Thoreau's Rooster

If you don’t need it, don’t need to veer through it, you can drift past it on the highway and barely see it through the trees. Then you can cast it as anything you want. Dunsmuir. Before I went there, I had heard that the only fast food place was a Subway in the gas station. That stuck with me, because it seemed luscious, as though this town imagined they could cluster and condense all modern refuse, retain some fleeting humility. I needed to see this Dunsmuir.
My friend Wayne and I were drifting north on I5, and we needed gas. A green sign read DUNSMUIR. I mentioned that I’d heard of Dunsmuir, heard it was romantic or something. Afternoon sun stretched tight across the windows, and I was lolling, drowning in mountain vistas, too able to breathe. We were worried about gas, and we were worried about our car battery, feeling bitter toward petroleum and electricity. So, it was either stretch that tank all the way to Weed or fulfill my fantasy.
Dunsmuir. This was the end of Northern California and hence the end of America, in my mind. This wasn’t the South, thank God, with Andy and Opie, sweet potato pie, cotton flower print dresses, tobacco fields, the Shakespearean authenticity of the Gentile accent. I tended to hate the South. Mostly I hated it for its stale definition and restriction of America. I hated it because it was there, it had been there, and it continued to sit right there. And I had tired of hearing about drugstores that stocked beef, iron and wine. The South reminded me of history, hatred, a burnt-down house. There was nothing perfect about it: they had tried to fashion the Small American Town, but they had failed. Yet Dunsmuir — here was a new shot. From my very own left coast.
So we stopped there to get gas. As we pulled off the freeway and into a station, we saw two rich old men at the pumps, their fortunes blaring from their cars, oh God, their cars: a Vintage Jaguar for Mr. One and this amazing, defiant, puttering Stanley Steamer for Mr. Two. Mr. Two winked at me as he caught me gawking. But, God: a Stanley Steamer. My first impression of Dunsmuir sat there glimmering and sputtering and blissfully preserved. I wanted nothing more than to stare and stare.
But Wayne wanted a Pepsi. The station only had Coke. They also, as rumored, had that Subway. A mother was ordering a sandwich for her little girl. The mother knew the sandwich lady, and they yakked brazenly, discarding the dull mechanics of modern chit-chat for drawls and sticky-sheet gossip. They were full of casual secrets, full of lemme-tell-you-about Sarah or did-you-hear-bout-that Krista May? Wayne and I saw two such Krista Mays, two teenage girls who wandered through the station to buy lip-gloss. For them, of course, Subway was no longer a novelty, and Dunsmuir was just an ugly hiccup. But Wayne and I loved them for their disrespect, for their allegiance to Teenage Fashion in the middle of nowhere. Those small-town girls wore the latest in jeans and halter-tops that left only the last winking bits of flesh to the imagination. God does make lonely girls. He hides them in Dunsmuir and lets them out two at a time.
The girls were looking good, but they weren’t looking happy. They glared and squared their shoulders. I reasoned that they had pinned on us — whirling in with a Mustang and our casual arms — all of their desire to escape the dull cogs of their shingled little hometown. I felt sorry for them, so I forgave them.
We bought drink and food and twenty on pump five, all that should sustain. The teller lady cheerfully shaved the last two cents from our purchase, and seeing that act sent my heart buzzing. For she had spared us those pennies so casually, not because some snivel-head had told her it was company policy, but by God, she probably did things in her life because they were the right things to do. Simple, stupid, two cent things, but just because. Just because. It was such a small gesture, yet it clanked and resonated. So I concluded that Dunsmuir itself, the whole town, was a success, one of those dollops of grace for which we live. I had heard right and felt glad we’d gone through it.
But Dunsmuir wasn’t done with us. As we left the station to start the car and swagger away, the car wouldn’t start. Pray, plead, kick, nope. The battery had died. So we panned our sweet voices for a jump, searching the station’s customers. First, we tried this housewife with this hunky truck. It was her husband’s truck. She didn’t know how to perform the surgery of battery jumpage. She couldn’t quite remember where the jumper cables were or even how to pop the hood. She was kind though. And she probably made muffins, or blueberry cake — and with sincerity too. What else is there? So I forgave her.
Besides, Wayne found her cables buried under a yellow blanket in her truckbed. I went back into the station to buy more food, abandoning the situation to general good fortune. I liked this method, as it consistently disavowed me of responsibility. When I came back, both woman and truck were gone, so I smiled at Wayne, asked him if things were all set. It was, of course, rhetorical, for how could we not be blessed in a town like Dunsmuir? But Wayne raised an eyebrow and made me drop my muffin.
The battery hadn’t jumped. It hadn’t two-stepped. It wouldn’t get its lazy ass off the wall and into the party. And this was a problem. I asked obvious, stupid questions: did you maybe put the wrong cable thing on the wrong hookupthingamajig or whatever? Wayne gave me another look. I began to feel quite screwed. I prayed to my new deity, called upon Dunsmuir’s might.
Then, on cue, several old trucks arrived, loaded with gruff, middle-aged guys. They were soot-faced and gravel-voiced, their truckbeds littered with tools and debris, such men that it was almost religious. They asked sharp questions, spit suggestions and started an argument amongst themselves over the best place to buy a battery. One even gave a modest apology that his truck was loaded with stuff or he’d have given us a ride. In the twenty-first century, the concept of rides-from-strangers functions as a litmus test for idiocy. But the man’s apology reinforced my growing notion that Dunsmuir was twirling merrily in the passions and convictions of a bygone era, just like I’d been told. There they were, chewing toothpicks and squinting by rusted claptraps, summing up why I had wanted to stop in Dunsmuir: to see if I could soak in honesty and old-fashioned humanity like a sunburn. I was dimly aware of how selfish that was. But I forgave myself.
As it turned out, the only place to buy a battery was a ways down the road. Dunsmuir, along with everything else, was a place where everything was “a ways down the road.” So we thanked the men and started to walk. It was downhill, which was nice. We tromped over a bridge that covered this river flowing hidden below the highway. We shuffled past a wooden boarding house, past pastel Victorians. We marveled at roadside log cabins that didn’t mind the yellow lines or rubber stains of the street. They were, I decided, friendly neighbors who exchanged recipes. Friendly like the eyes of the strangers we passed. Friendly like the UPS driver who laughed and said she’d give us a ride back up the hill but she wasn’t allowed. Friendly like the utter wind and the shadow of distant Shasta itself. Yet nothing about this serenity was eerie. It settled on me like an assumption, like expecting sunshine for a picnic.
Eventually we arrived at the auto parts store. It had the requisite root beer machine and penny candy dispenser. It had, of course, the musk. It had the bulging, bearded fellow manning the counter, greasy blue smock and all. Yet though he looked the part, he wasn’t really that friendly. As we entered, he gave us this nasty, searing look. But hey, we had burst through the door as obvious outsiders, giving big guffaws and chortles and sobs over our luck. Somebody had to protect Dunsmuir, and I respected that. So I forgave him. We allowed him his curt insults, allowed him to overcharge us. He sold us our battery for ninety bucks. We took tortured turns lugging it uphill to the gas station. I was not paying as much attention to the scenery this time, as I was carrying a battery. Batteries weigh a lot. I had small arms.
We got back to the station, thoroughly exhausted. Wayne showed me that changing a battery isn’t, you know, that hard. I nodded sagely and let him do it. As I waited, I made up a song. It went:

God gave us the open road
And a gas station in Duns-muirrrrr,
The treachery of ‘lectricity
And his crazy mountain laugh.

Rollicking, smirky, bluesy, a great start. But as I hummed it and hummed it, I got no more words. I didn’t understand. I loved Dunsmuir. It lived its own song, so why couldn’t I churn one out? Of course, by the time we got back to the station, drenched in sweat from battery lugging, things seemed dustier, dirtier. What had been quaint struck me as exasperating. I started to ask questions: why was the gas station so small? What of the little girl ordering her sad little sandwich? Where were those teenagers headed? Why should I love the idea of housewives and blueberry muffins? What did two pennies matter to the teller? Wayne changed the battery and I stood there crumbling. Oh God: maybe it was just a tired little town, maybe it had failed my ideals, just like the wretched South.
Then I began to think of that Stanley Steamer. I imagined how it sat in Mr. Two’s garage all winter, its vintage silver smothered by shadows. I imagined how Mr. Two sat in his kitchen all winter, staring as snow fell over Dunsmuir, a town stowed away in the shade of mountains and firs. The light in Dunsmuir — light like looking through the lemonade glass and out the other side — was only for him. Dunsmuir was the perfect town, but its immobility, that which I had branded defiant and romantic, existed only to ease Mr. Two towards death. Dunsmuir wasn’t for me at all. Dunsmuir was for him to trade jokes about gas prices and golf scores, haul out the Steamer and give thanks for one more March. He had winked at us, obviously proud of two teenagers’ bug-eyed amazement. But what he had thought of us whistling through, paying our respects, flippant about the whole thing? What had he thought of us as he drove his Steamer back to his garage?
Wayne started the car. He told me to get in. He said our battery worked, and we could leave. As we headed for the freeway, I saw in the Mustang’s mirror our crooked trail of perfume: exhaust that smeared the gravel, exhaust that burned to vapor.