Night Eleven... Back in a Basement

I’m at that point in Survivor where I really need a visit from home. So after checking out the marina and lakeside camping at Cricket Creek I decide I’m gonna make a run for Morrilton. Even as the light fades and the dark comes up, I just feel sure I need to see them. I haven’t seen anybody who I know in a week and a half. I haven’t slept indoors. I haven’t had a real shower in a couple days. I need to do laundry. It’s Thursday and Adam and I have a Thursday night tradition of dinners dating back to Los Angeles.

So we push on through. As the dark rises, my right eye twitches, this muscle, it’s been happening more and more, staring at phones, staring at computer screens. Changing distances. I don’t wear glasses, but it might be time to start thinking about it. I’m the only one in my family who doesn’t. 

Night miles are long miles. I do arithmetic in my head to break down the minutes into shorter increments. Not 36 minutes, just 2160 seconds. I cue up the greatest hits of Boston, ELO, Supertramp, throw in a little St Elmo’s Fire there just to seduce myself. Calculate how many songs it’ll take until I get there. I use my brights for the first time.

I’m rolling 9 all the way into Morrilton and I guess I’m missing things even though I’ve been into Morrilton before. Came from the West, coming from the North now. I watch the miles tick by, caravan occasionally with another car, Dumbo’s running pretty smooth although we’ve been burning a lot of gas today.

I text Adam to ask if I should pick anything up on the way and he says there’s not much open. I tell him I’ve got two dozen eggs and a half slab of the best bacon he’ll ever eat and he says that sounds like it’ll do it. I don’t mention the good bottle of bourbon, but I plan to crack that, maybe look at the stars, smoke a little. The stars have been out the last couple nights, the upside of the storm break and the heat rising. 

Harrison, Pindall, St. Joe… population 132… haven’t seen that before, I wonder what I’m missing. There’s an enthusiastic sign for “Smoked Meats!” that I anticipate for 11 miles only to find it well and truly closed, possibly for centuries. And fruit! My first fruit sign in so many states, this one claiming “Peaches!” but they also prove elusive. This is canoe country, it would appear, the mounted curved canoe fixed to two posts looks like a Chinese pagoda in silhouette. I’m ready to be out of this van. Finally, I descend from the vague into the vaguely familiar and I see the lights of the local liquor store. I park and stand and stretch out the ache in my legs and the emptiness in my stomach and I wander inside as if the clerks were awaiting me, but there’s not much of a rousing reception. Some quality assistance, though, despite not having a chilled Rose in the fridge for April or Adam’s preferred IPA, still I fill a box with beer and wine and for some reason a six pack of cider strikes me appealing. 

I switch off the GPS, remembering the rest of the route by feel as I turn off 9, past the small municipal airport then up the hill next to the donkey and the pond. This is April’s hometown, but she and Adam met while she was studying out in Los Angeles, fell in love, married and started their family in Adam’s hometown Pasadena. She was teaching school and he was working wardrobe on tv and film crews and making art in his garage while they popped out three boys in a row in the first house they bought. Adam and I met just before all of these dominoes started falling, at the origin of what would turn out to be a tradition. This dinner was formed, this Thursday dinner of guys, through friends and friends of friends, first at Dan Tana’s Restaurant on Santa Monica Blvd and later, when we’d bonded with Craig the Maitre D, at Craig’s Restaurant on Melrose which became our restaurant. Every Thursday at 8pm for more than 11 years now, some combination of these guys has shown up for dinner. There have been weddings and divorces and 8 children born, there have been successes and failures and fallouts and reconciliations. More than anything, though, there’s been a table of dudes eating a good meal, getting drunk, talking about their feelings and shit, meeting strangers, and blowing off steam. When I first met Adam he was crashing on one of the guys’ couches and wasn’t sure what was going on with his marriage or his life. One night, outside a party Channing Tatum was having at his poolside room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, I threw a glass at Adam’s head. To get his attention. It shattered on the wall next to him. He looked over at me and I was laughing. I think he had his hand on his knife already, half a mind to stab me. But then he laughed too and we’ve been tight ever since. 

They see me coming up the long driveway. They’ve gone from a concrete box on a packed Pasadena block to a hilltop A-Frame on 2 acres of cleared land surrounded by forest. Brings a tear to my eye. And to April’s too, I imagine, she never thought she’d be able to raise her boys in her family’s hometown. I pull all the way underneath the covered motorcourt and I haven’t even stopped when the boys file out of the front door. All the boys, even the 3 year old. And it’s easily 10:30pm. Eh. Summer hours. And they just got back from an LA vacation, who knows what time they think it is. 

I climb out and Adam cocks his hand and notches half a smile and wraps me up. He’s a big guy, strong, more and more it seems going country is in his blood, although he’s only gotten as far as the riding mower, still hasn’t pulled the trigger on the pickup truck. Aiden, who’ll be ten this weekend, and Alex, the middle, climb inside the van and mob Sadie. They’ve been waiting for her. As have the cats. There are four of them scattered around the property, city cats gone country quite well, and they know there’s a dog in their midst. Aaron, the baby, leads his Mom down the steps and I’m shocked to hear him talking, not that he didn’t talk before, but now he’s got sentences, he’s got a musical run-on run-together style that’s tinged with twang. And he’s got handfuls of action figures. Last time through here, in November, Aiden offered me a Lego figure for the dashboard and Alex mimicked the gift before realizing that it was a permanent separation from a valued toy. I detect a little bit of suspicion from Alex, as if I’m going to steal something else, he doses me with some sass about Dumbo, nothing I don’t already know. Everything needs to get cleaned. 

April hugs me hello and wrangles the boys and all of us into the house and Adam cooks up eggs and bacon and I pour drinks and the kids try to show me every god damn thing in the world, but I’m hip to this game. We’re gonna partial out the presentation of Legos and Star Wars and iPads and youtubes and Ferraris and weapons, we’re not doing it all at once. And first things first, I feast. The kids pet Sadie until April takes them all to bed at once and Adam and I crack bottles and move to the porch to watch the sky and watch the cats and dog stare at each other. Boba Fett is the alpha, the professional bird murderer, and she’s reclining paws akimbo on the railing staring daggers at the dog. Sadie’s giving her back her best, “What do I care?” face, “This your place? Nice.” With the threat of violence minimized, the softer cats emerge, Ashoka, Amydala and, of course, Skittle Berry. After some minutes of offscreen screaming, April joins us and we sip bourbon and down beers and smoke and talk LA and the South and small towns and big cities and the hassles of travels. Last time through, April and I were at the same level of political outrage and self-medicating with the same dosage of daily news. I’ve gone practically cold turkey, hoping to convert the outrage into action. April’s pushed the treatment to the background, just the corner tv in the kitchen, and collected like-minded souls from her family and friends. There is Liberal Arkansas, they just probably wouldn’t call it that. They’d just call it Rational. Or Normal. 

I tell her I’m a bit concerned for Claire McCaskill’s chances in Missouri, we all know President Big Butt is gonna come out and swing every dumb club in his bag of tricks. Tee off with his meat-headed driver on how she wants open borders, gets super turned on by crime and would love it if every American just got straight-up murdered. What’s she gonna say? She doesn’t even have a road sign. I think more people are gonna vote for a dead armadillo. They have a stronger roadside presence. April’s pretty pissed off at their own armadillo, snorting around digging holes in her yard. I’m curious to see a live one.

Somewhere around 2 in the morning, Sadie leads me down the carpeted stairs to the basement guest room next to the kids’ playroom. It’s cool in the concrete block box, the bed has been made and turned down, the bedside light is dim and moody, there are extra blankets and a plug-in air freshener, just like the last time we were here. Sadie looks at me like, “So this is where we’ve been heading.”

She may be right. It does feel like getting home.