Bangor International

   JOHN GRAHAM

“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive
where we started
and know the place for the first time.”

– T.S. Eliot

WHEN WE ARRIVED at the airport the place was crawling with troops.
  “Wow,” I said to the driver. “What’s this all about?”
  We had set out an hour before sunrise from a small town on the coast south of Bangor. The taxi’s headlights shot through the living room reminding me that catching a flight came before sleeping. Although I was packed and ready, to be honest, I was exhausted from a week of celebration. A friend’s marriage to a local girl would be the last hurrah of summer for all of us.
  The night before my departure we had feasted on left-over oysters and lobster tails, the corks of the remaining wines from the wedding dinner defused with encouragement. I knew I had a crack of dawn flight and tried to bed down early, to no avail. Fortunately, I awoke a half hour before my taxi arrived, a self-imposed reveille throwing me out of bed. I felt pretty good, I thought, for all the carrying on.   Somehow I had dodged the hangover bullet all week long.
About sixty of us had invaded the small harbor town of summerhouses where my friend’s fiancé had grown up. Most of the guests came from the West Coast air lifted in each day so as the week unfolded the consecutive happy hours were gleefully attended by more and more revelers. Ever the court jester, I brought my mandolin across the continent to play for the wedding, and—if by chance—to play with any other music makers I might encounter. When they didn’t reveal themselves, I was fortunate enough to encounter the drunken spouses of my colleagues loosened up enough to sing songs they only half remembered. Since nobody wants to hear a whole song anyway we had a noisy porch every night of the week and gladly.
  The week’s activities were well planned. With no taste for shock, we concentrated on awe. There were boats, houses, cars, hikes, road trips, side trips, dinner parties, canoes and kayaks. The adrenalin flowed. One of the day’s events was marked by the construction of an exquisite outdoor plywood toilet overseen by the groom, a moving tribute to his consideration of our alimentary canals while on picnic. And a small sailboat, it was announced, was available on the dock at the house of the bride’s mother. I say “on” the dock because upon arriving to set sail, we saw that the bark could barely fit a sea-going Billy Barty. No lilliputian one ship navy would be launched on this trip, we decided, and sought another activity. Gin and tonics, I believe it was.
  The rehearsal dinner was marked by the rewarding of verbal medals and ribbons none of us anticipated. The bride’s uncle, in issue blazer and Birkenstocks, stood to witness in a dialect so yankee that the Yankees asked for a cipher. Toasts were made and lobsters handed out like MREs. I personally ate nine of the red bugs in a one hour period, wondering if it was some kind of ambush. There were a hundred of us under the tent surrounded by larger boiling pots minded by locals dressed like the Gordon’s fisherman. The crustaceans just kept coming. It reminded me of what a Maine lobster bake must be like, only to realize that it was a Maine lobster bake.
The dinner finished with the majority of our company standing drunkenly around a log fire whelping it up on the slippery rocks near the boat dock. Several seem to throw themselves into the fire only to roll across the rocks into the water, coming up wet and smelling of burnt arm hair. Seeing my fate should I stay another minute, I quietly slipped away in the dark.
  Plans for the ceremony were devised up to the moment the bride began her walk down the meadow to the water’s edge, the site of an old Penobscot Indian village. The black ash and dust of an ancient midden lay beneath the lawn upon which the guests were seated. With each step of the wedding party, white shells half a millennia old and puffs of ash were sent loose at the corners. A Chumash Indian shaman had been flown in from Malibu to conduct the ceremony, his nose bone uniformly on par with the formal wear of the blazered and well-dressed attendees. I sat at the back of the congregation strumming “What a Wonderful World” as the bride made her way toward us. We stood at attention, little pomp, except for the bride’s uncle—the Yankee code talker from the rehearsal dinner—who began doing Tai Chi exercises as the bride was handed to the groom. This must be the New World.
  After the ceremony, we set to partying our way through the supply line provided by our hosts—more oysters, then a cocktail or two, on to the wine and whatever rations laid upon the table next to the band.
  On to dawn.
  Therefore, it’s no small wonder that five minutes from the airport I realized that I may not have dodged the bullet after all. I was deteriorating. I seemed to be uncommonly car sick, I took deep breaths filling my lungs with oxygen in an effort towards fortification.
  Could it have been the oysters?
  The sight of the troops in khaki fatigues at the airport only added to my growing anxiety.
  “What’s this all about?”
  “Bangor International,” said the driver “It’s a major point of disembarkation for the military. Coming and going.”
  I got out of the car, retrieved my bag from the trunk and pulled the mandolin in its case out of the back seat. I paid the driver and walked into the terminal.
There must have been four hundred soldiers inside and out, all of them young, of every ethnicity. Every twenty of them was a woman. They were grab-assing and heckling one another as I made my way to the ticket booth. I checked my bag through, the mandolin my carry-on.
  I went to take a leak in the men’s room. I looked at myself in the mirror and splashed water on my face. I was not better.
Another deep breath and I headed back into the terminal. I noticed that some of the troops still had dirt on their uniforms that sent a haze throughout the building. As they came and went between their luggage and the small café with food, soldiers were applauded by incidental tourists stationed throughout. Clapping came and went for an hour.
  I finally admitted to myself that I needed to go somewhere to lay down. I found a small row of empty chairs in the corner of the terminal where I hunkered down with the mandolin. As soon as I put my head in my hands, a handful of soldiers came over and occupied the empty seats next to me.
   “Is that a mandolin you got there?” one asked with a thick accent.
  “Yeah,” I managed.
  “Can I take a look at it?”
  “Sure,” I nodded, pulling my head up just long enough to pass the case to him.
The soldier, a blond crew cut fellow of about twenty years, took the cased mandolin from me and looked at the latches to open it. Normally I would have opened the case for him and presented the instrument. I gestured best I could.
“I got it,” he said, working the latches. “My mommy and my daddy play all the time. Whole family does.”
  “Oh, yeah,” looking up. “Where you from?”
  “I’m from Georgia. Headin’ home today. All of us are. My name’s Raymond,” he extended a hand.
  “I’m John,” I propped myself up and shook his hand. “Where’d you come from?”
  “I-raq,” he spied the strings of the instrument. “We all just did nine months ofstreet patrols. Now we’re nothin’ but BOPSA.”
  “BOPSA?”
  “A Bunch Of People Sitting Around.”
  “You need a pick?” I asked.
  “Naw. Fingers.”
  At that he slapped at the instrument and pealed off a series of bluegrass riffs that turned heads.
  “Yeah, right on!” one of his colleagues said from the next row.
  “Ray-mond!” another went off.
  Because the mandolin is the Jack Russel Terrier of stringed instruments, it thinks that is bigger than it is. It has been known to compete with electric guitars and drum sets. Soon Raymond’s playing began to attract a good portion of the terminal. He completed a circular pattern of melodies then came to the tight finish.
  “There you go,” he flipped the mandolin up and held it towards me. “Let me hear what you been playin.’ ”
  I looked at Raymond and took the instrument. “Well . . .” I pulled a pick out of my slacks and took a deep breath. Giving it my best, I eased into “Wonderful World.”
  My admission here is that I have always been told by “real” mandolin players that I play the instrument like a guitar or ukelele, which is fine by me. But I can’t really play the way Raymond and his family play as I’ve never been taught how to. I have always thought the guitar to be an ostentatious instrument in the hands of the average guy. It says, “Look at me—I play the guitar!” So playing the mandolin—even if I played it like a guitar—was my way of undermining GWTGT or “Guy with The Guitar Thing.”
  I felt stupid in front of Raymond, but started the song anyway. I had rehearsed it all week. F to A-minor, B-flat, back to A-minor . . . idiot. The terminal got small quickly. Then it came. I held the mandolin out to Raymond.
  “Here.”
  “What?” Raymond took it.
  I leaned forward and threw up in the trashcan between us. Then I heaved again.
  “Whoa,” Raymond stepped back.
  The group around me, with their boots and sacks and uniforms, started to laugh.   Then they broke into applause. I heaved once more and they applauded again. Soon the whole terminal of soldiers was applauding my expurgation.
  “That bad?” Raymond handed the mandolin back to me.
I nodded, wiping my chin, taking the instrument back. “Hell of a week.”
  “Yeah,” Raymond laughed. “Tell me about it.”
  I sat back down, mandolin in my lap, head in my hands. The intercom began announcing names and individual troops began to line up at the ticket counters. Raymond patted me on the shoulder. “You’ll be alright, buddy. See you later.”
Soon the soldiers were gone, on board their flights. The applause had stopped. I sat head down, waiting for my flight. Looking across the terminal, the place empty, I noticed the carpet was covered in a thin layer of dust, blond and light on the fiber of the terminal rug.

—John Graham
      San Francisco, 2006