Day Two... Afternoon... Overheating
I couldn't keep up with my thoughts on the four lane, but the overwhelming message was… slow down. Disconnect. Be with yourself. Be in the place where you are. I didn't listen. But luck has it that right now I've made it to a place called Paradise Island on the banks of the Guyandotte River and it’s raining. It’s raining. In my Dad’s book there were survivors of the Buffalo Creek Disaster whose PTSD manifested when rain would hit the tin roofs. When picturing the story, my ex, the movie director, made the comment that's been ringing in my ears. "I wonder whether it'd come off as white savior complex." Looking around it seems people here don’t believe that they were saved by anyone other than Jesus. This is a place on earth, a place where they were born, where they found work, where they found love and family, where those they love found the Lord and were delivered up unto him. I can’t believe I’ve never been here before. It’s strange that I’ve never come here before. It’s strange that I don’t go places all the time. I suppose I’ve finally reached the point where I’m equipped to go to the places I haven’t been.
Where was I? How'd I get here?
Working on my relationship with my dog and my van, getting to know how hard I can drive them. I was getting pushback on the uphills, trying to go 65 over Mountain Mama isn’t really in the gears. It slips getting in and out of 4th, especially on the hills, Dumbo doesn’t want to do that. But I kept dropping the hammer on him, giving the whip, and I didn’t notice the heat building until the radiator hose blew out and I could smell coolant and see steam. Sadie didn’t flinch. But my adrenaline flooded. The hills in front of me, my primary fear was settling like a bowling ball in the valley with no exit. I managed to sneak down into 2nd and ride the rolls to an exit at Mud Fork, just outside of Logan. These names these names. They’re written in my brain. They’re locations from a book, from the movie of my father’s life in the 1970s, from my own personal pre-history.
But they’re real. They’re populated. I spot a sign that says Auto Body and cross a tiny bridge to a skinny one lane town and I pull between houses to the garage. No one’s home. But an old man walking down the street with his grandson spots the thing out of place and approaches me.
A squared off flat top of white hair and a hanging beer belly full of muscle, squinty eyes and round fingers. His name is Ted McLemore. His little grandson wears a red Spider-Man shirt and plays by himself. I’ve got the phone to my ear already and I’m talking to AAA who’s informing me that I haven’t upgraded my basic plan to cover RVs and it doesn’t matter that this is a Class B camper van, I don’t have the plan. “So you’re not going to help me?” My voice is equal parts pity and confusion. Quizzical pleading. Why wouldn’t you make an effort to help me? I’m a customer. And my car just broke down and I’m stranded in a tiny town in West Virginia. Don’t you care about that? Don’t you care about people? Don’t you care about anything? Ted does. I pop the hood and he grabs a bucket and fills it up with water from a spigot in the front of his son’s house which is next to where I’ve parked. His other son. Who goes about 280 and drives haulers and dozers for the coal company. He fell off one last week, about ten feet up, and his leg got caught and tangled and he’s at the hospital now where they’re working out the details of how gruesome the news is going to be. I show Ted where clearly a hose has popped off the radiator and the coolant is gone and he fetches a pliers and together we clamp it back into place by which time his other son, Ed has shown up. “Call me Randy,” Ed says. The last bits of orange coolant mixed with the bucket of water are bubbling over and spilling all over the engine and the drive where Spider-Man is playing. Grandpa Ted keeps re-filling the bucket and splashing the drive clear and trying to re-fill the coolant tank, but it’s sloshing all over and missing the hole and creating joke opportunities for his grown son. Randy takes over.
I’m on the phone again and we’re all thinking the worst and I’m talking to a repair shop that’s theoretically down the road and he doesn’t know who I am and asks if I’ve been there before and I try to explain that I’m just passing through and everyone’s dropping the potentially worst case gruesome news… I’ve blown a gasket. I’m surprisingly calm for someone who’s blown a gasket. The adrenaline from road panic is fading, the chemical burst that hit my brain when the sound and smell popped out of the hood, that chemical is fading and I’m getting hungry and tired and it’s pushing 5pm and this mechanic on the phone sounds like he’d prefer not to take on any new projects this late in the day so he’s not making much effort to put me in touch with a tow truck. I ask Randy if he knows anyone who’s got a tow truck. (Later, when I’m driving down the tiny Route 10 out of their town, I’ll pass approximately 15 tow trucks of various sizes in various lawns and garages and understand the mysterious smile that Randy throws me.) But there’s hope. There’s hope to get it drive-able, to get it at least as far as the mechanic on its own. From there, I’ll have to figure out where to stay and how long I’ll live in Logan unless… unless unless unless… the thing was just too damn hot and boiling over every bucket and it’s not the gasket, it’s just the hose that was blown off, and everything else needs to cool down.
Just cool down, everything!
Randy’s filling and filling and I’m checking for leaks and bubbling and boiling and it’s starting to settle in and the coolant tank wants to hold water. The whole thing is getting still. And the impossible dream starts to surface. “You may be alright,” Ted says. And now we’re best friends. We trade numbers and Randy asks if I’m on Facebook and I tell him my Instagram and the world is a doofus. They give me directions to some campgrounds maybe 5 miles away down the Guyandotte and we shake hands and take a picture and say our goodbyes and Sadie and I (cautiously) proceed at between 35 and 40 miles per hour to follow the river. We check the map just to have a specific destination and we find Paradise Island and that doesn’t seem like something that can be passed up. I call the number and the woman who answers says, “I’m Priscella!” like it’s a celebration and I ask about the views and she says, “I’m on an island!”
This we gotta see.
