Nonessential Travel

“THE SNOW BLANKETED THE WORLD LIKE A SHROUD.” 

Gina stood at the kitchen window as she read the sentence aloud. Sighed, tugged on the belt of her pink terrycloth bathrobe. Flipped through more pages. I sat at the table, tapping my fingernail against my coffee mug, making a little plinking sound.

“The snow. Blanketed the world. Like a shroud.”

She repeated it a second time. Looked at me.

Scowled.

“This is what you’ve been working on?” She pulled the curtains aside. “What you came all the way out here for?”

“It continues,” I said, plinking more.

“Continuing into what, Earl? Breasts heaving like the bow of a pirate ship? Wolf-howls in the darkest night?”

“I can polish it.”

“But where is the imagination?”

“It’s a story. Stories take on lives of their own.”

“Where is the imagination?” She stabbed at the pages, shaking them. “There’s got to be imagination.”

She moved from the window and I had a clear view of the back yard. It was really coming down. The first major storm of the season. The snow was, in fact, blanketing the world like a shroud. I tapped at the mug, beating out a rhythm to some song playing in my head, until Gina started staring daggers. My coffee was cold anyway; I moved the mug over near the salt shaker. A few grains of rice were buried in the crystals, absorbing moisture. Gina returned to her reading.

We’d been at it since morning.

“All these adverbs.” She held the pages low and at arm’s length, as if they might leap. “I hate adverbs so badly.”

I let that one slide. It had to be a joke, anyway.

“Adverbs.” She wrinkled her nose. “Why waste time with such intrusive modifiers?”

I let that one slide, too. Prudent Ole’ Earl, what they should call me. Earl the Prudent One. Never passes up an opportunity to remain silent. Carve it on my tombstone. I tried not to watch Gina’s expression. But the papers rustled as she paged through. I could hear her read. It was only a matter of time before she arrived at the one part.

“Oh. I see. I get it.” She slapped my story down on the counter. Hard.

She’d arrived at the one part.

“You’ve decided not to go back.” She closed her bathrobe at her neck. “Is that it?”

So much for taking on lives of their own. But you have to understand…I’d been three times already. Maybe not to the place she had in mind, but to another just like it. What possible good might come from another go-round?

THREE TIMES I’D BEEN to the place up the hill from those Victorian homes. The ones you see in the postcards and such. Nicknamed the Painted Ladies, and for good reason. Whoever painted them knew the business. What accent colors for the trim, the proper shades for the bannisters. Sometimes the sun shines, sometimes it’s night. In the postcards, that is. When the angle’s right, the San Francisco skyline appears in the background.

The facility let us venture forth, assuming we had a viable purpose. You signed your name in the log book and in the column “Reason” wrote “job search” or “AA meeting”. Then you went to buy Pop Tarts with your food stamps, or maybe hang out in front of where you ex-girlfriend worked. Me, I’d go to the park. Sit in the grass and gaze past those Painted Ladies, past the skyline. Until I could see to the East. After a while, I’d clench my fist and shout at the top of my lungs, “You won this round, Frisco, but I’ll be back!”

Bold predictions are easy to make. But when the round lasts twenty years? A lot of getting up and being knocked down again.

GINA STARED OUT THE WINDOW. The daylight failed. You could almost hear the snowflakes bump down against the glass.

“My goodness, Earl,” she said. “One monster of a tale you’ve spun from your loom of fantasy.”

“Look…it’s just a draft, really.”

You could hear those snowflakes now.

“You know what? I’ll take the adverbs out.” I smacked my palm on the table. Jauntily, like it was the biggest favor. “I’ll weed them all out.” I even snapped my fingers.

“Oh, will you?” Her voice softer, with that wistful quality. She moved around the kitchen, opened a drawer, rummaged. Something caught her attention, but she closed the drawer and continued wandering.

“Look,” she said, “You check into your detox…”

“Rehab. It’s different. Detox is for people who get way out there.”

“Okay, Earl. So, you go to rehab. What is it, a week?”

“Three months.”

“Fine.” She held her hand against her chin. “You do your time, your three months. You get out, you can re-tox. You can de-hab.”

She touched the magnetic knife holder. I’d found it at a yard sale—my sole contribution to the kitchen. It had a long curved metal arm and the knives stuck there, tips pointed down, blades seeming to dangle in mid-air. Like those old cartoons where dozens of deadly objects defy gravity, hovering just above a character’s head.

“What’s going on out there, anyway?” I played with the salt shaker, batting it between my palms, sliding it back and forth across the table. “A blizzard?”

Gina peered out the window. “In three months, it will be warm again. It will have thawed.”

I stared into the salt shaker, Those buried rice grains.

“This is just the beginning,” she said. “The radio said you shouldn’t go out except for nonessential travel.”

“I think they mean essential travel.”

“I think they mean you should only go where you absolutely have to, Earl.”

Absolutely! An adverb. But I stayed quiet. Prudent Ole’ Earl, strikes again.

THE DELIVERY VAN arrived the next morning. Right on schedule. The streets had been plowed overnight. I padded around the living room, wearing Gina’s pink bathrobe, drinking the coffee she’d made before leaving for work. The robe was too big for her, and more comfortable than anything I owned. I’d been keeping my eyes peeled and was out on the porch, the storm door banging shut behind me, before the van even came to a complete stop.

Winter wind ripped the steam from my coffee mug where the liquid’s surface met the icy air. The watery cold bit into my nostrils and the sun splashed over the whiteness. Across the street, a neighbor shoveled his driveway. He was bareheaded—didn’t want a hat messing up his hair, I guess. There was a delay between when his shovel moved and the scraping sound of metal against pavement reached my ears. He saw me and hesitated. Then waved, but like his arm was frozen to his torso and he had to force it free. I waved too, after a moment.

The van stopped in the street, yellow lights blinking like muzzle flashes. In the summer and fall, the driver would pull part-way onto the lawn. But not with the snow. His van blocked half the road; traffic would have to go around. The driver clomped through the drifts towards the house. He held the envelope.

It was always the same driver. One van, one driver. A real small-town operation. He yanked one boot at a time out of the snow, like a filmstrips of astronauts walking the moon. He wore a blue hooded jacket and a cap underneath the hood. I thought, I should’ve shoveled the path. But the driver made it, one footstep at a time.

“Mornin’, bub.” He stepped onto the porch to hand me the envelope. It felt flimsy and light, as if less than empty. “No shortage of the white stuff, eh?”

My heart lurched. 

“What?”

“Been snowing half the night.”

“Oh.” Flooding relief. “The snow. Yeah. Kinda reminds you of a shroud.”

He eyeballed me.

“Or maybe a blanket,” I said, hurriedly.

He nodded. From somewhere in the vicinity came the rumble of a snowplow, spreading sand so tires might gain traction.

“Must be lot goin’ down,” the driver said. “Out in San Francisco.”

More alarm bells. Needles of panic. The snowplow got nearer, until the rumbling became a roar.

“What?” I shouted. “Why?”

He pulled at his beard. It was thick and black. A few snowflakes were embedded in it. The snowplow chugged off and it became quiet again.

“More envelopes, lately.”

“Right!” I said. “Envelopes.” I tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. “Well…business. Documents. To review and edit.” I put the flimsy envelope under my arm and hoisted my coffee mug. “Then they need to get returned right away.”

“Really? Because I never get any pick-ups from here. Only deliveries.”

He squinted and handed me a clipboard. The sun was bright, although too far away to do any melting.

“You remember the key this time, bub?”

I glanced at the door to the house. More panic—had I locked myself out again? It happened once, but not since, and the driver had never mentioned it. Why had he brought it up now?

It was during the summer, a few weeks after I got here. I’d signed for the delivery—it the first-ever envelope from San Francisco—and realized what I’d done. I yelled after the driver as he retreated along the flagstone path. Borrowed his phone and called Gina and begged her to leave work to come and rescue me. Then I’d gone around checking the windows and back door. All locked; no way inside. It had to be Gina. So I waited, hiding the first-ever envelope in the metal box on the porch where the dairy people left bottles of fresh milk. I sat in the wicker chair and on the porch and waited and enjoyed the summer morning.

The leaves were deep green and rustled in the breeze. From somewhere came the hacking thump of a lawnmower, the smell of new-mown grass. The couple down the street strolled past with their Doberman Pinscher puppy. The puppy had floppy ears and strained against her leash. It was fine to wait out on the porch, with my envelope hidden in the metal box, until Gina arrived. 

She’d laughed when she found me there, wearing her pink bathrobe and babbling about my idea.

“Sure!” she said, after I’d laid out my plans, smiling as she took the key from her handbag.

I fired up the barbecue while Gina shopped at the market. We grilled steaks and vegetables and drank a bottle of wine and twisted up a couple of numbers which we smoked in the cool of the evening as the sunset cast orange and purple streams across the sky. 

Gina called in sick the next day, too.

“I’m invested in what we’re doing here,” she’d explained.

We packed beer and sandwiches into a cooler and drove out to the lake. Swam in the warm water and lay on towels in the sand, letting the sun dry us. Smoked a couple numbers and at one point I asked her: Did she think there’d ever been any couple of days in Frisco when it got this good? I talked about my stories and didn’t stop until I looked over and saw she’d fallen asleep. I closed my eyes, too. I remembered the envelope…where had I left it? We got home late from the lake and there it was in the milk delivery box. Untouched, unopened.

“You still with me, bub?” The driver stomped his feet, knocking snow from his boots. It was getting colder by the second out there on the porch. I scrawled my name on the clipboard and thrust it at him.

“Okay,” I forced a smile. “Off to start my day!”

He watched me balance my coffee mug with my one hand and clutch the envelope with my other, wearing Gina’s pink robe and hoping the door wasn’t locked.

“Must get lonely,” he said. “Home by yourself.”

“Not when I have my work to keep me company.”

“Yeah.” He removed his cap and scratched his head. “You know, you’d think these days, what with e-mail and all…”

He stared at the envelope in my hands.

TEN MINUTES LATER we sat at the kitchen table, the driver and I. The cardboard envelope lay on the floor, torn open like the belly of an impala that had been set upon by hyenas. The plastic baggie inside contained white powder, which I dumped onto one of Gina’s dinner plates. The powder rose like Gurla Mandhata off the Tibetan Plateau. The plate was square and bone white, its rim covered in an ornate scroll, reminding me of the eaves on those Painted Ladies. I had a razor blade and had gone to work.

“You first, Wheels.” When I was finished, I passed him the plate. He had rolled up a twenty-dollar bill. He was at the ready, this driver.

“Hey, is your van gonna be okay? It was blocking the road.” It seemed important, all the sudden. That the road remain unblocked.

“Sure. I moved it, remember? To the side street. Leads up to the cemetery.”

Yes. I remembered. He raised the Jackson to his nostril and took a snort. Loud, like an engine firing. His whole body moved as he drew the Jackson along the length of the plate. It crossed my mind, something might need to be done about my deliveries from San Francisco, if things kept up like this. I wasn’t sure what. But something. 

“Looks like we’re in for the long haul, eh, Bub?” He grinned, blinked, passed me the plate. I took a nice long snort of my own. Blinked myself. The driver took off his cap, rolling the brim. Squeezing until it stayed curled into a U-shape. He looked around the kitchen.

“You got a wahina,” he said. “Lives with you. Am I right?”

I formed a mental picture, him parked in his van behind the bushes. Spying on Gina and I. Taking notes on his clipboard. He pointed at the calendar on the wall. “That’s not the kind of thing an hombre like you gets on his own.” He unzipped his jacket. The snowflakes in his beard had melted into droplets. I took the plate and razor and began carving away at the tiny mountain.

“Maybe the bank sent it,” I said, looking at the calendar. “But I guess you would know that? Being responsible for all the items making transit through this town.”

He shook his head. “Not all the items. Just the time-sensitive ones.” He tilted back in his chair, rocking a little. I worried he might tip over. But he had his balance. 

“You strike me as the creative type, Bub,” he said.

I set the plate down. The Jackson on the dinner plate had un-rolled on its own. He reached for it, re-rolled, snorted again. I followed suit. I put my hands in the pockets of Gina’s bathrobe. The terrycloth was soft and my hands were warm in the pockets.

“She thinks I should check back into rehab.”

“Oh, yeah?” He set his chair so all four legs were on the floor.

SUNBEAMS DANCED off the snow and into the kitchen as the driver and I sat and talked. We talked a long time. Back in San Francisco I’d owed certain individuals. There were threats, vague and not-so-vague. Sometimes the less specific warnings are the most concerning. People showed up at my house. Took the stereo, television, bicycle, and finally the house itself. All that was left there were my clothes and my stories. My pages.

And the pistol. 

It was an antique six-shooter straight out of the cowboy Westerns. I kept it around to protect myself. When it came time to leave San Francisco, I packed it into a steamer trunk with the clothes and the stories. Shipped everything out to Gina’s. It was waiting for me at her house when I got off the bus.

“You probably delivered it,” I said to the driver.

“Who else, Bub?” He leaned back in his chair.

GINA FOUND OUT ABOUT THE GUN, of course. “Bury it in the yard,” she’d said, after I asked what I was supposed to do with it. “Let it rust away to flakes!” But by then, the ground was frozen.

The driver rose and went to his van. He’d be back; his clipboard was still on the table. He let himself into the house, sat at the table and took out a plastic bag full of grass. The buds were fat and lush.

“Good green,” he said. “As good as you get in California. Got any papers?”

I pointed at the drawer Gina opened the night before. The driver rifled around. He twisted a joint and lit a match.

“She’ll smell the smoke,” he said. “She’ll see my footprints back-and-forth in the snow.”

“Not if I clear the path.”

He nodded. “I saw a shovel on the porch.”

We smoked the joint down to a roach, neither saying much. The driver licked his fingers and pinched out the glowing cherry. He shook some seeds from his plastic bag and set them on Gina’s dinner plate, next to what was left from my envelope. There wasn’t much.

“Good green,” he said, pointing at the seeds. “You plant them…who knows?” He shrugged and stood and offered me the twenty-dollar bill, but I shook my head. He picked up his clipboard and was gone.

Off to finish his deliveries, I figured. He hadn’t seemed in much hurry. So much for time-sensitive materials. I wondered how many stops he had left…who might be waiting for him. A random thought came, a vision of him being too high and losing control, careening his van through the cemetery and into someone’s living room. The authorities arriving to find my name and signature on his clipboard.

I looked at the calendar. A picture of a stone house in a clearing, in the woods. It was twilight; gloom filled the forest. But a glow came from the windows. Chimney smoke drifted up. Inside would be the smell of baking bread, the gurgle of poured red wine. People laughing. I could imagine the people, confidence and comfort in their laughter and talk.

I used the razor blade to slice a corner off the envelope and tucked the seeds into the cardboard triangle. Went upstairs and put them in the steamer trunk. I sat back at the kitchen table and stared at that calendar. A few more months of winter…that much was certain. I stared out the window and thought about what it might be like to do some digging, come springtime.