What Do You Want on Your Tombstone?

Events from Tuesday, October 14, 2008:

After a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep, I was pissing fire, ready to get some work done. The first two phone calls Skip wanted me to make were done before I left the hotel. The third item on my agenda was to contact the local newspaper in Henderson, NC, the Daily Dispatch. Before I did this though, I went to Bank of America to deposit a check; there, a nice southern woman gave me the name of a contact at the Daily Dispatch: A.W. She told me the Dispatch was right down the street, next across from the new library. I walked into the Dispatch and asked personally for A.W. When he came around the corner I knew I had found a southern reporter. He embodied everything I expected of a regional journalist—short sleeve button-up shirt (mis-buttoned), khaki pants, tennis shoes, holding a steno notepad. I introduced myself and launched into my spiel while he scribbled notes in longhand.

When I told him that I never know the exact location Skip is in, he acted as if driving out to find him on the outskirts of town was going to be too much of a hassle. I asked him, “Isn’t that the adventure of journalism?” He looked at me wearily and said, “Sometimes,” to which I replied, “Well then, do it for the story.” He went around the corner and when he came back he told me that he was going to send a photographer out there—we were going to have a story!

A.W. and I decided to take his car out to meet Skip to get the rest of the story. His car was a reporter’s car, Chick-Fil-A and Wendy’s refuse on the passenger floor. He attempted to dismiss this away with the comment, “I guess the maid forgot to come this morning.” We took the long way through town and out the other side in order to find Skip, all the while shooting the s- about the months ahead and my “Sabbatical” in Europe. We finally found Skip, stood in the middle of the road for the interview, and left Skip after an hour. When we got back to the Dispatch, A.W. told me he would mail a copy of the paper back to my permanent address in Grace.

The remainder of the day was fairly uneventful. I drove ahead to Stem, NC, and set up camp in a field with the sun setting over the trees behind me and a Hunter’s Moon rising up over the pine trees across the other side of the field. Right in front of the trees, deer were out for their evening meal.

When I drove back to meet Skip, I found him in front of a convenience store gas station, where a sheriff was getting out of the car. I don’t know why I, of all people, thought I could help, but I sped up and hopped out of the car. It turns out that someone in Providence, NC, saw Skip walking down the road pushing a twin stroller and whoever called thought that this constituted a threat to the county. Of course, with a sheriff and two drifters in front of the cultural hub of the town, everyone came out of their singlewides to find out what was going on. One of the fellars told us that this was the biggest thing to happen there in a month. I asked, “What happened last month?”

The sheriff got some information from Skip, and drove away, leaving us out front with the philosophers of Providence. The leader of the bunch, “Plato Lee,” invited us back to his home, where he promised Skip and I a “southern meal” and told us “he would take care of us.” We shot some pretty hilarious footage outside during the BS session, which conversations that sounded like:

Plato (to me): I can tell, lookin’ at you, that you are not a dumbass.
Me: Well, thank you very much. Would you mind calling my father to tell
him?

Skinny philosopher (to Skip): I had a guy jus’ up the street pull a gun on
me a week ago, jus’ ‘cause I drive a Chevy.
Me: Oh yeah, how do they feel about Volkswagens?

After a while we walked next door to Plato’s abode. The southern meal laid out on the coffee table in front of the television: a Tombstone pizza and two glasses of moonshine. I, unfortunately, had to pass on the moonshine. When I declined the shine, you would have thought that I had accused Dale Earnhardt of being gay. I told Plato that Skip would have mine, but I continued to get strange looks the rest of the evening. The rest of this story is too long and too rich for a blog entry; please expect a fuller story of this evening to appear in a periodical sometime in the future. (I would like to make a note now though, that in the 400+ miles I have traveled with Skip, and in Skip’s 800+ miles, these were the first people to meet us and immediately invite us into their home for dinner. They were good people with strong convictions and loyalty to family, and they truly embodied the spirit of southern hospitality. For the meal and the comfortable hours spent there, I am grateful.)

The short of the story, though, is that there was some mooning caught on camera, shortly before I left to go back to the tent. Skip agreed to spend the night in their guest bedroom, where he laid awake listening to Plato and his wife fighting, and occasionally heard muffled yells with keywords such as “gun” and “… I’m going to kill him.” Skip related to me later that he didn’t know who these words were intended for, him or me, but either way we had with our presence disrupted a delicate balance between moonshine and domestic harmony. After digesting a frozen pizza and all the racist political rhetoric I could stomach, I went back to the campsite. As this was the first night I would be spending alone in the tent, I decided it prudent to pull my machete from next to the driver’s seat where it is normally kept, and sleep beside it that night.