Tuesday, August 15th
I woke late and long at 10:30 but feeling mostly calm. I made a cup of coffee on the camping stove, added honey, and called Z to head off the ill feelings I feared might well into an unmanageable bitterness. I had two cigarettes before the coffee was done.
I spread the yoga mat out and moved my body more than it had been in days and did fifty push-ups before packing up. The battery for the van’s ventilation fan hadn’t charged much, and it would lose much of the added voltage before the end of the day. But the road setting out was smooth and rolling with loping curves—the best type of driving.
Boonsboro Mountain Road became the town of Boonsboro; I was hungry and stopped. The Subway’s OPEN sign was off, so I strolled further down to the Mini Mart Diner and asked if they could do a sandwich. “Having yourself some lunch,” an older woman with braces and a bleached-dry ponytail asked. I gave my order in pieces to the teenage cashier—“what type of bread? what condiments? what toppings?”— and changed my mind to having it for here.
In the dining room adjacent to the mini mart, I sat next to the window and the closest table and two away from a dark-complected man and his young daughter. They were playing one of the board games—Trouble, I think—from a stack hiding a four-top against the far wall. Another woman who seemed, by the color and texture of her hair, to be the sister of the woman with braces, and by proximity alone, the mother of the darker man’s child, sat in front of a different board game, one I didn’t recognize, mulling over her progress.
“Is that a Nikon, a Canon,” huffed the man, and I told him it was a Konica. “Oh, they’ve got good lenses.” He knew. “Where even develops film anymore?” He used to know. I told him.
We spoke about photography. He had grown tired of buying film and a professor friend from a local college had loaned him a digital camera at some point—years didn’t matter. He’d grown tired of that too, not wanting to edit when the friend had suggested he could just shoot raw, nevermind the settings. “There’s plenty to photograph around here,” he said, suggesting a hundred miles in any direction would yield the beauty hoped for. I didn’t tell him I’d be driving at least that far today, and our conversation ended just after my sandwich arrived and his daughter’s interest in the game resumed. It was his turn.
Braces sat down across from her sister and they, too, resumed their silent play. The man leaned towards the woman who seemed to be his wife and said, of his daughter, “the force is strong with this one,” meaning she was winning. The mother replied, “she’s possessed,” meaning something else. I asked if there was a bathroom, and Braces called me ‘darling.’ The room was several failed businesses long and filled with many unrecognizable and tasteless things waiting to be wanted. In the stall, I found one of those old fold-down stainless steel trays on which a certain type of woman used to set a certain type of purse.
I’d say I imagined what kind of place this used to be that such a woman with such a purse would have visited, but I actually only considered its particular convenience for a certain type of addict with a certain type of drug. I thanked the family as a whole as I left and resumed my roading.
Antietam sprang up, the battlefield to my left. But I had had enough Civil War in Gettysburg the day before and allowed myself to be content in simply seeing the area by car and knowing that the contours of my route had suddenly become the Mason Dixon.
The mountains broke into hills, and where they were not swathed with swaying corn, they were more frequently spotted black by cows. The perfume of slow turns was the earthy putrefaction of fresh manure. Maryland became Virginia became West Virginia.
There was a hill with a lone bench dedicated to “TED.” Then, a footbridge over a river whose Indian name meant “healing waters” but which appeared to ooze forth only a tepid and slippery algal silt. No swimming.
Unincorporated town after unincorporated town refused to appear, as if they were contented merely to be announced, Leetown among them. Instead of a blurred and unaccompanied sign, a high school with an impressive Class A football program preceded Mooresfield, and I stopped to photograph a small white building with a brick chimney and a lilac Victorian house. A later town offered a large bear wearing an American flag tie and wrapped in Christmas lights. Another possessed an ancient, two-story train station; the sun-faded notice on the front door window read “WE MOVED.”
At around 4pm, I found a small stream and attempted to fish but succeeded only in losing two flies. Its name, which I learned afterwards, was a punchline: Lost Creek. The proper tense.
A stretch of the Potomac replenished my hope. North Fork South Branch, an area for parking, a soft footpath, a crescendoing rush. A young couple was there, sitting in the friendly rush of a shallow, sun-glinting rapid. The girl was blonde and slender, and I thought of Z, of being with her here, of sex.
I hopped the dry rocks downstream, practiced my cast, caught no fish. I moved upstream only to do the same. I gave up and took some pictures and swam where the couple had been until the sun gave up on the water. I smoked a cigarette and watched an orgy of water-bugs spin around each other. When I tried to scoop them, they darted away and then back to resume their circling. I shoved on dry clothes and drove on.
More photos and then, jaggedly thin and radiant with the last of West Virginia’s light, Seneca Rocks. I pulled into Yokum’s Grill, “voted 2nd Best West Virginia-Style Chili Dogs.” Inside, I ordered one from the heavyset man standing below floor-level behind the sunken kitchen’s window. “I can getchu one,” he promised, before refusing to charge me for the sweet tea because, being nearly out, I’d only get one cup.
If by being the best Yokum’s were also representative of the rest, a West Virginia chili dog is made by putting ketchup and mustard directly on the bun below the hotdog and topping it with crisped-up (or, perhaps, dried-out) all-meat chili and minced onions. I had this with fries and wrote the day from the nearest booth.
I grabbed some supplies on my way back towards the front where the old cashier was vacuuming the floor mats. “You ready,” he asked, before whispering to the vacuum to stay put like a small, naughty dog. When I requested a yellow pack of American Spirits, he asked the difference between this and another color; I didn’t know. My total for 4 Michelob Ultras, a pack of cigarettes, and a large bottle of Aquafina in addition to the chili dog and fries was $26. I put a dollar in the jar marked “Stray Cat Fund.” I don’t know where I’ll sleep tonight, but the parking lot of Yokum’s seems likely.
