The Night Vigil

Guest author, Marya Hornbacher

A regular feature of the Rolling Desk is “Ask and Give”—stories about the ways people, often strangers, show up for each other, asking for what they need or giving what they have to give. Today’s essay comes from a guest author I’m thrilled to introduce to you.

The thing I most want to tell you about

Marya Hornbacher

isn’t that she’s a New York Times bestselling author, whose first book, Wasted, a memoir written when she was 23, has been translated into 40+ languages (though that’s pretty dope). It’s not that, since then, she’s written a critically acclaimed novel, a second memoir, a handbook on recovery, and a book exploring spirituality in recovery. And it’s not even that, two years ago, she changed her life, going on the road in a home on wheels she calls the Tramp Scamp, turning in “the premise” for “the clean taste of knowing—like running your tongue along the edge of one absolute, irrefutable truth—the pure, buoyant joy that comes when you feel your body catch the wind and begin to climb” (though it’s why I found her). (Check out a photo essay on that move to the road.)

What I want to tell you is that Marya’s writing here on Going Solo at the End of the World—about living on a road that’s both a lot like the one I’ve been on for the past handful of years and also different, because we’re all on our own roads—makes my heart cartwheel. I recognize the way she winds up in places and finds connection with whoever’s there (“Ring Bell after Dark”). So, too, her kinship with those who are “dusty, dirty the way you get when you live like this” feels like my own. Marya’s vision is sharp. She’s a badass with the heart of a protectress (read the three-part “Virginia”). Her prose mimics the road, here expansive and ribbony, there tight and to the point. And as an audio/video expert and voice coach, she makes recordings that take you with her. Want your heart to open wide and break a little all at once (especially if you’ve known the love of a dog)? Listen to “The story of Zeke & a few notes on love.”

Here’s Marya.

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The Night Vigil

3pm—Just Hitched

Sometimes things come up. Sometimes the bottom falls out of a gig or a plan or a life and then there you are, at the mercy of other people’s kindness or lack of it. Sometimes you’re standing on your bumper trying to rip the seven-pin hitch plug off its cord to get at the wires so you can replace it since you left in a hurry, didn’t plug it in right, and drove damn near 600 miles without brake lights or taillights, dragging the cord and the plug the whole way at some ungodly speed and shaved it fully in half, and now it’s a four-pin hitch plug with one flat side. Sometimes you’re digging through everything you own because somehow you can’t find a knife. You carry three, you bought two more last week, and now you can’t find a single goddamn knife.

So sometimes you’re jerry-rigging a box cutter and trying to bite a wire off with your teeth when a tall, slender boy with the kind of deep tan you only get when you live outside walks over to your campsite and takes his hat off and says, Ma’am, I seen you struggling, I was wondering could I help.

The boy tossed his hair out of his face and gestured behind himself at a girl with lemon-juice bleach-streaked dark hair who was hanging back a ways, and he said, This is my wife, and he looked so proud of himself he might pop. Both of them, their legs and arms and hands covered in blue-black jailhouse tattoos, beamed shyly at me, almost glowed.

She took a few tentative steps toward me. We were filthy, all three of us—dusty, dirty the way you get when you live like this, hands covered with grime, motor oil, jack grease, soot. I wondered when they’d last had a chance to wash clothes; I wondered when I'd last changed mine. Zeke was barking her head off at a big, sweet pit bull cowering and peeking out from behind the girl's knees.

Finally I said, Yes, I could use some help. This is not a sentence I like, even when it’s true, especially when it’s true, and I handed the boy the replacement plug and the packet of screws and the wrinkled sheet of detailed instructions in tiny dense print and the needle nose pliers and said, Have at. Thank you.

I pulled a couple of camp chairs out of the truck, unfolded them both, pointed the girl to one, went and got a bag of grapes and a box of crackers and some water, set them all on a camp table next to her, and looked the other way while she ate.

She said, You’re the first nice person we met since we left.

Where you from? I asked.

Mississippi, the boy replied, crouching by the hitch and examining the frayed wires at the end of the cord. People ain’t so friendly in the city.  

I nodded. There are no cities near here.

Two days ago, sunset blazing in streaks across the lake, I pulled into a campground, backed into my site, hopped out to unhitch, and found my hitch cord unplugged and the seven-prong tow plug beat all to hell.

That night, as I walked toward the bathhouse to wash up, I saw a broke-down little cargo van in one of the quieter sites, set way back toward the lake. There was a rainbow tarp spread over the windshield, held in place by a stack of old bicycles on the roof. Around the van I saw four or five tanks of propane, plastic crates of crushed aluminum cans, blankets, more tarps, a makeshift table made out of maybe a box draped with a batik patterned cloth, various parts and things and parts of things. Whomever it was had been there a few days—long enough to settle in. As I got closer, I could see that someone had printed their CashApp on the panel above the sliding side door in what looked like Sharpie pen.

On my way back to the Scamp, I saw the left side panel: in pink and red paint, surrounded by gold bubbly clouds and dots and hearts, someone had lettered Just Hitched in a schoolgirl’s hand.

5pm—Mind Your Business and Wait

The young woman had curled herself up like a cat, somehow, in a narrow folding camp chair, and I realized that she hadn’t sat in a chair in a long time. I prowled around, trying to think of things I could feed them, but I was pretty well out of food.

I stuck my head under the tailgate and asked the boy, You need anything?

Ma’am?  

Water? You got the right tools?

No, ma’am. I mean, yes, ma’am. I’m all set. Thank you. He smiled at the hitch plug. I just seen you over here like you was struggling, he said, studying the diagram on the instruction sheet, And I said to my wife, We gotta go see if she needs some help.

The girl, halfway through a bag of grapes, jumped in. I heard somebody yellin, mad as hell—she laughed, a high, clear sound, like windchimes or bells—and I looked over here and seen you marchin around, yellin and hollerin and I said to my husband, How’s that one little lady makin all that dang noise by herself?

I cracked a smile. You guys full time? I asked.

Yes ma’am, the boy said. We was backpacking, but then we got that van—he nods over toward their campsite—for a wedding present, and I said to my wife, We gotta go. No sense waiting.

No sense, she added, nodding.

I tole her, We wait, we might’s well not ever go. Could be stuck forever. Could set in one place and never see nothin our whole lives.

Where you headed next? I asked.

California, she said. I want to put my feet in the Pacific Ocean.

The boy tugged at one of the wires. Oklahoma first, he said. She got people there. I got a buddy, he’s makin botha us a gun.

That so, I said.

Yes ma’am, he said. He nodded at his wife. I want her to be safe, he said. Somethin happens to me, I wanna know she’s safe.

The girl said, I tole my husband this morning, I said, This protector thing is exhausting. I sat up last night so he could sleep—

I ain’t slept in four days, he said.

He ain’t slept, she echoed, and I want him to get some sleep so I said, Baby, you sleep. I’ll stay up and watch.

They still come knockin this morning, he said.

They did, she replied, nodding.

Who came knocking? I asked.

Park people, he said. Come knockin at six a.m., want to know where our license is at.

People ain’t friendly, she said, furrowing her brow. Like what kind of hospitality is that. It’s like they ain't even get raised.

It’s a big country, I said. Anywhere you go, people will tell you who they are, what kind of place you’re in. Where you stand.

The boy nodded vehemently. He pulled out a pocketknife and started cutting away the tough rubber tubing of the cord.

You don’t even have to ask, I said. They’ll tell you. All you gotta do is walk in, mind your business, and wait.

Walk with lantern, Ilya Repin, 1879.

You know how to read a map? the boy asked me suddenly.

I do, I said.

You teach her? he asked.

I looked over at her, curled up in the cheap canvas camp chair I bought at Walmart for a couple of bucks, but she’d fallen asleep.

I looked back at the boy. She drive?

No, ma’am.

She got a license? I asked.

We neither of us do, he said. I can’t get a social security card cuz I ain’t got a license, and I can’t get a license cuz I ain’t got a social security card. And if I ain’t got a license and I ain’t got a social security card, I can’t get my record expunged, and until I get my record expunged, I can’t get a gun.

It’s expensive, the girl said, piping up like the Dormouse. Cost bout as much as raising a whole child.

That right? I said, thinking I might fact check that.

I got a couple felonies, he said. Can’t legally own a gun.

You still on paper? I asked him.

Just got off, he said proudly.

Good for you, I said. You do time?

Ten years.

I blanched. For what?

Marijuana. Two bags.

You did ten years for carrying two bags of pot?

Yes, ma’am. Possession and intent to distribute.

I see.

It’d a been different if it’d all been in one bag.

And now you don’t have a license or a social security card and you can’t own a firearm?

Yes, ma’am. Suddenly animated, he gestured with the pliers in his right hand. And you know what I think? I think that’s crazy. I got a wife and property. I got second amendment rights.

You’re not wrong, I said. I watched him study the diagram of the tow plug. And I guess then you can’t vote.

No, ma’am. Far as Uncle Sam is concerned, I don't even have a name. He looked at me and grinned impishly. Far as he knows, I don’t even exist.

The girl shifted in her seat, half-opened her eyes, and murmured, You readin those instructions, baby?

I’m reading the picture, he said.

She smiled, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Good job, baby, she said, and drifted off again.

6pm—Hey Boss

We were hours into messing with the tow plug and we’d gotten the left blinker to turn on the right rear brake light when Karen called to see how we were getting along. I put her on speaker, set the phone down in front of the boy’s knee, and sat back down in my chair.

Hey Boss, he said to the phone. He had no idea who Karen was, or who I was, or what a Scamp was, and as I listened to Karen walk him through the details of the wiring—Scamp hitches are wired backwards, she explained, look at the schematic I sent Marya, she said, and I watched him hold a wire cutter in his teeth and twist the wires and cut the casings and say Yes ma’am and No ma’am and Thank you, ma’am—I realized that at some point these two people, like I, had slipped through the wormhole that exists in every economy, stepping outside of the visible world of transactions and cash and items of value and valuations of things and into the shadow world where all of us are hot and dirty and hungry and so incredibly tired and the wiring isn’t working and we’ve eaten all the grapes and a girl is sleeping in a camp chair and this man, this boy, is going to sit up all night watching over this girl and her stray dog and the bucket of water containing her four large turtles and one lily pad leaf, and she’ll put her bare feet up on the steering wheel she’s decorated with ribbons and glitter, and he’ll build a fire in a tin can and lean over it while she sleeps for no reason other than because it’s a fire in a tin can and there’s nothing else to do.

7pm—The Shadow Economy

The campground had been getting noisier, busier—it’s a holiday weekend, most every campsite was full. The campsite north of mine had a sleek Airstream—well into six figures, new or used—and a couple sitting in camp chairs. They waved, and watched. The site across from me was a big boisterous family with several small kids, and they stared like small kids do, and the parents tugged on their hands to jerk their attention from the motley crew the three of us made, an odd mismatched set of people who looked messy and broken down and lost.

From beneath the tailgate: Ma’am, can I ask you a question?

Shoot.

I see you got these gas tanks here, the boy asked, jerking his head at the propane tanks on the front of the Scamp. Any chance you’d want to buy another one off me?

Can you sell those? I asked him.

Yes ma’am, I sure can.

Take ‘em, I said. I don’t use the propane. They just add weight.

All right, then.

I can’t pay you, I said. Least this way you get something for all your work.

You ain’t have to pay me, he said. I don’t expect nothing for this. This is just what you do for people.

I know.

This is just what people do.

I know that, I said. I know.

I went over to the truck, folded back the tonneau cover, and started digging around for things they could sell.

Right around 8pm, a 35-foot motorhome rumbled slowly through the campground and came to a slow, squealing stop in front of the campsite where their little van was parked.

The owner, in a golf shirt so white it looked almost blue, climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood talking with the park ranger, who’d pulled up in a pickup. The two men looked over at us, then turned their backs, bent their shoulders together, and stood, arms crossed, feet splayed, staring at the little white Just Hitched van.

The girl said quietly, I tole you they was driving past real slow.

The boy, seated under the tailgate of my truck, flared, They can come and talk to me about it, all right? It said online this place was free to camp. There’s a sign right at the entrance that says it right there, it says FREE PARKING.

I watched him stripping the wires with the knife he’d showed me how to sharpen by running it along the truck window's edge. I kept waiting for him to nick a finger, a knuckle, with how angrily he cut at the casings on the wires.

The sign at the entrance to the park says Fee Parking.

Fee Parking Beyond This Point.

He can’t read.

1am—There’s a Baby Copperhead at Campsite 3

The door and windows of the Scamp are open; the rain broke the heat, then the rain stopped, and now there’s a breeze. The yellow curtains my mom made are lifting and falling, there’s the soft glow I love when I write late at night from an $11 lamp, and two kids from Mississippi are taking turns sleeping in their van outside my door.

We loaded up their van while the man in the RV stood with his soft fists on his hips and supervised without troubling himself to say hello.

I thanked them for all their help, told them they knew where to find me, and started back toward my site.

The man with the white shirt cut a sidelong glance at me. I ashed my cigarette his way and hoped I smelled like sweat and camper funk.

Behind me, I heard the van trying to start, the engine straining to turn over. I slowed my pace, listening.

It couldn’t even have been a four-cylinder. It wasn’t going to start; if it started, it wasn’t going to run.

I walked over to my pickup, hopped in, pulled in front of the Just Hitched van, hopped out, chained up, and towed them into my site, maybe twenty feet across the road.

The elderly couple that serves as the camp host—most state and federal campgrounds have volunteer hosts—pulled up in a golf cart around 10. The woman—almost ethereal in the nearly moonlight, white haired and white skinned and gentle and frail—leaned toward me and whispered, What are we going to do?

I did what she needed me to do; she needed me to play an older white woman who was safe and financially secure and in a position to judge people who were young and unhoused and unsafe and unwashed and poor.

I whispered, Oh, they’re fine. Great kids. Just young and dumb. I wrinkled my nose stupidly in a way that seemed faintly parental, a weird facial tic intended to say We’ve all been young and dumb and wound up stuck on road trips with our young spouse with whom we are madly in love, haven't we? And that’s just the grand adventure before we clean up our acts and get jobs and buy houses and have babies and perform our natural function as American citizens which is to make more citizens who work jobs to buy houses and pay for babies and have things and save up and retire and buy large RVs and travel from campground to campground in massive gas guzzling diesel spilling machines.

Are you sure? she asked, looking concerned for me.

Because of course I couldn’t say, This is the end of the world as we know it, and you will be fine. And I will make it out just under the wire. And these kids will not make it at all. And their children, whom they have already lost, will not make it, and those children’s children will not make it, and you are asking me to pretend to be one of you so do not have to think about the fact that the only thing standing between you and poverty, you and ignorance, you and the loss of security, the loss of any hope of security, is my willingness to pretend that I am one of you, not one of them; that the boat is sound, not sinking; that the water is not rising even now.

Oh, absolutely, I said. Just want to make sure they’re safe to drive. I can’t have them driving in the dark like that. You know how it is. You’re a mom, I said, looking into this woman’s eyes.

She softened a little and nodded, smiling.

I am not a mom.

All right, she said finally, sighing fretfully. But be careful. You call us if you need anything, hear? And you know they just killed a baby copperhead at Campsite 3.

With money James loaned me for gas and the last 3% of battery left on my phone, I booked the kids a campsite some fifteen miles closer to California. When she wakes up, I’ll tow them over, drop them off, and we will lose each other’s phone numbers and forget each other’s names.

The van’s hood is up and so is the truck’s. They’ve got jumper cables running from their battery to mine. It’s been that way since last night. Maybe it’s the fuel pump. Maybe it’s a fuse. The van doesn’t really run; I know that, though I don’t know how long it’s been since it has. I step out of the camper and walk the perimeter of the campsite to check on them every hour or so.

The young man is sitting on my camp chair outside the van, shoulders bent. The flare of a tin can fire lights the angles of his face.

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This piece was first published on Going Solo at the End of the World (May 2024). It was originally written using an AI-generated transcription of the conversation quoted here, which was recorded and transcribed in its entirety. The two individuals on whom this piece focuses were provided with written and audio versions of the piece and gave their written and verbal approval of the representation, characterization, and verbatim quotes herein, and have consented to its publication and received its final form prior to post.

Want more Marya?

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