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                         Underground eXperts United

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         [  Freedom  ]                            [  By Eric Chaet  ]


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FREEDOM
by Eric Chaet


     Oklahoma. Hot. Flat Interstate 70. I was hitchhiking, again, east. This
time, I didn't know what I was going to do, or where I was headed.

     Highway, fields of corn, milo, wheat. Cars. Always cars. An irregular
heart-beat of cars.

     Interweaving chirps of grasshoppers, cicadas, crickets. Wood poles,
black cables strung a little slack between them, red-winged blackbird atop
a speed-limit sign. White highway stripes on black asphalt, soft with the
heat.

     Blue sky, white-gray clouds.

     Bright sun, red dirt - clay.

     It would be nice to find a dry spot in the tall green grass.

     And to lie down, and just WATCH - the clouds drift across.

     Bushes and trees, low hills behind me, to the west, out of which I had
come.

     Also, behind me, a highway overpass. And a gas station - an elevated,
yellow, shell-shaped plastic sign (Shell Oil Company), posted prices of a
gallon of regular, premium, diesel gas. A row of pumps on a paved-over lot.
Thru the window of the small cube of a building, three guys, out of the hot
sun and humidity, talking in the shadows, one seated behind a desk.

     A ride with a fellow who said he had worked in the oil fields, for
good wages, before the price of oil dropped. Now he worked for a lot less,
behind the counter of a convenience store.

     I slept in the tall grass several hundred yards beyond a ramp onto
the highway just north of Oklahoma City, and, in the morning, got a ride
with... I already couldn't remember... I must have slept thru the ride.

     That's about the most unmannerly thing you can do when you're
hitchhiking. The driver almost always wants to talk, and even for you to
say something now and again, to help him or her deal with boredom and
sleepiness. I try never to fall asleep on the drivers who pick me up.

     But I must have slept thru the ride. I couldn't recall, already.

     Was it already a decade ago? Or was it two? A man giving me a ride -
he said he sold pornographic books and magazines that he bought at a
warehouse full of them in Wichita, from the Mob - told me that powerful
people, unknown to the public, lived on this bluff here, on the Kansas side
of the Missouri River, just southwest of Kansas City, Missouri - overlooking
cranes moving cargo on and off barges tied to the docks, by the wide,
slow-moving, muddy river...

     It would be nice to let myself fall asleep, to evaporate, not to have
to present myself to the next driver, whoever he would be...

     I thought I was done with hitchhiking a long time ago.

     It would have been easy to fall over...

     This is being faint, I thought...

     For several hours I waited, caught rides, little hops, from one ramp
to the next - around the edge of town - impatient under dark, threatening,
heavy clouds building.

     They were tall, their upper edges were brilliantly white - like big
ocean-going sail-boats, but - vast.

     Toward sundown, I was down in what the last driver had called East
Bottoms. He was a truck driver, and his depot was one of several located
here: wet grass-land, mud and gravel roads, truckyards. Nowhere to make
myself invisible for the night, to put down my sleeping bag and rest -
too open, too muddy, too much truck traffic.

     Above was the bridge over the Missouri - a nifty bit of building - full
of traffic - headlights on - heading north out the city.  But it was illegal
for me to walk up and across. And, anyway, it was inaccessible by foot.

     I'd have to wait.

     Again.

     A man my age - cautious face, cold eyes - mirroring my own, now? -
eyed me from the cab of a pick-up he drove by.  We got a good look at one
another.

     I put my thumb down - my arm was so damned heavy - and sighed.

     Then, squaring off my will and shoulders, for the next driver, I lifted
my arm, and... BEEP! BEEP! The driver who had stared into my eyes, so
coldly, had stopped, and backed up - a dangerous manouver - on a curve - for
me.

     I picked up my pack, and ran for the cab door, so that he would not
have to risk himself too much, backing up for me, and, also, so that he
would not have time to decide it wasn't worth it, and take off.

     "Ride in the back," the driver mouthed, silently, over his shoulder,
absolutely non-committal.

     I knew that the man was a philosopher - that is, that he thought his
own thoughts, that he had - justified - fear of strangers, and that he was
brave and kind.  Instantly, and deeply, I regretted that we would not be
getting acquainted.

     I leapt up over the side, and, when he engaged the engine, rode up and
over the river on the bridge, and past the grid of city businesses and
homes. He let me off at a ramp at the first town - considerably less traffic
here - beyond the city.

     It was raining hard - and time to wait, again.

     I had a good rain poncho. I'd held onto it for nearly two decades now.
It was my oldest possession.

     I'd had it longer than my brain cells.

     I got two quick, short rides, from one ramp to the next. Each of the
drivers wanted to tell me about Jesus.

     "I believe that Jesus and I are team-mates," I replied. "I believe that
Jesus was one of the greatest - maybe the very greatest - prophet and
philosopher. That he was brave and wise. And that his parables and sermons
are the work of the greatest literary artist ever.

     "But I don't believe that Jesus was a Christian or would care any more
for the various Christian churches of the last 2,000 years than he did for
the Hebrew synagogues and sects, or for the Roman or Greek institutions,
myths, and rituals of his day, or for the issues and arguments of their
adherents.

     "I don't believe that most Christians come close to acting in
accordance with his teachings and example.

     "And I don't believe everything even Jesus is supposed to have said.

     "Everything recorded in the gospels can't be accurate - tho they're
wonderful stories, full of insight. There are contradictions.

     "The system of things - and it's a damn shame - has lasted a very long
time. Jesus is supposed to have said - probably he did, in which case he
was wrong - that it wouldn't last even beyond the generation in which he did
his work and was rewarded with the wavering adherence of twelve men, the
wild and misunderstanding enthusiasm of occasional crowds, and crucifixion.

     "Of course, he may have been referring to the rule of Israel and
Jerusalem by the Temple rabbis, subordinated to the Roman governors and
puppet kings. But I don't think that's what you're talking about, and - even
if he didn't realize it - that was only PART of the system of things..."

     I think I said all that - maybe half to one of the drivers, half to the
other. Or maybe bits and pieces to a dozen drivers and other people over two
dozen years.

     Or maybe I've never said so much, aloud.

     I tried not to get into with the drivers.  They were giving me a ride.
And they meant to do me further good by enlightening me.

     Yes, I said, as agreeably as I could, I thought very highly of Jesus.

     But, no, I had to disagree, I didn't believe that Jesus had saved them
- hadn't Jesus said that they had to save themselves?

     While the conversations were going on, in each of the vehicles that was
carrying me farther from the concentrated center of the hive, I was hearing,
over the car radios, that a convict had escaped, supposedly armed - that he
had already killed three people, that the police were searching for him -
right in this area.

     That meant that 1) a dangerous man was on the loose around here, and
2) the police would be unusually curious and trigger-happy about hitchhiking
strangers.

     I got out of the second vehicle, where the driver turned off the
highway, for home - and took off, walking north, in the rain. In spite of
the rain poncho, I was soaked from the thighs down, and from the top of my
head to my shoulders.

     Coming upon a fire station, I went in and asked a fellow who was
organizing a huge hose, where the fence along the highway ended, and the
open country began.

     "About two miles," he said.

     While I was at it, I pushed my luck, and asked if I could use the
bathroom. As I was given permission, I went in - it was clean and bright and
built to accomodate many men at a time - and changed to my other clothes,
used the plumbing, brushed my teeth, shaved, dried and combed my hair, used
the plumbing a second time, marveled at my face in the mirror - "Still
alive!" - then walked on.

     On either side of the highway now, the ground rose steeply.

     I climbed up to the edge of the chain-link fence - beyond was a big
yard with two empty clothes-lines and a full-crowned tree and a house - and
sat against a fence post, with my knees against my chest, and my rolled-up
sleeping bag, under the poncho, between my spine and the fence-post.

     Morning, I woke up, vaguely uneasy: shouldn't I be comparing my
progress against the achievement of some goal? But I couldn't remember what
goal. It was morning - no longer black, but gray, a steady drizzle. A
cocker spaniel was yapping at me, not more than a foot behind me, from the
yard with two empty clothes-lines, tree, and house, on the other side of the
fence.

     When I was a boy, I was very fond of the cocker spaniel who lived with
the Wilhelms, two houses down the street from my parents' house. This
crystal-clear memory flickered thru, like a stroke of lightning, and left a
faint, sweet odor of ozone....

     In fact, it coincided with a stroke of lightning - a beauty! - over the
Missouri highway and the soggy fields and yards...

     I wondered how the escaped convict was doing, as I got up, and got
going. Given the escaped convict, the dog's owner might call the police -
to whom I would have to explain my presence - which I did not know how to
do.

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 uXu #560              Underground eXperts United 2000              uXu #560
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