Skylark Bum
by Alden Nagel
How do I put this.
In two days I will have been on my own for one month. As in thirty days. Which makes today the twenty-eighth.
Day twenty-eight. And a half. That’s twenty-six nights out in the heat of nowhere when I don’t count my hotel stay. Home Sweet Home is never the city. That’s where you go to cough up your heart before dragging whatever’s left someplace quieter. Hometown is shorthand for something humble. And while the people of Skykomish are nice, old, and weird but not weird in the way you could bottle and sell, I’m waiting for that moment where I finally get it. My hands still graze my pants; it’s looking for a phone.
The town of Skykomish was established in 1892, had its name changed to better reflect the region, and I can go on from there but honestly who cares. Skykomish is one of a hundred other towns that were there for the genesis of Washington State and never grew too much because it’s not Seattle so, again, who cares. That doesn’t have to be a bad question or a bad answer. Some people look for exactly that type of thing.
I came up with a new word for this place. Soggy.
This is called cowboy camping, and it’s good for you. Where was I supposed to draw the line? If I bring a tent I might be tempted to bring a whole lot more, and at that point I’m on vacation.
At some point, places like these stop getting new songs. And the cutoff point is strict. What are the odds these people even know what Tool is. The hotel lobby—and that’s a generous term—had the radio going. 38 Special and I only know that thanks to the DJ.
Southern cities make a big thing out of waking up to a beautiful day, every day. I had to assume they were talking about the sun, no way did they mean the city itself. Confronted with the plasticity of what a beautiful day can be, I’m nervous. Megalophobia for how pretty untouched the countryside can be. The defensive side of me didn’t wanna believe the hype. You visit the redwood forest and other than the real perverts among us, you don’t live there. Even self-identifying hikers and nature lovers in the grand scheme of things are only peeking out the window to make sure it’s still there. Nature on parade.
It would be wrong to say there are boring people here, and it’s also wrong to say anyone goes out of their way to be interesting. You’ll laugh. I tried complimenting someone in town for the choice to move to a place like this permanently. How cool of you to not live the city hustle, let slip the rat race, how cool of you to live a life not defined by capital gains, you aren’t a contender, how inspiring to not be like everyone else. At a point it sounded like this person wasn’t much of anything. It’s weird to define someone by what they aren’t. I forgot to notice what they are.
The call of the void is that softcore desire to throw yourself off a building. You’ve felt it. Hey. What if I just jumped off into whatever the hell is below me. I get a similar feeling looking up into the mountains. I know there’s nothing back there. If there was anything, there would be roads and picnic tables and signs begging you not to litter. What’s the deal with that? No one’s living up around there, not permanently, none that want to be found. We haven’t built anything, these are the places we call nondenominational nature. We take credit for their being there and go so far as calling it ours. It’s our forest. Notice the picnic table.
Just makes these places feel less natural. This isn’t the virgin Earth, this is undeveloped land waiting its turn. I made chit chat with someone working at a gas station at the foot of the pass. They told me a pretty long story about their decision to move out here, honestly it had more details than it needed, but the major detail was money. Living in Seattle was too expensive. They pissed me off. You aren’t supposed to be forced out here. This is the place you go to settle down, live a simpler life, discover yourself, god dammit. And you came out here because of money? Why am I mad.
My car was not long for this world. A 1996 Buick Skylark, beige. Now there’s function over form. The kind of wheels conjuring adjectives like “dependable,” and “affordable.” A graduation present for me, dependent in so far as being a car. Decent mileage, I was never rushing to get the thing filled up or doing it more than once a week and a half, max. Trunk space left something to be desired, but coupes do have an innate romance factor. My one and only trip to a repair shop was to get the starter replaced, a component whose existence was news to me. Before owning my own I didn’t understand concepts like paying more to keep a car than buy it, nor do I like that. But it doesn’t matter what kind of car it is, as long as it’s getting you around and persists in good peripheral memories, the car is like a roommate.
My 1996 Buick Skylark exploded.
Another inevitability with old cars. The check engine light I like to pretend isn’t there flickered off on its own, came back on, there was a popping noise, and I just barely pulled off the road before the thing died for good. Thirty minutes from the nearest town, and that’s by car. Would have been a funny time to be mauled by a bear or a cougar. What a story this would’ve been then.
I imagine from a satellite perspective roads aren’t doing nature much harm. Not the fifty-lane highways, I don’t mean. What I mean is the single lane roads between driveover towns, between flyover states. So optimized we forgo the avenues and parkways and drives and numbers. This is just the road. Leave town on The Road, enter on The Road. A coworker had told me, before I set out, I can go anywhere I want in this big, beautiful world. As I take one last look at that abandoned car, I have to disagree. The Road means I have two ways.
There is the saloon, old word, there’s the deli, a laundromat, the iconic private property sign. Trespassers will be shot. We would not be at the foot of the pass without a hiking trail. This one takes you up behind the trees, up a small hill, hits you with a pretty shot of the river, and that’s it. Don’t be greedy.
I am not a licensed 26.2 bumper sticker. I am not so much as a 13.1. Which is saying in not too few words that I turned back to my car more than once. Day 1 of my engine exploding I walked about eight miles to the nearby town of Index, sat down for a minute at a cafe that seemed a little too branded for how remote it felt, and walked eight miles back. That’s sixteen miles. Where the fuck is my sticker.
Skykomish sees a few types of tourists. A family on the day trip to the small town, Washington State type behavior. Skiers when it’s the season. Leavenworth is just an hour east, right here makes for a nice final rest stop. Somewhere between all that, there’s drifters. Might come in on the train, something people still do if you can believe it. Or they walk, like me. And that’s walking all the way, from who knows where. Cougar country. Not like me, walking a couple dozen miles and pretending I didn’t have a car because someone asked me where I parked and it didn’t occur to me that someone in this nice town might give me a tow or something. Well. Can’t go back now.
I will admit to being disappointed with how many people around here have cell phones.
I didn’t grow up around trains. Not like these kids must be. Most of what I knew about trains came from movies and songs. Here, there’s respect I have to pay. Reluctantly. Trains announce their presence for what feels like hours before they pull through town. My eyes want to equate the tracks to a highway and to that end I guess they don’t move so fast, or they do move that fast and I don’t see it that way because there’s just so much of it.
Here I see, honest to god, a man jump off. Another relic of train culture I thought was fiction. Just the power of these things, defying their unstoppable force with something as stupid as throwing your body on or off, I don’t know. But I watch this guy look ahead for anything he might fall into, look down at his clearance, adjust the duffel on his back, and spin himself off. And a friend after him. As far as jumping off a train goes, this looks like one of the better places to do it. I’m sure these things slow down in residential areas.
My respect for those two guys only grows when, later that night, I try and hop onto an incoming train with a decent number of flat cars and simply cannot. The fear of failure keeps me locked and sweating. Do these things have undertow? Should I fail to throw myself on this flat car will I be dragged under the bottom and shred to confetti? I forget myself. To drifters like this, asking to know a little bit about them can be a threat. What am I, a cop? Is it illegal to not live somewhere? But seriously. Ideally they spare me a few pieces of advice. Wisdom from one bum to another.
And I jump between names for these people. Do they prefer the romance of Drifter, the ironic putdown of Bum, the Homeless Person - do I think about this more than they do? I know it’s because I’m shopping for what to call myself. Everyone is drifting, one job to another, between apartments, driving one car to death and after death. It sounds aimless, a schlep, imprecise but it never ends so what is precise in that case?
One of them tells me before anything else that there’s no shame to be felt in just pissing anywhere. It’s just a biohazard in the city, and even then, not like there’s much more damage one person can do. I’m also told to travel light. Do not have a bank account. Maybe a credit union if you really feel like you’ll need one, but you shouldn’t have a card on you. Cash works, like it always has. You will never have so much on you that getting jumped will ever be a concern. Keeping bills in your shoe is a little try-hard. What are you afraid of? Like, are you gonna give up and go home if the money’s gone?
An hour east of Skykomish and you’re in Leavenworth. That’s an hour by car, so. Hold on. About. I dunno, probably about fifteen hours walking. Sounds like a two day trip. There’s a town to be if you wanna drift on easy mode. How remote could somewhere with a Travel Channel spotlight possibly be.
Skykomish has an electric vehicle charger. Because it’s spitting distance from Highway 2 and some people need that kind of thing same as needing gas, which is across the road. I know that’s why; every day that passes, not having one makes less sense. Imagine someone standing where I stand now, a hundred years ago, disappointed and I guess in a way pissed off that Skykomish sells gas. Or whenever this station was founded. Get a horse, people used to say, back when roads weren’t nice and station wagons got their wheels stuck in the mud. Sure, let’s be funny, a hundred years from now some kid who won’t know who I am will stand in this spot and pitch a fit over Skykomish selling branded nuclear fission canisters. Even if the rest of the town looks the same.
What a thing to be upset over. I leave the new world behind because I know deep down the old world is better and I tantrum when the old world doesn’t agree with me. Let me tell you something else that bothered me at the old, local Inn. The wifi password. But I’ll try and be realistic. We don’t choose the moment in time we spawn into. How is having internet access any less satisfying than filling up my water jug at a spigot I found behind someone’s house? Especially when I can still do both. We’re talking about things I picked up along my journey, and things I will just as easily discard when I’m done.
When my hotel stay is squeezed of all its blood, I go back to my car. Should have started sooner. I know how long that trip will take. And it’s not because I’m going all the way back. It’s because I left behind a coat, one I left because while it is warm it is merely water-resistant. Not good enough for pressing further into the pass. Unless you’re made of money you gotta pick one. Do you wanna be warm or do you wanna be dry. That coat worked on me like a wetsuit. Even a sprinkle left behind this sheen of moisture that heated up with me. That doesn’t sound so bad right now so, here I am.
Well. What would I have done? Clothes, bottled water, a box of granola bars and a jar of trail mix so big it comes with a handle on it, all of which I panic bought at a Costco with a membership card that isn’t mine because who knows how I’ll be feeding myself between towns. I left all of it in a town car that is nothing at all if not vulnerable, beside a highway where people got places to be, not car robberies to intercept, and I’m hours and hours away by foot. What would I have done?
I would not have taken the trail mix. Despite its reputation, I do not like it.
The coat is gone, the snacks are gone, one water bottle left on the driver’s seat beneath the busted window that lies in pebbles across the cushion and floor. Makes sense. It was basically free, the car was dead to me until I once again hiked back. Because what if it gets cold.
I apologize if I’m making this sound like an emotional low point. This is not what’s happening. If I’m upset about anything, it’s having to walk again. No sense sleeping overnight in a car with a busted window, even if that’s more or less what I did. We don’t waste any part of the animal. A place to sleep for tonight is all this car is to me anymore. After me, who’s to say. Someone else walking the highway, a bear, it matters to me so little I’ll stop thinking up examples right now. Emotionally, the car is dead to me. Tickling the same synapse as the thing being on fire. I’ve been back and forth too many damn times. ‘If there’s anything I’ll be disappointed to have left behind, I’ll just have to die feeling that way.
Skykomish is known for its railroad crossing. So are half the towns dotting the middle of the state. When I walk into Index this next morning, and hear the wail of this train, my first stupid thought is that someone here is ripping these people off. Like it matters.
Little Richard said he used to live near railroad tracks. Sounds like a nightmare, maybe, an impenetrable alarm clock going off every twenty minutes. He said he wanted to make music that sounded like that. I do, too.
This wasn’t too hard. Jumping on a train isn’t too different from standing up on a bus. And with that, I’m off. This is pure travel. This is teleporting. The wind blinding and the locomotive screaming and the rhythm just going and going. Why would anyone ever want to be inside the cars, ever.
It got cold so I moved up to an actual car with a hatch. Here velocity and time are just kooky ideas. Wild hairs. I’ve probably passed Skykomish already. Bye-bye.
I have been on my own for thirty days. Still brief enough that I could turn back and not lose much. Saying that makes it sound like there’s some arbitrary point where I can’t go back anymore. I don’t think there is. I’ll try and stop living so surgically. Like someone could follow my exact steps and be just as fulfilled. Let’s do away with preconceptions of success with regards to living as a Bum. Innately unsuccessful living. What happens now is my business.
Author Bio
Alden Nagel is a bald writer and graduate candidate of Literary Arts at Central Washington University. His work has been published in Manastash Literary Journal, Punch Projects, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. Originally from Seattle, he now resides in Ellensburg. He is currently working on a book of non-fiction.