The Fish

Auto-Fiction about Hitchhiking, Freight Train Hopping, and Native Americans

Photo by Faraz Arshad on Unsplash

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I stepped off the Greyhound bus in Tacoma, Washington. The driver nodded to me then pulled the lever and the bus door closed. I heard the loud, rumbling engine’s noise rise, climax, and then fade away as the bus lurched off, finally gone.

            I’d been on the road for two months, thumbing, taking buses, even hopping a freight train. I’d been all over the Pacific Northwest. I’d left San Francisco—my home—back in early April, trying to find that elusive, magical, existential Kerouacian “it” that Dean Moriarty talks about in On the Road, referring to 1940s existential bebop jazz. So far, I hadn’t quite found it.

            I trudged down the road, my heavy pack bouncing on my shoulders, the belt clipped around my stomach, cutting into my upper hips as always. The little metal pot clipped to the outside of the REI pack clanged as I walked. My feet were sore inside the old boots. My jeans were ancient, smelly and torn. I reeked like shit. Hadn’t showered in days. Felt like weeks.

            I ran into a main street called North Jackson Avenue. It was a four-lane thoroughfare. Two gray lanes, then a double-yellow divider, then two more lanes going the opposing way. Cars swished back and forth speedily. My cross street was North 13^th Street. I pulled my old flip cell phone and checked the time: 6:48 PM. In an hour and a half or so, it’d be dark. The question was a familiar one: Where would I sleep?

            I started walking south, passing the lower numbers. Seattle had been wild. I’d landed there after meeting Aaron in Buffalo, New York. We’d bonded after I’d crashed into him, drunk one night, on my way back to my pack stuffed and hidden in a public park. We’d exchanged words but then I’d slept at his place, in his garage. From there, several days of drinking and wandering around in Buffalo ensued, before I finally convinced him to leave his junkie girlfriend behind and hitch west with me across America to the Pacific Northwest. To my utter astonishment, he agreed.

We spent a week thumbing west through the land and ended up at the North West World Reggae Festival in Eugene, Oregon. Three days of pot, African reggae artists, free-spirited girls, and music. After that we’d hitched into Portland, and then, after five days, Aaron had helped me hop my first freight train—a “hot shot” Burlington Northern Santa Fe coming around the bend in North Portland—and we’d been dumped into downtown Seattle. From there we’d ended up at some marijuana festival and, less than fifteen minutes in Seattle, we were dropping LSD. A reckless week in Seattle sleeping under a bridge, and hanging out with this homeless punker chick digging through The University of Washington dumpers finding almost untouched food—even unopened, cold beers—was fun but exhausting.

In the end, Aaron and I had fought over what to do next. We had no plan and he and the girl had ganged-up on me. I’d been loaning Aaron money and was putting pressure on him to pony-up. He’d told me from the get-go that he couldn’t pay me back right away. He told the girl and she called me a “capitalist pig” and said I was an “Indian Giver.” That’s when I’d said Screw It and had fled, without telling anyone, jumping on a Greyhound bus.

I stopped. I was on the shoulder, at North 10^th Street. Cars rushed alongside me, five feet away. I felt the wind as they passed. There was a bridge. Right as I was considering whether to cross it, I saw a young man around my age approaching on the shoulder coming from the opposite way. He gazed down at the road as he moved. He seemed distracted. I waited. Then, at last, he looked up and when he spotted me there seemed to be some recognition, a kindred soul.

He came over to me. He was short, had brown hair, gray eyes, and wore ragged jeans, ripped, and carried a regular backpack over his shoulders. The backpack was faded purple. He cleared his throat, and said, “Hey.”

I glanced over the bridge again. “Hey.”

“Looks like we’re in the same boat,” the guy said.

The guy slung his pack off, dropped it to the road, bent, unzipped the black circular zipper, reached into the darkness, pulled a clear Nalgene out, twisted the cap off, and chugged water. Some dribbled down his scruffy chin. He handed the water to me.

I took it, chugged. I wiped water off my chin, handed it back. He screwed the lid, placed it back into the recesses of his pack, zipped it up again.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

I shrugged. “California.”

He smiled. “Me, too. Where?”

I thought for a moment it might not be wise to tell him exactly where. Then I thought, Eh. Screw it. What’s he going to do? Follow me? “San Francisco.”

“Sacramento for me. Not far, huh?”

“Nope.”

There was a silence and then he said, “Want to crash together tonight? I know the area. It’s gonna be dark soon. Need to find somewhere to sleep.”

The sun was getting lower and lower. There were cars and the highway and the bridge and the deserted landscape and not much else. I didn’t have the money for a room. This guy seemed slightly sketchy but basically trustworthy. He seemed more trustworthy than Aaron.

“Alright,” I said.

“I’m Daniel.”

“James.”

We shook hands. His palm was dirty and callused.

“Follow me, James.”

He slung his purple pack onto his back, tightened the black wide straps across his body, and started towards the bridge. I felt a beat of fear then, unsure if this was the right choice. I remembered my unstable life back in San Francisco, Carla, the girl I’d left my stuff with. She and I had met in a bar at 9^th and Irving, Mucky Duck, a wannabe sports bar, the kind of place where jocks and losers interacted, played darts, shot pool, got loaded, smoked outside, told sob stories. She and I had eyed each other from the moment I’d walked in one night. She was with two girlfriends, I was with my buddy Jared. Hours passed. We kept drinking, kept seeing each other, kept flirting with our eyes.

Then, half an hour before closing, I’d stumbled over and told her I thought she was beautiful. So easy. Compliment them and you’re in. I went home with her that night, to her apartment in the Outer Sunset, and that was it. Six months later I told her I had to go, hit the road. It was in my heart. She didn’t like it but what could she do? She had all my stuff, my few feral possessions, a couple boxes of books, some framed family pictures, some rock n’ roll posters, some old DVDs. Not much, really.

“C’mon,” Daniel said. I followed behind him a ways. We were on the vast, long bridge. Cars pumped below us a hundred feet. There was a large rushing river, dark blue, almost black. Finally, we reached the other side. He stopped, scanned around in a three-sixty. He looked down under the bridge, at the river, fifty yards down, amongst green wild jungle, and gestured with his hand.

We plunged downward into the fray. I felt like a Vietnam soldier in 1967. We pushed back heavy weeds and fronds and tree branches. The jungle was getting thicker and higher as we moved. I started to get frustrated. Where were we going? He took a sharp left and there was suddenly this tiny deer trail and we followed that and then the trail grew wider and at last we ended up at this open area right by the river with enough space to camp. It was under the bridge. Jungle all around us. You could hear the cars rushing above, on the bridge, the click click click of their tires rolling, the slight reverberation of the earth.

“Well, here she is,” Daniel said. “The secret spot.”

There was an old fire pit made of thin steel in a circle, some ancient, charred logs still sitting there. Mud and dirt rose in the center, rising up the steel bridge pillar.

“Are we safe here?” I asked. “No bums?”

He shrugged, dropping his pack. “Never had any problems before.”

“When was the last time you were here?”

He thought about it and then said, “Two, maybe three years.”