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

“What do you want?”

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

“It took you a while to get here.”

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

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

…

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

“Shitty hotel.”

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

“That’s what I was saying.”

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

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

“Still…”

…

“Would music help you, mmm, traveler?”

“No.”

“Would cleaning up help the smell?”

“Are you offering?”

“I am not.”

…

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

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

I hurry back.

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

I push inside.

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

If only there were a window.

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

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

“Is what here, traveler?”

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

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

“That’s not…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” I say under the rag, “Sure.”

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

-traveler

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

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

No, not impossible.

Uncomfortable.

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

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

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

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

A uniquely American power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The right order?”

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

“Is this an active field?”

“Active as in…?”

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

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

“Smoker?” I ask.

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

I resist a temptation to inquire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rest is typed plainly in a bulleted list.

‘DID YOU KNOW…

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

-your contribution rests among those of murderers and rapists?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The back is blank.

“Can I keep this?” I ask.

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

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

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

“You like the field?”

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

“Why not build a fence, then?”

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

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

“Will it do me better here?” I ask.

“Not at all, sir. Not at all.”

“Have you ever buried anything in the field?”

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

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

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

“Nothing like that,” I tell her.

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

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

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

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

“You’d think it would,” I agree.

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

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

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

“A lot, I guess.”

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

-traveler

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

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

‘A rock,’ the reasonable child would answer.

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

‘How?’

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

‘So, it is a rock?’

‘Yes, child. Now you understand.’

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

Now they are rocks.

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

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

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

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

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

-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

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

“Oh?”

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

“The unfinished piece.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you want to meet the artist?”

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

“The same person does all of this?”

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

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

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

“This way!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Rick!”

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

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

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

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

The man’s voice is barely a mumble:

“Jus’ about done.”

“For real this time?”

“For real.”

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

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

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

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

Rick clears his throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, uh…”

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

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

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

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

“Don’t need help,” he says.

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

He takes a moment to respond.

“You look bad,” he says.

I take a moment in turn.

“What?”

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

“I didn’t mean to…”

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

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

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

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

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

“Getting close, huh?”

“Yeah.”

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

“I…”

-traveler

The rising sun is distant and cold. It pulls itself lazily over the horizon and hangs there as though to catch its breath. The night slinks guiltily away, the sky forfeits its stars. An unassuming bird flits-

“Can you take a picture of us?”

I arrived an hour before daybreak, following the suggestion of Autumn by the Wayside and, absurdly, found I was not the first. At 4:00am there was already a station wagon there, brown and idling, soft shadows moving inside. I assumed I was the more imposing figure, a lone stranger from the woods, and gave the car a wide berth.

They began to stir around five.

“Sir? Sir?”

As our great star heaves itself upward into the frosty void (“Maybe he’s hard of hearing, honey. Walk up to him!”) the atmosphere warms and splays out against the cliff side. Perched on a roadside barrier, legs dangling over the drop, the sharp, dust-laden wind cuts into me suddenly. I start to cough.

“You all right there, son?”

I feel a heavy hand on my shoulder, anchoring my body to the fringes of this highway pull-off as though my coughing fit had threatened to send me over the edge. I don’t realize, until the warmth of those fingers, just how long it’s been since I’ve felt the bare touch of another human.

‘Located between Mile Markers 45 and 46, the unnamed state look-out point is just the thing for the jaded traveler. Practically surrounded by other, near-identical look-outs, this small stretch of highway distinguishes itself from the others with an available restroom and a higher-than-average vantage point. Unfortunately, this also makes it the more popular stop and company is to be expe-‘

“Son?”

The man behind me is as wide as he is tall, his pendulous stomach straining at the tucked-in cotton of his t-shirt. His also-large wife stands behind him, near the station wagon. His also-large kids stare daggers from the back seat.

“Son, are you on drugs?”

“What?” I say, “No…”

“Well, if you were on drugs, I’d tell you it’s not too late to stop. My best friend told me something like that back when I was drinking a 12-pack a day. Didn’t know I needed to hear it.”

“I’m not on drugs,” I tell him, stumbling onto sleeping legs as I attempt to swivel on the barrier. “I got dust in my eyes.”

The man scratches himself under the rim of his cap and surveys the area, now behind me.

“Quite the sunrise we had,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Where’d you walk from?”

“Town.”

“Which town would that be?”

I think for a moment, realizing I’ve already forgotten its name. The man’s kids are arguing inside the station wagon, their screaming muffled and indistinct. One of the boys leaps out of the door and starts teasing the others from behind the car. The woman tells them to get back inside.

She doesn’t trust me at all.

“It’s all right, babe,” the man calls, “Let’em stretch.”

She leans into the cab and speaks to them in a tone that is as quiet as it is serious. They pile out the other side and stand around, somberly trying to avoid looking at me.

“Don’t mind the old lady,” the man says, mildly apologetic, “Little over-protective, that one. It’s why I married her!”

He raises his voice at the end and the woman almost smiles.

“My name’s Bill, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Bill By-the-Way.”

“We got a joker over here, Mary!” the man shouts.

He turns back to me, chuckling, and an expectant moment comes and goes.

“Quite the sunrise,” I say and Bill rubs his hands together.

He nods.

“Well, Mr. Joker,” Bill says with a sigh, “Speaking of the sunrise, the wife and kids and I were hoping to see if you could snap a picture of us real quick. Got my camera here,” he says, pointing to a little point and shoot around his neck, “and we just need a fella with a steady hand and a good eye.”

I cough and stretch my legs.

“Sure.”

He hands the camera to me and walks over to his family. Bill’s got his apologetic look on again as he talks to Mary and points out a place near the look-out. She doesn’t seem happy with Bill’s willingness to put the camera in my hands. I look out at the road and wonder where she expects I would bolt to. Do I look like I need money?

“All right, kids,” Bill says, “Gather on around here for the picture.”

I pretend that I’m familiarizing myself with the workings of the camera while the family arranges itself but, with just half an eye on them, it’s clear that something is wrong. Bill’s putting on a good front but the kids are moving around like scolded dogs, even the little taunting one from before. Through the polite barrier of the camera, I watch Mary and Bill and try to remember the warning signs of domestic abuse, of drug addiction, of hostage situations.

“All right, joker,” Bill says when the family has arranged itself, “See if you can’t snap this picture.”

I take a couple but their smiles are all uneven and their eyes are looking down. The sun is rising further into the sky behind them now and backlighting the frame. I grow conscious of the time, of the book in the back pocket of my jeans.

Where to next?

“I think I got you guys,” I tell Bill, trying to mirror his false enthusiasm but he holds up his hand as I approach.

“You mind looking over’em just to make sure they look good?” Mary’s face falls as he says this. “Just a, you know, a quick glance over. It’s hard to rally these guys once they all scatter.”

He forces a laugh.

I switch over to the review menu and start to scroll through. I see a few landscape shots, a few pictures Bill must have taken before he hailed me down, but the pictures of the family aren’t there.

“Didn’t take, Bill,” I tell him, “Am I using this thing right?”

When I look up I see he’s consoling Mary, who seems to have started crying. The kids look uncomfortable, the youngest on the verge of tears herself.

“Try one more, if you would,” Bill says, hardly looking away from his wife, “Make sure you hit the button all the way down. Take a few of them.”

I raise the camera again but they don’t seem to notice. I take a few, try a couple different settings. The flash goes off, probably unnecessary in the new morning light. Whatever act the family was trying to pull, whatever guise of calm that Bill had held together, it starts to come apart at the seams. He tries to hold them together, but the family falls apart around him.

I have their camera in my hand. I scroll through the pictures again and quickly realize that there are now additional landscapes, pictures I’m taking in which the family refuses to appear. I feel embarrassed, suddenly, like I’ve been let in on some secret.

“Bill, I… I think your camera’s broken, man,” I tell him, trying to hand the thing off without looking the man in the eye.

He doesn’t take it.

“That old thing…” he says, suddenly quieter, “That old thing’s been giving me some trouble on this trip. Tell yah what, joker,” he says, chuckling sadly, “How’d you feel about taking a picture on that fancy phone of yours and then sending it my way later? I wouldn’t want… wouldn’t want to forget this.”

“Sure,” I say, and I set the camera down on the barrier.

I feel a moment of relief when I pull up my camera and see the terrified family there in front of me. The embarrassment and concern from before begins to thaw.

“Smile, guys,” I tell them and they try, but as soon as the phone freezes the screen to confirm, the family blinks out of the frame.

They wait, expectantly.

“Bill,” I sigh, “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“What do you mean it’s not going to work, joker?” he says, and I sense, for the first time, an angry undercurrent, “You’ve just got to take the picture.”

“Maybe try taking your own picture,” I say, backing up, “Maybe set a timer or something.”

“What?” he asks, “Is it too much to ask a stranger for a favor now?” His voice is rising and he steps toward me. “Is it too much to ask for a helping hand?”

“Nothing like that,” I say, lowering my head and raising my hands, “Nothing like that at all, Bill.”

The sun is peeking up over the barrier now. Bill moves and it shines over his shoulder and into my eyes. I lower my sunglasses with one hand and I turn my back on him.

“Fuck you!” he yells, “Get in the car Mary, kids, let’s go!”

I do not turn back to look at them and I walk, calmly, back to the highway.

It’s taken some time to get used to this part, reader, the part that necessitates leaving.

“Fucking assholes!”

A car door slams.

Maybe there’s a way to help people like that, but I haven’t figured it out. In my experience, the only thing to do with stuck folk is to walk away. Otherwise you end up stuck there with them.

An engine roars to life.

I pause for a few minutes as soon as I’m out of sight of the look-out and I wait to see if I’m wrong. Could be I am an asshole here. Wouldn’t be the first time. I wait and look over the picture I tried to take of them, a picture of the sunrise and a cement barrier.

The engine idles for a moment and then shuts off. There are no more sounds.

I take Shitholes out and start to walk again. This region is looking pretty clear and it hasn’t seen much of the Stranger’s meddling. He never says much when I call.

I happen past the description of the turn-off and stop. There is a picture of the place, a familiar picture of the sunrise and a cement barrier.

Credit to the author.

-traveler