On the Pocahontas Trail, Part Two
August 17, 2010
On the road in Virginia
Are the people of the earth less numerous than the stars in the heavens? Probably. I don’t know. I don’t know the numbers of the stars, the numbers of the people, I don’t even know who you are. I don’t know your dreams or your fears or your hopes. I don’t know what sounds wake you up in the morning, or what ones gently caress you to sleep at night. Such is the relationship between the writer and the written to.
And if something as intimate as this – where the voice and volatility of one human being are inserted and enflamed in the mind of another – if this relationship no longer engenders a meaningful connection, then what hope is there for any bond between the rest of us human beings who walk the streets, the highways and the sidewalks? None. You would have to agree that the smart money is on none.
So here is a story that flies in the face of the smart money. That pays off on the dark horse while sense goes wanting.
I am standing on a sagging wooden porch, in a withering front yard beside a grey road on the verdant peninsula finger that points from Williamsburg to Norfolk. I am knocking on an ancient peeling door as the rain starts and stops behind me, as unsure of its intentions as I am of mine.
To be clear, I am not a talker. That is, left to my own devices, I prefer to leave people to their own devices. I prefer not to invade their personal spaces and I am respectful of their privacy to the point of excess. Where I picked up a mode of conduct that is probably better suited to the nineteenth century than to this one is anyone’s guess.
To be standing here at all is something of a high wire act. A sort of dare. A string of questions that, individually, seem innocuous enough, but when strung together elevate exponentially the anxiety of such an exercise. Would I ever drive back to this part of the country in the first place? And if I did, would I seek out this house? Would I even be able to find it? And if I did drive and seek and find, would I actually stop the car and knock on the door? And would they be home? And would they answer? And would I stay around long enough to find out
I can hear them in there, talking, and without thinking I knock again – not sure if they haven’t heard me or if they have heard me and are merely discussing among themselves the reasons why a white man might be standing on their porch in the pouring rain. A white man with his white wife, while their white daughter waits patiently in the new car which he has in explicably parked in their driveway.
Cynthia, standing next to me, is nervous. Or maybe she is just being friendly. I have never been very good at telling the difference. She turns ever so slightly away from the door and considers the road, the embankment, the front yard where our car had finally come to rest nearly three-and-a-half years earlier. When the people of this house, and of the houses gathered around us in the shadow of thee Zion, good cheer of the yuletide still clinging to their clothes like the aroma of sweet hearth smoke, pushed, pulled, prodded, provoked, until they were coated in a fine patina of rich Virginia bottomland, and until my car was successfully extricated from their front yard.
So I am here to say thank you. To offer my appreciation and some small trinkets of gratitude. That’s all, all these years later. Thank you for coming out of your house on that miserable day and helping a stranger. Me.
And then the door opens and I see a vision of delight in their smiling faces. I see them slowly recall that day, bashful at their generosity. And as I hear myself explain this journey and why I’m here, and as I see their unbidden affection, I recall what the old man said about business. And I realize that those aren’t chains I hear, but the improbable connecting. And I realize as they tell me that I was raised right, that even if our paths never cross again, we are countrymen, and so will be for ever and ever.
