Looking in the mirror of the baggage claim bathroom at Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport, I didn’t know how to feel about my reflection. I wore a black suit, but it was creased from sitting in my jacket on the flight (even more than it would have been had I packed it in one of my three bags instead), and tiny white strands of something like plastic poked out of the right shoulder pad. I pulled them out one by one, holding the unexpectedly lengthy strips up close to my face to observe them and maybe figure out their purpose. Moving back into focus behind my fingers, I could see my facial hair growing more prominently in the dim lighting of the bathroom. Notice I say “facial hair” rather than “beard.” I told my classmates I just hadn’t gotten around to shaving: a lie nearly as thin as the mustache itself.
I waved my hand under the faucet until it came on, and splashed some water on my face. I reached for paper towels, but my hand come up empty in the cold tin mouth of the dispenser. I wiped my hands on the fabric of my rolling duffel and pulled my phone from my breast pocket. I lifted my tote onto the roller, slung my backpack over my back, shimmied around so the suit would straighten out, and grabbed the bag with my right hand. With my left, I clumsily dialed “Uncle Rex.”
It rang and rang, until eventually I wondered if I had dialed the wrong number. When it went to the pre-programmed automated voicemail, I knew it was the right one. When I pulled my phone away from my face, it read 20%, which in Apple speak means, “I can die at any second.”
Outside the bathroom, I had to walk past the only baggage claim to get to the doors out. Light spilled into the green walled room in a way that reminded me of when noon broke through the canopy leaves back home. The airport arrival lobby must not have been more than a hundred yards down and fifty across to the doors. The room was clean in an idle way, credit due to the lack of traffic more than the cleaning crew.
I decided to wait along the back wall, where a single outlet slumped white along the floor. My fellow passengers off the flight from LA still lingered around the cycling belt, pressing their shins up against the metal and leaning out over the edge to search for their bags.
I snaked my arm out of the backpack loop and set it at my feet. Unzipping it, I rifled for my phone charger and plugged it into the wall. You have to shove the charger in the right way, or my phone won’t charge. So I leaned against the back wall, fumbling with my phone in both hands, and watched the other travelers.
A family stood with their neck pillows at the part of the belt where the bags fell down. Closer to me, a dad in cargo shorts stood behind his son with his hands on the kid’s shoulders. The boy scrutinized each bag carefully, searching for defining characteristics. Eventually he found one and lunged out of the gates of his father’s hands and over to the belt. The oversized bag dragged him along the tile for a bit, his light-up sneakers squeaking as he went, but eventually he hoisted it over the lip and crashing onto the floor. Off behind his dad, who stepped forward beaming, there was a tourist poster for Africa: a lioness yanking a gazelle down off a rock. I laughed at the similarity, and wondered what an Africa poster was doing in Medford, Oregon.
Off against the right wall, an elderly woman in a cream cardigan sat watching her family. She clasped her hands one on top of the other over her minuscule pink suitcase, and wet her lips. She looked so far away from the rest of the group, and I wondered which family was hers. She scanned the rest of the room, eventually landing on me with a hint of surprise. I smiled at her and shifted my gaze.
My phone vibrated in my hand:
Uncle Rex – now
Parked to right immediately outside doors. White truck. Can't-miss it.
He waited right outside. I don’t know why, but I felt nervous knowing it. I think I get nervous anytime I know I’m going to see someone again after a significant amount of time has passed. Is it significant? Am I any different? And is that a good thing or bad thing?
I yanked the charger from the wall, shoved it into my backpack and hoisted everything again. I pulled my train past the old woman, who looked up at me. I gave her one of those pursed-lip white people smiles, like, “It is what it is, isn’t it?” and she followed suit.
Having made it to the other side of the room, the automatic doors pulled the curtain back on a view of dense sage mountains. I had seen them from the window of the plane, but mountains are always different from the ground. From the air, they look like little more than the products of God’s bored hands through wet sand. From the air, they look like the gods themselves: hulking authorities risen over time from absolutely nothing.
I turned right and hunched over slightly, looking out under the awning for Rex’s white truck, but when I saw a massive white F-150 with a pickup cover, I knew he had not exaggerated. I walked out from under the awning and into the sun, which imposed itself immediately on my black suit.
I recognized Rex because he recognized me: He faced me directly on the sidewalk, white-sneakered feet clamped together, leaning forward slightly in anticipation. He wore jeans and a white tank top with a snug collar. I couldn’t tell if he had made the tank top himself. His gut stood out in the light, but so did his arms, which were liver-spotted and close to hairless but still strong. He held them out at his sides, shoulders back. If not for the stomach protrusion, he would have resembled a soldier at attention like his father used to be. He squinted behind sport sunglasses, and reached a hand up to his gray hair. I knew he spotted me then, because he spread his arms out wide and opened his mouth, an odd mixture of recognition and appall.
“Jesus!” He looked around for witnesses as I walked closer to him. Family seems to do that: assume everyone else sees how much this person in front of them has changed. I couldn’t help but smile. “Look at you! I almost didn’t recognize you. You’re so tall!”
I opened my arms and hugged him tight. He squeezed back and pulled away to look at me. He looked me in the eyes, squinting in the sunlight. His mouth hung open slightly like he was panting, and he just shook his head, rattling his memories out of his ears.
“So, I made it!” I said.
“Yeah, here I’ll get your stuff,” Rex said, yanking them over to the back of the truck. He fiddled with the latch-handle locks on the bed cover, “Just get in the cab and we’ll be out of here.”
I told him I didn’t mind helping and we hoisted the bags into the bed.
The bed was packed to the ceiling. Milk crates with jumper cables, a hand saw, a spongy mattress pad, wrapped picture frames, an unmarked hard plastic case with latches and a handle, an accordion binder wedged between the wall and long boxes of aluminum foil and saran wrap…there must have been more “daily necessities” shit crammed into the front. Not sure why it was packed where he couldn't reach it, but I guessed that those were the items he thought of first when he got down to packing.
I took off my suit jacket and rest it carefully on top of the mattress pad. It folded in on itself anyway.
“Pretty much everything I own,” he said, and slammed the back window. He locked the latches, walked around to the driver’s seat, and climbed in. I followed on the opposite side, pinching and pulling my shirt to fan my chest.
He gripped the wheel with his left hand and twisted to grab a massive blue leather atlas behind him. He tossed it on my side of the dash.
“So…we have four days to get you home, with only around two and a half thousand miles, multiple hulking mountain ranges, wide open plains, and crazy Oregonians to pass before we’re home free.”
He chuckled to himself and slipped his sport glasses back on.
“Buckle up, buddy.”