Carbondale

May 23, 2008

On I-24 somewhere in Tennessee I saw a box turtle on the side of the road, its head stretched quizzically toward the din of the highway. I hesitated too long, and by the time I decided I must stop and make sure it got somewhere safe, it was no longer possible to do so. The intensity of the remorse was strange, because it may have turned around the next instant and toddled back into the wildwood. A few miles farther on, I saw a man at the roadside apparently fighting with a couple of gas cans beside a stopped car. I thought of the turtle, and I stopped.

"Do you need a ride to the gas station?" I said.

He hesitated for a moment and said. "Yes." He got in the car without his gas cans, but I figured he knew what he was doing. He reeked of gas. Did he spill some? Did he spill it all? I realized he was wet with it, or had been. I lowered the window against the fumes. He was crying, as I probably would have been with the frustration of it. I told him my name and he said his was Carl. As I watched him, almost unable to believe what I saw, he took a lighter out of his pocket and set the flame to the edge of his jacket. A sheet of blue flame climbed the jacket, but went out almost immediately. I whirled to the roadside and jammed on the brakes. I heard myself saying, as if it were a middle school science class, "Gasoline evaporates really fast." He seemed dazed, but I pushed him and he got out of the car. I pulled several yards ahead and called 911 and told the Highway Patrol–whoever was on the other end, I think it was the Highway Patrol–what had happened. They asked my approximate location, and I told them, and they told me to drive on and have nothing more to do with Carl. I did exactly that. In the rearview mirror I saw him walking back in the direction of his car. His shoulders were slumped, his right hand over his face. He was weeping bitterly.

I am certain that the turtle turned and walked back into safety.

Rose early and walked in the construction area behind the Carbondale Holiday Inn. Rough cuts of machinery bordered a little wood–perhaps a great wood, who knows?– and dry lakes in the construction gouges–oddly, one of the landscape most immediately nostalgic to me, because of the conditions of my boyhood. I stopped and peered into the little wood, reeling off the names of old friends, red oak, elder, poison ivy, dogwood, joe-pye, sassafras, green ash, snakemaster, hawkweed– a red-winged blackbird gurgling overhead–and I felt the burn of grief in my throat, and I heard myself whispering, "I want to come home."

Treated Carbondale as if it were some Irish town, and wandered through with eyes open. The town square is huge and sprawling in the Midwestern way, so spacious as to look disorganized. Visited the public library. Sat in the Japanese garden, though the effect was mitigated by the host of lawnmowers prettying up for memorial Day. Had iced tea at the Long Branch, where I was Ancient Marinered by an ex-Marine ex-Green Beret (I know this because he mentioned it in every sentence) whose topic for the day was the valuable stuff students leave in the dumpsters when they vacate for the summer. His latest find was a perfectly good bike. He grew up in the south side of Chicago, and is only now losing the suspicion–born of that and of being a combat Vet–that led him to carry two firearms and suspect every stranger. Must have been like the emotion I felt when I saw him walking toward me. The girl I bought a SIU T-shirt from explained that this area is known as Little Egypt, because of the river, and that the saluki is the sleek Egyptian guard dog of the tomb paintings, hence the name of their mascot. To honor the Ancient Mariner and the saluki, I bought a bike pump and a college T-shirt. I will go home and ride my bike as if I had just pulled it out of the dumpster.