Escape from New York

E-mail

To: marla.jenkins@dch.com

From: Frank Flounder

Date: October 3, 2001

Subject: Escape from New York

Dear Marla:

Two years ago I bought a sport utility vehicle. It is fully loaded with leather seats and a winch in back that, I am told, could pull a small yacht. I do not own a yacht, or any other maritime vessel for that matter, but I have always felt comfortable knowing that I could pull one behind my fully-loaded sport utility vehicle. My sport utility vehicle also has four-wheel-drive, which I am told would allow me to conquer many different types of terrain, including mountains and coastal wetlands.

To date, I have never actually used my sport utility vehicle for anything other than driving to work. Nevertheless, for the first time, its spacious interior has proven useful: I have filled it with items that will enable me to survive for some three months without fixed shelter or internet access. For the foreseeable future, I will not want for skis, backup skis, sunscreen, potato chips, cigarettes, gasoline, a complete set of National Geographic magazines (1986-89), vodka, kitchen knives, plates, innerwear, outerwear, galoshes, cell phones, earphones, mixed tapes, salt, American Express cards, flares and, of course, emergency flares. As my former Cub Scout leader used to say shortly before his sentencing, "don't let mother nature, or anyone else, catch you with your pants down."

Sage advice indeed.

***

I am parked at a truck stop just outside of Yonkers. It is after midnight and a drop in barometric pressure has revived an old knee injury. It seems as good a time as any to stretch for a moment and take stock of my options. At present these options have collapsed into cardinal directions, arrows pointing toward blank spaces on a map, and while these spaces frame the faint hint of adventure, they also serve as reminders that I have rarely ventured north of Harlem.

I have come to terms with the fact that I have few friends, and fewer yet that live outside of Manhattan. And yet I must consider, for the first time, that there is a world beyond the Island. For the last hour I have been staring into the window of a diner beside a truck stop where burly men shovel eggs into distended gullets, and the gullets of these men strain against sweat-stained shirts, and some dull song is playing in there, drowned out, I am sure, by the low drone of phantom engines whistling in their ears, a quiet hum that sings them to sleep so that they dream asphalt dreams and do not worry much about the world unfolding beyond the interstate. For the trucker, there are no blank spaces on a map, no monsters prowling unchartered seas; all the world's a highway, and their only fear is that, someday, they will have to stop trucking. Until then, whenever things get too complicated, you can always haul ass to Somewhere Else.

I have informed my wife that I have left her: an act that may result in, but is not limited to, furious litigation. You may be getting some calls inquiring about my whereabouts. Please feel free to tell anyone who asks that the last you heard from me, I was parked at a truck stop just outside of Yonkers.

But the truth is that I have grown weary of the metropolis.

I recently read about a woman who, for a nominal fee, will tell you a secret: you can change the world around you just by wishing it so. Well, upon my arrival in upstate New York, I wish to make friends with a band of merry savages who will teach me to hunt and bolt my quarry to the roof of my sport utility vehicle. I wish that I may deliver this gift to their children and womenfolk, and that they will dance and sing songs of thanks, and that when we finish eating, they will tell me stories of their ancestors, of burned over districts and strange prophets who led their soldiers into the Promised Lands of Utah, and that we may huddle inside decaying bunkers while the snows crack the sides of our clapboard houses, and that the salt will chip deep holes into the country roads that wind through the low hills, and that we will sit beside a roaring fire and wait for spring, whereupon many children will be born, and the land will ripen once again.

Or at the very least, I wish that I may escape from New York.

Marla, I have grown weary. I am almost forty years old. I'm going to go to sleep now. Tomorrow I think I shall drive north.

F.F.