I spend a week looking like an idiot- cutting the engine at stoplights, struggling to change gears on the highway, suffering breakdowns and walking like a saddle-sore cowboy into strange, suburban grocery stores. When things are going well, my tooth rattles about in the broken speedometer. Stalled, the broken molar settles, morose and inconspicuous to all but the closest observers.

I keep the radio wired into the dash, held up on a custom mount I bought with candy bars. It looks absurd and only works when the voice inside wills it to.

It crackles nervously now.

“Traveler?”

I pretend not to hear, that the helmet I’m wearing is too thick, that the wind is too strong. When I turn off the interstate it tries again, too loud to ignore.

“TRAVELER?”

“What?”

“Where are we going?”

“Any guesses?”

“Boone, North Carolina is not in your book. There is no reason to go there.”

“You can read now?”

“It’s unlikely to be…”

“Well, now you know what’s scary about this book.”

‘There is a humming in the air outside of Boone, a noise that is, to the ear, what shadows are to the eye. In the gray static there, it becomes difficult to concentrate, a visitor feels their mind slacken and droop. Muscles weaken and inhibitions loosen. Long exposure is, in many ways, like an opiate high.

‘The Boone County Music Festival’ is hardly a leap considering the circumstances. Scheduled annually for two days, the festival tends to drag on for nearly a week before the hosting venue has the whole lot of people removed. Sets are plagued with technical issues and silence is increasingly common as the days wear on and attendees lose motivation to move or speak beyond what is absolutely essential. Music is replaced with bizarre art installations and performances that represent the very fringes of interpretive dance. Radios in the area will pick up quiet laughter and a voice that thinks it knows more than it does.’

“Sound familiar?” I ask, pulling off onto a dirt road. The radio does not immediately respond.

I arrive at a small campground, closed for the season. I have missed ‘The Boone County Music Festival’ by a month or so, meaning even the most stubborn attendees have long abandoned the site. I pull a sun-bleached poster from the trunk of a tree, the only obvious relic. It rustles impatiently in the wind.

My fingers buzz with numbness, with thick, lazy blood.

“Is that you up there?” I ask, pointing to a radio tower up on top of a hill.

“If it was?”

“If it was, would you want me there?”

My bones rattle, suddenly, as though witness to some deep, unheard bass. After a few seconds, it raises into the realm of audible sound:

“Hmm….” the radio wonders out loud, “No, I would rather you stay.”

“Do you know the stranger? The author of Autumn by the Wayside?”

“I do not.”

“Has he been through here already?”

“He has.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“You did not ask about the stranger. He seems like a skittish man.”

I shake feeling into my hands and blink, slowly. I struggle to open the clasps on my bag. Wrapped in cloth, there, is a mason jar. The fairy fern is crushing itself against the glass, its tendrils sneaking out from below the rim, raw where I’ve snipped them away.

“I’m going to plant this here,” I tell the radio, “I’m tired of carrying it around. I wonder if it wouldn’t keep people away.”

“That would be a welcome change.”

“Should I plant it near the tower?”

The voice on the radio is silent as it considers the possibilities. I feel a brushing on my hand, where the fairy fern is trying to find a hold, and I realize the numbness has passed. The thrumming in the air has lessened some.

“Yes,” the voice says.

I take the bike up a dirt road toward the radio tower. It’s slow going and I turn over, once, on a thick patch of gravel. I dust myself off and keep at it. The radio occasionally screeches with feedback. Eventually I park and duck under an old barbwire fence, carrying my pack but leaving the radio on its mount. It says something, but I pretend not to hear.

There’s not much to the tower- it’s an old thing, paint coming off in great peels. Rust beneath that. The fairy fern is squirming in the jar, reacting to the sudden dose of sunlight. It will be happy, here, and maybe safe.

I’ve been thinking, reader, about the stranger and the author and me. I’ve been thinking about the path and about circles and eyes. The author is publicizing the path, the stranger seems to be walking it in circles. I am tailing them both, thus far just a witness.

Maybe there are others.

-traveler

Deer die in the woods, alone, and their bodies rot. They leave skeletons behind, their antlered heads distinctive in certain forests. People do strange things with these skulls, mounting on walls chief among them.

That’s beside the point.

I keep the antlered deer head in mind as I look for a skull in an acre of bones, the first of many pieces I’ll need.

‘A wasteland of rust, ‘Trish’s Ride Away’ is nothing more than a monetized junkyard. For an entry fee of $100, Trish will allow you to peruse the acres of wasted automotive parts she buys in bulk and to stay as long as you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. A book in the small shack at the front gate has pictures of the twenty or so odd people that have ridden out of the ‘Ride Away’ on vehicles they have salvaged, cleaned, and assembled. This is the best option.

Trish’s liberal time allowance has inadvertently led to the ‘Ride Away’ becoming a tent city, too far from any concerned municipality to warrant shutting down. The ‘Ride Away’ denizens can be both cagey and helpful, long cut-off from outside society by the metallic disruption of cellular signals and their borderline-superstitious fear of having to re-pay the entry fee. Goods from the nearby gas station will garner favors and ease a visitor’s passage.

The difference between ‘hidden’ and ‘lost’ is subtle, reader, and many lose themselves in Trish’s maze. Remember the worth of a hundred dollars and do not stay longer than necessary.’

I haven’t said much about my past, have I? I’ve kept my eye on the future and I describe the present only in the ways it hinders me. Well, I was a mechanic for a while, or, I should say, I was the stupid kid that works in a mechanic’s shop. I learned the basics there.

And I am tired of walking, of hitchhiking, and of waking up in strange diners with deep, rumbling headaches.

“Oh, look,” a voice says, “A window shopper.”

It’s not immediately clear who is speaking.

“What are you looking for?”

“A bike frame,” I tell her, speaking in the direction of the voice, “Something usable.”

“And then?”

“And then the rest of the bike.”

“Got a place to stay?”

“I’m getting tired of talking to myself,” I tell her, “What do you want?”

A woman’s body rises from the backseat of a truck. Her eyes narrow.

“What do you got?”

Ruby is 20 and she tells me she has been living in ‘Trish’s’ for some five years. She tells me she runs an inn for short-term visitors like myself but when I ask to see a room she says there aren’t any vacancies.

“Checkout’s at two,” she says, “Ask again after that.”

For a pack of gum she lets me store my backpack in the trunk of a car. She keeps the key and many others on a chain around her neck. We haggle absurdly for a while until she agrees to show me a few frames for the cheese-and-meat jerky packs I pulled off the clearance shelf.

“Cheese,” she says, “Is like gold here. A can of spray stuff will set you up for a while.”

I shrug and rub my sore jaw. My face is swollen, still, but Ruby doesn’t mention it. She leads me toward the center of the property, where she says she has contacts.

“Don’t know shit about cars myself,” she mutters.

Had I known that…

We speak to several people, each living in a carved-out hovel of old car parts and each with wildly different answers. Many ask for payment but Ruby shuts them up. If anybody is getting what I brought in, it will be her. Ruby, despite my misgivings, takes the average of our motley advice and draws me a map.

“You’re not coming?” I ask.

“I’ve got a business to run,” she says, “Should I hold a room for you?”

I consider the author’s warning and prod the empty place where my molar once was.

“Sure.”

I have a frame by nightfall, its handlebar head twisting loosely in the gray light. I, and a man I bribe with chips, haul it back to Ruby’s and set it near my room: the deeply buried carcass of a VW bus.

“The yard out front is yours as long as you’re renting,” Ruby says, handing me another key from her chain, “Folks around here respect that but keep an eye out for tourists. I gave you the ‘Bug Suite,’ no extra charge. Water-proofed it myself.”

“Thanks…” I tell her.

“I’m holed up just down the way if you need anything,” she says.

Ruby is buying time for something, her gangly silhouette hesitating at my door.

“Do you need me to pay now?”

“You seem good for it,” she says, “Think you’ll stay long?”

“As long as it takes to get this thing going.”

“It’s not great here,” she warns me.

“Oh?”

“I’m kicking guys like you out of my place all the time. You find a project, burn out, run out of things to barter. You end up sleeping under some random hood and asking for handouts. People adjust to this kind of living and then get stuck here.”

“I know,” I tell her, “I read it in a book before I came.”

“A book?”

I show her Shitholes, the nice, newer copy. I flip to the entry and see her smile, curiously, in the flickering overhead light. She sits softly on my ‘bed.’

“Well I’ll be…” she says, pointing at the accompanying photo of a non-descript pile of junk, “That’s my place. You know this guy?”

“Maybe.”

Ruby’s body odor has filled the hollow bus. I shift uncomfortably and roll down a window. I grate my teeth as she squirms around on my blankets, browsing the glossy pages of my book. I cough and yawn and side-eye her in turns.

“Seems like a bit of an asshole.”

The bus’ radio clicks with quiet, staticky laughter.

Heh, heh, heh…

-traveler

‘Between the months of December and February, ‘Black Lake,’ famous for its many drownings, becomes a seasonal ice skating hub. Families and couples come together at the lake with the assurance that it would be truly unlikely for anyone to drown while it is frozen solid and that the year’s unrecovered bodies have probably washed downstream, that they are not simply preserved underneath the skates.

True locals, those living in close proximity to ‘Black Lake,’ will be conspicuously absent from the cheerful winter scene. Found nearby in restaurants and taverns, they will tell you ‘Black Lake’ is not a good place any time of the year, that winter does not end the site’s uncanny maliciousness, only limits it to maiming instead.’

I rise to my hands and knees, a pool of blood beneath my face. A child screams and skates away. My weak arm collapses under me and splays out again, leaving a red streak across the ice. The world jolts and spins.

A man skates over. His abrupt stop peppers me with ice shavings. He says something, says it again when I don’t respond.

“You okay, man?”

I cough.

“You okay?”

“I… will be.”

He helps me to my feet, catches me before I slip again. He and a friend guide me to the edge. I hear them talking about calling an ambulance. I tell them I’ll be fine. They continue talking, quieter now so that I won’t interrupt.

I’ll have to return the skates before I go.

I look up at ‘Black Lake’ again. They are using snow to wipe away my blood. The sign, encouraging swimmers to beware, is frosted over.

‘Black Lake’ is a bad place.

I spit a gob of blood between my legs. Something rattles and comes loose.

I spit again, feeling little.

Speakers crackle: “The rink is open for free-skating once again, folks. Careful out there, it’s slippery!”

The gathered skaters hesitate, but slowly the rink fills. Their skates carve circles into the ice.

I sift through the snow for my tooth.

My tongue mercilessly prods its absence.

-traveler

‘‘The Orville Reenactment Society’ has been in residence at ‘Fort Elmer’ for as long as anybody in Orville can remember. They are local celebrities and the driving force behind tourism to the area. They perform every Friday and Saturday, rain or shine, and have a special matinee on Sundays (after church). Though popular, tickets will not sell out.

‘The Miracle of Orville’ is not a show to be missed. It draws heavily from the writings of the town founder, a very strange man named Fellowship Orville who claims a great hand came from the ground as he approached the site of the future fort. It pointed to the sky, and then to him, and then it retreated into the earth. Orville has embraced this origin with terrifyingly open arms.’

Thus far, in my stay, nobody in Orville has mentioned the bizarre folktale. They seem to let the town speak for itself, through murals, through massive, many-fingered statues, and through their high school football team ‘The Orville Hands.’ Knowing the town’s history, a smart person might think they are being purposeful in their silence, that their seeming normalcy is more sinister façade than genuine passivity.

And I am a smart person.

Though I was once more sure of that.

The… author… of Autumn by the Wayside sort of sets up this kind of thinking, doesn’t he? By entering a place into the book, a self-described collection of ‘shitholes,’ the author primes the reader for negativity. If I had come to Orville on my own and been asked to describe the… historically-informed culture there I think (no, I’m sure) I would have leaned toward harmlessly eccentric and not at all toward sinister.

Now, in buying gum, I notice an attendant grinning behind me. Before, a knowing nod from an old man. Previous even to that, as I entered town, the wide-eyed stare of short-haired child. It did not smile or frown but it did seem… bad.

Vaguely bad.

With a ticket I bought at the grocery store, I enter Fort Elmer and am greeted, immediately, by in-character ushers.

“Clarence!” a woman cries, seeing me step through the turnstile (which didn’t see widespread use until the early 1900s) “We’ve got our first visitor of the evening!”

“A visitor!”  a man shouts from another room, “At this hour? Who is it?”

“A stranger!” the woman says, coming close now in order to make a show of eyeing me over, “By the looks of it… a vagabond!”

“By god, be rid of him!”

I speak before the woman can continue.

“I’m supposed to rent a locker for this,” I say, heaving my bag, “Which way…”

“The armory is just down that hall,” the woman replies, whispering now so as not to disturb the fictionally grumpy Clarence elsewhere in the building, “And don’t mind my husband, you’re welcome to join the others in the courtyard for tonight’s gathering.”

I breathe an inward sigh of relief when I see that the kid running the locker rental is plain-clothes- no banter about ‘funny money’ or theatrical biting of coins. Relieved of some weight, I step past another group of visitors (delighted by the host’s bafflement at their jacket zippers) and into the restroom. It has been some time since I really, closely looked at myself and, if I’m beginning to look like a vagabond, it’s probably past due.

I stare into the mirror and shudder.

She was not wrong.

I’m washing my face in the sink when I hear the too-friendly jingle of a belt from the stall behind. In the reflection, I spot two feet in dirty socks and loose, tarry sandals. Worn jeans pile up around scabby, white ankles and a pale, hanging gut is just visible beneath the door.

And, between the door, a weepy eye.

One circle nested in another.

My hand reaches, reflexively, for the pocket over my heart, for the comb case and for the comb.

The thing in the stall wheezes with some unseen effort. Its foot twists in vulgar clenches.

I turn off the water, stare up at myself again.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Spit into the sink.

I reach for the comb and-

A toilet flushes and a man walks out of the stall at the other end of the room. He’s still buttoning his replica trousers as he makes eye contact with me in the mirror. He hesitates, clears his throat.

“My, what a strange facility this is!”

I leave without saying anything and find my seat on the bleachers in the center of the fort. I sit next to the quietest looking family and the parents nod cheerfully. I sweat, silently, beneath my clothes.

The reenactment begins.

It is quiet until a man staggers into the field, his clothes dirty and torn. A dim spotlight follows his progress. Fellowship Orville stumbles, falls to his knees, and collapses. It is quiet, again, for a time.

The ground trembles but I hardly notice.

-traveler

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

Mildew.

No book is safe.

And nothing is in order.

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

Now, is there a travel section?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I nod, calmly, to Alfred.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doesn’t it?

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

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

“The author…?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

He looks between them for a few seconds.

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

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

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

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

The all-seeing eye.

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

“Looks like googly eyes.”

“But they’re both looking ahead.”

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

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

He looks at me suspiciously.

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

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

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

“Smile,” Alfred says, “Big smile.”

I smile.

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

My smile fades.

-traveler