The road can be a remedy for the lonely

He had the look of an old cowboy and had a Texas drawl to go with it. He wasn’t wearing a 10-gallon hat, but he had the boots and silver buckle that went along with his flannel shirt and jeans. He was maybe in his mid-60s, tall and rangy except for a slight pot.

We met him at a rest stop just south of Redding. We’re on the road again, seeing our daughters in Sacramento and Vancouver, Wash., and we’ve got our dog Sophie with us. She rides in the back seat and seems to like going places as much as we do, sticking her pointed nose out the window as we drive, smelling the distance.

The man I’m talking about -- call him Tex; I don’t know his name -- approached us as we paused to take a break from driving. He was carrying two oranges, which made me think he might have been a homeless guy getting by selling fruit. I noticed he was driving an old blue Toyota that was pretty well battered. The hood, maybe picked up at an automotive junkyard, was red and similarly dented.

The first thing he said was, “I haven’t had a dog since Esther died,” which seemed to me to be starting in the middle of a conversation. Usually you say “hello” or “nice dog” or make some other kind of introductory remark. I’m the suspicious type and maybe even a little standoffish. When a stranger approaches, I’m just automatically on guard.

But then the guy handed an orange to Cinelli and one to me. Actually, he put them down in front of each of us where we were sitting at a picnic table. “Thought you might like these,” he said.

Then he looked at Sophie, who was tied to a leg of the bench.

“The best dog I ever had got run over a long time ago,” he said. “The man deliberately went out of his way to hit him. Can you imagine that? If I’da caught him I’da stomped him good. That’s what we did back then.” He looked at me. “Wouldn’t you have stomped him in your day?”

I ignored the question, but the old cowboy was expecting an answer and would probably have waited forever until he got one. I was never the stomping kind, even when I was young and angry. But I didn’t want to get into any kind of argument about the value of stomping, so I said, “Yeah, I guess so.” He said, “Damned right.”

I was waiting for him to ask for gasoline money or maybe enough for a beer, but he just stood there petting the dog. I kept thinking there had to be something peculiar about him, if you know what I mean. A stranger just doesn’t walk up and hand you an orange and expect nothing in return. Not in L.A. anyhow.

But this was the road, and things occur that don’t happen in the city. You come in contact with isolated moments that don’t connect with anything else. They just flash by like roadside scenery as you roll along an endless stretch of pavement, going someplace in a hurry.

So I took another look at Tex as he talked about how nice it was to have rest stops and meet people when you’ve been driving a lot; to stop for a cup of coffee and a howdy. It hit me that the man was lonely. The Esther he talked about must have been his wife. Maybe they’d been married a long time and she suddenly died, leaving a hole in his life that nothing could fill. So he hit the road to outrun the loneliness, heading nowhere.

I’ve known a couple of people like that over the years. Lonely people. They figure that out there, somewhere between where they’ve been and where they might end up, there’s something or someone who will fill their empty days and emptier nights. I can’t really imagine that kind of loneliness.

Or maybe I can. When I was in Korea fighting a war, I missed Cinelli more than I can ever say, thinking I might get killed and never see her again. A looming finality is the hardest part of loneliness.

Tex stayed for a few minutes more and then walked off. He headed toward his battered old car, and I figured we’d seen the last of him.

But what he did was move from one parking space to another a few yards away. He backed into the spot and opened his trunk, bringing out one of those webbed cloth bags half-filled with oranges.

A man and woman with a girl, maybe 10, passed him. He said something, they stopped and he handed each of them an orange. They smiled and began talking.

When we drove off they were enjoying whatever conversation they were having. He waved as we passed, and I waved back like he was an old friend, and maybe he was.

He was just a guy all alone in his world looking for something he’ll probably never find, passing scenes of a former life where there were wives and homes and dogs, the way it was for him in the old days, before the emptiness, before the silence.

The road can be an awfully lonesome place.

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almtz13@aol.com