Chapter Four

The following is the fourth chapter of the as-of-now unpublished novel by Matthew Osgood, Chasing Sunsets

IV.

A perfect day for driving

“…Until it spoke only to me, Impersonally, like someone gradually retreating, Not so much from his life as from its settings, From the country he inhabits; as the darkness depends in the weeks after the solstice.” –John Koethe “Morning in America”

My objective for the next drive, where I would be meeting up with my friend Elisha, was basically to beat the New York City traffic. I was heading to central New Jersey, where she was a medical student. I knew the traffic would be terrible if I hit rush hour driving over the Tappan Zee Bridge, and I understood that should I fail my mission, I would be facing a critical two hour delay.

Cops rarely patrol Rt. 91 through Connecticut, so I kept cruise control around 80. Lost somewhere in the surroundings, I must have missed the exit I needed to take for the bridge. Luckily, having been through New York City a bunch of times, I could navigate my way to get at least through the city and into New Jersey.

Amazingly, missing the Tappan Zee Bridge was nothing outrageously new for me. I had been given directions twice now instructing me over the bridge. Both times I’ve missed going over the bridge, and still to this day I do not believe it really exists.

I passed through New York with recollection of the many times I’ve been there in the past four years. Many of my friends from college lived in or around “the city”, such is the way my friends refer to Manhattan, as if it’s the only metropolitan area in America, so I’ve been fortunate to have an enthusiastic ensemble of hosts around the place.

New York is a beautiful city in many ways. The skyline rockets out of the concrete, so tall that it stands alone like Yao Ming in a Beijing elevator, everything cowering sadly below. The magnificence of viewing the buildings from afar on the Throgs Neck or George Washington Bridge is awe-inspiring, and only amplified at night when thousands of lights illuminate starless evenings. The true effect of the cities regality strikes when standing at the base of a building 80 stories high, staring straight up, and feeling queasy at the realization of the structures’ awesome size and adequate ability to crush anyone or anything within ten blocks should it topple over. Almost as much as the absurd size of the building, what impresses me about the city of Manhattan is the culture. New Yorkers claim the city as their own, yet they share it with millions of visitors a year. There’s an innate sense of ownership to everyone in the country and after the terrorist attacks on September 11^th, 2001, the world saw America’s ability to rally behind a place, uniting New Yorkers with everyone else in the country. There are very few cities in America, or the world, that have the ability to overcome such tragedy with such tremendous aplomb.

My first trip to New York wasn’t very long ago, but they’ve come very often in the past seven years. While visiting friends, I’ve seen the Knicks play in the Madison Square Garden and traveled to all parts of Long Island, including a yearly two or three visits to the eastern end of the island, known laconically as “the Hamptons.” However, nothing can ever top the first time I was there, the first time I stood beneath skyscrapers taller than all the buildings in my town stacked on top of one another.

The summer after my freshman year in college in the summer of 2001, I went to Long Island to visit some of the friends I had made the previous year. We visited some of the popular bars around Nassau County during the first couple of nights. On the Saturday of my visit, my college friend Kristen and I took the train into Manhattan to do the tourist thing.

The city was enormous and inspiring, a man-made wonder. Immediately upon reaching street level, I saw Madison Square Garden, which houses the hated New York Knicks, but is a historical venue I always wanted to see. The city seemed so new, commercialized, and updated, but I marveled – and still do – at the cities’ ability to keep its’ unique charm and history intact.

We spent the afternoon walking along the city blocks, snapping pictures and watching street performers. We shot hoops at the NBA Store and pretended to be Heisman Trophy candidates at the Radio City Music Hall. The two of us cooled from the heat in stores along Fifth Avenue in which we clearly did not fit in. When our feet got tired, we hired a horse-drawn carriage to bring us to a late afternoon lunch. After an amazingly overpriced lunch, Kristen and I walked the short walk from Times Square to the Empire State Building.

The sun was beginning to set on a sweltering afternoon as we stood atop the Empire State Building. It felt as if we were on top of the world, the people and cars below just ants in our kingdom. The two of us looked south towards the World Trade Center buildings and the Statue of Liberty.

“Is it too late to take a cab down to there?” I asked pointing south towards lower Manhattan. Kristen turned around to me in the haze atop one of the worlds largest buildings.

“We should probably be heading back to Long Island,” she responded. “It’s getting late.”

“Okay,” I said regaining my gaze over the now tiny buildings of New York.

I conceded defeat of the day. We had taken in as much as we could during a 12 hour span of walking around the city. During one last meaningful stare through the haze from my towering perch, Kristen approached me from behind.

“Don’t worry,” she said nonchalantly. “Next time you come visit the city we’ll go see the World Trade Center.”

“Deal,” I said. I turned towards her and the way to the elevator.

She continued, “It’s not like it’s going anywhere.”

#

Luck hit me when I reached New Jersey. Far off my course, I was ready to give up on my manly intuition and stop for directions to the highway I had somehow misplaced. In the land of jug handle turns, and wanna-be New Yorkers, I felt oddly out of place. When the sun began to dip below the horizon, I found the road I was looking for. I was on the opposite end of the road from where I should have been, but I was able to alter the plans accordingly.

Around 8 o’clock I arrived at Elisha’s house, where she lived with a roommate, both of whom were studying for an important test. That fact didn’t hinder any plans, as I knew that this one night stay would be more for rest and relaxation. We ate in, stuffing ourselves with sandwiches and cheesecake.

Outside sharing some laughs and a couple of cigarettes, I recognized that Elisha was my last link to my hometown, the last person I would see who reminded me of being on Hampshire Circle.

“I’m happy that I’m seeing you today,” I told her. She had been dating my friend for the better part of ten years now, and living with the family, which was just a few houses down. “I won’t see another person from Methuen for I don’t know how long.

“For years I have always had the concrete knowledge that I could go to that little piece of property on the Spicket River, and find friends at all angles. I had the comfort of knowing I had a place called ‘home,’ where I could go and my brothers would be there, my friends weren’t far away. Now I’m going a place where I don’t know anyone, really.”

She assured me I’d be fine, but I had to at least play devil’s advocate with myself if no one else would. I’ve been in many situations where I’ve needed to make life work on my own and succeeded. I had little doubt I could make things work in California, but without doubt, there would be no such thing as confidence.

I woke up early on the couch in New Jersey, the sun dancing just above the maple trees surrounding Elisha’s house, the sky colored a blue only defined in a color wheel. A perfect day for driving.

The trip, according to my map, followed I-95 about 700 miles down through the nations capital and the eastern seaboard. I remorsefully blew off a friend in southern New Jersey in order to make better timing on my trip, but at the time I was eager to get the trip started “for real.”

I hit traffic around Baltimore, but it got me to reflect on the time I had spent there when I fell in love with the city.

Two years previously, a couple friends and I went to Baltimore for a journalistic conference. While the conference in itself was lame, we made due by drinking bottles of Jack Daniels and wandering the city. Baltimore’s inner harbor and Fells Point are where we spent most of our time, stumbling around drunk, meeting locals, and egging on the serial sniper that was lurking the area at the time.

We had a hotel room overlooking Chesapeake Bay from 20 floors up; we spent the evenings forgetting what we learned at the days’ workshops, and I always vowed to go back to enjoy the city as a visitor and not a conference goer. Driving through the outskirts of the city, now I wondered if I’d ever be back.

The scenery down I-95 is filled with football and baseball stadiums, historic landmarks, and a remarkable transition from the hustle of northeastern cities to the trees outlining the highways leading to the site of the Confederacy. I passed the site of monuments in Washington D.C. and started down towards the Mason-Dixon line. When I passed the border of Virginia, the speed limit increased to 70 MPH, the next time the speed limit would dip below 70 again was in California, I spotted a sign for Manassas, VA. I called my friend.

“I just wanted to let you know that I am now passing the site of the first sniper shooting,” I told my friend Ted. He laughed.

“You’re a complete asshole,” he responded, “but that is the shit I want you to call me about. I don’t care about you seeing the Grand Canyon or anything like that. I want you to find the most asshole things you can, then call me.”

I had a lot of requests to call people when I passed significant milestones on my journey. One friend wanted me to call him upon the arrival of each state and I did a horrible job of it. Eventually I called him up somewhere during my journey and said as fast as I could, “Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska….” Before he cut me off laughing,

“I got it, thanks, asshole.”

I merged onto I-40 towards the coast of Carolina. I’ve always had a romantic fascination with the state of North Carolina and I don’t know if there is any particular reason why. The relationship between North Carolina and I developed somewhat into a crush, where I envisioned something in my mind that was probably better than what it would have been in real life. I battled with going to school in Charlotte before deciding to stick around Massachusetts, but my visit there was an experience I’d never forget and one I wanted to actually live out.

I think the reason I had such an appreciation for the state was the idea that if I had chosen to go to college there, I would have been far away doing something none of my friends were doing, like I’d be taking a risk into self-dependency. I saw the possibility of going to school in North Carolina as a chance of getting away from where I was from, starting anew somewhere. Since the day I decided to stay home, I guess I may have felt like an opportunity slipped away. When my friend Leah said she was living down there for her last physical therapy clinical, I saw it as a great opportunity to spend time with a friend and the place I held in such high regard.

As I turned into Leah’s driveway amongst the mangrove trees and the rigs on Cape Fear in Wilmington, she sprinted out of the little seaside home she was staying in and jumped into my arms like a little kid racing towards a father home from a business trip. Leah and I had spent our college careers on different paths, but our extra-curricular activities were almost all the same. Despite the fact we didn’t hang out nearly as often as we should have during our four years in college, we became great friends. She is someone who I sought out at all of the similar clubs we were a part of. Her apartment senior year was just a 50-yard walk from my own. I was looking forward to spending a couple days with her. She was lonely living alone, and enthusiastic to show me - her first visitor - where she had been living.

Leah has a dancer’s build, and she’s a pretty blonde from a small-town in upstate New York. She went to college solely as a dance major, but a car accident her freshman year derailed those dreams. She was now focused to help people recover from similarly damaging injuries in the field of physical therapy. Isn’t it odd how we make small consolations for ourselves? For instance, once I figured out I wasn’t going to be six-five, 250 pounds, I gave up on the dream of playing linebacker for the Penn State Nittany Lions and focused on telling stories about people who were. She was doing the same thing, which is never compromising or abandoning what you’re passionate about.

I knew nothing of Wilmington, and almost immediately following the three-minute long tour of her tiny house, we decided on dinner, but first the beach. I nostalgically reflected that the sunset falling opposite the ocean would be the last I would see from the east coast for an indefinite period of time. We waded a bit in the ocean, deciding that we should probably spend a good part of the two days I’m there lounging at the beach during the day and drinking at the bars when the sun sunk down over the horizon.

There is no better view in this world than the sight of a southern girl accompanied by her accented voice. In fact, the limb I will proceed to climb upon is to say that Wilmington, North Carolina has the prettiest girls in the entire country. Of all the places I’ve been, I have never fallen in love with so many girls in such a short amount of time. Truly, this part of the country is a diamond in the rough for women, like finding the perfect bar, right out of view from the tourists.

Being in North Carolina was liberating because I was so far from home. I was 700 miles away from home, and now solidly embedded in proceeding with the trip. There was money to be spent, alcohol to be consumed, and stories to be shared and made. When I decided to make the trip to North Carolina, I had looked for things to do in the area. What I found was a ghost tour of the city, which happened to be America’s first major port city, producing hordes of trade ships filled with supplies from the European countries trafficking in and out at all times. With the trafficking of everyday supplies came pirates, and as fantastic as it sounds, the truth of the matter lies in the ghostly past of the city. Pirates ran the city, plundering riches from sailors, parading through the cobblestone streets that still remain to this day. On the ghost tour, our tour guide showed us homes that were rumored to be haunted, and graveyards directly responsible for coining the terms we’re familiar with. Apparently, when the influenza epidemic hit Wilmington, citizens would be sick and unconscious for days at a time. Thinking these people were dead, and lacking proper medical protocols, family members would bury them, only to find out later that they had buried their family or friends alive. The remedy for this faux pas was to tie a string around a persons’ finger when buried, leading to a bell atop the grounds’ surface where someone would stand guard (“graveyard shift”) who would listen for the bell to toll, hence “dead ringer” and possibly “for whom the bell tolls.”

The city was big enough to be considered a major city in the state, but small enough to remind me of my Boston roots, where it was easy to walk around and revel in the authenticity of one of America’s first big cities without feeling trapped in a concrete jungle. There were trees that had been there for years, not phony trees being replaced every summer. From the graveyards sitting in the heart of the city to the cobblestone streets to the modern America downtown streets filled with pubs and McDonald’s, it was a city I felt eerily familiar with.

People had a strange fascination with the relationship of Leah and me as we hopped from pub to pub on Market and N. Front Street. A street-poet performed a love poem for us as we walked up the not-so-lit alleyways and, as Leah ducked into the bathroom, my cue shot was interrupted by a very intoxicated patron at Longstreet’s Irish Pub saying, “your girlfriend is hot. Interested in a threesome?”

We weren’t, so we walked back to the car after paying our tab. We retreated to her little house near Cape Fear.

The two of us frightened ourselves that night, perhaps it was at one of the pubs where we rehashed ghost stories, or when we returned home where we made inappropriate remarks about the rustling of wind being the presence of haunting spirits.

We sat on the screened-in back porch of her house, talking seriously about a subject long forgotten, and having a night-cap of Tanqueray and tonic. With a slight bit of tension in the air, we listened to jazz and three times made “just one more” drink. Perhaps it was that for a 700 mile radius, we only knew each other, maybe it was the gin, maybe it was lingering feelings, or maybe we were just trying to forget the ghost stories, but we did slept a little closer that night.

A few days later I left the salty Carolina shore. We said goodbye early in the morning as she got ready for another day of work. I honestly could have stayed there, in that little blue and white home with her, for the rest of my life. Forget California. With one last wave and a honk as my car shifted from reverse to drive, I was leaving. Sometimes we really never know how to just stay still.

Milking what I could out of what I considered the best way I could have spent my last east coast hours, I stopped along the road in Raleigh for a coffee and a donut at a gas station. I made conversation with the clerk, and also purchased a $6.99 Bob Seger Greatest Hits album on tape. It had been a while since I had bought a tape. A couple hours later, I was driving through the Appalachian Mountains westward through the swiftly changing autumn of western Carolina and Tennessee.