The Last Home

I was never so happy to see a sign in my life.

It lit the Montana night in neon brilliance. A much bigger sign than the building under it warranted, but I guess they wanted to make sure you saw it. I had seen the glow from the sign for miles. It was amazing how far light carried out here. I had left Wolf Lodge, Montana a couple of hours back and was looking for a place to bed down for the night. I had planned on sleeping one more night under the Big Sky, watching the Milky Way until I drifted off. Tomorrow, I should be able to make the Washington state line. I was walking along Interstate 90, what the locals called Old Highway 12, and by my GPS, it was about 23 miles to the border.

But the stars had all disappeared and that could only mean one thing. I couldn’t tell from here what The Last Home was, but I hoped they had beds. Or at least some sort of shelter I could camp under. Man, I was tired, and wishing this journey was over. I had just gotten close enough to see that at least part of the building was some sort of diner when the heavens let loose. Montana has three types of weather; sunny, snowing, and monsoon. This was the latter.

I made a dash for an old abandoned produce stand by the side of the road. I wasn’t worried about getting wet. Getting soaked to the bone was something I had grown accustomed to in the last couple of years. But I hadn’t properly stowed all my gear, and I wanted to get everything packed away and battened down before I finished walking to the diner.

I took off my pack, checked and stowed my phone and GPS, and closed all the snaps, buttons, and zippers. I had learned early in my journey that a dedicated GPS worked a lot better out in the boondocks than trying to use the app on my phone. Plus, it conserved the phone’s battery. You didn’t run into too many USB ports out in the wilderness. Under the old tin roof, I was a little closer and could read the rest of the sign under the bright neon.

Rest Stop and Way Station

Way station. There’s a term you didn’t hear much anymore. I figured it must be a bus stop for Greyhound; what we used to call The Big Dog. That would explain the number of people I could make out inside. I was still too far away to tell much, but there appeared to be about a half-dozen customers. Mostly folks sitting alone, but a group of three in the corner. Looked like they were in uniform, army or marines; couldn’t tell from here. Pretty good crowd for the butt end of nowhere in the middle of an August night.

Since I was almost dry, I decided to rest there for a minute and see if the storm would pass. The winds had been pretty high, so it might blow back towards Wolf Lodge and let me be. Weeds had grown up through the gravel floor of the stand, but not enough to be comfortable. I propped the pack up against the back wall of the stand and stretched out my bedroll cushion. Sounds fancier than it is. It was one of those cheap foam exercise mats. I had picked it up at the Dollar Tree in Villa Rica, Georgia When I first started out.

First started out. Man, that seems like a lifetime ago, and I guess it was. The end of one life and the beginning of another, I suppose. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. I had reinvented myself several times in my 70 years, but this time it was more of a radical change than the others.

And probably the last one.

Fourteen thousand miles. A little over two years. Approaching the end of the line, heading the wrong way in the opposite corner of the country.

Can’t really put a date on it, because it’s hard to say when the journey actually began. I suppose it was the day my wife passed, but it was months later before I started this particular expedition. But yeah, I guess I threw the switch the day Mary left me.

We had been together for over fifty years; married right after I got out of the service. Service. Always thought that was a funny word for it. Giving blood is service. Helping out at a homeless shelter is service. Hacking through the jungle trying not to get blown up or shot, not so much. But I survived that little party in Southeast Asia. My buddies weren’t so lucky. One minute we’re creeping along through Indian country; next minute I woke up in a place called Qui Nhon. They figured somebody had tripped a wire. I lost a kidney, part of my liver, and my three best friends.

Mary was my first and last. I had dated this golden-haired girl in high school for a while. Her name was Annie, but it turned out to be just puppy love. So, my wife was the first and only genuine love of my life. Bob and Mary. People always said we made a nice couple. What they didn’t understand, or maybe they did, was, we weren’t a couple. Couples are two things that are together. A couple of coconuts. A couple of kiwis. We were a unit, stronger by far than the sum of our parts. You tear off part of a unit, it’s not a separate thing, it’s a broken thing.

We lived in a great neighborhood. So, in some ways, life after she passed was better than it could have been. In other ways, it was worse. I realized that I didn’t have friends; we had friends. This broken-off thing was something they didn’t know. It wasn’t their fault. They were as caring and supportive as they had always been. It was me that was broken. It was me that was always alone in a room crowded with people.

So, one day I started walking. I had been walking for fitness ever since my knees gave out and I couldn’t run anymore. But the one-hour walks I used to take grew into two hours, then four, then all day. I would leave home just before dawn and walk all over the county, stopping to eat when I got hungry, drink when I got thirsty, and rest when I got tired. Which was often. I got tired a lot. I was turning 70 soon and I wasn’t in as good a shape as I once was, but then, who is? But even at a slow pace with plenty of stops, I was still walking over twenty miles a day.

On one of those walks, I remembered the plans I had soon after high school before my number came up. I was working in a bar at the time, helping out in the kitchen, carrying cases of beer from the back, and sweeping up at closing time. Drinking age back then was 18 and I had taken it late the summer after graduation.

They were closed on Sunday; well, they closed at 4 am Sunday morning. That’s when I jumped into my old ’69 Beetle, already packed and drove two hours north of Atlanta, down an unlit gravel road, and parked it on the side of the road in a place near Dahlonega called Nimblewill Gap. Nowadays, Dahlonega is practically a suburb of Atlanta, but back then it was way out in the country. You could leave your car on the side of the road for a couple of days and it would still be there when you got back.

I’d walk up Black Mountain in the dark, nap for a bit, waking with the sun. Then I’d hike up the trail to Springer Mountain, southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and points north. I’d usually shoot for Hawk Mountain for Sunday night, a twenty-mile hike, but if I was enjoying the scenery, I might only make it as far as Three Forks. Monday morning, I’d take the easier hike to my car, load up and hurry back to Atlanta before my shift started.

Sometimes a buddy of mine from the bar would come with me. We got to talking on the trail and decided that the next summer, we’d hike the whole damn thing. We figured we’d spend the winter planning, then late next spring, borrow enough money to fly to Maine, catch a ride to Mount Katahdin and then walk all the way back to Georgia.

Then he got drafted and that was the end of that and him. Frank never came home. I thought about doing it by myself. Back then, I didn’t mind being alone, but I figured three months of alone might be too much. How times change. Then I got the idea to load up my old VW and drive all around the country, hitting every state in the lower 48. I mapped out a route that hit all the states and was driveable in a couple of weeks, but I would spend the whole summer doing it.

And then my number came up. I guess it’s just as well we never made the AT because I got enough hiking through the woods to last a lifetime. Or so I thought at the time.

I remembered those youthful dreams on one of my all-day walks and thought, why not? But then I got the idea to combine the two. I would recreate my old driving map and walk the entire country. I did a quick version of my old route and figured it was a little over 14,000 miles. My driving route was shorter as it was more of a circle, but I wanted to end up in Seattle, so this version zig-zagged back and forth. If I averaged twenty miles a day, I could do it in two years.

Besides getting old, another thing had changed since my backpacking days. Now I had money. I’m not rich, but I got plenty. That meant no more squatting in the woods, eating cold pork and beans out of a can. If I planned the trip carefully, I could eat every meal in a restaurant, sleep most nights in a hotel, and buy everything I needed along the way.

So at midnight on my 70th birthday, I strapped on my little day pack with just a change of clothes, checked the charge on my phone, and headed down Highway 9. My first of many breakfasts on the road was at the Waffle House in Woodstock, Georgia. The waitress took one look at me and the pack I had dropped on the floor and made me show her my money first. Soon, I got used to that.

I walked on until dark, making my first day one of the longest of the trip. In Powder Springs, I learned two lessons. The first was that the GPS had drained my phone battery and it had died three hours earlier. That’s when I bought the GPS in a sporting goods store on 129.

The second lesson concerned hotels and a worn-out-looking old man with a backpack flashing an Amex gold card. I was afraid instead of the Holiday Inn, I’d be spending my first night at the Cobb County jail. But after a phone call to the 800 number on the back of the card, we convinced the night manager that I was legit and he let me have a room. After that, I downgraded the accommodations. I’d still get funny looks, but at the seedier motels, all they care about is if you can pay.

And I could.

That was over two years ago. West through the south, mostly following US 80, then up and back through the central plains, up the east coast, then west again. Of course, there were many doglegs north and south to catch every state. My trip finally cut through both Dakotas, then into Montana to where I was now.

Across and down the highway from The Last Home Rest Stop and Way Station.

Tomorrow I would start the trek through Washington and into Seattle, where I would figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Two weeks until the end of the road, if my luck held out. I decided before leaving home that Alaska wasn’t worth the effort. It would add too many miles to the trip for one state. Hawaii? The Russians can have it back as far as this trip was concerned. No offense to the Kanaka Maoli, but I couldn’t walk there, so it was out.

I must have dozed off because when I awoke, dawn was breaking and the rain had settled into a dense, wet fog. I could barely make out The Last Home as I crossed the highway to the other shoulder and began walking toward what I hoped was good coffee and a hot meal.

It surprised me to see that the same people were there as the night before. Then I realized there weren’t any cars in the lot and the bus must not have come yet. Through the dim early morning fog, the place reminded me of that old Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks. I began humming Tom Waits’ Nighthawks at the Diner as I got to the far end of the parking lot. I got a better look at the customers, drinking coffee, staying warm, and waiting for the bus to take them to wherever was next. I knew my next destination. Or at least I thought I did.

There was an old guy at the counter nursing a hot cup of joe. At the far end, on the last stool, was an ancient, stooped gentleman wearing one of those striped railroad caps. He was drinking a glass of water and eating saltine crackers from a basket on the counter. Across from him in the first booth was another old guy, this one sporting long hair pulled back in a ponytail. What’s with these old guys and their ponytails? My hair got longer than I liked on the road, but I would stop every month or two at a local barbershop and get it clipped off. Number two, please, and shave the sideburns.

There was an old couple in the next booth. She looked like she was going to church, down to the pillbox hat and white gloves. He had on an old brown fedora like the one my grandfather once wore. There was another woman in the last booth by the guys in the corner with her back to me. That was it except for the three army guys. I could see their uniforms now, but they weren’t the new BDUs the Army wore today, but the old pattern. I figured these guys weren’t army after all, but a bunch of hunters that bought their gear at the surplus store.

The only other people in sight were the waitress behind the counter, a young blonde writing on her order pad, and the cook I could just make out through the pass window. He looked like that character Vic Tayback played in the old Alice TV series, right down to the white uniform and Navy cap. My dad wore a hat just like it when he worked in the yard.

I thought he was burning something, but when I got to the door, I realized he was smoking an unfiltered cigarette. I could tell it was unfiltered because he was puffing on the last half-inch as his life depended on it. I didn’t know what the laws were like in rural Montana, but I was pretty sure you couldn’t smoke in the kitchen of a restaurant anywhere. But I wasn’t there for the hygiene. I was cold, wet, and hungry.

I sat at the first stool by the door and dropped my pack on the floor. This was a habit I picked up early in my travels. When I first started out, I liked to go all the way into the place and sit with my back to the wall, facing the door. This was a lesson that Jack McCall taught Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, South Dakota.

I had gone through Deadwood on my way through South Dakota in a huge dog-leg that left Minneapolis, went up through St Cloud and Fargo, then due south to Sioux Falls. From there it was straight west through Deadwood and Rapid City, then I angled northwest through the Crow Reservation to Billings. I worried about walking through the Rez, but I got the same stoic looks and occasional wave I did everyplace else.

But every once in a while, you just stumbled into the wrong place. In Clarksville, Indiana, just across the Ohio River from Louisville, I got into a scuffle at a diner. Some local took offense at the hat I had bought the day before at Churchill Downs and knocked it off my head. I guess he wasn’t a horse person. I made it out the door without it turning into a fight, but from then on, I sat close to the door for an easy exit.

The blonde-haired waitress dropped a menu in front of me, saying, “just a minute, hon,” before refilling all the coffee mugs in the place. Just as I opened it up, I heard, “Welcome to The Last Home, brother,” from the old guy two stools down. “You betcha,” I replied, not taking my eyes from the menu. Never engage. You never know what kind of nut job you’d get roped into a conversation with. The fact that he called me brother was a clue.

When I first got out of high school, before I got the job at the bar, I worked construction for a couple of weeks. It was back-breaking work, and being the new guy, I got the worst of the worst. But I met a guy on the crew who was cool to hang around with and we usually grabbed lunch together. Barely making enough to pay for the gas to get back and forth, lunch was the cheapest thing we could find.

We were working downtown; I think it was a Burger King or something. Nearby there was this place called Ned’s Sandwiches. We walked in there the first day on the job to find out they didn’t sell sandwiches; they made them. This was a place that made those sandwiches in plastic containers you bought off the roach coach on construction sites.

We apologized for our mistake and started back outside. “Hang on a minute,” one old lady said, sporting a white smock and a hairnet. She looked around to see if the boss was nearby. “I can sell you a sandwich for fifty cents.” Wow, that was cheap even back then, so I gave her a buck and walked out with a pimento cheese and a bologna sandwich.

We headed to the park across the street to find a shady place to sit and eat. As we were peeling the wrappers back off the sandwiches, David said, “There are a lot of homeless here in the park. Don’t engage.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean don’t make eye contact, don’t speak to them and if they talk to you, just ignore them.”

Seemed kind of harsh, but he lived down this way, while I was from out in Chamblee; still the country back then. No sooner had we got started eating than this old guy wandered up wearing bib overalls and a train engineer hat.

“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me what time it is?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s 12:30.”

I could see David’s head swivel toward me out of the corner of my eye.

“Thank you, sir. Do you have a cigarette?”

“No, sorry, I don’t smoke.”

“Can you spare a dollar so I can buy a pack of butts?”

David looked up, “Time to move along buddy.”

As the guy walked away, David said, “What part of don’t engage did you not get?”

The old guy next to me at the counter just went back to nursing his coffee as the waitress came back.

“What d’ya have, Bob?”

As I looked up from the menu to ask what was good, I noticed her name tag for the first time. Annie. I stuttered out that I’d just have coffee to start.

“You okay, sug?”

“Yeah. Just got a little rattled there for a second. Have we met?”

“Hard to say, hon, it’s been a long road, you know?”

As she walked off to grab me a mug of coffee, it occurred to me that I didn’t remember telling her my name. Maybe she said bub or bud, she seemed to have a nickname for everybody; honey, sweetie, sug. I was about to ask her about it when laughter erupted in the corner.

“Hey, you guys pipe down, we got paying customers in here trying to eat in peace.”

Annie winked at me as she sat the mug of coffee down. “Them kids just got home from someplace named Vietnam. Heard of it?”

She walked away before I could respond as a sinking feeling came over me.

She took the coffee out to fill up the mugs in the booths, starting with the one behind me.

“Frank, you got time for one more cup? Maybe a slice of pie? It’s a long walk back to Georgia.”

That got a snicker out of the guys at the counter.

And a chill down my spine.

The man at the far end turned toward me.

“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me what time it is?”

Before I could say anything, Annie said, “There’s a clock right there on the wall. In front of you the whole time you been here.”

Another chuckle went around the diner.

“Order up!” the cook yelled, as he slammed a plate of French toast on the pass. I looked at him again, but before I could get a good look, he ducked his head to light another unfiltered Pall Mall cigarette with a chrome Zippo. My dad smoked Pall Malls until lung cancer took him out while I was overseas. Had a Zippo just like that.

Thinking of my dad calmed my nerves a bit. I guess it was the French toast in the window. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so food wasn’t what you would call haute cuisine, but every Saturday morning, he got up and made us French toast with bacon. I can still remember the smell of cinnamon and bacon cooking. I looked back at the menu but didn’t see French toast anywhere. Guess it was a special order.

As I was wondering if they could make me some, Annie put the plate of French toast and bacon in front of me along with an old-fashioned syrup dispenser. You know the kind with the silver top; you pulled back by the sticky thumb grip.

“I didn’t order this,” I said.

Annie just hooked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “Bob Senior said he knew what you liked.”

My appetite disappeared and I could feel my ears getting hot and my scalp getting cold all at the same time.

“W-w-what’s going- “

From behind me, I heard, “It’s all right, son. Eat your breakfast. You got to keep it in the middle of the road.”

The only person I ever heard say that my entire life was my grandfather.

I turned. It was the old guy in the brown fedora. He and the woman were looking up at me. Even though they were both smiling, she had tears in her eyes. I saw that it wasn’t just the fedora. He had on the same suit my grandfather wore every Sunday to church. The couple had on what my grandmother called their “Sunday go to meeting clothes.”

“This isn’t…”

I could see the guy next to me turn toward me again.

“It’s me, brother. Welcome to The Last Home.”

My head refused to move, but I couldn’t help but look at him in the mirror behind the counter. His eyes met mine, eyes that looked exactly like mine, and then I knew.

“Hey, sweetie.”

I thought Annie was talking to me again, but as I looked back toward the booths, I saw it was the woman who had her back to me.

Mary turned around, looking as beautiful as the last time I had seen her.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said again, “It’s time to come home.”