The flatness of the Midwest dominated travel across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and the stunted panhandle of Pennsylvania. The great industrial cities of Gary, Toledo, Cleveland, and Erie were connected by I-90. Summer was at its height, as my good friend, AK, and I hitchhiked east from San Diego. We had experienced 135 degrees Fahrenheit in Needles, California. Wind devils had chased our trail across New Mexico. The sky across Nebraska was the color of an over-boiled potato.

It was late-June 1974.

Every day seemed hotter than the one before. Rides were hard to find. We were longhairs. Our last bath had been in Tulsa. The previous night we had slept in a cornfield off Route 66. I was so drunk from drinking moonshine with three ex-cons from Oklahoma that I had crashed on the cold earth. My stained jeans looked like I had been picking cotton for weeks and my face wore a sheet of dust. Motorists slowed down to pick us up, then sped up upon seeing my scarecrow apparition. We were stuck on the right side of Buffalo with four hours left of daylight.

“Stand behind me or else we’ll never get a ride.” AK had saved a clean change of clothing and at the last truck washed his face, while I slept in the back of a pick-up truck.

“We could always stop at Jackie’s place.” My ex-girlfriend lived in Buffalo. She had dropped me for a high school sweetheart. I hadn’t spoken with her for a half year.

“She’s probably back at school and I doubt her parents want two smelly hippies knocking on their door.” The New Yorker was only interested in getting to Boston. His girlfriend was waiting for him on the South Shore. He had a music teaching gig starting in a week.

“No, I doubt they would want that.” The Summer of Love had been over for years. Richard Nixon was president. The Silent Majority was in power. I stepped behind AK and stuck out my thumb.

Twenty minutes later a semi-trailer pulled over to the shoulder. The driver was deadheading to Gloucester. His return load was frozen fish for the people of the Plains. He had been driving this route ten times a month for five years.

“I can drive it with my eyes closed.”

“Me too.” I crawled into the back to sleep, while AK played his Kalimba for the 41 year-old trucker. He played a surreal LIGHT MY FIRE on the African thumb piano and I didn’t wake until twenty miles west of Albany.

“Be in Beantown within two hours.” The driver drawled with a mouth filled with chaw. He spat out the wad and wiped the spittle with the back of his hand. The Kenworth was humming at 75.

“Two hours.” I had graduated from college in May. My only job prospect was driving a cab. No banks wanted an economics major with a sin laude diploma. I had celebrated my 22nd birthday in Reno. A winner at blackjack until I had my first glass of bourbon.

Now I had $20 in my wallet and three cans of beans. I pulled out a map of Northern New England. My eyes plotted out an alternative route to the Interstate. Everything became very clear.

The air blowing in the open window was humid. The temperature was dropping under 90. I tapped AK on the shoulder. We had been together most of the month. “You mind if I get out at Troy?”

“Troy?” AK screwed up his face in disbelief. People had been abandoning the Collar City for decades. The population was down 25% from its height in the 1950s. There was nothing there.

“No one gets out at Troy.” The driver regarded the lingering light of the day. The sun was 50 minutes shy of the western horizon. Darkness was no man’s friend in a crime-ridden city like Troy.

“I’m not staying in Troy. I’m heading into the mountains.” The higher altitude of the White Mountains were cooler than the lowlands.

“At this time of night?” AK had someplace to go. Someone was waiting for him.

“I’ll find someplace to sleep.” I had nowhere to go other than my parents’ house south of the Neponset River, but they would be just as happy to see me in five days as tonight. “Drop me at the Troy exit.”

“It’s your life.” The driver shook his head and AK paralleled the side to side movement.

“You sure about this?” AK was a good musician. His fingers magic on the keyboards.

“I’ll see you in a few days.” Our cross-country trip had its share of highs and a small percentage of lows. LSD on Black’s Beach. Lust-hungry lesbians in Big Sur. Driving across the Rockies. Beer at the Id Lounge in Roosevelt, Utah. Drinks with the Spear sisters in Tulsa. Losing $2000 in Reno. Bourbon and cards don’t mix even on your birthday.

We laughed at the quick retelling of our adventures. The driver put on the radio. POPCORN was playing one more time. It was a big hit for the second summer in a row. The Kenworth downshifted to the exit. I climbed down from the cab. The driver tooted his horn and AK waved from the passenger side. I walked off the highway and stuck out my thumb. No one stopped for me and I picked up my bag to hike the short distance to Route 4. A SS Chevelle stopped within three minutes. The long-haired driver was heading north to Vermont.

We smoked weed and listened to the Allman Brothers LIVE AT THE FILMORE on his 8-track. He loved hearing about my orgy with the lesbians in Big Sur. The driver told me his name was Earl. I told him a few more tales of the road without mentioning the menage a trois in LA with a straight man and his wife. The passenger seat of his muscle car was not a confessional. The sun set late. It was five days past the summer solstice.

“Sky’s looking funny.” Earl pointed west. The clouds were darkening the dusk. “Looks like rain. You want to come north to Burlington.”

“No, I’ll jump out at Route 4.” This road led over the Green Mountains to Killington. “I’m not worried about a little rain.”

“Suit yourself.” Earl gave me two joints of Acapulco Gold at my departure spot. There was no light left in the west and the sky overhead was starless. A few drops of rain struck my face. A farmer stopped in a pick-up. He was going to Mendon. It wasn’t on my map. Within five minutes his windshield wipers were swishing back and forth at top speed. The rain was hard. The air was cold.

“I’d invite you home, but my wife don’t like strangers. Sorry.” The farmer dropped me atop the pass. The rain was torrential and lightning scorched the black night. No cars were out in this weather. A flash revealed a house in the woods. I ran for cover. The two-story house was dark. I shined my flashlight inside. It looked abandoned and I tried the door.

It was locked from the inside.

Lightning struck the treetops. Sulphur filled my nose. I wrapped my fist with a towel and smashed the window of the door. I shouted out ‘hello’. The word died in the kitchen. No one had lived in this house for years, but the roof kept out the rain. I found an upstairs bedroom with a mattress on the floor. I spread my sleeping bag on it and then stripped off my clothes. The rain was cold, but within seconds washed most of the dirt off my body. I entered the house shivering and toweled myself dry.

I found several candles and lit them in the bedroom. I opened a can of beans with my Swiss Army knife. They tasted okay cold. Anything does to a hungry man. I smoked a little grass and pondered my universe. I was 22 years-old. My university degree guaranteed no future. I was good-looking in a Neanderthal way. I inhaled a last puff of weed and slipped into my sleeping bag. The rain pounded the roof with a relentless rattle. The lightning shook the walls. I fell asleep several seconds after blowing out the candles. I was not scared of the dark and not even of tomorrow.

Something awoke me several hours later. The rain was stopped completely, although the wet was dripping from holes in the roof. I heard a noise. Loud and almost animal. A grunting timbered by a growl. I reached for my Swiss Army knife.

A bear was in the house.

I had left the door open.

The beast had smelled my beans.

The growl grew louder. The bear was on the second-floor. The bestial slavering increased in rapidity almost as if the bear was hyperventilating on nitrous-oxide. My right hand tightened on the knife, as I escaped from the warm cocoon of the sleeping bag. A rabid snarl echoed from the hallway. The bear was not alone either. A smaller creature was at its mercy. A mewing deer. Murder was murder even in the animal kingdom and I encircled my left arm with a towel. Bears had claws. I breathed deeply three times and pulled open the door.

The flashlight revealed nothing in the hallway.

The snorting terror was two doors down. The door was ajar. The runting fever pace accelerated in chorus with the alto panting. I pushed the door open and the flashlight beam fell on a naked couple in coitus. The young girl was a hippie. The man too. She looked like a runaway. The man my age. They saw me at the same time.

A man with a knife.

The girl screamed with her eyes closed.

“No, no, no, no.” I dropped the knife on the floor and quickly explained how I thought they were two animals hunting me. I told them that I had pot. The man had a bottle of cheap wine. We sat up for an hour telling stories of the road. The young girl was atypical of the women traveling with communes. Long straight hair, skinny body, piercing gaze. She had seen her share of promises throughout her young life. I figured her for 17. She said her name was Shane. Her tale was of Woodstock, Berkeley, Sedona, and Austin. Shane lived for the road. It was her home.

“Like the cowboy movie.” The man was from Kansas. Ray was heading for Maine to fish the Grand Banks. He had a bad left eye. A scar bisected his face. He was no hippie, only a long-hair. “Never seen the ocean before, but I work hard.”

I wished them good-night and returned to my bedroom, bracing the mattress against the door. The Manson Family had its imitators. I slept uneasily through the short hours until dawn. The sun was streaming through the pines and the air was fresh and clean. A good time of day to start on the road. I creeped down the hallway.

“Is that you?” Shane’s timid voice called from the room off the hallway.

“Yes, I’m heading into the White Mountains.”

“Could you help me?”

“Help you how?” I pushed the door inward. Shane was lying on the floor naked. Ray was nowhere in sight.

“Ray took everything.” She wasn’t the type of girl to cry. Her body was too young to be sorry about a bad decision. This must have happened to her more than once before. Hippie girls were everyone’s victim. “You have something for me to wear?”

“Nothing that would fit.”

“Better than a birthday suit.”

I rummaged through my bag. She swam in my tee-shirt. My towel was her shirt. We shared a can of beans. She touched my hand as thanks. It was getting late.

“We better go. We don’t want the police to find us here.”

“You mind if I join you.” Shane pushed her blonde hair from her face. She knew where she was going and she knew where I was going too. The White Mountains were fine this time of year and $20 could last a week if we were careful of the bears.

They ate everything.