Where You Hang Your Hat
By Griz Baer
Copyright Griz Baer 2013
The idea hit Philip Beauston as he was standing at his mailbox, mail in hand, at the side of the ever-increasingly busy State road, as he looked north: make a day of it, walk the whole thing. Just out of the blue, like that: walk the whole thing. And as he thought about it more and more that day, the idea grew on him, seemed more and more to be a good and cathartic journey for his own peace of mind.
Phil’s Mom had passed away the week before, and the sorrow of that event had crushed him, as his relationship with his mother was the one constant thing in his life; it kept him going when everything else in his 41 years on this earth went to pot. He couldn’t remember a time when she did not welcome him with open arms, to listen to his gripes, to encourage him in his dreams and hopes, to let him know that he was important in his life and in hers. He had what most did not, someone who was always there to show him unconditional love.
He had a decent job now, reading meters for the electric company (though, like many things, with the advent of the electronic age, he worried for how long), but when he lost his last job due to downsizing, the time and condolence that his mother gave to Phil showed him that things were not as bad as he feared, his life would be filled with speed bumps, as she liked to call them. And when his last girlfriend broke up with him a few months later, his mother’s hug and the knowledge that he was still loved got him through his rough patch.
So it was on this Monday on a windy yet warm September day that he decided to walk the whole distance from his house in Harbor Springs, Michigan to Cross Village, a small eye blink of a town, 11.32 miles according to mapquest.com. He and his mother would walk almost every other night after dinner, down to Stutsmanville road and back, which was a small half-mile jaunt but just enough time to get their metabolism going and a chance for the two of them to recap their day and their lives. That was time that he had taken for granted, he saw that now. He could have asked her more about her dreams and things that were important to her, and his anger flared at his own selfishness. No, he thought to himself, I talked about my own life and how things were with me, and she just listened, for the most part. That was one of the things that she did for him that made him feel special, and strengthened the bond that they had always had. She listened. It was always nice to have in his life.
It was on one of these after-dinner walks that his mother brought up a soon-to-be, ongoing joke: coming up on their turnaround at Stutsmanville corner, right by the old church, she made a comment that she was having so much fun with Phil that they should “keep walking all the way to Cross Village.” Both knew deep down this to be unrealistic, as his mother was slowing down with age, her breathing more labored and her bones aching more and more. It was still a joke that she brought out every so often, and always got a grin from her son.
So one Saturday morning, as the world was quiet and the sun was still low over the horizon, Philip Beauston closed and locked his back door, verified he had everything that he needed (keys went into the backpack front- pouch pocket, two bottles of Dasani water, one pair of polarized Oakley sunglasses, and his mp3 player, loaded with 5 classical music playlists that he could listen to, yet wouldn’t interrupt his thoughts) and started his walk, cutting through the field, beside his mother’s looming old house next door, still for sale; hard market these days as the real estate broker would say. He slowly walked around his mother’s house, making sure there was no damage from the elements, and everything was in order. Then he walked down her driveway, and started north on the side of the road.
Phil chugged along at an ample pace for a bit, but slowed down as his thoughts overtook the journey he was on. The world consists of little sections of this, he thought to himself, trees and grass and field, and every person has their plot that they feel is their property, 40-acres-and-a-mule. I imagine most are comfortable with their lives, though maybe they are waiting for that one…big…event to show that their life is not mundane, that their existence is important and needed, an epiphany?. Though this walk is not as much an accomplishment as climbing Mount Everest, or tending to starving children in Ethiopia, maybe it will make me appreciate where I came to in this section of the world, the man that I am.
As Phil came to the Stutsmanville and S. State road corner, where his mother and he used to turn around and head back home, he stopped and stood, taking the view in. Here was the old Stutsmanville chapel standing with an almost loneliness, where his mother and he first started going to church when they moved to Harbor Springs in the early 1980’s. His mother took a transfer with the Michigan Bell phone company, to get away from the “rat race” of the Detroit area (as she called it), and they found a nice 3-bedroom ranch that fit their belongings almost perfectly. It even had a small pole building off to the side behind the house to store some of his father’s old tools, things that were willed to him when his father passed from lung cancer at the age of 35. Phil would sometimes spend time with the tools, when his mother was at work, and take in the smells of oil and leather and, yes, sometimes he even caught a hint of his father’s old spice cologne, and this reminded him of his sly-dog smiled dad, as much as he could remember anyway.
Standing taller and grander than the old church stood the new Stutsmanville Chapel 200-feet away, built by the hands of the congregation. Just about everyone contributed in building this new place of worship, as the old church did not have the amount of seating needed as the congregation grew. There were 100,000 things that people could have been doing in spare time on a Sunday morning, Phil thought, yet this building and the fellowship, the friendship that it provided to people, was enough make a new structure top priority for its participants. Maybe like my mom, they got something here that could not be found anywhere else.
Phil took a tentative step north, away from the corner that was so comfortable a stopping point for his mother and himself, towards the northbound Cross Village, and the sorrow of missing his mother welled up from his body, and his eyes filled with tears. He had read a story a while back, and one of the passages in it said that when a child finally loses their last parent, they come to the realization that they are ultimately alone, that the part of their life where they were nurtured and looked after is over, and they are left to fend for their own survival. Phil felt this in waves every day, whether he went for a few groceries or out to eat at the City Park Grill for lunch. Sitting at the bar, surrounded by people and their laughter, he almost felt like it was him against the world; no one to stick up for him anymore.
He still went to church every Sunday, and his faith in a God and Heaven helped the grieving process when his mother first passed. There was no bitterness toward God, as his mother lived her life appreciating the time and life that God had given her, and he never heard one word against God when his father died so young, his mother would say “We should thank the Lord for the time that we spent with your father.” He adopted this view at the time, and carried no ill will, holding to the belief that both his father and mother were in a heaven that he would also see one day; he had accepted Christ into his life when he was 7. Yet he still yearned to feel his father’s strong hand messing his hair playfully, or smell the Jaipur perfume when his mother hugged him, his cheek warmed by the heat of bosom.
Phil walked along the shoulder of the road, and as he crossed in front of a dingy tan house, a rusted metal fence around the rear of it, a German Shepherd came from behind the house and barked and paced behind the fence, glaring at him angrily. I wonder if he just doesn’t like me, or is he mad that I have freedom and he doesn’t? That’s the ironic part; a dog like that is fed and looked after every day. Try living on your own an
d see if you find it endearing! You would probably march right back through the fence, kicking the gate back into locked position. Keep your current situation, believe me.
A sign caught Phil’s eye, nailed over the garage door: NO TRESSPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY. He scoffed at the sign. Nothing I would wanna do more than to saunter around your property, getting lockjaw from one of the multiple rusty cars sitting in the automobile graveyard that you have conveniently created over the years. Seriously…
It was just past Fisher Road, a gravel-dirt mix that crossed the main road where he saw a used condom, twisted and hanging from a small branch that jutted up from