Lighting Out for the West

But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before. 

--Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

I may have written in the past about what I am about to write now. I don't remember. Regardless, I will proceed. 

Back in the mid 1990's, my son suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth. Where he could have gone, no one knew. Had there been foul play? Had there been an accident, on the road, for instance? He had always been given to taking long walks, sometimes at night, and had always adhered to a general suspicion of traffic lights and crosswalks, choosing to navigate streets at points where these dangerous safety measures were absent. Had suspicions such as these landed him as an anonymous resident in the morgue? He carried, after all, no identification, he had no bank cards or credit cards or driver's license. In fact, he had no wallet. He kept his money in the bottom either of his right or his left shoe. If he had not in fact disappeared, if he was actually quite present, though unconscious, in one spot or another, how would anyone know? Unidentified man, est. age 25-35, wearing green trench coat, paper money in shoe. Please claim.

Well we had no clue. He had left no note, no particular evidence of intent or destination. Nothing in his little trailer home seemed different than usual. There was certainly no evidence of foul play in the trailer other than that habitually inflicted on the place by he himself. 

There was, however, this one thing; and we all knew, at least in the backs of our minds, that this was the critical thing: Holden was about to be evicted from his trailer, which had lately crossed the line between unhealthy and unlivable, and it was the plan of his mother and his stepfather to commit him to government housing, where his Social Security Disability status would pay the tab. 

This, for Holden, was the ultimate insult. He was not a freeloader. He would not be a ward of the State. He was not a drug addict or a retard or a convict or a lunatic. He was a man, a free man, a moral man in the face of an immoral and decadent society, and he was a self-sufficient man save for the necessary assistance provided by the government and his family members. He was not a man who needed or deserved to be filed in with the common refuse of civilization. 

In short, the most likely answer to this mystery was that Holden had run away from his own home. He had lit out for the Territory. 

But where? The territory is a big place, and a dangerous place, populated by beasts and the pitiless elements and wild Indians and treacherous rogues. Here he would be a lamb among wolves. How could be survive? How would he eat? What could he do without his disability check? It just didn't make sense. It was impossible. And because of that--because it did not make sense and was impossible--we knew, because this was Holden, that it did make sense and that it was not impossible. 

For myself, I began my search in Portland's more remote, less developed park lands, for Holden had long enjoyed the solitude of these places, the empty, unclaimed land. Often, he would prepare a patch of land in an isolated spot and plant "crops" there--beans, peas, corn. It was summer, and the weather was hot, and our outings were like picnic excursions--I and my wife, and maybe a son or a daughter, partly searching, partly exploring places we had never really seen before. In the forests and in the fields of those parks, we ran into many homeless people--many more than I had ever realized were there--tucked into the foliage like shy munchkins, yet willing to peep out from their secret places and welcome these travelers from Kansas. 

I had printed fliers with Holden's picture and some basic information, and these I handed to the curious woodland residents.

"And you think he's here?" one young man asked, handing the flier to his girlfriend who was yet huddled in her sleeping bag. 

"Maybe. Could be," I said. "We just don't know. Grasping at straws."

"You just want to do something," he nodded. "I get that," scrutinizing the photo again. "Can't say that I've seen him. But we'll help you look. We can help, right, Linda?" The girlfriend eagerly nods assent. "Just let me get dressed," she says. 

"I'm Paul," the young man said, reaching out and shaking my hand. "This is a recent photo, right? Same hair style and all?" 

"Yes, and … he might be carrying a shovel."

"A shovel? What's he burying?"

"Beans." 

"Ah, I see." 

Yes. Of course. Beans. 

We met many people in this park, people in flimsy vinyl tents, orange, blue, green tents, scattered on the forest floor like fallen kites. By the time we had toured and handed out our fliers, dozens were conducted their own searches, calling Holden! Holden!

We did not find him in those parks. The summer ended and September began and the chill of autumn hunted at our side. We had written a bulletin for the local newspaper and TV news station, and this was broadcast along with the photo from the flier. Diabetic, autistic man gone missing. Likely in need of help. Please report any sighting to this station. At church we spoke to our pastor, and our pastor spoke to the congregation. Let us pray. 

And then one day he just showed up, just like that-not in Portland, but in Lincoln City on the coast, 97 miles west of Portland. My ex-wife's husband's sister had a sudden hunch and drove to Lincoln City, and as she pulled into the lot of a Minute Mart, she met him coming in at the same moment, rumpled in his customary trench coat, ragged, a bit worse for the wear, but not unhappy. 

"Oh, hi," he said. "Are you looking for me?"

As it turned out, Holden had come straight to the beach from Portland, weeks ago now. He had hired a taxi to drive him 97 miles to Lincoln City, and here in the woods above the town, he had been camping ever since, living on edible vegetation and berries, and on Twinkies and cans of Tab Soda from the Minute Mart. He had begun to plant a small garden, he said, but of course nothing as yet had had time to grow. 

"I'd like to take you home," Nina said. "Would you let me drive you back to Portland?"

Yes, Holden said, he reckoned he would. 

The news of his return and of his whereabouts in the previous time came to me in a strange mixture of inexpressible relief and dreadful despair. Who runs away in a taxi cab? My God! Who squanders money on a taxi cab and then lives in the woods on berries and Twinkies? 

Then again, who among us has not thought of just bugging out one day, of just leaving it all behind, of just washing his hands of all the cares and the cornering walls? Erasing it all. Starting out new. Lighting out for the Territories.

Hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I touch no one and no one touches me. 

The truth is, I could not help but feel proud of my son. I think everyone felt that way. A helpless man does not conceive of and execute such elaborate escapes. A helpless man does not put his trust in the succor of mother earth, nor in manna for sustenance. Manna and berries and roots and Twinkies. A cowardly, needy man does not pitch his tent in the cold-hearted woods and huddle for warmth by the small fires kindled by his own efforts. 

I think of this now as a brave thing, an honorable thing, a needful thing. I think now that in his forty-two years on this earth, he did nothing more courageous than this. And in some sense, I never afterwards worried about him, for he was the master of his own destiny, the captain of his own ship. No course set by the compass of the world would ever suffice. No Aunt Sally would ever sivilize him. For he had been there, and couldn't stand it, and had lit out ahead of all the rest.