Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America (6 page)

The next morning, I woke feeling like I had swallowed sandpaper. Shit.

Rachel and I wandered into the house to find Donn, a doctor, getting ready to head to work. I raised my hand to my neck, where the Lump was doing its thing, being red and gross and painful. The night before, I had been relieved that he hadn’t mentioned it, but now I asked if he might check it out.

Donn took the Lump between his fingers, pressed it like a button. “Looks like it’s just a swollen lymph node,” he said. “But, actually . . . Have you had mono?”

“Um, no,” I said. Mono hadn’t been on my radar since high school, when kids brought it up as an excuse to talk about kissing and, by extension, sex. “Do you think I have mono?”

“I really couldn’t say. But swollen lymph nodes are a symptom.” He must have noticed the color draining from my face, because he added, “Don’t worry about it. If you’re still feeling sick in a few days, you can always stop at a clinic.”

Rachel and I decided to lay over in Washburn for the day, partly because of my maybe-mono and partly because, oddly enough, we already had errands to run. While we ran them, I pretty much without interruption thought about mono. I thought about it while riding to Ashland; while buying a nifty, portable cassette-removal tool for future spoke explosions; while helping Rachel pick a proper inflatable pad to replace her piece-of-shit, sleep-depriving foam mat; while getting groceries for the thank-you-for-hosting-us chili we were planning to whip up; while drinking coffee in a park and sitting on the Superior shore and riding back to Washburn.

We returned to the house by midafternoon, and I told Rachel I was going to take a nap, by which I meant I was going to lie in the tent and have a mild anxiety attack. I stretched out on my bag, felt my heart slamming against my sternum. If I had mono, I told myself, we’d have to head back to Conover for at least a couple of weeks, and by the time I was back on my feet it would be too late to ride all the way to the West Coast, and—

I cut myself off there. It was probably nothing more than a nasty head cold.

I ate a handful of ibuprofen and headed inside. Rachel was tucked up in a chair, paging through a
National Geographic
. We got started on the chili, combining our groceries with canned tomatoes from the pantry and fresh greens from the garden, and finished just before Donn and Ann got home. The chili was tasty, and it felt good to offer something to our hosts, even if it was simple, and even if we had created it mainly from things that already belonged to them. That night we had more great conversation, and Donn and Ann offered more advice about where to ride and who to stay with, but soon the drugs wore off and I got all hazy and shivery. I dried some dishes, then headed to the tent to be alone with the Lump and my thoughts.

 • • • 

R
achel grabbed a handful of blueberries from the bag in my lap and began popping them into her mouth, one by one, taunting a scraggly seagull that had camped out in front of us.

“These aren’t for you, pal,” she said.

The bird took a step toward the bench we were sitting on, his head bobbing sporadically, as if to some polyrhythmic beat only he could hear.

“Didn’t we just talk about this?” Rachel frowned. “I feel like you’re not listening to me.”

I smiled and slid my hand onto her knee. Just after dawn, I had woken feeling even worse, so I’d swallowed more pills and done my best to ignore what my body was telling me. Sniffles or no sniffles, we’d needed to get moving. And now, sitting in the sun, awash in endorphins and caffeine, I was feeling good about being back on the road, and especially, here in Bayfield, the (wait for it) berry capital of Wisconsin. Rachel and I had made the obligatory stop at a u-pick patch, and we’d brought our spoils down to a bench in a little park overlooking the harbor.

“I’m pretty sure this is where we docked.”

“Yeah?” Rachel asked, still staring down the seagull. “Whose boat was it?”

“Hmm. Honestly, I have no idea.”

When I was a little kid, my family had taken a few sailing trips to the nearby Apostle Islands. I had only the vaguest memories of those trips: Dad calling me first mate as I weakly tugged on a line that may or may not have been attached to a sail; my sister, Leah, and I scrunching up in the triangular bed at the aft of the cabin; Leah barfing on Mom. I hadn’t ever considered who the boat belonged to. It hadn’t mattered to me then and, I decided, it still didn’t.

“I can see why you talk about this lake so often,” Rachel said, looking out at the water. “It does kind of feel like the ocean.” She’d offered these words on a few occasions, and every time I took them as a personal compliment.

“Yeah,” I replied. “And we get to follow the shore for another hundred miles.”

We were headed for the town of Cornucopia, better known as Corny. Turned out Donn and Ann knew a young couple who lived up there, and that morning Donn had called to see if they’d put us up for a night. At first I had wanted to decline his offer. It was time, I thought, for Rachel and me to step out on our own. Then I reminded myself that I felt not like a conquering hero but like shit. I decided I could suffer a bit more generosity from perfect strangers.

West of Bayfield, the forest gave way to farmland, vast expanses speckled with solitary trees and five-foot rolls of hay. We stopped at a particularly picturesque spot and walked into the field and both emptied our bladders on hay bales. It occurred to me that this scene, minus the peeing, would be stunning in autumn, by far my favorite Northwoods season. The grass underfoot would be shorn to stubble; the trees a blur of crimson, orange, and yellow; the air crisp but for a hint of smoke from a nearby burn pile. Regret shot through me. All year I looked forward to autumn in Wisconsin, and even amid my recent travels, I’d managed to get back home and catch the colors. Now, for the first time, I’d miss them.

I turned to take in more scenery, and my gaze fell upon Rachel, who was on her way toward me, moving in a way I could only describe as frolicking. She was bounding through the field, weaving around hay bales, giggling wildly. In a few seconds, I was laughing with her. If there was any reason to leave the Wisconsin autumn behind, this was it.

We continued on, riding side by side, the road now nearly empty of cars. The pavement began rolling with the surrounding farmland, and I tucked into a tear-jerking descent, fought up a leg-stabbing climb, then did it all over again as the highway wavered up and down and up, finally plunging back to lake level. At the base of the final hill, I saw a sign pointing to Meyers Beach. Blew right by it. But the words tore through my head, setting off sirens.

I squeezed the brakes, spun around, told Rachel I wanted to check out the beach. I didn’t say why, and she didn’t ask. She just rode beside me as I followed the impeccably smooth pavement into the lakeside parking lot. By the time I waddled up to the sign near the beach, I knew where I was. I was
here
. At the sea caves. And though I didn’t need to read the sign—didn’t want to—that’s exactly what I did, aloud, to Rachel, who had been staring at me staring at the words.

Sea Cave Catastrophe: UW student perishes in Superior kayak accident

The sea caves are beautiful but can be dangerous. There are no landings and the cliffs cannot be climbed. When turbulent conditions capsized the kayak of a six-foot-three, 170-pound college athlete in the prime of life, he was not strong enough to survive being beaten against the cliffs by the waves.

 • • • 

I
had gotten the call three summers earlier. The message, actually. I’d been hiking and camping in Yosemite National Park, at the tail end of a Wisconsin-to-California road trip with my friend Vijay. I’d had no cell reception in the woods. It was only as I was driving back to San Francisco with Vij that I felt the buzz in my pocket and pulled out the phone. Seven new voicemails. My gut flipped. It had only been two days since we were in the valley, where I’d had perfect reception and last checked my messages.

The first was from my mom, and for a moment, I thought she might have left all seven. She defined the term “helicopter mom,” could work herself into a frenzy of worry over anything and nothing. Maybe she’d seen reports of nearby forest fires, or a yeti sighting, and had been calling incessantly to make sure neither had consumed me.

But the second message was from Josh. “Bri.” His voice was shaky, oddly formal. “I need to talk to you. It’s about Sam Larsen. Please call as soon as you’re able.”

I didn’t need to listen to the rest of the messages. I knew. And looking back, I think it was the way Josh said his full name. Sam Larsen.

Josh and I both knew damn well that there was only one Sam. When we said Sam, we were talking cartoonishly big ears and the ever-present smile between them. Big, brown eyes, often brimming with tears from a spastic fit of laughter, a missed free throw in the final seconds of a conference game, a massive bong rip. We were talking about a lanky frame, all of it wrapped in sinewy muscle, that folded up awkwardly in busses and at desks but moved with astonishing, gazelle-like grace on the soccer field. A sensitive soul who, even as his friends goofed off in the basement, would spend hours in earnest conversation with my mom. A boy who actually enjoyed talking about his feelings, who made everyone feel he was their best friend.

Sam was the eldest of our group. Me, Beau, Joe, Joey, Josh, and Sammy: The guys with whom I’d spent every minute in high school. The group I loved fiercely. The group that popped into my head when I thought of home. Together, we had launched ourselves into lakes from docks and rafts and cliffs and airborne tubes; had made a sport of fishtailing pickups and hatchbacks on wintertime ice and summertime sand; had gotten our first citations for underage drinking and speeding and vandalism; had stayed up until dawn having achingly sincere conversations about the conversations we didn’t know how to have with the girls we were sure we loved.

We were a family. And with family, you only used full names when you were preparing to dole out punishment.

I asked Vijay to pull over. There was a ditch just past the shoulder, and I slid down the slope, seeking some semblance of privacy. I dialed Josh, and there, amid the crushed beer cans and the empty bags of Doritos, the diesel fumes and the relentless whine of passing traffic, I heard Josh’s voice, three thousand miles away, telling me that Sam Larsen had been at Lake Superior, that Sam Larsen had been kayaking around the Bayfield sea caves with Lenny, his dad, that the weather had turned ugly, that Sam Larsen had been knocked from his boat, that the six-foot waves had kept Sam Larsen from getting back in his boat, that Sam Larsen’s lips had gone blue, that Lenny—“you know Lenny is such a strong swimmer”—had swum to shore for help because he had no other choice, that help had arrived in a helicopter, that Sam Larsen had lost consciousness by then, that Sam Larsen had been in the near-freezing water for far too long, and that the rescue team had done everything it could but could not bring Sam Larsen back. That Sam Larsen had passed away, an hour before I called.

I don’t remember what I said to Josh, other than “I love you” and “I’ll be home as soon as possible.”

I sat there for some time, staring at the ratty grass between my feet. Eventually I got up and walked to the car, opened the door, slumped into the seat.

“You all right?”

I kept my eyes on the windshield. “Sammy was in an accident. He’s dead.”

Vij drew in a sharp breath and rocked his head back. “Jesus, Bri.” He looked at me for what felt like an hour, then turned back to the road. “I can’t believe Sam’s fucking dead.”

I cringed but couldn’t fault him those words. I was thinking the same thing.

We’d just been talking about Sammy. An hour earlier, almost exactly.

Over the years, Sam and I had drifted. There had been an initial falling-out, over some trivial shit I barely remember, and then a longer, deeper divergence. We still exchanged e-mails, still saw each other a few times a year, but our friendship was in a holding pattern. Sam was a vivid presence in my past, and I imagined there would be a point where we’d reconnect and build an even stronger friendship, one in which we were mature enough to appreciate the ways we’d each grown and changed. But we weren’t there yet. Given the distance between us—three hours, if you were pushing it, between Madison and Eau Claire, our respective college towns—we weren’t able to be in the present with each other. We were stuck in the in-between.

I’d been feeling hopeful that Sam and I were on the verge of breaking out of this stasis. Just a few months earlier, I had visited him in Eau Claire, arriving late on a Friday and walking into an already packed party at his place. After giving me a big hug, wrapping his lanky frame around mine, he had grabbed me a beer and tossed his arm over my shoulder. “Bri,” he’d said, grinning and raising his voice over the deafening hip-hop billowing up from the basement, “I’m so glad you’re here.” He paused, his foot-wide smile somehow stretching further, his watery brown eyes locked on mine. He had clearly been drinking for hours, but I knew those eyes, knew there was something else going on behind them. Still, I was unprepared for him to say, without warning or preamble, “All this shit from the past few years, it’s so
stupid
, right?”

I coughed out a laugh. Before I could respond, a few of his soccer teammates walked up, and then he was off to play party host, I to abuse my liver with his friends. We didn’t continue the conversation that night, or the next day. We didn’t need to. It wasn’t about a conversation. It was an opening. An invitation to take the yawning space between us and begin to fill it.

I had missed that opening. That invitation.

That point on the horizon, the place where we would use what we’d picked up to build something new, it had vanished. I was left with the in-between.

 • • • 

R
achel and I headed to the shore. I was hoping we’d have a view of the caves, or at least the bluffs above. I wanted this to hurt. But now, when I looked east, I saw only an evergreen tail disappearing into blue water.