I've been reading "Moby Dick," the craziest quilt of stories, novel, philosophy, and scholarly footnotes I've seen since the Bible. At one point, my namesake, Ishmael, having been just pulled from a water-logged rowboat after a night adrift and hopeless, says to himself (and his reader), that:
"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."
Ever since the extraterrestrial ambulance picked me up a few weeks back, I've been getting the distinct impression that my life has gone into prime time and the channel is cosmic comedy central.
Imagine Rich Little doing an Ed Sullivan impersonation. Okay, now he's done and he's unraveling Ed Sullivan and coming back into just plain old Rich Little. When he gets about four-fifths of the way home, hit the pause button on your remote control. Okay. Now hold that image; you'll need it later.
From the moment I arrived in the yard in Sheffield, Alabama and pulled my pack out of the boxcar to take a look around I was an object of careful observation by the bull. Over the next several hours of me scoping things out and trying to find a southbound to Birmingham my every move was being watched from a tower in the middle of the yard.
Not knowing any of this, I felt pretty confident when I finally located a southbound in the yard and snaked between lines of cars to locate a comfy-looking boxcar. By the time the train started moving I was munching on an apple and daydreaming about how winter Alabama would look rushing by this afternoon.
But they moved the train out just far enough that the bull didn't have to walk far to peek in the door and say, "Come here, son."
This was two bulls in two days; my luck was turning sour. "Do you know that riding freights is illegal?" he asked. I said that I had guessed that it might be, but that I figured that since I wasn't there to vandalize, steal, or sabotage that maybe nobody would mind if I just hitched a ride to Birmingham.
He told me that he could take me in right now for being caught in that boxcar, but because it's getting close to Christmas, he's going to be nice about it and just write me out a trespassing warning. Alabama law says that before you can arrest someone for trespassing, you have to warn them that they're on private property. This is my warning. If I come back I'm going to spend some time in an Alabama jail.
But for a bull, he's a nice guy, and we chat it up about this and that (with him using the casual conversation to demonstrate to me that he's been watching me all morning hiking around the yard), and he gives me some pointers about the area, telling me there's a Salvation Army mission up the road in Florence and a truckstop about a half-mile in the other direction. Hitchhiking's legal in Alabama, he says, so long as you stay off the interstate.
Legal, maybe, but next to impossible. I decided to head for the truckstop where the 72 and 43 cross near Muscle Shoals. It looked to all the world like the perfect hitching spot. Wide shoulders, a stoplight where the highways meet without an overpass so when they pass you they're going slow enough to read your sign and see your thumb and pull over. Just ideal. I went in to the bathroom of a gas station to wash up a bit and trim back my beard so I'd look more presentable, and I changed into the cleanest of my not-so-clean shirts. Then I grabbed a discarded campaign sign and wrote "B'ham" on the back side and with a smile and a thumb tried to flag down a ride.
I spent hours. Hundreds of cars passed me. My smile got sore, my thumb got sore, I couldn't believe it. Toto, I don't think we're in California anymore. I threw away my sign. Hell with Birmingham; I'll take a ride anywhere in that general direction. Threw out the thumb again. Still no luck. I'd heard that hitchhiking was tough in the South, but I had no idea that it was this bad.
My transportation options were dwindling. Couldn't go back to the George Orwell Memorial Surveillance Yard and catch a train, maybe I could walk a couple of miles on cramped legs and blisters, can't seem to hitch a ride. Back at the gas station I suck down a Miller, write a couple of postcards, and stew over my predicament, eventually deciding to call the Salvation Army in Florence and see what the deal is there. They say they'll keep the light on for me. Okay.
Just a four or five mile walk into Florence, but a mile into it I already don't think I'm going to make it. The blisters are complaining, and my left thigh is so cramped up that my hip is popping from dislocation with every step. "Maybe I can walk out the cramp," I tell myself in a graveyard whistle, but with inexplicable hubris I turn some roadside debris into a "Florence" sign which I attach to the back of my pack, and although there's no shoulder I put out a tired and hopeless thumb to every passing car.
Eventually I do get a ride, though only a three-mile hop into town. The driver tells me he saw me out by the highway a few hours ago and warns me that it's tough to hitchhike in Alabama. I tell him I've already given up. He drops me in front of the Greyhound station in Florence, where I've hardly gotten my bearings when Ralph C. Bowersox, probably the most devoted employee Greyhound has, greeted me.
Okay, bring back that Rich Little thing from paragraph four, because Mr. Bowersox, whether he knows it or not, is a 24-hour-a-day Rich Little impersonator. The mannerisms, the voice, the facial expressions, all remarkable and full of presence. I'm captivated. Mr. Bowersox takes his job very seriously, too, and very much wants Greyhound to succeed in the particular consumer market that is me.
"The bus for Birmingham just left an hour ago, but there's another one tomorrow morning. You have family in Birmingham?" he asks.
"Well, no. I'm trying to get to Alaska eventually."
"Alaska! Well, we can get you direct to Alaska."
"Really..."
"Could get you there in four and a half days for under two hundred dollars."
Wow. That is pretty cheap. Cost that much in gas just for my friend to drive out to Iowa. I'll think about it. I ask Mr. Bowersox about the Salvation Army mission and he spins a cartographic spaghetti-tale which would add, by his estimate, another four miles to my day. Hell with that. I can barely limp down the block to check out the "Economy Inn" which looks like it's falling down and has a pool that has been filled with what looks like wheat-grass juice. Looks like a budget sort of place, midweek and all.
I haggle with the woman at the front desk and settle on a price neither of us are satisfied with, but I'm feeling self-indulgent, and a night in a real bed in a room with a real shower sounds too good to pass up. I feel embarrassed by luxury, kicking back watching an old Kung Fu episode on TV and nibbling on a week-old bagel. In the morning I wake up early but lounge around in bed. Checkout time isn't till eleven, and if I want to take up Mr. Bowersox on his offer, the bus doesn't leave until early afternoon.
There's a loud knock at the door, then another. I groggily get up and drag on my pants. Maybe my watch stopped and it's checkout time after all. I look out beyond the curtain and see one police officer at the door, and three more behind him hugging the wall with their hands open and eager by their belts, staring at my door in the classic "he's armed and dangerous and I'm scared" pose.
As I reach for the doorknob I review the events of the past months and try to remember any crimes I have committed that would provoke such a response. I can't think of anything they'd know about. Besides, I paid for my room with cash, just signing my name on a form. That's not much ID to do a search. I figure that maybe there's some mistake, or perhaps there's a lunatic sniper or bomb threat and they're evacuating the building.
I open the door. "What's going on here?" I ask.
"You'd better tell us who you are" the officer says, coldly.
I wonder whether the time is right for subterfuge, but eventually decide to play it straight. "My name is Ishmael Gradsdovic."
"Is Ishmael Cradodovis in there?"
"I'm Ishmael Gradsdovic. It's Gradsdovic. Three syllables."
"Are you sure?"
I think again for a moment, taking their question seriously. It's been a weird few days, and I could potentially be confused. Everything checks out, though. "Yes," I answer.
"We're looking for an oriental male in connection with an armed robbery and the lady at the front desk told us you were an oriental but clearly you aren't."
"Oh," I said, and they left.
Not to downplay the fine salesmanship of Ralph C. Bowersox, but this incident was what finally sold me on getting the hell out of Alabama by whatever means were at my disposal. One Greyhound ticket to Dachauville, Alaska, please.
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