Gary

 

The great lakes don’t seem so grate when seen from where I stand, a small beach a sign has marked off as “private.”

I keep thinking about that silly Broadway song Hank always sings, and wonder what the fuss is about.

This can’t be the same place.

Louise, with teeth chattering, is so hard to hear there over the howl of wind, I don’t know she is demanding I get back into the car.

We’re heading east from Portland to New York, and I’ve spent so many hours coupled up in a car I’m grateful for the change.

Even if my bones ach from the cold.

Bobby, our driver, for that last 1,000 miles sucks on a joint so small I smell singed hair from his moustache rather than pot.

He’s so stoned he doesn’t feel the cold, doesn’t know what season this is, what day of the week or even if this is night or day.

He is in no hurry to come or go, swaying in the breeze like a reed.

Louise is anxious to get to New York to start our new life, just as she was anxious to get to Portland before that and San Francisco before Portland.

All I want to do is stop, here or anywhere, to stop my feet from moving for more than a day or week, even though I know there is a time bomb ticking inside Louise’s belly, one that will explode out of her in a few months.

Thoughts of Hank keep me moving, seeing my one time and all time best friend whom I haven’t seen in over a year, and believed until we struck out on this trip that I would never see again. My hopes rests on the believe he will help us once we reach the Isle of Manhattan where he resides.

At the same time, I’m scared to get there, to find him gone or worse, soured on me.

Maybe that’s why I linger here on this littered shore in Gary, Indiana, to take a bit of it back with me so I can give Hank a glimpse of the place he sings about but he will never see.

Perhaps this is why I won’t go back to the war, waiting until I actually get something out of this dismal landscape to drag back with us to New York as offering.

The cold water refuses to give me anything, lapping slowly at our feet, depositing only plastic bottles and used condoms.

Louise tugs at me sleeve. Bobby sucks on a joint that has long ago evaporated in air.

Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, here the fuck are you?