Taking the Long Way

 I drove too far and too long on that first day of my road trip.  I was all jazzed up.  Unlike earlier road trips when I took nothing but two-lane roads, I was bent on getting to Memphis as soon as possible.  So, I opted for speed over scenery. 

I’d been to Memphis before.  It wasn’t the barbeque, Beale Street, or Elvis this time that drew me, though BBQ and Beale helped.  It was Tyre Nichols, the young African American man beaten to death on the street by African American members of the Memphis Police Department.  I couldn’t imagine it.  But news reports of the tragedy led me to believe I might be able to visualize it.

I wanted to stand in the spot where Tyre was first stopped by the police.  The place he abandoned his car and ran away.  I wanted to be in the place where the police caught up to him and gave him that savage beating.  I saw Tyre on video in that spot.  He was on all fours and looking, I assumed, towards his mother’s house, straining to see it I think, and calling out to her.  He yelled the word “MOM!” three times. 

I’ve yelled for my mom that way when I was a kid; when I was sick, hurt, or otherwise in trouble.  The police accounts said he was within a hundred yards of his mother’s residence.  I wanted to see for myself just how close his home was.  Hard to comprehend.  Maybe being there would help.   

But first, I had to get there.  I-57 South is the fastest way to get to Memphis and that’s the route I took.  Everybody was in a hurry.  I maintain this theory that going with the flow is more important than speed limits on those big, safe, limited-access roads.  That’s what self-driving cars will do I’m told.  No more gapers blocks, no more driver caused slowdowns.  They will know the speed of the cars around them and adjust to maximize steady and safe travel.  The flow that day on I-57 was about 80 m.p.h..  The sun was out.  I was breezing, you might even call it blasting, towards Memphis, a plate of barbeque, and a tall PBR.  That’s Pabst Blue Ribbon for the uninitiated.

I took food and ate in the Chevy.  I stopped only for gas and bathroom breaks and made great time, until I got into that little notch of Missouri by the Mississippi River that extends into Arkansas.  Between Cairo, Illinois and Sikeston, Missouri, I crossed the river, and the countryside emptied out.  There were ponds in the fields, and for some reason, the traffic got heavy and slowed down.  It was late in the afternoon. 

The GPS on my smartphone, connected by a cord to the Chevy and showing a road map on its screen, suggested an alternate route.  There was a notice that the route included a ferry crossing.  I looked ahead at two southbound lanes of interstate clogged with cars and trucks and took it.  I like ferries.  On the very first road trip after retirement, I took a ferry in Hardin County across the Ohio River at Cave in Rock on the Illinois side.  Really just a barge pushed by a tugboat.  It added to the adventure and felt like a short cut.

I might have known, after getting off the interstate and finding myself the only vehicle on an empty blacktop road, that my decision was iffy, but somehow Spotify had morphed from Bob Dylan to John Prine without my asking.  As if it knew I was a fan of his too.   It was right.

I was singing loudly to “He Was in Heaven Before He Died” and all wrapped up in thinking about Prine’s Common Sense album.  I’ve got the album on vinyl in the shack.  I could picture the cover. 

 “He was in Heaven…”  is a short little song, three verses with a simple repeated chorus separating them.  Steve Goodman plays acoustic guitar on it and sings background vocals.  Leo LeBlanc plays steel guitar.  The second verse is good, but the third one is better.  Gets me every time.  Steve Goodman died in 1984 at age 36, and we lost John in 2020 at 73 to Covid.  They recorded that album in Memphis in 1975.  Neither Prine nor Goodman knew what the future held for them then.  Who does?  I think I’ve written about that song before.  But what the hell?  I’ll throw those two verses in here with the chorus anyway.  Writing that good shouldn’t be forgotten.  Find the audio and listen if you can.

              Now the harbor’s on fire

              With the dreams and desires     

              Of a thousand young poets

              Who failed ‘cause they tried.

              For rhyme without reason

              Floats down to the bottom

              Where the scavengers eat ‘em

              And wash in with the tide.

 

              And I smiled on the Wabash

              The last time I passed it.

              Yes, I gave her a wink

              From the passenger side.

              My foot fell asleep

              And I swallowed my candy,

              Knowing he was in heaven

              Before he died.

 

              The sun can play tricks

              With your eyes on the highway.

              The moon can lay sideways

              ‘Til the ocean stands still.

              But a person can’t tell

              His best friend he loves him

              ‘Til time has stopped breathing

              You’re alone on the hill.

 So that’s what I was doing, as I took turn after turn on an empty blacktop road, blindly trusting my GPS to take me to a ferry and across the river.  I was wrapped up in the music, wishing I could listen to all the songs on the album in order.  If it was Alexa, I’d ask her to repeat that song, and play the title track next, followed by another great but forgotten Prine song on that Common Sense album called “Way Down.” But it was Spotify, and I didn’t know how.  There are far more apps and gadgets than I can keep up with.

Soon the John Prine songs were gone, and I turned the sound system off.  I was on what I believed was the wrong side of a levee.  The road was getting narrower, and I still hadn’t seen the river.  The fact that I’d seen no other vehicles since I’d taken this alternate route was a bad omen.  But I’d gone that far, and I was determined to see the thing through. 

And then, as the sun was dropping quickly, I turned off the blacktop onto a gravel road and the river was in front of me.  It was high and running fast.   A big tree limb floated by.  I had a bad feeling.  Next to it was a mobile home on concrete blocks, a pickup truck all jacked up with big tires, and most notably - no ferry.  There was a small billboard advertising the ferry though, with an 800 number.  I called it.

“Due to dangerous river conditions, ferry service has been suspended.  We hope to resume Thursday.”

The bottom of the sun touched the horizon.  I had promised myself not to drive after dark, but that pledge appeared to be in jeopardy.  I had thrown a good wool blanket in the back, but more for the beach than a sleepover in an SUV.  All I knew for sure was I wanted to get on the other side of the levee.

As luck would have it, a young couple in a sports car with Arkansas plates pulled up beside me.  The driver and I both rolled down our windows. 

“I take it the ferry isn’t running?”

“Yep.  Looks like we’re out of luck.  I called the number there.  Nothing till at least Thursday.”

“Damn.  We’re out for a drive and thought it’d be fun to take a ferry ride.  Never been on a ferry.”

“I have, and they are fun.  But it’s not going to happen today.”

The woman beside him leaned forward, smiled, and waved.

“Where you headed?”

“Memphis eventually.  But for tonight I’d be glad to just make it to a motel.”

“Want to follow us back to the highway?”

“I’d love to.”

The way out seemed even longer than the way there.  We finally went up and over the levee, through a very small group of houses on stilts, and finally to a road with a line painted down the middle.  Sometimes a road with a line is a sign you’re on the right track. 

They honked their horn, waved out the window, and turned north.  I headed south.  I’d be lying if I told you I knew where I was.  Closest I can tell that was the Dorena Hickman ferry I missed by two days. And if I’m right, I was in Missouri with Arkansas not far away and the border where Kentucky meets Tennessee on the other side of the river.

I finally found my way to Interstate 55 and took it south.  My trip got sketchy as it got darker.  I pulled over, put some drops in my eyes, and consulted Rand McNally.  It was still a ways to Memphis.  Since I was on the interstate, I figured I would find a hotel fairly quickly.  Turns out I should have stopped at Blytheville in Arkansas.  My advice to travelers in that area along the river is to make reservations ahead.   There’s not much out there.  

I was seriously sleepy when I pulled into The Sunset Inn, a West Memphis hotel with a vacancy sign.  When I went into the office there was a woman behind a thick glass window set up like a currency exchange, with a little metal trough that made a dip under the window.  A sign handwritten in black marker taped on the window announced there was a discount for cash.  After a very short conversation, I slid three twenties and my driver’s license through the trough.  She slid my license, six bucks, and a key back.  Told me the room was three doors down.  No breakfast.

“How close am I to a bridge across the river into Memphis?”

“About two hundred yards.  When you leave in the morning, go out the parking lot and make a right then a left.  You can’t miss it.”

It was raining.  When I opened the door to the room it smelled like someone had been smoking in there.  I didn’t care.  I was just glad to be out of the car.  I closed the curtains, got under the covers, and fell asleep within minutes.