Two weeks prior, I was living in New York City, where the sprawling, angry, and confused mood immediately following the September 11 attacks had changed to a dumb, mean depression. Public spaces were crowded with posters of lost loved ones. Eyes of thousands of dead people followed you as you got off the subway, walked to work, ate out. Small patrol boats loaded with machine guns circled lower Manhattan. Every person I knew had lost or was worried about losing their job. It did not feel like New York. It was time to leave.
My clever idea: I would buy an extended "Ameripass" on Greyhound and travel to the hinterlands. If New York was reeling in a profound stupor, the rest of America must be overwhelmed in a sea of Old Glory and ammunition. Walking around cities during the day and sleeping on the bus at night, I would find charming folksy types in the process of tattooing the American flag over their faces. I would see towns ringing themselves with howitzer cannons. And I would produce a great piece of journalism.
Almost immediately things start falling apart.
For starters, I made the same mistake New Yorkers have always made: I assumed that the rest of the country is (1) a bunch of hicks and (2) as wrapped up in New York as New York is. I also forgot how much the bus sucks.
"All rides have been canceled," a voice from the Boston station's loudspeaker bellows. "You cannot ride the Greyhound because we are under terrorist attack."
Mr. James, a security guard with a huge pockmarked clown nose, elaborates. "Some fruitcake ding-dong attacked a driver in Tennessee. Those towel-heads can't be trusted--they're fanatics with no regard for human life."
Luckily, Greyhound's rival, Bonanza Lines, is running. Passengers stand by while the driver is briefed in the station. Bits of conversation drift back to us: "FBI... searches on buses... six to 10 dead...."
The Boston bus yard is empty except for six stranded passengers and four local newscasters. One after the next, the TV crews ask the attractive college couple and the group of old ladies if they are afraid, if they think security should be beefed up. The responses get more elaborate and passionate as each reporter asks the same question. By the end of the process, one of the ladies is in tears and advocating metal detectors everywhere.
After half a day of waiting, Greyhound starts up again.
Heading out of Boston, I sit next to a woman with two-inch fingernails, white with red-and-blue laser designs printed on them. Behind us, a guy keeps muttering: "Ghosts... motherfuckers... fucking Bernard Goetz... you all niggers are on acid, son." All the way to Buffalo.
In Ashtabula, Ohio, we make a mysterious and unscheduled stop. There has been some plane hijacking in India. Standing around outside the bus, I overhear two older men talking. The first guy is white, in his 50s, with a crew cut. "I was in the Marines, and I know that this plane was just like the one in Pennsylvania. It was shot down. We did all sorts of things like that--classified, you know. Of course U.S. jets shot down that Pennsylvania plane."
His short black friend agrees, and tells an elaborate story about a Navy mission he was on that blew up a Filipino island full of people. "Ashcroft has been saying things that people need to listen to, they have been trying to shut him up... a lot of people don't like the U. S. of A.... there will be chaos on U.S. soil."
They both nod and reboard.
In Cleveland, a sad-faced cop pats each boarding passenger down. Three other officers watch. Our carry-on bags are searched. My Swiss Army knife is seized. The station dick is a man in his 50s in an antique checked suit and a broad-brimmed hat. A four-by-five-inch flag covers his lapel.
"Why is this the only part of the country where you've been searched?" he asks. "Well, Cleveland is a major hub," he answers, then floats away. Incoming passengers are not checked, only outgoing. Apparently, Cleveland is concerned with protecting the rest of the country from itself.
Detroit's downtown business district consists of bars, official buildings, and shoe stores. I don't see many flags out, but a large warehouse on the main drag has the phrase "NO VIOLENCE NO RACISM NO WAR" taped 10 floors up, each letter taking up a full window.
I visit my friend Emma, who, like most white people in Detroit, lives outside of the city. She is a flight attendant who has just gotten her "Due to the tragic events of 9/11 and the economy... " letter. We drive to the Detroit airport to drop off her uniform and badge.
Inside the terminal, state troopers and "undercover" officers stand alongside guys in black T-shirts and khaki pants with 9mm guns strapped to their legs. An enormous flag hangs from the ceiling. It is almost a Third World military dictatorship experience, the difference being that people seem to be cheerfully accepting the armed presence and the lines.
"Whatta ordeal, but they gotta do it."
"Yeah, they've been too lenient."
Walking back to the employee parking lot, Emma and I count the empty travel-sized booze bottles between the employee shuttle and her car. Eleven--an average number for the 50-yard walk, she tells me.
Graffiti in the Dearborn, Michigan bathroom:
NY and DC are full of liars and cheaters their own actions caused their own deaths.
You have a penis so far up your ass, you can't even think straight.
Death to you.
SHIP them ALL back or KILL them.
I will kill an Arab a day starting on 10/1/01.
While traveling, my reading material is the very unfortunately titled 1999 biography of the World Trade Center, Divided We Stand, by Eric Draton. I never worked in downtown Manhattan, and I'm hoping Draton's book will help me better understand the physical vacuum left by the attacks. The book is very critical of the buildings, which is maybe why Mr. Draton has not been a fixture on the news of late.
The book is creepy. "The trick then is to make the WTC disappear," writes Draton, innocently. "This is not as difficult as it seems.... You don't have to be a terrorist." The book lays the threat of terrorist attacks on the inhuman design of the building.
"You know they [the Twin Towers] are office buildings, yet their design makes it nearly impossible to imagine that they are full of people.... For the terrorist and the skyscraper builder alike, day-to-day existence shrinks to insignificant reality [and] distills itself to the instrumental use of physical forces in service of an abstract goal.... [This] opens up disquieting questions of how we have come to build and live in structures we are powerless to defend."
The book makes me appreciate the apolitical lowlife I have been living with for a week.
Chicago graffiti:
Arabs--They die by us bullets.
Dec 14, 1941 = Sept 11, 2001.
Hate begets Hate.
In the Memphis waiting room, a man named John starts talking to me. He's 30 years old and amped on something, bouncing while he talks and running his words together: "If you had asked me yesterday, I had a different opinion, but I've been up for three nights listening to radio, you know Rush Limbaugh, with this truck driver who gave me a ride here. Bush is the best man for this job. I don't even think anymore that Bush blew them up, the towers, himself. Gore is just too soft."
The tourist trade is down. I am the only person on the shuttle service to Graceland from fraudulent, touristy Beale Street. To make extra money, the driver is picking up Army inductees to take to the airport. My shuttle driver tells me it is a total waste, the dutiful enlistment of these young poor boys who don't know that Memphis will never be a target.
The boys are freshly shorn and excited about the new basketball team in town. The shuttle driver tries to talk to them about war. "You know, it is all in the Bible, all this war. Of course I wouldn't respect America a damn if we weren't striking back. An eye for an eye. Of course I would be signing up too, maybe, if not for my heart."
The polite Memphis recruits say "yes sir," and then start talking about basketball again.
Two overheard quotes written in my notebook under the heading "Arkansas--the Natural State":
"We need to napalm all of those cave rats the hell out. Just firebomb the whole country. An easy solution."
"My baby needs three things: his wine, his money for numbers, and his midday pipe."
In Oklahoma City, I wait with Bill for the 5:30 a.m. bus. Bill is the Jungian archetype of white trash: skinny, with shoulder-length greasy hair, tight jeans with holes near the crotch, and menacing fucked-up teeth. His braying voice is improbably loud, addressing no one and everyone.
"If I was in charge, I'd have all the gob-heads hanging in the streets. I call 'em the gob-head army 'cause I can't remember their name."
The bus is late. About half of all buses are. Twenty or so passengers are waiting at the loading area in the cold.
"This here," Bill says, gesturing to Oklahoma in general, "is the target. We got oil fields, and I'm an oil rigger. That's why I'm heading to the hills with my gun, my ammo, and my beer. That, and this girl that says the baby is mine.""
His dialogue is so good, I try slyly to write it down. He notices and starts talking even louder in my direction.
"But the FBI bombed the building here, though. They were working on their plan of pop-u-la-tion con-trol. I've got the evidence."
I am relieved when our bus arrives and Bill is gone from my life forever. Everyone is suspicious of my notebook. Not a single person is writing in any station or on any bus. The reading population of my whole trip consists of three teenage girls paging through genre romances and a math book.
Amarillo, Texas is the proverbial dry, dusty town. Where are the people in places like this? Cold wind sweeps through empty streets. A beat-up Chevy has a bumper sticker that reads "God Bless John Wayne." A camouflaged tank sits decoratively in front of the police station. A prominently displayed cartoon in the station shows an American eagle sharpening its talons. A big white guy in a filthy suit and loafers, who has traveled on the same bus with me from Memphis, is arrested. He is no more nuts than he was before, but unfortunately for him, he is now nuts in Texas. In Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, this kook was warned not to bother people, then ignored. In Amarillo he starts accusing the "racist Greyhound" of cheating him and loudly scratches his sockless heel, and the cops are called. He is warned once, then hauled out of the station. Don't mess with Texas.
In Albuquerque I stay with my friend Mitch, who is an Army recruiter. Although we are not great friends, he is glad to see me. Recruiting is an awful job every career military person has to do if they want to advance. Mitch has had nobody to talk to but retarded football-playing 16-year-olds for the last two and a half years. He agrees to be quoted only if I pretend his name is Mitch and say he works in New Mexico.
"You should see some of the e-mails I'm getting from the generals," Mitch says. "These aren't even the classified ones. They want to engage the enemy on all fronts. This is the perfect enemy for an all-fronts war--everybody hates the Taliban, and these terrorists could be everywhere."
He claims that he is getting no more recruits than normal. "Fifty-five percent of our recruits are under 18, and we need parental consent for them. In a war situation, you don't get consent. This is going to take 10 years, and when it's over, Osama is going to look like a quaint historical movement, like Geronimo. This is the last gasp of a dead civilization--but we need lots of young men for this."
In the Kingman, Arizona station, there is a young recruit asleep on the floor. His belly escapes from his new camouflage jacket and pools on the tile. His buddy seeing him off is a tattooed, pierced generic malcontent. Once on the bus, the recruit is eager to tell everyone that he just needs a bazooka and a parachute to take on the Taliban. He giggles, and says "Yes sir!" to the driver when the bus regulations are given. I am getting sick and cranky and hope he gets his parachute and bazooka soon.
Las Vegas is a weird place under the best of circumstances. I have developed a flu and my head weighs 85 pounds. I've also been on a bus for a long, long time.
This is the West. Instead of older working-class people going to a job, in the Las Vegas bus station there are young people, Europeans on vacation, flashy widowers living it up. Entirely different breeds of travelers.
But what does a casino like the Aladdin do when the Arabic world is a hard sell? Similarly, isn't the Guys and Dolls motif at New York, New York kind of hard to get into now?
The answer: Nobody cares.
The tourists seem sophisticated enough to realize that this is a fantasy version of the world. This is why people go to Vegas: so they don't have to worry about the intricacies of reality. The Aladdin is as empty as any other casino.
"People are afraid to fly," says Amy, a waitress standing around bored in New York, New York. "It's really bad. A lot of my friends are being laid off. It helped that we didn't build the whole skyline, though."
Fortunately for the casino, the World Trade Center--being a distinctive but essentially ugly New York landmark--was never part of New York, New York's enormous façade. However, the casino does have a mini memorial fence full of real cardboard messages underneath the mini Statue of Liberty. The Boyle family wants us to know that "bi Loden [sic] will pay." The Canadian Association of Social Workers is very sad that this happened. A nameless ballpoint tells the world, "We will never forget, We will never forgive." And then there is the doggerel:
The Cowards in Stolen
Chariots they Flew
Into the Great Towers
Standing one hundred ten
Stories times two
This is basically the same as the real New York's public display. What's missing are the antiwar sentiments, and pictures of victims. People go to Las Vegas so they don't have to think about complexities.
Something is really wrong with me. Arriving in Salt Lake City, I wander over to the Salt Lake Temple and start getting nauseated. It is early morning, and no one is around when my legs buckle next to the pioneer cabin in the center of the temple complex. I really don't want to vomit all over Mormon shrines, so I drag myself back to the station, the only dirty spot in downtown. I put myself on the first bus headed north and start reading about anthrax in the newspapers. I am paranoid. I am going to be disfigured. I am being crushed by the enormous biker seated next to me. This sucks.
We stop at a town where I down four more Motrin. Jerry the biker is outside with me. I'm in the cold because this is the only place where my ass doesn't feel like a fleshy inferno. Jerry is here because he has no money and doesn't want to be in the restaurant around eating people.
"I did my time in the Marines," Jerry tells me. "These kids don't know what they're getting into. You know why they're issuing pieces of sandpaper in the Army? 'Cause it doubles as a map of Afghanistan. [This is the second time I've heard this joke.] Of course I'd be joining up again if I was young and dumb again."
On board, I pass out and wake up next to Eric, a six-foot-six South Bronx native. My fever is down and I need to get my mind off this weird rash. Eric has left town for better employment opportunities in the West. He will get a bar-type job in Montana and then get a fishing gig in Alaska come summer. "That's the plan," he says. "Unless you're in construction, there are no jobs in New York."
We swap rumors. The Mafia is stealing steel from the WTC site. Port Authority workers ripped off anything not nailed down immediately after the attack. Eyeballs littered the scene of the wreckage. I ask if he is worried about being a giant black man in Montana. Eric laughs and waves at a passing car in whatever tiny town we are stopped in. The people in the car honk and wave back.
"No, this is a friendly place."
Missoula at last. In the morning, I can call the Centers for Disease Control and have my ass checked out. Whatever I have has spread to my arm, which has a golf-ball-sized swelling. My friend G meets me and gets us drunk. We end up in a house full of wooden eagles and Marine Corps medallions. I start talking about my case of anthrax with G's friend. After I show him my arm wound, G's friend disappears into the back room. He reemerges with a can and tells me to pull down my pants. I ask why.
"I've got something that will fix you. Don't worry, it's the good stuff. Military stuff."
A stranger is rubbing mystery cream all over the weeping sores on my ass at 4:00 a.m. on a kitchen table littered with Schlitz cans. This is a friendly place.
In contrast to this "friendly" diagnosis, the Big Sky state is hosting a "God Hates America" rally early the following morning, celebrating the death of Matthew Shepard and the September 11 attacks. I don't go. I've found a University of Montana professor who will examine my anthrax.
"You been in an area with poison ivy? Maybe you wiped yourself with poison ivy?"
Um, yeah.
Whoops.
I did take a drunken late-night walk in Mississippi. And I wiped myself with a leaf. I am also very allergic to that kind of thing.
The upside is, whatever special military medical cream was rubbed on my sores is working really, really well. I am healing already. Missing the "God Hates America" rally in Missoula is all right. Like a modern Klan rally, it had seven protesters in attendance and 200 anti-protesters. More a media stunt than anything. I try to find anyone in the area who saw it or was affected by it. The only answer I get is: "Yeah, I heard about it on the news." I have to pick up a newspaper the next day to find out what happened.
My bus to the Northwest is easy and uneventful. Some wiseacre kids make jokes about the new "Osama bin Lattes" at Starbucks and that's it.
I land in Seattle, a beautiful city with low self-esteem. Like bulimics who can't stand their own reflections, Seattle has been trying to purge itself of everything that makes it Seattle. My favorite bars are gone; landmarks have been knocked down; I can't recognize some of the streets for all the monotonously monotonous condos built. It is still an impressive town, but eccentricity is losing out to urban planning.
I am greeted with my own September 11 notice. A freelance job in Seattle guaranteed for the last six months is canceled with the words "Ummm... the economy now, uhh, you understand, ahhh... everything's changed now. So, uh, good luck." People wince when I tell them I am looking for a job.
Sleeping in my own bed, I cramp up. For the first time in weeks I've been able to stretch out, and my legs are getting their revenge. I am not in an enclosed space with 30 strangers, and for some reason that makes it hard to sleep.
Despite everything--my failure to write a definitive essay on the American pastiche during wartime, my uncertain job prospects--I am goofy-happy to have stopped moving. And that's enough.
