So a few days ago I’m hitching west on I-80 when this guy pulls over in one of those huge four-door pickups. He doesn’t talk, not even in the beginning when everyone asks you where you’re going – he just drives, slapping the steering wheel to the music real fast with both hands like the coked-up boys back home who end up going to CBGBs just to dance it off. He’s got some manic shit on his tape deck: Barracuda which I like, some guy named Jon-Luc Ponty which I don’t like, that song The Devil Went Down to Georgia which is just fucking stupid. But at least it wasn’t that Tammy Wynette shit I had to listen to on my last ride, with this anorexic trucker who kept popping speed and washing it down with a mix of coffee and Coke. I thought I might get Hersheyed by that hopped-up psycho so I pretended to sleep all the way through Indiana.
After a while he switches tapes and asks me where I’m headed. I usually say west and then look out the window, like I’m searching for something vast and mysterious. I know it’s retarded, but what else am I going to say? But this time I point straight ahead. I’m going to wherever this highway ends, I tell him. How’s that for a destination.
I reckon it ends at the Pacific Ocean, he says.
Then California here I come, I say. I think, maybe I could see the place where the mountains come down and then there’s the water.
He asks me where I’m coming from, so I tell him, and then I wait for the usual Damn, I could never live there. You got bullets coming in your windows at night? But he just nods and says cool. Name’s Jonny, he says. No h. And he sticks out his hand.
I shake it, all right, but I keep looking out the window. News flash: Iowa ain’t flat. It’s rolling hills, all green and pretty like some kind of movie – big change from all the trees, dead deer and concrete I saw for the first three days. And there’s miles and miles of corn, but not a single tractor. It’s like it just grows itself. I thought I’d see the mountains by now, but no way. It’s like the Midwest is some kind of marathon to get through, to see if you want to get to the real west.
He asks me why I left, and I guess I should have expected it, but I made it all the way through Pennsylvania, Ohio and two I states without anyone asking. So I keep staring out the window until he puts another tape in and starts drumming on the wheel again. Kansas, for Christ’s sake. Dust in the wind.
Why did I leave? Cause my brother’s an asshole, how’s that. Cause I broke up with Eileen and then felt like an idiot. Cause maybe some things I don’t want to talk about.
Then get this, there’s an exit sign that says Brooklyn, 2 miles. I shit you not: there’s a Brooklyn Iowa. I tell Jonny to just let me off and I’ll take the A train home. He turns down the manic violin shit, points out the window and tells me he lives there. Heartland of the heartland, he says. He tells me he just came back from Iowa City, news to me cause I didn’t know Iowa had a city. He went to “State” last year, just a semester, before he had to drop out. Now he drives an hour just to go to a summer class once a week.
So now it’s my turn to say cool. Believe you me, sometimes leaving is a lot tougher than sticking it out. And at least he got into a college. Me, I don’t know what I’m going to do. My guidance counselor told me I should apply this year, but there’s no way my old man can afford it and it’s not like I’m going to get a scholarship for stickball, right?
Jonny asks me about it and I tell him I don’t know, maybe I’m done with all that. I tell him I’m lucky I passed my junior year, but just between me and you, I got like the third highest average in my class and I won the Science Fair award. Not that anyone knows that, of course, cause the day they gave out the awards my whole family was at my lard-ass brother’s state championship game. He made second team All-American at catcher, you can look it up. In the picture he’s the one that looks like Babe Ruth.
I look at myself in the side mirror, to see if there’s been a transformation yet. My hair is normally dark, but now it’s greasy like a Puerto Rican’s. I got a little stubble on my face, which looks cool, and of course zits everywhere, not cool. I stick out my lower jaw so I look like the Boss. I’ve been grinding my teeth again, so every time I wake up I have this dead rat breath and when I spit, brown shit comes out. I haven’t brushed my teeth in a while, let’s put it that way.
I look over at Jonny. It’s like we’re the same picture, but he’s the positive and I’m the negative. We don’t have too many blonds in the Bronx, except in Throgs Neck, the Irish section, where Eileen lives with all her fellow McCartys. Eileen’s got pimply skin and a cute nose and she kisses with her mouth wide open like she’s at the dentist. She wears a baseball cap like the one Jonny has on, only his doesn’t have a team name like the Mets or Yankees, it’s got the name of some company. So around here, I’m thinking, they must root for tractors.
Jonny tells me he’ll let me off at the exit so I can continue my journey to the Promised Land. He says he’s sorry he can’t take me any further. Then he turns down the music and clears his throat.
Say, he says, you want to see about it?
See about what, I say. Brooklyn, Iowa?
He gets all embarrassed. Starts the wheel tapping again.
I look back out the window, way out, to where the sky and the ground come together. So this is what a horizon looks like. It’s still light out, but there’s a star up there, clear as day. Or maybe it’s a planet, maybe that’s what they look like.
So I tell him sure, absolutely. Let’s see about it. I slap the dashboard and it almost causes an accident. He’s a little jumpy, this one. What the hell, I say, I could use a bath.
He nods, goes back inside that little concert hall in his head, then exits and goes down the main road for a while. But then, get this. He cuts off onto a dirt road, yells out a kind of yee-haw and turns right into a fucking cornfield. We’re plowing over the stalks, the truck’s crashing up and down, our heads are banging up against the roof. Brown and green things splatter onto the windshield, Jonny’s laughing like a maniac and he puts the wipers on but that just smears it all into mud and we can’t see a goddamn thing. And you know what it is? Grasshoppers! Unbelievable. Big as frogs. I almost say to him Hey cut the shit you stupid fuck, but I figure this must be a shortcut to somewhere, right?
But I’m wrong, like I am about most things. He has no idea what he’s doing. Next thing you know he’s laughing and swerving the truck around, getting stuck in the mud. Finally he stops and looks at me and his face is all red like he was crying. Puts it in reverse until we get back to the road.
I ask him if he’s okay, but really I’m thinking I got myself into something I can’t get out of. After all, this is where all the weird psycho shit happens – out here, where everyone’s all white and decent.
He starts driving again, tapping to the music like some kind of Morse code, like SOS. Just trying to show you a good time, he says. He keeps his hands moving.
Who the hell knows.
So we get to Brooklyn, Iowa and it’s like one of those Norman Rockwell pictures in my Aunt Carm’s house: red barns, cornfields, happy yellow dogs, and those huge bullet-shaped towers I can’t remember what they’re called. We drive down a long straight road with mailboxes a mile apart until Jonny finally says Here we are, home sweet home. Big white house, blue shutters. American flag blowing in the breeze. Little red tricycle on the front lawn. One of those windmill things on the mailbox. Swing set with a little blond kid on it. I feel like tapping my heels together and saying There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.
Inside it smells like Thanksgiving, and the whole family gets up to see what the cat dragged in. There’s a skinny blonde girl so right away I’m thinking about Eileen; there’s a dad with a beer in his hand; a red-cheeked mom with her apron on like she wasn’t expecting company. The little boy, he stays out in the yard, swinging on the swing, humming to himself.
What throws it all off is the mom. When Jonny introduces me the dad and the little sister give me a friendly hello, shaking my hand like I’m a judge from the All-American Family Contest, but the mom, she gives me a little wave, walks down the hall and doesn’t say a word. Not exactly June Cleaver. Then again her son just brought home a hitcher that looks like road kill, so.
In the living room there’s a huge picture of the family, one of those cheesy ones with the puffy clouds. They all look a few years younger. The sister, Leah’s her name, is in a cheerleader’s outfit, that’s right a cheerleader’s outfit: royal blue, white and red, same colors as my school back home, good old P.S. 71. Jonny has a football in his hand and one of those old-fashioned college sweaters, way too big for him, black with a gold letter I on it. The dad’s sort of slouched, and his hair is parted so straight you could see your reflection in it. He’s got one hand on the mom’s shoulder, the other on Jonny’s. Mom looks pregnant, her boobs so big she could feed the whole family. No one’s smiling for real – they all have those fake, tight smiles – but still, we’re talking All-American here. In my family picture back home, we’re all smiling big smiles. I mean, the old man beats the crap out of me and my brother’s a hard-on, but still, we’re all smiling.
They’re just getting dinner ready, even though the sun is still up. The mom, who ditched the apron and put on a tight pink shirt, comes into the kitchen and says Please call me Johanna. She points to the pot of boiling water and lets me know I’m welcome to dinner, mind you it’s nothing special, just ham and mashed potatoes. Then in her quiet voice she tells me I can stay at her home for as long as I want. How about that? For all she knows I could be some mad rapist, right?
The dad asks me where I’m from, and when I tell him he says Huh! Never catch me living there. Then he looks around and everyone gives him a little laugh, except Jonny, who looks at me like Don’t listen to him.
The mom asks if I’d like to go get myself some corn, and I look at Jonny to see if he’s driving me to the local Pathmark, but he nods his head to the backyard, starts to get up, but then sits back down like he has one of those electric-fence collars on.
Not straight back, he says to me. That there’s for feed. Head towards the silo.
See, it’s like they have their own language out here. It’s not even English.
In the big field the stalks are only up to my shoulders, but out by the silo it’s over my head. I tear off a few corns, and when I do I get attacked by grasshoppers. I try to pick one up off my shoulder, but it takes me a while, and when I finally get it, he tries to bite my finger and I lose him. I’m not saying I was afraid of it, I just never seen one before. Why would anyone be afraid of a grasshopper?
I hear the dad inside yelling at Jonny for getting the truck all muddy, so I stay outside a while, holding the corn. I take a deep breath of clean country air and my throat starts burning.
When the yelling stops I go back in, and the little kid is in my seat. I dump my harvest on the counter, go over to the table and mess up his hair. It’s just like Jonny’s, all light and yellow like the corn. Hey little guy, where’d you come from? I say, and as soon as I say that, they all stop smiling. All of a sudden it’s like we’re playing Truth or Dare, and they’re all scared I’m gonna make them go first.
Nowhere, the kid says, like it’s the first word he’s ever spoken, and everyone laughs like heh heh. After that I don’t see the kid at the table for two days.