Chapter 8

Whitefish, Montana. G2 was headed eastward and was through the mountains. G2 had not found Nirvana. He was merely blanking out another portion of his life. If he could do that with all his life, then what? Then would he never want a glass of wine again? Would he achieve oneness with the universe? Would he be happy? Satisfied? Content? Nothing? The last seemed the most likely. G2 did not feel satisfied or content. Neither was he unhappy or depressed. He didn’t feel anything. People might have said he was empty inside, but G2 wasn’t empty. He wasn’t a wine bottle. A wine bottle was worthless when it was empty. But it didn’t have to be full to be worthwhile, either. A few drops was sometimes enough. No, G2 was not a wine bottle. Maybe he was a rock. There was a song about that when he was a kid, but G2 couldn’t remember anything past the words I am a rock. But it couldn’t be a rock like the one Mr. Barnes showed in science.

In sixth grade, Mr. Barnes taught everyone about geodes. Gerald had been fascinated during the part when Mr. Barnes taught about erosion. Everyone brought a stone in from their yards or driveways, and for one entire class period they sanded their rock. At the end of class, the rocks were put on display with labels that showed the differences in erosion for different kinds of rock. Gerald scrubbed at his rock with vigor through the entire class, but couldn’t see any change in the size of his rock. It was just a little smoother on the one side on which he had worked. Paul’s rock was almost gone he’d sanded so much off of it. And Sandra’s had crumbled with hardly any sanding at all. Mr. Barnes said it was really a dirt clod and not a rock at all. Mr. Barnes knew everything there was to know about rocks. The day he brought a geode to class was one of the most amazing in Gerald’s six years of school.

“Now what kind of rock is this?” Mr. Barnes asked the class. All the words they had learned to describe rocks bubbled out of the kids mouths. Igneous, sedimentary, marble, conglomerate, fossil. But Mr. Barnes said that this was a very special rock called a geode. He handed out plastic goggles to all the kids and they giggled at each other and how silly they looked or poked at each other’s eyes with their fingers. But when Mr. Barnes put on safety goggles, nobody laughed. Then he pulled on heavy leather work gloves, and finally picked up a large hammer he called a mallet and a steel chisel. He marked out an area around where he worked and told everyone they had to stay behind the chalk line. Then he set the rock on the floor and placed the chisel on it and struck it with the mallet. It took only two blows of the hammer before the geode split open and revealed the crystalline formations inside. The class jumped from the flying shards of stone, but then everyone crowded in to see the remarkable inside of this unusual rock. For weeks after that demonstration, kids from class would collect large rocks and work diligently at trying to break them open with a hammer. Gerald never found a crystal geode. All his rocks were solid and if they split at all it was into thousands of tiny pieces, crushed by the hammer blow.

G2 wasn’t a geode. He had no inside, so he felt nothing inside. He wasn’t empty. He wasn’t full. If the huge wrecking ball hit him directly, he would just crumble into sand and loose bricks and it would be no different.

The license plate said “READP21.” G2 stared at it for a long time. Then it dawned on him. Read page 21. Of what? he wondered. It was obviously important. He shuffled up the street until he saw a newspaper discarded on a sidewalk table. He picked it up and quickly turned through the pages. There were only 18 pages. No page 21. It took G2 a few minutes before he could get his bearings and identify where the library was, but when he had decided he walked there with determination. He would check page 21 and find out what was so important for him to read. At the door, however, G2 hesitated. He recognized some of the men gathered outside the library. Some were local and one or two were transient. One of the transient men waved G2 over. Reluctantly, G2 approached the men. The guy who called him over was tapping a cigarette on his thumbnail to tamp it down more firmly. “You gotta light, G2? I gotta coffin nail needs a hammer.” Sam something, G2 thought. He didn’t know the man well. But it did happen that G2 had a match. He was saving it to light a campfire tonight, but he could spare one. As long as the wind didn’t blow it out.

The matchbook read “Wabash College” on the front. On the inside it said “A Liberal Arts College for Men—Crawfordsville, IN.” G2 wasn’t exactly sure where Crawfordsville was. He didn’t recall going through it, but maybe it wasn’t far. There were only three matches in the cover. He pulled one out and offered to light the cigarette for Sam, but the man snatched the cover and pulled out a second match, lit it and puffed the cigarette to life. He offered the light to a second man with a cigarette, but the wind blew it out. He dropped the dead match and tore the last match out of the cover, lit it and managed to get the second cigarette lit before the match went out.

“College man are you, G2? Goin’ to the library to work on your Master of Liberal Arts degree?” The men laughed. G2 grinned and nodded. The library. That’s where he was going. Sam tossed the empty matchbook on the ground and G2 picked it up. There was something about it that he needed, though he didn’t know what it was. It was important. He would find out on page 21, he was sure of that. “You go get educated and when you make a million bucks, come get us and make us foremen, you hear?” Sam said. The men turned away from G2 and passed the two cigarettes around their little circle. No one offered a puff to G2. That didn’t matter, really, because G2 never smoked, but it would have been nice to have been asked. Cigarettes were bad for you. That Surgeon General made sure everyone knew it years ago. He published big pictures of people’s diseased lungs and made the tobacco growers put danger labels on their packages. There was no skull and crossbones on a bottle of wine; that was for sure. It was cigarettes that killed.

G2 was still staring at the open matchbook cover when he entered the library. What book was the message in?

When Gerald was a sophomore in college, his Early American History professor and his English Composition and Creative Writing professor assigned a joint research project that would last the entire semester, culminating in a 20-page term paper that would count as one-third of the grade in each class. The professors would grade the papers separately, so it was possible to receive different grades in each class. The paper was to describe the Revolutionary War as a common person might have experienced it. The professors had a grab-bag of names and a one paragraph biography of each person. The subjects came from different parts of the colonies and England. None were historical personages, but were identifiable in genealogies, letters, or historical references. The objective was not to research that person, but to research what the experience of that person could have been, based on the available data about the events of the war, the location of the person, their status, and family. Historical data had to be factual, but the paper had to be written from the point of view of the subject.

It was a daunting task. His personage was Sibel Betts, wife of Selah Betts of Pawlett, Vermont. Gerald went to the library with a general plan of research, starting with the Betts surname and extending to the town of Pawlett, thence to the state of Vermont and battles of the revolution that were fought within the region. He would track troupe movements and see if he could find the records of surviving soldiers from that region. He knew that one resource would be the Daughters of the American Revolution. The DAR had played a role in Gerald’s high school life, even though no one in his family was a member. Each year the DAR sponsored an essay contest for seniors, awarding a thousand dollar scholarship to the winner. Gerald’s essay had been chosen as a finalist in the competition. The five finalists presented their papers at a meeting of the DAR. The members then voted on the readings and awarded the prize. Gerald’s paper was filled with buzz words that he knew the ultra-patriotic organization would love. That was how he had been chosen as a finalist (the only boy among four girls). His presentation went well, his mellow voice filling the living room of Mrs. Hanes’ house. His persuasiveness made the words, “In God we trust,” and “conceived in liberty,” ring true and moved more than one of the members to tears. He sat, confident that he would be awarded the prize. Then his classmate, Debbie, rose to give her presentation. They’d never got along that well, but her smoothness in including him in her condescending gaze as she began her presentation made him feel very small. “Madame President, Ladies of the DAR, and fellow competitors and guests. Thank you for this opportunity to present my paper titled ‘The Role of Wives in the American Revolution.’” Gerald knew that he had lost the competition before she began reading. He had stood, said the title of his paper, and read. He did not salute the ladies or thank them. As he looked at the warm smiles around the room, he realized that he was a token. He was not a girl. He was not a Daughter (or Son) of the American Revolution. He had not followed proper etiquette. And he did not win. Debbie was voted the winner in a formality that even had the other female competitors grumbling.

Gerald went to the card catalog in the library just after the library opened and began researching. He compiled a list of specific books that mentioned his subjects, but after he had a page of possible references, he moved to the first section of the library in which he had found a book reference. The library was organized according to the Dewey Decimal system. He began in category 917 with a specific book, but the book next to it also looked interesting. He leafed through the pages, starting with the table of contents and then scanning the index. He looked for references to the names he had found, but discovered a reference to a Vermont Company under the charge of General Wolcott. This led Gerald to biography. Next to Wolcott’s biography was Wallace. When the library announced that it would close in fifteen minutes, Gerald looked up realizing that he had been pulling books off the shelves and looking in their indexes for ten hours and had not stopped to eat. His notebook was filled with references and his back hurt from sitting on the floor between the shelves poring over the books. He had forgotten the subject of his paper.

G2 entered the library with determination. Wabash. W. Page 21. World Book Encyclopedia. W was in volume 21. Page 21, Volume 21. Read page 21. He pulled the reference book from the shelf and sat on the floor in the aisle to open the book in his lap.

The World Book Encyclopedia was a familiar reference. Gerald’s father had bought the set from a traveling salesman and the books were delivered six weeks later in a big box. Also included in the box were a World Book Cyclo Teacher and the fifteen-volume set of Childcraft. The next year, they began receiving World Book Yearbooks. Gerald’s family had an entire bookshelf dedicated to World Book. Gerald sat for hours leafing through the volumes, feeling like he had all the knowledge in the world at his fingertips. Learning games on the Cyclo Teacher taught Gerald about constellations and he could still sleep outside at night and name all the major constellations in the northern skies. There had been only 20 volumes in the family World Book Encyclopedia, but the set in the library had 21 volumes with WXYZ all in the last book.

WAAF, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in Britain in World War II.

Waag, a river in Slovakia.

Waalhaven, The Netherlands, a Dutch military air field in World War II.

G2 turned over several pages. WABAC, the machine that Mr. Peabody used on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. G2 giggled over the memory of the cartoon. He had spent hours watching the clowning squirrel and moose. He loved Boris and Natasha.

Wabakimi Provincial Park in Ontario.

Waban, Massachusetts. G2 was sure he was close. He turned to page 21. Wabar Craters in Saudi Arabia. Wabash, Indiana. Census information, geography, historical sites. Nothing stuck out to G2. It must be here. Why was he supposed to read page 21. Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company vs. Illinois 1886, also known as the Wabash Case. The courts had to decide whether the states had the right to regulate railroad rates for interstate shipments. This was important, G2 thought. If every state could regulate who could travel or how much it cost on a railroad, then he might not be able to go through some states. G2 couldn’t think of a state that had prevented him from riding the boxcars. There were conductors who locked cars, chased away bums, and occasionally did a sweep to be sure no unauthorized people were riding the rails. But not the states. The commerce clause does not permit states to enact direct burdens on interstate commerce. There you had it. He could ride the rails. Wabash led to the creation of the modern regulatory agency and signaled the movement of the national government to assume responsibility for economic affairs. Yes, the United States government was responsible. The courts had decided. When was that? In 1886. The courts had decided that Illinois couldn’t regulate the railroads. Maybe he should sue the state. There were hardly any boxcars left on the rails. States were making the trains carry containers, two long and two up. When those cars ran empty, they were open and exposed to the air. Cold. Enclosed boxes were much better. Best thing you could get now was the well beneath a hopper car. You wanted to be on the trailing end of the car, or the wind would whip you to shreds. G2 opened his notebook and carefully wrote beneath the license “READP21” the word “Wabash.” This was important. He carefully reshelved the encyclopedia and walked out of the library with determination. The states were changing the railroads and Wabash said they couldn’t do that. G2 had an obligation to defend the railroad. That was what his journey was about.