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Pilgrimage
by sigurd
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Pilgrimage
Feikstein traveled the west coast the way most poor men traveled the west coast; looked to the open air for a draw in the terrain and chose the one that felt best. He made a thousand-mile migration every year sleeping under the lifeguard towers of Southern California to keep off the rain in the winters and then traveling all the way North to Seattle and Vancouver; which exploded in vernal bloom a little later in the year.
That summer he had come upon a disheveled public housing high-rise as he made his way into the North city of Seattle; a chalk-white building that stood with a glass-walled community room at its base. Feikstein had found it late one night after passing a large city park with a large lake at its center. He had spread his serape flat on the short-cut verdant grass next to the glass, and leaned up against the clear, smooth panes in sleep, so that to the residents inside he might have appeared some aquatic specimen; a resident of an airy aquarium.
That is how they found him the next morning, sleeping close to the glass sides of the rectangular room beneath the lee of the building. An old woman dressed in a bathrobe, paper-stick thin and a psychologically disabled man hulking over six feet and weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds watched him quietly. A black man entered the room; compact and muscular, with a graying mustache and sideburns in a Navy cap with an old destroyer’s name on it. A younger man joined the small group after the black man; psychologically disabled with the wiry frame of a punk, who fiddled nervously with a cigarette. They stood in a semi-circle at a bare distance from the sleeping man, unheard by the vagrant because of the glass wall that cut sound, and watched him shift under the quilted blankets on the metal framed khaki back-pack he used as a pillow. The old woman spoke.
“He seems exhausted.” In response, the African American man shook his head and looked at the floor;
“We should call the police.”
“No.” the heavy-set man said sadly, “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t blame me if he’s at the front door asking for hand-outs at the beginning of the month – he isn’t taking my benefits.”
“I remember when I was poor as he is...”The punk said, reminding them in a conscientious tone. “It certainly was hard to take... I mean, having the police kick me off one private property after another...”
A bell rang and the group looked through the entryway to the community room at the double elevator bank, and a door which slid open. A middle-aged man, wire thin and taller; with a face that had prominent cheekbones and a large, even nose, moved from the machine automatically, arms out to his sides a little and thumbs splayed; heavily medicated. He walked past the brass colored mailboxes and out the front door of the building to sit on a park bench that had been placed in front of the similar, glass-walled entryway.
... The group’s focus turned to the wire thin man.
“Poor Johnny.” The sticks and bones woman said, “always so quiet on medication.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen him let down his guard once,” said Cletus, the black man. Discussion continued around the young man. The day passed a little and the semi-circle of building residents disappeared, riding elevators above into the air of the white building to become invisible.
Feikstein turned onto his side and woke, staring into the glass walled community room at the television that hung from the ceiling. He glanced at the disheveled pool table with frayed cloth, and the beaten-up pop machine in the corner. His mind was blank.
When he stood he felt the earth heave under him and secondarily thought that he was experiencing hang-over, felt as if he were stepping out of a black-out though he couldn’t remember drinking in months or perhaps years. Feikstein looked into the pink-gray clouds of morning and then realized what was happening as he noticed the building swaying gently above himself. As usual, the nausea at the experience of earthquake over-rode him. Like a man on his first sea legs smashed further into a terrified pulp, he stretched his arms wide, desperate for balance desperate for anything concrete in that shifting, billowing world.
Feikstein found it difficult to admit, but he knew deep that the abnormal terror kept him from a normal life and made him a homeless man; that the earth-waves of terror drove him again and again to the highways and the interstates. He knew that the fear drove him to endless progressions of one step after another until he was calm once again and he could think of his next destination. Lately, though, he had been changing. Maybe it was that he had gained enough distance from himself as he grew older, or maybe it was that he had finally cultivated a hate of the fear, but as he had several times before, Feikstein chose not to leave the city. More and more, Feikstein instead chose to challenge himself; to prove his courage after the fear had passed.
Feikstein bundled his serape into a blanket roll and fastened it beneath the large tarp/flap of his back-pack. He shouldered it and made his way toward the five-way intersection that met the circular drive that rounded the lake/park. He checked his pocket for a rumpled slip of paper; a month-long bus pass he had obtained at a street shelter the day before. His world still lit with the orange after-image of fear, Feikstein noticed concrete bus benches that stood next to the metal flag of a bus-route sign. He neared the sign innocuously; defenses still up instinctively, and checked the number on it. The route emblem registered from the travels of a year previous when he had ridden the line to the great, forty-degree pool of the ocean the city crowded on. The inspiration came to him, a breath of wind, and Feikstein waited on the bus, convincing himself the secret of the cold blue lake could cool the terror of minutes past, though uncertain why that should be so. Feikstein squinted in the sunlight along the street; the tree lined boulevard that narrowed in the distance until he spied the distant hulk of the bus slowly approaching. The ponderous double-length rattled to a stop before the metal flag, air brakes hissing as the double-doors opened. Feikstein took the two/three steps quickly presenting the African American driver; a man who wore a floppy beret and sunglasses; with his low-income bus pass. He skirted the toll column and made for the mid section of the bus, finding an empty two-person chair along its length.
Feikstein fell into rhythm with the bus, letting the old coach take him where it would, looking through the windows. The bus climbed a shallow hill and then descended another, crossing a busy street and then wending again into a residential neighborhood, traveling in an uncomplaining and stolid nature toward an end point it knew undoubtedly to be there. The older model, for all its shuddering and creaking, came to a neat stop at the end of the line, doors buckling open, and Feikstein stumbled down the two-three steps taking in his surrounds and matching the old brick coffee shop and the tree-crowded entrance of the city park entrance across the street with the photograph in his memory. He entered the park and came to stand at a cement staircase that descended a tree-filled cliff.
Feikstein started down the stairs. After counting to two-hundred steps, he came to a plateau with a public dog run, picnic tables and a pair of restrooms. There was a wider and shallower set of stairs that fell from there, ceiling-ed with large red cedar and a stream that leaped and gurgled in steps next to the stair case. At the bottom of the case, he descended a slanting sidewalk to a foot tunnel that under-ran a set of railroad tracks. Coming out the other side he found an ocean breeze met him squarely in the face, with trees bordering the sands bent slightly in that wind.
Feikstein stood for a moment, looking toward the skies where the sun broke through tumult clouds and broke on his face like the breath of love. He felt an answering courage deep in his chest and Feikstein walked to the shore of the inlet where waves gently crashed and then rode up the sand. Feikstein thought for a moment of walking the several hundred yards to the beach house and changing to the swimsuit he carried in his back-pack, but decided instead to rely on the jeans-shorts he wore underneath his canvas trousers. He unbuttoned his flannel shirt, and then did the same with the trousers after removing his hiking boots and socks. He stepped into the bare surf and was met with a shock of cold water, but his zeal had overtaken him, and Feikstein waded, first to his knees and then to his waist. He could feel the freezing water separating each toe from the other, setting each nerve alive in his legs and then his stomach and then his chest. He ducked into the current and came back up gasping short breaths and then began to swim parallel to the shore, glorying in his fight with the cold water. It took what seemed an eternity for the fight instinct to completely overwhelm the fear he had felt earlier that morning.
Feikstein dragged himself from the water and slumped in the sand. He collected his clothing and his back-pack and made for the outside showers near the beach house. The well-water seemed warm in comparison to the ocean and for several moments Feikstein wished he could leave the brine in his hair as a remembrance of the battle.
Feikstein walked through the tunnel and climbed the steps through the cliff-side city park to the bus stop outside the brick cafe, finding a second, more modern transport parked between runs. He showed his pass to the driver and waited until the bus gunned. Riding back to the intersection from which he had come, he noticed a branch location of the public library and disembarked across the street from the Mediterranean-style building with curving, brick shingles, blue copper window frames and white stucco walls. He entered the building and climbed through the hours of the day, reading until darkness enveloped the building...
It would be easy to say the group of building residents was there the next morning, however they had disappeared, a chorus hushed by the dramatic action. The community room remained dead and silent, and almost matched the city outside, which had hushed also for some un-nameable reason. Inside, the elevator bell rang, and the tall skinny man, Johnny stepped from the steel box, making his way mechanically toward the front door and the park bench placed in front of it.
It was then that, for the second time in two days, the earth started to shake. Feikstein once again felt a sense of fear-shock, and uncertain of what he was doing, jumped from under the blankets and jog-trotted amidst the swaying earth of the small quake toward the center of a street, knowing only the blind, frightened impulse to find open ground. He fell to his knees, trying to find a better center of balance and watched the wires on the telephone poles sway perilously above himself. When the small quake had stopped he gasped, falling flat on his stomach, letting his body go limp. Never had he seen two earthquakes in two days. The effect was particularly terrifying.
Feikstein returned to the steel-frame and started sorting through his back-pack. Found the thick, woolen socks that would keep his feet from blistering on the road. He pulled a sleeveless T-shirt from the bag so that he wouldn’t become too cold en route. After that he checked a side pocket for matches, so that if he needed to bed down for the night, he would be able to light a fire. He also checked the water bottles – empty, which he would need to fill at a gas station. After that he checked secondary supplies; trail mix, a Swiss army knife, and shoelaces, which could be used for anything from replacements in his boots to stringing together a lean-to. When he was finished he pulled on the woolen socks, and throwing one of the blankets; a serape over his head, changed into the sleeveless T-shirt. Feikstein pulled on the pack and started to make for a street with a bus route that would intersect with a highway. He started to climb past the building entrance where Johnny sat, staring blankly ahead.
Noticing the tall thin man on the park bench, Feikstein slowed and then turned; there was something he was missing, and he started to stare blankly in amazement at the other. Johnny sat on the bench; frozen, arms extended on either side of him, white knuckles prominent on vise-fingers that clamped to the bench back. Johnny’s whole body was shaking. He stared at the ground, his eyes wide with terror and Feikstein could tell even from that distance that short terrified gasps racked his body.
He’s just like me; Feikstein thought for the first time with amazement, he is exactly like me. For the first time, Feikstein realized he was not alone. A somber and responsible seed of joy had been sown, and Feikstein realized that not only had he to overcome his fear with courage, but that he had to share that courage with someone else – it was too precious of a thing to keep to himself. Feikstein walked to the bench where Johnny sat;
“It scared me too,” he said, “do you need help getting back to your apartment?” For several moments Johnny was quiet and said nothing, and then he gave Feikstein a barely perceptible nod. Feikstein reached down and took Johnny’s arm, bracing him under the elbow. He helped the other in the front door of the building where a council of others had looked at him sleeping the day before.
…The black man now stepped into the elevator with Johnny and Feikstein, a strange respect in his eyes. As the door opened for Johnny’s floor a heavy-set man nodded to himself and closed his apartment door behind himself. They made their way along the corridor and a punk stopped to look at them a moment, and then stepped into the stairwell exit.
“See what I mean? You’re doing O.K.” Feikstein said, as Johnny unlocked his door and an elderly stick-thin woman looked through the spy hole in her door, smiling. Feikstein got back on the elevator and exited the building, deciding instead to make his way downtown. He would have to get shelter and find a job. For him, that was the moment love had conquered fear.