Epic Trip Out West, Day Fifty-Eight: There and Back Again

June 2nd and 3rd

“There is a long road yet,” said Gandalf.

“But it is the last road,” said Bilbo.

The final day of my Epic Trip Out West is a blur of color and memory, verdant, gritty, shot through with a headache that split down the roots of my neck into my whole body. A final walk of the OU campus with Aunt Candace amid the humid air: statues cast in bronze, vivacious dancer, giant half-submerged in grass with hands behind his head, Cherokee warrior with serenity written in his hawklike features. Weeping willow strands. Rose garden, vibrant blossoms without any smell. Final goodbyes, hot concrete curb at the gas station, chewing on a banana-bread energy bar. 

Right on time, the Greyhound arrived, with its gray seats and its gray floors and the man with I LOVE JESUS stitched onto his ball cap, who sat next to me. Michael was his name. Michael was a preacher, he said, talking to me through a grizzled white beard that almost glistened against his skin the color of coffee grounds. He was going to write a book and found the title in St. Louis when he was thrown in prison for being a troublemaker. “They took all my clothes and threw me in the cooler,” he said. “And I was curled up, butt-naked, and that’s when it came to me: ‘The Butt-Naked Truth.’ That’s the title of my book. That’ll get folks’ attention.” He gestured with his hands as he spoke, leathered but with a silken quality, etched with thin lines of mocha-colored flesh. We talked from Norman to Oklahoma City, and before we left he clasped my pale hands in his dark ones and prayed that God would grant me a safe journey, guidance in my life, and a young man who would be my husband.

The twelve hours that followed (it was only supposed to be ten) grow even blurrier in my mind, with splashes of vivid memory. Joe, a middle-aged man with a sneering smile and a booming voice, sat at the front of the bus and talked at everyone around him. “I only follow the Bible,” he said. “Not a word added, not a word taken away. I only follow the Bible.” He then went on to misquote and add extravagantly: “God says, ‘David scourged you with whips, I will scourge you with scorpions.’ That’s what he’s doing in Joplin right now. The wrath of God. Scourging us with scorpions, leveling out the field… I don’t take no money. Money is the root of all evil. If you’re taking money for your ministry, then you’re cursing God. You don’t wanna curse God. If anyone insults my God, I defend him. This lady I talked to, she said her God wouldn’t cause the tornadoes and the earthquakes. I said, ‘Well your God might not, but my God does, and who’s gonna stop him?… All religions are right, they’re all good. ‘Every knee will bow…’ When God came into my life, it was a total change, overnight, 360 degrees.” He also mentioned that Jesus was incarnate at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and that the Americas are what God is referring to in the Bible when he mentions “Jacob.”

One of my first sights of Missouri after nearly two months on the road was Joplin, a town ravaged by the recent tornados, the houses splintered to fragments, facing torn off, siding thrown all about: a heap of misery that I had never seen before. Joe got fidgety as we approached his stop, slavering like a dog on a short leash. He was eager to preach his Gospel to the people of the city, to let them know why they should be grateful for everything that they had lost.

For the whole journey from Oklahoma City to St. Louis, Heather and her three-year-old son Aaron sat in front of me. Heather was petite, despite the appearance of her baggy Mountain Dew pajama pants, with a t-shirt and blonde-highlighted hair. She was beautiful when she smiled, with catlike eyes and a glow about her face, but she looked worried ninety percent of the time. This was because she was deaf, and had to rely on the people around her to figure out what the bus driver was announcing, and couldn’t tell that her son was making noise and disturbing people unless she was looking right at him (and sometimes not even then). I could only finger-spell, but she gave me a smile of gratitude for the only person in range who could at least speak fragments of her language. Later, she and another mother used their cell phones to show each other typed messages— the best use of texting I’ve ever seen. She could speak her son’s name, with an artificial sound that told me she had been deaf all her life: “eh-Rahn!” she would exclaim when he acted up, rolling her R with impressive dexterity.

For a while, I became happily lost in the scenery that flew by the window, and I was reminded once again that Missouri is truly beautiful. The landscape undulated in subtle hills and bluffs, clothed in trees in a million shades of green, exquisite, thriving from the rainy spring. Limestone cliffs often hugged the highway, Missouri’s grand canyons overshadowing the river of the road. I forgot my headache for a while and I intermittently watched the scenery and read the final chapters of The Hobbit. My eyes stung with tears as I read the ending, even as I approached the ending of my own journey.

My bliss, however, was short-lived. The bus was packed from Joplin to St. Louis, ever taking on more passengers until there was only one seat left, and this was a noisy group. I was hemmed in by children— behind, in front, and two to the side— and the parents all seemed to think that slapping their children was the best way to make them quiet, which was not, as you can imagine, the best idea. A couple rows behind me, an ignorant close-minded conservative and an ignorant close-minded liberal started up a barely-controlled shouting match about homosexuality. My ears buzzed, my head throbbed, but none of the conversations were close enough for me to interject the comments that pounded at my thoughts. I plugged in my earphones, clapped my hands over them, and tried to bury myself in music. Snatches of songs wound through the conversations I still heard through my fingers, from behind and in front.

Some may pray to their mirrors, some may kneel before the sun. Me, I say there’s a mirror in the heart of everyone…

“So if Eve was created from Adam, that means they were related. That means the Bible says incest is okay!”

And on my best behavior, I am really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid…

“I’ve always just thought, if the Good Lord wants my husband to beat me, then I have to be okay with that.”

I hope you understand that I, tried to make a move just to stay in the game, I tried to stay awake and remember my name, but everybody’s changing and I don’t feel the same…

“Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. When you read the Bible, it all becomes clear.”

There’s a road, calling you to stray. Step by step, pulling you away. Under moon and star, take the road, no matter how far. The Road goes on…

The last few hours were an agonizing wait marked with flashes of light, low cloud cover, and children screaming as the fight about homosexuality turned to religion in general. For perhaps the first time, I realized why people don’t like riding Greyhound. I just wanted the ride to be over. I wanted to be home.

The last half hour was torture. The landscape was familiar as my own face, and yet we weren’t to the airport stop yet. Finally, finally— we pulled up to a parking lot lit with harsh florescents. Everyone asked if this was the downtown St. Louis stop, and I grabbed my bags and rushed off the bus.

I stood alone under the street lamps, listening to the roar of traffic, the sidewalk painted golden-orange with the buzzing lights. Then I pulled out my cell phone, and dialed home.

My friend Ryan drove to pick me up, along with my sister Mary and my mom. I collapsed into the seat, feeling off-balance, hearing and feeling their greetings through water. I acted like a stoner the rest of the night, as I saw the rest of my family, felt the familiar countertops and tabletops, warmed up some chicken in my favorite iron skillet, smelled the fragrance of home on every chair and nook of the house, and felt the stickiness of the St. Louis air on my skin. I crawled into the bed I had slept on before I left home, and I remembered no more.

Today, I woke up at 6:00am to get ready for a friend’s wedding. I walked to my dresser and opened up a drawer. I stared at the dozens upon dozens of clothes combinations I could try, all with clean clothes, and the possibilities dazzled me. I grabbed a pair of torn jeans decorated with phrases in several languages, written in Sharpie by my sister three months ago. I pulled on a purple shirt that didn’t have holes in it, that hadn’t lived through a Greyhound ride, that didn’t smell like stale socks. For a moment, I just stood— in my room, in my house, in my state, in my Midwest— and felt my clothes on my body. Clean. The feeling of home. The feeling of a weary traveller come to rest at last.

~Lisa Shafter

(Final stats on the trip’s budget coming soon.)

Song quotes, in order of appearance:

A Mirror in the Heart by Duncan Sheik

John Wayne Gacey, Jr. by Sufjan Stevens

Everybody’s Changing by Keane

The Road Goes On from Lord of the Rings: The Musical