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

“How long have you been in my radio?”

Hooked haphazardly into a car battery, the old truck radio flickers and seems to lose power for a moment. After that moment, an answer:

“Have you always thought that a thing must be inside your radio in order to hear it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I am a projection,” the voice says and I can hear the old chuckle in its tone.

“So why project into my radio? Why did you come back after the drive-in?”

“Because I could.”

“You couldn’t before?”

“Not in a sense.”

“What do you mean by that?”

The radio goes dark again, I am cast into the moonlight. In this, the forest that took the use of my arm, I listen to the wind and to the crickets. The radio cracks and the voice returns.

“Do you know of the town, Boone, in North Carolina?”

“No, is it famous for something?”

“It’s not famous for anything.”

“So why mention it?”

“So, could you have gone to Boone before I told you it was there?”

“Yes.”

“And why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t know about it.”

“So you could only go to Boone by accident before, and now you can only ever go there knowingly. Now that you know Boone exists, you can go there anytime and as often as you like.”

“You’re not going to explain yourself, are you?”

“There’s not much to explain, owner of the… oh, hmm… I don’t know what to call you; there’s very little to your name anymore.”

“You can call me whatever you want.”

“Well then, traveler,” the voice says, its tone soft and knowing, “Where are we off to next?”

Well.

It has been some time, reader. It may not seem that way to you but that is the magic of staggered release. I stagger even now, on a leg that recovers slowly because I can’t seem to keep off it. I type with one functioning arm. Can you tell?

The accident did a number on me and it put my travel on hiatus. It has been three months since I was pulled from the truck and dragged up to the road by a fifteen-year-old driver-in-training and her blood-phobic father and about eight weeks since I slipped out of the hospital, a rattled John Doe to the bitter end. I am the burden of the taxpayers now.

They’ll find me eventually.

At the egging-on of the radio I hid my wallet and my cellphone in the trunk of an old tree they leaned me up against on that fateful night. The truck’s plates are dead-ends, not because I am a mastermind but because I bought it from a man on the internet who didn’t have papers and I never bothered to make up papers of my own. The tags have long expired but nobody cares to check when you drive the speed limit, always just the speed limit, and when you’re white and plain and from a different state.

That’s what I assume, anyway.

My worldly possessions have been reduced once again to the contents of my bag: a copy of ‘Shitholes,’ a flashlight, two pens, and that damn comb. Add to that my cellphone and my wallet, recovered from the tree, and the truck’s disconnected radio, heavy and sharp for all that it’s currently useless. Minus the truck itself, of course. Now I rely on the kindness of others to get around.

There is one more stop, while I’m here:

“‘The Somerset Honey Bucket’ advertises itself like a refinery, its pamphlets featuring well-dressed, middle-aged couples smiling and holding small tasting cups. It would be easy to mistake their beverage of choice for scotch or bourbon, some sort of whisky, literally anything but the truth. The truth is that this is a destination for families with sweet teeth in their genes, for people who want to try their hand at tasting soil quality in a quarter cup of honey. Tour the grounds, cut the sugar with a waffle, and then leave lest you become stuck, stuck like the ghost of its founder.”

Thankfully, ‘The Honey Bucket’ has a bus service to shuttle prospective visitors from town to its estate a few miles on the outskirts. Free of charge. I wait for the bus on a Tuesday afternoon, the matinee, hoping I’ll be on my own.

I’m not.

A few large groups gather, organized and led by a guide. Several couples orbit the denser masses. There are children and the children stare. Everybody looks, but the children look closely. They see me and they know something is wrong.

As soon as I knew I would be back on the road I shaved and cut my hair. I pressed a shirt and dusted off my shoes. In the mirror I thought I could pass as a respectable somebody whose life had recently taken an unexpected turn.

I still look every bit the man who failed to.

My arm is in a sling, dirty since my abrupt departure from treatment. An old gash becomes a new scar over my right eye; I wear a boot and walk like a cartoon pirate. I have taken the next step toward the archetypal drifter, a man whose story is discredited before he even opens his mouth.

And, reader, the man on the book has no scar.

“All aboard,” calls the shuttle driver, a lumberjack behind the wheel.

I jump to the front of the line and then, quickly, to the back of the bus. Despite the crowd, I find I have a seat to myself.

We are not on the road long before I move to scratch under my cast and find my hand coming away from the faux leather with a sticky tug. Pulling up my boot from the floor elicits a tactile ‘snap’ usually reserved for movie theatres and food courts. Nobody else seems bothered, so I try to distract myself with scenes from the window, filtered through a thin yellow tinting on the glass.

As we pull into ‘The Honey Bucket’s’ grounds there is a cacophony of soles twisting on the sticky floor. A child, set into the aisle by his mother, falls on its hands and struggles to right itself.  I grimace, inwardly, when it finally stands and pulls a toy to its mouth. I try not to touch anything with my bare skin and still my clothes hold to the seat with the near-imperceptible grip of a sticky-note.

I am the last to leave the bus.

My hand sanitizer is gone, lost in the crash or the slipping away that followed. It is with sticky fingers that I miss it now, compulsively rubbing my hands on my pants and trying to seem inconspicuous in the crowd.

Several employees greet us in the lobby, their shoes pulling noisily on the polished wood. We hover as a group on the entryway rug, avoiding the floor. I feel, at once, validated and concerned.

“Welcome to The Somerset Honey Bucket!” one of the employees says, a woman in her late thirties, “We thought we’d start here with a quick tasting before we get you on the tour.”

The man behind her has a trayful of little plastic cups, each filled with a tablespoon or so of honey. He holds it forward with a little flourish.

“Volunteers?”

There is an obscene amount of hesitancy. I look around and wonder why these people showed up if they weren’t ready to drink honey out of a cup and if they weren’t led here by Shitholes. Maybe this is the low point on some tour package, something a company uses to fill out the odd day in the middle. A mom tries to push a disinterested middle-schooler ahead but he twists back behind her with a practiced movement and goes back to looking at his phone. Someone chuckles self-consciously. Light music plays in the lobby.

“You,” the man says, looking at me of course, “Come try one.”

I look at the others and now, rather than avoiding eye contact, they’re giving me encouraging smiles and little thumbs ups. I smile back, or give a confused frown (difficult to know), and take a resigned step forward. My shoe immediately sticks on the wood and pulls away noisily. I approach the tray and choose a cup at random.

“Ah,” he says, “Interesting choice. This is a top-grade pale amber, looser than what is often available commercially. Some people say a loose honey indicates a lazy queen but that hasn’t been my experience at all. I can introduce you to the bees that made this.”

“Uh,” I say, “Thanks.”

In the time it takes me to offer a good-natured cheers to the crowd behind me the woman steps forward with a metal bowl- a spittoon.

“I’m supposed to spit this in there,” I clarify, and she nods.

There’s a lot wrong with the situation but I am aware enough to see this isn’t the time to point it out.

I take the honey in my mouth and, at the egging-on of the connoisseur, swirl it around. It’s sickeningly sweet and about as consistent as olive oil. Sooner than is probably proper, I spit the stuff into the woman’s bucket and it trails in thick strands between my lips and the metal. I wipe my mouth with my sleeve, too late to see the proffered towel with The Honey Bucket’s logo embroidered near the hem. I cough twice, inhaling some of the honey as I do, and then straighten to give the crowd a watery-eyed thumbs-up.

Go for it, guys.

My jacket is streaked with honey already. I excuse myself to the bathroom while the rest of the guests make their way through the tap’s welcome offering. I rinse out my mouth with water and feel better, despite the broken man in the reflection. A child is crying outside.

The kid’s hair is matted to its head and there is a sticky puddle of honey on the floor. The parents console it but try to keep the screaming youth at a distance that will spare their clothes. Everyone looks uneasy, a few look outright upset.

“So!” the woman says, failing to read the room, “Shall we tour the grounds?”

I mostly ignore the history of Somerset’s honey economy, we all do. They take us through the factory, show us the hive, bring beakers of honey and bees to lights so that we might remark on the incredible purity, the golden yellows and deep ambers of the liquid and on the dainty stripes of the insects. We start to get distracted; the place has honey in the air. Before long we’re covered in a layer of something, something like day-old sunblock and sweat. Everything becomes sticky and our stomachs turn each time our smiling host pulls out a new product to sample. The child cries quietly now, its tears moving thickly and at a snail’s pace.

Faced with mutual suffering, the groups have warmed to me. They spare their skeptical eyes for the Somerset folk and let me trail behind them, just another lost soul in a honey factory.

“And there you have it, everybody,” the woman is saying, “A sweet taste of traditional America. Now, I’d like to open the floor to questions!”

“Who owns this place?” I ask and a man behind me misunderstands my genuine question for a thinly-veiled, ‘let me speak to your manager.’

He lands a jovial thump on my back and then takes a moment to pull his hand free from my jacket. The whole process sends sharp jolts of pain through my shattered bones. He whispers an apology.

“The owner?” the woman asks.

“Yeah.”

“She’s… busy.”

“I wasn’t asking if I could see her, I had just read…”

“She’s outside,” the man blurts out, “Out back. She watches the sunset around this time in her chair. Go on.”

“She’s not…”

“Go on.”

“She’s not dead?”

“Of course she’s not dead,” the woman says, narrowing her eyes at me and continuing to stare as she addresses the crowd: “Any more questions?”

There are no more questions and as we file into the gift shop I find the people have grown wary of me again, wary in response to something in the question I asked. I sneak away while everyone looks over vials of honey and plush bees to take home to their families.

An old woman sits just outside a fire exit, rocking slowly in her chair. She says nothing as I stand next to her, watching the sun set over the orchard. When it finally slips under the horizon, casting us into a translucent twilight, I notice her rocking has stopped. Her chair has stuck to the floor in a backward-leaning position, her legs swing weakly and her eyes just stare and stare ahead.

I quietly grip the back of the chair, and when nothing changes, I gently pull it free, setting her rocking once again. The woman grips the arms of the chair, her thumbs rub nervously on the wicker arms.

“Sun…” she mutters, “Sun like a pancake’s what I used to say.”

“What?” I ask, and she just starts screaming. Screaming and screaming.

Screaming and rocking.

I sneak back around the building to the parking area. I look for a long time at the empty gravel lot. My bus has gone.

I am stuck, reader.

I am stuck.

-traveler

There is nothing but static on the radio and I drive that way for a long time, the volume on low and the heat on high. Occasionally I’m encouraged by a ‘pop’ or a ‘click;’ twice there seems to be some sort of background jingle but, with so much white noise, I may be making it up. At least once I definitely hear a man’s voice but my surprise keeps me from understanding what has been said, if anything was said at all.

The way is forested, now, and lonely. It’s just past noon but a gray sky means it might as well be dusk. A rain drop falls every couple minutes, splattering on my windshield. The clouds can’t seem to make up their mind as to whether I’m here or not, as to whether it’s worth raining now or waiting a while for more like me to come.

I wouldn’t mind the rain.

I pass another sign: ‘For Information Tune Radio to 980 AM’

I check the radio, run a pass-through of the 970-990 range, and settle again on 980’s static. The truck has been on cruise control for nearly fifteen minutes as we wander smoothly around gentle curves and over small hills. The radio cracks again, buzzes, and then fades back to static. I tap the dash affectionately. There is no reason to rush.

‘For Information Tune Radio to 980 AM’

‘What kind of information, though? That’s the question you should ask yourself as you drive through Somerset Forest on your way across I-90 and see the many signs and their humble offering. We live in the information age, there are more words in the air than flies, than birds, than leaves falling from the trees. Sometimes we are informed against our will and that may very well be the case for you in Somerset Forest. If you’re reading this, be warned.’

I’m not sure I believe in the idea of forbidden knowledge. Secrets, sure. I understand why people keep secrets. I’ll also accept the idea that there’s plenty of information out there that I don’t necessarily need, that would just take up mind-space and offer no real benefit. Hell, I recognize that some of that information might concern things I’d rather not know; this trip alone has provided a fair share of regrettable experiences. That’s trauma, though, that’s something different entirely. I’m thinking mind-rending knowledge- Book of Genesis type stuff. If we’re talking about an idea that’s universally harmful to the extreme, that can’t be forgotten or rationalized away- I call bullshit.

And I think I’m in a pretty good place to judge.

By all accounts I follow in the footsteps of my future self, led by a book that I am destined to write. Much of what I have seen so far has suggested that the book itself is not a prank, that it has been written honestly and about places that are very real. It could be that my name was attached by the man who handed it to me, that he was able to manipulate a photo for the author credits so that I look more mature and less tired. Cleaner. He could have done the same with any book.

If I’m to assume, though, (and I do, sometimes) that what the man said was true and that a path of some sort has already been laid in front of me… well, you would think that would have taken more of a toll.

The clouds part for the sun and its light filters sideways through the trees. I lower my sunglasses, one hand on the wheel, and squint my eyes against the sudden strobe, the forest’s shadows on the pavement. The road is clear and straight.

I think mortality is the giveaway, or, I agree that it is. I’m certainly not the first to think it. We should be much more fearful of our own mortality than we are; it is inevitable and often more imminent than we assume. We already know that we will die and if that’s not enough to rend minds I doubt anything else can. Humans have evolved to be fantastic endurance runners. Maybe some of that has gone to our head- maybe we run from thoughts too. We are the great rationalizers, our comprehension wired with a kill-switch.

The radio quiets down and I think I hear the man’s voice again. It’s too garbled to make anything out; I raise the volume and slide the tuner back and forth, coaxing the distant-sounding words up and out through the speakers. Without understanding any one word I recognize the sound of a commercial, a tone that only seems to exist in advertisem-

The road pulls out from under the truck, a sudden, sharp turn. The world spins, the sun and the earth orbiting me in mad directions. There is an impact and I’m gone for a while.

Nobody finds me in the meantime.

The sun is setting when I open my eyes again. There is a great deal of pain. The windshield has shattered and a tire rests at an odd angle in front of me. I hang awkwardly in my seatbelt, the truck lying on its passenger side. I reach out and turn off the blinker. The radio still plays static; I hadn’t noticed until now.

My left arm is very broken, my hand draped limply over my stomach. I can’t seem to move any part of it. I try to adjust my shoulder and, when that doesn’t work, I try to pinpoint the trouble. Somewhere, distantly, I recognize that I may have entered shock. I try to remember if that’s something that can be solved, or even recognized, internally. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

A part of my forearm next to the elbow has emerged from the skin. A skeletal part, a great sharp piece of bone. It hurts the moment I see it. I wonder if it shouldn’t hurt more and then it does.

I start to cry.

It’s difficult not to despair, reader. I’ve found it difficult, even under normal circumstances, not to despair.

Circumstances have worsened exponentially.

My truck is as broken as my arm; it, too, holds up its skeleton to the fading light. We are united in a grim toast.

I pass out again.

I recognize the static before anything else. I try to open my eyes and realize they are already open. It has gotten dark, dark except for the dull, back-lit tuner. I remember, suddenly, why I woke up.

Somebody was laughing.

“Hello?” I try to say, the best I can do with a dry throat.

There is nothing. No footsteps or birds or anything.

And then the man’s voice on the radio, lost in the thick static. The tuner has been knocked to the left, its needle hovering near 972 AM. With a great deal of effort, I reach out my hand and adjust it to the right.

“-ggested to approach corners cautiously and to be aware of wildlife that may be crossing the road, particularly at night. Please do not throw cigarette butts or other waste from your windows as you enjoy the natural beauty of Somerset. Thank you for visiting!”

The voice fades into a jingle and then picks up again.

“Welcome to Somerset Forest! You’re tuned to 980-”

I close my eyes. The voice sounds familiar, some D-list celebrity doing charity work for the park service. I run through sitcoms and commercials in my head. I try to remember what audiobooks I’ve listened to recently, what commercials I’ve seen.

“…recommends flashing you lights when approaching dangerously narrow…”

The pain comes back in a burst. I wander in and out of shock. It’s impossible to concentrate- I consider and forget a hundred ways to save myself.

“…recommends flashing…”

My right hand can’t seem to find the seatbelt mechanism. I wonder what the short fall to the passenger side would do to me if I was able to free myself. I take a deep breath and hear the ragged wheeze of my lungs. The truck is quiet, the radio lit but silent. The man’s voice returns after a moment.

“Owner of the blue pick-up,” it says and it chuckles, “Heh, heh, heh.”

It’s difficult to tell how much of this is actually happening.

“Owner of the blue pick-up, why don’t you go ahead and flash those pretty lights of yours?”

-traveler

‘The Floating Rock State Heritage Site’ represents the wedding of a mystery area’s gimmick and a State Park’s credibility into an attraction that somehow manages to be a little boring. One can only think so long about what anomalous forces must exist to levitate the site’s boulder before remembering that the world is a big, strange place and that small, strange things happen here all the time.’

It takes me no little time to piece together the scene at ‘Floating Rock’ and, as I do, a bitter wind rolls over the landscape. It is winter, somewhere, and that somewhere’s winter has blown all this long way. I pull my jacket tight and huddle into myself.

This is a dry stretch of the earth and very flat, flat until I began to see the boulders which signaled my nearing the site. The floating rock is smaller than its kin, brown and roughly oblong, a meter at its widest. It is not floating, which is why it took me some time to identify the thing. If it weren’t for the signs and folksy illustrations put up by absent rangers, it would have been just another boulder among many.

‘Alex’ is the name carved into the side of the once floating rock where it lay. As far as I can tell it was this act of vandalism that also grounded the rock. I sit, in the dirt, and grow smaller amongst its sisters and brothers so that they can bear the brunt of the wind.

Lethargic ants wind aimlessly, sparse in number and disorganized by the autumn chill. Between them they carry the carcass of some larger insect, a thing I don’t recognize but that fits well enough within the realm of normalcy as to be easily forgotten. I pluck it from them and set it up on a stone like some tiny statue (in memoriam) but then I feel bad and I return it to the ants. They’ve begun to panic and seem unforgiving of my change of heart. They avoid the carcass, rightfully superstitious.

As dusk begins to thicken there is a sound ahead of me. The floating rock wobbles in place, shedding dust from its wounds. Moved by some unknown force, it tilts, slightly, and drags a half-inch before becoming still again. It is quiet for nearly ten minutes when, as before, it begins to shift. This time it rises, wobbles to an impossible balance and then falls over. A few minutes later it lifts again and maintains a tenuous standing position.

Over the course of an hour the floating rock rises and falls several times, never by more than a few inches but far enough, always, that pieces of it crack and split off. It struggles to remember the easy flight I see in the pictures around it, the days when it would float four feet in the air and spin lazily in the wind.

After a long time, I leave the floating rock to its work and find my way back to the truck. I wonder at the writer’s dismissal of the place and I wonder if I would have felt (or did feel) the same way seeing the rock untouched by the vandal. Is there value in struggle and, if so, is it inherent to struggle in all its forms?

I struggle, reader, but I do not know toward or against what. Already I feel the struggle has reshaped me and I do hope it is a refining and not the same blind crashing that splinters the rock, that may reduce it to dust before it joins the wind once more.

-traveler

Like scum on the edges of a stagnant pond, American capitalism seems to allow for a quota of small, aggressively niche businesses to thrive on the outskirts of highway towns. That may seem like an inherently negative metaphor and I suppose, in many ways, it is, but I invoke pond scum more for its resilience, its value to the ecosystem, and its universality rather than whatever an initial interpretation might suggest.

Though, these places are often dirty.

‘Mickee’s Freeze’ is the latest in a number of these particular businesses on my list and its specialties are ice cream and bold indifference to copyright infringement. Their mascot is a cartoon mouse that bears so close a resemblance to its clear inspiration that it makes an observer wonder whether the minor differences are intentional or simply weaknesses on the part of the artist. Whatever the case, aged signs of rusted tin and rotting wood suggest that Mickee has been around for years and never suffered for it.

‘Mickee’s’ is a rarity in that it appears in publications outside of Autumn by the Wayside, all of which are local to the region, however, and all of which write that it is the best home-churned ice cream the state has to offer. They, in turn, tantalize the reader with the legend of Mickee’s Mystery, a flavor unique to the store that has been universally well-received but otherwise defies description. Shitholes has its own take and, well, read for yourself:

“Is it so hard to believe that we, humans, are drawn to mystery as it appears to all senses? ‘What is that smell?’ ‘Did you hear something?’ ‘Did you see that?’ ‘How do you feel?’ In this regard, reader, taste is relegated to the realm of mystery flavors and, thus, to children. For a few crumpled dollars the tight-lipped staff at ‘Mickee’s Freeze’ will feed the child you once were. You will remember with joy and no little fear what it is to place something in your mouth, something you do not fully understand. There are no spoilers here, nor on your precious phone. Mickee guards the mystery with care and it is our place to wallow in it or to pass by, unawares.”

The inside of ‘Mickee’s’ is all sticky plastic and laminate, a rainbow of soiled colors. Flies cling in clumps to the outside of the building, drawn by the sickly sweet air that seeps out. A thick, milky substance oozes out from under a service entrance in the back and congeals in the hot dirt. As I reconnoitered, an elderly woman in a paper hat slipped out to pour a bucket of the same goo into a canister near the trash and then stepped back inside before I could make out any detail of the kitchen.

This I remember as I order, staring carefully at the top-loading freezer, at the metal scoop, and at the gloved hands of the teenager who greets me from behind the counter in front.

“One scoop of Mickee’s Mystery,” I tell him, “In a bowl.”

“One scoop is a children’s size,” he says.

“Then, uh, two scoops.”

“It’s all right, man,” he says, drawing me my single scoop, “It’s chill.”

What about me gives off the impression that I’m not calm? Last week I spent the better part of an evening’s hour just filming myself in conversation, speaking into my phone and into the mirror. I’ve watched it on loop since then, sometimes just listening to the audio as I drive. Nothing in that voice sounds ill-meaning or confused. What is it about me, then?

I tip generously and consider apologizing. That would be strange, though, that would be admitting to my slip.

Wouldn’t it?

‘Mickee’s Mystery’ is off-white to the point of yellow and smooth, visually a rich vanilla or a light citrus. It smells like nothing at all and sits heavily on the spoon, reluctant to melt.

“Is there a problem with the scoop, bro?” the guy behind the counter asks, seeing me stare at the dish without eating, “Mickee leaves no customer unsatisfied.”

He wipes at the counter with a dry cloth and waits for my answer.

“Everything is fine,” I tell him, sure now that I have crossed into the conversational gray.

I wish I were filming this.

Everybody in the restaurant seems to be staring through their peripheries as I raise ‘Mickee’s Mystery’ to my lips. It is cold and thick and very sweet, but underlying everything is a flavor I almost recognize but can’t quite place.

“Good, brother?” the guy asks.

“Yeah…” I reply, still swirling the ice cream in my mouth, “It’s good.”

It is good. It’s well-made ice cream, there’s no question about that. I take another bite much to the satisfaction of the server and he tosses the rag in the air and catches it behind his back before turning to other business. A child giggles in the booth two seats ahead of me, fed ice cream by its father.

It? Is that the right word in this situation?

“Hazelnut,” I say.

The guy behind the counter seems to freeze for a moment before he goes back to wiping down a blending machine.

“It’s hazelnut, right?” I ask, “‘Mickee’s Mystery’ is just hazelnut.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, bro,” the guy mutters darkly, only turning halfway back to me, “I don’t even know what a hazlenut looks like. Are you thinking about a walnut?”

“No…” I say, confused, “You’re saying it wrong. Hazelnuts are… well, they’re really popular in some places. They grow them in Oregon I think.”

The child hasn’t made any noise since the exchange began; its father follows the conversation casually over his shoulder.

“I’ve never heard of a hazlenut.”

The couple across the restaurant stands and leaves.

“It can be kind of a subtle flavor but I’m sure you’ve had something with hazelnuts in it before. If you’ve eaten the ice cream here then you definitely have.”

“No, man,” he persists, wringing the dry towel in his hands, “No… that’s not it.”

“Really?” I ask, taking another bite, “Because this tastes like hazelnuts.”

“Maaan,” the teen says, tossing down his paper hat on the counter and shrugging a little, “Can I talk to you privately real quick because-”

“Are there nuts in this?” the dad breaks in suddenly. He points to the ice cream. “My son is fucking allergic to nuts.”

“Welllll,” the server begins.

“There’s definitely nuts in this,” I say through a mouthful of ice cream, “If it’s actually allergic to nuts you should get to a doctor, maybe.”

“He,” the father seethes, acknowledging me only briefly before rounding again on the counter. “You fucking tell me now if there’s nuts in this!” he demands.

“I can’t really…” he’s quickly looking over a laminated sheet in front of him, running his finger down some sort of list. “I’m, uh, not here when they make it. I just sell the stuff.”

I only have to stand to see he’s looking at a flowchart of some sort and reading off canned excuses. I sit again while he sweats and avoids my eyes, rummaging with his rag in a half-effort pantomime of work.

“It’s not really a mystery if you just refuse to say,” I think out loud.

“A mystery is more than a, uh, puzzle box,” he says, hardly turning to look at me, barely disguising the fact that he’s still peering at the chart, “Not all mysteries need to be solved, wink.”

“You were supposed to wink, not say ‘wink,’” I tell him, “That would suggest a friendly collusion-”

I’m interrupted mid-explanation by a tiny cough a couple booths down. The baby sneezes loudly and then looks around, bewildered, a trail of snot and spittle glistening on its, or, his, onesie.

When the father speaks his voice begins terrifyingly calm and monotone.

“Somebody needs to tell me whether there are nuts in this right now,” he says before his volume slowly starts to creep up, “My baby is fucking allergic to nuts and there are NO allergy warnings on ‘Mickee’s Mystery.’ So… IS THERE FUCKING NUTS IN THIS?”

“The prevalence of modern nut allergies is psychological in nature,” the teens says, holding the chart and casting off any pretense of original thought, “You slash your friend slash your child is fine. It’s fine.”

“He’s fine,” I correct and the father lobs a spoon my direction.

“IS THERE NUTS?”

“Your generation’s ease of living has caused you to invent problems that do not exist,” the teen reads on, “If you slash your friend slash your child spent less time in front of the television and more time outside then this would not be a concern. It is your lifestyle that is to blame for you slash your-”

“Vaccines did this to my children!” the father yells as the baby starts to cry, “And now your damned hazlenuts will kill him!”

“He’s trying to direct you away from the point of all this…” I complain, “And there’s never been any link between vaccines and nut allergies.”

The restaurant is quiet for a second, as if to briefly acknowledge the altered direction of this exchange.

“Also that’s not how you say ‘hazelnuts.’”

The teen walks stiffly around the counter and looms over my table, glaring down at me through tearful eyes. He carefully reaches down and pulls the ‘Mickee’s Club Loyalty Card’ from under my bowl and crushes it in his palm. I look over my unfinished ice cream with regret but take the cue to leave. The noisy exchange begins again as soon as the door shuts behind me.

Amidst the dust and buzzing flies I find a moment to consider that it may be the world that’s changing and not myself. There are places here that requires an amount of paranoia to get by and it may be that, by adopting a defensive nature, I’m simply adapting. This could be healthy.

I could be healthy.

I take out my phone and turn on the camera. I see my haggard face on the screen and I begin to record.

“Hello,” I say, “How are you? I’m fine too. Nice to meet you, my name is-”

-traveler