Needed to be Gone

As I opened my eyes that summer morning and heard the rooster calling to the sun, I knew that the life I had been wanting to live was just about to begin and that I needed to Wake Up and get away from where I was. The life that I had been living, until that morning, had been in motion for close to thirty years, but I knew that I needed to change it if I wanted to make it out of here alive.

After I scarfed down moms' eggs and hash and washed away the taste with a half pint of the creamy white juice from our beloved cow Bessy, I was set to go.

I told mom that I loved her and that I'd write. I'm not sure she heard me because she didn't respond or act like I was leaving. But then again, maybe she didn't want to acknowledge the fact that her oldest boy was setting off on a trip that could very possibly lead him to no return.

I turned On the Road from the old gravel drive to our farm and watched the sun peak up from beyond the trees on the back forty as I slowly crept up the small hill that had kept me home for far too long. As I passed the pasture and the Weeping Willow's to the East of the road, I saw my father operating his tractor in the field.

I was too afraid to say goodbye to him. He wouldn't have supported me or my decision and instead, demanded me to stay home to work the land and slaughter the cattle. He would have told me that the hippos (that's what he called everything he didn't understand or didn't want to comprehend) would never allow me to write anything.

My father was the Big Sur of the county that we lived in. Everybody that needed something done would come to him for his help. If he had the time, and the motivation to lend a hand, my father was on it like white on rice. He always wanted me to grow to be like him. And for awhile, I too, wanted that. But after he realized that I was a lost cause, he gave up on me long before that day in July when I left.

On the back of that old blue Ford tractor, sat my fathers best friend. In all the years that I lived on that farm, I never did see the two not together. His name was Cody, a brilliant looking Golden Labrador Retriever that stood four feet high when on all fours and close to six when on just his back two. Cody was a magnificent dog. As fast as lightning and the ears of an owl. The only dog that I've ever heard of to scare of a black bear by barking and not giving up his ground to protect his master. I can still remember that day.....


I had just finished the two mile hike back from the market with the weeks grocery's for mom and could hear Cody's sneering growl from behind the barn. As I walked back to see what was going on, I noticed my father lying on the ground, with Cody between him and a horrendous looking black bear. The bear stood close to ten feet tall, with fangs for teeth and daggers for claws, screaming its growls at Cody to move from his path so that he could retrieve the meal (my father) on the ground behind him. Cody knew what the bear was saying, and he knew that he wasn't about to move.

And I did nothing. I stayed bent down behind the tractor tire so that the bear didn't see me and I watched Cody battle for my father. Cody finally wore the bears patience and the beast trotted off into the woods behind the barn. I will always have these Visions of Cody, and I'll always wonder if I would have been big enough of a man to scare the bear off like my father's dog did. And because of that day with Cody and my father, and a hundrend just like it, to this day, I still have Visions of Cody.

As I neared the edge of my family's property, I slowed my old Chevy to a crawl and looked out to my father one last time. If he saw me or not, I'll never know, but I will always have the feeling that he knew I was there.

After I got the old Chevy scooting down the gravel road once again, and noticed the Wind Blown World that I was leaving behind, I began to second guess my theories of life and wondered if the actions I had taken earlier that morning, by leaving my family, were the right things for me to do. And I started talking to myself, out loud. And answering my own questions in the third person.

I couldn't keep second guessing my choices, I told my self. You want to write, go and write. Find whatever it is that you're looking for and write the best fucking story ever written about it. There's no turning back now. If you do that, you're a coward, a bum, one of The Dharma Bums.

The Dharma Bums were the people who lived down by the river on the South side of my town. They lived in little shacks, made from old and rotted wood with plastic bags filling holes in the roofs. Being called a Dharma Bum, if you really weren't one, was the most insulting thing a person could say to another from our town. I didn't want to be considered a Dharma Bum, so I kept traveling. Looking for my story.

By the end of the third day of my journey, I was completely out of my element. I had no idea on where I was at, nor where I was going. But then again, I didn't know where I was going when I left either. When I finally had the vision of humanity in my sights and not just the light from the moon above, I was about thirty miles between The Town and the City.

The town that I stopped in, well, what used to be a town I guessed, was completely empty. Locked doors and windows covered with sheets of wood on every building. The only sign of life that I came across when I stopped to piss in the ditch was the glowing embers from a fire behind the old post office. Because I was naive, and because I was still looking for this great and magical story to write, I walked right over to stick my nose in somebody's business.

As I slowly stepped toward that burning pile of cedar, or maybe it was pine, I could hear the soft playing of a guitar and the beautiful voices of what seemed like, angels. When they noticed me, all things stopped. They all stood and turned to confront me.

"Lonesome Traveler, this is no place for you", the guitar playing old man said.

"He's right, these are The Subterraneans, nobody who is anything comes out here", said one of the women who was singing.

"Please, I am a traveling man, with no place to lay my weary head, for an evenings rest, I would owe so much," I spoke in a soft voice to try and sell my story.

At that point, the group all gathered around the fire, talking and discussing my intrusion on their get together. For close to ten minutes I stood and awaited their final verdict. And when they gave it to me, I was completely grateful.

"Hello stranger, I'm Maggie Cassidy, and it would be our pleasure to have you bunk out here with us tonight," said the outrageously attractive woman.

"Him there is Old Angel Midnight. Plays a hell of a guitar. Ask him to play ya' a song, and he'll play it better than the artist who wrote it. What you doing out here in these parts" Maggie asked?

"Well, to tell ya the truth Miss Cassidy, I ain't so certain yet myself. All I know is I'm looking for something to write about," I told her.

"Well, why don't you just bunk up here with us for a couple days and maybe we'll give ya something to write about," Maggie told me.

And since I didn't have a plan, or anywhere else to go for that matter, that's what I did. For the next seven weeks, I lived in that old, tired town, listening to Old Angel Midnight picking his guitar and singing his songs about Departed Angels and the woman that he loved who was Safe In Heaven Dead.

Old Angel Midnight, before winding up at The Subterraneans, worked as a railmen for the train through Texas. And when his wife died, he fell apart and couldn't continue there any more. He quit the job, packed his car full of clothes, food and his guitar and drove until he found himself here, out of gas, all alone. And it didn't bother him to be alone either, he actually liked it. He'd just sit around a fire, playing with the strings on his worn out guitar, waiting for his Desolation Angels to come and find him.

About a week after Old Angel Midnight stumbled upon the wasteland town in the hills, his Angels showed up. Maggie Cassidy was one of them. She was, in my opinion, the most beautiful Angel of the group. Long, flowing blonde hair. Radiant, glowing green eyes. The closest thing that I had ever seen to perfection, with a body and personality to match. I wanted Maggie Cassidy to be my Angel, and in a way, she was.

Maggie was up in the wasteland town because she was trying to escape from her brutish husband. She spoke of him only once while I was there, and just hearing the words she used to describe the way he treated her, and remembering the thoughts I had as I heard her soft voice tell her story, I was thankful that she had finally eluded him.

Maggie Cassidy told us of the times that he would beat her with his leather belt. And the times that he would throw the hot wax from the candle at her while she was drying his dishes over the sink. And the times he would make her sleep on the floor of the apartment because he didn't want a "dirty-slut-whore of a wife" sharing the same bed as him.

Maggie Cassidy was the exact opposite of a dirty-slut-whore of a wife. She was my angel. She was Old Angel Midnight's, angel. And she was an Angel to the rest of the girls, Carolyn and Teressa, that were up there with us.

After those seven weeks of living off of each other, and helping each other deal with the things in our lives, I thought that I was ready to try and make my return home to my father on the farm. I didn't want to know the pain I would feel if I woke Maggie and told her I was to leave, so I wrote a note, left it on the pillow of Carolyn and made my way back to my Chevy.

I could only imagine the way it played out when Teressa woke in the morning to the crow of a rooster calling to the sun. And I am certain she gave the letter to Maggie after she told Old Angel Midnight goodbye for me. I hope that Maggie didn't feel betrayed again when she read that letter I left for her. I was hers, and she was mine. She helped me cope with my father telling me that I'd never be good enough. And I helped her mend from the brutality of the coward she was married to before she came to The Subterraneans. This was my letter:

Dear Carolyn:
Please, my dear, express to all, my undying gratefulness for their love and support. Thank everybody for accepting me for who and what I was and for who and what I have become. Thank you all for making me a better, bigger man. Tell Maggie, that I never will forget her and if we should meet again, I will not leave without her. She is my Angel. Without her, I could have never grown into what I always wanted to be. Tell her I will find her, somewhere, and when I do, if she will have me, I will hold her in my arms for the rest of our lives. Until we cross paths again my friend, in some other place, at some other time, I love you all.

It was about sundown when I finally pulled back onto the drive of the farm, three days after I left the love of my life, Old Angel Midnight and Carolyn all up in those hills. As the headlights of my old Chevy peeked through the windows of my family's house, I could see my father standing at it, looking to see who it was.

As I shut the old Chevy down, and opened the door to step out, I heard his voice.

"I knew that you'd be back boy. We've missed you. I had Ma keep the Door Wide Open. Did you find whatever it was that you were looking for son," my father asked?

I answered with a nod.

"What about the hippos? Did you lose the hippos," he questioned again?

"Father, it is good to be home, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks."

*the words in bold are all names of books, stories, poems by Jack Kerouac. Also characters from them.