‘It’s easy to draw parallels between ‘Delaney’s Orchard,’ covered elsewhere in this book, and ‘The Gorechard’ of Southern California. They’re both functioning orchards and they both produce uneaten fruit and uneasy feelings. As is often the case, the difference comes down to motive- the churning of bones by the roots of ‘Delaney’s’ peach orchard is the consequence of good intentions gone awry. ‘The Gorechard’ is exactly what it’s supposed to be.’

Most literature on the matter recommends a spring or summer visit to ‘The Gorechard,’ when the fruit has begun to ripen and ‘Judgement Day’ looms but it’s early autumn by the time Hector and I arrive and the festivities have long passed us by. ‘The Gorechard’ is something of a misnomer for what is really a series of independently owned farms, each with their own names and each with their orchards so closely pressed that it’s easy to mistake them for a single, massive enterprise. The fruit grown in the orchards is not intended for consumption nor does it have an official name (which is to say it has so many nicknames that nobody can quite agree what to call it). Come ‘Judgment Day,’ it’s my understanding that attendees just refer to it as ‘rot.’

Rot is grown in ‘The Gorechard’ strictly for the sake of competition, cherry-like in its early stages but increasingly deformed as it expands toward ripeness. Winning rot has been measured with diameters of three feet and lengths of nearly four and half. Weights vary with purpose: some competitions require a minimal pit while others focus on size and weight specifically. The result of most competitions is rot that swells under the constraint of its own skin. It sags like a sick, alien cocoon from the tree, translucent except for a dappling of inner clots. Most rot will burst well before Judgement Day and that’s the trick, really. Competitors cultivate several strains in order to hedge their bets.

We pass by several orchards before I begin to spot a few clumps of rot still hanging from the trees. A booth in the parking lot down the road is vacant but a man steps out from his house to gather an entry fee.

“Wouldn’t touch’em if I were you,” he tells me, “They’re due just about any day now.”

“Didn’t win you any prizes?”

“They’re breeding trees out in the south field,” he says, counting the money, “Little longevity from those helps to keep things nice and juicy for the measuring.”

At the core of all this competing is the rot’s tendency to burst at agitation, spraying thick, blood-like ichor as it drops its pit. Most measuring competitions require that the rot hold up for the duration of the measurement but explode with a pin-prick afterward, proving peak ripeness. The insides smell like rotten milk and are often already infested with the larvae of a local fly that skitters incessantly across its surface and penetrates the skin with it microscopic ovipositor. The result is a horror scene, unfolded in an instant, and images of the aftermath are often flagged for censorship online, no different in presentation than the morbid snapshots of fatal car collisions.

Hector and I stand near the breeding trees for a while before I find a small stone and, with the blessing of the man out front, nail a clean shot to hanging rot several trees down simply to see it for myself. It performs the grotesque expulsion and the tree shakes with its sudden release of burden. Unfortunately, the shaking tree begins to burst the rest of its fruit and the fruit of the trees around it. Anchored, as I am, by an ancient rabbit on a leash, I don’t quite make it out of the blast zone in time.

The man out front laughs, initially, but then he offers a shower and a change of clothes while mine run through the wash. It’s not the sort of kindness I may have taken in the early days of all this but, more and more, I find every reason to linger a while with people who will have me. We watch my clothes stiffen on the line as the sun sets over ‘The Gorechard,’ illuminating the last of the season’s rot like shards of red glass.

-traveler

‘‘With an eye on Paris’ physical meter, measured in expensive lengths of platinum-iridium, the nation’s movie industry reacted to the early-eighties’ rise of the American sex comedy with a similar solution. Rather than rely on the memories of Hollywood’s aging elite (or the notoriously exaggerated descriptions provided by the then-modern teens) a group of troublesome youth were supplied a stipend, a venue, and enough booze and alcohol to throw a party as they saw fit. Two-way mirrors and cameras allowed the industry’s writers to harvest plot seeds from the all-year party (later shortened to ‘The All-Party’) and to have a reasonable defense when the prudish MPA inevitably tried to slap them with anything above an ‘R’ rating for being unrealistically gratuitous.

‘The All-Party’ was meant to be a temporary project, funded by three producers, each with a specific script in mind. When those films were inevitably lost in the late-eighties oversaturation of sex-romps, the producers prepared to disperse ‘The All-Party’ but were approached by a new batch of filmmakers, freshly arrived to try their own hand at the bloated concept. So it came to be that ‘The All-Party’ was handed down for decades, outliving many of the original participants and informing the silver screen’s understanding of what it meant to be a modern teenager for far longer than the initial one-year run. As party-goers aged out (passing the threshold even for ‘skeevy college-aged alum’) they were dragged off in their alcohol-induced slumber to be replaced by some wide-eyed transfer whose only goal in life was to comfort his crush when she’s dumped by the jock. These rookies were quietly poached from schools nationwide, usually students who had been expelled for (or dropped-out to pursue) little ‘All-Parties’ of their own.

Unfortunately for realists, ‘The All-Party’ is no platinum bar and the unit by which Hollywood measures its characters has long since warped into something altogether different. A crackdown on child endangerment has led to ‘The All-Party’s’ youngest recruits being 18. The result is that most high school melodramas are played out by full-fledged adults who tower over their lockers and struggle to act as though they’re only just learning about sex.

More importantly, ‘The All-Party’ is changed by the vacuum that maintains it, fermenting into something that is more itself than was ever initially intended. It has become such a concentrated pit of deviancy that writers now work to dilute what they witness through its mirrors in order to provide something remotely palatable to their global audience.

Participants emerge from ‘The All-Party’ with no understanding of society. They shuffle to music they no longer hear, sleep for only hours at a time, and suffer painful drug and alcohol withdrawals. Many are injured from cruel, slapstick stunts performed around the ‘The All-Party’s’ pool. Many are wracked with guilt or anxiety for having felt, for so long, that ‘The All-Party’s’ fictional parents would be arriving sooner than expected and that ‘the mess’ would need to be cleaned up before that time. Since 2007, when a drug-resistant form of gonorrhea was traced back to ‘The All-Party,’ all out-going participants are quarantined for two weeks and subject to a battery of tests upon exit. The quiet solitude of their hospitable bed is known to trigger panic attacks and therapists stand by to ease their post-party depressive episodes.

Just one of ‘The All-Party’s’ two-way mirrors are accessible to the public. Voyeurs treat ‘The All-Party Overlook’ as a sort of pilgrimage site but are often disappointed at what they find there. Those willing to describe what they saw relate a scene more evocative of science fiction or body horror than your average straight-to-streaming comedy and they grimace and shrug and wonder aloud how such a thing could even be legal.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Perhaps you remember, years ago, the day I was kidnapped by a witch hunter and rescued by the Stranger. I’ve recovered from the event, inundated by a slew of further traumas in the meantime. One might even suggest I’ve learned something, though, if that’s the case, ‘The Second Place for Follower’s of the Gray Witch, Roki’ is undoubtedly the first test of that theoretical knowledge.

‘(sponsored content)

Following the destruction of ‘The [Original] Place for Follower’s of the Gray Witch, Roki,’ ‘The Second Place for Follower’s of the Gray Witch, Roki’ is second in name, only. Now offering space for both followers of the Gray Witch, Roki (any branch) AND friends and family of followers of the Gray Witch, Roki (up to four), ‘The Second Place for Followers of the Gray Witch, Roki’ is the nation’s number one choice for card-carrying followers, friends, and family alike. Please limit familiars to one-per-follower (as the Dust Tome mandates).

(sponsored content)’

I’m not at all nervous about the visit until my sheet of counterfeit membership cards slides from a machine in the local print shop and I begin the tedious process of cutting them out. The edges of the first as so mangled by my nervous tremors that it wouldn’t pass muster with even the least invested bouncers or doormen. Like casting a spell or embellishing a resume, the use of a counterfeit credential requires an expenditure of some kind- a little sacrifice, even if its just the energy necessary to maintain a commitment to the bit.

I manage cleaner cuts on the next few, but I start to wonder exactly how official an organization like ‘The Followers of the Gray Witch, Roki’ would be on paper. The most official document I own, my driver’s license, is pretty ratty and it still gets me into bars. Do followers keep their membership cards clean or is there an amount of blood staining or smoke damage lending credence to the pass?

I’ve got six counterfeit cards, when all is said and done, each on heavy card stock and each looking more or less authentic depending on cut. I take some of the worst and fold them a few times. I rub one in dirt and let Hector chew the corner off another. I consider coaxing a drop or two of blood from a scrape on my knee but draw the line at handing bodily fluids over to a cult. I think of myself cautious but understand how it may look, to an outsider, like superstition. I squint and settle on the first one that doesn’t make me feel a nervous flutter in my stomach.

‘The Second Place for Followers of the Gray Witch, Roki’ is a sprawling complex, meant to be condos before the housing collapse and, now, a solid investment on the part of the cult or, alternatively, the sect of witch-hunters that attempts to lure the cultists in. The woman who previously kidnapped me claimed there were only three of her kind but, given that deceit was the basis for the interaction, her word doesn’t hold a lot of weight. In my mind, the chances of ‘The Second Place for Followers of the Gray Witch, Roki’ being another trap is about equal to it being the real thing.

Which presents a new problem with the cards. The hunters of the followers of the Gray Witch, Roki seem like the type to burn first and ask questions later. Discovering the membership card on my person won’t do me any favors if I’m suspected of being in the fold. The more counterfeit a card appears, the more likely it is I might convince hunters that I am what I am- a curious traveler with a strange pet. Too counterfeit, though, and it won’t pass by a true believer.

Hector scuttles about in his carrier as, an hour later, I hover over a public garbage can and examine the six cards, talking myself into and out of each. I consider bringing them all so that I can improvise on the spot, depending upon the legitimacy of the welcome. A witch-hunter means I bluff a clear counterfeit from the back of my wallet, a follower situation means I pull a clean-cut, authentically-worn card from my breast pocket. A shakedown reveals all the cards which, in either scenario, might suggest a lovable interloper (which is the truth I tell myself). In reviewing them again I find, to my dismay, that even the nicely printed cards have begun to wilt under examination.

I return to the copy center to print another round and find the self-service machine is out of order. The woman behind the counter offers to let me use the machine in the back so I step through the ‘employees only’ door and into a small, dark room- empty except for a chair and bindings. The door locks in time for me to notice a pattern scrawled on the floor underfoot and the woman moving in the shadows, now clad in a robe.

“Ah ha!” she smiles, “I see my sigils have held against you, sir!”

I wonder- which card do I show her first?

-traveler

Certain things were quite a bit easier back when I had the truck. Almost everything, really. I’ve mostly moved on but there are nights, usually bitter cold or stormy, when I’d happily shell out the past years’ extra gas money for a consistent roof over my head, for the stale but familiar leather-smelling atmosphere of the cab. The tent I own is stale in its own way. The smell of it lingers on my hands after I roll it up- mildew and smoke. I smell it when I eat or scratch my nose or brush my teeth. The truck felt like a place I could leave and somehow the tent stays with me, even when it’s sealed up and packed away.

Maybe I just need a new tent.

In most ways, the motorcycle is as good as the truck and in a few cases it’s allowed me to check in on a location that its predecessor, stiff with arthritic rust, made difficult. Take, for instance, ‘The All’s Fair Food Festival.’

‘‘The All’s Fair Food Festival’ traces its roots back to a parking lot on the outskirts of Marfa where an unnamed Mexican food truck served the workforce of half a dozen nearby factories for a few successful, but uneventful years. When the truck was ‘discovered’ by a local magazine, the lot was quickly gentrified and the original proprietors quietly disappeared. The lot owners were so stunned by the sudden influx of wealth that they didn’t realize how many zoning laws were being bent until several were being flagrantly broken. When the authorities arrived with a laundry list of fines, the tightly-packed vendors were unceremoniously evicted, provoking the sort of ire that only white, middle-aged hipsters can produce when their fusion tacos are threatened: petty, self-congratulatory, and ultimately ineffective.

‘The All’s Fair’ was established to take advantage of a loophole in which food vendors were allowed to sell at gun shows and, in Texas, gun shows are allowed to occur at any time and place with the bare minimum of paperwork. The city council (older, perhaps, but equally petty and white) moved quickly to distinguish the two types of event and, within a month, the lot was vacant once more with the exception of a man who sells assault rifles out of the trunk of his car but can’t so much as lend a stick of gum without incurring a cease and desist.

In one last bout of whimsy, ‘The All’s Fair’ took to the streets in a very mobile way. Half-protest, half-parade, the trendiest food trucks began to patrol the downtown at speeds well below the recommended speed limit, upsetting traffic flow and allowing bystanders to purchase food at a normal walking pace. Truck owners were arrested, vehicles were impounded, but the ‘cause’ gathered enough traction to break national news and soon the outskirts of Marfa were swarmed with mobile restaurants from all over the nation. Paralyzed by the sudden gridlock, city council did what it probably could have initially: nothing. The proprietors of ‘The All’s Fair,’ who greatly outnumbered potential customers, mostly dispersed within a fortnight.

What remains is ‘The All’s Fair’ in name, only. A core of the original broke from Marfa like a glider in the Game of Life and remains on an incessant tour, sometimes colliding with existing pods, enhancing or collapsing them. The offerings and owners change with each collision or breakdown and an eventual total degradation seems likely. What matters for the time being seems only to be perpetual movement. The trucks will stops for lights and signs but never for customers. If one wishes to order from ‘The All’s Fair,’ one must be willing to keep up.’

I catch up to ‘The All’s Fair Food Festival’ on I-90 and follow it past several cities before I decide it’s a now-or-never type situation. When the road empties and straightens, I take a chance with a passing-lane and rev the bike’s engine, pulling up beside the tail-end of the caravan. A man inside toggles a switch and his voice blasts through a speaker mounted on the truck’s outer wall. Dark smoke streams like exhaust from the roof behind it.

“What can I get for you?”

It’s hard to really take in the menu but it seems like your average pizza-by-the-slice eatery. Checking that I still have time ahead, I open my visor and shout back.

“A pepperoni.”

The bike wobbles beneath me and I miss something on the speaker as I lose speed. I think of Hector in the back and wish this was something I’d done before his life depended on my driving. I grit my teeth and pull forward again.

“A pepperoni,” I shout again.

“We’re all out,” the speakers screams, “We’ve got the, uh… cheese. We’ve got the Hawaiian. The carnivore which is like, all the meats and some peppers. We’ve got the marg…”

“The carnivore,” I shout, mainly because it’s the last thing he’s said and I want to get this over with.

He tells me a light on the back of the truck will flash green when the order’s ready and we spend several nail-biting minutes handing cash back and forth.

I pull off at the next likely stop and eat the slice of pizza which is neither particularly good nor particularly warm. Hector sniffs at the crust and I spend nearly an hour sitting in the sun, trying to discover, with a relatively unstable cell-signal, whether a small piece would be acceptable for an otherwise healthy-eating rabbit.

I’ll say this about the truck- I spent less time in the sun, less time sitting on benches, like this, or in the grass. It’s not all bad, this thing that I’m doing, and it’s taught me, again, that I don’t want to die. That seems worth four dollars, at least.

-traveler

‘‘The Couch Cushions’ are a rock formation in northeast Iowa, named for their vague resemblance to a mountain-sized sofa and their nearness to an interstate, as though abandoned there by some lazy behemoth, the giant having upgraded their furniture and hoping someone will take the old set before rain obligates a trip to the dump. One might attribute the mild droop of the trees there to a certain natural eyerolling, the hills having existed long before the advent of furniture or roads or the practice of leaving one on the side of the other.

One might also attribute the overall sickliness of the area’s wildlife to the new tradition of carrying old couches to the top of the formation and dumping them into the gaps between the ‘cushions’ while filming, a sort of meta-ironic art movement that allow many to justify what normally amounts to littering. Relative newcomers to the area assume the numerous ruined couches there are the basis for ‘The Couch Cushions’’ name.

The newest trend among traveling artists is to sculpt or paint small pictures of roadside couches and to painstakingly descend into ‘The Couch Cushions’ in order to leave the art pieces between the uncapitalized couch cushions that litter the crevices. The more interesting and dangerous the placement (for many of the couches become wedged partway into their descent) the more respect is given. Following a gruesome incident involving the disgorged mechanism of a fold-out couch (rusted and sharp), rangers have taken to patrolling the area and turning back would-be couch surfers while the earth slowly processes a century’s artful indigestion.’

There are no rangers about when Hector and I climb past the base of ‘The Couch Cushions’ and venture into the nearest crevice to escape a chilly autumn storm. Hector is a little more active these days, seemingly a little more willing to interact with his surroundings. I bought him a sweatshirt meant for pugs in the last town we passed through, thinking he could use some insulating as we travel through the cold snap. It doesn’t suit his pot roast lump of a body but doesn’t seem to narrow his range of motion either. Hector has contented himself with life on the road.

Taking cues from their miniaturized equivalents, ‘The Couch Cushion’ crevices are grimy but not without a few small treasures. A particularly thick conglomeration of wedged couches keeps the sofas on the ground dry and the two of us stop underneath to wait out the rain, Hector occasionally perking up his ears at the creaky settling of the furniture ceiling.

It seems like a long time ago, but I once climbed into the palm of a rebar giant and felt both significant and small. The irritated earth we call ‘The Couch Cushions’ imparts a smallness in much the same fashion but the longer we loiter there the more I find any assumptions I once held about my significance disappearing. By the time we leave, the hills seem less like a couch and more like teeth, we the passing detritus of a recent meal.

-traveler

‘The old adage suggests that almost all accidents occur within a five minute drive from a person’s home. ‘Almost,’ because a good deal more occur on ‘The Long Right,’ an interstate exit that seems to exist in perpetuity.’

It takes about 30 minutes of leaning into the curve before a dozen small muscles in the right side of my body begin to complain. The car I’ve been following (a steady blue sedan) pulls ahead as I slow, just far enough that I lose it for a moment, and a minute later I see where the road guard is torn as though by a recently jettisoned vehicle. It could very well be the scene of a previous accident, an ominous coincidence, but is shakes me all the same.

Not long after, ‘The Long Right’ branches into one of its many fractal turn-offs where, at the center, a few less-than-legitimate businesses set up temporary shops. I buy a cup of coffee and a small bottle of anti-nausea pills. Hector and I watch other vehicles pass until that proves dizzying too. Rumor has it that taking ‘The Long Right’ past dark, when all of its blinking safety lights have come on, will grant a driver the gifted visions of a dead god, so we don’t stay for long.

-traveler

‘It would seem reasonable for the cooks at ‘World Burning’ to cut corners during preparation, given that the wood burned to smoke the meat is so laden with an era’s carcinogens (the varnish, the dust) that the taste profiles swing wildly between two meals that read the same on paper. Nevertheless, they go about the work with all the care of a world-class kitchen and deliver food to customers who are willing to forego future health concerns for a taste of something tasteless.  

‘World Burning’ is, in some ways, a museum in perpetual decline. Its owners bid on the wood left behind by otherwise disastrous fires and display the wreckage on their walls. Customers order meat by the pound and the wood over which they would like it to be smoked. Steaks over a door from the house of your unfortunate childhood neighbor come cheap. Kebabs cooked with paneling from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory are expensive and increasingly rare. The meal that put ‘World Burning’ on the map, a deep dish pizza cooked in a brick oven with historical scrap from the Chicago fire itself is long extinct, but they’ve kept behind a plank on which they occasionally smoke oysters as a special.

The restaurant has been criticized for its poor taste, both literally and figuratively, but reservations are booked out weeks in advance in spite of poor reviews. ‘World Burning’s’ owners claim the restaurant’s model and the controversy itself reflect a simple lesson in supply and demand. Nobody wanted the wood until they began to burn it.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

After three days of filling and re-filling forms, speaking to managers, sub-managers, and associate supervisors, and subjecting Hector to a variety of physical, mental, and seemingly spiritual tests, I decide to give up on the long application process required for admitting the leathery lump to ‘The Rabbit Hole,’ a wildlife sanctuary outside Maine. The office does not seem at all set up to receive visitors and, more than once, it’s suggested that ‘most mammals just wind up here.’ They emphasize words in a way that seems suspicious but isn’t otherwise threatening. They offer me self-guided tours of the grounds and seem baffled or disappointed when I return. The last straw is a man that bursts through the sanctuary-facing door, thickly bearded and dressed in rags.

“I’m back!” he screams, “My god, I’ve finally returned!”

He seems a changed man, his perspective on our mundane world greatly altered by whatever occurred to him inside ‘The Rabbit Hole.’ He laughs gleefully as the manager calls him a ride-share and somehow I get the stink-eye for having arrived with a rabbit and not with a revelation. Hector and I take our business elsewhere and, on the way, we drop the gibbering man downtown.

‘One might assume that a wayward hare, run to ground, would find refuge in ‘The Rabbit Hole.’ Typical of a woodland bureaucracy, ‘The Rabbit Hole’ is a liminal haven, at best, useful only as long as one is content to run in place. Most who take up residence there find nothing special about the forest, only that its benefits stem solely from the respite it provides from the city. ‘The Rabbit Hole’ is a wilderness and, in preserving the ecosystem it is careless with the individual parts. Life is inconvenient, there, meaning most emerge with a new respect for civilization and nearly as many simply die.”

-traveler

‘It’s difficult to say whether the death cult behind ‘The All-Year Christmas Tree Arboretum’ recognizes a certain hypocrisy in their perpetuation of an off-season holiday. It seems likely enough that the angle is toward some mysterious higher purpose, given the unsettling references to the resurrection story embedded in their promotionals and a fervent use of the word ‘evergreen’ in contexts where it only just applies. A failure to see the irony in prolonging something that has already extended its natural lifecycle would represent a severe disconnect between their PR branch and the core beliefs they’ve never quite admitted to (nor ever fully denied).’

The friendliness with which I am greeted at ‘The All-Year Christmas Tree Arboretum’ sets the loudest of my internal alarm bells ringing. Three immaculate men in immaculate uniforms surround the bike before I’ve even reached for the strap at my helmet and for all their timeliness they wait, silently, for me to say something before speaking themselves. The air is dense with the smell of pine, the field beyond the fence a forest in clean lines. Hector sniffs meekly about in his cage and one of the men bends awkwardly to look at him.

“That’s Hector,” I say, “A rabbit.”

The creature’s hairlessness has made the clarification necessary several times now.

“Cute,” the man smiles, “Hello Hector!”

“I was going to walk him out on the curb before…”

“Please, bring him inside!” another of the men says, “Plenty of wild animals roam the arboretum and the small fellow’s droppings are as welcome there as any other!”

“He could stay,” the first man chimes in, sensing somehow that our partnership is temporary, “He would be taken care of, here, and when his long life ends his body will…”

The unspeaking man ends the suggestion by gently placing his hand on the first man’s back.

“Ah, well,” the first man says, “Perhaps a tour?”

Picture a nervous traveler walking a blind rabbit while three clean men patiently follow, each holding an axe that they’ve retrieved from the barn where a dozen more clean, smiling employees knelt as though interrupted in prayer. The men talk in circles around the subject of inevitability and death, each a cheerful vulture in their choice of words.

“It’s an honor to tend to life in the arboretum,” one man begins.

“Even if the fruits of our labor fall to the axe,” another continues, “The evergreen essence returned to dirt.”

“It costs nothing to fell a tree in this place,” another chimes in- or maybe it’s the first, “Nothing to the customer, that is. It costs the plant everything.”

“Nothing to the arboretum as a whole.”

“Nothing to the world.”

“But enough…”

We stop while Hector sniffles about in the grass.

“I believe your little rabbit has chosen,” a man says. All three hold out their axes.

“You saw what I drove in on, right?”

“We’d be happy to take care of the remains if you have no use for it. Firewood for a pyre.”

“A pyre?”

“A bonfire.”

“If you need wood, can’t you chop it down yourself?”

They laugh and hold out their axes. With no little reluctance, I let one of the men hold the end of Hector’s leash while I go about the suddenly distasteful business of chopping down the rabbit’s tree. One man shouts advice and encouragement. The others smile and weep loudly. Amidst the crash of the fall I swear I hear cheering from the direction of the barn, but it’s quiet again in the aftermath.

One of the weeping men silently returns Hector’s lead and the three of them begin to cut the tree into smaller pieces with a zeal that makes me nervous enough to carry the squirming animal out in my arms rather than trust his default meandering. I tell myself, on the drive out, that I’m made no more complicit in their occult dealings through my actions in the arboretum than I am made a sponsor for war in paying taxes, but find the thought falls flat.

I try to forget it altogether.

-traveler

Hector is so still, at times, so unresponsive to the world outside his thick serenity that I wonder if he hasn’t quietly died in the back of the carrier. More than once I have poked and prodded and called out to him through the open bars and he has either been in such a deep sleep or has had enough reason to fake such a state that he only ‘wakes’ upon tumbling out of the tilted box like a medicine ball before chewing at his lettuce in a drowsy stupor. A veterinarian has said the creature is old but reasonably healthy, minus the clear UV-callusing of the body and the probable abuse-callusing of the mind.

Water. Food. Comfortable bedding. These are the things Hector needs in retirement and I fall into the habit of providing them. The animal hardly notices.

‘‘Daylight Savings’ is the company with which the American bourgeois prefers to stockpile its summers. It’s headquartered in central Florida but maintains several regional branches for personal deposits and withdrawals, the density of which increases as one moves toward the U.S./Canada border. These locations are popular with the lower class, as well, who sometimes huddle near the buildings come winter, waiting for a bus or otherwise loitering with the goal of skimming a little warmth from the upper echelons.

This practice is based upon the misconception that ‘Daylight Savings’ still stores significant quantities of daylight in their regional sun safes. In reality, modern fiberoptic networks allow for the vast majority of deposited summer to be transferred immediately to a location that remains undisclosed and is very likely some sunny, offshore haven that caters specifically to shady forms of sun tax evasion.

The many lawyers employed by ‘Daylight Savings’ have stated that the cloak-and-dagger keeping of the nation’s excess summers are to avoid disasters like the botched daylight heist of 1886 that resulted in ‘The Oklahoma Sunspot’ and may have inadvertently triggered the nation’s ‘Big Die-Up.’

‘When all that stands between a few bandits and a scorched-earth disaster is a family-owned business like ‘Daylight Savings,’ they claim, ‘Then America must have faith in those who have invested the most in its daylight and in its security: the wealthy elite.’’

We don’t get very close to ‘The Oklahoma Sunspot’ before I notice Hector’s uncharacteristic agitation. He’s pacing back and forth in the carrier at the rim of the great, black disc and by the time we reach the edge of the scorching-proper he’s begun to chew his way out. Nothing in my research suggested that ‘The Sunspot’ emitted even faint radiation, but the rabbit is familiar with sunlight and wants nothing to do with the charred landscape where there once stood a town.

I drive far enough back that Hector calms and then we hike to a viewpoint just off the highway and up a short hill. From there, I snap a few pictures of the blast zone and spend some time fussing over sketches of the white-warped shadows of old buildings, each pointed away from the old sun bank with the same dire certainty as Hector.

-traveler