Goodbye

The day started normal enough. I was awoken by severe tent shaking, accompanied by a gruff voice barking “Wake up in there!” I unzip to find not one, but three angry park rangers. Apparently we had another noise complaint. The front man put on a show, being bristly and full of machismo. Twig pig (slang for park ranger) on a power trip. When he told us the fine was $250, I knew he was bluffing. He wasn’t about to throw huge fines at a bunch of kids. But I reconsidered when he took our licenses to examine, then held up our spent bottle of whiskey and said, “Only half of you are over 21. I’m going to test the minors, and if they’ve had alcohol, you’re also being charged with supplying alcohol to minors.”

Which was funny, because I didn’t get it for them, but more on that later.

The skinny one hadn’t had too much to drink, and the fat one is fat, so both passed the breathalyzer. The girl held her breath the whole time, but I was fairly confident in the results. Not so confident in our not getting a ticket when the boozebreath-lacking fat one did a victory dance in front of the ranger. I really wanted to deck him.

However, the original complaint had to do with the two boys fighting each other ala Fight Club for fun, so I restrained. We packed up, reluctantly paid up (later), and shipped out. A cursory visit to the fog-shrouded and thus pointless Clingman Dome Observation Tower before we escaped the park.

This is where we had to part. They were headed south to South Carolina, and I was to continue on to Raleigh. I was to drop them off at the start of I-26, making me their longest distance host ever. But before saying goodbye, we went to lunch at Little Ceasers. Inside a K-mart.

We bought the pizza, but the girl stole a coke. And the skinny boy stole a toy in the store. In the 4 days I’ve known them, they’ve stolen food, soda, alcohol, cigarettes, firewood, clothing, and if not for the noise complaint, a night at a campsite. They claim its because they want to spite big corporations, but they seem to steal from individually owned stores if it strikes their fancy. I know they’re pretty poor, but I can’t help but wonder if the stealing is need, greed, or mere kleptomania.

If you think about it, there’s no reason I’d hang around these people. They’re dirty annoying anarchist hippies who steal my food and make my car smell. They love to fight, steal, and get all-too-frequently political. But we bonded. They and I, despite nothing in common, connected somehow. I was sad to see them go.

“We’re so glad we ran into you,” they told me. “You’ve been so helpful.” And I was. I drove them from Nashville to central North Carolina and all around the park, let them eat my food, let them sleep in my car, and paid for the campsites without asking for contributions. Maybe they only liked me because I was unreasonably, perhaps pathologically giving in the same way they take. Maybe I only kept unpleasant people around because I was lonely traveling solo. A mutually beneficial trade. But I’d like to think it was more than that. I’ll find out if they keep to their word to call me when they pass through Chicago.

I left them in the early afternoon on the road shoulder at the on-ramp of I-26. Now?