Bainbridge

Bainbridge

Sometimes, driving, I’ll get the smell. A car will stop short, or a big truck. It hits me right in the nose, that burning rubber stench, and then I’m six years old, back on that one-lane country road in the hills of Pennsylvania.

It happened years ago, before I started school. I've tried telling people about it over the years, and folks laugh or stare. They look at me, wondering when I will deliver the punch line. There wasn’t anything funny about it.

It started one fall day, in September. The air was crisp and clean. Warm, with a little breeze, enough to be comfortable.

Dad never bought new tires, his way of saving money. Every year, we’d drive to Elizabethtown, to the “Opona Tire Store.” We’d watch as our tires were taken off the car, two at a time, stripped and retreaded. We watched the entire process through the windows that circled the plant. Old weather-beaten guys in greasy blue coveralls did the work. Sweat stains under their arms and down the middle of their backs. All I could smell was the molten rubber stink. It was hot, even in the fall. I’d stand there, one hand holding onto dad, the other holding my nose. He didn’t seem to mind the smell. He smoked his non-filtered Camels and looked at the progress.

Dad would pay some in cash, then sign the ledger for the rest. Once a month, we’d drive there after paydays, and Dad would pay down the account. The old Polish man, Mr. Kozlowsky, owned the place. I remember seeing farmers bring in chickens, vegetables, and bushel baskets of fruits in the fall. Apples, potatoes, pears. He accepted it all as payment. He would use what he could, then the rest was taken to the Coptic church to pass out to the needy. That was life in rural Pennsylvania. People got along to get along.

On Saturdays, we went to the grocery store. I’d go in with a dollar and instructions. Get 2 packs of Camels and one pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and three books of matches. I came out with the bag, and he’d have his hand out wanting the change. I'd complain, and he’d laugh. “It's only eleven cents, Dad.” “Yeah, but it's my eleven cents,” as he smiled at me.

On our assignments from my mom, he’d always take the back roads: flour from here, sugar from there, and a stop by the dairy to get fresh milk with the cream on top. A list he carried in his head.

On one afternoon, driving from my aunt's house, his window open, a cigarette in one hand, and the other hand on the wheel. He swerved edge to edge. I looked at him, and a bee was stuck in his mustache. He tried to get the bee off, drive, and hold me in the seat. The tires kicked up grass and dirt. When he got under control, the bee was gone. We’re safe. But the car rolled to a stop in the ditch. He looked, then checked me, making sure I wasn’t hurt.

“Are you ok?” I smiled. He’s my dad, and I knew he was in control the whole time, just a scary ride for the fun of it. I wasn’t afraid.

Finally, he bent the rearview mirror and looked at his top lip. I noticed that it was swelling. After a minute of examining, he said, "That stinger is going to hurt for a while now.” He took the last drag on the Camel, wincing at the lip pain, and flicked the butt out the window.

We got out and found the front tire on my side was flat. He plopped me up on the fender, shook his head, and said, "Sit tight, buddy, while I get the jack and spare out of the trunk.”

Sitting and watching, I smelled something like a campfire. He smelled it at the same time. He stood with the tire iron in one hand and a lug nut in the other and said, “Tarnation, how’d that happen?”

The cigarette lit the dried grass on fire on the opposite side of the road. He walked over and started stamping out the fire. A swarm of bees attacked him. He yelled, “Get in the car and roll up the windows. Yellow Jackets!” He ran a few steps away, and the hornets followed, biting him. As he swatted, more came. He was screaming and cursing, swatting at them like he was possessed.

Now I’m frightened. Dad was flailing around. I don’t know where we are, and I don’t know what to do. His love of country roads has left us miles from anywhere, and nothing is familiar, and I’m afraid of the hornets.

He ran across the road, jumped the fence to a cattle pond, and dove in. He disappeared under the water. I kept watching, but he didn’t come up. About 30 feet away, he stuck his head out of the water and still had bees stuck on his face. I watched him clawing at them, and the ones flying around seemed to find him right away. He went under again. I saw his flattop haircut bob up and down in different parts of the pond. I yelled at him, “What do I do, Dad, what do I do?” He didn’t answer me.

When he stumbled out, his eyes were almost swollen shut, his face was all lumpy, and he had big bumps on his arms and neck. He could hardly walk, and his clothes were wet and muddy. He dropped, leaning against the car, let out a big breath, and fell over on his side.

I climbed out, asking him to get up. I was crying and shaking him. He just lay there, not moving. The welts on his body were growing red and angry.

Mind you, I’m six years old, terrified, my dad is stung all over, and he is not moving. I don’t know what to do. I was in a panic. I knelt beside him, “Tell me what to do, Dad, please tell me what to do.”

I don’t know how much time passed, but Dad didn’t move. I leaned close to his face and could hear wheezing. I was a lost little boy on a back road in the hills of Pennsylvania.

Minutes later, I smelled the tire shop, that sharp, acrid smell of melted rubber. It got my attention. Is there a tire shop around here? I looked back and forth, nothing but trees and fields. I finally had enough courage to walk around, looking at the tires. I thought that one was burning, but I wasn’t sure.

Nothing, no smoke, no stink from them. The grass still burned across the road, spreading to a barbed wire fence line. The breeze brought the smell to my nose.

Then I heard a grunting noise by the trees. I watched a woman coming out of the woods. She was tall, with strong cheekbones and tanned brown skin. Her long black hair fell past her shoulders, flowing out behind her. Her hair was woven with flowers. She had a cape made of black feathers that draped to the ground. Her shirt was strung with pearl white beads, and her skirt looked like deer fur. I couldn’t see her feet under the robe. Her eyes were black, from corner to corner. She stood in the middle of the road, about twenty feet from me, my dad forgotten. She stared at me, then looked at the car. She spun around slowly and raised her hand, palm up. I wasn’t scared. Until that point, every woman I knew was kind and caring. None had so much as a cross word, even when I was boisterous.

She glanced at the fire, as I did. When I turned back, she stood a few feet before me. She waved her outstretched hand, and the fire stopped, and the smoke disappeared.

At once, I smelled the tire shop stink, then I knew it was from her. The stench brought tears to my eyes, snot dripping from my nose. Later in life, I developed a word for it: “Offensive.” It was an offensive smell—right in the sinus, up front, and critical.

She stared hard at me, gauging me, though I didn’t know why. I didn’t sense danger, only inquiry. She never spoke, but I knew what she was thinking, like she was inside my head. I felt her say, “What happened here?

I babbled, “Daddy had a blowout, and the bees attacked him.” I saw her head slowly nod. She slid backwards away from me. I noticed that her feet didn’t move, like she was gliding over the road.

The smell made me sick to my stomach; it was so bad I could taste it. No matter how much I spat and coughed, it hung there. The woman looked over the car, at my dad, then around the area. I don’t know what she was looking for, but the thought came into my mind that she didn’t want anyone to see her.

She bent down and removed a leafy vine from her hair. She broke the branch in several places and rubbed the sap on her palm, then rubbed my dad's face. She rubbed on each swollen bite on his arms and neck, even in his hair.

Then rolled dried leaves and pushed them into my dad's mouth. A minute later she took everything back and hid it under the folds of her cape.

Dad started snoring loudly, and I could see the welts fading. When the swelling was gone, she stood and looked around the area again.

Her head snapped up, looking up the road, as if she heard something. In my head, I felt the word “Strangers. Strangers were coming,” but I couldn’t hear anything.

She smiled at me, then glided away, back into the trees. I watched her, and it seemed like she disappeared at the edge of the trees. I was confused; I had never seen anything like that before.

An old pickup truck popped over the hill behind us a minute later. They stopped. It was a middle-aged man and his wife. They asked if I was all right and why I was there.

I cried and stuttered over what happened. They got out, leaving the truck in the roadway. She hugged me, her husband found my dad on the ground and woke him. It took a while, but Dad was able to explain. The bee stung on the lip, the cigarette caught the grass on fire, the tire blew out, and the hornets chased him to the cattle pond.

I tried to tell them about the woman, and he laughed at me, saying to the older man, “These kids watch TV and get good at imagination.” He agreed and helped my dad with the tire. They tossed the flat tire in the trunk, and we all left a few minutes later.

He said he was surprised he didn’t feel any of the bites of the hornet. He felt his top lip and said nothing was wrong; it was back to normal. He didn’t remember anything else.

We rode home with me talking about the woman from the trees, me remembering, and him smiling at me. I felt hurt that he didn’t believe me, but I accepted it before we got home. He said, “What a story we must tell your mum. I got lucky, very lucky.”

Years later, I was outside the doctor's office, sitting in my car, thinking over my life. My two boys are grown, one in the Army, and the other in Alaska, working as an environmental engineer with a big oil company. They're good boys. Never a minute of trouble. My beautiful wife is away nursing her mother back to health.

I haven’t told anybody about the cancer diagnosis. The biopsy confirmed large cell carcinoma. They could operate, but it's already metastasized into other parts. The oncologist said it was hard to tell, six months without treatment, up to 35 months with chemo and radiation therapy.

For me, it boils down to only one decision. Months of treatments, sickness, and losing my hair. Stuck for days in the bathroom and bed with nothing but agony. The treatments only prolong the meeting with the ferryman to cross the river Styx.

I should make this decision with my family and create together, but something in me resists. One motto I've had my whole life was, “As a man, you always have one option. That is to quit. It's the only thing guaranteed.” I know this is grandly selfish, but it's my decision alone.

I survived two tours in Afghanistan, then twenty years as a police officer in uniform, with too many life-threatening situations to count. Now I'm faced with only one decision. Live terribly with decreasing mobility on painkillers, sleep the days away until I'm a leather-covered skeleton, or choose to face it head on, and when that door opens, step through proudly.

While I wait to die, I think of things that I never got to do as much as I wanted. First, I'll visit my Parents' grave in Jennerstown. I'll bring flowers for my mom, not for dad. He'd say it was a waste, then say, show up and catch up with what's happening in the family.

I will visit the places where I was most happy: my younger days in Bainbridge and Rheems, all while Dad worked at the Naval Supply Base before his transfer to Wright Patterson Air Base in Ohio. Then, Football in High School, the girlfriends, the places I’ve seen. I’ll bring my wife; we’ll see the country that I love with all my heart.

My youth was spent up until my teenage years in Pennsylvania, then in Ohio until I joined the Army. I have a list in my head of where I want to visit. Cousins in Boswell, the old house on Kaiser Road, where I was free before starting first grade. So many adventures with my dad in his old blue Chevy Nova. Six cylinders and a three-speed standard shift on the column. It was his tank. It started every morning, driving through snow, sleet, rain, and high water. He babied it through the years like it was a family member.

Then the thought struck me: I should look for the flat tire spot. It's been so long that I barely remember it. Now, I only see it in dreams, and I wonder if I can find it. As far as I remember, we never took that road again. I wondered about the smell, was it in me, or was it in her. If it was her, it kept everything away. If it was in me, it was something to startle me into action. Almost like smelling salts. I don't know, but I want to. So many unanswered questions before my visit is over.

First, I'll check the country house to see if it's still there, and then the flat tire road.