The Bunch Quitter

No place to rest*

A grieving young Irish immigrant puts his motherless infant son in the hands of strangers and sails away, never to be heard from again. An old cowboy turns his ranch over to his wife and rides off into the sunset. A glimpse of a hobo waiting by muddy waters to board a west-bound freight train, the stuff of a young boy’s dreams.

I went out on the road in pursuit of angels and some crazed notion of perfect freedom, after I returned from Vietnam. I disappeared for ten years into the drama that was America in the sixties and seventies. Among other things, I learned that visions are not confined to saints and schizophrenics, I could be violently seasick for a week and survive, and not everyone wants rescue. Unable to sustain the degree of rootlessness and isolation that I found out on the road and yet unable to see a place in society to rest my head, I let the road become my prison.

*bunch quitter: a colloquial expression generally used to describe an animal, usually a cow or steer, that resists being herded or controlled. This resistance can sometimes take the form of violent and even self-destructive behavior.