There are certain destinations on this journey that make me wonder whether the Wayside is aware of people like me, people who plan to see as much of it as possible, and I wonder if the Wayside, which is more of a concept that a place and much more of a place than an actual thinking entity, is mean. 

Take ‘The Cactus Maze,’ for example. Why would it ever need to exist except as a punishment for those of us who choose to explore the dusty corners of the nation? And why is it that the hardest or most painful attractions are the cheapest and easiest to access? I’ve driven past ‘The Cactus Maze’ a dozen times and I’ve always found a reason to avoid it- that it looked too busy or that it was too cold for something outdoors or that I had a small, fragile rabbit traveling along that would do poorly in such a pointed environment. 

This time as I approached, on my way to somewhere else entirely, I saw that the old, sun-word billboards carried a fresh addendum: the cacti are blooming it said. 

Well, now I have no choice.

‘When most people think of a maze, they think of it mainly in two dimensions. It’s a matter of moving forward, and sometimes backward, and making left-or-right sort of choices until our simple logic is rewarded with an escape from a trap we set for ourselves. ‘The Cactus Maze’ adds a third dimension of play with the addition of carefully placed, ground-lingering cacti and bonsaied cacti that jut their arms into the paths one is expected to navigate in order to succeed. ‘The Cactus Maze’ expects a bit of up-and-down thinking, and it rewards those visitors who are willing to get a little hurt by making the experience that much shorter. Those who choose to draw the maze out will find their paths narrowing.’

The maze is beautiful, I will give it that. Regardless of the flowers, ‘The Cactus Maze’ incorporates a variety of species that I have only ever noted on their own. And the sheer density of cactus is something new for me as well. I’m used to considering the lone cactus out of the corner of my eye, stepping over as I traipse through some desert trail or avoiding as I veer off to piss in a bush. 

In ‘The Cactus Maze,’ I begin to hear the cacti. They bristle against each other in the wind. They scritch and scrape as lizards drag their scales between the spines. The cacti at the entrance have been vandalized, their skins thick with names and slurs. Past a turn or two, however, there is no sign that anybody has been through in a while. It’s an intimidating place, dark and near-silent in a way that makes a corn maze seem jovial. 

I come to a path made hopscotch by the growth of little cacti pups and navigate it with relative ease. I find the same pattern around the next bend, only a large cactus lays sideways across like a fallen log. I’d assume it was an accident, but I know better, and I make it across with a few small snags in my pants. I regret bringing my backpack with me. I worry I might not have enough water. 

I crawl through a narrow cactus tunnel. I clamber over a massive cactus, carefully placing my hands where its spines have been pruned away. I pass through a hall of cacti that look like men. People have clothed them: a doctor, a santa claus, a marine. I lend a bandana to the cowboy and things get a little easier after that. The blooming cacti are dazzling in the low sun. I find myself standing to admire them, not something I’ve allowed myself to do at a place like this in a while. 

After an hour, I recognize the sound of the interstate. The difficulty has eased and the forks have dropped off entirely. Finally, I turn a corner and find myself at a dead end, blocked by brutal, unblooming cacti. They hold a toy skeleton between them and it, in turn, holds a sign:

Sorry, pardner. Best head back the way you came.

-traveler

Where else would ‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ be but outside Vegas, in the desert where nothing else will grow? It is an oasis, of sorts, the sort of place a man might crawl toward if he had been lost, wandering for weeks on end, desperate enough to topple cacti for their scant liquid, suffering the pinprick wounds of its needles. It is lush green and perfectly manicured: a bonsai of short grass and carefully placed flowers. 

The perfection conceals a raging war between man and plant and insect and desert. 

The plants are not allowed to breed with one another, for starters. Perfect specimens are bred elsewhere and transplanted only when ready. In order to inhibit breeding, local insect populations are killed and repelled by a cocktail of aerosol poisons so potent that visitors must wear a mask if they wish to trod the stone pass that bisects the greenery- so potent, that a mesh is drawn over ‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ to prevent birds passing overhead from dying and splattering themselves on this pristine and captive nature (that is, it doesn’t prevent the birds from dying- it only catches their bodies before they land). 

The land is dry and unforgiving, salted in the formation of the Earth. For this, a massive industrial plant works day and night nearby, pulling water from the next state over, purifying and then re-poisoning it with a specialty mix of weedkiller. 

‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ has no attached house, no living space whatsoever, though it is home to a motley collection of lawn ornaments, each fashioned by the sort of artist who is inexplicably rich and successful and completely unknown except to those who devote their lives not to art, but to the artists themselves. The result is a series of pink ceramic triangles that its creator describes as ‘a flamingo, deconstructed.’ Horrible gnomes peer out from sculpted bushes, each an homage to the artists highly abusive family. In December ‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ sports a nativity scene compromised of living children in expensive costumes, these children being trained at great expense to remain still for extended periods of time and to ignore the gawking tourists, each of whom paid more for entry than these children will see for their work.  

‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ is more a mirage than an oasis. A man crawling toward the grass would be shot before he was allowed to drink the chemical water that sustains it.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘There is a special sort of sadness present in ‘The Layaway Vault’s’ of western Illinois. The items there represent sadness on an individual level, of course, having been long abandoned by the families that hope, someday to afford them. This is compounded by the much more judgmental sadness that arises when an American pledges, but is unable to, complete a purchase.

This is not to be confused with the noble tragedy of a failed enterprise- it’s very noble to gamble and even to lose on money-making schemes, but to commit to buying something, say a comfortable armchair, and to fail to have the funds when the prescribed time has arrived is a pitiable thing. It represents not a failure of the individual, but a failure of the system which should, at least, have offered the would-be purchaser a high-interest loan or even a direct, parasitic siphoning of their monthly salary. ‘The Layaway Vault’ represents opportunities lost and the owners are determined to preserve them in this state, unwilling to open the packages or to contact the original layaway-ers or to consider the willingness of visitors to purchase said packages and have them delivered, belatedly, to said layaway-ers. 

There is a lot of shame wrapped up in the whole thing.’

Soft, quality bedding. Thick jackets. Kitchen sets. Toys. The items tucked away in ‘The Layaway Vault’ are all little luxuries- things that could likely be replaced with cheaper versions, that could be thrifted or done without entirely. They represent the then-dreams of the families that chose them. That comfort has hardened into something really quite sad in its abandonment. ‘The Layaway Vault’ has pledged that, for posterity, these goals will never be met. It’s a cruelty I imagine most of the families don’t even realize. 

I’ve seen a lot of sadness on this trip, but these goals, left dust-laden in the dark, fill me with dread. I’ve shelved so much in my life. I’ve left things behind me for longer than I intended. I’m not sure how much of it is still waiting for me. 

-traveler

‘Biologists agree: ‘The Fruiting Bramble’ is worse than its previous manifestation, and they have roundly apologized if their questions about the once ‘Fruitless Bramble’ have somehow, in a display of irony, prompted ‘The Bramble’ into this new phase of life.

“We much preferred ‘The Bramble’ when it was inert, a spokesperson said, “And, on behalf of the scientific community, we’re sorry for ever asking.”

‘The Fruiting Bramble’ now oozes a thick sap from its branches. The sap attracts and traps nearby wildlife and ‘The Brambles’ wet the ground with their blood. The sap does not prevent decay, not really, but it does seem to draw it out, creating a loose sinkhole of rotting insects and small mammals. It smells for miles around and has been known to kill birds who fly overhead. 

The fruits that have appeared are soft and white and plump. ‘The Brambles’ tear at their skin, revealing deep red innards, riddled with thick seeds. Nobody has tasted the fruit, which says a lot about ‘The Brambles.’ People taste anything- this is a universal constant. Nobody wants to go near enough to ‘The Fruiting Brambles’ to try it. 

Those brave and foolish travelers who have consumed the side-of-the-road bramble tea have largely been hospitalized since the fruiting. Nothing so dramatic as the growth of new brambles in their bodies, just a stubborn and wasting sickness of the bowels and a weakness of the limbs. The tea left something behind and it is killing them. 

Flowers of ‘The Fruiting Bramble’ are small and temporary and largely nocturnal, as pale as the fruit and impossible to smell over the rotten soil. Their petals glow faintly in the evenings and attract moths, half of which are shredded by the incessance violence of ‘The Brambles’ thorns and half of which escape, somehow, carrying a wicked pollen to parts unknown.

Local governments have reached the conclusion that ‘The Fruiting Brambles’ may be dangerous, that it may be time to take action. To do the right thing and see ‘The Brambles’ uprooted for good. The process is slow, though. Money is short. 

It has become a game for local children to cover their faces with their shirts and look out over ‘The Brambles’ as though stargazing. They identify violent constellations in the flowers and return home with strange ideas. They dare each other to eat the fruit, but nobody will.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

What is most uncomfortable for me about ‘The Museum of Urinating Statues’ is that they are not displayed as one expects- outside as part of one large or many various fountains. The owners of ‘The Museum’ have instead organized them in separate stalls, all situated in a fairly enclosed, almost tunnel-like hall, so that each can (and must) be viewed separately from the others. Signs on the outside of each door describe the statue inside in some details and, where known, include the date of its creation, its original location(s), and its manufacturing process.

This is all good information, I suppose, and the door system does mean that nobody has to see anything they don’t want to (nudity being mostly necessary in this statue genre) but the result is very much like entering a massive public toilet and moving between occupied, but unlocked, stalls. The urge to knock is overwhelming and finding the actual bathroom is impossible.

‘Is it possible that the owners of ‘The Museum of Urinating Statues’ are run-of-the-mill art collectors who interests leaned innocently niche as the years went on? Yes. Is it much more likely that there is some sort of fetish involved, that it is the owners themselves staring down into the monitors of their unnecessarily robust CCTV system and watching visitors watch, in turn, these statues as they attempt to do their business in the privacy of their protective stalls? Yes, also, to that. 

It’s recommended that one avoid the 43^rd stall, which is kept empty for some reason but is also consistently occupied by a disgruntled man who, mid-urination, will turn to hapless travelers (they having opened this door like all the others, curious about the lack of sign and assuming that no person in their right mind would put themselves in the position of being caught pants-down) and be both angry and embarrassed and give just a small view of his genitals before shooing they, the also-embarrassed but also mildly-violated and suspicious traveler on.

On the other hand, it is recommended that travelers do not skip the 44^th stall, as they so often do in their reflexive attempt to place some distance between themselves and the urinating man. The 44^th stall contains the statue of a rather majestic horse and rider, hair swept back as though by the wind and both of whom are urinating into the same pot, mid-giddyup.

Not another one like it in the states.’

I waffle a little at the 43^rd stall and finally push it open with my foot, just wide enough that the man inside can grunt his annoyance and show me his dick and I can say ‘oops, sorry about that.’ I suppose it’s the perfectionist in me, wanting to see these places on full display, even when their fullness is… tainted. 

The horse and rider are absolutely worth the stop. 

-traveler