Something is molding in this bookstore. Maybe everything is. I pull a book from the wall and flip to the middle. I smell the book, a deep huff.

Mildew.

No book is safe.

And nothing is in order.

There are people who like this sort of place. This is the sort of store we imagine when somebody tells us they once stumbled upon a first edition copy of their favorite book, tucked between two dictionaries under a stack of magazines. It’s the sort of store where you imagine two people falling in love- a cute book-nerd strikes up a cautious conversation with the wry, hipster cashier. Actually, when I imagine it, I’m the cashier. A life of retail work will do that to you.

Now, is there a travel section?

‘‘Book Ends’ is literature’s graveyard, a cemetery for words. Just as you do not seek your warm, living relatives among the headstones, you should not waste time trying to find a specific book here. It cannot be found. Ask, and you will invariably learn that the last copy has been sold, that the back-order is processing, that there is a copy, yes, but where… hmm. Must be a mistake in the inventory.

‘The inventory’ the man claims, while clearly pulling up an empty computer file. ‘Hmm…’ he says again, as though giving special care to your piece. He will shuffle books around behind the desk and you will notice these books have shifted many times, as though this is a daily charade. He will, eventually, offer a small, exasperated shrug and a small, meaningless apology. This man owns the store and his name is Alfred and he is the source of this business’ shitholery.’

In matching black sweats and thin, crooked glasses, the man behind the counter is no hipster. He looks at me with watery eyes and scratches his dark, ill-shaven goatee.

“No proper travel section, I’m afraid,” he says, after a moment, “Where’ya headed? Maybe I can find you something here.”

He boots up the computer, which whirs and wheezes with the sudden exertion, and he taps idly on the mouse as if to communicate a mild impatience with the machine.

“I’m actually looking for a specific book,” I tell him, “Autumn by the Wayside: A Guide to…”

“Oh,” he says, “Got a rack of’em over there.”

The man seems bored, suddenly. He holds the power button down with the soft determination reserved for one lover strangling another. The PC’s chittering work ends abruptly.

I turn and see he’s right- there, on a spinning wire shelf near the entrance to the store, is a literal rack of Shitholes. I remember that the cover was once glossy and colored, smooth as a placid lake. My heart, which, until now, had been quietly mumbling to itself in my chest, pushes out one, giddy pump, pauses, and then pushes out another.

I nod, calmly, to Alfred.

The copies on the rack look thin, their pages compact and un-creased, my name clear. I pull the book from my back pocket and wave it at Alfred.

“I brought this in,” I tell him and his eyebrows raise. He wonders why I would think he might mistake the garbage in my hand for something he would try to sell.

“That,” he says with his eyes, “Is below even me.”

I wonder if he’s realized these books immortalize him?

I pull a copy from the rack and feel its weight, the stiffness of the spine. I set my book on a shelf and Alfred coughs politely as it flares out the crinkled pages. Is he afraid of some contagion?

I hold my breath and open the back cover to the author’s bio. The picture has been vandalized with a markered moustache and glasses. Somebody has scribbled something underneath, something unreadable. I pull another from the shelf and find the same thing- this one has buck teeth and a top hat. I squint past the additions and try to see my face there. It does look similar.

Doesn’t it?

“Somebody wrote in all these books,” I call over my shoulder to Alfred.

“The author wrote in all those books,” he says back, “That’s why they’re marked up.”

“The author…?”

“Real asshole,” Alfred says, “Came through a month ago and asked if I wanted to host a signing. Showed up late, drank all my coffee, and didn’t sell a single book. You should see what he wrote about me in there. If I had realized…”

By now I’m several books deep and there’s not a single picture of the author that hasn’t been modified beyond sure recognition. My hands shake nervously.

“This is my name,” I tell Alfred, my voice shaking too, “I was trying to find a clear picture… did he… did the author look like me?”

Alfred glances up from the book he’s been reading. He looks me over.

“Passing resemblance,” he sniffs, “I think he was taller.”

“Look,” I tell him, jotting down my name in one of the copies, “It’s the same signature.”

He looks between them for a few seconds.

“It’s basically the same, I mean,” I tell him, “He, I… He was using a marker and this is just a pen.”

“You’re going to buy that, I suppose.”

“Yeah, sure. Look, do you have any unsigned copies? Anything that hasn’t been drawn over?”

Alfred presses the button on his computer and I go back to the rack to look myself. Several of the books have been altered the same way, the more I go through the more prevalent the pattern: nested circles, white and black, over the author’s face.

The all-seeing eye.

“What’s this?” I ask Alfred, “The guy did this a lot.”

“Looks like googly eyes.”

“But they’re both looking ahead.”

Alfred sighs and I see I’m walking the precarious line between zealous customer and dangerous weirdo.

“I’ll buy the copy I wrote in,” I tell him, “And if you can find an unsigned copy I’ll buy that. Can I take a picture of the googly eyes?”

He looks at me suspiciously.

“The author’s a recluse,” I tell him, “But I’ve been trying to follow his work and…”

“Got one,” Alfred says, shuffling a few books around behind the counter.

Eventually he pulls another copy up and, maddeningly, flips to the back page himself. He looks between the book and myself and I try to remember the picture. I try to remember how the author looked.

“Smile,” Alfred says, “Big smile.”

I smile.

“Nope,” he says, handing me the book, “You’ve still got all your teeth.”

My smile fades.

-traveler

‘The Turning Table’ is the most recent in a number of businesses that have moved into the bizarre single-story revolving space off US-51. Prior tenants include ‘Dinner with a Twist,’ ‘The Revolving Roti,’ and ‘Pizza in the Round.’ Reviews of each are low to moderate. It goes without saying that the quality ‘spinning’ is not enough to make a successful restaurant.

I arrive in the parking lot and am signaled, by wait-staff inside, that the entrance is currently around back.

‘Yes, whoever commissioned the structure that houses ‘The Revolving Roti’ was an idiot. Unlike traditional revolving restaurants, in which only the interior floor turns, the whole outside of ‘The Revolving Roti’ spins around the core, kitchen area. Even on a good day, this contributes to a number of technical problems including a building-wide shudder every 17 minutes, near constant breakdowns, and intermittent wheelchair access. A brightly painted protective barrier has been installed at the base following a crushing fatality some years ago. The pre-entry waiver does not exactly whet the appetite.

The food is what you would expect from a moderately priced Indian restaurant though the garlic naan stands out above the other options as exceptional.’

Diners watch as I push between the building and the close-growing shrubs on its side, waiting, perhaps, for another fatality. It isn’t a graceful passage but I’ve been walking a long time and would like to sit down. Inches away, ‘The Turning Table’ groans and squeaks, its gears complain in the darkness below. It stops for just a second as something deep within grinds painfully. I press myself into the bush and grimace. I look for support from a couple who have stopped mid-meal to look worriedly back at me. A high-pitched whine indicates a growing pressure from inside.

The machine below breaks from the jam suddenly and the restaurant lurches forward. The couple turns their attention to the woman’s soup, which has sloshed over onto the table.

I press forward.

The entrance is already trying to sneak around the other side by the time I reach the back end of the property. I squeeze my backpack through first and jump in after, just as the bushes overtake the door. A man turns from paying and sees the way is blocked and he rolls his eyes.

He sits in the waiting area while I take a table for one.

The fare is no longer Indian and the naan has gone the way of the previous owners. I order a grilled cheese and lean back in the booth, happy to be rid of the weight of my pack. An untrimmed branch scratches across the window outside, annoying several people around me. I tap the glass and close my eyes.

“Your coffee, sir.”

I shudder awake and see the waitress standing over me with a mug. She hesitates.

“Sorry,” I say, rubbing my eyes, “It’s been a long trip.”

She smiles and nods.

“You can just set the coffee on the table,” I say.

“Just a moment.”

She looks at her watch.

The restaurant grinds to a halt and she expertly counters the motion with her arm so that the coffee doesn’t spill. The sound is worse from the inside- a few customers look worried, others, exasperated and knowing.

The noise continues.

“Looks like we’re stuck, Emily!” someone calls from the kitchen and the waitress, Emily, huffs.

“Careful with this,” she says, handing me the coffee.

Emily and a few other waitstaff gather at a spot ten feet away and stomp a couple times. Eventually, as the noise grows more severe, they resort to little half-jumps. The restaurant starts without warning and, despite Emily’s, I spill my coffee on the table.

She brings me napkins.

The back of the menu has a little rundown of the building’s features and a diagram of the building itself. One arrow points out the ‘jolly rotator,’ another the ‘protect-o-wall.’ Somebody thought these labels were a good idea.

My vision blurs with another pulse of sleep. The slow, whirring movement of ‘The Turning Table’ is doing me in. I take a sip of what remains of my coffee- not bad- and I notice, for the first time, the familiar shape of the restaurant. Two circles, one inside the other, and arrows like rays.

The all-seeing eye.

I chuckle, sleepily, and the restaurant moans.

Halfway through a blink, I fall asleep again.

The quiet clatter of my sandwich on the table wakes me. Emily has already filled my mug and moved on to another customer.

My view is still blocked by shrubs, seemingly infinite amidst my off-and-on napping. Eating helps me stay awake, I was hungrier than I realized.

The restaurant halts again, much to the dismay of a man who had just been served a shake. It starts on its own after a few seconds.

I tap my phone and wonder about the stranger. I tap the menu and wonder about that man, Tom, and his description of the eye. I tap my copy of Shitholes and wonder how I might close the growing gap between myself and the book. ‘The Revolving Roti’ has been out of business for a year. The author’s path is growing cold.

The parking lot slowly rotates into view and a mother desperately tries to get kids out of an SUV before the entrance disappears again. They gesture angrily to the TV screens embedded in the seats ahead of them and she gestures angrily to the door. ‘The Turning Table’ seems to move a little faster suddenly, though it’s likely my imagination.

Assuming the author and I are moving in the same direction, we will only meet if he slows down or if I speed up. I stretch my legs under the table and I wonder just how much faster I have it in me to go.

I wonder about the legitimacy of shortcuts.

-traveler

I imagine the person who coined ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’ thought they were being clever. Like most things that seem clever in writing but are normally unsaid, ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’s name is obnoxious and not really all that clever at all. Going forward I will call it: ‘Brick-Point,’ with the understanding that we are talking about this, specific, point and no other, differently-coordinated, point.

A point of bricks.

The ‘Badlands’ are not an easy place to visit for the carless traveler and this carless traveler does not wish to improve or challenge himself- motivations that might make the difficulty more palatable to a certain type of person. What it means, for me, is the social discomfort of hitchhiking followed by the physical discomfort of sleeping on the ground. A ground peppered with rocks and bones.

Night, in the ‘Badlands,’ is quiet, but in that quiet, relative to it, quiet things become loud. The sand readjusts itself. The wind readjusts the sand. Things contract in the cold. Other things crawl or roll or fly overhead. I learn, early, to turn off my light. It serves only to attract what passes for life in the dry, cracked earth. There is nothing much to see anyway.

I sleep fitfully and wake with a start to a brightly lit morning.

The ‘Brick-Point’ is still several miles away.

‘‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’ is, nearly always, a massive pile of bricks. Like other pilgrimage pieces, it grows as people visit and add their own bricks to the pile- bricks they’ve purchased, bricks they’ve found, but more often than not, bricks that were once a part of something they loved.

It is a resting place for bricks and a memorial to the structures they were once a part of, though it may not always seem that way.

Some corner of the internet has adopted ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’ as an art piece so, when it is not a pile of bricks, it is sometimes a house or several small houses. Other times it is a massive brick word, barely legible from the tallest nearby dune. Once, with careful use of forced perspective, it was made to look as though no bricks existed there at all.

The pile has taken several forms over several decades but, like the phoenix, an avatar of entropy, its destiny is to crumble again and again, no matter the energy it wastes in cohesion.’

A bold statement by the author of Shitholes. I wonder if they’re his words or if he lifted them off the artist’s forum, the one that associates itself with this place. I had a look at it back when my phone had service and, suffice to say, the ‘avatar of entropy’ bit would be right up their alley. Maybe he’s just trying to sell books.

‘Brick-Point’ is pain to get to but it’s not hard to find. With the coordinates plugged in and a general heading, it’s only a matter of following the path of least resistance. I pack up and start to walk, picking my way over and around the barren landscape.

An hour later I spot a line in the distant sand and I groan. It is, undoubtedly, the work of artists- it reeks of art school, burning man, and sweat. Worse, it looks fresh- a uniform black line across the red-brown wastes of the ‘Badlands.’ Paint? Paper? Reclaimed garbage bags?

No.

Shadow.

I arrive at the line and see it is not ‘in the sand’ at all. It is a long, uniform, shadow stretched impossibly far. I check my coordinates and follow it because it is, almost certainly, leading to ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W.’

An hour on and I am able to make out the source of the shadow; another line, this one also impossibly long but stretching from the horizon into the sky. I squint against the sun but cannot make out its terminus.

An hour later I arrive at ‘Brick-Point’ and find it abandoned. The bricks have been stacked, one on top of the other over and over again. They disappear into the sky. I examine the tower closely but cannot make out the use of adhesive. There may be an internal structure but even a metal bar would sway and bend eventually. I look around, expecting to see someone, wishing someone was there to share in the wonder and terror the impossible brick structure invokes within me. I try, again, to make out the top and experience a sympathetic vertigo.

I fall over and am glad to be alone.

There is a small slip of paper wedged under the bottom-most brick, folded there very carefully. Something is written on the inside, I see, but I cannot make out what without disturbing it.

I hem and haw for a while. I approach the tower and step away again. As the sun rises in the sky the long shadow draws back to its caster. I look again at the paper. It is only folded once. It is not thick, not a wedge for balancing out some rickety chair. It is, most certainly, a note.

I kneel and pull the note out from under the brick. It slips easily into my hand. There is a noise like a heavy footstep some distance away as I unfold the paper. It says:

‘RUN’

A brick falls into the sand nearby.

-traveler

‘The Lathe’s Court’ is unattended and difficult to find. Some suggest it has been abandoned and, by all accounts, it seems to be, though the governing rules of roadside art are historically vague and the degradation may be part and parcel of the show. It shares the traits of its kin (car-henges and cement dinosaurs alike) in that it professes no statement of purpose and bears no clear signature. ‘The Lathe’s Court,’ like the others, simply exists to be witnessed and will continue to draw the occasional pilgrimage until the trees shake off their tending.’

The Lathe’s Court is easy enough to find at sunset.

I’ve taken to editorial scribbling in Shitholes since the stranger’s phone has been disconnected. It may be convenient to have notes if a second edition ever rolls out, or, if I happen to find a second edition already existing somewhere, it may be convenient to have something to compare. I still have a lot of questions about all of this, even though I don’t ask them as often as I once did.

‘The Lathe’s Court’ (where a ‘lathe’ is a woodworking machine) is easier to find at sunset because the artist’s statues, which have been carved into the still-living trunks of trees, continue to grow. The ‘Lathe Dancers’ (where ‘dancer’ is one of the many carved human figures in the ‘court’) have risen well above the ground and hover sparsely in the branches. The setting sun, for a few moments each evening, reveals them by their shadows.

Easy enough, but eerie.

Eerie if, like me, you don’t know what you’re looking for and if you assume, like many would, that the court remains unwarped and at ground level. Eerie if, like me, you rest underneath them to pour, frustrated, over a hand-drawn map. Eerie if, like me, you look up to see the shadows there, suddenly. Eerie if, like me, you are alone.

Time, but not decay, has taken its toll on ‘The Lathe’s Court,’ stretching the limbs and features of the figures there into uncomfortable silhouettes. Their skin has become rough with bark, their mouths sealed shut or awkwardly gaping. Arms and legs have grown new joints, collarbones collect the canopy’s rotting detritus. Some have become host to animals, others to birds, but, in the sun, they are what they were, they remain human-enough.

I climb a tree to look at one and hang, for a moment, my arms around a woman’s waist.

“This is new,” I joke to her.

She creaks under my weight.

There is a man ahead of us, a ‘Lathe Man.’ The tree’s life has emphasized the man’s posture; he was carved to be proclaiming something, his arms spread out, grown far beyond any possible model.

The court is vast and layered, its ‘dancers’ spanning elevations and poses. They disappear in the twilight, dissolving back into the chaos of twigs and branches. Darkness obscures everything but the odd limb.

I take a different way out- I’ve lost the path but I know which direction the road is. These days I don’t mind being a little lost. I come upon a fallen tree, a fallen ‘dancer.’ A lightning strike has severed her connection to the earth. In the air, as she was carved, the ‘dancer’ may have been reaching for an embrace. I scour the treetops above us with my light but find no partner there. On the ground, having fallen forward, she seems to crawl. Her mossy arms bend awkwardly, failing, over the years, to hold the weight of her trunk.

She faces the road but the road, I know, is several miles ahead.

-traveler

Think, for a moment, about the song: ‘The Wheels on the Bus.’ There may be no truer musical homage to journey than this. Hidden under the playful tune is a bleak and true-to-life description of what the bus, what being on the bus, is like. Strip away the notes and pretend a man, a man who has been on the bus for many hours, is speaking the words under his breath. Imagine his eyes and imagine the way his lips might move over every tired word.

Yes, the song is just a series of descriptions. Descriptions of what is happening on the bus. Examine the lyrics and you will see for yourself, the story is this:

The wheels go round and round and it begins to rain. The bus fills to the brim and the driver commands people to make more room, room that simply isn’t there. The road becomes rough, the way congested. People are leaving en masse; they are fleeing. The driver lays on the horn and a child begins to cry. The parents try, in vain, to comfort it.

What is happening here, exactly? Why was it necessary to write a song and why, if the tune is cheery, does the author describe the worst aspects of a bus ride?

I am in a bad mood.

‘Old maps and adverts in the central office detail the early days of the ‘Plains to Coast Quick Bus Co.’ how it started with many buses and many routes until, as though tending to a bonsai tree, the founders quickly trimmed it down to its truer form. It is a 17 and a half hour beast of a ride that does not go out of its way to make you comfortable.

But it is the only public vehicle allowed through the ‘Dull Moon Pass.’

Amateur Gray Road Theorists are quick to use the ‘Dull Moon Pass’ as evidence to their claim but the time it takes to traverse the DMP (satellite images reveal) corresponds closely with its theoretical length. In short, they are grasping for seconds at best. That, of course, is the trouble with Gray Road Theory. Even if it were true, the touted ‘known examples’ would hardly be useful or interesting given the small size of their estimated anomalies, no matter how precisely those distortions are calculated or how forcefully those calculations are shoved under your nose.

All that said, the DMP does fit the bill in other ways. Around fifteen minutes in it’s safe to expect color blurring and dizziness, precursors to a creeping grayout. Those who remain able to see will occasionally report a small town, often at the 45 minute mark. This would place it at the base of the ridge, shortly before the bus enters the tunnel.

There is nothing to be said about the tunnel itself accept for a near universal feeling of dread that comes upon the riders like a motion-sickness, climaxing just as the bus bursts back into full-sighted daylight. There is no clear danger and no clear change but the darkness of the tunnel clings like guilt and it insists that something has changed, that you have done something wrong in your passing. You will not feel welcome on the ‘Dull Moon Pass’ a second time. You may not feel welcome anywhere for a long time after.’

-traveler

“You’ve lost another tooth,” I tell him, though I’m sure he must know. It doesn’t surprise me when his answer takes the form of a short, dismissive nod. He nods again after a moment, a nod to himself, as though confirming some internal dialogue.

I wonder what that must sound like.

The stranger’s shadow is long and varied under the streetlights. People seem to unconsciously avoid its perimeter, mistaking it for a murky puddle in their peripheries. I prod it with the toe of my shoe when he isn’t looking and, though there is nothing underneath but pavement, the stranger turns quickly and shudders.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Waiting for you to decide which way to go.”

“How do you usually do this?”

“I just walk in and wait until something happens.”

He sighs and takes another step toward the cordoned-off street beyond which lies several blocks of happy, smiling people. Before us is a sign: “Welcome to the Springfield Night Market!”

‘Yes, the people seem to be happy and they seem to be smiling but, reader, do not believe that either is truly the case. The ‘Springfield Night Market’ is a place of debauchery, comparable only, perhaps, to the infamous ‘Uptown Festival of Greek Cuisine’ before it burned to the ground and was discontinued.’

“Was that you?” I ask the stranger, pointing to the passage.

“Of course not,” he says, his shadow wavering guiltily, “That must have happened before the book was published.”

As ever, I’m not entirely sure that’s the case.

‘To fully grasp the corruption at the heart of the ‘Springfield Night Market,’ one must step back and consider the very convention of the ‘night market’ itself. No mere place of commerce, a night market is the vampire’s teeth of American consumerism, emerging from the shadows to pierce the busy veins of a city and to drain them endlessly. Fledgling night markets gorge to bursting and fail but the ‘Springfield Night Market’ is ancient and clever.’

 “Do you also think that the author’s militant anti-capitalist rants sometimes make it difficult to figure out when a place is actually dangerous?”

“Yes,” he says, “Just skip down to the end.”

‘The simple answer, reader, is that you must be rude to leave the market. You must ignore the merchants as they debase themselves and you must walk in a determined line until the noise of the crowd dims and you find yourself alone once more. Despite threats to the contrary, nothing will follow you past the confines of the market unless you make the mistake of purchasing it.’

“What the hell is that?” the stranger asks, returning from an extended reconnoiter of the market.

“An elephant ear,” I tell him, “I thought we could share.”

“The book says not to buy anything!”

“The book says not to buy anything you don’t want following you,” I shrug, “Do you think this is a haunted elephant ear? Do you think a piece of bread can be cursed?”

“I don’t want any,” he says, which suits me well enough.

The thing cost eight dollars.

The stranger has never asked, in any direct way, where I received my copy of ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ and his not-asking has kept me quiet on the subject as well. His copy, I’ve noticed, is further along in life than mine. So broken is the binding that, sat on a table, his copy of ‘Shitholes’ forms a near-perfect circle of splayed pages, no longer able to contain itself. Pieces are missing, like the page he gave me with his number. He seems to know, without looking, which parts of the book are no longer necessary. He loses them like teeth.

We enter together.

The cramped aisles of the night market press the stranger and I close. We lose and re-find each other between hopeful artists and honey vendors. He picks at the elephant ear disapprovingly while people trip over his shadow. I get the feeling he could disappear if he wanted to, disappear like he did in the cave.

Which means he doesn’t want to, not today.

“Sir,” someone whispers, “Sir!”

The stranger has gone.

“Sir!” a man says, indicating me to his table where he puts on a louder voice, “I’ve got something you might be interested in.”

The man is selling plants, or selling intricate plant holders that seem, incidentally to be occupied by succulents. ‘Tom’s Plants,’ the sign says, ‘You can’t kill’em!’

“That’s a bold statement,” I tell him.

“Is it?” he asks.

“I mean, doesn’t that instigate people? Won’t people try to kill your plants to prove you wrong?”

“They can try,” he says, “But they can’t.”

“You’re saying that a person could not kill one of your plants, even if they tried.”

“That’s right,” he says, “It’s more than right, it’s guaranteed!”

“Guaranteed for life?”

“We don’t offer exchanges on plants that die of natural causes. Old age, for example, is not covered. Would you like a demonstration?”

“A demonstration of what?”

Tom pulls a hammer from under the table and swiftly crushes a succulent, artsy pot and all, with several deafening blows. Passerbys watch, curiously, but scatter when he’s finished, afraid that loitering might accidentally convey interest in buying. By the time Tom is finished, the succulent is a jelly and the pot is dust.

“That seems dead, to me,” I tell him.

“Not yet,” he says, “But probably soon. In this instance, given this level of damage, we would likely offer you a refund. As I said, we have a guarantee.”

“So the “can’t kill’em” is mainly a marketing gimmick?”

“Mainly,” he says with a bizarre emphasis.

I look around for the stranger, but he has not returned.

“Mainly but not entirely?” I ask.

“That’s right.”

“Is there a specific plant…”

“Our guarantee does not cover potting supplies,” he says slyly, “And it doesn’t cover the pots themselves but we do have a peculiar specimen of fern that might suit a man such as yourself. A traveler, by the looks of it…”

He seems to want something from me, then, and his eyes narrow at my hesitation.

“Do you know what this is?” he asks, smoothing the dirt and succulent powder flat. He draws, with his thumb, two small circles, one within the other.

“Circles,” I say.

“No, wait,” he says, wiping over them and starting again.

This time the outer circle is an oval, pointed at the ends.

“An… eye?” I ask.

“The all-seeing eye!” he says, expectant once again.

I nod my head appreciatively and wait for more.

“The all-seeing eye,” he says.

“Yep,” I agree.

“Do you know what this is?”

“The.. all-seeing eye?” I ask, but he gestures for extrapolation. “The eye of providence? God watching over mankind? Conspiracy? Freemasons?”

Tom’s frowning now, his own eyes narrow.

“What is this?” he asks, wiping away the eye and drawing a short squiggle. He saves me from another embarrassing assortment of answers by mimicking a walking person with his fingers.

“A path?”

“And two people, walking the same path and in the same direction and at the same speed- will they meet?”

“No.”

“But,” he says, “Upon reaching the end would they have seen the same thing?”

“Um…” I say and Tom nods encouragingly, “Mostly?”

“Mostly!” he says, “Yes, mostly! A thousand people walking a path will meet at the end with a single, blurry vision. A hundred thousand people and the vision will clarify. The path becomes easier to follow, it is worn into the ground. The vision becomes clearer, it is held aloft by those who seek it out. That is the all-seeing eye and its rays, a multitude of visions becoming one.”

“Is this how you sell plants?” I ask.

“It is how I sell a single, specific plant,” he smiles and, donning gloves, he brings a small glass jar up from under the table.

The plant inside presses desperately against the glass. A single frond has worked its way under the lid and it points at me like an accusing finger.

“A fairy fern?” I ask.

“A regional name. I grew up calling it ‘crawl grass.’ In the south it’s… ‘the devil’s such and such,’ I don’t know. Everything belongs to the devil in the south.”

“How did you know I would recognize it?”

“Because we are the two people on the same path. I have slowed and you have caught up to me. We are the two people here that share the vision.”

“Actually,” I say, pulling out my wallet to pay him, “There’s another guy you probably shouldn’t let…”

A massive plume of fire rises over the ‘Springfield Night Market.’ People scream, plastic tents shrivel and burn. Jars of honey froth over and burst. Tom stands aghast, too aghast to hand me change. I turn to leave and trip over the stranger’s shadow, tumbling into the pavement. He’s reappeared behind me and he holds out a hand from above.

I reach out to take it. “No,” he says, “Give me the stupid fern.”

“No!” I tell him, “It’s harmless.”

I wince as the rogue frond digs into my palm.

“All right, fine!” he hisses through the gaps in his mouth, “Let’s just go.”

I take his hand and he pulls me from the ground. We start to weave through the crowd, fingers intertwined, and as the stranger leads me away I hear Tom shouting. It’s difficult, at first, to make out, but what I hear is this:

“He’s running!” Tom shouts, “He’s running backwards on the path!”

-traveler

“Traveler,” the radio cracks, “Traveler.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you want?” it asks, “You don’t look so well, traveler. You look sick.”

“It took you a while to get here.”

“It doesn’t take me any time to get anywhere. You know that as well as me.”

“Well it took you some time to speak up.”

…

“Where are we, traveler? It’s dark here.”

“Shitty hotel.”

“We’ve been here for a while, in the dark.”

“That’s what I was saying.”

“If you are not traveling, then I don’t know what to call you.”

“We’ll hit the road again once I’m better. No need to think up a new name.”

“Still…”

…

“Would music help you, mmm, traveler?”

“No.”

“Would cleaning up help the smell?”

“Are you offering?”

“I am not.”

…

It’s three days before I open the window, a few days longer before I turn the bolt in the door. I am gone long enough to get ice. My legs are still weak and the day is bright and painful. The world has taken on a foreign smell, not a pleasant one. Or else that’s me relative to the new freshness.

Yes, a moment’s investigation confirms it is me.

I hurry back.

The door to my room is ajar; did I leave it that way? It is only open a crack, hardly enough for a passerby to notice. Hardly enough to let in air. It’s the space left when a closed door doesn’t quite latch, or when a trespasser doesn’t want to make a sound. Closed, but for being open.

I push inside.

The room is thick with human evaporations, with sweat and feces and, distantly, with cigarette smoke. This is a dim place, a place that resists light. The bathroom door is closed and light seeps out between the cracks. There may have been movement there as I watched but, now the subject of my focus, the room pleas vacancy.

If only there were a window.

“Is it here?” I ask into the darkness.

The radio, improperly adapted to the wall socket, buzzes and pops. The lights in the hallways flicker.

“Is what here, traveler?”

There is movement in the bathroom, I see it again.

“It might be best if you close the door, traveler,” the radio says, “It is unhealthy to linger between spaces.”

“That’s not…”

Another movement in the bathroom, the sound of a cabinet quietly closing.

“You are still not well. Is it not my duty to remind you?”

“You’re supposed to warn me when something breaks in here too.”

“There is nobody but yourself here, traveler. Even I, by most definitions, am not where you are.” The radio laughs at this, “Heh, heh, heh.”

I hear the sound of a toilet seat dropping, the rustle and tear of toilet paper.

“There is something in the bathroom, I mean. Don’t you hear that?”

The voice is quiet for a moment and I assume it’s listening. As the moment grows longer I realize it has simply chosen to end the conversation. I stand alone with the thing until, against my better judgment, I slip inside and close the door, close and latch to banish whatever liminal space may have existed. In the failing confidence of my decision I feel my heartbeat, quick with fear and anticipation.

I start the coffeepot and wonder if one evil might provide respite from another. The thing in the bathroom quiets down, some. The door there is like the last, closed but unlatched. Tenuously open.

The wayside is a place for things we’ve forgotten or failed to do and as I travel here I find it difficult to see past my own failings, or, I suppose, to discern them from the successes I carry with me. In a place littered with broken bottles and used needles, things that jab and poke and hook into your soles, it’s hard to tell if you’re being followed or if you’re just dragging something behind you.

I’ve begun to understand that mine is the latter case.

The toilet flushes and I hear the too-friendly jingle of a belt. Inside, the thing stands and pulls faded jeans up over its pale, distended belly. Its movements are lazy and vulgar, its breathing deep and steady. The hairs on my arms prick up as I hear it splash its hands about in the sink. My own body is itching and sick.

I remember the ice, now half-melted. I make a cool rag with one eye on the bathroom door. I climb into bed, between the damp sheets, and I cover my face.

“Traveler?” the radio clicks, “Traveler? Should I still warn you when something is coming? Will you believe me when I say there is nothing?”

“Yes,” I say under the rag, “Sure.”

“There is nothing now, traveler. Nothing now or before.”

-traveler

It seems, at first, to be a field like any other. That is, weedy and dry. Maybe there are flowers but they are few and far between, dispersed widely so as to be entirely incidental and meaningless. A single flower, growing eternally as the sole representative of its kind in an otherwise empty acreage, might raise an eyebrow. A few intermittent flowers in a field mean nothing, except, perhaps, to the particularly sentimental.

When the sun reaches as certain angle over the field, however, the ground begins to shine. It becomes, all at once, almost unseeable in its shining, illuminated by what seems to be a thousand tiny diodes. The field becomes impossible to approach.

No, not impossible.

Uncomfortable.

Years of sunblock adverts, skin-cancer PSAs, and embarrassing tan lines have left me distrustful of the sun and of anything that will magnify and reflect it. The ocean, for instance, and snowdrifts that remain on the clear days that follow a storm. I do not like looking at the sun and I don’t like feeling, sometimes, that the sun is looking back.

The effect of the field is a narrowing of that poisonous gaze and, backed by oncologists and screaming, dying ants around the world, I wait until the sun is differently angled before I approach. In the meantime, I read:

‘It is the pennies, not the knives, that illuminate the burial ground north of the interstate known officially as ‘Unclaimed Lot #17.’ This place has become a pilgrimage site for those wishing to inter old wrongs and, eschewing the more traditional hatchet, wrong-doers have instead co-opted the ‘knife and penny.’

A tool at heart, most cultures have recognized the knife is much more, that it has been a symbol and means of violence since before recorded history. To pass a knife between friends is historically frowned upon. To give one as a gift is in bad taste. It is fitting, perhaps, that the United States have taken this ancient superstition and adapted it to the capitalist narrative for, in stranger times, the bad luck that trailed a gifted knife could be nullified by the exchange of money, even a single penny. Such is the great sterilizing power of monetary exchange, it is the power to hide ancient meaning in the guise of an impersonal transaction.

A uniquely American power.

It is for this reason the author of this publication has decided to include ‘Unclaimed Lot #17’ and not ‘The Great Hatchet Field,’ west of the Missouri and frequented, more often, by people living there.’

It may be the pennies that light up the field but the knives are not far below. In testing the side adjacent to the highway, a strip of dirt worn low by passing cars, I see how the knives are buried vertically, blades skyward, with only a sprinkle of earth and coin between their tips and the open air. This would be an unfortunate place to fall but, because the rows are neat, it isn’t hard to walk.

My crouching has drawn the attention of a woman in the field, a silhouette, now, with the sun above and behind her. She had previously been moving between the rows but recently she has stopped and turned toward me, her posture vaguely disapproving and wary. She begins to walk my way as I finger several of the lost coins back into their places, undoing the natural ruin of the highway. Everything is in order by the time she reaches me: a young woman, younger than me, in cowboy boots and jeans. The boots are torn up the sides and her hands are bandaged. Her skin is made thick and dark by the sun.

I did not wrongly imagine her disapproval, it’s there in her face as well, hidden behind a smile.

“That’s great,” she says, smiling uncomfortably, “You didn’t polish them but I suppose you thought you were doing a good thing and that’s great.”

“I guess,” I tell her, seeing a bottle of polish peeking from her jacket.

“It’s no more work for me!” she continues, speaking as though the opposite is true, “I’ll just dig’em on up on the next round and give’em a quick polish and then put them back in the right order, no problem!”

“The right order?”

“By year,” she says, “Penny year, that is. No knowing when each was buried.”

“Is this an active field?”

“Active as in…?”

“As in, do people still come here with their knives and pennies?”

“Why, they sure do!” she says, “Only a couple a month in the winter, though. That doubles or even triples in the summer. I’ve got one fella who comes around like clockwork every new year.”

“Smoker?” I ask.

“Beats his kids,” she says, “Wow! His oldest must be heading into middle school this year!”

I resist a temptation to inquire.

“So, how do you account for new entries? Do people have to bring up-to-date pennies?”

“I sure encourage them to!” she says, jingling a bag at her belt, “But if they don’t I just make a little room somewhere and adjust! Here, while I’m wiping up these little guys you can look over our pamphlet.”

She hands me a thin brochure and crouches, pulling a rag and the polish from her side.

“The Knife and Penny Field!” the paper reads, “A few things you may not know!”

Below the title is a picture of the field, an older picture. A man and a young girl stand distantly in the center, posed solemnly. It’s dated nearly a decade ago.

The inside of the brochure is undecorated and headed with a cartoonish “DID YOU KNOW…”

The rest is typed plainly in a bulleted list.

‘DID YOU KNOW…

-rain water drains from the field and into our farmland, poisonous and red from the rusted knives and copper you bring here?

-your contribution rests among those of murderers and rapists?

-God is not blinded by the shining of the field? Your sins are as much a beacon here as they are when you carry them.

-we maintain a relationship with the sheriff in order to extract fingerprints from suspiciously buried weapons?

-tradition does not make you welcome here? It is not our job to bear your mistakes.

-we find an average of 2 bodies in our field annually? My daughter learned what suicide was when she was just eight because of what attracts you here.

-there is a tall overpass located just 15 minutes north for your convenience?

-dogs and cats run from miles around to die in this field?

The list goes on for a while in no obvious order.

The back is blank.

“Can I keep this?” I ask.

“Of course!” the woman says, though she does not make eye contact or hesitate in what she is doing.

“Why keep up the field if you feel this way?”

“Oh, my daddy wrote that,” she says, “I just haven’t gotten around to making a new one, that’s all.”

“You like the field?”

“Wouldn’t say that but the city fines me when it gets unruly down here.”

“Why not build a fence, then?”

“You’ve got something to bury?” she asks suddenly, briefly curt as she stands up to my height, “It won’t do you any good on your back!”

There is a knife in my pack, but it’s one I had imagined burying in private. The woman knows this, but seems to think saying it outright would be impolite.

“Will it do me better here?” I ask.

“Not at all, sir. Not at all.”

“Have you ever buried anything in the field?”

“My daddy,” she says, “Whole family’s out here.

I shuffle my feet in disappointment and scratch my arms under the sleeves.

“You read about the overpass…?” the woman inquires, her voice discrete.

“Nothing like that,” I tell her.

She seems relieved, then, and looks back over her shoulder.

“I’ve still got some work to do before the sun’s set,” she says, “Anything I can do for you here?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, but she lingers.

“The way things are,” she says thoughtfully, “The way things are heading here in the states… you’d think it would make more work for me.”

“You’d think it would,” I agree.

“Funny thing is,” she says, “I get more folks out in the field when things are good. Now these people aren’t ashamed of what they should be anymore. The president’s telling them it’s okay, he’s done worse things himself and never had to apologize. He’s not burying knives so nobody’s burying them.”

“These things come in cycles,” I tell her, “If not soon then in a few years when we re-elect somebody else.”

“I had a man out here last week,” she continues, “Drunkard who found his way into the field. He pulled a knife straight out of the ground and told me to go back to Mexico. I told him I ain’t ever even been over the border. Any idea how many weeks there are in a few years?”

“A lot, I guess.”

“People remember where they buried their knives,” she says, “That’s the real trouble with this place. People bury knives for show but they’re plenty happy to dig them up when someone tells’em it’s okay.”

-traveler

‘At the risk of alienating petrified wood enthusiasts, the author admits to a lack of personal excitement regarding the processes involved in its creation and, generally, in the substance itself. Consider the following interaction:

‘Do you know what this is?’ a parent might ask their child.

‘A rock,’ the reasonable child would answer.

‘No, imbecile-child, look closely and see it was once wood.’

‘How?’

‘Time and weather have replaced the decomposing wood with minerals. This is the fate of many things.’

‘So, it is a rock?’

‘Yes, child. Now you understand.’

Petrified wood does itself no favors in its found form, being mostly indistinguishable from other rocks with less interesting histories. It has little value, practically or monetarily, and it takes an amount of previous knowledge and a healthy dollop of imagination for petrified wood to inspire genuine wonder. The wonder is short lived when one considers that this is just another of the earth’s natural processes, normalcy on an extended timeline. It is a fossil, yes, but these rocks were not once the lizard-titans of our Earth’s shadowed history. They were trees, like those that remain.

Now they are rocks.

The ‘East Continental Petrified Forest’ is rife with rocks, with petrified wood. There is very little wood left un-petrified; there is very little remaining life at all. A place of jutting ruins, like dry, jagged teeth, the ‘East Continental Petrified Forest,’ composed of any other substance, might be called a wasteland. A desert.

The park rangers have posted signs asking that no rock be removed from the ‘East Continental Petrified Forest’ and warning that they patrol the boundaries of the park vigilantly and at all hours. Smaller signs, deep in the park, suggest the rangers have trained dogs to sniff out petrified wood, that visitors smuggling even the smallest amount of petrified wood will be captured and prosecuted.

Later signs admit that, due to funding cuts, the trained dogs have been laid off and ask for donations so that the program might be re-instated. The previously trained dogs have been released into the park, they say. Beware feral dogs, they say.

‘But if you’ve made it this far…’ they say.

It is the author’s theory, perhaps biased, that neither the rangers, nor the dogs exist and that all signage to the contrary has been constructed to further insinuate the imaginary value of petrified wood. There is no reason not to believe your eyes, reader. They have not failed you previous to this. If it looks like a rock and feels like a rock and bludgeons like a rock, it is a rock.’

-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

“That one’s a real unique piece,” a woman says, approaching me from the side, “It’s been carved from a single piece of locally sourced wood.”

“Oh?”

“The challenge for any of our furniture artists is to imagine the finished piece in the untouched shapes that nature provides.”

“The unfinished piece.”

“Of course,” she says, smiling like she doesn’t put up with this every day, “The unfinished piece.”

‘There is a trait, attributed to the Persians, the Amish, and whatever Native American tribe happens to be convenient in conversation, that ancient artisans would sew, chisel, or bead purposeful imperfections into their work, so as not to displease the gods. It’s a nice idea and one that ‘The Unfinished Furniture Co.’ fails entirely to enterprise on.

The items for sale are unusable in frustrating ways- tables that lean dangerously, chairs that splinter and snag. There is a door too wide for its frame, a dresser with no drawers. The handiwork is not particularly good, the prices not particularly cheap. ‘The Unfinished Furniture Co.’ has taken an idea and run with it unabashedly. It is the collision of capitalism and anarchy, the result of a market that allows for anything as long as money is involved. Held aloft by the weighted purses of…’

Shitholes goes on for a few paragraphs, illustrating the author’s opinions of a company that specializes in conversation pieces. I look around the showroom floor and wonder if I shared the same opinion before I read the piece or if the pressure of my potential authorship sways me. I try to like the ‘stool.’ I try to appreciate that the artist has left all of the nails exactly half hammered, and that the actual finish, surely not without irony, has been applied expertly around the sharp protrusions.

It’s painstaking and ugly and useless and looking at it makes me grate my teeth. Everything in the store is a few hour’s work from being a complete piece. Each piece, completed, would be entirely average. Even the underlying principle of the place seems half-realized at best. If the un-finishing of something is meant to evoke an emotion or represent a greater idea, it falls flat in the face of their exorbitant prices and sterile space.

“Do you want to meet the artist?”

Most employees would have given up by now but ‘The Unfinished Furniture Co.’ is not centrally located and the parking lot is conspicuously empty. There’s no reason to not keep me on the hook.

“The same person does all of this?”

“Of course; his workshop is in the back.”

While the woman is putting on her jacket I wonder if she knows already that I won’t be purchasing anything. I wonder this a lot about retail employees. Having worked in several little stores over the course of my life I think I’ve experienced feelings of both challenge and indifference toward the wares and toward people like me, people who are only in a place to ask questions or waste time.

Thinking back, asking questions and wasting time has made up the bulk of my life.

“This way!”

There was a short snowfall several days ago and, since then, the world has frozen. There is no wind, no further precipitation. More than a simple nothing, the world seems to resent the small, necessary disturbances of unsleeping life. Every footfall in the snow is frozen there, accusingly, so that others might be discomfited by the broken symmetry.

The woman and I carve a new path, out the back of the main building and toward a small, shuttered warehouse. She doesn’t wait to knock or to kick the snow off her shoes. She lets herself in and gestures, smiling, for me to follow. It is the last friendly thing I see her do.

“You’ve got a guest, Rick!” she yells.

The workshop is dark and stuffy. It smells like smoke, the way a place smells when the chimney hasn’t been cleaned, when it’s tightened up like a sore throat, like asthmatic lungs. A fire rages in the old wood-burning stove but the glass has blackened and the frantic light is dimmed.

“Rick!” she yells, “Rick, get out here and do your job!”

Several more unfinished pieces stand dejectedly about, potentially more unfinished than those I saw before. Sawdust has piled into corners and around chair legs. It sticks to the snow on my boots. It weighs down a spider web in the rafters.

“Rick!”

The woman lobs an empty beer can at a pile of blankets on a pull-out bed across the workshop. It misses the mark by several feet and clangs loudly off the wall. The blankets stir and groan.

“God damn it, Rick, get up or I’m calling dad in here. He’ll whoop your ass Rick!”

The resting figure stirs immediately, though the movements remain sluggish. A man, dressed in the company’s uniform, emerges and seems to try to pull the blanket over the mattress. He manages it halfway before stumbling to a work bench where he begins to haphazardly sand a small wooden box.

“How long are you going to work on that stupid box, Ricky?”

The man’s voice is barely a mumble:

“Jus’ about done.”

“For real this time?”

“For real.”

“You’ve got a guest, Rick. Someone from the front. Come up and explain your design philosophy.”

“It’s not…” I begin, but Rick has already tossed the sandpaper aside and turned. He keeps his eyes lowered as he approaches and extends his hand for a weak, dusty handshake.

“Name’s Rick McDowell,” he mutters to the floor, “Family owns the business. Y’may notice the work reflects a common theme…”

“Louder, Rick! The man can’t hear you!”

Rick clears his throat.

“…work reflects a common theme. Theme is practical furniture that remains incomplete in construction or design. I was inspired in 96’ when…”

Rick mutters on through a scripted history of his work, occasionally pointing to early projects strewn about the workshop, pieces otherwise indistinguishable from the rest. The woman wanders around behind him, her gait purposefully bored and careless. She collapses a column of beer cans and eyes a TV-dinner stand with disgust.

“…following generations with growing difficulties regarding attention and handiwork my own craft progressed and seemed to catch the attention of the generation previous…”

“Rick,” I whisper, interrupting him once the woman has wandered to the far end of the workshop, “Rick, are you okay? Do you need help?”

“… small stools, ottomans, toilet paper holders… Uh…what?”

“Are you… being kept here? Like a slave?”

“Well, uh…”

“Do they pay you, Rick?” I ask, not sure whether the man is comprehending much of what’s being said, “That woman’s treating you like shit.”

“Family owns the business…” he says, potentially trying to answer the first question, “Sister keeps the place outside.”

“That’s your sister?” I ask in disbelief, “Rick, that doesn’t matter if you think you’re in trouble.”

Rick huffs, his breath heavy with alcohol and some unclear emotion.

“Don’t need help,” he says.

“You’re happy doing this?” I prod, “That showroom makes it look like you’re some sort of hipster artisan, putting shit together and working with your hands and stuff. Like you’re one of those guys with a vision and a nice coffeemaker. You look bad, Rick. This,” I say, indicating the workshop/living space, “looks bad.”

He takes a moment to respond.

“You look bad,” he says.

I take a moment in turn.

“What?”

“You look bad,” he says, raising his voice a tad.

“I didn’t mean to…”

“What are you doing that makes you look bad?” he asks, insisting on the pointed ‘you,’ each time, “I’m making furniture.”

“I’m writing a book,” I tell him, too angry to consider the implications, “I’m… writing a travel book.”

“When are you going to finish?” he asks, “You getting close?”

My pack shifts on my shoulders. It feels heavy suddenly, heavier every second.

“Getting close,” I mutter, “Just a few more places to see.”

“Getting close, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Will being finished make you happy?” he asks, “Is that what you want? You’re ready to be finished?”

“I…”

-traveler