Frank is Emptiness

May 15th, 2018

Yesterday I sent Hans a text: “I hate talking to liberals.”

Just seconds later, Hans replied, “Why?”

That’s a good question. It’s kind of funny too, because in most circumstances Hans thinks of me as an old school, hippie-style liberal. My redneck son considers me to be a classic peacenik. So, he wants to know: why would I hate talking with other liberals?

I didn’t answer Hans’ text, so he called me later in the evening, brimming with curiosity. We had a long conversation. In order to explain myself, I had to tell Hans about a discussion I had earlier in the day. I will have to describe it to you too. It went like this:

The traffic on I-43 was heavy between Port Washington and Milwaukee, and I had an older woman in the  passenger seat of my car who insisted on talking politics as I changed lanes on the freeway. I don’t multi-task, so I found it stressful trying to avoid an accident while responding to her various remarks.  At one point I attempted to simply ignore her comments, but the woman was uncomfortable with silence, and kept sucking me back into an interminable argument. It’s not that I actually disagreed with her so much, it’s just that she wouldn’t quit.

In a way it’s my fault. I started telling her about a person who is important to me, and that this individual is currently in jail. I mentioned that this young woman is looking at three years of probation, and possibly two years in prison if she can’t stay straight.

My passenger asked, “Will she get psychological help while on probation?”

I answered, “I don’t know. Possibly.”

“Well, they really should offer her some services.”

“You’re right, they should, but often they don’t.”

“Our criminal justice system doesn’t help these people.”

“No, not really.”

“There was a wonderful special on PBS about the German prison system. Did you watch it?”

“No, we don’t watch TV”, I replied, as I attempted to watch the car next to me.

“It was really an excellent show. The Germans have a system that doesn’t harm the dignity of the the people in prison. Any developed country should have a system like in Germany. But, then maybe our country really isn’t so developed”, and then she laughed at her own joke.

I responded irritably, “But we don’t live there. We live here.”

I became frustrated at this point. For one thing, I almost hit the guy in my blind spot as I tried to change lanes. Second, my loquacious passenger was discussing the justice system from a safe distance. I saw it up close and personal. I was going to the jail that evening to visit the person I loved. I am dealing each day with the experiences of a specific individual who is firmly enmeshed in a fucked up government organization. I don’t care about what other countries do with their prisoners. I only care about one particular prisoner in one particular system.

I knew very little about my passenger. I still don’t. I do know that she lived and worked in Bolivia. I got the impression that she cares about other people, although in a different way than I do. Our disagreements were mostly a matter of style.

There was time for my passenger and I to talk about other topics, with generally the same result. She had opinions on nearly every subject. (So do I). It seemed that she thought any social ill could be solved by a committee of well-meaning zealots. Anything can fixed with a new law or a new program.

Somehow we found ourselves discussing white privilege. That was a mistake. I told her about our youngest son, Stefan, who was working as a welder in a shop with no ventilation in the Riverwest neighborhood. Most of his coworkers were black or Latino. I told the woman that sometimes they would needle Stefan about his white privilege. Stefan would respond to them by saying,

“If white privilege is so good, then why I am working in this shitty shop with the rest of you guys?”

(By the way, Stefan has a long time Latina girlfriend, and he speaks Spanish. Just sayin’).

My copilot wasn’t buying Stefan’s comment. She told me in great detail about economic inequality and racism. Everything was based on environment: schools, transportation, available jobs. Fix the system, and you fix the environment, and it’s all good.

Anyway, I told Hans about my long conversation with my friend on the left. He then told me about when he was laid off in the Texas oil fields, and he became both homeless and jobless for a while, that he was not able to get benefits that he believed were available to other people in his situation. Hans didn’t seem perturbed that other folks got help from the government, but it bothered him that he didn’t qualify for the same assistance. Tom him, it was a question of fairness.

I asked Hans, “You are aware that there is such a thing as racism?”

He sighed, and said, “Well, yeah… “.

“Okay, I was just checking.”

It’s strange. The conversation I had with my copilot was not unique. I have similar arguments with conservatives, like Hans,  but for the opposite reasons. I know people who are absolutely convinced that everything is determined by human freedom and responsibility. While my passenger was determined to show me that people are products of their society, and often victims of that society, my right wing friends will tell me that each person has the ability and duty to decide their own fate. They use the old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” argument. I knew an Evangelical woman who talked to me once about someone who was in trouble, and she told me earnestly,

“She just needs to learn how to make good choices.”

Sometimes there are no good choices. Sometimes there is only a spectrum of bad choices.

Both sides are right. Both sides are wrong.

Some people get dealt a lousy hand. They start life with health problems, or family problems, or race problems, or whatever. Other people seem to have it made right from the beginning. The playing field is never level. We can and should strive for equality, but we will never completely attain it.

Some people make good decisions and they prosper. Some people screw it all up and suffer the consequences. Some people do everything right, and life still kicks their asses. And others break every moral code and succeed beyond their wildest dreams. At times there seems to be no rhyme or reason for how our lives turn out.

I don’t deal well with groups. I don’t understand groups. I can’t identify with groups. I can identify and care about individuals. I can care about a specific person who is hurting. I can care about Hans and his struggles. I can care about Stefan. I can care about a young woman in jail. I can care about any person when I recognize that he or she suffers.

That’s all I can do.

May 13th, 2018

“How do you sleep? How do you sleep at night?” – John Lennon

Karin came to bed a little after 11:00 PM. She brought the dogs along with her. Shocky finds her place on the floor, and Sara whines until she can climb up on to the comforter. Sara is thirteen years old, and she struggles now to jump on the bed. I’m not sure how we will manage once she is too old to get up at all.

I go to bed early. Karin is a night owl. I am usually in bed for a couple hours before Karin decides to to call it a night. Once Karin got settled, she kissed my forehead and said,

“You had another nightmare. This one wasn’t too loud, so I didn’t try to wake you up.”

I mumbled, “Yeah.” It is not unusual for me to have nightmares early in my sleep cycle. Sometimes, I just struggle though them. Sometimes, I scream and thrash about, to the extent that Karin fears for my safety. She’s grown used to these episodes.

There was a thunderstorm in progress when Karin came to bed. We have a skylight in the bedroom, and I can stare straight up through it as I lie on my back. The rain splattered on the glass, and I could see the flashes of lightning in the night sky. Immediately following the flashes came the deep rumble of thunder. As accompaniment, the two sump pumps in the basement took turns pushing water through a PVC pipe to the outside of the house. All in all, the conditions weren’t conducive to going back to sleep.

As I was lying there, I heard my cell phone vibrate. So, who is texting me at 11:30 at night? “Hmmmmm, I better check.” I got up and found my phone.

The text was from Hans.

He wrote, “I just watched 12 whatever it’s called. It’s about the guys in Iraq and it started bringing up memories and I am starting to be stressed.”

Great.

I wrote back to him, “Try to relax”. That was kind of a useless thing to say, but I had nothing else.

Hans replied, “I am trying. We should have just killed all them fuckers.”

I texted back to him, “Hug your puppy.”

I could have told him to hug his fiancee, but she might be asleep already, and perhaps not interested in being hugged. Odds are good that Hans went outside, and smoked a couple Pall Malls and/or slammed some Lime-a-ritas. Hugging his dog seemed to be the best answer available. Hans loves dogs. They love him.

I got back in bed, and stared into the darkness. Sleep eluded me.

Hans didn’t text back. Hopefully, he’ll call today to talk with Karin. It is Mothers Day after all.

I hope that, eventually, he slept well.

May 10th, 2018

“The details don’t matter. All you know, for sure, is that your brain starts humming with brutal vibes as you approach the front door. Something wild and evil is about to happen; and it’s going to involve you.” – Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Karin and I walked through the front door of the court room. We had been there twice before. The room itself was rather innocuous. There was some wood paneling on the walls. A few watercolor paintings of landscapes passed for artwork. Behind the judge’s chair were two flags: that of the U.S., and the Wisconsin state flag. We sat down on one of the wooden benches in the back of the room. The court room was nearly empty. The only other people there were the prosecutor, who was looking intently at his laptop, and some mysterious guy whose job apparently was to make sure that things kept moving along.

Yes indeed, I could feel the brutal vibes. In about ten minutes the judge would pass sentence on the girl we love. Our loved one’s attorney walked into the room. She chatted briefly with the assistant DA. Then we heard the sound of rattling chains, which meant that our young woman was being led into the court room. She came into the room, fashionably dressed in a bright orange clothing. Our girl and her lawyer walked into a back room to talk over some last minute details.

Those two returned to the court room, and then both attorneys indicated to the quiet and unobtrusive man in charge that they were ready to start the show. The man wandered into the back room and mumbled something to someone. Then the bailiff came out of the back room, said, “All rise!”, and then the judge walked in and took his place.

There is a certain amount of drama involved in a sentencing. In some ways, it is anti-climactic because most of the decisions have already been made. The woman we love has already pleaded guilty. The prosecutor has already made his case. The defense attorney has already made her bid. Everybody is done except for the judge. Now it’s his turn to rock everyone’s world. He did.

There was some initial discussion between the judge and the attorneys about the pre-sentencing investigation, and about other details. Then the judge got down to business. He started by saying how difficult it was for him to decide on an appropriate sentence. The vibes got really brutal at that point. The judge patiently explained that he had to balance the prospects for rehabilitation of the defendant with the safety requirements of the public at large. The fact remained that this young woman was now guilty of four drunk driving charges, and the question was: “Will she do it again, and maybe kill somebody?” The judge made it absolutely clear that the young woman was not in court because she drank too much. She was in court because she drank and then drove a car. The judge acknowledged that there were mental health issues involved in the case, but the crux of the matter was whether or not our girl would commit the same crime again, and thereby endanger other people. The judge had no desire to allow our young woman to kill an innocent person or herself by driving drunk.

Things hung in the balance for a seemingly endless period of time. Finally, the judge announced that he would stay the sentence (two years in prison followed by two years of probation). Instead, the young woman would spend another two months in jail, and then she would have three years of probation. If she keeps clean, then everything is fine after the three years is up. If she screws up, the sentence takes effect, and she goes to prison. Done deal.

The ball is in her court.

It’s not over. Nothing is over. We are just starting a new chapter in this saga. Regardless of what happens, Karin and I are deeply involved in the process. We have some answers, but we also have more questions.

It’s not the endgame.

May 8th, 2018

“For What It’s Worth” from Buffalo Springfield

May 5th, 2018

The Chicago Tribune printed a letter from me today. It is as follows:

“I read recently that 18 Republican members of the U.S. Congress have proposed that President Donald Trump receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Some folks attending Trump’s rally in Michigan wanted the same thing for Trump. Apparently, there are people who are convinced that Trump is somehow, single-handedly, achieving a peace settlement in Korea, one that has eluded diplomats for six decades. It is true that current events on the Korean Peninsula have taken a sharp turn toward denuclearization and reconciliation between the warring parties. Even if President Trump’s efforts have not actually been a factor, he certainly has managed to be in the right place at the right time.

The Nobel committee significantly lowered the bar for winning the peace prize when they awarded it to President Barack Obama for essentially doing nothing. Obama got the prize simply because he was not George W. Bush. It might be prudent to wait a while before we clamor to give the prize to Trump. Things are looking better, but nothing has yet been changed in a concrete manner. If, at some point, the two Korean regimes make peace, and the peninsula becomes nuke-free, then by all means give President Trump the peace prize. Why not?”

May 4th, 2018

It’s amazing how quickly memories can fade. I left Tyler and Gilbert three weeks ago, and already it’s hard to remember details of our interactions. It’s true that I didn’t know those guys for very long. I was only with Tyler for two weeks, and with Gilbert for less than that. However, they both made an impression on me. They made me think.

My first exposure to Tyler was when he picked me up at the Amtrak station in Havre. His first comment to me was,

“Yeah, I heard about you.”

That statement can mean so many things.

It took us a while to feel each other out. We are different in many ways. Tyler is twenty-five years younger than me. He’s from San Francisco. I’m from the Midwest. He has a full head of hair. I don’t. (Tyler made a joke about that once. He got worried that I took offense. I didn’t.)

Tyler joined the Longest Walk the day I left it to go home the first time. We missed each other by a matter of hours. During the time I was away from the walk, Tyler found his niche as the group’s photographer and media guy. He also received a carved wooden staff from the tribe in Yakima. He was very proud of the staff, and that bothered Bobby. During our move from Fort Belknap to Billings, Tyler misplaced the staff. I think he left it behind at Fort Belknap. Bobby saw this as a kind of karmic reckoning. Tyler got the staff back, but it seemed like he held it differently.

Tyler drove the F250 one day. He did the entire stretch from western Nebraska to central Missouri. I sat and talked with him for hours. He told me about being a carpenter in San Francisco. He told me about his studies in herbal-ism and acupuncture. Tyler and I discussed religion. He follows his version of Native American spirituality. In his own family, there are Christians, atheists, and Buddhists. They must have interesting holiday get-togethers.

Tyler is a very talented young man. Besides his other skills, he writes and performs his own music on the guitar. He is a good cook. He is curious about the world around him, and he is very thoughtful. He has a good heart.

Gilbert is a Native American from the Sacramento area of California. He is twenty-three years old. When Karin first met Gilbert, she remarked,

“He seems like such a gentle soul.”

I think that is an accurate description.

Gilbert and I had some long conversations, mostly while I was driving the ill-fated Nissan through Montana and Wyoming. He has done a number of things already in his life. Without a doubt, the most important thing to him has been his participation in the demonstration at Standing Rock.

Standing Rock means everything to Gilbert. It marks his coming of age. He was involved in an confrontation that was both meaningful and dangerous at times. In a sense, he is a veteran. When he spoke with other people about Standing Rock, it was like I was listening to my oldest son talk about being in Iraq. For Gilbert, the time he spent at Standing Rock is the defining moment in his life. Anything he does in the future will be measured against that experience.

Gilbert likes to smoke (both tobacco and weed). He gave up weed for the walk. He was happy to do that. He told me that he never had dreams while he used weed. He was grateful to have dreams again.

Gilbert rolled his own cigarettes. My father-in-law used to do that too. Gilbert burned one every chance he had. He quickly ran short on tobacco. Oddly enough, I had a full pack of tobacco. Bob, one of the other walkers, had given it to me during my first iteration of the journey. So, I gave the whole package to Gilbert. He was delighted. He wanted to repay me, but I told him it didn’t matter. It all evens out in the end. Gilbert was okay with that.

Gilbert walked with me one time while we at Greg’s place in southern Illinois. He was fascinated by the trees and animals in the area. He especially liked to watch the hawks in the sky. Gilbert has a deep love on nature.

I wish that I had been able to spend more time with Tyler and Gilbert. We never exchanged contact information, so it is unlikely that I will see them again. I am grateful for the time that I did have with them.

May 3rd, 2018

Seven days.

One week.

One week from today the girl we love will go before the judge for sentencing. Karin and I plan on being in the court room with her. Our presence most likely won’t change anything, but we will be there. According to a woman from the Department of Corrections, Karin and I will be able to make a statement at the sentencing, if we so desire. I have to think about that.

Both Karin and I spoke on the phone with the lady from the DOC. She was working on the pre-sentencing investigation, and she called us for our input. We tried to give the lady all the pertinent background on our young woman. The woman from the DOC listened carefully to what we had to say. She actually seemed to care. Her report will go to the judge, and he will use it as he sees fit.

I talked to a friend of mine, Mike, about the upcoming court appearance. He shrugged and told me,

“It’s just going to be a day full of suck.”

True. There is no way to spin it to make it look positive. It is unlikely that the judge will tell the girl, “Go and sin no more!”. That’s probably not going to happen. The question is what will he choose from a selection of bad options. What is the least shitty outcome to all of this? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I have no advice for the judge, because I don’t know what we is the best solution for this situation.

The girl we love seems to be handling her anxiety well. At least, she seemed to be coping with it when we saw her at the jail on Monday evening. It’s got to be incredibly stressful for her. It’s stressful for me, and I’m not directly affected by the judge’s decision. Karin and I will be collateral damage. The court decision will radically change the life of our loved one. By extension, it will change our lives too. Our girl is not in this alone. Like it or not, we are all on this walk together.

Our loved one spoke to me about going to Florida someday. Years ago, we traveled as a family to the Gulf Coast near Destin. We went to a state park on the beach, where the sand was pure white and the water was warm and salty. Our girl doesn’t have many good memories, but that trip is one of them. She dreams of returning to that beach. I talked to Karin about the girl going back to Florida. When things settle down, whenever that happens, we will help the loved one make that trip.

If I would speak at the court appearance, I doubt that anything I say would influence the actions of the judge. All I would want to say is that Karin and I are with our loved one on her journey, no matter where it leads. I want the judge to know that. I want the loved one to know that.

April 30th, 2018

My throat hurts. It might be hurting because I am fighting a cold. It might be hurting because last night I was screaming in my sleep.

Do people often scream in their sleep? I don’t know. I only know that I do. Not all the time. Actually, I don’t scream very often, but when I do, I do it right.

I tend to go to bed early. Karin, on the other hand, is a night owl, so she doesn’t join me until I have already been asleep for a few hours. She came suddenly into the bedroom last night, shouting, “Wake up! You’re dreaming!”

I had been crying out and thrashing in my sleep. Loudly. The covers were scattered all over. The pillows in disarray. The memory of my bad dream faded rapidly.

Karin looked down on me and asked, “Who was attacking you?!”

I don’t know. The ephemeral scaffolding of the dream collapsed as soon as she woke me up. All I had left was a feeling of panic and phlegm in my throat. My heart raced. My breathing was ragged. My conscious mind knew where I was and what had happened, but my body was still fighting something from somewhere else.

Karin decided that I was okay. She said, “You never screamed that loud before.” Then she left the room.

It took a long time to get back to sleep. I never have the bad dreams twice in one night. The forces of darkness have their fun, and then they wait to visit me some other time.

I never remember contents of the dreams. I only remember darkness and fear and rage. Who or what is attacking me? The loose ends of unfinished business? Unhealed trauma? A guilty conscience? The avenging Furies?

I don’t know.

April 29th, 2018

Hans called us a little over a week ago. He called to let Karin and myself know that he and his fiancee, Gabby, were expecting a baby. I think that both Karin and I were expecting that they would at some point be expecting, so this announcement wasn’t entirely a surprise.

Hans told us in usual monotone that Gabby’s test was positive. Then he said,

“This wasn’t planned.”

My immediate response was, “You weren’t either.”  The answer was a verbal shrug.

Hans was born thirty-one years ago. He came into the world in March of 1987, at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Hans decided to show up four weeks early. He was a breach baby, and he had a cesarean birth. I was in the operating room with Karin. There was a screen across her midsection, so that she couldn’t watch the surgery being performed. I watched, and that made me kind of woozy. I wasn’t very good at comforting Karin. I remember them playing Madonna’s “Material Girl” in the room. Karin’s doctor was named Bruce Lee (seriously).

Hans spent several days in an incubator, until his liver was functioning adequately. Karin cried when she found out that she couldn’t take him home to nurse him. I cringed every time the nurse to a few drops of blood from the heel of his tiny to a test sample.

I had no health insurance when Hans was born. I had started a new job and it would have been another month before I had coverage. Somehow Karin and I paid for Hans’ medical bills. The fees cleaned out our savings.

Hans was weak for quite a while. Hans had two inguinal hernias, that needed to be repaired when he was older and stronger. They were in fact repaired, but that happened maybe a year later in Germany when one of them was suddenly strangulated. Another emergency.

I would like to say that Hans’ life settled down after that. That would be a lie. As I look back on it, Hans’ life has been a series of close calls. He had something that appeared to be a seizure while he was in middle school. After an endless array of tests, the doctors never really could determine what happened to him. I was strict and over-protective with him. Hans jokes now that, after growing up with me, Army boot camp was a letdown for him. He was a very quiet and restless adolescent. He found his solace in video games, usually violent ones. He loved dogs. He still loves them, and they love him.

Hans became adventurous once he reached adulthood. He moved to Texas. He tried to find work down there just as the recession of 2008 struck the economy. He joined the Army in 2009 for a variety of reasons. He went to war. He came back very comfortable with risk-taking. He bought a crotch rocket and he went skydiving. I suspect he was already comfortable with risks prior to going to Iraq, but he lost all fear during his deployment. For a while Hans was homeless and jobless. He has been slowly rebuilding his life since then. It’s been a scary process.

Now he is soon to be a husband and father. Is he ready? Of course not. I wasn’t ready. I have never met anybody who was ready. As I look at my career as a family man, I see long list of fuck ups, occasionally interrupted by moments of clarity and compassion. I’ve done a lot of damage, and maybe a bit of good. I tried to do things right, but it usually doesn’t feel like I did.

Hans has his issues. He knows what they are. So does Gabby. He also has his strengths. Hans is brave and loyal to a fault. He is intelligent and honorable. He is capable of a fierce and self-sacrificing sort of love. He will do the best he can.

We will help him. We will help Gabby. We will help their child.

April 25th, 2018

“Nuk nu’waat!”

That was one of Bobby’s favorite phrases. It roughly translates to: “It’s done!” Chief Bobby would use those words to end a circle ceremony. Up until Bobby said, “Nuk nu’waat”, members of the circle could speak their minds (at least in theory). After Bobby said that phrase, nobody was allowed to make any further comments. Bobby told us that it was important for us, as a group, to follow this protocol. Otherwise, he said, “We will not look strong.”

“Nuk nu’waat” encapsulates Bobby’s style of leadership. He ran everything. He was The Man. For the most part, I was okay with that. Bobby could do whatever he wanted to do. I was just along for the ride (or walk). I have spent most of my life being in charge of something, so I was good with somebody else handling everything. I slipped back into my old Army mode, and just waited for somebody to tell me what to do. I didn’t need to know all the details of the operation, and Bobby certainly had no intention of discussing them with me.

This “walk” was very different from other walks I have done. By rights, it should been called “The Longest Drive”, because that is what we mostly did. This journey was also different in other ways. I remember with previous walks that, at the end of the day, we would all gather together and discuss the events of the day, and talk about what we might change or do better. That never happened on the Longest Walk. We might gather up in a circle at the day’s end, but it was usually only Bobby that spoke. The rest of us were there mostly to listen.

Bobby often made plans and then changed them, sometimes without telling other people about the changes. For instance, on the day before Easter Sunday, Bobby had told us that we were going to attend the Christian religious services on the rez the next morning to talk to the congregations about the walk. We were sleeping at the Lodgepole High School that night. We got up early and hung around the high school until noon on Easter, but we never went to any of the church services. Why? I don’t know. Nobody knew. Apparently, Bobby decided that he didn’t want to attend the services, so none of us did. Instead we went to the Easter egg hunt in the afternoon. That was actually fun. The kids were madly running around in a field full of snow and horse manure to find eggs that would win them bicycles. There was also a rumor that two of the eggs contained $100 bills. That motivated people.

As I mentioned earlier, I was usually fine going with the flow. As long as somebody had some kind of a plan, I was willing to follow. I was satisfied to observe and learn from others. Then things got weird.

We drove in a snowstorm from Billing, Montana south into Wyoming. The plan, as I understood it, was for us drive all day and then camp out some place near Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The roads sucked. Everything was snow-covered and slick. Our gypsy caravan crawled along I-25. The trailer that Tony was pulling behind the F-250 had an unfortunate tendency to fishtail in the wind and the snow. Gilbert burned a little sage and cedar in our car, in the vain hope that it would keep on rolling.

Bobby and Chief Kindness pulled into a rest stop just inside the northern boundary of Wyoming. The rest of us followed them into the stop. We gathered around their camper. Bobby brought out an object wrapped in a scarlet cloth. It was a chanupa, a peace pipe. We stood in the wind and the weather to listen to Bobby. The following is not an exact quote of what he said, but it is close.

Bobby told us all, “We are not going to Pine Ridge. We are going further to Illinois. We have to keep this quiet. I don’t want anybody posting our whereabouts on Facebook. If you can’t stay off Facebook, then you can be left off at the bus station in Casper. This is for your own safety. Anybody want out?”

Nobody wanted out. Bobby lit up the chanupa and we passed it around the circle. We all took a hit, and then we moved on.

Bobby never told us where we were going in Illinois. We were all just following him. It was a journey of three days. We drove through freezing rain and snow. The Nissan died in western Nebraska, and we abandoned it there. We slept in rest areas and redneck truck stops. After the Nissan quit, I was seriously considering going with the bus stop idea. Bobby convinced me to keep riding along. I’m glad that he did that.

I don’t like secrecy. I never have. I grew up in a family where everything was a deep, dark secret. I didn’t mind so much that our group of walkers was driving across the country on an open-ended road trip. It did bother me that we seemed to be hiding from someone, and that Bobby seemed to be hiding things from the rest of us. The talk about this change in plan being for our “own safety” made me very uneasy. I felt like I had joined a cult.

When we arrived at Greg’s place in southern Illinois, everyone rested and relaxed. It was a wonderful place to be. However, the secrecy continued. Bobby never told us how long we would be staying with Greg, or where we we were going afterward. Everybody just kind of shrugged and hung out, waiting for Bobby to make some kind of decision.

The obvious question would be: “Why didn’t I just ask bobby what was going on?” That is hard to explain. Part of it goes back to my time in the Service, when I got used to not asking questions. Also, at least for me, it was difficult to feel relaxed around Bobby. I felt a distance between us. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just there.

I went home from the campsite in Illinois. I had a medical issue, and my wife drove seven hours to get me. I’m not sure that I would have stayed with the group even if I had remained healthy. The dynamics in the group itself did not seem healthy.

Bobby was admirable in many ways. He was extremely dedicated. He truly cared about the people in the group. When I was in the Army, there was a saying: “Mission first, men always.” Bobby exemplified that. I am convinced that he cared about me, as a person. I still care about him.

I never discovered if Bobby’s style of leadership was typical for a Native American, or if  it was just how Bobby rolled. Maybe that is how a chief runs his tribe. Maybe Bobby’s way of handling things was normal. Maybe that is how it had to be. I don’t know. All I know is that, because of the secrecy, I eventually stopped trusting him.

After Karin brought me home and I had the medical problem checked out, I looked on Facebook to see where the Longest Walk was. They had gone from Illinois directly to Washington, D.C.  The show was over.

Nuk nu’waat.