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CHAPTER 30
1
I stepped off my final Greyhound at the Minot Avenue station in Auburn, Maine, at a little past noon
on the twenty-sixth of November. After more than eighty hours of almost nonstop riding, relieved
only by short intervals of sleep, I felt like a figment of my own imagination. It was cold. God was
clearing His throat and spitting casual snow from a dirty gray sky. I had bought some jeans and a
couple of blue chambray workshirts to replace the kitchen-whites, but such clothes weren’t nearly
enough. I had forgotten the Maine weather during my time in Texas, but my body remembered in a
hurry and started to shiver. I made Louie’s for Men my first stop, where I found a sheepskin-lined coat
in my size and took it to the clerk.
He put down his copy of the Lewiston Sun to wait on me, and I saw my picture—yes, the one from
the DCHS yearbook—on the front page. WHERE IS GEORGE AMBERSON? the headline demanded.
The clerk rang up the sale and scribbled me a receipt. I tapped my picture. “What in the world do you
suppose is up with that guy?”
The clerk looked at me and shrugged. “He doesn’t want the publicity and I don’t blame him. I love
my wife a whole darn bunch, and if she died sudden, I wouldn’t want people taking my picture for the
papers or putting my weepy mug on TV. Would you?”
“No,” I said, “I guess not.”
“If I were that guy, I wouldn’t come up for air until 1970. Let the ruckus die down. How about a
nice cap to go with that coat? I got some flannel ones that just came in yesterday. The earflaps are
good and thick.”
So I bought a cap to go with my new coat. Then I limped the two blocks back to the bus station,
swinging my suitcase at the end of my good arm. Part of me wanted to go to Lisbon Falls right that
minute and make sure the rabbit-hole was still there. But if it was, I’d use it, I wouldn’t be able to
resist, and after five years in the Land of Ago, the rational part of me knew I wasn’t ready for the fullon
assault of what had become, in my mind, the Land of Ahead. I needed some rest first. Real rest, not
dozing in a bus seat while little kids wailed and tipsy men laughed.
There were four or five taxis parked at the curb, in snow that was now swirling instead of just
spitting. I got into the first one, relishing the warm breath from the heater. The cabbie turned
around, a fat guy with a badge reading LICENSED LIVERY on his battered cap. He was a complete
stranger to me, but I knew that when he turned on the radio, it would be tuned to WJAB out of
Portland, and when he dragged his ciggies out of his breast pocket, they would be Lucky Strikes.
What goes around comes around.
“Where to, chief?”
I told him to take me to the Tamarack Motor Court, out on 196.
“You got it.”
He turned on the radio and got the Miracles, singing “Mickey’s Monkey.”
“These modern dances!” he grunted, grabbing his smokes. “They don’t do nothing but teach the
kids how to bump n wiggle.”
“Dancing is life,” I said.