In Florence

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Akos is slightly hunched over, his eyes directed at the fishing boats entering Florence Port from the sea; but I can tell, even from a distance, that he is looking at nothing. In contrast, Lloyd's eyes follow every passing car, every tourist, every boat as it comes in off the ocean. Both of them hold cigarettes with long ashes. The smoke trails up in identical whirls from lightly curved fingers. Half-drunk cups of cold coffee rest at their elbows.

They see me and sit up slightly. They watch me dismount, remove my gloves and helmet. I walk across the street, and though I'd met them for only an hour the last time I passed through, they greet me like a long-lost friend.

Last time Lloyd gave me a carnation to put on the Ural. This time he went to the empty lot across the street and picked a wild rose. While he was gone, Akos tried to say something but was interrupted by a passing tourist who asked about the bike. And then Lloyd was back. Akos sat on the furthest chair away and looked resignedly out at the street.

Lloyd bought me a cappuccino and told me how, when he was a young man, he'd given up motorcycles. I heard this story last time through, but I listened again. He's an old man, and he likes to talk. Akos glanced up and smiled a little. How many times had he heard the same story on the same bench?

But that wasn't it. Akos wanted to say something. I was somehow afraid that he wouldn't now.

Lloyd continued. When he was a young man, "about 60 years ago," he was out riding, too fast, as usual, and slid the Indian motorcycle into a ditch.

"I got up, dusted myself off, and walked away," he said, in an unwavering, dreamy voice that was decades younger than his 80-plus years. "I could have ridden it, but I left it there and walked home."

He shook his head and looked into the distance as if he was remembering the bike. It had been red, a powerful machine. "But I knew I'd kill myself eventually." He waved his hand at his beat up old mail truck parked at the curb. "This is good enough for me these days."

People are always telling me their motorcycle pasts. There was the doorman in San Francisco who had once been a rich Puerto Rican businessman. He'd told me how he'd once owned many motorcycles, including a Vincent Black Shadow. There was the British hotel manager in Seattle who'd wrecked a Triumph. There was someone's old Goldwing, another's Honda racer, the borrowed Ducati, a friend's Bultaco. The stories were told sadly, as if the machines had been people instead of motorcycles.

The memories carry them away, allowing escape from the mundanities of everyday existence. The memories carry them away as they tell the stories that jump into the forefront of their thoughts at the sight of me and the Ural. They look at the saddlebags, at the tent, at the horse blanket strapped to the rack over the spare tire, and they talk. Sometimes it is difficult to get away.

After I listened to Lloyd's Indian motorcycle story, Akos asked me to dinner. We walked next door to the pizza place, and sat at a table outside in the sunshine. The evening was washed in a cold, burnt light that cut shadows with knife-sharp edges. It felt as clean as cold, clear water.

Akos is a slow, serious talker, and has unreadable blue eyes that hold steady through the most shocking revelations. I think he doesn't talk much about himself, which made me curious. Strange how attractive that is. I found myself being pulled in, trying to figure him out. I wasn't listening so much to what he was saying as to the tone of his voice, the inflections, and wondering what he was thinking.

This kind of uncultivated mysteriousness is one of the strongest attractants, stronger than money or perfume, and I hung on every word, trying to discover clues to his age, his origins, if he'd been married; and as he talked, the physical features of the town began to slip away until there was no town, no river, no sidewalk, no tourists, no bridge. I studied him carefully: his blue eyes, thick graying hair, uneven white teeth, strong tanned arms, shy laugh, the baseball cap with "Alaska" printed across the front.

The sun fell behind a building. As the shadow reached my forehead, I caught the tail end of an unconscious thought sneaking by. I shivered, and tried to dismiss it as the cold. Akos noticed and insisted on moving the table across the street into the sun, to the empty lot full of grass and wild roses. Passing locals on their evening stroll watched as we carried the table across the street; they said hello, winked, but declined his invitation to sit down and join us. Tourists wandered by, found nothing to do at this end of town, and turned to buy T-shirts and key rings along the main drag.

Through the charm of my dinner in the wildflowers I tried to reflect, objectively, on the art of romance. Red roses and steak dinners are sweet, but seem to me almost a cop out, a no-brainer. It takes creativity and spontaneity to be truly romantic. It takes imagination and originality to find a different way to express affection, love, or sexual intention. Objective or not, intentional or not, this was romance, poetry, spontaneity.

"This lot is going to be sold one of these days," Akos interrupted, in his deep, melancholy voice. "When the tourists stay at this end of town, it'll be time to leave Florence."

I was only in town for the evening. I sat, trying not to shiver, and pried into his life. He had moved from academia and scientific research to trucking, to woodcarving, to trucking again. He'd never been married. He'd sold his extraneous material possessions; had even given his books away.

I'm always terribly impressed when someone gets rid of even their books. There is such a comforting presence about books. It's as if they have souls of their own that spill over into mine when I read them.

Lately I've been reading Emerson's essays. In one of them he writes about possessions:

Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full recontre front to front with this fellow?... if, perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose eye we have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice of the Lord God in the garden.

I've known a few people who've given up most of their possessions. In retrospect they seem to me to be great examples of Emerson's "searching realists." I do remember feeling rather naked in their homes, with no toys, or the "screens" possessions provide. I remember a discomfort, but also the joy of distractionless conversations. I remember them letting the phone ring in favor of present company, and I remember thinking that I'd like to try living that way.

Such people also seem to be travelers, too. Or at least, people who are willing to make a change, to try something new. Adventurers...

Akos was telling me about his boyhood experiences in Hungary during World War II. I looked at him again. He'd seemed younger than that, only tanned and weathered in a mountain-man sort of way, a quiet, old-hippie with a relaxed mode of dress. He was six years old in Hungary during the war, and he told me how he used to stand outside a bomb shelter, looking at the sky.

"The planes were fascinating, and so was the noise," he told me, and hesitated. "And so was the destruction."

I thought about my childhood reactions to road kill, and understood, on a very minor scale.

"Just fascinating," he continued. "I remember it in flashes like photographs. Very vivid, but not like moving pictures."

I could imagine him as a small child. I pictured him in a black and white movie, a small blond boy, his head tilted to the sky. The soundtrack would be the roar of planes, the shriek of falling bombs, their impact, explosions, the rush of fire, screams.

And always the small boy there, alone and watching.

When it was time to go I tried to help pay the bill.

"Ever since you left," he told me, and laughed his soft, shy laugh, "I said to myself, 'If that woman ever comes back I'm going to try to buy her dinner.'"

So I accepted dinner, and a fond surprise kiss farewell. He smelled of woodsmoke, and I imagined his house in the Oregon hills, without even books.

Index | Dispatch 6

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