"Have you seen "No Country"?"
I can't think of the first few friends to ask me that, and I want to see it on my winter trip. Looking for someone to watch at night in a cheap hotel. Sheets are balled, unread messages are waiting for me on my phone, stats are lying on my computer. My original intention was to open that movie on one of the most tiring, worst nights.
I just finished a 10,000km road trip by myself. But I'm running away from the meaning of travel, I'm running away from this movie. I do not know why.
I didn't watch the trailer, I didn't watch the intro. I thought it was a story of a woman traveling all the way to work. I saw her living in her station wagon and working in Amazon's factories during the day. Her best friend introduced her to her co-workers, everyone introduced their tattoos during their lunch break, and Fern stared at his lunch box.
I will remember the days when I used to work in the factory. I used to have a colleague who had his wife's name tattooed on his left forearm. His wife's name is K. He's not very good at telling his own story, but people always tell me.
"He! Married three times, and the third wife is a junior, so her wife can be cautious. She asked her to tattoo her name on her forearm. We kept him away when we decorated the company's Christmas tree for Christmas. For one thing, if he gets some sequins on him, his wife's going to end it all..."
But my colleague is very happy, he always smiles when he mentions his wife. I think Fern is surrounded by that happiness too.
It was December, and Fern's job at Amazon was coming to an end. Colleagues told her, see you next year. She opened a can opener and warmed the tomato soup on the stove. She was wearing a Christmas celebration tiara that wasn't the right size. She lowered her head to scoop the soup, and the headdress would slide over her head.
Last December, I was still working in a cannery. At that time, the busy season was over, and I would go to the warehouse to help. I love the Gin in the warehouse who checks empty cans for wear and tear. She was thin and often smoked with other male workers. It was a very small factory, and everyone knew what happened in the workers' homes. I know her husband has been bedridden for a long time and she can't pay her medical bills despite her hard work. On days of minus 20 degrees, I also saw her smoking one after another in the snow.
"Did you know? The cheapest Christmas tree is the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. One year, when my husband was well, we went to the Christmas tree market to buy an eight-foot (about two-meter-four) Christmas tree, but we picked it up. What a bargain! We were laboriously strapped to the roof and hauled home..." Gin said.
The days in the factory are grey, but Christmas is always golden. Like Fern's flickering headdress, like those beautiful china plates with polished edges.
Why is Fern on the road? She stubbornly felt that was the only viable way of life for her. Like a migratory bird, she draws beautiful, incomplete circles on the map.
In the cannery where I used to work, most of the workers were from Mexico or Texas. Some of them will go around to find different factories to work. Every May, they drive north from Texas to Wisconsin. The one-way trip was twenty-four hours, and the workers usually came together as a family. The family took turns driving for twenty-four hours. In summer, they are at this vegetable cannery. When it comes to fall, they go to the frozen cranberry plant.
"Is there any difference between a vegetable canning factory and a cranberry factory?" I asked worker Juan.
"There's no difference, maybe there's no unpleasant smell of vegetables, and then we don't have to wear safety helmets," Juan said.
That is the only life trajectory the workers can imagine. Full-time jobs are hard to find, and living like a migratory bird is the most profitable per unit.
Being alone is not the only option. Most of the workers in the factory have company, whether it’s a boy who insists on helping his girlfriend clean up when the factory is sterilizing, and doesn’t care about his own area, or an old man who insists on having lunch with his sixty-year-old wife. Can be accompanied. Worker Emily's fiance stayed in the bureau, and he made five boyfriends in the factory. Being alone is not the only option.
In Fern's life, she may have witnessed many such moments. Those RV gatherings in Arizona where people sat around the fire and shared their pain. Everyone hugs hard, in socially appropriate and socially inappropriate ways. I watched her story and I was crying and laughing. I don't know how many times she repeated her story, about being forced to leave her home, about her husband's passing. She tinkered with the china plates earnestly, taking the slides out again and again.
"I know you must take good care of your husband," Swankie said to Fern, looking at Fern.
She just nestled in her bed, stubbornly flipping through photos, stubbornly celebrating the holidays like an active family member.
Fern had countless moments where he could stay. The first time Dave was getting ready to go home, he asked Fern if he wanted to come with him. Then Dave invited Fern over to his house for Thanksgiving. He asked Fern, would you like to stay here? Are there better options? Together they held out their palms to Jupiter under the stars in Badlands Park. Twenty-four light-years away, the light of Vega shone upon them. Cosmic explosions kicked up dust, and fragments of plasma and stars fell on them.
For Fern, such happiness may have been too dazzling to stab people's eyes. On that peaceful night, she flipped off the comfortable big bed and went back to her car to sleep for the night.
The girl in me yelled, Fern stay, stay, stay safe.
But she still left.
Then I cried and laughed and the walls in my house were thin. I saw her extending and retracting hands. I closed the door to the room, and I couldn't help crying unrestrainedly for her. I see her far away. A stable life memory is a chronic disease with a very long incubation period. Those road landscapes are painkillers.
Swankie told Fern that she had seen a lot of scenery. She was boating in Alaska, and the rock faces were full of birds, white eggshells floating in the water. Those grand, distant lives will occupy the minds of people, making people forget the stubborn diseases in their own bodies.
Maybe that's why, why Fern couldn't stay, why I couldn't explain the meaning of the trip.
Whenever she was tempted by that stable life, the pain would remind her that if she stopped in this place, the chronic disease would catch up with her and the incubation period would be shortened. Her heart was still contracting hard because of the pain. Yet she covered her ears as if nothing had happened. She is still refusing pain, refusing pain to reach her brain. I see her refusing to stay, I see myself refusing to stay. I saw her puncture her tires and not have a spare tire ready. Nowhere to go, nowhere to go.
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