street roots
July 20, 2012
Rod Beal
BY JAY THIEMEYER
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
nd of April, Oregon coast. Route 101:
for vodka. But everywhere wasn’t as
Setting out from Gold Beach heading
accommodating as Hood River.
for Brookings and beyond. Night
“You smell like ‘Blue Label’,” I told him.
spent in colorless, chaste Motel 6 situated He jumped on that. If I knew Blue Label, I
in the woods overlooking where the Rogue
was all right by him. And he opened up.
enters the Pacific. Wake to a sort of Zen
Told me his whole life story. A rootless
dreariness. Rain all night, wind, loud
American story. Out of a time warp; he
drumming on the windows.
looked like something from the beginning of
In the morning I survey the downed
the last century. Before that, even! Like
branches strewn across the parking lot, the
Huck Finn refracted through the American
debris on the roof of my car. I’m one of last
Century (such as it was). I’ve had time to
to leave. No rush. I drop my key off and go.
think about what he shared with me, and I
Leave the lookout point and ease back down
believe it was about as good a
onto 101. No traffic.
representation of an American loner, an
Sky beginning to clear, with a low ceiling
American floater, in these times of the
of gray, spindle clouds. Gazing at the sky is
failing, flailing American Dream, where the
claustrophobic, like finding myself in a small
same suckers fight The Man’s wars and
pup tent sagging in a night rain. Glimpses of cling to the myth and delusion of American
the ocean beyond the estuary wake me and
exceptionalism, and won’t know from
get my motor going.
nothing about being on the road. I felt, in
Coming up a rise, in the bike lane ahead,
short, that I was in the presence of
I see a heap of wet laundry slowly grinding
greatness (after a fashion).
toward the top, one foot in front of the
But really, Rod Beal was merely a
other. I slow down and ease over. Open the
messenger of things to come. View of the
passenger-side door. He shuffles up and
future from the very bottom.
grunts. Maneuvers his knapsack off his
He said the edge of Brookings would do,
back. I can smell him — moldiness mixed
wherever he could do some canning. I could
with vodka.
drop him off there.
I look at what I imagine to be his face
I said I’d done some major canning back
beneath the watch cap and the black hoodie
not that long ago. Paid my way with this
covering. Can see nothing but his dun-
fella back in the '80s who drove me from
colored brow and brown whiskers and curls
Atlanta to Jacksonville. I paid my way by
from the cap and the reflection of clouds in
bumming change wherever we stopped.
the thick lenses of his taped glasses. It was
Truck stops and shopping malls off the
like looking in a mirror.
interstate. Since I wasn’t one of the
“Have a seat,” I say. He does just that, no
familiars, people tended to be generous.
difficulty, letting out a groan after setting his That change paid for the gas and food, and
knapsack in the well of the front seat.
we drove non-stop. Quite a trip. He was an
“I’ll leave the window cracked,” he says.
old Marine, this one, and he was going to
No need, I tell him; not to worry.
find his old lady to start up another thrift
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people their space. Simple as that. These
days, apparently, he found that solitude, if
you want to call it that, in forever traipsing
around the country, unaccountable to
anything, riding his bike 'til it got stolen, and
staying ahead of the game juiced on 100-
proof ‘Blue Label’ Smirnoff.
After the jail time, he was let out on
probation and ordered into treatment at the
Salvation Army. His taste of sobriety was a
little over three months at the Salvation
Army’s ARC program. Got his two-month
coin, his three-month coin, was sponsoring
guys, the whole shtick, then one warm day
toward the end of summer, he’d just had
enough. Probation or no, he was out of
there. With what little money he had, he did
what he’d always done. Got a bike for long
distance travelling, and a 12-pack of beer,
and zoot, he was gone!
At 53, he was still in his teens.
Before joining the Navy, he had a bullshit
job that allowed him to buy a white Mustang
convertible. But when he enlisted, his
adversarial dad took the car and wouldn’t
give it back. It broke his heart.
The story behind that, Rod Beal didn’t
share. There was, in fact, a lot he didn’t
share. He had a well-honed roughly hour
long spiel and he stuck to it. Any questions
were left hanging. His story served the
s Rod Beal rehearsed his story, one he’d
purpose of keeping people at bay. But I
told many times I’m sure, it became
could dig where he was coming from. It’s
obvious that his whole life was about moving not easy being a loner, even if you’ve got
on. No roots, no predictability, just constant
your health and the means to buy a bike and
moving. When he was ten it was a step up
a 12-pack.
for him to get into foster care. Up to that
When we passed Pistol River, he was
point, he went with his mother, whom he
quiet for a moment. He’d been telling me
loved and who still lived down in Santa
about breaking probation before. They
Monica. Her life was always there in Santa
caught him on the other side of the country
Depends, or some goo for hemorrhoids.
Can’t remember.’
He said he’d missed that. He was still
seeing her on that bridge.
Said riding his bike up and down the
coasts, that trip across that bridge in the
Keys was scary but a rush. He said,
however, there was nothing scarier than
crossing that bridge from Astoria over the
Columbia River right here in Oregon. Blue
Label or no Blue Label.
I said I could imagine.
“Yep. I spent the winter in Hood River.
Lost my bike. My glasses. Everything I
needed, gone. Stayed there till a week ago.
One day it was warm out and the clouds had
disappeared. I left.”
He wanted to go to the Olympics again,
then down to Seattle and Tacoma. Get a ride
one way or another. He didn’t have a bike
this time out, but the hitching had always
been easy 'til he got close to L.A. He hadn’t
counted on the rain and cold though.
Who’s gonna pick up the Green Man
straight out the forest, with the leaves and
needles still stuck in his hair? He was
indeed a heap; his wet clothes looked like
foliage, a leaf pile.
A
In exchange for the ride, he produced his story. It was taken for granted. It was all he had to give. He deposited It as
niechanically as feeding the fare to the open m outh of a TriMet bus.
“Where you heading?”
“Santa Monica. Or anywhere south
you’re heading.”
“I can get you to Brookings.”
“That’ll do. I know my way around
Brookings.”
“Well, when we get there, just let me
know where you want off.”
The ride was roughly an hour, with very
little traffic or distraction. He said his name
was Rod Beal. Been a reader for years. He
was 53. Just lived for getting a bike that was
sturdy enough and a 12-pack of malt liquor —
Olde English the preference — and hitting
the road. Had been all over the country.
Covered all of it, he said, in decades since
he was small. “Top to bottom and side to
side.”
Came up from Santa Monica last Fall
heading to the very tip of the Olympic
Peninsula and eastward to Maine and up
that coastal highway which he’d done a few
times but not enough, then down South as
the weather got colder.
But someone ripped off his bike and gear
in Hood River. Then he lost his glasses. “I’m
blind without my glasses.” Then, a friendly
cop told him about an interfaith coalition
that provided overnight shelter. The
churches switched off week to week.
So, Rod decided to spend the winter on
the Columbia. Canning for “redeemables,”
snagging for pocket change, diving for
whatever and staying warm and dry. The
winter days had a similarity, he says. Good
to have a shelter to get out of that stuff
when night fell.
A week ago, he left Hood River and
headed for Santa Monica. But his trip had
been roughly a week long by now and the
rain had done a number on him. He was OK
as long as he could find cans and get money
store. They had had success going around
buying from the drunks who took donations
at the Goodwill sites. Five or 10 bucks
would get a lot of clothes. They then had
rented a cheap storefront and filled it with
these clothes, selling them on the cheap.
Made out good.
It had been several years now since they
got busted and he left town. He knew the
cop who got him and he knew he was close
to retirement, so it seemed likely that cop
would be long gone when he got back to
start up the enterprise again. He was willing
to take the chance, if he could find his old
lady. She’d been the brains of the operation.
“I’ve been in JAX,” Rod Beal said. “Spent
a month in their jail.”
I spent a week there in '83 when that guy
drove me down and dumped me after I’d
paid for the whole trip. He promised me
there were fishing boats looking for
workers. But all I found was a lot of locals
looking for work and resenting the Hell out
of outsiders taking that work. I have a ridge
on the side of my skull from where this fella
blindsided me and kicked me in the head.
Monica; never once left the place. She
attached herself to a series of questionable
gents, ‘fathers’ as Rod Beal saw it. Men who
abused his mother and him, till out of the
blue, one of them treated Rod and his
mother OK. The last one, the one that
stuck. That is, until he was sent to a foster
family. Then for some reason he didn’t
explain, they became adversaries. Maybe
being distant from his mother, she
expressed more fondness for little Rod.
Maybe, at a distance, physically away from
her, he brought out the love in her. The
motherly love every mother has.
Or maybe it was just a way to taunt her
new husband. She missed Rod Beal “so
much.” He was always such a “righteous”
kid. That kind of thing. Needling her new
partner in chaos. They passed many a night
getting drunk and passing out. Telling each
other how much they missed little Rod. Or
so Rod Beal explained it.
The new man on the scene didn’t
anticipate competition for the woman’s
affection. Rod became an abstract and
stayed with the foster family till at sixteen
he stepped into his Navy blues. In a pattern
he didn’t deny, he signed up for four years
and stayed for three. Then, one warm,
’ve been out of homelessness for more
bright day, he just split. Managed somehow
than a decade now but I was totally
to get a general discharge. Which meant
plugged into Rod Beal’s story. He had
these days, getting rehab for his alcoholism
indeed been around. Most of it by bike and and a temporary straightening out. During
most of it on the coasts or the Canadian
the recent fall sojourn in Southern
border.
California, two years ago actually, he was
He’d been from Maine to the Keys on the
jailed for beating his wife. He demurred,
Eastside. “You know that movie with Tom
said she was just being a bitch. But there
Selleck and Jamie Lee Curtis? Where she
had been so many calls. He was hauled
escapes on that seven-mile bridge down
before the judge and sentenced to a year
there? I road my bike on that bridge!”
and a day. Said he never hit her, that he
Damn, I said. I missed that one. Jamie Lee
wasn t like that. Just the sort of guy who
Curtis? Saw her in an ad for something-
wanted to be left alone and give other
I
and hauled him all the way back to Santa
Monica by plane. Shackled the whole way. I
never pursued the fact that he spent a lot of
time as a fugitive from justice for a guy who
never bothered anybody, who had “never
become a career criminal” — something he
was obviously proud of, even if a lie. He just
wanted to stick to his side of the road.
But in fact, his life was a chain of
inconsistencies. His wife was waiting for him
back in Santa Monica. As was his long-time
stepdad toward whom Rod Beal by now
directed some notes of being loved and
missed. Rod Beal seemed forever to be
leaving home and longing to return. But
what home did he have in mind?
So he was quiet now. But only for a
moment. He went on but never seemed to
mention anyone besides his family, such as
it was. He didn’t know his birth father and
had nothing to say about his m other’s
previous husbands before “the one that
took.” He didn’t talk much about his wife
after the incident he “didn’t do” that wound
him up in jail. His life story was honed and
something of an idyll but at the same time it
didn’t add up. Except in the sense that such
a chaotic, removed existence must have
produced in him a sort of fantasy state, an
alcoholic bubble where everything
connected. Everything in the Blue Label
sunlight sublime made sense. And was
beguiling to whoever gave him a ride. In
exchange for the ride, he produced his
story. It was taken for granted. It was all he
had to give. He deposited it as mechanically
as feeding the fare to the open mouth of a
TriMet bus.
It seemed as though Rod Beal didn’t trust
eing at rest, or stability, or pursuing and
See ROD BEAL page 13