It’s early in the evening, the time of day to start rolling up the windows- I seem to have driven my way into Fall, or lost a race with it and this morning I found the first hints of frost on my windshield. I’ll need to scrounge a blanket from somewhere soon, who knows what happened to the last?
Rest Area #212 off the highway has me well and truly stumped. It’s given a write-up in Shitholes but is, by all accounts, just your normal sort of stop. There are bathrooms, reasonably clean, and a few old park benches outside, reasonably weathered. The information area is outdated and mildly vandalized, the pamphlets there warped and discolored by the sun. Who pulls off at a rest stop and takes directions from one of these, I wonder. Wouldn’t a person already have a destination in mind? Wouldn’t they have planned their trip such that they arrive at said destination according to a time table? I don’t think I would take water slide advice from one of these pamphlets, or water park advice of any kind.
Even if these slides are the tallest in the state.
Even if they are housed in a massive, heated structure so as to be a year-round affair.
Even if these kids appear to be in various stages of ecstasy, going down the slides.
Even if their parents seem to approve from the illustrated sidelines.
With a candy bar out of the vending machine I sit in my truck and wonder what it is I’m supposed to be looking for.
“For the safety of our readers, parking at Rest Area #212, off the highway, is not recommended. The mysteriously numbered Rest Area #37 just another hour down the road maintains similar facilities and has a pinchy, but well-meaning swing set for the kids.”
So I’m going to stop at #37 too, sure, but what’s going on with this place? It isn’t marked on the map in the book or the road map I picked up with gas. There wasn’t any signage to speak of until the ‘Exit for Rest Area’ announcement. Maybe I should have asked someone along the way.
The red car, the only other means of transportation in this lot, has been empty as long as I’ve been around. Nobody in the restroom when I was there, very few signs of life. That’s a strangeness of sorts for someone grasping at straws.
The car is empty, the reflection of my chewing the only movement. I kick the tires and find them full, don’t see any extraneous dust or foliage on the roof. A smell like cinnamon reaches me and I see the window is cracked, a smoker’s vent. The engine feels cold under the hood.
The bathrooms are still empty, I check the men’s and then, very cautiously, the women’s. These are cement buildings with few places to hide and they echo noises I don’t seem to catch. If you press your ear close, I wonder, would you hear the ocean? I doubt it. Maybe something else, though, some more stagnant body of water.
The women’s has a few more stalls than the men’s, that much seems reasonable, but the stall on the very end, which I had neglected to look at carefully on my first round, opens on a goddamn fucking staircase into the ground, I shit you not. There are plenty of reasons not to walk down the stairs, the foremost of which is that this still constitutes sneaking around the women’s room. It’s my job to look into these things, though, or it’s what I do instead of having a job.
I descend against my better judgment.
The old flashlight I left at Phil’s has been replaced with a newer model, a thing that emits cheerful white light even in places like these. The ghosts of my childhood were yellow like kidney failure under incandescent bulbs. Modern spirits are black and white, the way they were written in books. We’ve come full circle.
The young man at the bottom of the stairs is black and white and red all over like the joke but he’d dead and covered in old blood. There is no smell. Beyond him is a vast gray tunnel, far vaster and more gray than I’m normally comfortable with.
I step over the man and into the tunnel.
I was wrong before, when I said there was no smell. There is a smell like an old closet, like old, musty clothes. The air is still and difficult to breathe, it moves sluggishly into my lungs, seeming to resent the process as much as I do. My light finds a wall ahead, the way divides and moves almost imperceptibly downward with every step. The man behind me, the body, is facing the exit. He died trying to leave.
There is a toilet to the left of the fork, clean minus a few drops of brown urine under the seat. This stall caters to a niche audience, I would imagine. The tunnel continues to the right but before I am able to continue the body behind me, the man, begins to make noise. He starts to breathe.
The man’s breathing is audible all this way down the tunnel because it’s loud and labored. Under the dim light from the top of the stairs I see the rise and fall of his back, the expansion of his chest so dramatic that it seems, in the shadows, at odds with common anatomy. He swells like a balloon and then deflates, each exhale a violent, sputtering rattle. There is no movement, no sound, but for the man’s breathing.
I approach him cautiously but my footsteps change nothing. The man’s eyes are closed, his lips billowing. He has broken ribs, his chest shudders wildly underneath his clothes. The source of this man’s blood remains unclear.
The setting sun blinds me the moment I step outside. I run to my truck, pull the small first aid kit from my glove compartment. There is a hammer on the floor in front of the passenger seat and I grab that too, in case I need to protect myself. I dash back to the restroom, back down the stairs of the last stall at the end. The man’s breathing has lost its rhythm, each intake shorter than the last.
There are gloves in the kit and I put them on. I feel along his abdomen, afraid turning him over will only worsen things. The man’s chest has no structure, his ribs move freely under the skin. He doesn’t seem to notice me and his breathing continues to sputter out. Eventually it stops altogether.
I check his pulse, sitting very still so that I can be sure. His blood shines under the flashlight, lying next to me on the bottom stair. And then there is a noise ahead, like the tap of a foot. When I begin to adjust the light, smearing blood across its handle, I hear a polite cough.
Someone is sitting on the toilet, far ahead in the tunnel, their legs just skin and bone sticking out from around the corner, terminating in dusty blue jeans and old, leather shoes.
The man in front of me is dead, his heart motionless under my fingers.
The toilet flushes and the thing ahead begins to stand. A sickly, bulging stomach appears around the corner, clammy and pale under the LEDs.
The man in front of me is dead.
I run back up the stairs, fleeing in bloody gloves to my truck. The women’s room at Rest Area #212 lingers in my rearview mirror longer than seems normal, the place casting a shadow on my thoughts. I drive without the heat, afraid, in the short term, of its hoarse, rasping breath and thinking of the man who died in the tunnel and also of the thing that seems to live there.
-traveler
The least enjoyable sort of destination for me in all of this are the little businesses or attractions that are clearly run out of a person’s home. The Midwest is rife with these sorts of places and a certain type of person might find the idea charming or comfortable, a sort of shotgun-hostiness and a dash of American entrepreneurship. I wonder how a person’s mindset changes about the things or the places they own in order for these places to come about. When does a collection become something you’re willing to show off for money? When do you start wondering if you can make money off of local rocks? A man can only own so much rose quartz, after all.
My stomach sinks when I see the first sign advertising ‘The Museum of the Common Man’ as just fifteen miles away. It’s hand-painted and well worn, held to a tree by several long, rusted nails. Expectations were already low, to be honest. The name of the museum doesn’t go very far toward inspiring enthusiasm. Somebody who takes it upon themselves to erect a museum to the ‘common man’ is going to be political or philosophical in the worst ways and now they’re going to think I’m interested in hearing their spiel. I’m paying to be there after all.
‘The Museum of the Common Man is the brainchild of a guy that thinks he’s one of the less common. It’s a shrine to the intellectual ego, built before the proliferation of the online communities where modern egoists go to commiserate or knock each other down. This man, left alone, has built a shrine to himself and accidentally fulfilled his promise. Do not visit expecting to enjoy yourself.’
A low bar, as I said.
The museum grounds are just off the highway, the sort of place that retains a year-round dusted look from the constant passing of semis and the glare of a sun without obstacles. A house sits in the front, too small (god, I hope too small) to be the museum. The likelier place is the extended barn-type building out back where somebody has maintained an optimistically sized parking lot.
A human-shaped cloud of dust pulls away from the porch as I pull into the lot. The man has the look of someone prematurely aged- his hair has maintained a golden brown but his face has the deep, downward sloping lines of a chronic frowner. He walks up and leans on the fence at the edge of the lot, gesturing me into parking like the place is crammed full.
“Here for the museum?” he asks once I’ve stepped down from the truck.
He’s a spindly guy, rail thin under the flannel shirt and jeans and I’ve got more than six inches on him. There’s a knife in my back pocket, a flip-open thing with the modern sort of safeties that I’d probably fumble with during a fight. Probably most important, I’ve got my running shoes on in case I need to get out quick. These are the sort of precautions that keeps a guy alive when he follows strangers into barns.
“Yep.”
“Right this way, then.”
The path out to the barn is lined mostly with low, dry-looking brush but occasionally we pass by an old piece of farm technology, long rusted, and each piece has a little sign that describes what the thing used to be (tractor, backhoe, etc.) and what they are now: ‘Failures of the Common Man.’ Looking at all those signs I start to think maybe this is all a big joke which, in my mind, might make this experience a little more worthwhile. Could be this man’s the cynic’s cynic.
“What’s admission like here?” I ask and he spits.
“Fi… er, ten dollars. Year pass is a huhnerd.”
Is that another joke? I try to chuckle but by the time anything comes out the moment’s passed. I mask it with a cough.
“Dusty out here,” he says as we reach the barn door, “I’ll have ter go turn the place on ‘round back, won’t take but a minute.”
He stands silent until I realize he’s waiting for payment. I hand the man his ten bucks and he disappears around the side of the building.
My stomach rumbles and I check my watch. It’s just past noon, about the time I’m usually scouting around for a place to grab lunch. I flip through Shitholes to see if there’s any recommendations nearby but it’s got nothing in the way of food for a couple hundred miles. There’s a bag of jerky in the truck that I bought out of a guy’s shed. His was a shriveled Noah’s Ark, two of each animal, vacuum packed and sealed. Mine was a purchase of whimsy, a veritable sampling of all God’s creatures. I wonder if I’m allowed food inside the museum, but then, the truck is so far away now.
A generator coughs itself to life behind the barn and the gray smell of exhaust reaches me before the man does. He’s changed clothes, or, he’s thrown on a jacket that has the name of the museum embroidered over his heart. On the other side it says his name: William.
“William’s a common name for a guy,” I say, trying to conjure the half-joke from before.
“Go by Will, mostly,” he says, “Say it takes will to rise above the common pitfalls and passions o’ the folk ‘round here. Step inside when I call ya.”
Will slips in through the barn doors, careful that I don’t peek in and spoil the surprise. A smarter man than me might seize the opportunity to escape, leave Will with his ten dollars and the smug assurance that I, as a common man, simply grew too afraid of facing myself in his philosopher’s mirror. Who could have guessed that the burden of humanity would fall on the shoulders of Will, a Midwestern-
“I said come in, boy,” he yells.
So I do.
The barn door isn’t used to being opened more than a foot or so, just enough to admit a slim frame such as my own. The inside of the barn is dark, the lower level empty except for a stool in the center. When I stop to try to make sense of the modified ceiling above me I hear Will’s voice from the dark rafters.
“If you’d take a seat, sir, we will begin shortly.”
The stool is on a little platform, built into the ground and an arrow, painted on the platform says:
“Face here to begin.”
I sit on the stool and the legs give out completely, the shattered wood splintering as though under some great weight. On my ass I see the thing’s nearly turned into sawdust, that it likely was never anything more than cleverly stained balsa wood tubes. Tubes filled with sawdust. The barn door creaks closed.
“The common man is a trusting critter,” Will’s voice comes over a speaker system, “The first folly of the common man is a tendency ter follow directions.”
“Fuck you,” I mutter at the darkness above me but as I try to leave I find the barn doors locked.
“The common man don’t much like seeing hisself laid bare…”
It’s not so dark in the barn that I’m not able to see that the walls are lined with other exhibitions. A spotlight comes on above me and illuminates a dusty mannequin across the room and Will’s voice drones on, assuming I’ll catch at least some of it.
“It weren’t until man began to settle that a clear division began ter take place between the common an’ uncommon folk…”
An absurd scene lights up across the room, two cavemen representing some intellectual split that happened in time unknowable. I realize the first mannequin has a mirror for a face, no doubt Will’s take on poignancy. The added light helps me to spot the latch holding the barn door shut and I let myself out. Will keeps talking inside, his voice muffled by the thick wooden walls. The sun is downright blinding.
What an asshole.
I’m only a few minutes down the road before I start to get this ill-meaning itch, the feeling that I’ve somehow left without fully completing whatever experience Shitholes suggests (or at least documents). There’s a part of me that will always wonder what I missed. I make an awkward 3-point turn on the road and piss off a dude in a janky looking sedan and then I’m headed back to Will’s farm, determined to see what his deal is without having to further interact with him. I leave the truck about a quarter-mile out and walk a ways until I find a comfortable shrub to sit behind while keeping The Museum of the Common Man level in my thrift-store binoculars.
Will comes around the barn a few minutes later, still wearing his embroidered jacket. He eyes the barn door for a moment and fiddles with the latch. Then he looks up, up at the sky, and he stays that way for a long time, shoulders slack, breathing even, mouth slightly open. He stays like that for long enough that I start examining the sky myself but there’s nothing. I try to focus on Will, try to see if his eyes are open or closed or if he’s blinking at all. Finally, he just brings his head back down and walks to his house.
As I wait for the sun to set on The Museum of the Common Man I take a closer look at the surroundings. The path leading to the museum proper is carefully lined with old relics but the field out back has its share of scrap wood and rusted tin. A truck stops to exchange mail with Will’s box and putters away. A country mailman must have a lot of time to think during the day. Will emerges from his house as the truck disappears and shuffles a couple letters on his way back inside.
I sneak closer in the dark and wait for Will’s silhouette to give his location in the house away. When it does, when I see he’s in the kitchen, I move in past the socially acceptable limit of trespassing and start trying to catch glimpses of his home life. The light of the kitchen falls into his bedroom which has a clean floor but cluttered shelves. The living room looks dusty and there’s the impression of a man in the sofa. He’s still got a box TV.
Back in the kitchen Will is chopping tomatoes and throwing them into a pot on the stove. The knife is too dull and he crushes the tomato every time he tries to make a cut and then he ends up just tearing the mashed piece away and calling it good. Tomato juice leaks onto the floor before he pulls a rag from the fridge to mop it up. After a while, once the chopping is done, he stares into the pot like he did into the sky, occasionally stirring but mostly doing nothing at all. He coughs and doesn’t cover his mouth.
I’m strangely riveted by the whole thing and Will makes no attempt to conceal his home life. No shades are drawn, no cautious looks spared for the windows. He pours the pot into a bowl and take it into the living room to watch the evening news. He falls asleep on the couch, wakes up an hour later and stumbles into the bedroom. Under the covers he falls asleep again, his breathing even. It’s past midnight now and my own breath emerges in a fog.
What a miserable life Will must lead what with his being alone and being a shitty cook. The Museum of the Common Man truly was a shithole, but I feel at least a little better knowing the guy who runs it isn’t all that much better than…
Wait…
-traveler
Like most drive-ins this place only shows double-features which is just fine by me and it pipes the audio through a short-wave radio station so my truck gets something like surround sound. I picked up a 6-pack of cheap beer and some sandwiches to smuggle in and I bought popcorn and soda from the snack bar to keep the place in business. The first movie is a pretty colorful kid’s flick that I get engrossed in. The fairy fern curls around the popcorn I drop into its aquarium and together we have a gay old time and get a little too drunk.
I’m re-upping on popcorn during the intermission and just a little off-balance when I think I hear some leading chatter in the corner between two of the young-adult stooges that waved me in. They’re talking running-times and clean-up, figuring in post-credit scenes and bottle-necking as everybody packs up and heads out on the dark highway toward home. They’re talking lateness, really, which, to me, is like the ‘darkness’ of time. Late words about some late event still to come. I skip the butter and head back to the truck, sober and distracted.
‘Friendly reader, do not let the owner of this establishment intimidate you. The movies will be over, the families will have gone, and you will be left alone in the lot while the man’s voice leaks from your radio, saying anything that might make you leave. Do not accept his gifts, do not budge, reader, and do not fret. The man is not real, but the third feature very much is.’
This is undoubtedly a strange entry in the book. It’s much more detailed than normal, for instance, much more instructional in the way a travel guide is usually supposed to be. It also takes the tone of an annoyingly knowing college bro, a guy that’s been a year out of high school and thinks he knows the ins and outs of the world. Day by day I grow more embarrassed at my potential authorship.
“Hey there movie fans…” a man’s nasal voice cuts into the previously inoffensive background music on my radio, “We’ve got just five more minutes of intermission so get on down to that snack bar and pick up some nosh. The snack bar will be closing after intermission, don’t miss your chance!”
If that’s the guy Shitholes is talking about I’m thinking I can stand my ground but as the intermission ends and the movie rolls I feel a tension building in my stomach where the alcohol has previously kept things chill. I don’t mind wandering back alleys or dense brush in the dark but I’m not really a guy that likes confrontation with other people. My time on the road has only made me worse in that regard, awkward pauses infest my recent conversations like termites. Even my drive-in orders come out in stutters sometimes, which makes life hard for me in a way that’s pathetic and niche.
Under the guise of a restroom break I stake the place out, poking my head into the snack bar windows, checking the tall tin fences that border the place off, even using an old pair of binoculars to peek into the projection booth. If I had to guess based on this alone I’d say the whole enterprise is run by six kids, all between the ages of fifteen and twenty. Ominously, perhaps, but keeping with the narrative, the man with the nasal voice doesn’t seem to be around at all.
The drive-in doesn’t have any obvious secrets except that it’s a real junky if you look around at any of the details. Like most drive-ins I’ve been to this place teeters on the edge of financial ruin, storing old rusted metal to be worked in the fence when it needs repairs, paying minimum wage to the few movie-buffs that emerge from the local high school.
“What are you doing back here, man?”
Goddamn I’m drunker than I thought, pretending like no one would hear me tripping over garbage in the back. The kid who comes round the corner is the same that handed me popcorn half an hour ago. Now he’s got a box in his hand and now he’s tucking the thing under his arm. It’s not suspicious gesture, per se, but I’m a suspicious person in a suspicious place. And goddamn I’m drunk.
“What’s in that box you’re carrying?” I ask and suddenly he goes defensive.
“Supplies.”
“What kind of supplies? Movie theater supplies?”
“Yeah.”
“Rolls of film?”
“We’re digital, man, this is the 21st century.”
“What, then? What goes into movie theater supplies?”
“A hammer.”
“A box of hammers?” I’ve pushed it too far, he pushes back.
“Get back to the movie or I’m calling the other guys,” he says, holding the box in two hands again.
“Fine,” I tell him, and by way of covering my tracks, “Just looking for the toilet.”
He doesn’t let me out of his sight until I’m well across the lot, staring up at the giant faces moving wordlessly across the screen in front of me. I step back into the truck, resigned to playing this out by the book. When the movie ends and people begin to leave, I turn the radio on and remain where I am.
“Thanks again for coming, folks,” the man’s voice drones on, “Remember to keep left while you’re leaving and drive safe. We’ve got some jumper cables up front in case you need’em, ask a friendly neighbor to get you going again. We’ve got another double-feature for you next week…”
Somebody taps on my window, asks if I need a jump. I tell them I’m just letting the crowd pass before I get going, no hurry. As the rest of the cars file away it’s a good ten or fifteen minutes before my truck stands out as conspicuously immobile. The screen is dark by then and the radio has gone back to playing music. I get a second jump offer and then nothing until:
“Looks like we got a straggler out there,” the man’s voice cuts through the music, “Did somebody fall asleep? Heh, heh, heh.”
The chuckling seems forced.
“Anyway, just a reminder that we’re closin’ up for the night. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. Heh he-”
The music starts abruptly again, cutting off the man’s laughter. It seems shriller now, definitely louder so I turn the volume down and wait for someone from the front to come wake me. The lot empties entirely, though, and the place is quiet and still.
“Hello out there to the owner of the blue pick-up!” the voice says, loud but still in the spirit of a cheerful man, “We’d all like to go home ourselves, you know! Heh, heh.”
The music does not return.
“Wakey-wakey,” the voice pries.
A moment passes.
“Would the owner of the blue pick-up signal if they are able to hear us?”
I think for a second and flip through Shitholes. There’s nothing in the book about responding to this guy so I flick my lights. If it means we cut through this horseshit then…
“The owner of the blue pick-up needs to vacate the lot immediately,” the voice says, “We’re not interested in pranks and we don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”
I hold my hand out with a piece of popcorn and watch as a loose tendril of the fairy fern cautiously curls around it. It startles easy, though. A heavy breath is all it takes to set us back…
Suddenly the cab of my truck is flooded with light from the projection booth. I cover my eyes and try to squint some sort of explanation out of the new circumstances. There’s a pricking on my palm where the fairy fern has stealthily embedded itself. I pull it out and stuff the plant back into the aquarium. My knees feel tense and I wish there was room to stretch them. I hate confrontation.
“A few movie theater employees have been dispatched to make sure you’re all right, owner of the blue pick-up. If you do not vacate the premises in the next five minutes we will be forced to call the police.”
Damn. I’ve done a lot of trespassing, gotten involved in a lot of questionable activities in my life but I’ve never had more than a brief run-in with the law. My legs feel like they’re buzzing. My shoulders hurt. The light from the projection booth makes it all but impossible to see how many people are coming to kick me out. I lock the doors. I hold Shitholes to my chest.
“Do not budge…”
Several more minutes pass but nobody approaches the truck.
“Owner of the blue pick-up,” the voice says again, “The police have been called they will be here shortly.”
Nothing.
“Owner of the blue pick-up,” the voice whispers.
I turn up the volume.
“Owner of the blue pick-up, it’s not safe for you here. Nobody has called the police, there are fates far worse than the police in store for those who remain. Please leave, owner of the blue pick-up.”
The light from the projection room goes dark as quickly as it came on. I blink, willing away the spots in my eyes. The lot is still empty.
“All right, owner of the blue pick-up. We’ve placed what you came for in the back. Now please, leave us alone.”
There’s a box in the back of the truck. It looks a lot like what the kid was carrying before. It looks like somebody has taped a note to the top and the paper flutters about in the gentle breeze. Suddenly the cab of the truck feels stifling. I reach for a window, see the lock, and reconsider. The radio spews forth a loaded, waiting static.
“You fucker,” the voice on the radio is hissing now but it crawls to a low sneer, “You leave us the fuck alone you monster! Do you know how many shit-smelling grifters I have to deal with on a weekly basis? You think it’s funny or noble to sit in the middle of the business that my family built from the ground? The business that I keep afloat by kissing-ass and begging money from the hardworking folk who come here just to enjoy the latest movie? Have you ever cleaned a popcorn machine? Have you cleaned a fucking thing in your life? GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY LOT!”
The wind pulls the note from the box and it tumbles into the darkness. What did it say?
“You don’t want the box, then?” the voice says, “Owner of the blue pick-up, blink your lights if you don’t want the box.”
Fuck, that box is tempting. I flick my lights.
“You don’t want the box,” the voice says before the lights have even faded.
I wait a second and then flick them again in agreement.
“No, owner of the blue pick-up, I understand. You don’t want the box.”
I stare out the back window at the box, willing it closer.
“Tell you what, owner of the blue pick-up. I’ll send someone out to collect the box, but I need to be sure you’re not going to hurt them. It’s dark out there, after all, and this could be a way that we form a sort of understanding. If you would, owner of the blue pick-up, just turn on your interior light so that I can see you, and then cover your eyes so that I know you won’t hurt my employee, I would be appreciative.”
That seems like a terrifying prospect to me. I look over the dash for something that would best communicate skeptical hesitation and settle on the emergency lights.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, owner of the blue pick-up,” the voice says, “If you wanted, you could just drive on out of here.”
The radio goes quiet for a moment before continuing.
“Right, then. Let’s just go step by step. There’s no harm in you turning the interior light on, right?”
There really isn’t, as far as I can tell. I turn off the emergencies and switch on the interior light. It’s difficult, now, to see even a few feet outside of my truck.
“All right, handsome,” the voice says, “Heh, heh, heh. Let’s see you cover your eyes. The box will be gone and you won’t have to worry about that.”
The lot is still completely empty, the buildings behind me quiet. I listen closely, in case there’s someone under the truck. I look carefully along all sides. I sit back and the voice asks:
“Ready?”
I bring my hands to my eyes, carefully watching the box through imperceptible gaps in my fingers. Nothing happens.
“CLOSE YOUR GODDAMN EYES!” the voice screams and then it keeps on screaming like a man burning alive, screaming and screaming until the windows in the truck rattle with screams.
I reach around to crank down the volume and after a moment I hear the voice again, barely a mutter. I cautiously turn it up again.
“That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”
The box has gone from the truck. I turn off the interior light.
“No hard feelings, I’m sure,” the voice says, “Heh, heh, heh.”
It’s nearly three in the morning now and I’m tired. Tired generally and tired of all this. I yawn and try to keep a vigilant eye on my surroundings during the long silence that follows. The radio is thick static now. The volume of the static rises slowly until it lingers just below a level that would be unbearable. Then it cuts out entirely, casting me into true silence.
The projector starts up again, aiming back at the screen now. It’s off-center and the frame shakes and jolts as the operator moves it back into position. A low chord plays over the radio, so deep that it rattles the cheap factory bass of my truck’s sound system. I compulsively eat a handful of popcorn.
Music plays and a film begins. Silent. Black and white. It follows the trials of a 20’s flapper who descends into a life of ‘degeneracy.’ Drugs, dancing, alcohol. I look at the empty beer bottles on the floor of the truck. The flapper hits rock bottom, finds religion, redeems herself. She lives to an old age and dies surrounded by her family. The screen fades to black and the music peters out. I look around the lot and assume it’s over.
Then that low chord again. The screen comes alive with vivid, twisting colors. The flapper’s in hell, tormented by demons. The scenes are intricate and gruesome, the production incredible for something as old as it is. Every 10 seconds or so a screen flashes to explain the noises you would be hearing if that sort of technology was viable at the time. It only ever says ‘Woman screaming.’
The film ends abruptly, a fraction of a way through a scene. Then nothing. I yawn and turn the key in the ignition, feeling like I’ve had my fill. Nothing happens.
Dead battery.
-traveler
“The Fairy Fern Refuge Area is hidden behind a labyrinth of poorly placed signs and poorly worded directions. Even seasoned travelers will find themselves doubting on the long hike to the refuge, wondering whether they’ve wandered through the Fairy Ferns without realizing, only to conclude eventually that the Fairy Fern infestation ground would be very difficult to mistake.”
The author of Shitholes, be it me or someone else, has not seen fit to write their own directions or draw their own map to the Fairy Fern Refuge Area. A road sign mentions, as an afterthought, that the trailhead can be found ten miles ahead but the road signs seem to forget about it afterward and I spend an hour and a half roving the same stretch of forested highway until a small pull-off catches my eye. There’s a barbwire fence I hop, which worries me, but a decayed wooden sign in the dirt a short ways ahead shares several letters with the place I’m trying to find. Past that I’m left to follow a path which seems surprisingly viable considering the hoops I’ve jumped through to find it.
I walk a mile and swing left on a fork before I hear the low sounds of voices ahead and smell a good deal of smoke. Shortly I emerge into a small clearing in which several kids, maybe just out of high school, have built a little fire and around which they are drinking beer and shooting the shit. I haven’t been particularly quiet but they haven’t taken many precautions in terms of keeping an ear out and because I’ve been sleeping in the truck these past few days and haven’t slept all that well I wonder if my appearance doesn’t startle them some.
“Hey guys,” I say, offering a casual half-wave, “Is this the Fairy Fern Refuge Area?”
A look passes between them, a look that I don’t immediately understand. Could be relief that they’re not getting busted, could be suspicion, suspicion that I might still be out to murder them or to take their weed.
“This is just a place,” one says, “It doesn’t have a name.”
“Spooky,” I joke and I try to smile but they all just keep staring.
Fuck, I’ve gotten old. They don’t think I’m some sinister grifter at all, they think I’m a middle-aged plant enthusiast. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m walking around the woods looking for a fern refuge and I’m clutching Shitholes in my hand like it’s a bible. There’s a banana and a bag of granola in my backpack because I’ve been getting peckish on excursions like these. And I used to be one of these guys, these kids that hang out in the woods. Fuck me, this is embarrassing.
“I think I took a wrong turn back a little way,” I tell them and stalk off, not unaware of suppressed laughter.
The right-at-the-fork is a lot less easy going than the left, a way overrun with nettles and segmented by fallen trees. Clumps of moss come off in my hands as I scramble over the underbrush and I maneuver awkwardly over the insect colonies I expose there. The whole way I’m thinking of those kids and their smug-sounding laughter and I’m realizing that no matter how this pans out those kids are going to have a better day than I am. Either I find the place or I don’t and that those are my choices is just… it’s just exhausting.
There are a bunch more forks and turns in the path, a lot of roundabouts that are just long enough to trick me into going in circles. Shitholes guy, maybe me, was right about the refuge being a pain to find and he doesn’t even include a picture or a description of a fairy fern but seems to rely on the reader just knowing it when they see it which I know I probably won’t. What do I do with my time between cases that isn’t research? There’s nothing of substance to my free time, a lot of trying to sleep in the back of my pick-up. A lot of hasty eating.
After another short hike I come across a lacquered brick path, well grown over, certainly, but the sort of thing that promises a sight. It’s also when I hear a voice in the tree above me and it says:
“If I had more teeth, would you think I was more beautiful?”
There’s a man in the tree, dressed in worn jeans and a t-shirt that looks like he bought it at a gas station.
“Who says I think you’re beautiful?”
“Nobody,” he says and I see that he’s missing two teeth front and center, one above and one below, “It’s a question of relativity.”
“I’ve never dated a guy who was missing teeth.”
“Not what I asked either.”
“Then?”
“How many more teeth could I have,” he asks, “Before I was less beautiful? I’ve still got my wisdom teeth, if that matters.”
“I’m going to say five for the sake of ending this.”
“If you’re looking for the fairy ferns, you just missed them.”
For some reason this bothers me more than the teeth, even though it seems reasonable that the refuge is the only reason I would be out here. Suddenly the wind changes and I smell smoke.
“I burned them,” he says before I can ask.
I set out on the lacquered bricks at a jog but I only have to turn a corner before I see the smoking clearing ahead. A pile of fairy ferns burns freely in the center, individual fronds twisting and grasping in ways that are uncomfortably human. The earth has been gouged out, the trees nearby stripped of their bark.
“I salted the earth, too,” the guy says behind me, “I’m not superstitious, it just means things won’t grow as well now.”
“I know what salting the earth does!” I snap, “Why did you torch this place?”
“Have you seen a fairy fern?” he asks, “They’re invasive, bad for the plants around it, bad for the people who come to see them. If a plant deserves to be burned, the fairy fern does.”
“But this was a refuge.”
“Just calling a place a refuge doesn’t mean anything,” he shrugs, “If anybody wanted to protect these plants they would have put a guard out or something. If I had come through a month ago you would have walked through this field without ever realizing you missed them. I don’t think the world will suffer for their loss.”
“The…”
“You’re going to tell me that the food chain, the cycle of life is an intricately balanced system and that everything has its place but I’ll tell you that the world has been rebounding from extinctions for as long as there has been life and that sometimes, a lot of times, the blind groping of evolution on this planet produces something that’s just shit all around. You stepped on a piece of fairy fern back there, now look at the bottom of your shoe.”
There’s a frond trailing behind me like toilet paper and when I lift my foot I see that the base of the thing has worked its way up into the treads, digging into the rubber of my shoe. I pull my boot off quickly and feel pricks of pain in my foot as I do. My sock comes off, held to the inside of the shoe and bloodied. There are several small holes in my foot, each trickling blood. The fairy fern has infested the boot entirely and the leather pulls apart in my hand.
“Tell me you’re not going to throw that in the fire.”
“Of course I’m not,” I tell him, though it had crossed my mind, “You’re going to stop me?”
“Do I look like the fighting type?” he asks and I see again that he’s missing teeth, that there’s a knife at his side and dirt under his fingernails. He can’t be much older than me but he’s bigger and certainly stronger and he’s got a dirty shovel in his hands.
“Yes.”
“Well I’m tired after digging up so many plants.”
I’ve shaken most of the boot away from the fairy fern and it hangs limply now, watching the end of its species.
“How did you find this place?” I ask the man as he turns to leave.
“Read about it in a book. Watch your finger.”
The fairy fern has reached back up and wrapped a tendril around my pinky. I quickly shake it off and say nothing else as he goes. My own progress back to the truck is slow, walking with an injured, bare foot and stopping the fairy fern’s attempts to consume me. There’s a rat’s cage in the back of my truck that wasn’t there before, a rat’s cage and a few empty beer bottles. A scrap of paper, torn from another copy of Shitholes, is tucked up under my windshield wiper and it’s got a phone number scribbled in the margin. The entry is for a place called ‘The Kat Cirkus!’ and the guy’s crossed everything out and written ‘don’t bother looking for this one either.’
I cram the fairy fern into the rat cage and by the time I’m looking at it in the rearview mirror it’s already well-tangled around the bars. I’ll have to look into an aquarium.
-traveler
