another preview of the novel What Matters
***
This is the scene: it’s a 100 degree day and Jim is sitting on a bench in the shade at a bus stop at Riverview, Kansas, where there has not been a river since the 1930’s when the Army Corps of Engineers diverted the Old Bone for a dam and a reservoir but the view is still very fine because lack of water has stunted the real estate development in that area, and made it good for staring out over the bluffs and tall grass of the plains all the way to the horizon. I have never been there but I am taking Jim’s word for it. He doesn’t lie—much.
A bus comes and goes, but he remains just sitting there with his back pack beside him. After a while, a boy of 16 or so who works at the gas station close-by, and noticed Jim because he has not moved in hours, comes over to check on his health. And they have a conversation about beauty.
Jim has his shaggy orange hair, and shaggy orange beard that Harry gave him after the last inquiries from the FBI. He is dressed as a hitch-hiker, exactly like someone he read about in a book, with a back pack, and a floppy gray fisherman’s hat, and plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and jeans and low boots. He’s got a change of clothes and a jacket in the pack as well as two back-up batteries, so it weighs about sixty or seventy pounds. But he is there because he has run away. This was Jim’s solution, he says, to the ‘jeopardy’ of his staying with me. He ‘got out of Dodge’ by taking a bus—several buses—to Dodge City, Kansas. He can be very literal.
Now, here is the fact of the matter. In spite of the letter he left us—left me, written in a perfect script that looks like it was taken from a nineteenth century school book lesson, which it probably was, he left here because Bridget is here and he’s driving her crazy. He knows this because she kissed him. I know a little of what this might have been like because it was her mother that first kissed me, but the result of that was Bridget and unfortunately, Jim is not equipped to deal with the situation.
Back in Kansas, Jim now is taking local buses from town to town after watching some sort of dramatic tourist presentation of the ‘wicked’ old days in Dodge City and deciding he could not afford to stay there. He tells me that it was difficult to find a ‘cheap’ hotel anywhere. He is averaging $50 a night and the charge is against Harry. I tell him to come home, but he is pretty certain the FBI is going to track him down on the Cape because of Bridget showing up. This seems like a non-sequitur, which I did not think Jim was capable of making, until I think about it. Bridget has gotten herself a job at The Grill for the summer until school starts again, and she is making better tips than I get so I am pretty sure she is staying.
The really disconcerting thing is to get a phone call from a robot. He answers every question from me without hesitation, and very little inflection, and I am over-reading into every potential nuance. He tells me about talking to the boy at the bus stop and I am trying to figure out why he has made a note of that particular incident before I come to the realization that it was just a beautiful view and that I should be considering the fact that he is appreciating beauty.
The boy, whose name is Lloyd, asks him if he is okay. Remember, Jim hasn’t moved in hours. I have seen him do this.
Jim says, “I’m fine. Very fine. That is a beautiful view.”
Lloyd says, “My father says it was even prettier when the river ran through it.”
Jim says, “You mean, like in the book? The Norman Maclean book?”
Lloyd says “That’s Montana, I think. My dad has that book…But if you’re looking for a place to eat, the Delcy is good. It’s also the only one though. There’s nothing else around here. And the bus to Salina comes by every two hours.”
“Thank you.”
“You have enough water, don’t you? We have a machine in the garage, but you are welcome to drink from the spigot. I do.”
“I’m fine. I’m just watching the shadows on the grass drift down from the bluff.”
“Are you a poet?”
“I wish I was.”
“What do you do?”
“I am a lab technician. At MIT.”
“In Boston?”
“Technically, in Cambridge.”
“Wow! That must be cool!”
“Yes. What do you do?”
“I’m an automotive technician. That means I change oil, and tires…What do you do in your lab?”
“My boss makes robots.”
‘Very cool! What? for the army?”
“He has in the past.”
“We get some of those convoys out of Fort Riley through here. I saw a truck full of robots once, when they broke down. They don’t look like they do in the movies….I’ve been thinking about the Army.”
“What’s your favorite subject in school?”
“History.”
“Have you thought about studying history in college?”
“No. I’ll need a job. Maybe I’ll go to the Polytechnic over by Salina.”
“Wichita State has a robotics program.”
“Yeah. But I’m not so good with math.”
“Well, maybe then you should just stick to reading for pleasure and fixing cars to pay the bills. There’s a good living in that.”
“That’s what my dad thinks… But he’s going to be looking for me now. I better get back over to the garage.”
“Thanks for checking up on me.”
“Thanks for checking out the view. I guess I’m just too used to it.”
“You shouldn’t let that happen. Beauty is pretty precious.”
“Yes, sir. I guess.”
“What is beautiful to you?”
“That’s easy. Barbara Anne MacAlister. We grew up together. She’s a waitress over at the Delcy now. ”
“Besides Barbara Anne MacAlister?”
“My mother.”
“Good, but besides her? What things do you think are beautiful?”
“The best is in the morning when the spring mist comes over the Smoky Hills, I think.”
“That would be something to see. Maybe, right up there with Barbara Anne MacAlister.”
“Right. But she’s taken.”
So that’s the story. Jim left it right there.
But now, I’m thinking something else. Jim’s real problem is Bridget. Which means, he will be coming home soon.