Mobile

I'm listening to Neil Young "Live at the Riverboat 1969." I am back to the hotel room in that fancy hotel in Mobile, Ala., two years ago. It was a late, muggy night as I landed in the airport in Mobile. The ride from Detroit was bouncy. The ride from the airport was long, me on the last shuttle, with an older African-American lady who had spent her entire life in Mobile. Mobile has the very first Mardi Gras ... "it would be good for your babies." Family friendly. I brought up my youth in North Carolina, one Southerner to another. To her, though, North Carolina might as well be the Maryland I call home now ... North. South is here in Mobile and down that long road to New Orleans. We talk. I listen, a lot. I learn that she worked in a factory that closed. She has one son, who has moved away to South Carolina with a girl. Now it's just her and a grandniece in need of mothering. "You want to call ahead when you go back to the airport, the shuttle doesn't run all the time." Good advice that saves me at the end of this trip. I tip with every bit of cash I have in my pocket. Not much, but she is overly grateful. I feel guilty for being able to tip, the dark lining in every bright cloud, that guilt. So tired, I make it to my room. High up above Mobile Bay. I see twinkling lights of ships out there in the humidity. The air conditioning is the real thing. Thank goodness. I turn on the radio. Neal Young. Turns out to be an all-night Neil Young station. "Sugar Mountain." "Whiskey Boot Hill." Stuff with Crazy Horse. New stuff. At 2 a.m. It's enough, I turn on the alternative setting ... ambient sounds. I pick Southern thunderstorm over rainforest stream. Seems appropriate. Like me, being here, right now.