BY CHRIS RIMKUS
I’ve just passed Colorado Springs. There is nothing here, an absence of people, water, words. I take out a piece of jerky and place it my mouth as might have a pioneer (thus named for the Denver University mascot) a hundred and fifty years past. Satellite radio turns on, possibly because I thought it so. Dave Chappelle doing a bit about monkeys and AIDS. I laugh and juice runs down my chin. I look out at the absence beyond the road and I am just a person untethered to the land. A driver amongst drivers from one place to another, kindred in their condition.
I stop in Raton. For gas, a beer, and conversation. A youth hovers above the ice cream fridge, cold air pouring out.
“Must feel nice,” I observe.
He stands unmoved, slack-jawed, his maw agape as if waiting for an ice cream sandwich to levitate upwards, unwrap itself and deposit its confection into the abyss.
It seems like a waste of electricity to me, and an unnecessary burden upon the planet. But then again, I am an oil and gas lawyer, and lest a thousand self-righteous stones find their mark, I observe the waste in silence.
A man asks where am I going. The clerk, observing me observing the boy and the ice cream refrigerator. He says, “Where are you going?” just as I have written it, ringing up a water and a bag of pretzels I left upon the counter.
“Houston,” I say, matter of factly, if not slightly distracted, as might a hauler bearing goods. Which I am.
“Houston?” he muses. A question or a confirmation?
“Aye, Houston,” I answer as might a mariner, a mariner lost upon the sea of grass here in the south where the wind always blows.
“Houston. Big city,” he observes correctly, if not obviously. “I had a boy that moved to Houston. Married a Mexican girl and had three children.” He looks past my shoulder to where their ghosts reflect as he imagines they might look.
I think to tell him that we use the term “Latino” in the 21st century, but he has the weathered look of someone who has kicked a dandy’s ass before. Instead, I ask “Your grandchildren?”
“No, no relation.” And with that he is done with the subject. “$4.39.”
I pass him a ten and he give me back five ones, 6 dimes and a penny. What the hell? I wanted the two quarters. “Do you have any quarters”? I ask, extending my hands and exposing the dimes, too many in my hand.
“Sure I do,” he says, closing the register. He locks his eyes on mine until I look away, and when I return to his gaze he has moved on, looking back to where the ghosts were or just the cars passing by. Thinking of regrets with each taillight over the hill?
“No, just how long I have till beers at the Elks,” he answers and I start at the precognition and bump into the door on the way out saying “sorry, thanks, best wishes, bud.”
The gas tank is full and I am off again bearing aid for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, the irony of that such suffering should be borne from such a pedestrian name. Over the northwestern corner
of New Mexico I muse at other “H” names that would better befit such a storm, talking to myself as do the lonely on a long car ride.
“Hadrian.” Builder of the wall, bane of the Celts. “Hurricane Hadrian I say to myself in the vacuum of the cab and find that it does not roll off the tongue.
“Horace?” and then I picture a bespectacled youth from one of the Miss Peregrine books. Dammit.
“Hannibal? Hulk? Henly?” I kind of like Henly. I think it would have been a better name.
I suppose it really doesn’t matter. Whatever the name, the city I grew up in will not be the city to which I return. Pictures of neighborhoods abandoned to water and the swamp from which Houston first rose, to snakes and frogs and the other creatures of the bog and tar. I heard that over 250,000 homes were destroyed. Half a million people or more with no where to live. I think of Joel Osteen closing the doors of the Summit, aka Lakewood Church, and it makes me mad. JJ Watt raised over 36 million dollars, the owner of the Rockets’, Les Alexander, raised over 10 million dollars, but Osteen couldn’t be bothered to share 20,000 seats with the desperate fleeing the rising water. Of course, one should not expect a parasite to support the host – only a fool asks a leech for blood – but still, it doesn’t exactly signify Christian charity does it?
As opposed to the donations I’m carrying. Donated by families from Steele Elementary, Slavens Elementary, as well as the MarkWest law department. Filling the back of an extended cab suburban, filling a six by 12 u-haul trailer, filling even the folds of my wallet where another $300 in cash resides. Given to Houston from a city across the plains. People helping people the way humans connect to the suffering of other humans. A great lesson in the gesture, a celebration in the teaching.
When I came to the school to pick up the bulk of the items I arrived a broken man. Literally, with my hand in a split from where the intractable nature of a rock met the more pliable nature of a palm-bone, the surcease of pain a flower when hand thus struck stone and me half the mover I might otherwise be were all my digits in play. Crippled, I took a bag into my good hand and looked up, a silent prayer than Starbucks might give the energy to carry these donations one bag at a time to their temporary hold. That I might make it before the rush hour and get my trip off to the start a long journey demands.
As if in answer to my thoughts children emerged from the school, sent by a sympathetic teacher to help. Hailing them I asked of their intentions.
“Hey – what are you doing?” And when they dug into the provisions, “Those aren’t for you – get out of those,” then more gently “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Questions I’d like to think any sweating, jaded old man might ask while in his labors, his hand abloom in pain and the sun relentless above.
“We’re here to help,” said they in unison, and help they did, loading most of the donations themselves, me there to witness the act and direct them as anyone experienced in moves might do. My wife emerging during the process from the school where she works, hers and the children good spirits filling the sails of the journey shortly to commence, she carrying boxes along with the children. The goodness of the act reflected in the selflessness of their work, me observing, they at work.
Absently, I whistled an old tune, a hobo tune, “In the big rock candy mountains, there’s a land that’s pure and free….” A magical land of endless candy and moonshine lakes. Where pennies grow in bushels, and you sleep out every night. I like the thought of candy and pennies, but I do wish the song referred to a boardinghouse or camping provisions, as I’ve never liked just sleeping on the ground.
The loading finished, the children returned to class and my wife came up and gave me a kiss upon the cheek so that I felt a noble about to set off on a quest.
“Call me and let me know how it is going,” she said before heading inside. And later I did.
From a motel in a town I call Dumas, even though I think it is something else. Checking in, the night manager, a 74 year old grandmother of three I learn during the twenty minute check in process, offers me earplugs and I say, “I’m a heavy sleeper.”
“Suit yourself,” she says as sweetly as someone can say “suit yourself.”
Now, 17 hours past, the first gas stations I try in North Houston are out of gas. The third only has regular unleaded, and my heart aches for the octane being denied to people filling their tanks. Here, off the highway, you can see the effects of the flooding. Stores closed, a restaurant in the nearby mall already gutted, a Michaels with its wears in a heaping bin in front, a Starbucks once full of the making of delicious coffee but now simply a darkened hull of urban decay, its windows blown out and nary a barista to tell the tale.
I see animals roaming the alley behind the gas station, a possum and raccoon bloated on the spoils of decay so that they swoon when I approach but do not leave a dumpster’s edge. Their fur matted and damp, their homes likely under water. Were they not vermin the sight of them in the dumpster might break my heart, but they are, and I throw a rock and tell them to scram.
A dog wanders near the pumps when I return, thin, lost and hungry. I give it my beef jerky and a sip of coca cola poured into a depression upon the ground, scratch its ears and ask “Where’s your family boy?“
The dog, mistaking my cooing for an invitation, tries to jump in my cab. A man across the island says, “What are you doing with my dog – Festus, get back in this truck right now!” The dog jumps back out leaving a trail of brown drool on my seat, the man eyes me warily and I mumble something about my perception of the situation and he shouldn’t let his dog run around and I wish they had more gas as he drives off. The dog watches from the bed of the pick-up and barks. “Thank you for the jerky. But you’re not supposed to give a dog caffeine.” I nod and wave until he is gone from sight.
It is after nine pm when I arrive at the YMCA on Stella link. A symbol of the gentrification of the neighborhood, the building and new pool having replaced the Sunny’s when we bought beer in high school. The young man at the front desk is excited when he hears we have a truck, ecstatic when he realizes we have a full suburban and u-haul. I wish I wasn’t so tired because I am proud of the school and everyone that helped gather all of these supplies for the people of Houston. Sadly, my excitement is tempered by the thought of not being finished before midnight on the heels of the seventeen plus hour drive.
Carrying my first load towards the room in which they are gathering supplies for the community, I see my brother disappear into the gym. When I come out of the room for load number 2, I am happy/amazed/relieved to see 12 young men fresh from the basketball court and my brother with their arms full. As it turns out, it only takes twenty minutes to fill the room with roughly two tons of aid.
When we’re finished, I try to get a picture with all of them but they don’t want the credit. To a man they reflect an appreciation at the help provided the city by people a thousand miles away. They exude a shared pride. In common suffering they find common strength. Frankly, it chokes me up a little bit.
The deliveries finished, all that is left is to lament that the parents and children who graciously donated to help those affected by the storm aren’t here to see just how much help they were able to gather for people in need. Thanks to everyone involved.