Between Two Whiles

More than a few months have passed since my last trip to Texas (and since I first began the post intended to comment on that trip–the post I am now attempting to edit out of its ‘grown-stale-while-abandoned-as-a-partial-draft-on-my-computer state.’ )  I dare not get into the goings-on of these intervening months lest I be reminded of my own negligence and slip back into the shadow of intended posts from which I am now, ever so awkwardly, emerging…The adventures of October, November, and early December will *probably* appear here eventually, though I stress the indefinite nature of this statement, for my last promise was too long neglected and has become a lie.  However, enough of this assumed self-importance!  I am fairly certain those few  who read my blog have been kept up to date via other means, so…onward!

Late September, I went to Texas to visit family. But, in the spirit of honesty,  I’ll  admit to the overwhelmingly selfish motivation.  I love New York, but it simply cannot meet my daily urges to flee to the woods and sit (or dance)–undisturbed– among the trees.  With a few free days at my disposal, I packed a small bag (yes, I managed to fly as one of the carry-on-only passengers whose efficiency I usually envy!) full of to-be-muddied clothes and hopped a plane.

The three days I spent in East Texas dancing outdoors and experimenting with alternative photo printing techniques were a much needed escape.  I intend to blog more about those particular aspects of my self-guided retreat, but the story I would like to tell now takes place on the day following my  re-emergence from the woods, therefore, more easily translates into verbal expression than a solitary few days among nature.  The trees never demand verbal thoughts or experience.

I wake up very early on the morning of my departure  to meet the Super-shuttle service outside of my hotel in Dallas.  I am waiting in the abandoned hotel lobby just before 5am, believing myself to be alone in the expansive marble foyer at such an hour, as the concierge has gone to fetch a bottle of water he so kindly offered to me.  But before he returns, I notice a man sitting in an arm chair near the fireplace, reading a magazine. Without really noticing I am doing so, I note that he does not have luggage with him ruling out an early flight as his reason for being up when any sane person would rather be sleeping, and simply deem him an early-riser.  Ten minutes or so pass in the haze of my tiredness while I sip on water and watch for the Super-shuttle from a seat near the revolving door.

My ride finally arrives but just as I reach the exit, the magazine-reading early bird calls out, “Hey, Miss, will you tell the driver I’ll be out in few minutes?”  A little stunned, I reply, “Sure” and walk out to the vehicle realizing my subconscious “detectiving” skills to be faulty.  I replace my earlier assumption that he is not going to the airport with a certainty that he is from the Deep South, based on his accent.  I am seated in the middle bench seat of the empty 12-passenger van for a few minutes before I see him exit the hotel and approach the van carrying something that rouses the detective in me again.   Perhaps because I am already on-guard, being a woman in a van in the darkness of early morning with a male driver and a mysterious male passenger, but the only items that come to mind as the possible contents of his very large plastic trunk seem sinister and worrying.  Why can’t he travel with a nondescript black suitcase like the rest of us?

His trunk loaded, he takes a seat in the row just in front of me.  I wonder if I should pretend to be napping against the window to avoid having to talk to him when the driver starts the ignition and the radio blares a spanish pop tune, eliminating all possibility of feigned sleep or conversation.  The driver turns the music down to a tolerable level but we continue in silence for a while, leaving me to my thoughts.  I now notice that my mysterious fellow passenger looks a lot like John Locke from LOST and begin to factor the meaning of this into my present situation.  Locke is awesome. But he is also creepy, and has been riding the ambiguous light/dark, good/evil line throughout his entire character arc. So I am basically exactly where I started, except that if I do die in this van, it will not just be at the hand of a mysterious man, but a mysterious man that looks a lot like a mysterious character with a mysterious connection to a mysterious island.  And that is a better way to go, I guess?  All I have to do it make it the 10 miles to the airport without a knife, or gun, or cadaver, or severed limb, or evil puppet, (or a smoke monster) coming out of that trunk.   And then his words break my strange web of thoughts.  ”So where are you headed to? Are you going or coming?”

As the conversation continues, I am slightly eased by the fact that he seems very nice, but I still try to answer his questions vaguely, leaving out as many details as I can.  Conversely, I learn that he is from Alabama and has been in Dallas for a boar hunting convention or something.  (Ah, so perhaps he does have tons of knives in that trunk! And hunting boar?  Locke hunts boar!)  And that he is headed back to Alabama early this morning because he has to lead a group of kids on their first hunting trip later that day…(Hmmm, maybe it holds kid-sized knives too.)

I am beginning to be lulled into what I hope is not a false sense of security (at least the trunk has an explanation?), encouraged by the fact that we can’t be far from the airport, when ‘John’ turns to me and says, “We’re going the wrong way.”  I have no idea where we are or where we are supposed to be but I am fairly certain a hunter needs a good sense of direction.  Another minute passes and he turns to me again, “Do you have a pen?”  I dig around in my bag, find a pencil, present it to ‘John’ wondering if it is a sufficient substitute, and he takes it, indicating that a pencil is fine.  Again, my skills of detection are off, because my assumption that he needs to write something with that pencil is negated by his white-knuckle death-grip around it.  A casual look on his face, ‘John’ is poised to jab my pencil into the driver’s neck if he makes another “wrong turn.”

“You can never be too careful,” ‘John’ whispers.  ”He could be taking us to an alley somewhere, where his buddies are waiting to jump us. ”

Okay, so, I’m looking out the window at a road that looks too small to lead to the airport, thinking I don’t want to be stuck in an alley with the driver and his gang, or a van with this man!  We have certainly gone more than 10 miles and the airport is nowhere in site, but this is Super-shuttle, not an unregistered taxi.  Surely everything is fine, right?  Maybe I should just redirect my worrying to the passing time and the threat of missing my flight. (And maybe keep an eye on that pencil to make sure it isn’t coming toward my neck.)

‘John’ asks a few questions of the driver in a threatening, intimidating voice, “Where are you taking us!? Where are we going?” The driver’s English is unintelligible, which only makes ‘John’ more certain that he is up to no good.  I will not comment on the racist assumptions at play because I would have to make my own potentially unfair assumptions about ‘John’ but I think he may have been living up to the Good Old Boy stereotype.  He remained white-knuckled until the van came to a halt, not in an alley, but at the front door of a house, from which a benign white-haired couple emerged with suitcases.  ’John’ merely chuckled a little to himself and handed the pencil back to me.

Our new passengers boarded, the last twenty minutes to the airport were uneventful by comparison.  I made my flight, kept all of my limbs, and never found out for sure what was in that trunk.  I knew ‘John’ could not be headed to Alabama via New York so I was fairly certain my plane was not going to crash due to electromagnetic oddities; However, I did check all of my belongings when I arrived in New York in case ‘John’ slipped in a note admonishing me for not believing him.  We had, after all, been going the wrong way.

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