There are two things absent from the modern casino: the deep smell of institutionalized smoking and the pinball-clicking of old slots, replaced with their silent, electronic successors. The smoking I can do without, I suppose, though I do get whimsical in any old diner that has neglected to replace their carpets. The lost noise presents a problem.

‘There is a strange prize to be had at ‘The Spinning Wheels Casino & Bar,’ strange and closely kept. At the time of this writing, the author has fruitlessly lost money and time in its study and found only the following:

The casino’s namesakes, ‘The Spinning Wheels,’ make up an enormous, if not slightly degraded structure at the center of the building. Built like a massive, exposed slot machine, the four spinning wheels are easily 20’ across and a yard thick. The whole contraption is sunk into the ground so that a quarter of the wheels disappear into the floor. Prominently featured advertisements for the casino show a man from behind, kneeling at the machine as though at some ancient god, his arms thrown up in joy or despair.

It is not an uncommon sight.

‘The Spinning Wheels’ offer no explanation for the vague symbols they display (a tree, the moon, an inverted horse) but it’s commonly held that the only winning combination is a four-of-a-kind of the open door. Located on the far left side of the far left wheel is the crease of a subtle hatch that happens to line up with the floor when it lands on the legendary symbol, lending credence to the claim. Partial winners are allowed to enter but quickly return to report the passage is blocked by the non-winning spins. Jackpot winners exist only in rumors.’

There are few places more accommodating than a casino. Free drinks, free snacks, friendly smiles and a general come-as-you-are atmosphere. Playing carefully, a person can spend a day in the comfortable air-conditioned embrace of ‘The Spinning Wheels’ for less than the cost of a gas station sandwich. It’s not worth it to the casino to track everyone because the casino, on average, will win. Unlike a gas station, the casino can take everything from you and give you nothing back. More than can: it’s trying to. It will.

Accordingly, I do my best to be wary despite a sense of relief that washes over me with the crisp, clean air. Then I listen for the clicking of the old slots and hear nothing. I wonder if the stranger has been here and what he found. And then the lights dim, flicker, and return. A high electronic hum fills the air and, on its tails, a mad clattering from deeper within the casino. There is a smell like ozone, though nobody else seems to notice or mind.

Further inside I spot the machine. It’s as Shitholes described but larger and far more neglected than I had imagined. Powered down they would have the faded charm of an old amusement park but, forced into activity, ‘The Spinning Wheels’ move like a lame horse. A thick cord drops from the ceiling and disappears into the body of the thing. The first wheel shudders to a stop as I enter- landing squarely on the open door.

There is a hush about the room as the other wheels continue to spin. The second begins to slow and manages several pained revolutions before landing on a crude eye. The woman at the lever is already crestfallen and the small crowd that gathered begins to disperse. I watch as she speaks to an employee stationed nearby and, together, they approach the left side of the massive machine. There I see the hatch, hardly large enough for a person to crawl through. As she disappears inside, the two remaining wheels settle on a lightning storm and finally a second open door.

The woman emerges again, before long, and a man steps up to the lever. She, the losing player, re-joins the short line to play and I step in behind her. We both watch as the man pulls the lever and ‘The Spinning Wheels’ creak reluctantly back to life.

“What’s in the wheel?” I ask, but the woman doesn’t respond. She’s busy watching the machine, her face expectant and her skin sheened over with nervous sweat.

The first wheel locks on the inverted horse and I expect her to relax but, quite the opposite, she pulls a small notebook from bag and begins to scribble. I can just make out that it’s a journal of sorts, that the inside is structured and coded. She waits for the second wheel, which stops on the broken candlestick, and notes this as well. The man two places ahead of us in line, who I had assumed was texting, also seems to be recording the wheel.

The third wheel displays the open door and I see the woman make a quick, obvious check.

“Ma’am,” I begin again, “Ma’am,” I say, tapping her shoulder.

She turns, annoyed, as the fourth wheel lands on a splayed hand.

“What was inside the wheel when you went in?”

“It’s hollow,” she says, “And blocked by the others.”

“And how far have you gotten?”

“One wheel in,” she glares.

The line moves forward slowly and play after play ends with an anti-climax, the first wheel never spinning the door. A man that joins behind me is a little chattier, he explains that there are theories about the wheels’ patterns, about the length of time or the number of plays between a jackpot.

“The Wheels have been spinning at least one door per play for the last week,” he says, “A buddy of my dad’s says it was the same thing 20 years ago, just before a win.”

He says this as the second wheel confirms him.

“How many times have you played?”

“Just three tonight,” he says, “Can’t afford more than that.”

“How much does the thing cost?”

The thing costs one hundred dollars a spin.

I immediately remove myself from line and join the small, transient crowd that watches. The woman from before plays again and carefully records the loss in her book. She runs her hand across the back of the thing as she passes and doesn’t re-join the line. She leaves the casino.

I grab a drink.

Making rounds over the next couple hours, I see the group near the wheels grow smaller and, eventually, build again. Play is consistent throughout the day. At $100 every minute or so, I watch several dozen people feed ‘The Spinning Wheels’ at least $24,000, an absurd amount. The first wheel refuses the open door to all.

Around six I pull a hundred from the machine near the teller and I walk around for a while, my hand in my pocket, trying to remind myself that it’s a substantial bill, that money is often tight. It’s a soft, old thing. I wonder if it’s new to the casino or if it spends its days in and out of the machines. Finally, when the line is short, I re-join the people at ‘The Spinning Wheels.’ There are three people ahead of me.

The mountain. The splayed hand. The shoe. The open door.

The inverted horse. The open door. The crude eye. The splayed hand.

The broken candle. The waving monkey. The open door. The open door.

I approach the attendant and hand him my money. He feeds it into the machine and then tries to flatten it out when it’s rejected several times. Each rejection is another chance to get the money back, but I don’t speak up and eventually it glides into the reader and remains. I pull the lever and immediately smell the ozone sigh of ‘The Spinning Wheels.’ The handle buzzes under my fingers.

The first wheel lands on the open door and my stomach sinks. The crowd below seems to hold its breath.

The second wheel clicks to a stop on the open door as well. I see the woman from earlier in the day, she’s returned with money in hand. She writes nothing and she glares at me.

A third open door. The attendant is passive. From his vantage point I’m not sure he can even see the spins. He doesn’t seem to notice the tense crowd or the nearness of the jackpot. My heart beats wildly and my hands feel weighty at my sides.

A fourth open door.

A discrete mechanism bursts to life, spraying my face with dust and sharp, metallic confetti. I cough and cover my eyes, hardly able to see. The attendant guides me, watery-eyed, to the left of the great machine. He mistakes my blindness for emotion, and pats my back several times.

“What’s through there?” I ask, as my eyes clear on the hatch.

“That’s for winners to know.”

There is a little black knob in front of me. I reach out and see, scraped carefully into the paint of the door:

“When God closes a window…”

“No,” I say.

“What?”

“Can I transfer my winnings?”

“The jackpot of ‘The Spinning Wheels’ is not easily…”

“Just to her,” I say, pointing, red-eyed and itchy, to the woman from earlier.

She can’t hear what I’m saying and she looks concerned.

“You want to let her enter instead?”

“Yes.”

“Ma’am,” the attendant calls, “Could you step forward?”

She does and I see she’s shaking, holding the little diary in both her hands and up against her chest.

“This man wants you to go in instead,” the attendant says, his mild surprise having melted back into passivity.

She looks at me and I think I see the same concern in her face that I felt, spinning the jackpot.

“Do you want to go in?” I ask.

She pauses for a minute and then says:

“Yes.”

“Then be my guest.”

It’s difficult to see past her as she opens the door and crawls inside. The hatch slides closed almost as soon as she’s through, but I catch a glimpse of the massive hollowed inside. The walls of the first wheel are scribbled with the names of those who have entered before.

I expect more ceremony, but the attendant suggests I re-join the line and he takes his station at the lever again. Before a few minutes have passed, the wheels are spinning and the line grows with renewed vigor.

“A few years back the wheels spun two jackpots in the same hour,” I hear someone say, “Time’s ripe for it.”

The woman does not return and the wheels clatter endlessly.

-traveler

‘‘Sulphur Springs’ was undoubtedly founded based on the relatively simple and familiar formula:

UNPLEASANT + NATURAL = HEALTHY

Well known among the locals and around websites that offer the local experience, ‘Sulfur Springs’ is only really advertised by its distinct smell, which wafts through the forested surroundings and should, by all accounts, turn any intelligent creature on its heels. An unexpecting hiker might arrive at the trailhead thinking they misplaced a boiled egg in their pack but, nearer the springs, would be forced to assume the egg had swelled, rotted, and burst.

Still, there is a strong belief among some that ‘Sulphur Springs’ is a hidden tonic, that the wretched waters can strengthen the weak and cure the sickly. Tucked into a scenic alcove and bubbling at a mild 81 degrees Fahrenheit, it is nevertheless an acquired taste. Those who acquire it are evangelical and very, very few.’

A dip in ‘Sulphur Springs’ is the act of a desperate man, a man searching for a vitality he once, but no longer has. Even in town, where the smell of it lingers like thick but distant flatulence, I realize that, if there was any truth to the miracle of spring water, we’d all already smell like shit. The woman at the store, the woman who hands me a receipt for the swim trunks I purchase, the woman who may have lived near ‘Sulphur Springs’ all her life- she turns her nose up at me.

The smell of desperation repulses her.

-traveler

The old house has been gutted, its walls scraped bare, its innards strewn about the yard to rot. The door hangs off its hinges, cobwebs wriggle and tear like ragged gums. Even the rats have abandoned the old house, even the spiders. The old house is without life.

‘‘The Old House Bakery’ is a pleasant place to stop for coffee, a place for well-baked bread and quiet conversations. They serve an array of hot beverages and a rotating selection of cakes and pastries. Given a day’s notice, they are happy to accept special orders and offer reasonable quotes over the phone.

Located in a county rampant with methamphetamine abuse and petty crime, it is easy to overlook the darkened circle on a crime map, the circle that deepens red just as it closes in around ‘The Old House.’ There are murders, here, more murders in the half mile radius around the bakery than anywhere else in the state. As such, it may be prudent to ask whether ‘The Old House Bakery,’ which has seen no crime directly on its premises, is a haven or the bait of some sinister trap.’

The floor of the old house remembers a kitchen, the faded imprints of an oven, an industrial freezer. There are long, deep scrapes in the wood where chairs and tables once slid, oil stains on the ceiling and the gray apparitions of old hands on the glass. Cool air rushes in the back door and, finding it empty, rushes out the front again, pausing only to whip around the unzipped flaps of my jacket.

I wait for something to happen and, when the waiting gets too long, I piss in a room that was probably a bathroom once.

It is, while pissing, that I spot a silhouette in the trees outside, far enough away to be a shadow cast by the setting sun but standing at odds with the wind. Through the frosted glass of the once-bathroom it could be the size and shape of a person or, just as easily, the size and shape of some broken stump. When I check again from the once-kitchen there is nothing.

Just like that, as night begins to thicken, the thing that haunts the old house begins to haunt me. It taps on the windows and scratches at the walls. It pulls the front door from its remaining hinge and places it high up in a tree outside when I’m not looking. For a long period, for nearly three hours, it walks slowly back and forth across the roof. It seems to know what room I inhabit no matter my means of hiding.

I consider leaving many times but I remember the deep red circle around the old house and I stay put through the night.

Even after the thing leaves an old pair of empty boots on the porch.

Even after it covers the windows in mud so that it’s impossible to see outside.

Even after it begins to send crumpled sheets of paper through the old house on its airstream, a novel in wet, black symbols.

I leave cautiously long after the sun has risen and I step out of the door and off the porch and I’m so worried about the thing that I trip and fall on my fucking face in the dust and dirt.

There is something buried in front of the old house, an old iron knife exposed by the wind, caught up in the curled laces of my boots. It pulls from the ground, dull and heavy with rust.

Distracted by my find, I might have missed the thing that has emerged from the trees. There may be a person there, or something shaped like a person, but all I see of that hunched form is a great mass of rotting leaves and ancient pelts. It pays me no attention as it shambles past and struggles up the stairs to the old house. It disappears inside and, after a moment, I hear the wrenching of wood.

The old house shudders and lets out a great, dusty sigh.

I take a minute to replace the knife in the ground, considering the very slim chance that whatever kept the thing outside the old house might work in reverse to keep it in.

I leave the old house with my hands rusted red.

-traveler

There is, at my feet, a great river of wax, emanating heat and a mixed perfume. It flows with the regal patience of molten rock, slow, careful, and heavy. I stand away from the thing, aware that the soft wax coast, thickened and scabby, might break through into the loose liquid underneath. Streaked and deep red, the undulations of the wax river evoke the same induced hypnosis as a smoldering fire. In that flow, I am lost, for a time.

‘At some point the world seemed to agree on a certain definition of a ‘wax museum.’ We agreed that it is not enough to describe the history of wax or the processes involved in its creation. It is necessary, at least to display wax statues. It is encouraged to include celebrities among the statues displayed. If these likenesses are not convincing, then they must be unconvincing enough to mock. If they are simply mediocre then the business will fail.

Because of our high standards there is no place quite like ‘The Tri-County Wax Museum.’ It disregards the historical narrative regarding wax museums and presents something altogether different and perhaps truer to what they, in the author’s opinion should be. Keep your mind open and your breath shallow and ‘The Tri-County Wax Museum’ will be an experience less-shitty than most.’

There is no railing, no careful attendant to guide my tour. As such I could, and do, spend the better part of an hour simply watching the great wax flow. Light purples emerge after half an hour, deepening, eventually, into blue and layering the coast. The complex housing this marvel is massive and stuffy, the air is slick, oily.

After nearly an hour I struggle to draw breath. I cough through a narrowed windpipe, cough squirming, molded strings of wax and phlegm. A flexi-layer of my esophagus dislodges, smelling like cranberries and nutmeg. My breathing improves but I understand it’s time to move on.

Further into the complex, upriver, as it were, there is a great wax waterfall and a molten rainbow lake. The sign there insists that the bubbling center is fed by a natural spring, a wax spring. A map highlights various American wax fields, details the machines necessary to tap them. There is nobody nearby to question about this. I scoff and look around the empty room, sure that none of the information makes any sense but unable to convey my disbelief.

Fuck if I know where wax comes from.

I start to cough again. My skin and clothes shine with a layer of the stuff.

Through a revolving door the air clears and I’m treated to a corridor of glass cases. Inside are the extinguished smatterings of old candles:

‘Hung at the Old North Church to Warn Paul Revere of the British (1775)’

‘Pooled at the Base of the Original Menorah (??)

‘Recovered from a Jack o’ Lantern, Salem, Massachusetts (1963)’

‘Burned on Michael Jackson’s 30^th Birthday Cake (1988)’

There is no clear order to the cases and no overarching theme. These are pop-culture candles at best, mostly pilfered from celebrity situations or vivid, commonly taught historical moments. Each lends itself to an impressed widening of the eyes, a knowing nod of the head, but not much else. Not much else at all.

It would be impossible for an amateur to verify any of what ‘The Tri-County Wax Museum’ presents as truth.

I wonder if the stranger has been here and, generally, where he is now. I wonder if, after suffering these wracking coughs, he would choose to burn the place.

It’s a place that would lend itself to burning.

-traveler

‘’Echo Cave State Park’ is most likely not a state park at all. It is not listed on any official website, for instance, and the advertising it has done seems only to exist in a 10 mile radius around the park itself, taking cues from children’s lemonade stands in regards to both spelling and sporadic placement. Down a dirt road and past several abandoned houses, you will find yourself questioning the validity of the site long before you reach it, a feeling the tour, at no point, attempts to alleviate.’

The weather has become mild: soft breezes, cool air, and sun. In the back of a pick-up I am almost cold.

Almost, but not quite.

Sprawled in the back with a clear sky overhead and the smooth length of the interstate unwinding behind me I almost feel like it could be a year ago, two years ago, when I was whole and healthy of body and mind. When I had my own truck and a place behind the wheel. Autumn by the Wayside flips wildly through its pages at my feet and it threatens to skitter away, to lift into the wind and scatter itself on the road. Despite the theatrics, it remains anchored to the truck.

It is a heavy book.

We pass a mile marker and I tap on the cab. The truck slows and finds a place to pull over. I say my thanks and my goodbye. I assure the driver that this is my stop, even though it doesn’t seem to be much of a place at all. I wave and begin to walk away.

“Don’t forget your book!” he calls out.

Right.

I heft it out of the back, flexing my bad arm. The pages curl around my fingers as I drop it to my side to wave again.

A heavy book.

The road to ‘Echo Cave’ isn’t terribly long and the weather is pleasant enough. Several plywood signs encourage me along the wooded drive, ticking down a mile and a half or so before pointing me to the right at a fork. There are only the ruins of houses along the way, piles of wood and stone that have collapsed under countless seasons of snowfall. When was the author here? Past a few trees the road widens and terminates into a dirt parking lot, half-populated. Beyond that is a small check-in booth.

Beyond that, the gaping entrance to ‘Echo Cave.’

It does not occur to me until I see it that there are no hills or reliefs friendly to a proper cave. ‘Echo’ simply opens into the ground, a paid-entry pit about 20’ across and surrounded by waiting families. A woman dressed in uniform blue is listing safety precautions to be taken upon entry. Looks like I’m just in time for a tour.

The woman and the crowd have already begun to descend when I join them with my ticket.

“Echo Cave was discovered by Beatrice Echo in the early 1800’s while she as she lead her horses to the river. I bet you thought it was named after the acoustics!”

There is a polite smattering of laughter, made ghostly by the stone walls. Our guide narrates the history of the Echoes as we pick our way down grated metal stairs, wet with the breath of the earth and shrouded in its shadows. Now I hear the concerned murmurs between partners, between parents and children. It’s one thing to stand at the mouth of a cave and another to enter it. There are whispered consolations, assurances that a place like this, no matter how scary, is safe. It’s a business, after all.

It’s a state park.

The stairs drop us at the bottom of the pit and our guide reiterates the differences between stalagmites and stalactites, reminding us not to touch either. We loosen as a group, staking out our own portion of the smoothed out hollow. Above us, far, far above, the bright day has been reduced to a small, white circle-

“Like a damn eye,” someone says, seeing me look up.

“Hm,” I reply, though I had been thinking the same thing.

“You don’t recognize me.”

It’s difficult to recognize anyone in the shadows, let alone this man who towers a full head over me. It’s not until I see his smile, which is the nearest facial feature, that I remember the missing teeth and the general posture of a man used to fighting. I step back and crush a baby stalactite under my boot.

Or, was it a stalagmite?

“You didn’t call.”

“I didn’t have a reason to,” I tell him.

“You look… bad.”

“What’s that-”

“You two?” the guide calls, “Please follow me and stay with the group.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” he says, waving cheerfully, “Caught up looking at these beautiful rock formations.”

The guide appears briefly confused by his unabashed sarcasm, but she lets it slide as we follow.

“Are you going to burn this place down too?” I whisper as we tail the group.

“Not everything burns.”

“Would you?”

“No,” he says, “This all seems… ingenuine at worst.”

“Then why are you here?”

“The book doesn’t exactly give everything away in the descriptions. I needed to make sure it wasn’t one of the contagious ones. Contagious like that plant of yours.”

“It died,” I tell him.

“Condolences.”

We squeeze our way down several halls, the stranger and I bringing up the rear. He folds his bulk gracefully, his shoulders barely brushing the cramped cavern walls. I follow his lead, keeping an eye to the back. Eventually we descend another staircase and gather in a small chamber.

“This section of the cavern is affectionately called the ‘Shoe Closet,’ any guesses why?”

Several people guess as the stranger skirts the group. I follow him, bumping into the others and apologizing under my breath. Occasionally his arm sneaks out to tap a wall but he never pauses long enough to listen. I catch up to him once he stops.

The guide has started some sort of countdown.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

“This place is marked by the eye. You saw it yourself.”

“Four, three…”

“I saw the entrance to the cave.”

“Hold my hand,” he says, “I don’t much like the dark.”

“One…”

The lights turn off and the darkness of ‘Echo Cave’ becomes absolute. There are little frightened noises all around us, the startle of a crowd expecting the surprise. Rough fingers snake between my own as the guide’s voice cuts through the murmuring:

“This may be the darkest dark you’ve ever seen. No light from above is able to penetrate this far into the earth.”

“Why are you afraid of the dark?” I ask, thinking of the thing at the rest stop.

The stranger tickles my palm and says nothing.

“Try waving your hand in front of your face,” the guide continues, “Careful not to hit anyone! Some of you may think you can make it out, maybe you see a little movement, but that’s only your mind. Your head knows there should be something there and it’s fooling your eyes.”

“You and I know better,” the stranger says, his lips very close to my ear, “Folks like us put a lot of stock into eyes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He tickles my palm again.

The lights flash back on and I yank my arm away reflexively. The stranger does not appear particularly affected, though he cuts ahead of me as the group is syphoned down another narrow path.

“We’ll have to walk a ways to the ‘Sitting Room,’ named by Ms. Echo herself…”

My leg starts to ache as we descend further, the combined wear of the cold and the stairs on the weakened bone. I struggle to keep sight of the stranger ahead but cannot politely push past the people between us. I wonder if it really matters that I stay near him.

“Here we are!” the guide says, her voice excited as we enter a massive chamber.

I make my way toward the stranger, expecting he’ll avoid me, but see he’s gone back to tapping cave walls when the guide’s back is turned. The tour group as a whole has spread about and seems determined to ignore the continued narration.

“Find what you’re looking for?” I ask.

“Have you?”

“I’m not looking for anything,” I tell him, “If I can get through this tour it’s another place to tick off in the book.”

“Remind me why it’s important you see them all?” he asks, but we’re interrupted before I can reply.

“Sir, please don’t touch the cave walls. The oil from your skin is detrimental to crystal growth.”

“Sorry,” the stranger says, and he makes a show of stepping away while the guide still watches.

When the coast is clear he starts again.

“Is inhibiting crystal growth what you planned all along?”

“This place is just shitty, like I said.”

“So?”

“So I’m just looking for a faster way out,” he says, leaning close in to an alcove, “Stand here and look at the wall.”

I step closer and he grips me by the shoulders, taking care to position me just so. Up close he smells like gasoline- like a lit match.

“Now shine your cellphone light ahead.”

I turn on my phone and shine it at the wall. There are cracks there, some minor and some that stretch from the floor up into the darkness above.

“Watch,” he says, and he steps forward into the alcove.

He steps again, and again, moving impossibly far into wall. His body is hunched, his frame stunted, but only as though he were passing through a cramped passage. Each step he takes seems to push the far wall back, an optical illusion unfolding in jolts. The stranger smiles and the shadows emphasize the gaps in his broken mouth. By all accounts the man could be twenty feet down the impossible corridor.

“What are you doing?” the guide’s voice again. I turn and my light turns with me.

“Just getting a closer look,” I tell her, showing both my hands in mock surrender.

Squinting at my light, she nods and turns back to the others, satisfied that I haven’t taken cues from the stranger’s poor behavior.

The man and the corridor have disappeared in the absence of light. I look about the room, carefully checking the faces of every man, woman, and child present. I peer into the corners and discretely tap the walls but, when the tour moves forward, it becomes clear the stranger is no longer with us.

I think of him during our ascent, the eye of the cave widening to accept our exit. It would be fruitless to worry about a vanishing man but I wonder, as they draw a metal gate over the cave, if he will be all right down there in the dark.

I certainly wouldn’t be.

I call the number scrawled across my palm, the stranger’s inked tickling brought to light in the sun.

It rings once, twice…

-traveler

There is something about the American highway that breeds hyperbole. Everything is the ‘best’ or the ‘first’ or the ‘biggest,’ no citation necessary. I’ve eaten hundreds of the ‘best’ burgers and I can tell you they vary pretty distinctly in quality. The first U.S. ice cream parlor seems to exist in every state. The biggest coffee mug in the world, well, I guess I haven’t seen another one bigger.

They have me there.

‘The nation’s largest American flag remains relatively unvisited in comparison to our country’s better known patriotic sites. For that reason, it seems to appeal to a niche crowd, a crowd you might describe as hipster patriots- people who seek out the ‘truer’ essences of what it means to be American. At its most simple, this seems to be a reverence of small, historical relics- the personal objects of lesser known presidents, remnants of war, and obscure trivia- mirroring, in many ways, the Catholic idolization of saints. Layered on top of this is a strange game of one-upmanship that the author could only tolerate for several minutes before ceasing research altogether.

This aside, the flag is worth seeing if only for its enormity. The few employees are tight-lipped about the origins of the flag, about where and how it’s stored, and about the materials used make it. It is the author’s opinion that they simply do not know.’

If you’ve visited Mt. Rushmore you’ll know that the place isn’t exactly centrally located. You’ve got to drive quite a good distance from the nearest city (passing through smaller towns along the way) and even within the park you find yourself looking at the presidents from a long ways off. You putz around the gift shops and scoff at food prices and then you take off.

This flag place is much the same.

Located on the floor of a valley, a 90 minute drive and a very long walk from the nearest motel, the home of the largest American flag appears to be a small cement hut and a set of bleachers. I arrive to find a small group of people already waiting, bundled against an autumnal cold and making small talk. By the bleacher spacing I make out mostly singles and couples among them. One family, with a few small kids, seems to be the odd one out.

“One?” the man asks when I approach the ticket hut.

“One,” I say, “Where do you keep this thing if it’s so big?”

“Up over the hill,” he says, “We’ve got an unfurl scheduled every hour on the hour.”

I look at my watch and see it’s just a few minutes till 3:00pm.

“What happened to your arm?”

“What?”

“Your arm.”

“Car accident,” I tell him, trying to straighten my arm at my side.

“The rash.”

“Oh, uh, you know. The cast came off recently.”

He hands me my change and I try to give him a dirty look. Are we just commenting on outward appearances these days? What if I had been self-conscious? I see my face in the ticket counter glass and it looks as pleasant as ever, hardly conveying disapproval at all. I try again in the reflection.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I say, checking my watch again and moving to the bleachers.

There isn’t much to this place, or else, maybe it’s the offseason. A vacant hot dog stand rusts on the edge of the woods and I see a dumpster, much too large for an operation this size. A squirrel scurries past my feet, carrying an empty bag of chips in its teeth. There is a mild breeze and the smell of pine.

There is enough room in the stands that I can sit alone comfortably and wait. Among the crowd I note a lot of patriotic undertones- little flag lapel pins, star spangled trims, and Liberty Bell earrings. There is no garish Americana here, nothing that speaks quite as loudly as Uncle Sam hats or aging eagle tattoos.

“And Garfield was the first president to use the phone.”

“Bell got the phone running in 1876 when Grant was in office.”

“Yeah, and Hayes was responsible for putting one in the White House, what are you talking about?”

My instinct is to tune these people out but I’m planning to ask one of them for a ride. I could walk, if I wanted, but it will get dark before I make my way back to civilization from here and it’s a hell of a lot easier getting a lift away from these places than it is to hitch a ride to them.

“I saw the Liberty Bell last year,” I tell the woman with the earrings, “Pretty amazing piece of history.”

“You didn’t fucking see the Liberty Bell,” she snarls, “It’s been in storage since 2013.”

She’s right, of course. I wasn’t anywhere near Philadelphia last year.

“Time must have gotten away from me…” I say, “Did you get your earrings there?”

“I made these.”

“When did you break them?” I joke, but by then she’s turned away.

I look down at my shoes.

It will probably be a long walk back.

“Jesus!” somebody exclaims.

I look up, up toward the valley wall, and I see something insane. A massive structure has begun to rise from the hillside, slowly blotting out the sky there. As it pulls forth, the hut’s little PA system cracks to life with the chords of the national anthem, confirming that this is indeed the show.

The flag is incomprehensible. It is thick enough that no light passes through and so, with the sun behind it, appears to be a great black lid drawing itself over the entirety of the valley. It would have to be miles long, I realize, just to get halfway across. Its shadow nears and some high-up gust of wind sends a ripple through the massive banner. The woman near me, the one with the bells, cries silently.

The crowd, as a whole, is falling apart. One man appears to have passed out, his partner desperately gripping his hand. The children have frozen, their attention divided between the flag itself and their parents fearful eyes. Several people have fled, have left the bleachers and turned their faces to the earth, refusing to look at the thing. They cover their eyes as the shadow engulfs us, cover their ears as the tinny notes of the anthem sneak through the air.

There is a distant sound like thunder, like fabric rent by a storm. I watch as a corner of the flag whips across the hillside, levelling trees and marking the ground with a swooped gash. There are patches all over the valley, I see now, places where the flag has accidentally touched down.

I join others in a cry of surprise as sunlight breaks back into the sky. The flag, keeping us in darkness for mere seconds, is relenting. It pulls back over the hill, a behemoth assimilated into the horizon.

Thick silence fills the places there once was music. A man nearby takes a deep, unsteady breath. Another laughs nervously, rubbing his eyes underneath the dark frames of his glasses. I smell a burning cigarette.

The silence remains on the ride back into town, in the passenger seat of an old car. The woman with the Liberty Bell earrings drives with a steady hand and unblinking eyes. The forest rushes by and I look at the dash. We’re traveling just five miles over the speed limit- always five miles over the speed limit. Civilization, when it greets us, seems thin and petty.

-traveler

There is nothing that brings perspective like a good, public cry and, in the aftermath, I seek out a familiar place to console myself. I go to a diner, a chain diner, one of those 24 hour places that keeps your coffee topped off and doesn’t ask why you’re there alone and still a little teary-eyed. A place where nobody knows your name and, under most circumstances, will never ask. A familiar place, no matter where you are.

‘Familiar’ is a funny word in this context.

The noun, I mean.

Traditionally a witch’s demon friend, a cat, a raven, an imp- could be anything, why not a diner if it serves the same purpose? Baba Yaga had something like that, a mobile home. I have the chain diner which cuts to the chase and exists everywhere at once- multiple entrances to what is, basically, the same place.

Didn’t even have to do away with the chicken legs.

The diner suckles on my wallet like an extra teat and offers me sanctuary in exchange, a barter I’m happy to accept in most circumstances.

These are not original thoughts. Well, they come from Shitholes.

So maybe they are.

‘‘Autumn by the Wayside,’ endeavors to remain solidly in the realm of non-fiction, despite our eccentric choice of content. That said, the author must occasionally allow for the printing of rumor, superstition, and that which borders upon conspiracy. The following represents such speculative research.

It is said, in certain circles, that the cowboy paths of old have collapsed into ley lines. Like all things, strange and otherwise, the lines are governed by numbers and fueled, in part, by money. In our civilized present a wanderer may forsake the deserts and travel in the relative comfort of a diner booth, penciling coordinates onto a slip of paper and paying fare. When your number’s up, well, step outside.

The trouble with Keno Coordinates, I’m told, is that nobody seems to know any that work. This dubious method of travel is kept by that most passive gatekeeper, the friend of a friend, whose mysterious absence seems only to add credibility to what they guard. It is the friend of a friend who knew a couple strings of Keno Coordinates and who would, on occasion, simply disappear. It is the friend of a friend, and perhaps a word of warning here, who would invariably never return. I would enjoy your coffee, reader, and think little of things that could not happen.’

It could be that the author is a better, saner me, a me whose body remains unbroken and womb-smoothed. A scarred creature like myself, with an arm that can barely lift a warm mug, represents a divergence from the man in the picture, or, the way I remember the man. As the back cover has faded, cracked, and torn away, I have only my memory to go on.

It did look like me, once.

The divergence is why I can enjoy my coffee and think of things that seem unlikely happen. I am not limited by the author’s hesitations or by the smoothness of his unbroken skin. It is not enough to approach the unknown; if I want to understand the book then I will need to prod the unknown with a short stick and be ready to run. The once placid sheen of my exterior has already been disturbed, further ripples will likely go unnoticed.

I have not slept.

The waiter mops a puddle of coffee from my table and I switch back to my healthy arm. He takes the money and the ticket I hand him and he enters the numbers into a machine. My burger comes in record time. I order a slice of warm pie and match a few numbers to the screen, a few of many. It is too dark outside to see anything.

I pay up and exit the diner into a place that is distinctly unfamiliar to me. I shake away dreary thoughts and stretch my tired limbs. I double-knot my shoes and take several deep breaths.

I will walk for now but I am ready to run.

-traveler

Shitholes has, of late, entered the curled stage of a paperback’s life, lending itself to the ass pockets of tired jeans. It ages well, looking less like a serial romance or gas station horror, more like the sturdy manual to some gray machine. Sun-faded, water-worn, and dirty, I shake it occasionally to find discarded dollars, receipts, and notes that I’ve written myself but forgotten. The notes read like a concerned mother: ‘don’t forget to water the fern,’ ‘buy sunblock, batteries,’ ‘call home.’

Sometimes, on the backs of these notes, I find words of encouragement. Other times, I find derision. Good or bad, I read them and then throw them away and start over. My system of bookmarking Shitholes needs work, in that regard. At some point too many bookmarks is the same as none at all.

I find a stick of gum in my pocket and I chew it into shards and eventually into mash. I write, on the wrapper, ‘use fewer bookmarks,’ and I flip through Shitholes until I find the entry I’m looking for.

“Have you, reader, ever considered the curtain? A piece of cloth, a veil, to obscure or cordon off, the curtain, I put forth, is more metaphor than reality. Consider the example at hand: ‘The Tape Hub,’ an independently owned video rental store, the last of a dying business. More specifically, consider the room to the right of Comedy, unsigned and… curtained.

The small gaps on either side provide the narrowest of glances, a flash of color, old carpet, dim lights. The curtain provides no physical barrier and it offers no instruction. The only thing required to pass through a curtain is a willingness to see what is on the other side.”

“You can’t just read in here, sir.”

I startle at the voice, the high, nasal tones of a teenager.

“I was trying to remember the name of a movie,” I tell her, “Is remembering allowed?”

“Do you have a membership?”

“Not yet.”

“You need to start one before you can rent.”

“I want to make sure you have the movie I’m looking for, first.”

“What’s the name of the movie?”

“I’m still trying to remember.”

She knows, somehow, that I’m lying but leaves me to my browsing and I pocket Shitholes in an attempt to meet her halfway.

I was done reading anyway.

The problem I face currently is that there is no curtain to the right of Comedy, no curtain anywhere in the store, as far as I can tell. I’m not naïve to the sort of set-up Shitholes describes, we’re talking about the porn section, the guiltiest room in small-town America. Well, a decade ago maybe. The internet has brought our guilt back to the bedroom, as god intended. If video shops are a dying breed then porno-closets are their vestigial appendages and I’m starting to think ‘The Tape Hub’ gnawed off its own some time ago.

That is, until I notice marks in the carpet. The place has seen a poor man’s renovating and shelves have been moved. I take a look around with fresh eyes and eventually I spot the curtain- behind the counter. The girl from before has re-stationed herself there and she watches me with an amount of boredom.

“Remember that movie?” she asks.

“No,” I tell her, making as if to browse the end displays on my way to the counter, “I was actually in here a long time ago…” I lie, “And I feel like things have moved around.”

“I’ve worked here for three months.”

“You didn’t come in before that?”

“I don’t rent movies from here now,” she says, “And I could do it for free.”

“Is that curtain, there,” I point, “Open to customers?”

“You want a tan, dude?”

“There are tanning beds back there?”

“Yes.”

“Uh…” shit, this has gone south, “Anything… else?”

She looks at me for several seconds without saying a thing.

“You can go and look,” she says, finally.

I walk past her, trying to summon the gait of an exasperated customer and not someone who has just indirectly asked for porn from a minor. The shame lessens with the protective obscuring of the curtain between us. I find myself facing a bathroom at the end of a short hall and two rooms, further curtained, on either side. To the left I find the tanning beds and, to the right, I find the porn.

It’s a small room, and dark until I switch on a light, aptly dim. An impressive amount of smut lines the walls, cases crammed in and overlapping. The titles themselves seem run-of-the-mill, not that I would know any different. A lot of big tits, a lot of faux-reality titles, and a lot of ass stuff. I make out a few strictly male productions in one corner but see lesbians peppering the room at large. If there was ever a method here it has long since fallen into disuse.

Finally, and to my mild surprise, there is another curtain, a thin one, on the far wall. A strip of darkness underneath suggests a room beyond.

“You’re into some weird shit,” the girl says, as I move to pull back the second curtain.

“I’m not…” I begin, “I was just looking.”

“Cool.”

“Are you even allowed back here?”

“I work here.”

“That…”

“You think the little brown bag for hiding your case means I don’t see the title flash when I ring it up?”

“Words are different.”

“Depends on the words.”

Finding I can’t disagree, I wait for what she has to say.

“Are you going back there?” she asks, after a moment.

“I was considering it.”

“Well?”

“Well, are you going to follow me?”

“Look,” she sighs, “Just don’t do anything creepy, okay dude?”

She leaves me feeling distinctly creepy already.

Past the second curtain is another room, dimmer and even closer than the last. The walls, again, are packed tightly with pornography, floor to ceiling, and, absurdly, there are two narrow curtains to the right and left: two more rooms. I choose the left, noting that the content of this place is becoming more graphic, more niche, as I travel between rooms.

A man, I think, or a woman brushes past me as I move through the curtain. I linger on the threshold and look back to the room I was in before but they have gone, already. There is a fan whirring in the new space, hardly more than a closet. The videos here seem focused on car accidents and, loosely, on strangulation. There is another curtain ahead, cut from a heavy cloth.

Someone is crying inside.

I enter, carefully, and see the room is lit by a flickering television. A woman cries on the screen for several seconds before it switches to a man, moaning despair into a pillow. They are both nude. The titles on the wall are all of the same genre: ‘The Boy Who Cried Daddy,’ ‘Sobbing Skanks 2.’

The next curtain is damp to the touch.

This room has a fish tank in the center; neglected and dirty goldfish swim inside. The room is nautical-themed and humid, somehow pleasanter than the last. There are two curtains once again, one cloth and the other bead. I push past the beads with a rattle and find another television.

This room is all ‘caught on camera’ stuff, black and white videos of people screwing in bushes or in cars. The TV, though, appears to be a live stream of the room with the tanning bed.

And as I watch, the bed opens.

A man emerges, a man with a sagging pot-belly and jeans. He heaves himself onto his feet, shaking his naked, drooping front as he does. And then he exits and, because this is an angle very much meant to let me know, I see him pass through the hallway and into the curtained porn room.

I hear rattled breath, my own, and am frozen. I remember the rest stop and the way I could run when I wasn’t limping. Finally, I move, keeping the sound of the crying actors to my back.

I pass through curtains: silk, net, plastic. I feel other bodies here but I never see their faces. Rooms become tight and then widen. Some are as long as hallways, other are short so that I have to crouch. Genres change, and mediums. There is a room for laserdiscs, for flipbooks, for thumb drives scattered on the ground like startled roaches. As soon as I pass through I hear someone behind me, dragging brown, dusty shoes through the cheap plastic. There is a smell, like sweating skin, and an intimate clamminess.

I come to a dead end, a curtain with a wall behind. I hide there as the man enters. No doubt he hears the rustle of the thin fabric, no doubt he sees my boots sticking cartoonishly out from under it. He steps forward and pulls the curtain back.

It is the teenager.

She eyes me with confident disgust, my actions, no doubt, fitting well within her definition of ‘creepy.’ In my relief I move awkwardly and knock cases from the wall. They clatter to the ground, piling at the soles of her sneakers.

Laid bare, I weep.

-traveler

“That’s a real pro-job!” says the Red Neck Shaman, “A real fiberglass beauty.”

The whole upper part of him has disappeared into a metal crate, one of several. There is a sound of rummaging, of a great deal of metal turning over and over. A rusted handsaw pushes over the edge and clatters to the ground.

‘Not that one,’ I hope, quietly, ‘Not that one.’

A cold draft pushes under the sheet door and across my naked upper-half. I shiver and rattle the ramshackle table I am attached to, attached by a metal vice pressed deeply into the cast on my arm. It has cracked under the pressure already, which I take as a good sign. If the cast will give easy under the vice, then it shouldn’t take too much sawing.

“There are well-intentioned denizens that live by the wayside, people and businesses that mean little harm and, in the grander scheme, do little. ‘The Red Neck Shaman’ is one of these people. Questioned about the authenticity of his title, ‘shaman,’ the man will agree with the common definition and say little else. When asked about the ‘red neck’ portion of his offerings, he simply calls your attention to the headquarters of his business, a rented storage shed, and the source of power for his more intricate tools, a car battery. The Red Neck Shaman’s services are worth more than his asking price but his asking price, reader, is very little to begin with.”

The Red Neck Shaman, still hidden in the steel box, goes very still, leaving me with the sound of my breath and the squeaking of my nervous sneaker on the cement floor. He hangs there, bent limply in half at the edge of the thing, moving not a muscle. I bring my hand, my good hand, to the vice and consider releasing it. The iron there is thick and cold and, to my surprise, vibrating very slightly. As soon as I feel it in the vice, I feel the same vibration in the metal of the chair, in the air around me, in my skeleton, deeply buried under flesh and clothes.

“Found it!” the Red Neck Shaman says, animating suddenly.

The hum has gone and the skeletal man in red flannel emerges with a hack saw, no less rusted than its cousin on the floor. Thankfully, he unfastens the blade and pulls another out of plastic, settling on an old stool to switch them out.

“Was that hum the spirits?” I ask, wincing at the potential idiocy of the question.

“That were them!” he says, “Some like to misplace my tools, others like to find’em for me.”

“In that regard…” I begin, “Are the spirits usually more helpful or… mischievous?”

“Spirits’s mostly just folk like you an’ me that’s passed,” he says, “Plenty’a assholes among’em.”

“How did you get into this line of business? Shamanism?”

“Done what they told me an’ started makin’ money doin’ it.”

I try to stretch but the vice grip restrains me. The hack saw is coming together quickly in the man’s callused fingers.

“How specific are the spirits when they talk to you? What do they say?”

“You heard’em just now.”

“But it just sounded like a hum to me.”

“Gotta tune it in jus’ right.”

“You mean like a radio?”

“As good an’ analgee as any.”

“Could you actually use a radio to hear them? As a medium?”

“Not ‘less they got miker-phones in the life beyond. Otherwise I’m all the medium you ought need. Now…”

The Red Neck Shaman examines the assembled saw in the dim lantern light and shrugs before wheeling over on the stool.

“Real pro-job,” he observes again, flicking the cast with his broken fingernail, “Makes a man wonder what a feller like yerself’s doin’ comin’ to a feller like me.”

“The spirits can’t tell you?”

“They said ain’t none my business but it don’t stop me from wonder’n.”

“Trouble with insurance.”

The old saw blade clatters off the table as the Red Neck Shaman looks on.

“Good n’ bad spirits alike don’ take well ter lying, sir, but I’ll leave yer business yers and get to mine. Do this right n’ you ain’t gon’ feel a thing. Do it wrong and you feel a bunch.”

The blade’s teeth bite into the cast and my arm moves painfully back and forth despite the man’s attempts to hold it in place. I wonder, too late, if I should have given the bone more time to set.

I grit my teeth.

“Wouldn’t ‘medicine man’ have been more apt?” I ask over the sound of sawing.

“Medcin’ man’s a term steeped in genner,” he grunts, putting his weight into the motions, “Don’t set much an example to my daughter, fer instance.”

The saw’s teeth graze my skin and the Red Neck Shaman halts himself before I can warn him. He clips the connecting bridge at my thumb with bolt cutters and the cast splits up to my elbow.

“We’re gon’ have to get a tad intermate fer this next part, I’m ‘fraid,” he says, pointing to the length of plaster that extends up to my shoulder. “I’ll take’er slow.”

Smelling of moonshine and exhaust, the man hacks away at the plaster from a position over and behind me in the chair. He mutters to himself and to me and to the spirits, invisible, as he works.

I try not to let my teeth chatter.

Slowly my arm emerges from its cocoon- hardly a butterfly but free, after a long time, from constraint. The tender skin feels out currents of air, otherwise unknowable. Perhaps these are the man’s spirits, coming to observe their colleague’s work.

“Stinks t’high heaven, don’it?” he says, pausing thoughtfully before adding: “Spirits say that’ll be ten bucks.”

-traveler

“‘Charlene’s Haunted Crafts’ is, by no means, truly haunted. It is a Halloween store, open year-round and run entirely by the owner, an old woman named Charlene. Charlene takes it upon herself to dress as a witch might, a stereotypical witch I should say, donning a pointed hat, a velvet cloak, and a tiny pentacle pin. She maintains a distinctive character while inside the store, responding to jokes with a shrill cackle and speaking to her fat Maine Coon as though it weren’t sleeping. There are cracks in her façade if you know where to look, the witchy guise a gaudy plastering on a thing much stranger than it seems. Look carefully, reader, or do not look at all.”

One might have expected that ‘Charlene’s’ would be the sort of business that is open four days a week from 11 to 4:30 (and closed at noon for lunch). Without that personal foresight, my first visit to the little shop consisted entirely of staring in through the display windows at the tiny, orange-painted trinkets there. Having had my fill, I hefted my pack and limped off to find my own lunch.

Returning in the late afternoon I find Charlene at the register, hunched over a wooden jack-o-lantern and a small pot of black paint. Her Maine Coon watches from a shelf above, flicking its tail in tandem with the brush strokes and sniffling at the cobwebs it inadvertently pushes into the air. Neither pay me much mind as I walk the aisles and eye the layers of thick, white dust.

It is uncomfortable for me to be in a shop, on my own and without any reason but to browse. Small wooden pumpkins are low on my list of needs. I don’t have a house or a truck to celebrate Halloween in and my pack doesn’t exactly want for more weight or sharp edges. The thing is, I used to work in a little shop like this and even I could tell when somebody was looking with no intent to buy, I could tell just about right away. If Charlene has been running this place for as long as I assume she has, she probably felt me coming down the street.

“Do you paint all of these?” I ask, circling around to the front of the store and feigning interest.

She does not look up at me.

“Do you…” I begin, thinking my voice had been too quiet, “Do you paint everything in your store?”

Still nothing.

“Ma’am…”

“Oh shut up,” the woman says.

The woman behind me, that is.

I turn and see a squat woman, hardly a witch in baggy jeans and the short, pointed hairstyle tween boys and computer-savvy grandmothers begrudgingly share. She frowns at me, continues frowning, and then turns to the woman at the counter.

The woman at the counter is a doll of some sort, intricate in assembly and coloring but entirely unmoving as she hovers over the craft. The cat above her has frozen, warped, and flattened itself on the wall- a painting of a cat, an optical illusion. I move my head from side to side, step backward to the door but the cat persists in unreality. Now, from this angle, even the woman loses some of her detail.

“I thought she was alive,” I tell the new woman, “She’s…”

I hesitate before saying ‘realistic’ because now I can see the fake rubber skin and the cheap stuffing that pokes out of the seams on her wrist. The cat, above, is peeling from the wall behind them both, painted ages ago.

“In the shadows it seemed like she was real.”

“She?” the woman, Charlene, I suppose, asks.

There’s nothing at the counter but a backpack, a jacket draped off the chair. Two rolls of gift wrap lie where her arms once did, or where it seemed like they were. The cat is a water stain, the ugly type you ignore because you’re afraid of exactly how much it will cost to fix whatever is causing it. It is faintly the shape of a cat, but that could be said of anything of that size. Cats take strange shapes.

I shift onto my bad leg, reassured by the pain, and shift off again. I face Charlene.

“I think Halloween is getting to me,” I tell her, forcing a chuckle.

“Must be, we’re halfway through November.”

“It’s… snow…” I say. I say it aloud hoping it will keep the conversation going.

The shelves are covered in fake snow, not dust, and the jack o’lanterns have stacked into snowmen. I wipe my brow, nervously.

“You can’t use the restroom,” Charlene says.

“What?”

Something meows in the store and I look desperately around. The water stain has all but disappeared.

“You can’t use the restroom. Lay off the smack and get a job, it’s not too late to turn your life around.”

“I…”

“You don’t think so?”

“Well, yeah,” I say, agreeing more that a theoretical version of me, a smack-addicted version, would do well to get off the stuff. That it wouldn’t be too late.

“Off you go, then,” she says, “Best be out before I call the sheriff.”

I leave quickly because, drug-addled or not, I have reason to avoid the law. The air is colder now, the sun well on its way to our neighbor’s morning. I check my watch and see that it is November, that Halloween passed as a ghost might- quiet and disconcerting. I shiver against the cold and the psychic stress of the last few minutes, days, months.

Charlene taps on the window behind me, taps with her costume jewelry rings.

Used to be I could drive somewhere warm and shake all this off.

I start to walk, instead.

-traveler