‘What is it they’re farming out there? Too short to be corn, too tall to be any number of ground vegetables. You’ve been driving for a while now. Your passenger wakes up long enough to confirm it isn’t wheat, isn’t any number of American cereals. They’re asleep again, unable to answer questions about the strange farm equipment that appears. You know so little about modern farming. You can’t imagine where they pull enough water to satisfy this field, for instance. You don’t know how much water a field of any type needs. Is an acre more or less than a square mile?
Why are there never people in these fields? Why are there so few birds? Why is the equipment unmanned? When was the last time you met a farmer? How do you know they weren’t lying to you?’
The motorcycle coasts on empty for several nauseous miles before the sun finally sets and we find an exit from I-38. We emerge several states from where we started and loiter, for a while, in the parking lot of a gas station. A woman walks her dog in a patch of grass as her child chooses candy inside.
“I’m not sure we learned anything from all that,” the Editor admits, flipping through a copy of Shitholes, “I don’t think that was useful in the least.”
I chew up the last of Alice’s picks and spit the splinters into the gravel. It’s been a while since she said anything to me. I hope she’s resting now.
“You all right?” the Editor asks.
I nod, and we set off toward the next continental breakfast.
-traveler
