The Forgotten Road Read online

  I slung the backpack over my shoulder and took a deep breath, taking in the moment. As I looked around, I felt a faint sentimentality toward the place. I had lived here for seven years, longer than any place else except for my childhood home. I had left that home because it was killing me. I left this one because I was dead.

  As I opened the back door, I softly spoke my mantra. “There is no God but me.”

  I locked the door and walked to the end of the yard, where I had climbed over the fence the night before. I looked over the fence. There was only a single oncoming car. I waited until it passed, then lowered my pack over the fence and climbed over.

  I opened my pack and brought out my hat and sunglasses. The hat sprang back into shape. The sunglasses I brought were the same ones I wore at seminars when I didn’t want to be recognized. They were black, wraparound, military-grade Wiley X—the same kind Bradley Cooper wore in the movie American Sniper.

  I lifted my backpack and walked west toward the hotel.

  I hoped to avoid my neighbors—not that they would recognize me anyway. In the past seven years, I had only spoken to a few of them and that wasn’t at any great length. I was on the road more than eight months out of the year, and when I was home it was usually after dark.

  Oak Park is a quiet bedroom community about ten miles west of Chicago. My home was just off North Oak Park Avenue on Erie Street, just a block south of Ernest Hemingway’s childhood home. I also lived less than a mile from Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. His influence was profound in the area, as he had designed more than twenty-five structures in Oak Park. It’s where he perfected his signature prairie style architecture that changed not only the Oak Park landscape but the very course of twentieth-century architecture.

  I felt conspicuous walking through the neighborhood with a backpack, but the sidewalks and asphalt were still puddled from the recent storm and my neighbors seemed content to stay inside.

  It took me just a little more than ten minutes to reach the hotel. The Write Inn is a four-story, redbrick structure with a large green awning shadowing the front entrance. It is a boutique hotel, small by any standard, just sixty-five rooms.

  As I walked into the hotel lobby, I saw a couple at the front counter. I walked up behind them to wait and was about to remove my sunglasses when the woman turned and looked at me. I knew her. I didn’t remember how I knew her, but I did. She must have recognized me as well, or thought she did, as her gaze lingered longer than what is usually considered socially acceptable. With my hat and glasses on, I knew she couldn’t have been certain. I casually looked away, pretending that I didn’t notice her.

  Then she turned back to the man and took his arm and they stepped away from the counter. I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. But then the couple stopped again and stood talking by the door.

  The woman behind the desk looked up and asked, “May I help you?” She was close to my age, pale, with thick-rimmed, black-framed eyeglasses and curly black hair.

  I shrugged off my pack and laid it up against a column, took out my wallet, then glanced over to see if the couple had left. They hadn’t. “Just a moment,” I said softly, acting as if I was trying to find my ID.

  Then I remembered how I knew the woman. Kate. She had attended one of my seminars and had cornered me afterward. She had applied for a job as a presenter and was angry that I hadn’t hired her. Crazy angry.

  Kate had called me sexist in front of a crowd of clients. Amanda had spoken before I could. “Mr. James hires a lot of intelligent, talented women, which is precisely why you weren’t hired.” Kate had gone bright red, then turned and ran from the hall.

  Kate glanced back over at me once more, and then they walked out of the hotel. I breathed out in relief.

  “Yes,” I said to the clerk, extracting my credit card from my wallet. “I’d like to check in.” I handed her the card without speaking my name to draw less attention to it.

  She briefly looked down at my credit card, then at her computer screen. “Mr. James. Welcome to the Write Inn. I have you in a king suite. You’ll be staying for a week?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Just sign here,” she said, handing me a form. “There’s no smoking.”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  “Will you be parking a car with us?”

  “No.” I initialed the form and handed it back.

  She ran my keycards and put them in an envelope. “You’re on the fourth floor. The elevator is around the corner. Do you need any help with your luggage?”

  “No, thank you. I just have my pack.”

  “Have a nice stay.”

  I put the keycards in my pocket, lifted my pack, and walked to the open elevator. The fourth floor hallway was partially barricaded by housekeeping carts, and I had to take off my pack to get through.

  Once inside the privacy of my room, I leaned my pack against the wall and removed my sunglasses. The room’s design was surprisingly dated. It had brass candelabra light fixtures, pale-yellow walls with camel-colored upholstered armchairs and dark blue carpet. The bed had a high, colonial-style mahogany headboard with a gaudy red-and-gold paisley duvet. It looked like they were trying to keep the décor authentic to Hemingway’s era.

  As I lay back on the bed, someone knocked on my door. My chest froze, revealing to myself my anxiety. What was I so nervous about? Maybe it was because I was using a dead man’s credit card.

  I walked to the door and looked out the peephole. It was only a cleaning woman, her arms piled with towels. I opened the door.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said with a thick Russian accent. “I did not leave towels. May I come in?”

  “Please.”

  I stepped back and she hurried into the bathroom, returning a few seconds later. “Thank you, sir. Have a good day.”

  “You too.” I held the door for her as she hurried out.

  Besides a swig of milk, I hadn’t had anything to eat. My favorite Vietnamese restaurant was only two blocks away, but eating there was out of the question. The hotel’s restaurant was called Hemmingway’s Bistro, noticeably spelled with two ms instead of one, probably to avoid licensing fees or a lawsuit.

  I sat down on the bed to look over the room service menu. I ordered French onion soup and a chicken Waldorf salad with a glass of red wine. Then I turned on the television to the local news. They were still talking about Flight 227. O’Hare handles more flights per day than any other airport in North America except for Hartsfield–Jackson in Atlanta, and the talking heads were giving updates on the crash as well as the subsequent chaos in the country’s air travel, showing video after video of stranded travelers bedding down in airports across America. When room service brought my lunch, I turned off the news to eat in silence.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon studying and charting my route. Route 66 is said to be 2,448 miles long, but actually, with all its different alignments and multiple roads, there is no exact number. The Route crosses eight states and three time zones, beginning in Chicago and ending in Santa Monica, California—where my Monica was. Where I had once been happy. Maybe, the last time I was truly happy.

  I didn’t know how long it would take to walk the Route, since I really had no idea how many miles a day I could walk. Using my smartphone and a notepad, I planned out my walk as far as St. Louis, Missouri, which is where I had last seen McKay, and where he’d told me he was dying.

  I worked on my plans straight through dinner and called down to order a beet arugula salad, a half dozen Blue Point oysters on the shell, and chilled lobster.

  Then I put away my notes and retired to the television to catch the NBA playoffs, which, unfortunately, the Chicago Bulls wouldn’t be participating in this year. I had been too distracted to follow the playoffs, so I didn’t know what teams would be playing tonight. It turned out to be the Atlanta Hawks and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Cleveland. There were two teams in the NBA that I loved—the Chicago Bulls and whoever was play
ing Cleveland.

  I have nothing against the city of Cleveland itself. I love Cleveland. The people are friendly, it’s the home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Velvet Tango room, Drew Carey, and Calvin and Hobbes. Some of my biggest sales had come from the city. But it was LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers who had knocked the Bulls out of the playoffs last year. Then, to add rock-sized salt to the wound, media pundits had the audacity of comparing LeBron James to Michael Jordan, which, to us Chicagoans, was as sacrilegious as John Lennon comparing the Beatles to Jesus Christ.

  The Cavaliers crushed the Hawks by more than twenty points.

  Chapter Two

  Survivor’s guilt is a peculiar thing. Why would our psyche torture itself for doing what it was primarily designed for?

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  THURSDAY, MAY 5

  I woke the next morning to the room spinning. I felt nauseous and dizzy—seasick without a drop of ocean in sight. I crawled out of bed to the toilet and threw up. Twice.

  I had felt this dizzy only once before. It was two years ago. I was in North Carolina and I had a big show in Dearborn, Michigan, I couldn’t miss. I threw up once on the plane, twice in the Detroit airport, and two more times backstage—just two minutes before going on stage.

  Amanda had gotten me some medicine that helped but I didn’t remember what it was or even if I had needed a prescription. Amanda and I had that kind of relationship. She’d hand me a document and I’d sign it without reading it. She’d hand me pills and I’d swallow them without asking what they were. I knew she would take care of me. I just wished that I had her here to take care of me now.

  I dialed the front desk and was greeted by an overly cheery voice.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. James. How may I help you?”

  “Does the hotel have a concierge?”

  “Yes, I can help you. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m not feeling well. I need someone to pick up something for me. I need something for dizziness. I don’t know what, something over-the-counter.”

  “There’s a Walgreens a couple blocks from the hotel. I’ll see what I can find. Can I get you anything else?”

  “Maybe some Gatorade. And ice. Lots of ice. I could use an ice pack.”

  “Yes, sir. Something for dizziness, Gatorade, ice, and an ice pack. Give me about a half hour.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and hung up. I went to the bathroom and wet a washcloth with cold water, put it over my face, and went back to bed. As I lay there I wondered how much of what I was feeling was psychosomatic. Or was it just a coincidence that my life was spinning out of control and now my head was as well?

  I hated the thought. Part of my stage shtick was my mantra, “Take control of your mind, take control of your life.” Here I was, completely bereft of control of both. Then again, maybe there was a simple explanation. Like a brain tumor.

  It seemed like hours before the hotel guy knocked on my door—a young man with red hair and bushy red eyebrows. He was holding a Walgreens sack in one hand and a hotel ice bucket in the other. A rolled newspaper was wedged under his arm. “May I come in?” he asked.

  “Please.”

  He walked to the table and set down the ice bucket and sack, laid out the newspaper, and then proceeded to hold up the items for me to see.

  “The pharmacist recommended Bonine for dizziness. Here’s your Gatorade and your ice pack. I also brought a copy of today’s paper. I thought you probably wouldn’t be going out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Shall I put this on your bill?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Very good. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Wait. Just a minute.” I went to my pack and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “Here. Thanks for your help.”

  “My pleasure, sir. I hope you feel better.”

  “Thank you. Me too.”

  After he left, I washed down two Bonine tablets with half the bottle of Gatorade, then went back to bed. As I lay there, not only was the room spinning, my thoughts were as well. What-ifs were bouncing around in my head like numbered balls in a bingo cage. So many things could have changed Tuesday’s outcome. Stupid things. What if I had not stopped at the office for the birthday celebration? What if the flight attendant had reopened the Jetway door for me? What if the obnoxious clerk at the shop hadn’t been so slow? Everything that had annoyed me at the time had collaborated to save my life.

  Of course, my what-ifs were the foundation of a much bigger question swirling around in my head. Why was I still alive? Of 211 people, there must have been at least one life worthier of saving than mine. Maybe all of them.

  I realized that what I was feeling was survivor’s guilt. I wanted to talk to my therapist, Christine Fordham, and get her take on all this. I picked up my phone and began looking for her number, then stopped myself. I couldn’t do that anymore. I was dead. I wondered if therapists were bound to the same confidentiality standards as lawyers, that she couldn’t disclose anything about me. Or, when it came to legal consequences, was she required to report me? I could see it going either way.

  A half hour later my dizziness had eased some, so I gingerly got up and googled survivor’s guilt on my smartphone. A slew of entries came up. The first thing to catch my eye was a story about country singer Waylon Jennings. It turns out that wailing Waylon and I had something in common. We had both barely missed dying in a plane crash.

  Jennings was supposed to be on the infamous flight carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. Jennings was a guitarist for Buddy Holly’s band and had a seat on the plane but, at the last moment, had given up his seat to Richardson because the Big Bopper was ill and didn’t think he could take the long bus ride. (Another guitarist in Holly’s band, Tommy Allsup, was also supposed to be on that flight but lost his seat to Ritchie Valens on a coin toss.)

  Just before getting on the plane, Buddy Holly said to Jennings, “I hope your ol’ bus freezes up.” Jennings replied, “Well, Holly, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”

  It was the last thing Jennings said to the legend. The article said that Jennings suffered the rest of his life with survivor’s guilt. Not helpful, I thought. At least I hadn’t told anyone that I hoped their plane crashed.

  The next article I read was clinical: “The Cause and Treatment of Survivor’s Guilt.” The article offered the following advice.

  1. Recognize that your feelings are a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances.

  2. Share your feelings with a friend or family member.

  3. Take time to mourn.

  4. Turn your feelings into action.

  Step one wasn’t difficult. My circumstances were about as abnormal as they could be. Two wasn’t going to happen. Three, I would have more than enough time to mourn. And four, positive or not, walking Route 66 was definitely a lot of action.

  I went back to bed and didn’t wake until the next morning.

  Chapter Three

  Maybe it’s better to go through life with our self-deceits hidden beneath a rock than to lift the stone and watch them writhe in the light.

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  FRIDAY, MAY 6

  I woke feeling a lot better. I still felt as if I had been run over by a truck, but at least the truck wasn’t parked on my head.

  After throwing up most of the previous day, I was famished. My stomach was still a little upset, so I ordered a large stack of pancakes from room service, along with a Coke to settle my stomach. Then I went back to planning my walk.

  I’d left off at the eastern outskirts of St. Louis, which were a bit confusing. St. Louis had diced Route 66 into so many pieces that it was difficult to know where to go. I finally just figured that it really didn’t matter which road I took, since just about every road west had, at one time, been part of the Route.

  St. Louis was about sixty-five miles east of the Meramec Caverns. This was significant for me. The caverns w
ere a known hideout of my great-great-grandfather Jesse James. Cave explorers had found both his signature and a bank box from one of the trains he robbed. I felt as if I was going to visit a family shrine.

  Then I noticed the newspaper that the hotel employee had left in my room the day before. I picked it up and began scanning the headlines.

  City Tries New Tactic for Museum

  Students Write to Slain Classmate

  For GOP a New Reality Sinks In

  15-Year-Old Missing South Side Girl Found Safe

  Families Mourn Victims of O’Hare Plane Crash

  Families mourn. I turned to the article printed next to the obituaries, which, because of the crash, were several pages longer than usual.

  I read the article. Then, as I fanned through the obit pages, something caught my eye. It was a picture of me posted above my obituary.

  In a way, reading about my life was even more surreal than reading about my death—the whole of my existence summarized in a few short paragraphs. That was it. My legacy.

  When I was in eighth grade, my English teacher had given us the assignment of writing our own obituary. As macabre as it sounds, the point of the exercise was to force us to examine our own existence. That’s exactly what I was doing now. There were things I would have liked to have added to my obituary. “A loving husband and father” would have been nice.

  At the end of the article was an invitation to my memorial service.

  There will be a cocktail party, memorial reception in Charles’s honor at the Crystal Gardens Navy Pier, Sunday, May 8, from noon to three. In lieu of flowers, please send a donation to The Christmas Box International (Utah) to help abused and neglected children.

  A cocktail party at Crystal Gardens. I had no doubt that the service had been planned by Amanda. She had taken care of me in life. Now she was taking care of me in death. The Crystal Gardens venue would not be cheap, but at least she was spending my money on me.