Long Way Home (5 page)

Although the nation's fascination with weaponry has never been mine, I'd be the last to criticize somebody else's idea of harmless fun. It's been estimated that five million Americans play paintball every year, after all, and the hobby isn't cheap. A round at Pev's costs fifty-four dollars if you rent the gear. When adults take up simulated warfare for pleasure, though, it does suggest their lives may lack adventure.

There's no small irony in Pev's location. It's just miles from Manassas, where nine hundred young soldiers, some still in their teens, died in 1861 during the First Battle of Bull Run. The battlefield is a national park at present, and though John Steinbeck confessed to being lax about visiting such places in
Travels
and even put Yellowstone in the same category as Disneyland, he might have felt differently here.

Nobody was in period costume when I entered the park. No Civil War reenactors were on the prowl, either, and the battlefield had been left largely untouched out of respect for hallowed ground. It's impossible to walk over that ground without feeling haunted. The ghosts of Bull Run inform every step.

At Manassas, the tide was supposed to turn in the Union Army's favor and hasten the war's end. The troops numbered about thirty-five thousand, mostly ninety-day volunteers who'd heeded Lincoln's call to action. They'd never been trained for combat, rejoiced in their new uniforms, and idled to pick blackberries as they marched on a crucial railroad junction. If captured, the junction would give General Irvin McDowell the best overland approach to Richmond, the Confederacy's capital.

Gangs of civilians tagged after the army, keen to witness the spectacle. They carried picnic baskets, certain they'd be celebrating a quick surrender or a rout. Yet Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard lay in wait at Bull Run with twenty-two thousand men, soon to be joined by ten thousand more men from the Shenandoah Valley.

On July 21, at daybreak, Union soldiers fired on an enemy stronghold. The Confederates retreated, consolidating their forces on Henry House Hill. McDowell tried to press his advantage, but his green volunteers lacked the will and experience, and they withdrew in the late afternoon. Weary and disheartened, they were enveloped in a melee on the road back to Washington. The civilian observers also were racing from the scene in their carriages. Caught up in the chaos, the soldiers lost any hint of discipline and fled in a panic.

The armies met at Manassas again in August 1862, although they were composed of hardened veterans by then. Second Bull Run lasted for three days, elevated the Confederacy to the pinnacle of its power, and left another thirty-three hundred men dead.

INDIAN SUMMER.
It came out of nowhere with a blast of heat and light that banished the clouds. On Route 211 past Warrenton, I drove up and down, up and down through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, hooked on the pastoral sublime.

There were lush green meadows board-fenced for horses or cattle, dry stone walls, farm ponds stocked with bass and catfish, and dragonflies on the wing. The Rappahannock River sparkled in the sun. After a tour of Manassas, I felt grateful for the gift of such a splendid afternoon. This was Barack Obama territory if you trusted the signs, twice as many as McCain's. Though George W. Bush won Virginia in 2004, most pollsters judged it a toss-up in 2008.

APPLES AND COLD CIDER
read another sign, this one for Williams Orchard in Flint Hill off the two-lane road to Front Royal, once known as Helltown because of the rowdies who tore it up while chasing after whores and whiskey.

The road, all tight curves, afforded fine views over a valley after each switchback. The orchard was at the base of a steep incline. Apple trees heavy with fruit stretched in every direction. The scent of ripeness, brought on by the warmth, was almost dizzying.

Two women were hoisting bushels of apples into their truck. They looked like members of a commune, muscular and not fussy about their clothes, ready to dig post holes or string up barbed wire, servants of the functional. Maybe they'd be baking pies for the followers of a little-known swami later on. Flint Hill, this part of Rappahannock County—my California antennae twitched. I sensed the presence of seekers.

In a weathered barn, there were more apples in baskets—Yorks, Romes, McIntoshes, and Jonathans—along with cool cider in bottles and jugs. Farm machinery was stored in the dark interior, where spiderwebs hung from the beams. When a pup rushed up to sniff my leg, a woman shouted, “Andy!” and the pup dashed away to sniff at something or somebody else.

The woman's name was Liz. She ran the stand for the Williams family and wondered how she could help me.

“Well, I'd like some apples,” I said, stating the obvious.

“We've got all kinds. What's your pleasure?”

“Something I haven't tasted before.”

She selected a bright yellow apple with a pink blush. Using a pocket knife, she cut a wedge and held it out on the blade.

“Try that. It's a Virginia Gold. They're a cross between an Albermarle Pippin and a Golden Delicious.”

The apple, very crisp, managed to be both tart and sweet. I bought half a peck for a mere five bucks and felt as if I'd just picked the Williams's pocket. They'd been farming the orchard for more than seventy-five years, and also sold vegetables and natural beef.

Liz bagged my Virginia Golds. “They'll last straight through the winter. They won't go bad until spring.”

“I'll be happy if they last until Kansas.”

“What'll you do in Kansas?”

I told her about Steinbeck and my trip.

“I'm envious,” she laughed. “I'm a terrible traveler. Not like my daughter. She's got the travel bug. She insisted on going to college clear across the country in California at Humboldt State.”

Humboldt State is in the redwood country of the northern coast, where marijuana, not apples, is the cash crop. Liz flew to San Francisco once and rented a car to visit the college, but she was too chicken to take Highway 1 along the coast, even though she wanted to see the Pacific. She feared she'd be so mesmerized she'd drive right off a cliff.

“Where does your daughter go when she travels?”

“All over. She'll go anywhere. I like to follow her in my atlas.”

A Mexican rode by on a tractor and waved. I walked into the orchard to inspect the trees. They were old and gnarled, and some branches trailed almost to the ground, drawn down by so many apples ripe for the picking.

I hadn't been wrong about the Flint Hill area. It represented an offshoot of the New World born in California in the 1960s. The locals bred goats for milk and cheese, and grew lavender and medicinal herbs. Their veggies were strictly organic. They raised purebred Clun Forest sheep and Scottish Highland cattle. Their Yorkshire pigs ate fescue grass, and were fed no hormones or antibiotics.

Teachers advertised classes in weaving, ceramics, and yoga. Massages and acupuncture treatments were widely available. No doubt a cultivar of Humboldt's potent skunk had also found a purchase in the Blue Ridge foothills.

A man could live here, I thought. For an evening out, you'd drive to nearby Washington, a five-block-by-two-block grid laid out in 1749. The surveyor was George Washington, age seventeen. The town was the first of the country's twenty-eight Washingtons, a plaque certified.

Dinner at the Inn at Little Washington? Well, maybe not. The fixed price on Saturday night was $178 before you chose some wine from the 2,400-bottle cellar. For a surcharge of $450, you could sit at a table in the kitchen and watch the chef prepare carpaccio of herb-crusted baby lamb with Caesar salad ice cream. Even falling into bed could be painful when a room with a full bath cost $505. The inn catered to silver-haired patricians and fat-cat lobbyists on a weekend escape from D.C., I suspected.

Sperryville was more humble. An artsy-craftsy town on the Thornton River, it acted as a gateway to Shenandoah National Park. The summer high season had just ended, and the leaf peepers of autumn had yet to show, so the streets were quiet and the river barely a rill.

The Sperryville Country Store, an ordinary grocery by its exterior, fooled me. Inside I found Manchego cheese from Spain, imported Belgian ale, multigrain bread from a resident bakery, and thick strip steaks properly aged. I'd stumbled on a backwoods version of Dean & DeLuca.

The man at the cash register, in Bermudas and an apron, appeared to be the owner, so I complimented him on his stock and mentioned all the Obama signs I'd seen since Warrenton.

“Is that a fact?” he asked archly, turning his back.

“I gather you're not the one who put them up.”

“No, I'm just an old southern boy at heart.”

“That says it all.”

“I guess it does.”

THE DAY SLIPPED
away from me in the lovely confines of Flint Hill and Sperryville. It was too late for even a short hike at Shenandoah National Park before dark, so I went southeast to Culpeper instead, realizing that I hadn't yet seen a single roadside attraction, not one papier-mâché dinosaur or petting zoo. Hitchhikers also were missing from the traditional equation, all those hobos, bindlestiffs, and minstrel vagabonds of legend.

Culpeper is the seat of Culpeper County. Its slogan, “Still Making History,” caused me to scratch my head. The sturdy brick buildings downtown—historic, naturally, and newly revitalized—were scrubbed clean and painted inviting shades of red or pale blue. The old train depot, also recently restored, was a trophy during the Civil War, coveted by both sides for its telegraph line and easy access to the railroad.

Once Culpeper was a hub for dairying and beef cattle, but most farmers quit after a government buyout in the 1980s. That freed up acres of land for developers. A housing spree began a decade ago, with subdivisions built at warp speed and crews of Mexicans arriving to do the labor. The spree had ended, of course, but the Mexicans hadn't left, a sore point in certain quarters.

Now Culpeper banked on its tranquil atmosphere to attract harried Washingtonians ready to swap the urban frenzy for a simpler lifestyle, if such a thing exists. Tourism figured in the plan as well, with horseback riding, golf, biplane flights, and an array of B and Bs. You could visit the boyhood home of Eppa Rixey, inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in 1963, and Belmont Farms Distillery, the only legal purveyor of “moonshine” in Virginia.

That evening, I fell into a trap that loneliness sets for travelers. Though I knew better, I conned myself into believing that an hour or so at the motel bar might relieve the symptoms, blissfully ignoring the fact that such bars are the venue of choice for veteran cranks and other self-regarding bores every bit as lonely as I was.

The only other customer on this dreary Monday was a veteran crank attired for golf in an Izod shirt and jackass slacks. He stared blankly at Fox News, while the bartender sliced lemons and limes, attacking the fruit more violently as the negatives escalated in a dismal financial report.

“I hate the news!” she cried, stabbing a lemon. “It's so upsetting!”

“Scare tactics,” her ally muttered. “You can't trust the damn government anymore.”

“I feel it's all beyond my control,” the bartender shuddered. “Thank God, I'm blessed.” Her blessing, it seems, was a lower mortgage payment renegotiated prior to the collapse. “I'll never be foreclosed. I'll come out of this just fine.”

“They should never have allowed it to happen,” said the guy in slacks. “They weren't paying attention!”

“Who do you mean by ‘they'?” In a split second, I wished I'd never opened my mouth.

For the next ten minutes, I listened to a highly polished, well-rehearsed harangue. In broad strokes, old jackass slacks blamed the government for failing to protect its citizens from making such stupid decisions as buying real estate and material toys they couldn't afford. Absent from his argument was any notion that an individual bears some responsibility for his or her actions.

“I'll say it again,” the bartender piped, her voice overflowing with emotion. “I am truly blessed!”

She was not alone in her sympathies. Organized religion is a powerful force in Culpeper County. There are more than a dozen Baptist churches, some dating from the 1800s and Crooked Run Baptist from 1772. The Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, and various evangelical sects have congregations, too, although the county lacks a synagogue and has only one Catholic church.

Had I been younger and even more foolish, I'd have countered the man's argument with FDR's admonitions—no plague of locusts had descended on us and so on. Instead I crawled into bed, ate a Virginia Gold apple, and read some Emerson.

“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards,” he wrote in
Self-Reliance
.

EAST STREET IS
Culpeper's Park Avenue, famed for its lavish Greek and Colonial Revival–style houses. With a tourist brochure in hand, I started for it the next morning and almost got run over by a maniac in a careering van. Ed Perryman shared my fate. We jumped back on the sidewalk in synchronized fashion, as if we'd been practicing the trick. As survivors of a near fatality will do, we introduced ourselves and expressed our disbelief at what the world was coming to.

Anyone would put their trust in Ed Perryman. There was no guile in his face, just a sunny quality of acceptance. He was neat, too. You could see that in his crisply ironed short-sleeved shirt and his new khakis. A ballcap rested on his head. What would Americans do without ballcaps?

“I'm going to be eighty pretty soon, in November,” Ed began our conversation, without much prompting. “I've been retired since '91, used to be with a paper company. I keep busy making furniture for those who ask. I did farm work as a boy for a dime a day—'course, you could buy two pounds of beans for a quarter back then. It's not like that anymore. The future looks pretty bad to me.”