Night Rambler Copyright 1994 by Dave Laird An Addition to Tales from the Front Whenever I return to my home in Stevens County, I am struck the peacefulness of the dark. Once I leave the city lights behind, there are the occasional farmer's lights, casting broad pool of greenish light around somebody's yard, even the occasional street light you pass through small towns. One of the recent arrivals that just moved in down the road recently made the comment that they took a considerable time just aclimating themselves to the lack of traffic after nine o'clock at night. This is especially true, after Crazy Jake Caslin went on the wagon recently. In fact, I've woke several times at night, recently, about 2:30 in the morning, and caught myself listening in vain for the sound of his clattering old pickup truck trying to weave its way up the mountain road. Despite Spokane's advertised image to the contrary, there is too much of the city in it to my liking. The public transit buses spewing bus farts all over the town brings to mind an image of burly, brawling Chicago or New York at rush hour, not some insignificant little enterprise of a town clustered along the Spokane River. In Spokane we may have all the ailments of the big metropolis, but less than half the brains it takes to run it. We have gang wars, street ministers and everything encompassed in between. Ten years ago, we had only a handful of twenty-four hour full-service restaurants catering mostly early-morning newspaper delivery drivers, truck drivers and occasionally vagrant tourists passing through the area. In ten years time more all-night eateries have opened their doors, to meet the explosion of late-night wierdo-types. Growth of unprecedented proportions has taken place, mostly people trying to get away from the very problems caused by their existence, their lifestyle. In my travels, I encountered one of the more unusual these individuals at a local twenty-four hour diner. This man, whom I favored immediately with the moniker "The Night Rambler", seemingly had little purpose with the ordinary pursuits that fulfill most peoples' lives. The Night Rambler, so named for his footloose lifestyle, a man only slightly past middle years of his life, was just gray enough the temples that some women would find him attractive. During the course of the last two years, I have encountered this man in no less than a dozen Spokane's twenty-four hour restaurants. Each time, he was sitting alone, bereft of human companionship, for he seems to have no friends. He never stays long in one place, either. It is almost as if listening for and hears a distant warning gong that tells him when he has over-stayed his welcome, and generally leaves before anyone works up the nerve to remind him so. Each time, he abruptly jumps to his feet, fumbling for the pocket change to pay for his coffee, peering uncertainly around him, as if to see if anyone has noticed how long has been sitting. He pays his bill, and nearly always pays a decent tip to the waitresses, all of whom know him by sight. Then scurrying out the door, he climbs into his 1968 Chevrolet Impala, the one with the long, ugly fins like the Cadillac once favored, and off he drives into the darkness. He'll drive around for approximately half an hour, perhaps less if the weather is ugly, only to stop at yet another restaurant, where he repeats his performance before. He'll repeat his actions all night, until the feathery gray sunrise is just beginning to tinge the sky with color, and then he disappears. After curiously monitoring this individual's path for period of several weeks, finally worked the nerve up to approach him face to face. "I've met you several times at different diners during the course of the last six weeks or so," I commently softly, as I sat down next to him at the formica counter of a favorite eatery. "You seem to get around almost as much as I, which is saying a lot." "What of it? Are you a cop or something?" I laughed, every inch of me suddenly wary, on guard. "No, I'm not a cop. just happened to notice you and I sit in some of the same places each night, that's all..." "The world's free. A man can sit where he wants, so long as keeps a civil tongue in his head and pays his taxes. These days, the government will forget whether you keep a civil tongue so long as you take care of the latter." He slowly, deliberately poured his sugar into his coffee, keeping his face averted from me. Then, as suddenly as flash fire in gasoline, he turned his grey eyes full on me, and did a slow ten count, then said, "I don't know what you are after, much less do I care. I keep to myself, mind my own business, and I'd recommend you do the same." With that, and a sigh of patient forbearance, he arose from his untouched coffee, and with the now-familiar absent-minded funbling for pocket change, he snatched his ticket from the counter, tossed a few coins down next to the coffee, and left. Since that first and only encounter, I have seen the Night Rambler several more times. I now know that he listens old Tammy Wynette country music albums on an eight-track tape deck that is probably worth more than his entire car. I have come upon him unawares in the parking lot of the truck stop in time to hear enough of Wynette's plaintive wail to recognize her voice. I also know that he occasionally smokes some of those short, evil-smelling rum-soaked cigars, after he flung one out the window of his car as he launched himself from a snow bank late last winter.