Getting away. thecrazytourist.com
I knew I had to get away, but I had no particular place to go. But that’s not a problem with a Mustang convertible and lots of money. You just get in and drive, and it will take you somewhere. I had a faint image of Charlie in mind. He was the only person not possibly implicated in this huge spider web of deceit, so I loaded the trunk with six cases of my father’s whiskeys, a few clothes, my journal, a few books, and the cash on hand. Then I locked up the house, leaving the keys with Lucille and tore down the hill to his shop.
“What’s up?” he greeted me.
“I’ve got to get out of here, far away and right away. Do you know any place far from people?”
“Ya sure” he responded slowly. “I have a friend, a fellow ham up in Idaho in the mountains. We served together. I visited him two years ago. But I’ll have to go with you. He’s not good with strangers. I’m sick of all this electronics bullshit, soldering parts all day long. Do you have any booze?”
I opened the trunk. He had his duffle bag, his guns and all his gear in the back seat within minutes and we were headed north towards the wilds of Idaho. Even the sign he posted on his shop door showed haste, simply saying, ‘gone away’.
Along the way, Charlie filled me in about his buddy in the woods. His name was ‘Jack’. He’d seen a lot of action in the war, Charlie explained, was wounded twice and sort of held a grudge against the human race.
“He’s friendly though” Charlie went on, “once you get to know him. He’s friends with me at least. He loves hunting and fishing every day. He almost lives off it. He has to because all he has is his pension which isn’t much. Don’t expect any ‘Roland house’. One thing we’ll have to do is bring him lots of supplies if we plan on staying, but what you have in your trunk there will break the ice because he sure loves drinking.”
It took us three days to get there. It was a small, run down, rustic place on a little lake in the mountains, nestled in pine trees. There was a long dock with a rowboat tied to it, a beautiful blue lake, and a little town some twenty miles down the dirt road we’d just come up. His only human company were the people he contacted each evening on his radio, many miles away. He had no phone and no idea we were coming, but he did hear us because he was standing in front of his house with his shotgun and his dog as we pulled up. When he recognized Charlie, he set the gun against the log cabin and came over.
“Jack we’ve brought you some gifts.” Charlie bellowed out. “This is my friend Roland, a swell guy. Roland, open the trunk.”
In a minute we were shaking hands and carrying the boxes in the house. It was mostly one large room, a living room and kitchen combined with a large fireplace. There was a bedroom at the far end and a closet of a bedroom at the other for me. Charlie was fine with the couch, right at home in fact. The bathroom was an outhouse in the back, and the lake was the only way to take a bath. There was no power, just a generator behind the house which he only cranked up on rare occasions to charge up the batteries for the radio. There were kerosene lanterns parked here and there, one table with four wooden chairs in the center of the room, a smaller table and chair against the back wall for the radio, and one very dilapidated couch near the fireplace. There was an equally worn out piece of shaggy rug in front of the fireplace where the dog slept, an old collie, shaggy as the rug, friendly and sedate with age. He came over and licked our hands as we sat down and patted him on the head. Jack called him Jeff and often talked to him as if he were a roommate. I wanted a radical change from my old life, and this was it.
“How long do you boys plan on stayin?” Jack began, as he pulled a bottle from a box and examined it. “Why this looks like some mighty fine stuff. I’ve never even heard of it.”
“Only one way to find out” Charlie said, as we sat down at the table and Jack brought over three glasses. “How does a week sound to you?”
Jack looked down at the six boxes on the floor as if trying to calculate how long it would take three grown men to drink that quantity but before he could answer Charlie broke in, “Don’t worry about us using up your supplies. Roland here has lots of money. He’s a millionaire in fact.”
Jack eyed me suspiciously but at the same time poured the three of us full glasses and tasted his.
“Why this is damned good Scotch. You can stay a month for all I care. But what the hell you doin up here?” he said looking straight at me.
“You know” I meekly replied. “Women problems.”
“Oh, ya, well, shit, stay as long as you want, on condition we drop that subject right now” he said, taking another sip and leaning back in his chair and savoring it. “Mighty fine, mighty smooth.”
Thus began our friendship and my introduction to a whole different way of life. I took up drinking and smoking cigars and hunting and fishing, playing poker every night, waking up with hangovers which only a dive in the cold lake on a cold morning could shake off. My friends weren’t educated in books but in the school of life I came to see in them a remarkable intelligence, and in the school of the woods Jack was a walking encyclopedia. Each day was an expedition to the best fishing spots on the lake or into the trees, mostly hiking, sometimes in search of small game. On the shorter trips, Jeff would accompany us but when we planned to do some real mountain climbing from sunup to sundown, as we were adjusting our packs, Jack would turn and say, “Jeff, this one might be a little too much for your old bones. Why don’t you take a pass this time? We’ll see you at dinner.” And Jeff would go curl up on his rug. You could almost hear a little huff of disappointment as he did so. Other than that he was the most obedient and likeable creature I’d ever met.
Every fourth or fifth day we drove into town to the food and hardware stores. I noticed there were a lot of things Jack could use, so I started buying them. We loaded them up in his old truck. They included a barbecue set, kitchenware, new bedding, tools, shingles and tar to patch a leaky spot on the roof, more batteries and some twelve-volt LED lights to illuminate the room at night. This freed us of the kerosene smell. I bought something new on every trip, just so he’d keep us there longer, as I did feel like I was recovering, getting my old self back again. I even told them this but didn’t have to. They could see how my spirits were picking up with each passing week.
One night, playing poker and drinking heavily the thought occurred to me that if Charlie could read my mind, or vice-versa, he’d know my cards and the game would be pointless, so I engaged him on this sensitive subject.
“Charlie, did you ever read other people’s thoughts back at Roland house?”
“No” he replied, “I don’t want to know what’s going on in other people’s heads. What do you think I am, stupid?”
“But what if we’re playing poker and there’s a big pot, and you have a middlin hand, and someone raises you?”
“I don’t cheat” he replied loudly. “If you cheat you’re not playin poker, and I like playin poker.”
With such simple logic could he answer what I thought were complicated questions.
“You’re not reading my mind, are you?” he retorted.
“No Charlie. I would never do such a thing. But Claire used to read my mind, and it bothered me quite a bit.”
“Well, you two were always an odd couple, if you don’t mind me sayin so, and always actin strange around each other. You just stay here with us for a while. You’ll get her out of your head.”
He had no idea how relieved I was to hear this, how much I wanted it to be true, or maybe he did.
Jack spoke up, deep in his cups. “I had a girl for a while after the war. Met her in a bar, stayed with her in town for over a year. But I had to give her up. She drank too much. We’d start arguing about little stuff, which drove me to drinkin more. It was a bad cycle all ‘round. But I fixed it.”
“How’s that?” I asked eagerly.
“Why, I came up here, can’t you see, the healthy life. I’d be dead by now if I hadn’t.”
In a strange way, it was a healthy life. We drank too much each night but come morning we sweated it out with hard labor, chopping wood, rowing the boat all over the lake or hiking up and down the mountainsides with guns and packs. Every time I took a bath in the frigid waters of the lake, I could feel my brain clear a little more, and old worries would come up and seem to resolve themselves, especially at night in cheap fold-out chairs by the campfire, as we sat there quietly staring at the flames, drink in hand. I could look out across the smooth, morning water, with my chin just above its surface, at the pine-filled steep on all sides of me. I felt one with nature and the most pleasant sense of belonging, of being immersed in a beautiful place.
There was another house on Jack’s property, in the trees, a few hundred feet behind his. It was taller and larger with a gabled roof and veranda in front. It was uninhabited. A few of the windows were boarded up. Moss was growing on the shingles and ivy crept up its cedar sidings. It had the look of being three or four decades older than Jack’s place, but much more elegant and finished.
I wondered about it but only brought up the subject late in the second month of our stay there, on another peaceful night by the campfire.
“My grandfather built that house right after the war, bought all of this property and raised a family” Jack began. “Kind of had the same feelings I have about people, best to stay away. My father built this house. I was just six years old at the time. But both him and my uncle died in Vietnam. My aunt and gramps and grandma raised me, all the kids. The others have all gone their own ways. My aunt and grandpa were the last to leave, gettin too old for the winters this high up, about fifteen years ago, went to Boise. So I’m the only one left, me and Jeff, stayin put, livin the family tradition.”
“But why don’t you move into the bigger house?” I asked.
“Just because of that. It’s too big. This one’s just right for Jeff and me. Besides, I grew up in this house.”
At this point he paused and let out a deep sigh. He took one long draught of whiskey, and an aura of sadness shadowed his look.
I left it at that. My mind was full of questions, about his mother, possible siblings, why they left and whether they were still living. But I knew not to intrude. I figured the matter was too delicate.
I could tell that beneath the surface Jack was a very sensitive man, drowning his sorrows in liquor each night. I sensed it in the kindness in his voice when he spoke to his dog, the respect he showed to it and us, always insisting on getting the glasses and pouring us, his guests, our first drinks each evening, formally polite in an odd way but politeness is a sign of deep feelings.
We stayed there well into the fall. We had such a good time that before we left we drove Jack into town one day and I set him up with a bank account, enormous to his mind, with the simple condition that he keep fixing up the place and that we’d be welcome back next Summer. He was aghast at the twenty thousand dollars I left him, shaking my hand, swearing I’d have my own guest house fixed up and ready with my name on it, even in the middle of winter. We parted the best of friends, three amigos.
