Tom Foran Clark

They passed through Trevi, crowned a hilltop, and kept right on going. The two were in Spoleto before nightfall. They went to the Piazza della Vittoria, then climbed steps, layer by layer, piazza by piazza, to an ancient Roman amphitheater. They rode back down again and crossed the Bridge of Torri, an aqueduct rising high over a stunning river gorge. At dusk they went through a tunnel in one of the Rocca mountains. They rode on a gravel road by the Abbey Church of San Ponziano and up the slopes of Monteluco to the Coll of Ciciano.

Neither Pike nor Emery had any idea where they pitched their tent that night. They were really out there. The temperature had warmed up amazingly. It was almost like a summer night. Wherever it was, it was marvellous.

They noticed no frost came from their mouths when they breathed in the morning. It was that warm -- and it got warmer when the sun came up in a clear sky.

Pike and Emery discovered how close to the road they’d pitched their tent when some men walked by, gabbing and chuckling, saying assorted quotidian pleasantries -- things they could not understand, of course. "Buon giorno," Emery said to them. "Buon giorno," they returned. "Buon giorno, buon giorno."

They heard church bells. At the Duomo, a chamber orchestra was setting up. There were frescoes by Fillippo Lippi in the apse. Enchanting. Now the orchestra was playing. This too was enchanting. The spell of these faded once they got back on their bikes and struggled on a road steeply winding up a canyon. This led to a tunnel that emerged onto a road going down and down. They soared for most of an hour. There was only one juncture, in that entire hour, where they perspired -- a short haul up a cross-canyon bridge at Terni. Then down again they swooped, into still deeper gorges decked out in still more lush evergreens.

After that, they came to broader valleys. The roads were as much up as down and, for the most part now, level. As the sun eased down, the two pressed on, walking with their bikes, struggling up a slope just out of Narni. Assorted brick and concrete homes under construction shared a nearby ridge with abandoned wooden house and barn remains. Pike and Emery had their pick of these.

There was one humble abode, perhaps one-third to half finished, that caught their attention. It was tucked away, partially, out of sight. At first, they didn’t see it at all; then they did see it, and they knew it for a safe haven.

The temperature plunged again that night. Lightning and thunder swept in and shook those mountains, bringing sudden, torrential rainfall. Pike and Emery feared mudslides would take hold of that entire ridge of homes, and take all down together. For all that, the two really had no choice but to stay put.

Tranquillity prevailed. At dawn, all was calm. The vastness of the brown, gold, and green ravine; the clouds lying low across the valley plains; the sheet of white overhead: Pike and Emery were glad of having sight, seeing those things.

In Assissi, Emery had picked up a book about Saint Francis, which he now brought it out to read while Pike studied the little treasure-map and notebook Townsend had given him. While the two stood there, amid those wonders, some things that hadn’t made sense to Emery suddenly did begin to make sense to him: "Even if one gave sight to the blind, made the crooked straight, cast out devils, restored hearing to the deaf, made the lame walk, and the dumb to speak, still joy would not be his. Even if one possessed every language, and science, and knew the course of the stars and the virtues of the herbs and spoke so eloquently he could convert infidels, still joy would not be his."

“Townsend really stumbled onto something,” Pike intruded on Emery's thoughts. “Imagine you’re out hiking in the mountains and you come to a fruit stand and instead of getting apples, oranges, or a glass of lemonade, you get a treasure map and a puzzle. What could be better than that?”

“According to Saint Francis, one came to have joy through persevering, and keeping simple,” Emery read aloud from his book.

“Then the fruit seller is robbed,” Pike went on, “maybe killed, and you’ve got the map and a big mystery to unravel. But you have to skip town because they know you have the map and key, and you’re chased all over the world and wind up in hermit’s quarters in Assissi. Townsend must have suffered a lot.”

“According to Saint Francis, one achieves happiness through suffering, persevering, humility, and keeping simple ways.”

“To this beauty of nature we bring our human consciousness, human puzzlement, human suffering and, if we were joyful humans, our humility and serenity.”

“Two guys show up and he hands over the whole kit and caboodle. It just takes my breath away."

"This jack, joke, poor potsherd," Emery said, recalling lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins. "Immortal diamond is immortal diamond."

"Saint Francis?" Pike asked.

"Hopkins," Emery said. “The poet.” In that moment, this gem sprang to mind: "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Francis and Hopkins would have got along fine. The words rolled in Emery's brain -- praise, praiseworthy, precious, resplendent, fair, merry, luminous, radiant, exceeding, forgiving, shining, triumphal, joyful, humble. At the other end of the spectrum were the words excess, denial, diabolical, despairing, fearful, accusing, possessive, resentful, despising, ignoring, angry, empty, vain, and so on.

“Santiago -- Saint James,” Pike said. “Santiago de Compostela -- the destination of pilgrims. I’m ready to go -- right now. I’m looking forward to Rome. I’m going to do some research. Where better than Vatican City to start on a pilgrimage to the treasure of Saint James? It all seems so dog-gone fateful -- just like Townsend said.”

Pike had opened out, and was now intently studying, Townsend’s treasure map. It occurred to Emery that he and Pike had not met the same Arlen Townsend. Where Emery had merely put up with a ridiculous fruitcake having nothing better to do than to insult and pull Pike’s nose and ears, spitting on him and even throwing rocks at him, Pike had seen a wild card -- a loose end, somebody who had fallen low, a hard nut to crack, a man with a puzzle that Pike vowed he would piece together. Emery could see that now. Where he’d heard, "You are scum; you are filth; you are the lowest of the low," Pike had heard "Take it.. Who goes most out of their way to avoid suffering, suffers the most." Emery could see that Pike felt he'd been given something rare and precious -- something he felt due him -- something worthy of him.

Pike now re-folded the map, and put the book back in his pocket. Emery, feeling Pike’s gullibility and innocence, suddenly felt protective of him. It came as a revelation: the two were going through the world together, traveling side by side, and yet were in separate warps or zones of time and space -- and everything else.

“To Rome, then!” Pike cheered.

Emery knew this much: they were in paradise -- and they couldn’t stay. They had to leave -- they had to turn and go, and leave this world, to move on to another. Pike and Emery packed their things, loaded up their bikes, and rolled away -- without looking back.

They reached a junction where four roads intersected, and there were no signs. They had not a clue where they were. Then something Emery had been reading in his book about St. Francis gave him an idea. In a similar situation, while traveling with Brother Francis, Brother Maseo had asked, "which way shall we go?" Francis had spun Maseo around and around until he was thoroughly dizzy and giddy. Maseo fell several times to the ground, but rose each time, and continued. Finally, Francis said, "Stand still. Don’t move. Open your eyes. What do you see? This is the way we will go."

Emery now tried this. Pike was spun. The road his eyes saw when he opened his eyes was the road they now traveled. As it turned out, the two were now on our way to Orte.

In Orte, a tiny village, an old gent all in black sat in front of a corner grocer’s. He bounced a little girl, perhaps his granddaughter, on his knees. Pike had a go at inquiring as to which way Rome lay. Smiling knowingly, the old man drew a nice, straight horizontal line in the air with his hand, letting them know, they assumed, the going would be level and easy the rest of the way. Then he pointed out the direction, and he winked at Pike and Emery. "Buon giorno," he said.

The two resumed their ride confidently, glad of this news that the road ahead would bring them easy sailing -- all the way to Rome.

Struggling up the road out of Orte, leading from the village into high canyon walls way over the Tiber River into still higher mountains, Pike said, "You know, for a horizontal road, it sure ascends mighty Goddamned vertically."

They came up against every kind of obstruction and impasse imaginable. Twice they got to the tops of promontories that led nowhere but to places accessible by helicopter, zeppelin, dirigible, or leap of faith only -- or, yes, back down the way they’d come. So back they went, and then forth again. The ravines grew vaster and the mountains higher. For good measure, there were occasional volcanoes and halting winds thrown in.

Somewhere in the lofty hills around Castelnuovo di Porto, the two slept. Forget the tent. They were too tired. They slept out in the freezing cold like Egyptians -- like mummies.

Lights blinked on throughout the countless valleys, lights stretching away from them in every direction, akin to the sea of stars shining over them.