a day (# 15)

*

Four hundred years ago, Agawam, located at the point where the Connecticut River receives tribute from the Westfield, was a fertile meadow where a few Native American families grew maize, squash, and beans.     

I think of this as I collect Yodaris in Agawam. She just moved here from the Bronx to care for her aging father. 

The people here, Yodaris observes, seem not so warm as in New York. We pass Pynchon Point, a park by the river, where, in 1635, two English colonists, built the first European dwelling in the region.

As we navigate the traffic circle, I tell her I understand what she means, that I’ve always found New Yorkers very warm. She seems to appreciate that. Her wary eyes soften as she adds, “But it is more beautiful and peaceful here.”

We cross the bridge and enter Springfield, the earth underneath which, in 1636, the English Puritan fur trader Thomas Pynchon purchased—along with 100 square miles of earth under what we now call Agawam, West Springfield, and Chicopee—from a group of Native Americans for 18 hoes, 18 fathoms of wampum, 18 coats, 18 hatchets, and 18 knives. 

“Yes,” I agree. “It is very beautiful and peaceful here.”

* *

Makeda is waiting outside at Roady’s America’s Home Town Truck Stop. What is it with Roady’s America’s Home Town Truck Stop? I mean, what’s with the name? The two possessive nouns in a row confuse me. Does this Home Town Truck Stop belong to America or Roady? Is Roady even a person? How about America? Is it a person? 

Makeda seems pissed. At first, I worry it’s me. I always get a little turned around in this neighborhood. Roady’s America’s Home Town Truck Stop is in a terrible location. I mean, it’s a perfect location for an urban truck stop, nestled amidst a tangle of curling concrete ramps leading to and from the interstate. But for that very reason, the location is a bummer:  sandwiched between the Connecticut River and I-91, which separates Springfield from the river that made it a desirable place to live for Native Americans and Puritan colonists alike. It’s never clear to me whether the surface streets that run alongside and crisscross beneath the interstate are actual streets or service roads or ghost roads from another era; and if they are actual streets, whether they are dead ends; and if they are not dead ends, then whether they are one way—much uncertainty in this place of dusky shadows beneath the overpass.

But Makeda is not pissed at me. She’s tired from working the night shift at the Roady’s America’s Home Town Truck Stop convenience store. And now she’s headed to her next job as a manager at Dunkin’, where regional will be inspecting today. Not that she’s worried. She runs a tight ship. But she is tired from working two jobs. She pauses to take a phone call. 

To get to Dunkin’ we’ll have to find another place to ford the interstate. When it was built in the 1960s, planners felt the Connecticut was “too polluted to be useful any longer.” I don’t know what that means exactly. But instead of redirecting funds toward cleaning the river, they dropped I-91 like a dull blade slicing a ragged gash through the heart of Springfield’s riverside communities, including South End, where Makeda’s Dunkin’ is located. Everyone who could afford to, fled to new suburban communities and strip malls using the highway that destroyed their neighborhood. Those who couldn’t leave, or their descendants, still today wander the streets of this part of town, seemingly stunned.

When Makeda gets off the phone, she explains that she hopes to quit at least one of her jobs, so she and her man can get their kids out of South End. Their plan? To win $50,000 in the lottery.

* * *

When I get to Dawn’s in Chicopee, she is moving giant Hefty trash bags onto the back porch of her third-floor walk-up apartment. 

When Thomas Pynchon bought this area, he called it Cabotville. But the area’s natives called the river “Chicopee,” meaning “violent water,” because of the rapids and waterfalls that mark the river’s course before it pours into the Connecticut.

I’m still waiting for Dawn and thinking about Chicopee when one of those trash bags lands with a soft thud a few feet behind my car. I open my door slightly and try to peer up. 

“Sorry!” Dawn shouts down with a sheepish smile. “It’s just my laundry. It’s easier than carrying it down the stairs.” More bags follow—one, two, three, four more. I get out. 

“No problem!” I shout up. But Dawn’s disappeared inside her apartment, so I just start loading the laundry into the trunk. A few moments later, she descends the fire escape, wearing baggy flannel pajama pants, fluffy Tigger slippers, and an enormous, black Smith & Wesson hoodie. 

Like many towns in the Connecticut River Valley, Chicopee, rich with water power, was a mill town. By 1850, its textile mills were processing enormous amounts of cotton picked by enslaved people in the American South. But only a decade later, the Ames Manufacturing Company produced most of the cannons used by the Union army in the Civil War to defeat the Confederacy.

Dawn’s in the car now. She’s already pressed a $5 bill into my hand for loading her laundry. Then her phone rings. Her friend is afraid because her new baby is throwing up. Dawn is sympathetic but calm, well-informed, and reassuring. She explains to her friend what she needs to look out for. I’m impressed, and I tell her so when she gets off. I say she must have younger siblings she’s looked after or lots of babysitting experience. Dawn, who cannot be more than 21 years old, laughs. 

“No,” she says, “I have four kids myself.”

Most of the textile and later sporting goods and arms factories that made Chicopee are gone now. On the way to the laundromat, we pass a couple of the few remaining big local employers: food distributors. Whenever I pick someone up from a shift at one of these, they tell me working there is awful, not so much because the work is hard. Any idiot can do that work, they say. The work sucks because the managers are terrible and are among the few idiots who can’t do the job. When I tell this to Dawn, she replies “I know. Totally. My kids’ dad got fired from there. He punched his supervisor.”

* * * *

After I drop Dawn and help her wrangle the trash bags into a laundry cart, I find my way back onto I-91, heading north toward home, planning to turn off the app. But before I do, a request comes in. It’s not on my way home, but the pickup isn’t too far past my house; the estimated ride is only about seven minutes, and I see surge pricing is in effect, so I’ll get a couple of extra dollars. 

I climb towards Northampton, the highway winding gently around the broad base of Mount Tom to my left. On the right, laid out below me on the Valley floor, the city of Holyoke—where the poverty, addiction, violence, and suffering are usually so nakedly revealed it seems the shining body of American promise itself has been flayed and turned inside out—looks from my elevated vantage point like a timeless New England idyll.

It didn’t take long for the settlers of the areas immediately surrounding Springfield to imagine settlements and markets along the Connecticut at points north of the rough waters around Chicopee. By 1654, they’d established a settlement in Northampton, where I’m headed now to pick up Amaya. Others followed in Hadley and in areas I know today as Amherst, South Hadley, Granby, Hatfield, and Leverett.

Along the way, Amaya changes her ride destination. A flash of anxiety arises: this was going to be a seven-minute ride; what if she tricked me—which is an actual thing—and is now changing her destination to Worcester or Boston? I won’t know until I’ve picked her up. At that point, I know I’m incapable of refusing to drive her. But this is not the first time this has happened, so I try not to get ahead of myself. Instead, I text her to ask, explaining that I’m doing my last ride and want to stay in the area.

“No worries!” She explains, “Just entered the wrong address. I’m just going a short distance.” This is punctuated with a smiley face emoji. A surge of relief prompts me to quickly reciprocate her smiley face and then raise her a hands-together-in-prayer-of-thanks. A moment later, another destination change. But this time, it is followed by a quick reassurance: “Sorry, I’m having trouble finding the right address.” 

By this time, I’m off the highway and heading toward the pickup location a few minutes away. Then another change, but again, Amaya shows her awareness that I’m a real person and her sensitivity to my real feelings and considerately texts me again: “So sorry. A lot is going on over here right now. But that should be the last change. Sorry!” I send her a thumbs-up and a smiley face.

I pull into the driveway as she’s coming out of the house. Once she’s in the car, I thank her for her consideration. She cheerfully waves it off as nothing, telling me she’s just trying to get to the bank branch to get some cash out of her account. “Great!” I say, “Let’s get you there.” I start the ride by pointing out the charger, water, candy, and poems. She seems less excited about these things than I’d hoped, but that’s okay. Maybe she doesn’t like poems, or the candy is the wrong kind of snack. Who knows? It’s not all about you, I think to myself. She takes a phone call. I start the ride, and see the address. She was right. Very close by, just across the bridge in Hadley, and sure enough, I’m told I’m seven minutes away. 

Within a decade of European settlement in this part of the Valley, Wampanoag natives complained that the settlers wouldn’t stop trying to convert them to Christianity and that their cows and sheep wouldn’t stop wandering into their fields and food stores. Tensions grew and, by the summer of 1675, erupted into a war—known as King Phillip’s War—which raged for nearly three years across most of New England. In the end, settlers and their indigenous allies were victorious. Historians estimate that 30% of the indigenous male population was killed in the war. 

When the GPS directs me to turn right because I’m at the destination, I’m a little surprised. It’s a gas station. But I’m thinking perhaps there’s a little bank kiosk or something that I don’t know about in there. “Here you go, Amaya,” I announce. She looks up from her phone. 

“What?”

“We’re here.”

“No. I want to go to TD Bank.”

“Hmmm. Okay. Well, this is the address the app gave me.” I gesture toward the phone screen to show her.

“That’s fucked up. That’s not what I put in.”

“No problem! Why don’t you just change it on your end, and then the app will update, and I’ll be able to take you to the bank.” She looks down at her phone and begins that process.

“What the fuck!? It costs that much more to change it to the bank?!” I can’t see what she is looking at, of course. But I know what’s going on. When you change your ride en route, Uber recalculates the fare and asks you to accept it before confirming the new route. In this case, I guess there was a surge in price or something else. It happens. 

“I’m sorry,” I say, “That happens sometimes.”

“Can’t you just take me anyway?”

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t afford to do that.”

“I’ll pay you a dollar.”

“I appreciate that offer. But that’s not something I can afford to do. But if you want to get out here, I can end this ride, and if you wait a few minutes, you might get a cheaper ride to the address you want to go to. Or you can change it, and I’ll take you.” She shakes her head but looks back at the phone as if she’s decided to change it.

“It’s not working.”

“What do you mean?”

“It won’t let me change it. Like, I have no cell signal here.” That’s possible for sure, but I doubt it’s true. Still, I don’t mind compromising and taking her claim at face value.

“Okay, Amaya. How about I pull out and start heading toward the bank? You keep trying, and we’ll see where we’re at when we get to the next traffic light.” The next light is only a quarter mile away, so I figure I don’t have much to lose.

When we get there, and I ask for an update, she tells me it’s still not working. So I pull into the strip mall parking lot on our right and cheerfully tell her we can just wait here until she can get a signal. I repeat that she’s free to stop the ride here and try her luck with another ride request. She looks at me in the mirror and then stares at her phone. 

“But it’s just like a mile away! Why won’t you take me? I can’t help it if my phone isn’t working.” I explain again that I understand her frustration. But this is my job, and I can’t afford to give rides for free. I’m about to add that the mile she’s talking about will probably take fifteen minutes to cover because it’s a construction zone in the opposite direction of home. However, before I can even begin, her dead phone rings: a miracle! She answers on speakerphone.

“What, Dad?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in an Uber trying to get the bank but this driver won’t take me there.” Like a panicked defendant on People’s Court, I interject:

“Because that’s not the address you put in. I can’t afford—”

“I’m not talking to you!” she shouts at me. Twice. Then, her father speaks up.

“Now, Amaya. He’s just doing his job. You know what we’ve talked about with your anger and how to deal with it.”

“But…”

“Amaya, I understand you’re frustrated,” he says, “but you just have to consider your choices and make one.” Then Amaya abruptly ends the call, punches the seat back in front of her with both fists and screams, “Fuck!” It takes me a second to realize that she’s trying to get out but can’t because the child safety locks have activated.

“Let me out this car you l’il bitch!” she shouts at me, leaning forward. My heart begins to pound against my ribcage. I jab at the door lock button, finally hitting the right one. Amaya flings open the back door and slams it shut so violently that the whole vehicle shakes. 

According to legend, in September of 1675, a stone’s throw from where Amaya and I parted, a group of settlers worshipping at the Christian meeting house were suddenly besieged by an approaching band of Indian warriors. Though armed, the settlers were surprised, terrified, and in disarray. Just then, a mysterious figure, unknown to anyone there and dressed unlike them but bearing a white beard and a long sword, appeared out of the darkness to take command, organize the settlers, and lead them in a triumphant defense and counterattack. This figure, who vanished as mysteriously as he’d appeared, became known as “the Angel of Hadley.”

Amaya’s gone, but—my hands trembling on the steering wheel—I cannot move for a moment. Then I end the ride, oddly pausing to consider what rating to give her. For the first time I give a passenger less than 5 stars: 4. I always was an easy grader. Then I shut down the app, navigate back to the bridge spanning the Connecticut River, and slowly make my way home to Easthampton, at the foot of Mt. Tom, the highest peak in the Metacomet Range, named after Metacomet, also known as King Phillip, the Wampanoag sachem who had led the natives against the settlers until finally being shot and killed, then beheaded, and then drawn and quartered for high treason.

When I get home, I see that Amaya took some gum out of the candy box after all. I found it on the carpet in the back, where she’d spit it out before getting out of the car. 

* * * * *

Some days, I love this valley.

Other days, I feel like I’m driving inside a badly healed wound. 

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