To: Candace Gillentine, Overland Park, KS

From: Sam Gillentine, Wichita, KS (mailing from Salina)

June 12th, 20+4

Hey babe, it’s Sam.

Got your letter earlier this year. Quite a surprise to hear from you. Sorry to learn about your beau Harlan. It’ll come as no surprise to you that I never cared for him too much, but since he made you happy, I suppose that made him OK in my book.

Still can’t believe it has been five years since you left. I figured you’d head on over to Kansas City, have yourself a big time for a few months, wind up flashing your tits (or other parts) to the wrong guy in front of Harlan, then make your way back. Never counted on the whole world going to hell in a bucket. After that it’s been almost all thinking about my next meal, parting out old cars and vans for pieces folks can use to heat their house solarwise. Never knew much else. Can’t garden – but not for lack of trying, lately, tell you that – can’t sew or butcher cattle or do any of the other hundred or so things a hell of a lot more important now than fixing up busted transmissions. Just a wrench. Never saw much money or food or anything else out of it, just enough to get by on. Living hand to mouth... pretty much like before, but with even less barbecue and no television, lights or running water. Heheh.

But I got the gist of the message. The part about Sean, I mean. I hadn’t seen the kid in the better part of a decade, I suppose, and I only had the one little photo of him in my wallet. The one from his high school graduation, with the rat stache and bolo tie. Yeah, I kept it. I can’t look at it too often or for too long, though. He’s got your eyes, and ––-

Well, so he’s important to both of us, even though I’d forgotten how much so when things were bad between you, me and the bottle. And I knew what you were asking in your letter, and pretty much thought and felt the same way. But I couldn’t just up and leave overnight. No working bike, no map to speak of, no provisions. I wouldn’t have lasted long just going off half-cocked. So I went into the library after work one day, around noon or so – business had been slow over winter and hadn’t picked up yet – and checked out a book on bicycle repair. I figured that, with me being mechanically inclined, it wouldn’t be too awful hard, but might take me a couple weeks to really pick up on how to fix that old Schwinn of Sean’s. Well hell, come to find out there’s hardly anything to them. Just some bearings, racings and a chain, spokes, breaks and tires are all that ever needs maintained, and a couple oddly threaded bolts to keep in mind when taking the thing apart and putting it back together. So I pulled that Schwinn out of the shed and broke it down. Broke it all down, cleaned the bearings and other moving bits good with your old toothbrush and a rag, slathered those parts with Crisco and put everything back together. I couldn’t get the chain off because there is a special tool I needed for that, but I just wiped it off and greased it up well, and it’s good as new. Took the book back a couple days later – I think they were surprised to see it get returned at all. When I tried to check out a road atlas or other map book, they really put their foot down. Guess they’ve seen far too many maps just walk out and not come back. So I had to ride home – faster than walking was, though – and pick up a bit of paper. Then I went back to the library and trace the route. I did pretty well, I think. I didn’t include much, just the main ways into and out of Denver and the general outline of it and its suburbs. The whole trip one-way was something like 500 miles.

Now, I’ve never been the picture boy for health or what not. I didn’t really know how many miles I could do in one day, much less how many I could do stringing those one day trips together and being sore and all that. But I had given up smoking almost four years prior, when I couldn’t get it no matter how badly I wanted it. I just started riding into work every day. Didn’t take long before I realized I needed some fenders, and so I pulled those off your old Schwinn in the shed. Good chrome-plated ones, and plenty wide to cover the tires. Riding got easier after a week or two, but I knew it wasn’t even remotely preparing me for the trip.

I still hadn’t really figured out how to get enough food to cover the trip. Well, I remembered Sean had gone to Sunday school before you and I hooked up so I went to the Methodist church and asked about getting a handout. I’d always thought I was above doing such a thing, but it came really natural to me. I didn’t even have to lie about it, just told them that I needed it to go find my son... well, former stepson, but they didn’t need to know quite that much of the truth, right? (Alfie Ganz filled me in on how lenient the Methodists were with all things material, except money.) I came away with a whole shit-ton of flour and some parched corn and a half-gallon of pickled eggs and even some beef jerky. So, if I ever said anything bad about the Methodists, let me take it back right now. They’re OK folks.

So I made hard tack. Just water and flour that you let kind of bake or dry. It’s not very good, but I ate less and worse before. Made some in advance and packed it and the rest of the flour to make more as I went along.

Just had my boots re-soled last fall, but I figured the old pair of sneakers would work a lot better on the road. And I packed an old sleeping bag I got with Marlboro miles and a blue poncho that used to belong to Sean. Didn’t have a helmet. Hot enough riding without a big damn hat on, and if I fell off and really hurt myself... well, who knows? Might have been a relief.

So I let Alfie know where I was heading a couple days before – just shook his head, like he knew it all – and then left out of Wichita on April 30th, as early in the morning as I could muster. By the time I made it to Newton, I was in a bad way. Just panting and had it in the granny gear on almost all of the hills. But, I kept on and made it just past Hesston. I’d tell you I thought that wasn’t too bad for a first day, but I wasn’t really thinking anything once I got off the bike. I crawled into the sleeping bag and wrapped the poncho around me tightly as I could. It was colder than I thought it would be, but I still fell asleep in a few heartbeats. Slept like a log.

The second day was the worst of the entire trip. I woke up and tried to get up and at ‘em, but couldn’t. The sleeping bag or poncho weren’t constricting me. My back was. After a few minutes of doing my best to rub my back in the parts that felt most like hot irons, I was able to ease myself up into a sitting position. Finally, I was able to stand, and then I remembered what I really should have asked the Methodists for. Fucking aspirin.

So I packed the stuff up best I could and got back on the bike. All day I just wanted to get back off it and walk. In all actuality, it probably would have been as fast. Made it up to Elyria that day, just past it a couple miles, then had a dizzy fit and fell off the bike. I figured that was enough for one day, even thought it wasn’t even evening by that point, so I ate and kind of slept, but mainly shook all the rest of the day and into the night.

Third day I got up slowly and got underway without even eating anything. I don’t know, maybe it was the long rest I’d had, but things went a little better that day. I made it up to Lindsborg without feeling dizzy or anything. Alfie Ganz’s parents, Paul and Cindy, live there, so I begged off a little dinner from them – a whole chicken sandwich with butter and some vegetable soup! – after running a couple errands for them and taking a bath in the Smoky Hill river and changing my clothes. I hadn’t brought too much with me, just a backpack’s worth of stuff. A pair of long pants, couple pairs of shorts, a couple short sleeve shirts and a long underwear top. I spent the night in Alfie’s old bedroom, and crashed out pretty hard. They even gave me a bit of breakfast in the morning before I got on my way. They had coffee! I’d forgotten what it tasted like, but don’t think I ever really got over not having it in the morning. So, I stuck around a bit and chatted with them. They were damn nice people, not like Alfie at all really. Wanted to know what he’d been up to, how he was down in Wichita. I felt a little bit bad, feeding them some white lies about business at the shop and Alfie’s love life... oh, I’m not even going to give you any details on that nasty business. But man, such nice folks... don’t know why Alfie just doesn’t move back. Well, the talking to such decent people and two cups of coffee perked me up and I left Lindsborg feeling pretty damn right with the world.

The ride up to Salina turned out to be not too bad. I got there early afternoon, then turned west. Made it to Carneiro or thereabouts before the sun went down. I probably could have saved a bit of time heading west out of Lindsborg, but thought it would be better taking what I thought were the most traveled routes. It turned out to be a pretty good plan, for the most part.

The next week or so I made my way west along I-70 through the rest of Kansas. Despite the wind slapping me in the face the whole way, I had a few halfway decent days. I just got up every day at butt crack of dawn, hopped on the bike and rode until I felt like it was time to stop. Only rained on me twice, once near Hays and then a couple days after as I was pulling into Oakley. Took a day’s rest in Oakley and begged off some more food and even did laundry (in the Saline river, but still – did you ever think I was capable of doing it?) They’ve still got that stupid cement prairie dog museum there. No visitors to it, of course, and I think the signs on the interstate have all long since been used for firewood. But the museum is still there. Don’t know if it was open, and didn’t even try going in.

Do you remember hopping on the bike with me in Wichita and taking road trips to Denver or the Springs? Remember how free you felt back then? At least, I felt that way, like I was an arrow in flight, almost. And it didn’t matter if it was windy or a little rainy, I could just roll back on the throttle and power through it. Well, the feeling I got in Goodland was just... not the opposite. I felt like a halfway fumbled pass. You remember, a football pass? Just kind of flopping through the air, so slow and goofy, just waiting to be picked off by something. But, I knew I was past the high point of the arc, past the halfway point. And that was good in a way. Felt even better when I was actually in Colorado a day later.

It didn’t last too long. I had planned to go quite a ways that day and stop in Bethune, ‘cause there’s a creek there and I could get some water and maybe wash up a bit. But some pretty rough characters stopped me on the way through Burlington. I don’t know if you knew this, but apparently there was a high-security prison in Burlington, and there was a major breakout after all the power and everything else went out. So now the prisoners are basically in control of the town, which you think would be a pretty bad thing. And it is.

I was getting roughed up a bit (been through worse in other bars, though that’s nothing to brag about I guess) and called a faggot spy or some such and being asked who I was working for. Well, of course, I didn’t know what in the hell they were on about, so I kept saying so. I was starting to get pretty dizzy and unable to answer them what with all the punches they were raining down on me, but then I heard someone yell “Sam!” And I don’t even recall recognizing my own name at that point, but I looked up all the same and saw them boys getting pulled off me before I blacked out. When I woke up I saw a face I thought I’d never see again. Rod Vickland. Used to work at the same shop as me and Alfie before he got busted for making meth. Had no idea he got sent up to Burlington. Big time tweaker, and wasn’t a very decent guy back then. Still wasn’t. He grinned at me with one of them horrible methmouth grins and started asking me questions. Where was I going? Who was I working for? How deep did I cut the junk in my pack? Well, I didn’t know what the hell to tell him, except that I didn’t know what he was talking about. He showed me a handful of powdery looking stuff and said that his bosses in Denver didn’t like those Pollocks in Ohio trying to move junk in their turf. And I looked at that powdery stuff and looked back and him and just asked him to take as much flour as they wanted but to please leave me enough to get to Denver to look for Sean. He looked at me and the flour back and forth a few times and asked me whether I was couriering for the eastern cartel. I told him I didn’t know anything about any cartels or couriering, but that I was trying to get to Denver to look for my son (I didn’t tell him he was really my stepson, and he’d never have thought to ask, anyways). Some of those other mean mothers started chuckling and seemed to be giving Rod some shit, so he made me eat almost half a pound of the flour, mixed with water beforehand, thank God, and then he sat me aside and had a couple young punks keep an eye on me for a few more hours. Guess he wanted to make sure I was telling him the truth.

After they were sure I wasn’t going to OD on Methodist flour, they took half the rest of it and half the eggs and put me back on my bike and told me to get the fuck out of town. I was still really dizzy and my left eye had swelled almost shut and I couldn’t see well at all out of it, and I had a headache, but I rode out all the same. Anything to get the fuck out of dodge. By the time I was a few miles to the west, I hopped off the bike and rolled out the sleeping bag and laid there. I thought I was going to die, but the next day I woke up. I stayed there for a few hours, trying to get my bearings. It was cloudy, and I wasn’t sure which way was west and which east. So, I just sat there and waited the rest of the day for the sun to go down. It was boring as hell, but finally I was able to make out the sun going down in the direction I thought west was, so that was good. And I went back to sleep.

Felt a lot better that next day, but I needed water, so I rode to Bethune first thing and drank my fill right out of the creek there. Probably not the best course of action, but it hadn’t hurt me before and it didn’t then, neither. Made it into Vona that day and the next few days just kept making progress. I ran out of eggs the day after Limon, and was precious low on parched corn and hard tack a few days later when got near to Denver.

I remember riding into Denver with you on the back of the bike. It was always after dusk before we made it even remotely close to to the city, and you could always see it from almost an hour away. Just the buzzy glow of it, of course, all that light bouncing off the front range and back to the east. It always amazed me, especially when we woke up the next day in the city and saw the sky for what it really was – a thick, brown, smoggy mess. The local bar flies always said it was dust in the air kicked up by the wind, not pollution, but what the hell ever. (Sky never stopped us from having a good time, though, remember?) Well, this time was a bit different. It was mid-day, and I had my head down and was pushing so hard against the wind just to make headway, I hardly even took a look the sky as I got into eyeshot of the city. Well, I finally saw a faded green roadsign that said I-470 exit whatever it was, five miles, and took a swig out of what was left of my water and wiped the sweat out of my eyes. And there that sky was, but it looked so different. You could see clearly all the way west, to the mountains!

In hindsight, I probably ought to have taken more time and soaked in that view, but I was a bit nervous about being still while on the road. Basically boiled down to that I didn’t want to get in trouble with or even see Rod’s bosses, whoever they were, so I took the interstate bypass road, I-470, down southwest towards Parker just hoping they weren’t situated that far out of the town center to notice. That’s where I spent my first couple nights, and I was able to scavenge a bit of food out of an abandoned house down that way. I’m not proud of it, but cold canned soup had never tasted so good. I even slept inside those nights, and it was sweet.

I felt a bit stronger after spending a couple days there – whoever had ditched that place (or maybe got stuck somewhere far away) had done so real quick and carelessly, ‘cause there was still some serious dried and canned goods stocked there – even some freeze dried instant coffee! Also some booze, but with God as my witness I didn’t touch it. (I didn’t dare open the fridge – I’d heard too many horror stories about doing that, and it had an odor even with the door closed.) The house was really on the far southeast outskirts of the city. There were some bare concrete slabs just to the south of it. Probably houses that got started but not finished before everything went dark. No wood there – figure that there probably was but people took it for fuel. (That’s what happened with all the construction under way in east Wichita.)

So after I was rested up, I started looking for Sean. I decided to use that house as a home location, of sorts. I had the address you sent me, and still had that photo of him, so after taking most the junk off the bike – wanted to look most like a local as I could – I planned to just ride into the city to find the address and then, if Sean wasn’t there, a public place where I could ask around. Not much of a plan, in hindsight... but I never tried anything like this before.

Before leaving, I took another look at the little map I’d drawn of Denver, and realized I would never be able to find the address with it, so I rummaged around the house I’d been squatting in and found an old yellow pages and ripped the map parts out of it after circling Sean’s address nearest I could find it and drawing a route from where I was pretty sure I was.

It was clear as a bell when I left the house in the morning. The whole city was so quiet as I rode up the highway through the other suburbs. I saw maybe a couple dozen people stirring outside as I rode, cooking breakfast over wood fire in grills or hanging out laundry or weeding their gardens. So few people, though. I know it was almost like Wichita and... other cities now. Well, the few folks that looked at me gave me odd little doubletakes, like it was obvious I didn’t belong, even though I really had tried to blend in. Thought maybe it was my beard.

By the time I made it through Aurora and Glendale and then into Denver proper, though, the sky had clouded over and looked real nasty. There was lightning off above the mountains. I had left my poncho with the rest of the stuff I’d taken off the bike, like a knucklehead – but then, are there any forecasts anywhere anymore? – and an hour later I was almost soaked, even though it had only rained about ten minutes. I hopped off before everything on me was completely wet and hid beneath the overhang of an old strip mall storefront. It was coming down in buckets a few minutes afterwards, and I felt lucky I stopped when I had. Not that it would have made a big difference to me, ‘cause my clothes were already pretty much soaked through, but it’s a big pain to ride in that stuff. I propped my back up against the storefront wall and sat straight down, then immediately felt a stiffness in my chest. Well, I realized in a second what was wrong, and pulled out the map pages, which were completely soaked and stuck together and ruined.

I set the pages down and just sat there for the better part of a half hour with my head in my hands, when out the corner of my eye I saw someone come out the front of one of the shop doors a ways down. It alarmed me, ‘cause I thought the whole place was abandoned, but it was a little old lady, at least sixty years old. She didn’t even pay me any mind, just walked over to the corner of the overhang to a big bucket – which had just started overflowing – at the bottom of the gutter there. She had a little trouble getting it out from under the gutter spout, so I walked over to help her out with it. Soon as I grabbed the bucket she let out a squawk that it belonged to her and I couldn’t have it. Well, I didn’t know any better. Said I was just trying to help, and she eyed me real close for almost a minute I thought – felt that long, anyway – and then nodded and pointed at the bucket. I hauled it to the door for her – had a little trouble myself, ‘cause it really was damn heavy – and made to take it inside, but she stopped me and half-grunted to me to put it down. Said OK, and had an idea, so I asked her if she had a yellow pages. She eyed me again, like I had a dick growing out of my forehead, and finally said yeah and to come in. I started walking in but she stopped me again and pointed at the bucket. Jesus, you know?

So, I hauled in the bucket for her and she pointed at a door through which to take it. I did, and saw almost a dozen other identical buckets, and half of them were filled. I walked back out and took a good look around. Couldn’t tell what kind of store it used to be – maybe a furniture store, ‘cause it was so big in area, and there were planters stuck all over the place, and the overhead lighting was a bunch of skylights. At a second glance I saw that there were plants in the planters. Most of them looked like regular crops: lots of corn, beans, some tomatoes and chilies, and even some onions or garlic, I don’t know. A few other plants I didn’t really recognize right away. I about jumped out of my skin a second later, as the old lady had snuck up behind me and pinched me. Freaked me out, I don’t mind telling you. She laughed this nasty, throaty laugh and ushered me back to an office-type room. The yellow pages were at a desk and open to the map section in the front. I sat down and tracked down again vaguely where Sean was located and then asked the lady where we were. She flipped a couple pages and pointed one of the boniest fingers I ever seen at an intersection, just northwest of a bigger intersection at I-25 and highway 36.

I asked her how long it’d take me to get up to Holiday Hills. Well, she gave me yet another one of those looks and I felt myself shiver. Said it would take too long to make it up there that day, said it would be better to wait out the rain and go the next day. Then she leaned really close to me, so close I could smell her. She stank like hell and I shrank away from her. Recognized then both what she had in mind and part of the odor and realized what she was growing out in the main room. I fell over backwards in my chair and scrambled up and sprinted out the door to the bike. She followed me and squawked out fuck you and you’ll be sorry and other things I couldn’t hear or understand at the time. The rain had almost blown over, clouds breaking up to the west, but it was still showering lightly as I got on I-25.

I took the highway 36 exit as it afforded a high point, and I thought I could use it to orient myself. So, I looked over towards where I figured Holiday Hills should be. There was hardly anything there but scorched earth. The whole area west of I-25 and north of highway 36 almost as far as I could see was just a nasty black field with scattered patches of grey and green. A good little bit of the city south of 36 was blackened, too. I couldn’t believe my eyes, thought it was an optical illusion or something, but kept riding north from the 36 interchange. Past that, the southbound lanes on I-25 looked really rough, like they’d been melted and cracked open over the winter or something. I took an exit off I-25 around Thornton and headed west to see if I could still locate Sean’s place.

There was just ruins down that way. Every single house and apartment and trailer had burned down. I kept riding down to Holiday Hills, to the little avenue where I was pretty sure Sean’s place was. All of them, burned down, and there wasn’t a soul anywhere nearby. The smell of the whole area was just... I can’t describe it, and when I thought about what might be causing it I got real dizzy and had to sit down. I hadn’t been tempted to look for a drink in the better part of five years, but just then I’d have sold my soul for one, or maybe a joint or just anything to take the world away.

Well, I don’t know how long I sat there, and I can’t say exactly why I got back up. But I did. And I rode on back to the interstate, trying to not look at anything but the street. I finally got back to heading south towards the house. The interstate really was cracked up bad down to 36, but I made it through. Just south of there I saw a few other folks, kids really, heading north. They started hooting and hollering at me to stop, but I just kept pressing on. That wasn’t the best idea, as they turned around and caught up to me in just a minute or two. A couple of them had bats in hand and looked like they were itching for a reason to put them to use. The leader, maybe he was the leader, I guess I’m not real sure, asked me what the hell I thought I was doing on that bike. I didn’t figure it’d do to lie to this group, so I told them I was from Wichita and in town looking for my stepson. Told them where I’d looked today. I half-expected them to start jeering at me and start a beat down, but they all got real quiet. One of the other ones piped up and said, real gentle-like, that I’d probably ought to call off my search, as the fire had started in the middle of the night and nobody in the area had lived through it. He also said I’d either have to get out of town or stop using the bike, as the city bosses only let a few people – including themselves, of course – use them, and that they couldn’t guarantee they’d be so nice next time they saw me on one... or that another group would be nice at all. None of them volunteered any more info, and I didn’t want to press. Might have been ugly, especially for me.

So I rode back down to the house, and by the time I got there the sun was almost down. Forgot how fast it gets dark once that sun’s at the top of the mountains. Couldn’t bring myself to look at the sunset. I ate maybe two ravioli out of a can then took a hard look at the booze there in the cabinet but the thought of drinking it made me feel sick to my stomach, so I laid down on the abandoned bed and tried to not think about anything. I guess I must have fell asleep at some point, but I woke up feeling as tired as I’d ended the day before. Well, I went downstairs and ate the rest of the can of ravioli, then thought about heading back into town to look a bit more for Sean, despite the risks and fact that I’d seen... what I’d seen the day prior. Went outside to gauge the weather and saw that the bike’s tires were slashed. And, on the door of the garage someone had written, “SQUATTER GO HOME!” in red paint. I thought a minute on why they’d slash my tires when they want me to get out of town, but got lightheaded again and went back inside.

Well, at that point I figured there wasn’t any point in trying to stick around any longer, so I stuffed as much of the canned and dried goods as I could into my backpack, especially the coffee. There was a couple bikes inside the garage that had the same kind of tubes and tires as the bike I was riding, so I replaced the tubes and tires and took the others as spares. (Maybe the person(s) who did the slashing knew there were more bikes in there... didn’t really care to find out.) Stuck the rest of the crap I’d taken off before back on the bike, and left as quickly and quietly as I could.

It was clouding up again by the time I hit the exit for I-70 east, maybe early afternoon, then started raining about a half hour later. Caught me off guard – I hadn’t even looked back as I left the city. I rode through it, even though there was lightning strikes just to the south of me about every five minutes. Probably should have stopped, but I wasn’t thinking too straight that day. Couple hours later it had passed me by and the sun came out. I was in Bennett a while after that, and figured it was as good a place as any to rack out. Next day I made it into Limon, with just a little bit of rain in the afternoon. Despite what had happened in Denver, I was riding much faster than before. I suppose it was having the wind at my back, pushing me on... well, something had to be.

Truth be told, I had completely changed my mind about what I was going to do. I figured it would be best to just not go back to Wichita at all. Instead, I’d ride all the way to Kansas City, where I could see you and explain things. I hadn’t thought past that point, but hoped something halfway positive would come out of it. After all, we’ve got history, you know. So that’s what was motivating me, what was really pushing me.

A couple days out of Limon I was just about to Burlington. I stopped in Bethune there for the rest of the day, then got up at dusk and waited. Once it got late enough, must have been the wee hours of the morning, I hopped on the bike and pedaled quietly as I could into Burlington. I couldn’t stop pedaling because that would make a noise, and I didn’t want to be heard. So I went through town there as quickly and quietly as possible. Well, there was a guard shack of some kind on the eastern end of town, just after the spot where I was initially waylaid. A torch or candle was lit in the shack, and someone was sitting outside in a chair. I couldn’t very well turn back at that point, so I just kept on going like it was nobody’s business. The guard was asleep, or at least, he had his eyes closed. I kept pedaling, and was past him. I relaxed a bit but kept pedaling, then about a half a minute later I heard a “HEY!” At that point I knew I’d been found out and just started going flat out. A minute or so after that I heard a couple whistling noises go by, one just to the southeast and south of me. I started getting lightheaded but pressed on for as long as I possibly could, which was about ten minutes. I slowed down a bit, but kept pedaling until I really blacked out. Couldn’t tell you how long it was before that, or how long I was out. But I had a pretty good scrape my head when I came to, as the sun was just coming up, and was in a real steep ditch just off the interstate. Well I scrambled up the side of the ditch best I could and peeked out to see if anyone was watching. Nobody was in sight, so I hauled the bike back up to the road, hopped back on and kept at it. I was in Goodland by the end of the day, so I must have been making decent headway.

I probably should have just gotten off the interstate and taken some country roads around. But the rains had kept up and it would have been a godawful mess just hauling the bike up to a country road where there was no exit. Not to mention that the country roads probably weren’t in very good shape, as from what I saw they were almost all dirt and gravel. That and I hadn’t been thinking real straight since before Denver.

A day or two after, I had stopped in Oakley mid-afternoon. It had started raining real hard and I just didn’t have the energy to go much further that day. So, I squatted out by an old Montana Mike’s steakhouse. An hour or so later a cyclist pulled up. I’d heard him a minute before and hidden myself. He knew what was what, though, and called out to me. Said he’d seen my tracks leading into the parking lot. I stayed hid, but he kept calling me out and said he meant no harm. He didn’t look real tough, so I finally walked out to meet him. Young guy, said he was a “special courier” for some folks in Denver, heading into Lawrence to make a delivery. I didn’t ask him any further about that. But, seeing as how we were going the same way, I asked if he wanted to ride together. He shrugged and kind of agreed, and we left out the next day.

We rode along with each other for several days. The kid was really in shape, probably wanted to go faster. But, I had a bunch of canned and dried goods yet, and so he kept pace with me. It kept raining on us pretty steadily, only one real day of decent sun, between WaKeeney and Hays.

Well, we were riding and were maybe ten or so miles west from Salina when the courier spotted a group of five or six guys coming north, just over a ridge south of the interstate. Just as they crested the ridge, one of the men let out a war whoop and waved his hands, obviously trying to get our attention. Through the rain, it looked like they were carrying something like a big box. As they got closer, we figured out it was a man, and that he was pretty seriously injured. You could hear the moans from fifty yards away. Well, at that point, the courier said he’d ride on ahead and let a doc in town know to expect company pretty soon. He was out of sight in two minutes – so damn fast. Wasn’t sure at that point whether he was really going to alert folks or just to get the hell out of dodge in case the men weren’t the friendly sort.

The men came up on me pretty damn quick. There were eight of them, and they were almost completely silent except for the one moaning until they reached me. One of them said “our friend is hurt”, or words like that in pretty broken English. They were all Mexican except for the one being carried. He was a blonde kid, not even thirty I bet. Probably just a couple years older than Sean... his leg was splinted and cinched tight with leather straps and he had a black eye and a bump on his forehead, and they were carrying him with leather straps supporting him from below. It was a fucking mess. They pointed at the bike and I immediately understood what they wanted. I resisted for about a half a second, but the kid being carried moaned again, and he said “mama”. Well... I just let go of the bike, didn’t even think about taking my own stuff off it. Just let them have it. They said “Gracias” almost in unison, put the kid on the bike best they could and turned east towards Salina. They moved a bit quicker than me, of course, and were out of sight within ten minutes or so. I hoofed it as long as I could, almost into town. There was a farm barn on the outskirts, and it was really dry inside and there was even some dry hay, so I took off my soaking wet clothes and rolled up in that and fell asleep.

And that’s where I am now. Well, Salina. I made it into town yesterday. Somehow found the courier – actually, I got found out by him. He really did help out, let a local surgeon know the men were coming into town. I wanted to get moving on from there, but the courier said he didn’t know where my bike was. Said he heard a couple of the men tussled over it after getting the kid into the doc’s place. One of them won out and took off, couldn’t say which way.

Well, that was that, pretty much. I didn’t figure it was realistic any more that I could make it to you in KC without a bike. I asked, really begged the courier to stick around another day. He did under duress – and a threat by me that I’d tell some local folks what he was hauling (a bluff by me that actually worked for once). So, I been sitting in an emptied out Wal-Mart all afternoon and evening writing this to you on whatever I could scrape together. Figured you should at least know what happened.

Not sure where to go from here. I suppose I can scavenge up some supplies to get me on my way south. Maybe beg off some more flour from the local Methodists.

Well, regardless, I have a 90-mile walk ahead of me, and it’s raining. Hope things are better for you in Kansas City. If I get dizzy again and never come out of it, please know that you’ll be the last thing I think about before it all goes black.

All that’s left of my love,

Sam

P.S. - I’m sorry this letter was so long... I just wanted you to know that I didn’t half-ass this whole thing like the everything I did before you left. I tried so hard this time and, there’s not much else I can say except I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.