Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America Read online

  I’d been feeling hopeful that Sam and I were on the verge of breaking out of this stasis. Just a few months earlier, I had visited him in Eau Claire, arriving late on a Friday and walking into an already packed party at his place. After giving me a big hug, wrapping his lanky frame around mine, he had grabbed me a beer and tossed his arm over my shoulder. “Bri,” he’d said, grinning and raising his voice over the deafening hip-hop billowing up from the basement, “I’m so glad you’re here.” He paused, his foot-wide smile somehow stretching further, his watery brown eyes locked on mine. He had clearly been drinking for hours, but I knew those eyes, knew there was something else going on behind them. Still, I was unprepared for him to say, without warning or preamble, “All this shit from the past few years, it’s so stupid, right?”

  I coughed out a laugh. Before I could respond, a few of his soccer teammates walked up, and then he was off to play party host, I to abuse my liver with his friends. We didn’t continue the conversation that night, or the next day. We didn’t need to. It wasn’t about a conversation. It was an opening. An invitation to take the yawning space between us and begin to fill it.

  I had missed that opening. That invitation.

  That point on the horizon, the place where we would use what we’d picked up to build something new, it had vanished. I was left with the in-between.

  • • •

  Rachel and I headed to the shore. I was hoping we’d have a view of the caves, or at least the bluffs above. I wanted this to hurt. But now, when I looked east, I saw only an evergreen tail disappearing into blue water.

  I sat down beside Rachel, who’d gone quiet after reading the sign. We’d talked about Sam before, but only briefly. I never knew quite what to tell her, beyond the rote details, and so usually she did what she was doing now, which was grab my hand and massage it and ask if I was okay. I was, I told her. For three years running, whenever I thought of Sam I’d felt not sad but empty. Even in the week after his death, spent at a lakeside cottage in the company of my closest friends, I had been unable to cry. A few times I’d needed to leave, not because it was too hard, but because it didn’t feel hard enough. And it wasn’t a question of love. Of course I loved Sam. I’d just gotten used to a world where he lived only in the past and future. I still had the past. And I didn’t know how to mourn our future. In many ways, I was still waiting for it.

  Now I turned to Rachel and said, “This is my first time here.”

  She kept massaging.

  “I’d been waiting. I wanted to . . .” I trailed off, stared at the water. “Honestly, I’m not sure what I was waiting for. I guess I figured if I chose the right time to come, I’d feel . . . I don’t know. Something different. Something, period.”

  Rachel’s eyes were on mine. For a moment it looked like she might cry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I can’t imagine what it must feel like.”

  I squeezed back and chose not to say what I was thinking, which was: me neither. Instead I stood, and smiled, and said, “I’m going to take a walk.”

  Rachel nodded and gave me a smile-frown. “Okay.”

  I headed east, toward the caves. I tried to make myself feel something. Anything. But I was empty. I knew only that I missed Sam, even as I couldn’t fully feel his absence; that I missed Wisconsin, even as I stood on its soil; and that, in deciding to follow Rachel wherever she chose to take me, I’d for the first time in my life made plans to leave this place but none to return.

  I looked over my shoulder. Rachel was now lying in the sand, the sun bright on her skin, revealing what was already a pretty impressive farmer’s tan. I turned back and stepped toward the shallows. I let the frigid water lap my feet, looked out over the blue, and thought of how many times I’d found myself here, or beside a thousand other Wisconsin lakes. I thought about the Simeones and the Christensens, my folks and friends, the Gliddens and Bayfields, black bears and berries. About everyone and everything that made this place, for me, a place.

  I wanted to carry it with me. Wanted to pack my past in my panniers, haul it to the horizon, use it to build something new with Rachel. But we hadn’t yet arrived at the horizon. We didn’t even know where, exactly, it was. We only knew we were on the verge of heading into unknown territory, into that place I’d learned to avoid. The in-between. There was nothing to do now but accept it, live in it. We’d picked a point in the distance and were moving toward it, mile by mile. And we needed to believe we couldn’t lose what we were carrying along the way.

  CHAPTER 6

  To Leave a Mark

  West of Meyers Beach, the highway climbed through farmland and fourth-growth oak, then dipped back toward Superior, and as the slope steepened, I dropped my head and drove the pedals, spinning faster and faster, until pedaling was of no use and I was just chin-kissing the bars, tucking elbows to hips, and plunging shoreward, lungs full of lake air, eyes on distant blue.

  The grade leveled out, and I coasted into a shore-hugging gravel cul-de-sac. Rachel pulled up beside me, and together we backhanded tears from cheeks and gaped at the north end of the lot, where, just as Donn Christensen had promised, a farmers’ market was in full swing. It all looked familiar enough—mismatched tents and tables, thrift-store scales and baskets of gleaming produce—except for the people, all of whom appeared to be (a) in their twenties and (b) crunchy as fuck. The lot teemed with ponchos and tie-dye, Hacky Sacks and antiwar bumper stickers, hand-drawn signs advertising artisanal soaps and precious stones and made-to-order waffles with local maple syrup. This was not the Wisconsin I’d grown up with.

  We leaned our bikes against a gnarled pine and walked through the market, looking for Jennifer Sauter Sargent, the friend Donn had called that morning. Based on his description, I guessed she was the dark-haired, smiling woman presiding over a table full of summer squash and purple peppers. We walked up to introduce ourselves, but she spoke first.

  “You must be the bikers! I was wondering when you’d get in.”

  I opened my mouth to ask how she knew, then looked down at my clunky shoes and sweat-stained shirt. My cheeks flushed.

  Jennifer told us she needed to stay at the market for another hour or so, but that we should feel free to head to her house, just a couple of miles up the road. She pointed to the east. Right where we’d come from, at the top of the hill we had just bombed down. I threw a silent tantrum, then smiled and thanked her.

  Climbing that hill seemed like a lot of work, so we loitered awhile at the market, then headed over to the four-block strip that constituted downtown Corny. At the south end of the strip, across from Fish Lipps Bar and Restaurant and a tiny shake-sided shack that, I shit you not, boasted of being “Wisconsin’s northernmost post office,” was the local general store. From the street, it seemed ordinary enough—the piles of seasoned wood, the obligatory ice chest—but once we stepped inside, I wondered if it might have been airlifted from one of Madison’s hippie enclaves. Among the standard groceries were “natural” hygienic products, jars of locally made honey, herbal extracts, and copious usage of the word “organic.” Corny and Conover were about the same size, but my hometown general store had been a gas station–cum–deli–cum–video rental depot known as Energy Mart. Now I wondered what a childhood in Corny might have looked like. What I might look like had I grown up here.

  • • •

  In the hour we spent exploring town, the afternoon’s dose of endorphins and ibuprofen slowly wore off. By the time we got back on the bikes, I was feeling lousy and had the sinking feeling I was fighting something worse than a nasty cold. My lungs had shriveled into useless little raisins, my legs protested every pedal stroke, and pins and needles poked from under my skin. The Lump, for its part, seemed as healthy as ever.

  We got back on the road. I tucked behind Rachel, kept my eyes on her shoulders, and focused on staying a few feet from her rear wheel. Up till this point, I’d on
ly ridden beside or in front of her, and now, in her wake, I was noticing things: how the muscles of her back flexed and furrowed as she drove down the pedals, how her body blocked my view of the landscape, and how she was raising her head every few seconds, eyeing me in the rearview. Adjusting her speed, keeping me close. It felt at once comforting and patronizing, and I wondered if she’d noticed me doing the same thing on our ride from Park Falls to Washburn.

  Soon enough, we reached the Sauter Sargents’ driveway and followed it to the house, a rectangle wrapped in corrugated steel and adorned with Tibetan prayer flags and Technicolor hammocks. Andrew, Jennifer’s husband, was out front, working on what appeared to be a chicken coop. With his snap-button shirt, khaki shorts, and sideburns peeking from a backward baseball cap, he looked like a dozen guys I’d known back in high school. Rachel and I laid down our bikes and walked up to introduce ourselves, and I felt a faint boost. I was done riding for the day, and that knowledge was its own kind of medicine.

  Jennifer soon pulled up in an old white Ford, and after we helped her unload the market supplies, she and Andrew showed us through their handcrafted, solar-powered home, then walked us back outside to point out the property lines of their seventy-acre spread. It was a mix of forest and overworked farmland, and they were bringing the soil back, beginning with the flourishing fenced-in garden just west of the house. This, Jennifer said, was the beginnings of an organic farm, and they had big plans to grow tons of veggies, raise chickens, and produce their own lacto-fermented foods.

  I had no idea what that meant. But I was feeling too spacey, not to mention proud, to ask.

  Rachel wasn’t. “Sounds exciting. I’ve heard the term, but what’s lacto-fermentation?”

  “It’s the way people used to preserve things,” Andrew said. “You just use salt and spices, and they bring out the lactic acid in whatever else you’ve got in the jar.”

  Jennifer said we could try one of their concoctions alongside the soup Rachel had offered to make with the dried lentil and bean mixture we had been hauling since we left my folks’ place. We hadn’t yet touched this mixture, let alone the pancake ingredients or granola or the pasta and quinoa we’d picked up in Ashland—it had proved a whole lot easier to subsist on snacks from small-town stores and leftovers packed by our hosts. Still, we kept the grains and powders, figuring we’d need them when the trip really started.

  Jennifer and Rachel headed inside. I wanted to follow them, curl up on the couch, and sleep through the night. My head was pounding and I was exhausted. But Andrew was going to keep working, and I knew that I’d feel like a lazy, freeloading turd if I didn’t help. I joined him in the yard, where he was putting up a fence around the coop. Despite my heavy lungs and snotty nose, it actually felt good to wrap my fingers around a shovel and drive its blade into the dirt—to leave a mark on the land, not just pass over it.

  • • •

  At dusk, we gathered inside for a dinner of lentil soup, pickled beets, and fresh-from-the-garden salad. It all looked delicious, but my tongue was bathed in bacteria. Everything tasted like Styrofoam. The soup did soothe my ragged throat, just enough that I was able to chime in when Rachel began the obligatory this-is-how-we-met-and-where-we’re-going-and-why speech.

  No matter how many times we told this story, it still felt like a romantic epic. Both of us far from home. A crowded bar, me in the shadows, Rachel on stage. Me swooning and chasing and eventually ending up on stage beside her. The slow evolution from bandmates to friends to lovers to partners. The months of distance we endured to embark on this adventure together.

  Jennifer and Andrew then shared more of their story, and I found it to be every bit as romantic as the one we’d just told. They talked about how they had met in Door County and moved north and bought this land and built this house, how Andrew had read a book about salt and become obsessed with fermentation, how that had turned into building a certified kitchen and provided a business model for their burgeoning farm, how they had found a like-minded community of young progressives up here, and how they were trying to live their values while respecting the old-timers who wanted their town to stay the same and did not want to hear another goddamn thing about doulas or a community theater or bringing more organic food to the general store.

  I wanted to know more about the town and their day-to-day life and whether they had any regrets about settling so early. But I was struggling—droopy-eyed and feverish and ready to crawl into bed. I began raking my fingers across the Lump.

  “So, what’s that all about?” Andrew asked, pointing a spoon toward my neck.

  I snorted a laugh, feeling like Frodo with his ring. I had been probing the Lump because I was feeling weak, because I wanted to disappear. But I’d only drawn more attention to myself.

  “A swollen lymph node. Donn looked at it this morning. He said it could be mono.”

  “Yikes,” Jennifer said. “You know, there’s a clinic just up the road, in Red Cliff. You could probably see someone tomorrow before you head out.” She looked at Andrew, then at Rachel, then back at me. “Actually . . . Do you two feel like you’re going to want to ride?”

  Rachel looked at me and shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  I sat with this for a second, then released a baleful, would-that-I-could sigh. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to do much tomorrow.”

  “Well, I ask because we’re going to an old-time music festival tomorrow night,” Jennifer continued, “and we haven’t found anyone to feed the dog and the chickens. You could get some rest here, and it would be a big help to us. I’d say you two seem pretty trustworthy.” She turned back to Andrew. “Right?”

  He looked us over, pursing his lips and squinting, as if searching for evidence. Then he sat back and folded his arms. “Yep, they’re clean.”

  Just like that, the place was ours. And as if the house wasn’t enough, Jennifer offered to leave the keys to their truck, so I wouldn’t have to bike to the clinic.

  I was struck by their trust, by how easily they offered their space, by how much they had to offer. I marveled at the half-dozen guitars and banjos and mandolins, the jam-packed spice rack, the teeming bookshelves, the half-finished commercial kitchen where they’d do their lacto-ferma-fuck-if-I-could-remember. And then I looked out the window, where I could see our bikes, lonely and moonlit, lying on the lawn.

  • • •

  The Red Cliff Community Health Center’s waiting room was pretty charming, as waiting rooms go: natural light streaming through the windows, stonework on the south wall, friendly receptionists. Rachel sat beside me, paging through magazines, as I moved through a stack of intake forms. On the first, I confirmed my personal information. On the second, I detailed all the ways I was uninsured and signed on the yes-I-know-this-might-mean-I-am-totally-fucked line. And on the third, I provided my medical history and checked off my symptoms. I’d always liked this part of the process, a personality test of sorts. If I checked the right combo, the doctor might feel compelled to tell me I was an intuiting, feeling, perceiving introvert.

  I’d been a bit apprehensive about scheduling an appointment at this tiny clinic on an Ojibwa reservation, even though Jennifer had assured me they accepted any and all patients. I was a well-off white guy, after all. Every door in the world was open to me, and now I was walking through this one, into a clinic that was probably overwhelmed with real problems, just because I felt sleepy and had a bump on my neck?

  If my body was 60 percent water, the other 40 percent was guilt, principally of the white, class, male, and Jewish varieties. And so while I felt relieved to be treated cordially when I entered the clinic, I only felt it for a second before realizing how fucked-up it was that I needed affirmation from an Ojibwa woman to feel comfortable, and even now I was considering—

  “Brian Benson?”

  A short, smiling woman was standing by the reception desk, holding open a door. We headed back to a
n exam room, and I went through the motions: stepped on the scale, rolled up my shirtsleeve to make way for the comforting python grip of the blood-pressure cuff, cringed when she inspected the Lump, breathed in, breathed out, said aaaah.

  The nurse slid back from the table I was seated on and looked me in the eye.

  “You don’t have mono.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Well, I can’t say for certain, but it seems like you just have a really nasty cold. The doctor can run some lab tests, of course, but that’s just going to cost you a bunch more money.”

  I choked out a laugh. I had never heard these words at any other clinic, and haven’t since. “Thank you for your honesty,” I said. “Should I still rest up for a bit? I don’t want to overdo it and get even sicker. And what about this?” I pointed at the Lump.

  “Lymph nodes can swell for dozens of reasons,” she said, standing from her chair. “It’ll probably be there for another week. Just pay attention to your body. If you end up having mono, you’ll know. But if you wake up tomorrow and feel all right, I’d say you’ll be fine on the bike.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I really wasn’t expecting to hear that.” I paused, waiting for her to add more advice or qualifications. Silence. “So, I can leave?”