38
THINGS DON’T WISH TO LAST . My father told me that.
Pat is playing acoustic guitar in the pavilion off Main Street and I’m sitting at one of the far-off wooden picnic tables with the paint peeling off, all alone.
With fading curly hair and a thick beard, Pat does what he was born to do.
His rings shine on his fingers as they strum, and tattoos cover his neck and arms.
Though born in Johnston, he sings with a bit of a southern drawl.
He has a full round stomach and the saddest, most gentle eyes you’ve ever seen.
He’s playing through a set of folk tracks that settle like heartbreak into the fifteen or so of us here to listen.
“Mamma don’t worry, mamma don’t cry, I’m heading home now mamma, I’ve got the song to make the drive.
Mamma don’t worry, mamma we’re fine, we’ll ride along the road, we’ll wind along this road of time.”
And I swear Pat’s eyes glisten with water as the evening falls around us.
It’s rare that Johnson houses anyone quite as talented as Pat, but when wanderers like him come through I almost never miss them.
Around here, if you see a man with a guitar, then you oughta stop to hear the music just in case.
I’ve just finished working a long day painting the back rooms of Mick’s Grocery and feel exhausted.
On the way back to my place I saw Pat walking by the pavilion, and I immediately turned over to the side of the road and parked.
He’s cradling his guitar and beginning another ballad.
“Darlin I’m beat down, the sun’s gone off and set now, so I’m draggin myself back down through the door.” Pat seems beat down, just like me.
He’s only thirty, but seems much older.
Some of these folk heroes, the good ones, sing with the soul of a thousand years if they get it right and find their voice.
Pat has it alright.
Off to my left the sun sets earlier than yesterday and the day before that.
It also seems a bit sad in its early descent, but maybe that’s just me.
We see the world as we paint it.
Van Goghs, the lot of us.
God.
Am I going to think about Rose every time I see an acoustic guitar for the rest of my life? I never even got to hear her play.
I only hope she hasn’t ruined me forever.
It’s been two weeks since she left town.
She disappeared just a couple days after our night on Johnston Hill.
Word had it she went to go check on things in Ryland and do some sorting out.
I don’t know what the hell that means really but that’s what Saul told me so, that’s all I know.
He so casually mumbled the news to me I couldn’t believe it.
He told me as if it didn’t feel like the end of the world.
It plummeted my heart to my stomach.
There was no voicemail on my answering machine, no letter at my door, just a graceful, quiet exit.
Senseless.
Things had gone so beautifully, too.
I could fucking pound my head on this chipped paint table.
I’m nothing but a child, in the end.
An angry ruined sad mess and tantrum prone.
To think I only kissed her once, only held her once.
I imagine she’ll be back, but I can’t be sure.
She was gone in the morning like a ghost fit for dawn, so I’ve told myself it’s over forever.
Maybe I was wrong about everything after all.
Two weeks of radio silence, staring down the barrel of confusion, I admit my mistake.
What a thorough disaster I’ve made.
I really opened myself to it this time.
To think I was fine before she showed up.
What a fucking drag.
I rap my knuckles on the table but it’s not to the music.
Pat, the bearded wanderer, is on that pavilion stage tonight and it feels like he’s traveled here for me.
When he sings about stitching up his eyes not to cry, I feel we are one.
Isn’t it funny how we’re all the same, together but alone? The Peterson family is close to the stage, and they’ve brought their boy.
The kid must be three or so and is impressively well adjusted and thrilled.
The mother and the father and the kid.
The chosen few.
They each hold one of his hands and sway to the music.
The American brave and content, I think that kid’s got a chance.
It’s true that there is nothing more fortunate than a good family.
A father being around, and a mother all filled up with love.
I gotta say, I’m a little envious of that Peterson boy.
He crouches down and falls to the grass in a soft little heap.
He picks at the blades and has no damn clue how swell he has it.
He’ll find out one day.
He’ll know what I know—that family is everything.
I haven’t seen much of anyone lately.
No Leon or Prince or anybody.
I’ve dropped off the map, in a way.
I’m prone to these sorts of stretches sometimes.
Even as a kid I would try to run away and disappear after a fight with my father or a bad day at school.
I’d never make it in the forest through nightfall and Ma would throw a real fit, but I couldn’t help it.
I can get pretty isolationist sometimes.
I’ve gone through entire seasons of life feeling dramatically alone.
And I knew that all it would take would be a phone call, or a knock on the door, but for weeks I could pretend as if the world had abandoned me, and it would continue to do so from there on out.
I’d become convinced that all my friends had left and that they had never understood me in the first place, it’s the blues at its worst.
None of those lies were true, but I would find that tune anyway.
Pat sings about it now, today and most days.
Maybe I’m finished.
Maybe I won’t reach out anymore.
Maybe I’ll hit the road and finally disappear into the wide American frontier like my ancestors.
I’ll figure it out one sweaty, dirty day at a time and make a real life.
Wander to exhaustion, sleep on the floor of subway stations, climb mountains and on.
And in my later years, I will then sit and rock and look back and be proud of the adventure.
No memory to drag me down.
Only the future - the future! Maybe I oughta hop in my Saturn and be a prisoner to nothing and no one.
Find a fine river and stand in the water, be swept up in the current.
Where to? Where is my purpose hidden? Fuck’s sake, I feel restless.
All at the hands of a woman.
Maybe I’m better alone, standing still amongst all the scramblers and desperate people for love.
Not me! I am an island.
Pat plays on as the day finally relents and the air starts to carry just a little more bite. It fills my lungs.
Come down and stay a while, come down and stay.
I close my eyes and try to breathe a few memories away. Things will get better. Keep your head up, Cash. One black night at a time, try and face it. I have to be back at the store at six a.m. tomorrow to complete my job, but Pat will be finishing up any second now and I know that he’ll need a cold beer.
A half hour later Pat and I are sitting on the pavilion stage sipping a few Budweisers I snagged from the Shell. He is leaning back against one of the pillars and scratching at his beard.
“Came in yesterday. Fuckin, haven’t slept man. I don’t know what it is, I come home sometimes from the road and can’t sleep a wink.”
Pat will go months at a time in Nashville, but has spent the past five years or so mostly on the road doing small gigs, just barely getting on. Pat’s family wasn’t around Johnston anymore, but he still stopped by to pay his regards.
“It’ll always be home Cash, you know that.”
The only thing tugging at his heart was the woman he left behind in Tennessee.
“She’s a good woman, you know, she’s tired too, I think. It ain’t easy waitin around for me comin back, I know that. Shit, Cash, it’s just a circle, ain’t it? The comin and goin. I love her, though. I do. It’s been a dead week. Had to make it home.”
“Are all those songs about her?”
“Lot of ’em.” He nods, scratching that beard again and taking a long pull of Bud. Of course they are.
“You ever find what you’re lookin for out there?” I ask.
“Travelin?”
“Yeah man, out on the road.”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you lookin?”
“Think we’re all looking for something, ain’t we?”
Pat was prone to talking about life in these giant philosophical ways sometimes. He knew they could mean anything. That’s how he deflected.
“Where’d you stop along the way?”
“Shit, Cincinnati. Cincinnati for a couple. One outside of St. Louis. Stopped over through Bettendorf for a few. I don’t know. Everywhere Cash, any place that’ll have me.” His guitar lies loyal by his side, the pick guard completely shredded by decades of strumming. It has a real soul, a worn and rugged history to it that all the best guitars have. Pat never really did anything else outside of playing that guitar.
“Life of an artist,” I say.
“Shit. I don’t know, Cash. Feels more like work some days, I gotta tell ya.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes when I’m really burnt and strugglin, yeah. Broke as hell.”
“A craftsman then.”
“A craftsman, yeah.” He laughs a low pleased chuckle.
“I like that. Yeah.”
“We’re all craftsmen around here, Pat. That’s what we are.”
“You got that right.”
Pat here has been living out of his truck for five years and he’s still making the rounds. Sure, he may be broke, and he may be tired. He may miss the woman he loves, but he is right in the heart of it. He’s a moving piece of the grand expanse of America and going after it. He is free. No matter how ragged he looks before me now, I admire him.
“Will you be sticking around Johnston for a beat?”
“Nah. Leaving in the morning for Sun Prairie.”
“On it goes.”
“On it goes.”
To think the man had played to no more than fifteen people tonight, got paid only a few bucks, and still, he would pick up that guitar and try again in a new town.
“What’s in Sun Prairie?”
“Hell if I know, Cash, hell if I know.” He cracks open another beer and searches the night.
“I know you think it’s rad on the road man, but what you got here, you got it right.”
“Greener on the other side.”
“Maybe. But you’re part of something, ya know? Community is important. Out there it’s lonesome as hell.”
“You’re part of everything all at once though.”
“I don’t know what’s comin one day to the next man.”
“Ah none of us do.”
“Well, I envy ya. How’re the boys?”
“Good man. All good.”
“Leon still at Sureland?”
“Yeah. Like clockwork.”
“Prince still Prince?”
“Always.”
“Miss those guys man. Been ages.”
“They’re around. They’d love to see ya.”
“Yeah well. I don’t know, man. Honestly. Sometimes I get to thinkin maybe I oughta just come home.”
“Here?”
“Yeah man, of course here.”
“What about the music?”
“I can play anywhere. Could get a real job. Ask Janey to come north. I don’t know.”
“You’re alright man. Something’s coming.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got a gift, Pat. I ain’t lyin.”
“Thanks Cash.”
“I’m serious man.”
“I know you are. Thanks pal.”
“Just keep on rolling. It’s gonna work out. It’s gotta.”
“Yeah.”
He takes a pack of Camel Reds from his flannel pocket and offers them to me.
I pull one out and he hands me his lighter.
There’s few things as settling to me as that quick roll of the lighter, that soft snap and the flame.
I breathe in the smoke, and I toss it back.
He does the same.
All quiet on the Johnston front.
I hadn’t ever seen Pat so lost before.
Never did I think I’d hear him say he may move back to Johnston.
All I can do is encourage him.
He was living the life on the road, and though he may be a little down on his luck, I knew what he was after, even if he’d forgotten.
I remembered that promise, that sovereignty over his nights and his mornings, that embedded adventure at the root of everything that was so moving about his music.
I have to believe that everything is waiting for him, just around the next bend of a midwestern freeway.
“When are you back to Nashville?”
He takes another nice long gulp of his beer, lets out some breath into the Johnston air, scrunches his face and thinks. He looks out, far out to the frontier, down every road he’s ever trudged along.
“Maybe a month.”
I take a drink, then a smoke and I think about the whole countryside of America being heartbroken and looking back on their past with the same eyes Pat has, deep and affected, sad and longing for something unknown.
I want to tell him that he’ll get it right again someday, that he’ll catch the wave and be okay.
He’ll be alright, somewhere, sometime.
“There’s so much of America left.”
“That there is.” He takes a drag.
“Cash, tell me somethin.”
“Alright.”
“I gotta know. Why have you stuck around here all these years? You say all this to me, and ya always have. Ain’t nobody pullin for me more. Making me promise I’ll keep wanderin around.”
“I don’t know man.”
“Aint ya thought about it?”
“Course I’ve thought about it. I’m always fuckin thinking about it.”
“Well?”
“I don’t know. Feel like I’m waiting for something.”
“A woman?”
“Nah.”
“Your pops?”
“Maybe.”
“Shit. I hear ya.”
“Yeah.”
“Ain’t anybody that loves this place like you, man.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Promise me, Cash. That you’ll leave someday.”
“I will.”
“At least for a good while.”
“I will man.”
“Shake on it.” He reaches his hand over, and even though I shake it, my destiny has never seemed more elusive.
“You know,” he scoffs.
“I’m too tired to make it all the way to Tennessee, even if I wanted to.”
And there you have it. If someone left for long enough, traveled far enough on foot or by dusted wheel, they could be lost to it forever, full of rags and unable to begin again where the story had started long ago. Even though he’s beat down and full of doubt, Pat is roped to something moving. A wild horse or freight train. And maybe that’s how it should be.
Pat and I finish the last of our beer and stand to our feet. Wearing his smoke-stained flannel, my friend wraps me in one of his bearhugs and says.
“Love you, buddy.”
“Love you too, Pat.”
“On it goes, yeah?”
“On it goes. Proud of you man.”
“Proud of you too.”
He squeezes my shoulder and picks up his guitar. Off he goes with nothing more than a salute.
“See you soon, brother.”
“Godspeed.”
He lumbers a bit as he walks, that best friend guitar of his swaying by his side, a trusted companion in the long journeys through the night.
His form slowly disappears into the shadows of the dark sidewalk.
On it goes.
The leaving.
And still, I can’t keep her out of my mind.
I suppose Rose is like Pat, in a way, a vagabond, wandering place to place, looking for a home.
What shadows are you walking through now, Rose? I hit my fist on the pavilion pillar, just hard enough to hurt.
What the fuck is the meaning of it all? God, I can’t even blame her when I try to.
Whatever it is she’s looking for I just hope she finds it.
Way off, I see the lights of Pat’s truck shine as he revs the thing up and then drives away.
I know he’ll be lost again for a while, singing his broken ballads to anyone that’ll listen.
Well, we’re all lost Pat, at least you’re looking.
And that severe longing stabs at my heart in my chest.
Promise me Cash, that’s what he said.
Maybe it’s finally time I get around to my wandering.
Until then, I’ll be searching these same city streets, waiting for a ghost to emerge from the dark.
The half-moon above looks like a smile.
I can almost hear it say to me.
“You know Cash, if you can’t find what you’re looking for in Johnston then maybe you won’t find it anywhere.” I laugh.
God, to think that might be true.