Jerry's Market is down in the darker section of town, near where the railroad ran aground and in the middle of the night you can see the trailer drivers pulled over to sleep. As I pulled in the headlights of my car illuminated a woman who was walking out the door. She seemed to smile.
Jerry's is an institution, it's been there since before the Depression and has survived each subsequent generation with reciprocal tolerance. I always stop there for cigarettes when I'm working. They cost about a dollar less there than in any of the other stores in town. Sometimes I think that they might be involved in once of those throwback promotional events that places like McDonald's have on anniversary years. But I hope that they're just hard workers who aren't interested in overcharging people just to bump their register receipts up a little.
It was chilly that night and small flakes of icy snow hit my face as I walked from my car to the door. The guy behind the counter has been there every time that I've ever gone in. He's young, in his mid-twenties with a patchy beard and a protruding belly that probably makes for a wonderfully deep and resonant laughter. I always wonder if he's named Jerry also of if the lineage has gotten so warped over the years that he isn't even directly related to the man himself. Maybe he's got a number at the end of his name, but if so it would give the family sort of an upper class sound and ruin the feeling of home-down goodness. I've never asked though, the mystery is too thrilling.
"Cold out tonight?" he asks me, choosing a question from his long list of time-honored convenience store remarks, leaning back on the four-legged stool until his back hits the wall. He crosses his arms across his chest.
"A bit," I said sort of offhandedly as I looked over the cigarettes that were set in promotional displays on the counter. Cartoon drawings and beautiful women all dance around inanimately saying, "Choose me, I taste great on a summer day," or "Choose me, I'll make a mountain man out of you." I hate promotions.
I can usually get in and out of a convenience store with very few words if it's my aim. It's also possible to get into a long discussion about weather, or the Republican Party if those subjects tickle your fancy.
I picked a pack of Old Golds from the display stand and watched as he mulled over whether or not to check my ID. He decided against it and peeled the coupon from the box, my savings was realized. I paid for the cigarettes and looked innocently at him. I wanted to shrug but didn't. He met my gaze and seemed to acknowledge the inherent awkwardness of the situation. I think we both wondered if there was anything else that could be said, any unexplored convenience-store conversation territory that we might trailblaze. But silence in the room was broken only by the monotone hum of the fluorescent ceiling lights and the seemingly distant sound of cars splashing through the wet snow.
"Stay warm," he said to me as I turned to go, hopefully realizing that empty conversations aren't bad things, especially if there's an understanding between the people who find themselves in that conversation.
"Do my best," I said, putting the cigarettes in my inside coat pocket and pulling the collar up.
My car smelled like pizza. It's really an unpleasant odor of you encounter it each time you enter your car. The smell lingered and stagnated, becoming worse with the passing weeks. When I was in the midst of a busy night I didn't notice it. It was when I had breathed clean air that it became obvious to me. I hated it. I was praying for nasal congestion.
It was a good job though, and on the whole I couldn't complain. It was probably the only job where I could work a couple nights a week and make over a hundred bucks. It helped to cover some of those electric bills and phone bills and all the other things that I wait excitedly by the mailbox for on the first of every month. Each week I got to put a little money away in the bank. It's a solid feeling when I think about it.
It's a pretty easy job, too. When I'm busy I never have to talk with anyone, I can just listen to music and think while I'm driving. The rest of the time I just find ways to look busy and no one ever seems to bother me. It's one of those things that becomes so monotonous that time moves slowly in the moment and quickly in the duration. It's similar to the discourse which takes place in a convenience store, there is a set of established calls and responses. Things like "How much was that?" or "How are the roads tonight?" To which I might respond with the correct price or a comment that they're probably not as bad as a person might think from looking outside. Sometimes the people I encounter are interesting or disturbing. One night I met a woman who had at least four cats and happened to have grown up in a town near where I was from, the world's funny like that. Other times people are high on something and give the wrong apartment number or pay their bill with change that they scraped together from seat cushions and floor boards and never manage to have enough for a tip. They're rich kids, of course, claiming poverty and surviving on the money that their parents put in their ATM accounts each week. They can't understand work, and sit lazily in warm apartments or dorm rooms as I look for house numbers or trudge up the back staircase gripping the rail with one hand, hoping and praying that my feet will not shoot out from underneath me and that the wobbling of the stairs won't lead it to collapsing.
The driving part is the easiest, the most mindless. Listening to Muddy Waters or Miles I muse about the places I'd rather be. My mind often wanders to the city, to crowded, smoky bars in the dark of a rainy Manhattan night. It was where I first glimpsed the wonder and harshness of life simultaneously. I got sucked in early by the allure of its insomniatic experience. I rode the train alone the first change I got, speeding through the backs of run-down towns and marshes in Jersey, always looking off into the distance to see it calmly staring back at me. I ended up in a country city trying to save myself.
I like to sit at corner tables, the ones hidden in the shadows where light and dark met briefly and the dark won out. I like to be removed a little from the crowd. I can feel the vibrations of the music through the floor. It's performance that draws people, reminds them of an age that they heard stories about and wish they could recreate. Performance can eclipse music. A performer draws you in, some may make you feel like you are his friend while for others it's simply a movement of the head or the shine from a bead of sweat that dangles from their nose. He might be in the middle of a long jam and force the tension up that little bit more to the point where you though it couldn't go, or he might pause completely to wink at the woman with green eyes in the front row who could've been his granddaughter in a different world.
Maybe in those moments perfection has been achieved, we've all really been spirited away and returned with something that shines. I remember the first time it made sense to me. When I caught a glance across the bar and knew it belonged to me. It was simple and sweet and only lasted for a moment, but I remember it. I felt like I'd been transported across sixty years and seen something pure, something rich.
He leaves though, retires to some back room with a final wave and grin in our direction. I don't wait for the conversations, for the remarks of brilliance or legends. I pay my tab and leave, moving slowly through the empty streets, listening to the sounds and stories it whispers to me. I eventually catch a train back to Jersey and sleep comfortably in a bed which isn't really mine.
He'll sit in that back room and wipe away his sweaty face with a towel, then take a moment to listen to praise from James the bartender who pops his head in. He won't sit in there long, he'll wait for the crowd to empty out then put on his coat and pick up his case. He'll walk the same empty streets, silent and alert, but shielded from the sounds that were so strong and fresh to me only a little while before. He won't end up scribbling madly in a black composition book for an hour on the northeast corridor train that shot me back to quiet America. He'll end up jingling the keys at the door of his apartment and sitting up for the rest of the night in a chair by the window waiting for the sun to assault his bloodshot eyes. He'll eventually drift off to sleep there, with an arm hung loosely over the black case and calm enveloping him wholly.
I was far away from New York and fantasies of a life there or even on the fringes had to be left for some other time. My own true night came back, as I clung to my visions and tapped out a beat on my steering wheel.
"Hittin' the bottle again...doin' ever'thing my doctor tol' me not to do ag'in." The scratchy twang came out of the speakers, melodic and sad. I thought about deep southern country roads and the impassioned combination of guitar and harmonica and the sounds that they can made down those very roads. There's something about places that go with music and that all the high tech sound equipment ever devised can't reproduce and there's something about the people that you might see.
I was five when we were driving through Mississippi and I looked out the window and saw an old black man sitting on a bench with a harmonica drawn tightly to his lips. I'll never know what he was playing, if he was good or terrible, I was shut off from the sound and listened instead to the constancy of the air conditioner. There's something that will always make me remember the sight with perfect clarity. More than my first bike, Disney World, or even the girl I though would be my first love, I will remember the sweat on that man's brow and the look of concentration and pain.
In high school I'd bought books to try and teach myself how to play the blues. I'd wandered through bookstores looking at the pictures of the old men to whom it was only a way of life. I remember thinking that somewhere I'd find it. I was watching TV one day and saw an interview. It seemed the interviewer didn't really understand much about the subject so it was explained to him. "It's not somethin' that you can read out of a book, it's not somethin' that you can pluck out of the air and take a bite of, it's somethin' you're born with, somethin' you grow up with. Maybe it's the dirt or the water or the air, I hope to God it's all of them."
The night of work ended eventually, as slowly as it had begun. I was confronted with a world of options. I was young with tip money fresh in my pocket at 2:30 A.M. I walked around the streets for a few moments, watching the bars empty out and the stumbling boys filled with liquid courage take out their aggression on lamp posts or make jokes at the expense of random passerbys. I bought a cup of coffee and crouched in a doorway smoking a cigarette and sipping cautiously from the styrofoam cup. The passing conversations eventually became boring, whether serious or belligerent it mattered little, so I left. I walked to my car slowly, taking in some final remnants of the night and the cold. I drove up the hill and parked on the street outside my building. I climbed the two flights sleepily, opened the door and was met by Jack, my cat. He rubbed against my leg and arched his back. I knelt down and ran my hand over his back. I dropped my bag on the floor and looked around my apartment. The bookshelf and the windows, the sink full of dishes and the unmade bed. I walked across the room, sat on my bed and took my guitar from the stand it occupied. I don't know what notes my fingers chose or the strings that became the most comfortable that night. I do know that I've always searched, through the pages of books, in the sounds of music and in other more remote and distant places. It's something intangible that I'm looking for, something that acid trips and drum circles couldn't provide. I don't know what there is that exists definitely out there. I think that I've glimpsed it, in moments you can't put on a page or play on a guitar. You just have to take them away in some stitch of memory that lays silent in dark corners of bars, in empty whiskey glasses and full ashtrays, that exists on country roads and in the hearts of young boys. That everyone has known or should have and that gets me through days when nothing else is willing and will always be that way.