She touched My Knee While Laughing

Lindsay, OK (Southwest of OK City)

To walk America solo is to wash many feet while remembering that my hands are getting cleaner in the process. Walking these miles is to take the lowly seat while remembering to give thanks that I am, for now, sitting without fire ants running up my shorts, and the sun is not making me hear things that aren't there. It is listening to a country move in heavy cloth, and trying not to interprit it, and the knowing that I will.
What does it matter if children coming into the resturant point and stare at the man sitting on the floor by the stock shelves eating cold beans out of a can? It amuses me that the parents choose not to see me as they rush to their tables, children, heads darting back to me, seeing nothing else. I have become , of all things, Peter Pan without the ability to fly. At least I have managed to retain my shadow.

Leaving the Lindsay Library late, I am heading out of town with my mind all over the idea of a night of flat land and lush grass. It will be a couple of miles before there will be a fence to hop. The sun is already pulling down the shades. Passing the Shell station that is also a Mexican Resturant I wonder if the two cold sandwiches I'm packing will beat the frost, and 22 miles. My stomach holds the majority vote. The air inside is warmer than I expected.
Always squeezing dollars into more days of walking, I buy a can of baked beans for 99 cents, and a tall beer for a dollar to thank my back for carrying the brunt of my foolishness. At the cashier I smile feeling the cold in my cheeks flush into heat. "A cowboy dinner," I grin sheepishly at the teller who is clearly amused.
"Yes," agrees the dark skinned man that I like instantly,"I like beans very much." It is clear that he would be more at ease speaking Spanish. My Spanish went foolishly under when I left Central America in the eighties. "Would you like to have some warm tortias with that? It would be easy for me to warm those beans." The kind man is already far from the register collecting foil and four fresh hot tortias that he rolls as if he is caring for his son. He does not make me feel dirty, or poor. He is easy in me eyes. "Stay here at my tables," he insists. "Do you have an opener?"
My head has already promised me the cold quiet outside curb beside the building for a dinning. With this plan I am quite happy. "I would make your guests
uncomfortable," I grin.
"Please, it is cold out. The floor is clean. You and your things, you can rest and eat over there. Noone will care." His eyes are soft in worry. He is tending to my feet. He is is a hand over my own in concern. I take my spoils to the piece of floor that I have been given feeling my heart grow large for this man that sees me as a brother, a man moving just as people still move, through towns of uncertainity, praying for kindness more than for the luxury of warm tortillas. After opening the can with my old army P-38 opener, I spoon beans onto the steaming flatbread, I can not longer hear the children pointing their words at me.

As my mouth moves over the warm bread, my heart is a dozen blocks back sitting next to a librairian that talks in a soft southern voice. She has warmed a cup of coffee for me, and brought me pumkin bread that smells like fall. There is a small circle of us sharing words, and fears of winters past, and the uncertainty of snows coming. We talk about black powder hunters, and I remember the risk of the coming season of hungry rifles and open land. The ladies are very kind as they look at me through eyes that I do not have for myself. We are laughing over stories or some silly quip I've said, some turn of words. It was then that she touched my knee while laughing. Wearing shorts; my skin bare. Everything that is me becomes swirling light to sound falling just like her hand to my knee, just a brush, and it is gone.
Behind the book house she hugs me with that thick sweater that feels like fur between my fingers. This lady is telling me how to find the reporters office through her radiant face, and soft blue-gray water eyes. Of course I hear nothing she says. If I were to suddenly fall I could not be expected to find the ground beneath me.
An hour later, maybe two and my legs are being pulled by dogs that have had kindness paid to them. They want to leave the hardness of this resturant floor and return to the room of books, and the smell of women talking in autumn. I tell my feet that it is late. The trees are waiting for us. My feet grow quiet still watching the door.

Is this it? Is this the all of it looking at me while I sit, night coming on? Is this what I have become? Tonight I will be awake in my tent feeling a hand fall delicately like a leaf while still breathing. The last tortilla is still warm, though no longer hot. I roll it slowly as I spoon the remainder of beans. This is the known world falling away, no longer told to me through television, magazines. I know this. Still. One last piece of bread comes up to my mouth and I hear you laughing with your hands.