Rob Davidson

The Bukowski of the Susquehanna

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 1987

Joe hands me another beer. It opens with a gassy pop, foam rising in a sudsy bubble. The first sip is warm. I hold it in my mouth for a moment, letting the fizz subside into liquid. Then I swallow. 

My weed high is wearing off, slowly replaced by a drinker’s buzz. I like to pretend I can tell the difference, that I am a student of the gradations of inebriation in all their subtle tiers. I am the Bukowski of the Susquehanna. My barstool is a two-tone ’78 Chevy Nova, its roof still warm from the late afternoon sun. Joe and I sit atop the car, legs crossed, passing the stub of a joint back and forth, inhaling slowly, and drinking half-warm Shaeffer beer at the foot of Three Mile Island. 

It’s been eight years since the meltdown. The shuttered reactor looms over us like a medieval redoubt, glowing orange and green in the early evening sky. The threat of radioactive waste seeping forth, polluting a major river, destroying an ecosystem and threatening the livelihood of thousands, of millions—all very real. Sober me wouldn’t find any of it funny. Yet Joe and I laugh at the follies of man. On the boombox, Neil Young informs us that everybody knows this is nowhere. I cannot disagree.

Joe passes me the roach. “Finish that.” 

I take two long hits, the smoke hot and harsh in my lungs, then drop it in an empty can of beer. He offers to score me an eighth that weekend when he goes home. 

“Or better yet, come with me and score it yourself.”

No chance. On a recent weekend I accompanied Joe back to his home in the Appalachians. At a party with a dozen of his friends, I snorted speed, smoked weed, and drank enough beer and whiskey to ensure that I’d pass out well before midnight. I awoke the next morning with a catastrophic hangover, completely dehydrated and spent. Joe seemed disappointed that I couldn’t hold my own amongst his hard-partying mountain man pals. 

I tell him I’m driving to Connecticut next weekend to visit a girl.

“Long drive,” he says. “You gonna get lucky?” 

I laugh. It’s not luck I’ll be looking for in Connecticut. Yes, a pretty girl wants to see me, but it’s a keening loneliness that makes me go. All summer, I’ve avoided spending weekends in our shabby condo on the campus of Penn State Middletown. I’ve driven to Rockville, Maryland, or Washington, D.C., to visit college friends. I’ve driven to Gettysburg to stroll the battlefield and sit at the foot of my great grandfather’s statue. Albert Woolson, last survivor of the Union Army. My restlessness is not new; it’s accepting the restlessness, understanding the origins of this part of me, that is new. 

Months ago, I fantasized about a summer alone. I would write my stories and read my books, perfectly content. I’ve learned that I do not want that. I struggle with solitude; I get lost inside my own head. I need others around me, people I know and love, and who know and love me. I need them close so I can keep my distance.

I swallow the last warm sip of beer, then toss the empty to the ground. Joe slides off the car and teeters into the weeds to relieve himself. It is time for us to leave. The buzz is wearing off, and there’s only so much to look at here. The reactor stands across the Susquehanna, imperious and stoic, brimming with something hot and dangerous. Were it to be let out, it would poison everything.

In the Lime Tree Arbor

Carriacou, Grenada 1991

The Rasta, Danny, leads me down a cattle track, the earth soft from recent rains. Fern and West Indian lemongrass dampen our ankles. Passing through a weathered wooden gate, we enter the arbor. Lime trees stand in orderly rows, their alleyways covered in overgrown grass, the stalks dappled in dewy crystals of rainwater, seedheads bowed as if in prayer. 

A silver fog hovers between the trees. The rain begins, a fine drizzle. Far off in the mist, the lonely clanking of a cowbell. Danny beckons me forward. He stands over a golden-brown cow pie. Parting the grass, he shows me what grows atop it. 

“Pull the mushroom from the dung,” he instructs. “Look for the witch’s cap.” He reaches down, pinching the slender stem between his long, lean fingers, and plucks a mushroom. The cap is bell-shaped, brownish yellow, almost shiny.

In the next hour we crisscross the dewy arbor, losing each other in the low gray fog and mist. I work slowly. Each mushroom seems a small wonder, the product of a mysterious process designed, Danny has assured me, to reveal a solemn truth. It is an ancient ritual, a search for a higher meaning, sacred to many. 

I don’t know about sacred. Sacred is not a word I use or understand. But I know about meaning. I kneel at the altar of interpretation and theory. If a Rasta tells me that eating a mushroom can reveal the secret of the universe, I am eating that mushroom. I hunger for things I don’t fully understand, for things I cannot articulate. I’ll do this, and it will mean something. 

I will make it mean something.

I am in need of a revealing. 

My bag full, I retrace my steps, heading for the cattle gate where we agreed to meet. Danny is there. We compare our bags, each brimming with mushrooms, smelling faintly of manure. He explains how to prepare a mushroom tea, two fingers of which will take me where I want to go. 

We bid each other adieu at the crossroads in Bogles Village. I thank Danny for guiding me, then begin the long climb out of the valley, up to the road that will lead me back to my village two kilometers away. I walk, unhurried, now above the low-hanging cloudy mists of the valley in the bright, late morning sun. I stop to watch a scattering of sheep cross the two-track road. In the rainy season, the farmers let the livestock roam freely, foraging amidst the tall grasses. A blackface ewe, its belly plump and round, follows at the rear, several paces behind the others. 

We are questing, curious, restless animals. 

Often we learn something other than what we seek. I did not know then that, whatever I was looking for, I would never find it in a cup of mushroom tea. But that young man needs to keep searching, and I must let him. I am thankful now for the stillness of that lime arbor in winter, for the guidance of a friend, for the simple task of gathering something and holding it close, learning what to look for, and knowing what to do with it. And for knowing when to leave it behind.

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