32 The Hitchhiker

I am now, officially, sick of the grief. Sick of the wailing and griping and grousing. Sick of the Me Me Boring Old Me rattling around aimlessly in the cavernous reaches of my head. I decide, after a couple of whiny phone conversations with a couple of saintly friends, that I want to be a better, less selfish, less complaining, nicer, happier, more helpful and outward-oriented person. I pray for discernment.

This is what Catholics do when they’re clueless. They “discern,” which means they pray for guidance and insight in whatever form the Holy Spirit might choose to deliver it, be it a conversation with an insightful friend, a “still, small voice” in one’s own mind, a remark made in a priest’s Sunday homily, or some coded message in an episode of Modern Family. It’s a form of Roman Catholic F.S.O., this opening-up to outside influences, and lately, addled by my failures to figure my own self out, I’ve been doing more and more of it. I do my best to listen, and this time, the voice that speaks is a book of short works by Leo Tolstoy that’s been gathering dust on my bedroom shelf for who knows how long and somehow, miraculously, catches my eye.

Immediately, I flip it open to the contents page. Immediately, my glance falls on a three-page fable, The Three Questions. Immediately, I open it. Read it. Ingest the details of its small, sharp plot, which concerns a king’s search for meaning and his time spent digging a hole with a wise man. Basically, the king wants to know the right time to do something, the best people to be with, and the most important thing to do. By digging the hole, which helps the wise man and serendipitously prevents the king from being assassinated, the king learns firsthand the answers to his questions.

The right time to do something is Now, because it’s the only time you have any power. The best person to be with is whoever you’re with at the moment. And the most important thing to do is whatever helps that person.

Hmmm, I think. Discern that.

So I’m driving up Madison Avenue in Albany, thinking about the Now, when I spot a miniature old man with his thumb out. He’s across the street from the New York State Museum, not a usual hot spot for hitchhiking. He’s wearing a short-waisted army jacket and cap, and he looks to be, oh, 80 years old.

Now, normally I don’t pick up hitchhikers. Unless they’re women. Or ancient. Then I figure, What the hey, they can’t do any major damage to me, and I wouldn’t want anyone else picking them up, right? So I pick up the mini old man in the army jacket. He climbs in. He’s even tinier up close. He has a big paper shopping bag and laughing eyes that he aims at me with a squint.

I pull over. He climbs in.

Where ya goin’, I ask.

“Guilderland. Past Guilderland. Way past Guilderland.”

He mentions a town, and inwardly I say: Way, way, way past Guilderland. That’s an hour and twenty minutes west of Albany. In the middle of nowhere, Mr. MicroHitchhiker. Outwardly I say: I’ve got kids coming home from school in an hour, so I can’t take you all the way there.

He suggests a gas station at an intersection I know, maybe a twenty minute drive. Sure thing, I tell him. We swap names. I’m Amy. He’s Al.

We make small talk. Al tells me he hitchhikes into Albany often, about once a week. He goes down to the mission. Do I know it? Of course I know it. What does he do down there?

“I collect things. Pick up things. I’m a collector.”

This he says with a nice, soft, downstate “R”: “I’m a collectah.”

Al tells me he collects old movies, old TV shows, old books and old records, old military stuff. All kinds of old crap. Here he pulls out a DVD boxed set of Hee-Haw, holds it up with pride and joy.

“See?” he says.

Ah.

Then, describing his jaunts on the road, Al launches into a lengthy disquisition on cops. He names names: which cops are “nice,” which cops are MEAN. He tells me, “The cops in the city are nicest. Albany, Schenectady—they’re nice. Cops in the small towns, they’re MEAN.” Some cops harass him. Some do not. Some cops, the MEAN ones, tell him to cease and desist as soon as he sticks out his thumb. Some, the MEANest kind of all, arrest him on the spot. Sometimes he gets dragged before judges. He names their names, too. The nice ones. The MEAN ones. Once, in Cooperstown, an extra-MEAN judge tossed him in jail for eight days.

Eight days?! Seriously? For hitchhiking?

“Yeah. Yeah. He was MEAN, oh, boy.”

You’d think all these cops and judges would have better things to do, I say.

“You’d think.”

I say to myself, I am in the Now! I am being totally and unreservedly present to my passenger! This is good! Yes! Then, suddenly, Al changes the subject. Shoots me another squinty look.

“You from Albany?”

Not originally, I say. Born in Queens, grew up in Connecticut. What about you?

“Born in Brooklyn. Moved up here in ’57.”

Ah.

Brief pause. I’m driving, of course, but from the corner of my eye I can tell he’s sorting me out.

“You said you have kids?”

Yep. 18, 16, 11.

“You have a husband?”

Inwardly I say: Dammit all. If I answer this correctly, it will alter the course of the conversation. It will shift the focus from him to me. Which I would rather not do. Because I am sick of Me. But what the heck. I’m in the Now! Maybe this will go somewhere interesting or engaging or even vaguely helpful. So outwardly I say: I did have a husband. I was married for 20 years. He died in September.

“Cancer?”

That soft downstate “R” again. Can-suh. Again I debate whether to answer. Again I decide to respond honestly.

No, I say. No, my husband became suddenly mentally ill and wound up killing himself.

Al’s reaction is quick and emphatic.

“Nooooo!” he howls. “I hate that! Not the good ones! Now, I don’t care when the MEAN bastards (“bass-tuhds”) do it. They can all kill themselves, for all I care! But the good ones, noooo!”

This has never occurred to me before, this distinction between the suicides of nice folk on the one hand, A-holes on the other. I had previously assumed that suicide in general was a bummer. Al has given me moral and spiritual food for thought. But he doesn’t give me much time to chew on it, because his quicksilver mind is on the move. He shoots me another squinty look.

“You have a boyfriend?”

Ummm…No. I don’t have a boyfriend.

“You don’t! Well, I’ll be your boyfriend! You want to be my girlfriend? I’LL BE YOUR BOYFRIEND!”

He pats my arm. Several times. Then he strokes it, over and over, up and down, as though applying sunblock. This is the arm currently engaged in shifting the gears on the automobile I am driving, and I can’t jerk it away. And so he pats and strokes it. “I’ll be your boyfriend! OH, BOY!”

He recites his full name, phone number and address for my future reference. I laugh and say, Oh, Al. I laugh again, a somewhat spastic laugh of embarrassment. Hahahahahah. Thanks, but no thanks, I manage to spit out.

But inwardly I say: Holy holy holy SHIT, it’s been a long time since a man has reached for me in this way. Any man! Of any age or size! Even a miniature octogenarian hitchhiker with a Hee-Haw boxed set! Then I think: What, am I nuts? To which the answer is: Yes! Yes, I am totally, unambiguously, spectacularly nuts, thank you very much. Grief makes you nuts! Loneliness makes you nuts! The two combined make you want to hump every freaking thing that might hold still for the duration! Evil laugh! Bwahahahaha!

This is something no one discusses about widowhood—the bizarre physical intensity of its grief-stricken spousal loneliness. One feels cleaved in two. One feels deprived of a limb, or several limbs, or all of them plus a nostril. One feels phantom pain, except it isn’t phantom; it’s real, and it hurts, and I mean that physically. The loss of intimacy and desire to be held become so overpowering that some widows have been known to binge on anonymous sex.

Not me. I’m a nice Catholic girl, so I just pick up diminutive collect-ahs on the side of the road. But this is how I want it. I chose this! This is my life in the Now! Watch me discern! I’m not sure what I’m discerning—aside from Al’s amorous good cheer—but at least I’ve figured out the relative niceness of judges and law enforcement in pockets of upstate New York. That’s not nothing. And I’ve figured out something else, too, something that Chris figured out long before I met him: that strangers, wounded souls, old folks, and odd ducks all have their stories to tell, and if we let them, if we listen, we might learn.

Al rubs my arm again, spitting out his contact info a few more times, thoughtfully remembering to include the area code. In an attempt to deflect him, I ask more questions about his weekly trips to Albany. How long does it take him, usually? Between an hour-fifteen and four, depending. Does he know most of the cops by name between here and there? Sure. He also knows the names of people at various missions and pantries. Some of them are MEAN, too. Turns out he also knows the location, accessibility and tastiness of every single church dinner. Al hates casseroles. They stink, he says. We discuss this for a surprisingly long time. The highlight:

“They smell terrible. Oh, boy.”

Ah.

Then he starts telling me about Sister So-and-So, an extra-nice nun who picked him up some years back. She hates the Bishop. Al likes the Bishop, remembers him from his time as a street priest in Albany’s South End. I like him, too: He’s a good priest and a good man. But Sister So-and-So, she couldn’t stand him.

Why not, I ask.

“I don’t know. But she hated him, oh, boy. She was married, you know. Sister So-and-So. Before she became a nun.”

Al aims yet another squint my way. I can feel it. My skin tingles. I can also feel a comment forming on my tongue that I probably shouldn’t utter, but I am in the Now, and the Now’s temptations prove formidable.

Ya know, Al. Ya know…I was thinking about becoming a nun someday. After my husband died, I say.

It’s my turn to dart him a look. Zap. A flick of the eyes between gear shifts.

What do you think, Al? Should I? Become a nun?

At this, Al nearly explodes out of his seat. “No!!! The Lord has enough nuns!” he says. “He needs more GIRLFRIENDS!”

And I smack my forehead against the steering wheel, gripped by laughter. This is Al’s second helping of moral and spiritual food for thought, this news of God’s involvement in the dating scene. For me, it’s a revelation. And now that I’ve heard it, I know that it’s true. The Lord needs more girlfriends!

When I drop him off at the gas station, he asks for a hug. In the process he tries to plant a wet one on me, but I duck out of the kiss and wave goodbye with a laugh. He waves back. I drive home, grateful for the attention from a primate more advanced than the ones who pawed me in Ecuador. I’m also grateful to be jogged outside of myself, if only for twenty minutes. I had started the day Sick of Me. I’d been trying so hard to peer within that I’d all but jammed my head inside my anus. Grief will do that to you; if you’re not careful, you’ll end up puckered with self-absorption and folded inside out, unable to face the world. For a while today I faced it. And it grinned back.

The next day, I call up Bob and tell him about the hitchhiker. His reaction, again, is: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” Again he almost breaks the phone, and again I love him for it.