Lexington, Kentucky gaped out its windows on the 15th of April at the half-inch of snow which had fallen in the night. The crab-apple blossoms and cars had lost their colors in the white and gray.
I sighed. I had brought the winter down with me. Yesterday the girls were all walking around in short shorts, and now it was bitterly cold: gray and windy and cold. I stared out, listening to the car-wheels hiss on the wet roads, and lost some of my nerve: my host, Catherine, was getting ready to go to work, and the plan was that I would head down immediately to the Smokies and then return to Kentucky after camping overnight in the mountains. (She would be driving me down to the Gulf, leaving me there, and taking my truck back north.) But in rough weather there was no joy in botanizing; indeed in the mountains the roads might be closed; and I had left all my cold-weather gear back home. I was heading for the Gulf, where the night-time lows were in the 60s, and I would be following the good weather north. What’s more, I had looked online upon my arrival in Kentucky and found that tomorrow would be the first day of the “Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage” in the Smokies, which must be the most significant wildflower event in the United States: 146 guided hikes, some led by eminent men and women of science, over four days, in what is probably the single most biodiverse temperate part of the world. This was a fabulous opportunity: but maybe if I was going to be staying longer in the Smokies, I wouldn’t need to push to see them today. I could wait until the snow melted and the Kentucky April had returned.
I wasn’t certain what to do. I had wanted to hit the Smokies quickly, then on the trip south hit Port Royal, Kentucky to see Wendell Berry, then Mammoth Cave, and Oxford, Mississippi, then a little prep-time in New Orleans; and thus leisurely to Venice, where the biking would begin. But perhaps I should skip all the other sights and just see the Smokies, after waiting a day in Kentucky; it was a five-hour drive to the mountains from Lexington, and then I’d have to drive five hours back the next day; it was cold; it was gray; I had gotten in only five hours ago and not spent many of those hours sleeping.
But whatever, I said to myself, I should go; if it’s great in the Smokies, then I’ll just double back and we’ll spend the time in the mountains. I knew I would not have many opportunities to see the Smokies in spring: life does not give us that many free days in April. I had such an opportunity right now, on the 15th of April 2014, and I would take it. So I threw my bag in the truck, cleared the snow off the mirrors and windows, and hopped in.
I turned the ignition, but then found I could not get the truck into reverse. The gears just ground and ground. I shut off the ignition and started it in reverse. The truck jumped as the gear finally caught, but I backed up just fine; but then I could only barely thrust the stick into first. “That happened last night too,” I said. “The clutch is going.”
I drove the truck down the block, then stopped at a light. I mulled in the gray gloom. “This is not going to fix itself,” I said. “And it’s not a cheap fix. A new clutch will be at least a thousand bucks. And that’s presuming I can find a decent mechanic here.”
The left-turn light went green. The stick absolutely would not go into first. I pushed it with all my might. Nothing. I cut the ignition and restarted it in first, as the cars behind me honked in impatience: the good people of Lexington were going to work, and they had to make this left turn and I was holding them up. When I had gotten it restarted I roared through the intersection, and down the road which ducked into a tunnel.
“Fuck,” I said, as I heard the echo of my motor in the hollow tunnel. “I’m not going to make it.”
When I got out of the tunnel I got into the next left-turn lane to turn back. There was no sense driving the truck. I could always start the truck in first, but at some point the truck would not allow me to get from first to second, and I would be stuck in a vehicle that couldn’t go more than fifteen miles an hour. The truck was going to get fixed in Lexington or get scrapped here.
I had thought about this moment for a long time. The truck had 265,000 miles on it. It couldn’t last much longer, and in fact putting another thousand dollars into it – even if I could be guaranteed good work by a good mechanic – was hardly the obvious decision. And I had about four thousand dollars for the next two months on the road; spending a quarter of the reserve before I even started would perhaps make the trip impossible. I didn’t have a job waiting for me when I got back either; my money simply had to last. And perhaps now the money I had would need to be used to buy another four-wheel drive vehicle, because without such a vehicle I couldn’t live on Wildcat Mountain. But perhaps that was the solution – perhaps I was living in the wrong place, living my Thoreau life though I was no Thoreau. Thoreau was “the bachelor of science and nature” – I loved people, I loved love, I thought that in the end an unshared joy was unworthy of me. Perhaps I had stuck myself into a corner of the world where I couldn’t get what I wanted in life, and now I was being forced out of it. I didn’t know. I could hop on the Greyhound, and get down to Louisiana; or we could rent a car; but then what would I do when I got back? Move back to New York City?
And then I looked up, and found I was driving past Tony’s, a mechanic’s shop. I didn’t back up – I didn’t have extra gear shifts to spend – I just pulled right over and walked back to see Tony. I found him, and I felt he was honest – perhaps because I was honest at him first. I explained the whole situation, and I felt in him that human desire to help a stranger who has many, many miles to go before he sleeps in his own bed again. “I have a transmission guy who does stuff for me, let me send you to him.” He gave me an address. It was just a few blocks from Catherine’s place. It wasn’t even nine-thirty and I was on my way there.
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