Yesterday’s gentle evening, James and George and I sat on metal chairs beside the creek murmuring alongside the Mineral Springs Motel watching the night come over the mountains and I listened to their stories.
James and George are HIV positive. James was diagnosed in 1991, George was diagnosed in 2001. James has a Parkinsons-like tremor in his jaw and hands from the drugs and has blackouts, dropped conversation and a straight-ahead stare that lasts many seconds until he blinks and shakes his head and says, “Sorry, sorry.” George has osteoporosis and arthritis from his treatments, the pain is constant. His doctor’s afraid that one day his legs will collapse from his body weight. He walks with a cane. Through the years, they have both teetered over and over at the edge of death.
They were both born in 1964. James went to West Virginia Tech where he joined a fraternity and had a first boyfriend and dropped out of school. He worked in retail, as a model (he went to modeling school) as a writer and editor. George worked as a florist. His dad died in a coal mine. He and James have been together for 16 years. They live on disability.
George told me that they used to drink a liter of vodka a day. They’ve switched to wine because it’s healthier. They drink all day. George smokes cigarettes and James, who dislikes the habit and the smell, walks across the parking lot for an ashtray and lays it in George’s hand with a gentleness and intimacy that catches the attention.
They’d been living with James’ sister, Loretta. There’s tension; James had a fling with Loretta’s now-deceased husband. It happened some 40 years ago when Loretta was first married but it’s still there. A few days ago, she threw them out on some pretense and they’re staying at the Mineral Springs Motel. She calls the motel owner, Randy, every day to check on their condition. It sounds like they may be going home tomorrow. A relief for James and George; between them they have three older cats and miss them terribly. And they’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week.
I spent the night at The Mineral Springs Motel in Webster Springs, West Virginia. That’s a lot of springs for a little coal mining town, I’ll ask Randy about that. Randy owns The Mineral Springs Motel. He’s sixty-nine, former mayor of Webster Springs, former member of West Virginia House of Delegates, former West Virginia state senator and the first openly gay elected official in West Virginia. He recently had surgery for brain cancer and wants to sell the place, $750,000.00 (two acres, mature trees, well-maintained lawns and flower gardens, a stream running through it, masonry building with a metal roof and twenty-three rooms not updated since the wood paneling was installed in the seventies). He’s willing to negotiate.
I had breakfast at Vicki’s Cafe. The Special was two eggs, sausage, toast and coffee for $4.75. With potatoes and a buttermilk biscuit, my breakfast was $6.31 plus tip. The coffee was weak, maybe that’s their cost savings. My no-humor waitress was in her forties with sagging jeans and tattoos on her hands and arms. I tipped her well, the girl needs pants.
While I was eating, three motorcycle guys from North Carolina sat down at the next table. I said hello and got curt nods in return. Sixties, bearded, baseball hats hiding their pates, black leather jackets with American flag patches and a goose stitched on the back, they were members of the Wild Geese MC. I’m sorry, but an embroidered goose just doesn’t have the same gravitas as “Hells Angels” or “Hells Outcasts “ or “Banditos.” Just sayin’.
Walking to Vicki’s for breakfast, I ran into James and George. Nine o’clock in the morning they were sitting by the creek and each had a tumbler of white wine. Last night, I sat with them and drank that same wine. They’re a strange couple. James hates the smell of cigarette smoke, George smokes and so they sit together ten feet apart. James seems physically quite fit, George had a hip replaced and hobbles with a cane. George doesn’t talk, James won’t stop talking. They seem to drink well together.
James and George were born and raised in Webster Springs and had been living in Fort Lauderdale. James had been writing and editing for a variety of gay publications including a stint in the leather press (who knew?). When I arrived yesterday afternoon, he was wearing a Black History is American History t-shirt, which would seem to me bold in small-town anywhere, particularly small-town West Virginia.
West Virginia has a lot of poor people. They live in tiny clapboard houses with peeling paint and broken steps surrounded by stacks of firewood, junk vehicles and carefully manicured lawns. Or they live in ancient mobil homes, a haphazard wood porch nailed to the front that’s piled with broken furniture and trash bags surrounded by stacks of firewood, junk vehicles and carefully manicured lawns. Indoor plumbing seems unlikely. But here’s the question: if poverty is set in steep hardwood forest, clear trout streams and tiny well-maintained roads is it still poverty? The lawn thing is weird.
The town of Pritt Mountain is a bar. I stopped because of the LGBT banner hanging over the door. I sat at the bar next to Mark and Don and ordered a bottle of Bud. We were all hard of hearing. I yelled at Mark, “What’s the name of this town?” and he took my arm and led me to the jukebox so that we’d know what song was playing.
One of our two waitresses complained that eating raw broccoli gives her gas so bad she can’t breath. The other waitress has 25 grandchildren and one great-grand child. Her fifty-one year old son is having triple bypass surgery and she held him while he cried. She talked at great length about how nothing is more important than family.
My cousin Molly lives in suburban Cleveland and has a husband, three kids and cancer. Her parents, my aunt Mary Jane and uncle Phil, live nearby; I stopped for a visit. Phil taught geology at Case Western Reserve and brings real knowledge and understanding to the climate change conversation. Despite complete agreement on the subject, we spent two hours yelling at each other; climate change is real and humans are stupid and fucked. Yelling about climate change is easier than yelling about cancer.
Highway 2, two lanes, curvaceous and beautiful, crosses the Ohio river and runs east from Gallipolis into West Virginia. Russ had taken a break from trimming Susie’s hedges and was sitting on a lawn chair in the shade when I rode by. I turned the motorcycle around on that skinny road and turned around again at the hedge, “Is this the road to Ripley?” I asked him. I knew the answer, I’ve got GPS on the bike.
After a few minutes, he invited me into his screen porch where we drank sweet tea and he smoked a cigar. He’s 74, married to Susie for fifty-six years, they got married in 1968 just after her father died. She was sixteen. It was their anniversary.
That same year, Russ was drafted. He went to basic and AIT at Fort Campbell where he trained as a 13 Bravo, Field Artillery. When he was done training, he went to Viet Nam. Russ has PTSD, diabetes, three stents in his heart and needs hearing aids.
I joined the Army in 1974, trained at Fort Knox and went to Germany instead of Viet Nam. It was still Russ’s Army of blood, Jesus, alcohol and drugs. My First Sergeant, Sergeant Allen, had a baseball-size purple bulge at the base of his skull that oozed shards of bloody shrapnel in the shower. Our Troop CO, Captain Tenney, tried to make me a Mormon, I guess Joseph Smith got him through his stint. Our unit Sergeant Major bought a bottle of vodka from the Class VI store every night and I mean every night. He was a vicious son-of-a-bitch come morning. The lower ranks depended on drugs to salve the wounds, speed, hash, LSD, heroin, whatever could be had. The VA considers Russ 100% disabled.
I stayed at McCoy’s Inn in Ripley last night. Maria’s the night front desk manager. As I was going to dinner, she told me she was hungry and I bought her tacos and we had a conversation. She runs a toiletries pantry for homeless people out of her house. She says homelessness is rampant in Ripley but they’re invisible, the police have no tolerance. She votes Democrat. So does the waitress on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan who is in recovery and in a bitter custody fight with a step-grandmother for her four kids. Her ex and the grandfather are both in jail. The young waitress at the Italian restaurant in Gallipolis looked at the booths on either side of me before admitting that her politics are not the politics of southern Ohio.
Smokey ride across northern Wisconsin yesterday, I guess Canada’s still on fire. Spent the night at the Four Seasons Motel in Crandon, a town of abandoned two-story brick buildings and out-of-business businesses. For dinner, I had a California burger, fries and a root beer float at Palubicki’s Eats & Treats drive-in diner. The fries were salt-crunchy and hot out of the fryer, unfortunately the ketchup was in packets so I had to eat them naked. The concrete slab the restaurant sits on is cracked and broken so the high school kids running trays and bags out to the cars and picnic tables wear shoes instead of roller skates.
The Four Seasons Motel shares a potholed and oil-stained asphalt parking lot with a BP gas station and the rooms face the gas station. Each room has a folding metal chair in front, a sand bucket for cigarette butts next to it. My room cost $49.00.
Besides the pylon sign flashing $3.49 in neon green, store signage at the BP advertises Bud Light, Hunt Brothers Pizza, AmeriGas propane and ice. I sat outside my door for an hour as the sun went down slapping mosquitos in the humidity and watched BP customers slam the doors on Cadillac SUVs, old and new pickups, tired sedans with tired mufflers, and rusty Dodge minivans then a few minutes later come striding, shuffling, stomping back out yelling at their kids and lugging clear plastic bags of Dr. Pepper, laundry detergent, chocolate milk, diapers, cartons of cigarettes and beer.
For breakfast, I bought a copy of The Forest Republican, the county newspaper, and a cup of coffee at the BP. Front page above the fold, a story about a motorcycle cancer fund raiser, “Ride for Research,” and two Crandon High School students, Maya Quade and Madelynn Erdmann, having been selected for a U.S. State Department grant program. The paper was 16 pages and included obituaries, legal notices and a flyer for Menards. It cost a dollar.
Vincent is my neighbor two doors down. Forty-seven, untrimmed beard, divorced, four kids, three at home with the ex. He’s raced motorcycles, built custom bicycles and worked as a union electrician. Now he works as a mechanic at an ATV shop and lives at the Four Seasons Motel. The shop is seventy miles away; Vince doesn’t have a driver’s license and carpools with a coworker, they drive an hour and a half each way. He had a pack of American Spirit cigarettes resting on the leg of his jeans and we chatted while he smoked one and then another.
On the wall at the BP, alongside the handicap ramp, are cork-boards thick with advertisements and business cards for stump grinding, a farmers market, masonry, opioid addiction support, an indoor craft and flea market, a classic car show, real estate agents, taxidermy, homemade jewelry, off-road expeditions, lawn services, hair stylists, military recruiters and dozens of other hard-times hopes and scams.
