Alone at last. How marvelous! Only it’s not what I expected it to be. I am standing in a field of gently waving grasses. I hold my arms up into what is most surely a gesture of grandiousity. It is, truly! The sky above me is endless- I am in Cape Girardeau, Indiana. Two days from the bleakness that is Portsmouth, Maine. Portsmouth of the dank shorefronts, the endless talk of baked tubers, and the men who, whenever you see them, shaved three days ago and not this morning. Never this morning.
I purchased myself a fine vest yesterday, fronted with tweed, at a little shop in Cape Girardeau, overlooking the old Grand Dam herself, the Mississippi. As I stand in this field of tall grasses (mind- they reach my waist, and move as the breeze does!) I tuck three fingers into the left pocket of my new vest, not five, nay, but three, as it is a minisicule pocket and I wonder, is there still a place in the world as wondrous as this, where a vest maker remembers the days of pocket watches? And she will appreciate this, as I do- the three-fingered pocket.
I came here on an express journey to happiness; to see the woman that I very well may love! It is a side trek on a journey that was said to be of “epic-scale” by those who know me, my journey- Romanesque style, with a valise full of Victorian fiction, all credit cards but one left behind with abandon, and a goal to sample the beignets of New Orleans.
What has troubled me, though I strive to overlook it, is that Cape Girardeau does not have the demeanor in toto that I thought it might. There is a lovely town green, yes, and just at the edge of town the fields of agriculture reach to the horizon. But the refuse trucks, with their whining hydraulics, the modernity of the monstrous, plastic mouth-hinged trash buckets- nay, larger than a barrel they are, all hint of the good things here being gone. The town green is quaint, and couples from the local community college stroll here and visit the ice cream shop on the corner, as they should. But just a block from the town’s center, the two storied houses become shabby, and condominiums sprout from between old structures, reeking pungently of mediocre affluence. Also, they have built a “Borders” bookshop, which feels more like a slaughterhouse for readers; you enter and will not leave before you have purchased- and it may not even be a book! Coffee, a “reading light” (!); the shop is even complete with a cattle-chute to enter before purchasing your item. A modern abbatoir; imagine your Lady Thatcher with her throat cut messily, lying at curb with skirt askew- this is an image that shopping at “Borders” brings to mind.
But now I breathe deeply of the scent of wheat, thank to the Lord they are growing wheat here. I can almost forget the sight of those arc-lamps, and that… parking lot.
You might argue with me that I am but 24 years old. Affected, I have been called, outdated. And I say you are cursed with modernity. Love is as fresh in me as it may be in you, though I may love a high backed leather chair with brass rivets, and you may say you are in love with your God of War.
I came to visit a friend, someone that I knew from long past. We were good friends, perhaps better than friends, perhaps lovers! Yes, I dare say it, and I will remind her too, though only in the most noble way; I hold her to none of what once passed between us, so many years ago, in 2005. I will not go there, to those days of holding hands, of walking between the brick dorms, so solid, with their round eyes looking out over the campus. Those were heady days. Days of chicken cutlets, so perfectly shaped, and the gravy reminded one of what one might have eaten were one a sailor on a whaling vessel in the late 1800’s. Yes, I watered down my orange juice in the mornings, and yes, she smiled so coyly at me, scolding gently as I requested yet another chicken cutlet. But what was I to do? I loved them then, I love them now. I loved her then and so too, do I love her now.
It has been less then twenty four hours here in Cape Girardeau, yea, but one night sleeping on her grandly mouldering pull-out bed in the side room and may I suggest that the snake has already entered paradise. I suspect that she has taken another, which irks me in my heart but which I cannot disallow.
“Andrew,” she told me, as we walked along the dike that overlooked the swollen Mississippi, “it’s nice to see you. And I want to make it clear that what we had is over. I’m seeing someone else, and I really love him. I hope you didn’t come out here expecting anything.” To be completely frank, as she said, this, I was fingering a small trinket in my pocket, a loop of exquisite metal which cost me no less than $3800.
“No,” I told her, “of course, it’s OK. What are you surmising that I expect? It’s been years since we were together. What could I hold you to? Nothing. It’s just nice to visit. Just nice to walk with you for while.” As we walked I contemplated taking her hand, thought about bending near her and nuzzling into her neck, the scent of flowers that I knew to linger there, and of something deeper, the tiny animal smell that she had that made me remember that I too, was an animal, somewhere down inside my brilliant human shell.
We walked some more, and talked of our lives. I told her of the bookshop where I worked, overlooking the fish packing station for Burgett’s Fishery. Of the old books that had passed through recently; a copy of Jane Eyre from 1924, an oversized Melville compilation with etchings that I could have pored over for a week. It sold quickly, I told her, much to my dismay! She laughed.
“You are amazing Andrew,” (Amazing!) “you have not let go of that love for old things that you’ve had since I first met you. I was with you there, for all that Bronte. And the Emerson. Oh, and and Lord Byron! An eagle passes… it was all lovely. You were so filled with your love for those things; that is such a wonderful thing about you. I still think so too! Have you found someone to share all that with? I hope so. I guess I’ve moved on to other things. I wonder why that is? You know what I love now? Cooking. And dance; I’ve picked up swing dance and it’s just the greatest.”
“Dance?” I said, “that’s wonderful! I’d love to see you dance sometime. Maybe I can come to a performance- are you giving any performances?” Secretly I thought that her choices were decidedly vulgar and steeped in the physical, but love can skew one’s clarity, is it not so?
“No, it’s not like that,” she said to me. “I just, go out and dance. There’s a place here that hosts a swing night every week. Daniel and I go.”
“Daniel?” I asked with a chipper edge, as though I could not help myself.
“Daniel, my boyfriend.” Her not noticing what she was saying. “We’re talking about moving to Barcelona together.” We chatter back and forth, and truth be told, it was here that something inside of me became quite distant; I could see her but it was as if I was hanging from the top of tall tree in the dead of winter, swinging back and forth.
And here the story goes twisted, as she begins to talk, the next morning, about “being frank” with me. Then, the conversation about my “oddness”, yes, she uses that word to describe me. I remind her of her previous devotion to the craft, and now she is discussing moving to Barcelona, purportedly because you can ‘drink until the sun comes up’, and every day ‘sleep right through lunch.’ I tell her a few things about this; things I think she cannot afford to not know; for example that with the advent of Big Band music (ergo “swing”) the incidence of syphilis in the United States soared, (not unrelated facts) and that within the political jurisdiction of Spain’s borders, woman from Barcelona are not infrequently referred to as “como puta”, or “whorish”. I can give her references to both this information, I merely want to step forward with the most indefatigable truth.
I did not get a chance to visit with her sweet mother as I had intended, who lived but a mile away from where Brianna lived. Truth be told, I think she wished that Brianna and I had been wed. Oh the laughs we used to have, and the grand, soft-bosomed hugs she would give me! Given our misunderstanding at this point, Brianna asked that I not stop by to see her mother, and though I requested a formal introduction to Daniel, her apparently pained heart denied that she grant me this too; I think the facts that I had presented wore on her with a heavy insistence; would that I could have said otherwise.
We parted. I reconsidered my trip to New Orleans at this point, though to be brutally honest, there was a piece of me that never intended to get there.
I wanted to see more of Cape Girardeau or course, after my months of secret research, and my poring over tomes & pictures, and even a lengthy drive through it’s rural backstreets on the “information superhighway.” But I had a taste in my mouth at this moment that reminded me of poorly cultured marmalade, (and I must intervene in this moment to point out, perhaps as my last devotional to the great British culture, that the last syllable is pronounced as if it rhymed with “odd”, as in mar-meh-lodd), as I drove slowly to the edge of town, gloriously alone. It is marvelous to be here in these great fields of the American mid-west with nothing to tie me down, the grey skies beckoning to adventure! I eye the leafless trees and think of Jane Eyre’s poor son, who lived such a dissolute life. Ah John, would that I could have known thee, and talked you down! And I wonder the suffering that he caused, the poor creature, when he stood upon the limb far from ground and considered that “such a thing to do was this”.
