Tim's Tales from the Road
Tim's Tales from the Road
The autumn air is slowly cooling in Seattle and now that I am lost in the world of academia, the falling leaves seem to represent much more than the quiet rush that a season’s change brings to the senses. The carpet of quickly fading color cushions my feet. This red yellow layer of biological processes that sometimes rustle as I walk across. Among all these forgotten leaves, in one of the few remaining quiet spaces left in Seattle, are the places where I find solace. Sometimes, as I walk so far from my beloved ranch, I believe that Seattle's beautiful parks not only soothe the soul but in minute ways they can heal. Seattle is known as a place of expectations and the capital of innovation. Yet, under the quiet canopy of Discovery Park's giant maples, leaves catch wind and then fall in somersault and dance with pause without regard to this reputation of greatness. I wish I could be so lucky.
I am an adult learner. It sounds like a handicap and sometimes I think it is. Adult learner, this title that I didn't ask for, is a means of separation. It is a title that hardly reassures or brings any real sense of equality. And from this angle, I am caught somewhat removed, looking in on idealism that I shouldn't still have. Trying to remember exactly what eighteen felt like and why, although I am only 33, it now seems a lifetime away.
In my initial college career, I defined procrastination. Putting off needed requirements because I knew that approaching these subjects might prove overwhelming. But procrastination is never a solution and I reap the truest agony testifying to this now. I am the oldest student in my math class and one of the oldest ones in a human biology course. And so far it has hardly been a grand moment, as students fly by me secure in the knowledge of DNA and RNA, aware of the differences between gene transcription and transference, while I drown in vocabulary that was hardly defined ten years ago. What a difference a decade makes.
Yet, especially in the biology class, the subject is real to me in ways that I doubt that my classmates can appreciate. To them these are mere cells which divide and replicate and the blood that pours through their veins is of little consequence. The material is something to be memorized, tested on, and forgotten. A course to "just get through". For some of my classmates this has meant sacrificing integrity for a better grade on a quiz or to equalize what in their eyes appears to be just another unjust playing field. They were caught as they changed answers in line to turn in their quizzes or read opened books beneath their feet.
The subsequent cheating exposure and the resulting integrity issues generated huge ripples through the academic calm of Christian University. The professor confessed in class that she sought the advice of well paid Microsoft managers in dealing with such a devastating breach of trust. And the week testified to this focus as the professor confronted 150 students regarding the consciences of a few.
'It's just a grade, just a quiz.'
How does it matter, in the grand scheme of things and why should she care or any of us for that matter? The "Everyone does it" defense. We all have to get by as best we can. The song and dance of slip-sliding, silenced consciences, shortcuts, and "I'll just do it this once". As she stood before us and railed about honesty, the events of the week railroaded me back to my last run of the summer. A run derailing right in front of me: A tragic example of the results of shortcuts and quieted integrity.
While she talked of honesty, I thought back on the lecture she'd just completed. And it was no small irony that professor likened the circulatory system of blood to the trucking industry and compared Wide Loads to the challenges an anemic person's over sized cells face when their blood navigates the traditional transportation system of veins designed to carry smaller loads. I know of wide loads and trucking. And I know of shortcuts and integrity. I know of blood.
The day was brilliant in the way that only an Oregon high desert day can be. The August sun was full of itself and the endless stream of traffic poured forth across the blacktop in hordes of aggressive tourists and truckers battling for position as they traveled US 97 between Bend and Klamath Falls, Oregon. The highway, framed by Jack Pines, twenty mile long straight stretches and tall volcanic peaks seemed to lead one’s thoughts toward those sacred heights. Cragged and disjointed, the mountains challenged the horizon and broke open stubborn skies.
The strawberry hood of my Kenworth, known as 'Little Red Ride 'em Good' or 'the Lady in Red', caught the reflection of the horizon and the dark shade jumps of trees playing leap frog with shadow. She was running sweet in only the way that a Cummins engine rocking under the pulling power of 525 horses can. Life was easy and the 45,000 lbs. of paper behind me seemed weightless. Until just north of Chemult, when I had to bring all 78,000 lbs. to a halt, 'right now baby', dynamiting the brakes, and throwing Dallas out of the sleeper.
A trucking company pulling a wide load forwent a pilot car. In spite of regulations to the contrary, they must have felt it was an unnecessary expense. Just another tedious and worthless regulation. Southbound and down, maybe they hoped that just this once there wouldn't be any trouble. No one would know. A harmless oversight. A driver was pushed to do something he knew he shouldn't. Yet he complied with running illegal, thinking it would all work out.
And I suppose it did work out, until the Southbound Wide Load truck met a Northbound Wide Load, a northbound truck which did have a pilot car.
The two wide loads met on a narrow railroad bridge overpass. The pilot car driver radioed back to warn the truck driver behind her of the impending tight squeeze and the driver tried to compensate. His trailer caught the guardrail and jack knifed. Immediately after, a southbound Ford F150 4x4 plowed into the sideways oversized load. Buried inside the frame of the mobile home, the still moving structure collapsed around and on top of the occupants of the pick up truck. The wreckage strewn across the bridge effectively shut down the highway.
I witnessed this nightmare unfold and barely stayed out of the accident myself. First on the scene, I would be there for the next eight hours. My 'last trip' now added to the previous accident mile markers already haunting me and in the still of my daily walks they replay over and over again. The August accident becoming one of the worst.
I still have nightmares about the accident. The collapsing mobile home, the struggle to keep the man in the pickup truck alive. The other occupant of the pick up truck, now an equally bloodied mess that once was a pretty woman. The horror of the northbound truck driver knowing that his truck had just shattered two innocent lives. And yet he was innocent too. He was obeying the laws. But now, under DOT law he would be subjected to a drug test. The accident would become a permanent part of his driving record. The event would appear for the next ten years on his DAC report and be reported to every prospective employer. He would never be the same. Especially upon learning that we lost the driver. His name would always be attached to a single word: Fatality.
Hours later, when the truck was finally extricated from inside the mobile home, the last image I saw under the fading hues of a red sunset was the bloody, deflated airbag so bright against the white paint of that 4x4. That image remained with me once the road was reopened. Reflected against the headlights and piercing the night. When Mt. Shasta finally loomed tall and great in the moonlight, I was grateful for something to take up all the empty space of the windshield. Something to replace the other image. The image of the seat where a man's cells ceased to replicate and where DNA and RNA changed course. A place that would come hurling back at me three months later in a freshman biology course. The miracle of life laid down against the themes of integrity and cheating in a Christian college.
I wish this was the only lesson of the week. I wish that integrity as defined in a freshman biology class was all that haunted me. I wish that ‘phagocytosis’ was just a term that could be left in biology. Studied memorized and then forgotten.
Phagocytosis is defined by my instructor as "the ingestion of microorganisms or particulate matter by a cell." It means "to engulf", and as I sit in that class I cannot think of truer definition of what it means to attend a Christian university as an adult. As I approach this young, evangelical community and its penchant for having answers to everything, I am brought back to freshman biology and back to phagocytosis and all this engulfing.
I am a stranger in their midst who asks these questions. Questions about life and biology and being a confused Christian. And when it is all over and I have that piece of paper with a few letters after my name, I wonder, how long will this particular cell skeptically remain a living cell in the body of Christ. Will I still remain intact or will I have been ingested and absorbed like so much bacteria. Fought off and segregated just as the immune system in humans identifies all those cells that don't seem to belong and then removes them from the system. Human Biology and Christian Biology, they really are quite similar. If you are a cell in either body that doesn't seem to fit.
Recently the class dealt with the immune system. During a video produced for public television we watched as safe topics were explored such as Small Pox and M.S. During the presentation of the findings no one laughed. The class remained attentive and respectful. Objectivity reigned until one particular segment of the video drew attention to HIV, the virus which causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).
The example in the video demonstrated new research techniques being applied to identical twins. One set of twins who agreed to be interviewed for the video were two brothers. One who was HIV positive and the other who was not. The infected brother appeared to be a bit effeminate, seemed obviously gay and as he spoke about his diagnosis, some members of the class laughed. They laughed at a man who was willing to honestly tell the cameras that he didn't know how much time he had left, that each day was a gift and that he hoped the research he was hoping to participate in might lead to a cure.
They laughed at HIV. They hadn't laughed at Small Pox, MS or Cancer. What was so funny? The effeminate man? That his identical twin, a straight appearing brother, cared so much for his twin that although not infected himself, he agreed to participate in the study? Was AIDS itself funny?
This summer as I buried first my great aunt and then a close friend from cancer, I do not recall hearing laughter when they told of the pain of their afflictions, the hopes of new treatments and ultimately their awareness that for each of them time was running out. I do not recall hearing any laughter at the scene of the accident in Chemult. Yet here in the lecture hall, in freshman biology, I heard laughter. In the same place where everything we do, we do in Jesus Name. And I don't understand it. In spite of all those years on the road, in rough places like the Bronx or in the burning midst of the L.A. riots, I still have enough idealism to wonder at some of the people I am surrounded by who do so much in that name. And yet who laugh so easily when they don't think anyone is listening.
Their laughter occurred in the same week in which the World Health Organization and the census bureau revised downward worldwide population estimates because of the threat AIDs is wreaking on Sub Saharan Africa, Asia, and Central America. In some countries over half of the populations are threatened. The threat of the virus is so serious it forced Cuba to pull her troops out of Angola because so many were coming home infected. According to reports from the WHO, there are now over 23 million people who are infected worldwide. This is the result of a disease that wasn't even recognized or defined twenty years ago.
"It" can't affect us here at our Christian university located in our precious Seattle, this best of everything place. Yet as I walked around Southcenter Mall and saw all the different peoples walking around the mall I knew that it can and it will. All of these people travel and their cultures are mixing with our own. There is no way to effectively isolate "us" from "them." And in 1998 "them" doesn't just include effeminate men. It includes people we would never suspect.
My father's church in the south end of the city operates a small preschool. In that preschool there are over a dozen foreign languages spoken. Some of them originating from countries already devastated by AIDS. This is the world of a virus. A virus that doesn't discriminate between religion, culture and economics but that is changing our world. Ironically, Africa is one of the most targeted mission fields in the world and yet in spite of all this attention from Western Christians, her transmission rate has far surpassed less evangelized areas. If AIDS can wipe out populations centers in our most converted regions than how can we laugh at it from the safety of lecture hall.
It has been over twelve years since I attended this Christian university and it has been 15 years since I was 18. And I am desperately trying to remember what it was like. To be 18. But there is one thing I know. People who are 18 are getting infected. 18 is not young enough to be safe from HIV.
When I was 18 I never thought I would know anyone from the university who would become infected with HIV. Now 15 years later I know two members from my class who not only became infected but who are dead. I know of others who are positive. People who once sat in a freshmen biology class. People who studied the replication of cells and immune responses just as I am. People that once might have laughed at this same video. People I identified as fellow Christians. People who thought it could never happen to them.
I come from a rural ranching background and in the last 12 years I have spent most of that time in these communities and the trucking industry. When many folks consider the face of AIDS, again they think of people like the effeminate man in the video. They don't think of cowboys from Wyoming's Little Big Horn. They don't picture a former Wyoming high school Rodeo Saddle Bronc champion. They don't think of ranked Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association bullriders. This disease only touches the lives of those foreign 'others.' The easily identified. The effeminate. The ones who deserve it. It can be laughed at. Or can it?
The day before the video, I walked around Green Lake with a cowboy friend of mine. He hails from an area just west of Sheridan, Wyoming in the great high country where the population is measured by the head, has four legs and the wide open spaces frame more than just fence line and range. It frames dreams and possibility.
As Chance and I walked around the lake and talked of Wyoming and The Little Big Horn Country, we also talked about "it". The fact that he is HIV+ and that for the last 13 years his battle with the disease seems never ending. To look at him, no one would ever know. Rugged and handsome, he is one who gains respect just in his stature. The women running around the lake openly smile at him and I catch two of them looking back to see if he might be watching them. Yet these days it is he who is running. Running scared because the medications don't seem to be working anymore. His health is failing him. He may be out of time.
If he was in our class, speaking to us, no one would be snickering. They wouldn't dare. Because they'd be looking at someone just like themselves: A Christian, A man of great strength. A picture perfect postcard representing the men the west is known for producing, a vision of virility and independence: A River Runs Through It, Butch and Sundance and The Horse Whisperer. A man riding a domesticated Mustang, his Malmutes never far from his side. A man named Chance. A man just like us. A man who made a mistake. A mistake that was as easy to make as cheating on a biology test, "I'll only do this once." If he even gave it that much thought.
Freshman Biology and the place I find myself are not incompatible. But it isn't an exceptionally generous place either. I choose to finish my degree at this Christian university because I am a Christian. Yet I am here trying to study the same subjects as my fellow classmates. At times the learning is painful and made too real with the perspective a little more life experience brings. It is experience that sometimes I'd like to not admit having. Especially here, at this university, where the controlled environment produces a hypothesis with a predetermined outcome that later life might prove to be a bit more challenging than the casual first glance would allow.
Here, homeostasis, the other biological term that defines us at the university, as well in our own bodies, takes on a greater meaning. It is defined as the ability or capacity of the human body to maintain stable internal conditions. To pull the definition away from the matter of human cells and elevate it to all of us that are supposedly members of the body of Christ, I can see the effects of homeostasis and phagocytosis demonstrated every day in Biology. We focus on this internal body and do all we can to protect it from outside influences and when we perceive them in our presence, we do all we can to engulf them and show them to the door, so that we may maintain stable internal conditions.
My father, a Lutheran Pastor, knows this well. He is known among the funeral directors in town as one of the few in the ministry who will do the funerals that no one wants to do. The difficult ones. The funerals attended by thousands and the funerals attended by none. The funerals for the effeminate and the funerals for the "who would have thoughts". The funerals telling of the casualties of AIDS. Held in stale funeral parlor chambers and nondescript sanctuaries. Banished from their church homes their caskets laid upon generic altars without the mercy of a cross he performs the ceremonies of separation. Facing angry faces. Facing grieving faces. Sometimes facing no faces.
The body of Christ from a biological perspective seems to be in conflict with its mission. And I am not sure we are any better off as a result. I probably will not be very successful in human biology. The vocabulary is sinking me. The spelling and rigid definitions of processes are always just barely within my grasp. But the other "biology" I am witnessing, I find just as challenging. If not more so.
At the end of the biology class as I filed out into the sunshine I saw a bulletin posted on the door of the hall in which the lecture was conducted. It asked if anyone had a heart for people with AIDS. The poster sought volunteers. I wondered if anyone from my biology class would volunteer. I wondered if anyone might bring sweet comfort to those who had none. I wondered if they would give the same humble grace and the gift of their presence to the final moments of those dying from AIDS as they would give to the smoker dying of lung cancer or the alcoholic dying of a failing liver.
Or if in Jesus Name they would just continue their laughing.
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