Day One-Hundred-Eighty-Four, Drowned Rats

It rained last night.  Cats.  Dogs.  Buckets.  Bathtubs.  Barrels.  But I didn't care.  I was too wiped out.  My tent does leak just a bit.  Especially when I leave my windows open.  I'd neglected to batten down.  I thought the fresh air might do me some good.  As it turned out it did not.

But it stopped at six-thirty or so, and stayed stopped until almost seven.  By which time I was back on the road to Bolinger, Alabama.  Three miles off.  No considerable distance.  Though it did seem further in the rain.  By the time I hit the first gas station I was soaked to the shorts.

My new shorts, my discount underpants.  I'm still making my mind up about them.  They don't preserve my modesty as well as I'd hoped, but they are, well, flattering.  I suppose you should lead with what assets you have.  I may just find a bride yet.

I settled into the gas station and had me some biscuits and grits.  It was my first food in a day or so.  It still was not very good.  But I choked it down and plugged in my computer and studied my map for three hours.

I'm in a mess.  It is going to get cold.  Damn cold, maybe twenty-five degrees.  For three, maybe four days in a row.  And tomorrow it is supposed to snow.  It looks like I'm headed to Mobile again.  I wish to golly I had known.  I've come miles out of my way.  And once there I may or may not have the bridge I need to cross the bay.  If not, I double back 150 miles.

My little computer's still pissing me off.  In Mobile they might fix it.  But I doubt it, the dipshits.  It's not why I'm headed there.  I'm trying to stay near towns.  So if I indeed freeze myself solid I'll have somewhere indoors to thaw.  And drink cocoa with marshmallows and cuddle up in front of a fire.  With someone who loves me, if only for a while.  I'll leave her one of my toes.

I made it a mile from the gas station, a third of a mile perhaps.  I figured I really ought to have lunch.  Breakfast had failed to satisfy.  So I had some catfish, which I don't much like.  It is better with cocktail sauce.  I know it's a beloved local fish but it tastes like an old canvas tent.

My day without food did not do me good.  It's left a void in me.  It's as if there's a gear with missing teeth in the machine that is my digestion.  It's affecting me emotionally.  My innards have turned against me.

The catfish did very little help.  I searched for something more benign.  But when in Rome you eat lasagne.  In Alabama everything's fried.

I was hoping it would stop raining.  It didn't.  It wasn't too cold.  But I was still in awful shape when I got to Millry, Alabama.  I resigned myself to a low-mileage day.  I stopped in a laundromat.  It was supposed to be in the forties tomorrow and I had nothing dry to wear.

They've revised the forecast.  Now they say the fifties.  And they're no longer predicting snow.  Which is good of them.  I was concerned.  It may not even rain.  Breakfast is thirteen miles away.  That's a pretty good jog.  Almost as far as I walked today, in the rain, every step.

I DON'T dislike grits.  Even pasty gas station grits.  They helped me choke those biscuits down.  In the future when I'm really rich, I'll have grits once in a while.

IT IS MEANT to be thirty-seven tonight.  That's up from twenty-eight.  I like this trend.  The cold seems to bother the locals more than it does me, and it bothers me a lot.

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Day One-Hundred-Seventy-Three, Suspicious Minds

It was raining when I woke up, some minutes before sunrise.  There was lightning but no thunder.  Somewhere there was a tornado.  Nowhere near me, as far as I know.  I heard about it on the radio.  It was a quarter of a mile wide and injured fifteen people.

It rained gently and it rained hard.  Then it rained harder still.  I figured I may as well stay in my tent.  I had nowhere to be.  Walking in the rain is bad enough.  Packing up is much worse.  I put on some dry socks and listened to Nicholas Nickleby.

Which I've read a half-dozen times.  I've listened to it a dozen times more.  I was running out of water and I was getting a little bit bored.  And hungry but at least I was dry.  Not as dry as you might think.  Some water always manages to find its way into my tent.

As did a number of little red ants.  I murdered them to pass the time.  Which is not, I confess, what the Buddha would do.  Call it a weakness of character.  When I lived in India I'd kill hundreds of them every day.  I tried to get my lizards to eat them but they would not even try.

The rain did stop at nine or so.  It turned out to be a trick.  It waited until I took down my tent then opened up into a monsoon.  I don't use the term loosely.  I know of monsoons.  I have lived in monsoony lands.  In two minutes it soaked everything I own and me right down to my shorts.

Getting back out to the road was a trick.  The world had turned to mud.  Not that sissy Yankee mud either.  Here is the real thing.  Tenacious and gooey.  Each one of my shoes must have weighed fifteen pounds.  I was feeling just a little bit picked on as I clomped up the hill to town.

But the sky was pretty.  It was eerily warm.  The clouds were all aswirl.  And conspired with the fog in the southeast to look very much like a mountain.  A Cascade, specifically.  But I was not fooled.  Not for more than a minute or two.  This is Mississippi.

It was not an altogether unpleasant walk.  You can only get so wet.  And there was a summery smell in the air.  Town was but two miles off.  Okolona, to be specific, "A Certified Mississippi Main Street Community." 

Whatever that is supposed to mean.  There was a street called Main.  I clomped halfway down it looking for somewhere to eat and dry my bones.  No joy.  It was back to the highway.  I dined at the supermarket.

I had biscuits and grits and gravy and eggs and two chunks of fried baloney.  Which was salty as hell but I'm not complaining.  The whole meal cost me four bucks.  Five with coffee.  It was all good.  Those were my very first grits.  Which don't really taste like anything.  They're like bland tapioca pudding.  I put salt and pepper on mine.  I don't really know if you're supposed to.  I waited until no one was watching so as not to piss anyone off.

It stopped raining over breakfast.  I dried as much as I could.  And set out to walk as far as I could in a pair of squishy socks.  My shoes were cheap but they're not waterproof.  There was not much I could do about that.  Suffering, they say, builds character.  Blisters will make me a god.

I was headed, of course, for West Point, Mississipi, twenty-eight miles off.  With absolutely nothing between the two towns.  It's like being in Montana again.  And it had me a little bit intimidated.  I looked for alternate routes.  But nothing really leapt out at me.  I bought a sandwich to go.

And walked.  I guess it wasn't so bad.  I was stopped by the State Patrol.  It's been a while; I was overdue.  It still rather hurts my feelings.  I don't like being asked to explain myself.  It is not so easy to do.  And I'm sure there is something in the Fourth Amendment that says I don't have to show them ID.

I guess they have me on "unusual conduct."  My whole life's been conducted unusually.  But I still resent being run through their computer.  What happened to the Land of the Free?  I can see them pulling over to offer help.  I might need a foot rub or something.  But once I tell them what I'm doing they should be on their way.  But it takes Imagination to understand.  They're a fairly unimaginative bunch.

My pace slowed just a bit after that.  They'd gone and ruined my mood.  Walking Across America is a Great Thing to Do.  It pains me when people can't see it.  Driving a Winnebago or riding a Harley would make perfect sense to them.  If you want to be truly free from suspicion you need to have a fat ass.

I was outside the supermarket adjusting my pack.  Some fellows pulled up in a truck.  "Have you eaten?" they asked.  In fact I had but I knew just what they meant.  If they were Christians they didn't wear it on their sleeves.  They just wanted to make sure I was fed.  What a wonderful state, I thought.  I meet good people everywhere.  But I'm thinking now of cutting it short and heading for Alabama.

Or Arkansas.  Alabama, I think.  I keep mixing them up in my mind.  And I cannot be sure the cops like hobos any more on that side of the line.  But a night in jail would enliven this blog, and one hopes, pay for this trip.  I would insist on compensation.  I can hold a grudge.

I am still twelve miles from West Point, camped by a soybean field.  It is meant to be in the thirties tonight.  I'm fine if it doesn't rain.  Tomorrow will be cold indeed.  I'm just a little bit worried.  I draw the line at twenty-seven.  That's when I move back indoors.

"YOU AIN'T from around here."  I get that one a lot.

THE RETIRED preacher I met yesterday has eleven children.  "Being fruitful," he calls it.  He has too sixteen grandchildren.  "Do you know all their names?" I asked.  He assured me he did not.  Again quite without irony.  I expect he has them written down somewhere.

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