“Is this a good time to stop? Are there things unresolved, I mean other than those things that will remain unresolved forever? Because I see how it may be possible to not stop yet, and maybe resolve some things, and come to a better end at a better time? Or, maybe, not stop in such a way that it never actually stops? Or it is a situation where stopping is long past due -should have stopped weeks ago?” These were heady questions, but she seemed like an attentive and wise bartender, so I asked.

“Makes no difference to me,” answered the inattentive bartender.

“That’s why you’re the perfect person to answer. It would sure help me to know what your observations are, and how they inform the decisions I face,” I said, pretending she was attentive and wise.

“Observations? I’m not paying that kind of attention. They’re your decisions.” She said these things with humor. We were both playing along.

“Yes, but you’d think as a person in the world, you may have some insight. Something to share. I’d be curious and grateful to know what you think. But by all means, don’t help.” I waited for her retort.

“I don’t even understand the nature of your indecision, but if you really want my opinion, I think perhaps you need one more drink, and then I suggest you get yourself home and have a long sleep. I also recommend you try tipping better.”

I was less certain now that she was playing along. “Alright, fine, you convinced me,” I said. “One more and I’m on my way. Although I am disappointed. I was trying to figure out if you were enjoying my company; to see if you wanted me to hang out with you while you closed the place down for the night.”

“I want to close in peace, meaning alone, and then go home for some peace, meaning alone. If I’m being honest, I did enjoy the first several minutes of your company, but then you got weird, which was cute for another few minutes, and then you became so weird that I’m finding myself questioning even having this job. I’m too well educated to be talking to people like you. Here’s your drink. Now go sit somewhere else. Go make a friend to take home with you. Maybe you’ll meet a psychic you can ask your big questions to. But as for me, I’m done. Finished with you, and finished with this shitty job.” She was clearly being flirtatious.

“But what if this is the best place you’ll ever work? Suddenly, after talking with a charming patron, you’re willing to just walk away? Because of some asshole libra at the bar? I’m very worried that I drove you to the brink of a poor decision. We can talk it over, I’d be happy to offer my advice. But first, can we please change the music?”

“You don’t enjoy Taylor Swift?”

“Enjoy Taylor Swift, I do not. Good observation. I feel like we know one another.”

“What do you want to listen to?”

“Something about love at second sight.”

“So, like, Justin Timberlake?”

“Put on some Janet Jackson. Janet always inspires redemption. What’s your name?”

“Alexandra,” she answered.

“There is no way that’s your name.”

“Yes, but you’ll call me Alexandra, and I’ll call you…..”

“Wonderful, I’ll give you my phone number,” I said.

“I meant, what is your name? I won’t be needing your number tonight or ever.”

“Rick….. Shaw. Rick Shaw is my name,” I lied.

“Lier.”

“If you would have carded me you would know for sure. You’d also know that I’m not old enough to drink.”

“You, sir, are definitely old enough to drink, and that is the one and only observation I’ll make about you tonight.”

“Make another. One more observation. For the road.”

“You’re not from here.”

“Guessed the bartender at a hotel bar! Brilliant, but you cheated. Just give me one real observation, and make it a good one. Please. I need it.”

“You’re needy,” she shot back.

She wasn’t wrong. “Well, Alexandra, thank you for chatting with me. Listen, I’m a bit drunk and I fear I’m being obnoxious. I’m out of sorts.”

“Call me Lexi. And don’t worry. You’re fine. In the event you’re flirting with me, you should know I have a girlfriend.”

“Oh dear. I’ve been creepy, haven’t I? I’m not hitting on you.”

“Good, because I wasn’t looking forward to being the one to tell you that you’re as gay as the day is long.” She finally smiled.

We both laughed, and I felt relaxed for the first time in a while. Lexi and I were the only people in the bar. If not for this fact, I would not have been talking to her so much. I’m not chatty. There is a lot on my mind. I had begun to think it was a mistake to drive across country alone like this. The lonesomeness was not as inspiring as I had hoped. Inspiration comes in like a wave, and it leaves like a wave, so I’m riding a wave across America in a Honda. Anyhow it is good to try to meet people. Seeing America this way is an opportunity to meet Americans. After two days of driving, this is the first I’ve made an effort to meet anyone.

Lexi was wiping down the bar. “You’re staying at the hotel?” she asked.

“I am. It’s nice. I mean, I feel like it is stuck in another century, but It’s cool.” The hotel itself was, at 12 stories, the tallest building in town. It was an older building, formerly glamorous, although you could see that refurbishments were made without any reverence for its potential as an historic landmark.

“It is an historic landmark.” Lexi is a mind-reader. “I’ve been working here since I graduated from Oberlin last spring,” she said.

“What did you study?”

“Classical violin,” she answered proudly. “My plan is to move to Cleveland for graduate school. Play gigs there, perhaps teach lessons. And what do you do, Rick Shaw?”

I had already forgotten my made-up name. “Call me James. I’m a teacher. I’m starting a new job in Portland in the fall, and I’m driving there presently from New York.”

“Why Portland?”

“I needed to go somewhere, and I was offered a Job in Portland. I guess you could say I’m fleeing after a bad breakup.”

Lexi asked, “a breakup with a boy or with the city?”

“All of it. I’m worn out by everything.”

“Hey do you want to join me down the street? I’m meeting some folks at a our local watering hole. It’s called Fun Bar. It’s our queer spot. The only one for miles.” Lexi was closing the register and washing the very few glasses used this evening. Most of them were mine.

“Is it…… fun? Sorry, yes I think that would be……great.”

We set out to walk from the hotel bar to the Fun Bar. We walked past buildings similar to the hotel, with the same combination of old glamour and new failure. Most of the storefronts were empty, and we were the only people on the streets. A law office, a coffee shop, a smoke shop, a jewelry store- indicators that during the day there was a little life here. There were many tall trees, and the sidewalks were made from an attractive, bumpy brick. This town had the asset of a beautiful Victorian downtown and limited means to appreciate it. Lexi was telling me about how the shopping mall, 12 miles away, effectively took business away from town, and that now the mall also stands almost empty. She called it a monument to suburban sadness. Her sister peddles cosmetics at the only remaining department store, where the rumor of imminent closure casts anxiety over the otherwise bourgeois perfume department. We approached an intersection dominated by beaux arts buildings, miniature but stately. A library, an empty bank, a gorgeous old theater cannibalized by a megachurch, a post office-turned-brewery. Lexi tells me that the brewery draws a good crowd but they close at 9:00 PM, so anyone wanting to be out among people may go to few pubs with live music, or go to Fun Bar, where we had just arrived. It was screamingly anonymous, no windows, no rainbows, but there were skinny boys smoking outside and music pulsing from within. “Quintessential,” I heard myself say.

We walked into the bar, and about fifteen people gave us a quick glance before returning to their conversations. The music wasn’t too loud, thankfully, because it was bad, treble-heavy, pop. The bar was hot and stuffy, with a refreshing musty draft coming from somewhere above. It smelled like a suburban basement. In the far corner, there were misguided attempts at a 1990s martini bar vibe, complete with a few tripped out disco lights over a small, empty dance floor. Fancy. I preferred the rustic-basement part of the bar, and this is where the bartender sat, not so much presiding as occupying, melded into the stool she sat upon. You wouldn’t dare order a drink that required her to stand up. She immediately greeted Lexi and began asking all about me. Her name was Wendy, a name way more dainty than her affect. She was in her 60s and was enthusiastically welcoming. Her eyes were friendly but tired. She was dressed as if it were bedtime at home. Her conversation was generic, but it was genuine; within 5 minutes you’re Wendy’s friend for life, although you will know very little about her beyond good gossip. She pointed out a guy named Robert because he used to live in Brooklyn. She suggested we’d have lots to talk about. Ned was an artist who runs a community art school through the local Methodist Church. Jennie was straight but eccentric, and here at Fun Bar almost every night. There was a small group of boys from an even more rural town 45 miles away. Matthew was a beloved town lawyer who wore leather gear any time he came in. He has two children from an ill-advised first marriage.

Wendy started telling me a bit about the place with the same love and fascination as if she was describing a son or daughter. Open since 1985, the bar was a home for gay men who would travel many miles to make friends with fellow rural outcasts. Local gays avoided the place; reputations could be ruined if a local teacher, policemen, or clergy, any of the neutered saints of the community, were seen at the bar. The place had been vandalized a few times during the first few years. People were angry and afraid about the mystery of AIDS and focused their efforts on harassing the bar itself but not the patrons- mostly because nobody would go near them. So much changed in the late 1990s. Kids from the local private college and the state technical school frequented the place. Rebellious high school kids would come to dance. Straight women felt more comfortable here than most places. Nowadays, anyone will go to a gay bar, but nobody really goes to bars anymore, so business remains about the same as it has always been. Some nights there are 50 people here. Many nights, it’s just Wendy and Jennie. There are still people in town who think it is a place for evil doers, but Wendy feels bad for them because the bigots are outcasts too these days, and for that reason alone she would welcome them here.

It was a cozy place, and I was happy that I found it. I was thankful to have met Lexi, who was sitting at a table with friends. I was sitting at the bar for a few minutes taking in the scene. Everyone looks a little tired, and it is not because it is after midnight. People look as tired here as they have at the gas stations I’ve used and the stores I’ve shopped in. There is a generalization formulating in my mind, and I hope it isn’t judgemental to say, but there is a small-town exhaustion that is identifiable to the traveler from the coast. I’m accustomed to the urban-tired. It looks adrenal, everyone surviving on stimulation, like large crowds of people are riding the same wave of unhealthy motivation. The rural-tired is more existential. It’s rooted in low expectations and puritan values that are exhausting, as if everyone has chosen to carry the same invisible boulders. I’m tired of being urban-tired. I am finished with its agitation and dissatisfaction. But there is something in the eyes of the small-town-exhausted that feels like judgement, as if they’ve noticed that you have chosen to not carry their invisible boulders. Even if I acquired this look in my own eyes, I would not be accepted among these people, not equally, never fully. We all choose what exhausts us. I guess the same is true of what energizes us. I don’t want to be energized or exhausted by the impossibly high/low standards of the small town. Which is a shame, because this is where I came from.

I was drinking more than I normally would, teetering on the beginning stage of drunk. It was helping me to be social and I felt better than I had in awhile. I was feeling generous toward these chance companions, so I offered a round of shots to Lexi and her friends, and that was when I realized that most of them had not been drinking at all. They were in recovery, and were heroes to me instantly. I sat down with Lexi’s people and listened. They were funny, and they were kind to each other. They talked ruthless trash about other people, but always in service of a good laugh. I don’t know what they thought of me. I was accidentally snobby, too observant, too much in my head with my broad generalizations. It was obvious that I was receiving special attention from Robert, who was curious and sweet, and he knew my neighborhood in Brooklyn well. He was in town to care for his mother; he was distracted and low until we began to discuss music and then he was animated and flirty. I was much more comfortable talking one on one, and so Robert’s friends faded into the background, some started dancing a little bit and others moved to the bar to chat with Wendy.

Robert and I went out for a cigarette, and ended up taking a walk around the block. The streets were mostly empty and I suspected it was not safe to be out. Robert appeared quite comfortable as he pointed out some of the architectural interests of this declining, noble downtown. He was observant too, and clearly had been looking at these streets pretending that this district was the city he had always dreamed of, and he couldn’t understand how an entire community could neglect the center of their own town. We walked past a particularly beautiful office building with a cornerstone marker from 1840. Robert told me it was done by the same architect that built many of the region’s ornate homes. His buildings continue to hold their charm but most of them are neglected or abandoned. Sturdy things though, they survive the abandonment better than buildings built 20 years ago. They were built by a country that envisioned a long future.

We were walking and looking around. “Wendy told me you were here taking care of your mother.”

“Of course she did,” he laughed. It looked like he had more to say but he was lost in thought, looking down now. He looked at me and asked, “did she mention that my mom disowned me about 12 years ago?”

“Oh god, no,” I said. “Is she speaking to you now?”

“Barely,” he answered. “It is awkward enough, but she’s made it a needless humiliation. Her only son, the only child willing and able to bathe her, is a dirty homosexual.”

“Goodness.”

“Lexi says I’m a saint.”

“I’ve known Lexi two hours and I’ve seen her bestow the sainthood on a few people and a dog. In this case I agree with her fully.”

“Some of Mom’s church friends visit us at the hospital. They won’t speak to me, or if they do, they tell me bullshit about how sad I made my family. One of them, a very crazy old woman, said I’m murdering my Mom, minute by minute. Others are very nice. My sister points out, over and over, that I’m a good caretaker. My mother admits to my sister that I must have been good at my job. And I am. I’m a great nurse, and I’m glad she gets to witness it because I imagine she has one good thing to think about if she ever thinks about me. If I could have spared her the pain she caused our family, I would have, but if a person isn’t willing to parent all of their children….” he trailed off.

“Do you have friends here?” I asked. “Who is taking care of you?”

“I have Lex. We’ve been close since elementary school. I have Wendy in the way everyone has Wendy. She’s been an angel. I have a support group at the hospital.”

“Church?” I asked.

“It’s sad, but I’m weary of the church people in this town. My mother belongs to a church whose only doctern is homophobia. It’s the megachurch in the old theater. When I was a kid here, I swear nobody went to church. It was a peaceful time. Now, all the factories are gone and we have churches. And addicts as far as the eye can see, but the churches want nothing to do with them. Well, actually they play at being sympathetic, meantime they all hide the fact that everyone knows at least one addict. They are just as damned as the homosexual, just as shameful. But so are the young intellectuals, and so they move away after high school. And a catastrophic dullness falls across the region and nobody can see why. I’d be filled with sympathy for these folks, if they had any for me.”

We walked in silence for a while, circling the same block three times, enough time for Robert to tell his story. We turned to go down a new road. “Where’s your favorite building around here?” I asked.

“I’m taking you to it. It’s an amazing house, built by the same architect that built much of downtown. Locals call it the humming House.”

“Does it hum?” I asked.

“You’ll see that it does, in fact, hum,” said Robert.

“Is it haunted?” I asked.

“No. It’s haunting though. Here comes Lexi.”

I saw Lexi just ahead of us, smoking in the middle of an empty intersection. She gave us a wave and walked toward us.

“Rickshaw, you are a hot mess but you bring great weather with you,” teased Lexi. It indeed was a beautiful evening with the bright stars of the country.

“Rickshaw?” Asked a confused Robert.

“It’s a private joke, from our recent past,” laughed Lexi. “What are we doing?”

“We are taking James to the Humming House.”

“Of course we are! I hope it doesn’t disappoint.”

“Not possible. Humming House is a treasure,” said Roger. He was being coy, and I was not certain if there was such a thing as a humming house. Lexi locked her arm with Robert on one side of her, and with me on the other, we skipped on down the road toward the edge of town.

After about 5 minutes, things began to look sketchy and run-down. We had just crossed over old railroad tracks when I heard what I would describe as a hum. For a moment I was frightened. There were not many buildings on this side of the tracks, and the town had been transitioning into a dark forest. We turned a corner onto a narrow street called First Avenue, and a stately mansion revealed itself behind overgrown gardens. The Victorian house was well proportioned, modest and tasteful, with elegant woodwork around two tall bay windows. The entire first floor was overcome with weeds. It was a gracious house that looked small, dwarfed by the trees behind it. It was an old house, in poor condition, and it was most assuredly humming.

I asked the obvious question, “what is that sound?”

Robert said, “it is the house, humming.”

Lexi said, simultaneously, “nobody knows.”

“When did it start humming?”

“Almost two years ago,” they both said.

I asked them if it had changed pitch or volume.

“It is consistent. It never changes.”

“What?” I asked. The hum was audible, but barely so. It sounded like a hum because of its distant humanity. There was pitch and warmth. You could harmonize with it, but there was no rhythm, no pulse, no variation. It was human, but dull, diminished.

“It could be a warning from middle earth,” Lexi offered.

“There are many theories,” said Robert. “Experts are baffled.”

“My father says it is the sound of the middle class, dying,” said Lexi. “I think of it as a benevolent saint.”

Robert and I smiled at each other. “I wanted to show you something else, around back,” he said.

Lexi agreed. “This is something James needs to see!”

I was frightened again. Besides one tall street lamp, the last in town, it was entirely dark behind the house. What was there? I envisioned a murderous clan of satanists. The humming was disquieting. We walked along the left side of the house, toward an old carriage house, an excellent structure in its own right. In the middle of the carriage house, between two battered garage doors, a brick archway opened onto a paved back alley that ran parallel to the main road for several blocks. From the alley you could see that the connected backyards of this row of abandoned Victorians have all been turned into junk yards, each of them overgrown, the forest reclaiming this part of town. Only the Humming House had a carriage house, and this is what they wanted me to see. The side of the carriage house that faced First Avenue had become a bright mural, painted onto old clapboard walls. The streetlight hung overheard, dangling precariously from a tall post, illuminating the astonishing mural.

Blood red letters, capitals with black outlines, spelled a single word. RESIST. Under that, in smaller block letters, a date, November 8, 2016; the date in which this town voted against its own interests with crazed enthusiasm.

RESIST. November 8, 2016. Robert explained that it was started by a young artist in the days following the election, and by the time of the inauguration there were many contributors.

RESIST NOVEMBER 8 2016. Lexi told me that there were many days when the wall was surrounded by people with paint brushes. The artist came by every day to help people out. He directed the colors and helped manage the quality, but he did not shape the message. “All of these thoughts are from members of the community,” Lexi pointed out. Around the RESIST were similar slogans of the movement, painted in rainbow colors.

“A similar thing happened in Union Square after the election,” I said. “New Yorkers wrote down their fears on post-it notes and placed them along a huge stretch of wall in the subway station.”

Robert asked, “Where are they now?”

“Gone, I guess. It was like an enormous, temporary, spontaneous installation,” I said.

Lexi asked, “do fears just disappear in the big city?”

“Ephemeral hope,” said Jake. “I like this tribute because it hasn’t gone away. When I see it, I’m reminded of that wretched day in 2016, and a lot of us here don’t want to forget that feeling.”

I asked, “does it bother the Trumpers?”

“Some of them mock it. Snowflake this and that, but they leave it alone,” Lexi answered.

Robert expanded, “honestly, most of them don’t disagree with the sentiments. To them we are silly to think ‘normal’ Americans should be scared in any way. They can’t see themselves as among the endangered, which is fucked up because we are all poor here. The target is on our backs as much as anyone’s.”

“There’s not been one incident of vandalism,” Lexi added.

“Well that’s something.” I said.

“It does mean something,” she said. “It is a point of pride, a demonstration of how un-awful we can be.”

Robert was annoyed. “They elected an idiot, but hey, they haven’t defaced our art. Just our value.”

“I know,” said a sympathetic Lexi. “But I embrace a generosity regarding this particular mural. To me it belongs to everyone,” Lexi said. “Evidence of saints.”

Black Lives Matter.

Love is Love.

Protect Democracy.

Hate Has No Home Here.

RESIST NOVEMBER 8 2016.

“Hmmmmmmm,” said the House.