cough and sneeze in his face, like a surfacing sperm whale. I was appalled. But he just said “OH!! Are you all right??” and patted my shoulders. Then he stood on tiptoe peering through the gates until I made it through security, then while I walked backwards waving he waved and waved until I was out of sight.

2 hours down, 14 hours to go to my own airport.
This presented a little problem. Do flight attendants allow coughing people on planes? Maybe not. On East European trains during that whole bird flu scene, people with colds were dumped off bag & baggage in Khabarovsk or wherever. So what if that happens, say, up ahead in Dallas? Then I’d have to book a flight back to Lubbock and ask my lovely hosts to come pick me up again (driving 2 hours each way) until I’m better. But then they might get sick too! And it’s a no-refund ticket; to book a whole new flight home is $700 but my emergency credit card has a $500 limit. 

No, can’t let anybody see me cough.

For moral support I concentrate on women older than me, some in their nineties, who traveled the U.S. or the world with one or two dresses and a Bible and little or no money at all. Mother Gavrilia Papayannis, Peace Pilgrim, Catherine Doherty, Doris Haddock. Corrie ten Boom was almost my age, and she had flu and pneumonia and pleurisy when they arrested her. Then after Ravensbruck she traveled to 60 countries without asking for shelter or food or a dime. So there’s nothing to complain about. It’s a friendly airport. Just don’t cough.

Lubbock Airport turned fine. I got a good scare when my cell phone jumped ahead an hour. How did it do that? But then a cheerful volunteer in a big Stetson hat explained to me that traveling east from New Mexico gains an hour, and most cell phones will automatically correct for that. “Next time you drive to or from New Mexico,” she pointed out, “You keep an eye on the cell phone; depending on which cell tower you are passing, the time will keep flicking back and forth by one hour. Around here, we call that entertainment.” On the little plane, our presiding flight attendant was a gracious African-American gentleman with graying hair, serving drinks with unbelievably fast multi-tasking skills. “Yes, yes — comin’ up,” he informed us. “I am juggling away with this cart to entertain y-all.” All through the flight you could tell where he was, by the appreciative laughter among the passengers; not a one could resist bantering with him. He even stopped and lectured one young man ordering a drink. “Now I will tell you what alcohol to avoid on a flight,” he advised. “Stay away from those mixed cocktails, like Cosmopolitans. That is all high sugar. Do NOT mix alcohol and sugar on a flight. Drink it neat and straight in moderation, or do not drink at all.” The other passengers murmur their agreement. “And, always buy high quality,” one of the older men tells the young one. “Decent vodka will run you sixty a bottle or it is not worth your while.” The sheepish young man admits that at school they go for the vodka in the five dollar bottles instead. “Five dollars!! Why, for real value just take your five and buy you some turpentine.”

Dallas means a 3 hour stopover.
It’s freezing in here. It was freezing in the car too and back at the house, even though the weather is so warm and sunny. So in my sweatshirt with hoodie pulled up I’m rocking back and forth to warm up. I gave up on following Slavonic, but now I can’t even keep the prayers straight on this pocket rosary either. There’s a Pilgrim’s Progress right in my knapsack, a nice annotated one with the Scripture references and notes, but today even that will be over my head. So I settle on the Jesus Prayer, matching it to a little French tune about the bells of Paris, and then it runs along all by itself.

I fall asleep, and wake up as my head topples over toward my lap. My phone battery is charged to 92%.
“Young Lady?” says a smiling man in a Stetson hat. He’s part of the volunteer brigade staffing booths all over the airport. “Is your phone charging up all right for you?” Half an hour ago he helped me find this recharge terminal, and now he’s clearly just passing by to check up on me. We have a nice chat, until — presto, cell phone’s at 100%. He walks me to my gate. I give him a big smile and nod and wave, and he heads back to his station.

Better get some water. Dehydration was a big problem all week, no matter how much I drank. At the newstand I look around for room-temperature water. There isn’t any. I finally choose 2 icy liters from the cooler. The cashier is a young lady from… Somalia? I stop short, totally thrown off by how beautiful she is. That is, her looks are pleasantly ordinary, like any of us, even a little tired and careworn. But she has some kind of radiance that makes my eyes mist over. I just want to stay close and look at her. But getting a grip I just say “Hello!” and bring the bottles to the cash register. She sees me coming and lights up. Just beams. She lines up my receipt and change. Then we stand there staring in each other’s eyes a minute. After handling the cold bottles, my joints are having trouble picking up the change from the counter. Before we say goodbye she takes my knapsack and puts everything away and ties it up, and puts the change in my palm, closing my hands and patting them.

There are no empty seats.
I stand blinking for a while, and then gathering my courage head toward one seat with just a handbag on it, to see whether that seat is reserved for anyone.
“Why howdy,” says a smiling lady with a crown of braided hair and a long spring dress. She immediately moves her handbag to make room for me. “Let’s have ourselves a seat so we can jump out of it again soon as they call us to board! Betty Dietz from Abilene. How are you doing? Visiting family?” I smile and whisper a howdy back and give her my name.
“You are a schoolteacher, aren’t you?” she asks.
“You’re absolutely right,” I croak back. “I was.”
“And what did you teach?”
“Russian.”
“Oh.” She thinks that over a minute with a kindly reflective nod.

The man across from us is actually not wearing a Stetson hat. He is wearing boots and full desert camouflage. Dallas Airport is full of men in camouflage with no luggage at all. I would have thought that military men would travel with a lot of banter and joking around. But not this wave of them. They move very fast in quiet groups, and they sit very close together wasting not a fidget of energy and looking down with faraway eyes. This man has a chiseled sunburned hardened look; it’s a little intimidating until he speaks up. “I can not get over these Texas bluebonnets in bloom,” he says out loud, to anyone listening. “Why, to come back home and see them coming right up.” His voice breaks, and he drops his head with his hands on his knees. All the passengers in earshot drop what they’re doing to turn to him and chime right in. Yes, isn’t it something wonderful? Those bluebonnets! A pretty sight.

A very petite neighbor with a neat hairbun turns to me. “Young Lady? Do you mind saving this seat for me? Here I’ve put my old hat on it to mark the spot. I don’t think that anybody will be lookin’ to take my old hat!” I promise to put up a good fight in case anybody tries.

Another lady strikes up a conversation with Mrs. Betty Dietz. “So my sister-in-law says to me, ‘Until the politics at church simmer down, I am not setting my foot in the door for worship a-t’all.'” Mrs. Dietz and the other passengers are all smiles at that. “Haven’t we all said that!” says one woman. “Haven’t we all done that,” says another. “Church politics? Simmer down? She may be waiting quite a while,” says one of the men.

Another man is talking to a high school student.
“What do you mean!” he exclaims. “18 years old and have never left home or gone up in a plane?” The 18 year old laughs, a little bashful. “No Sir. We did go to Michigan once. Took 30 hours by bus. But this flying — I am a little nervous.” Every passenger in earshot turns to him, joining right in.  “Why, you will be amazed at the ease and convenience of air travel. You are going to be just FINE.” The first man agrees. “YOU will be fine. ME, I just hope it ain’t your day to die.” They all enjoy a good laugh.

Uh-oh. The lady who left her ol’ hat is standing way off in the terminal aisle looking lost and afraid. I grab her hat and leap up, waving it in the air. She looks relieved and comes right on over. “Thank goodness. I got so turned around; this same old place looks like a whole new place to me! Thank you, Young Lady.”

At the airport information booth, a beautiful young Mexican girl with long flowing hair takes the mike and makes a public service announcement. In earnest precise words she announces that it is not good to sell your town’s water rights to factory farms, to let stockyards deplete the aquifer for miles around. I wake up with a start, gripping my luggage and turning to look at the info booth; it’s staffed by the same cheerful Stetson team that was there five minutes ago when I fell asleep.

Mrs. Dietz gives me a sympathetic look. “You feeling all right? First time flying for you too?” Little does she know that if I can’t fool the flight attendants I may not be flying at all. “Just fine,” I tell her, with a big smile.

Finally we are boarding.
And — what fantastic luck! The seat neighbor they give me is coughing non-stop all the way to Seattle. It’s like my own set of desert camouflage. Nobody is going to notice me at all. “Sorry,” he says. “Got over flu over a week ago. They say it’s not contagious at this point, but it certainly sounds dramatic.” He is also kind enough to open my next water bottle for me.

We taxi down the runway.
The 18-year-old across the aisle says “Gosh! Flying is just like a drag race!” And at the point of liftoff he’s peering out saying “Aw, crazy. Man. This is just crazy. Look at the ground pulling away like that. People look like ants. This is nuts!” His seat neighbor from the terminal congratulates him on his first flight, and adds a warning. “Now remember: once we touch down, the real danger of air travel is only beginning.”
“It is?” says the student, giving him a wary look.
“Yes. That is when you start driving in your car.”

Home airport at last.
But wait, where’s my shuttle? Isn’t it supposed to be at this terminal? What if I miss it and have to spend the night here? In a panic I dial Shuttle Express, but it takes a minute to stop coughing long enough to say “Help! Help! I can’t find the shuttle stop!”
The endlessly patient dispatch operators talk me out of my panic and direct my hacking croaky voice to the correct parking garage for the ride home.

At 12:30 a.m. New Mexico time I stagger in the door of my studio, drop my stuff, set up my blankie corner, wash up — and see my copy of Corrie ten Boom in the bathroom. How can it be sitting there? I don’t remember taking it out before the trip at all. It’s open to the page where she’s under arrest in the police station and her father recites Psalm 91. I put the book down and have a little cry and go lie down. Ah.

But it’s not over.
I sit up in a hurry when a strange man steps in through my studio wall. He’s trim and neat, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He has a deep suntan, black hornrim glasses, black hair slicked over from a side part. Right away I know who he is, though we’ve never met and he died many years ago. He’s the founding medical doctor of the New Mexico town where I’ve been staying (I even stayed in the house that he built himself). Now he’s returning the visit. In a brisk no-nonsense way he lectures me about what I should have done first thing, arriving in New Mexico, to keep from getting sick. Get a bottle of straight vodka ($60 a bottle, he reminds me, or don’t buy it at all). Take some sotol plant, the kind growing all over the landscape. Steep it in the alcohol to make a tincture, and add the local plants: yucca, sage, prickly pear, on and on. Take 5 drops a day in a glass of water. I can’t hear his voice, but can read his lips and see him point to all the desert plants and red dust springing up out of the carpet. He finishes his consultation, wipes his hands on a towel, and strides off through the wall to visit his next case. I lie there listening to my heart pound, thinking Wow. A doctor who makes house calls.

Four days later I’m still in bed, consuming hot lemon-honey-cayenne water, still moved to tears by the local people during the week’s adventure. The trip calls to mind Thor Heyerdahl’s account of sailing bright phosphorescent seas of plankton in the Kon-Tiki: some network of goodness from person to person just lifted me up and bore me along. I didn’t travel alone at all.

Now, about the politics of the people of West Texas I have heard some terrible things spoken, especially by the people of New Mexico West Texas. But for a traveler short of breath and mildly hallucinating, the people could not have been more jovial or kind. May it bless them back many times over.