Later we wrote our postcards in the car, parked next to the post office. The doors were open. To keep the post office, the natives changed the name of their town from Santa Fe to Santa Claus. Now, besides the amusement park, the post office is the town's only industry. All the letters come here. All the ones addressed to the North Pole. All the lists. All the directions home. We came here to mail some from the eye of the storm. All the stamps were airmail. It is too hot for Christmas, too still. You could hear the sleigh bells.
“Look. Look,“ I said, pointing across the evaporating parking lot to the back gate of Santa Claus Land, “Santa Claus.“ In shirtsleeves and Bermudas, he swung a black lunchbox as he went to work. He was sweating and he wasn't whistling. She didn't look up.
“Where?“ she said.
But he was already gone through the gate and hidden behind the scraps of newspaper caught in the Cyclone fence. I pointed with my finger.
“There.“
FRENCH LICK
We came into the valley from Santa Claus and skirted the grand hotel fronting the road, a walled city. We crossed the old Monon tracks, the spur where the private cars from Chicago were switched right up to the door of the resort. “Monon,“ you said. I told you again about Hoosier, who's there. The French in Indiana. We stayed down the road in a motel — half in French Lick, half in West Baden. Alsace-Lorraine. “A lick,“ I said, “was for the wild game. The seasoning in the ground.“ I showed you the salt blocks in the supermarket.
“Kiss me, there,“ you said.
We walked back over to the grand hotel. In the coffee shop you had a tongue sandwich, and the waitress behind the counter said I was the first to order a bagel and cream cheese “since I've worked here. What do I do?“ Next to us on the little stools, a couple argued about the food. She complained about her peas in French. He scolded her in English. We came for the waters, you said. But really you only wanted your postcards canceled with French Lick. We played Space Invaders in the arcade, and they kept coming. Then we lingered on the veranda, following the deck chairs to the spring. The spring was in a gazebo, bubbling through a pool of green water. “Kiss me, here,“ you said, but the sulfur smell was too strong. “If nature can't Pluto will.“ You read the sign. “This is what they came for?“ you said. “This is what they came for, the presidents and gangsters?“
The next morning you wrote your postcards, naked, at the desk. Maids were making up the next room. I watched David Letterman on TV making jokes about Muncie. Turning, you said, “Let's,“ licking ten cents Justice, “go there next.“ On my way to the shower, I stopped behind you. You were writing that animals need their licks. The sounds you make, the ones that are not quite language, name nothing.
“Knock, knock,“ I say in your ear. “Who's there?“ you say from another world.
MUNCIE
In Muncie, we are staying at the Hotel Roberts, downtown. And, though the elevator is automatic, a man wearing a Nickel Plate conductor's hat pushes the buttons. We have learned that the third Middletown study is in progress. We are mistaken for sociologists by the old men we sit with in the lobby when we watch TV. Before we can quiet them with the truth, they tell us their church affiliations and bathroom practices.
The first night here, we ordered a pizza by phone from a campus takeout to be delivered to our room. Since then we have gone through the yellow pages for anything that will be delivered. When it arrives, Theresa answers the door wrapped in the hotel bath towel. After awhile we begin to receive all sorts of things we never ordered — pints of macaroni salad, goldfish cartons of fried rice, heads of lettuce. They are delivered by college boys wearing Ball U T-shirts, who then sculpture obscene animals with the warm tinfoil. Everything seems to have the same tomato paste base.
If we leave the Roberts at all, it is to watch the summer basketball leagues play on a court next to one leg of the high school drag. The cars go by honking. The players glisten in the single scoop lamp. The backboard is perforated metal used in temporary runways. The hoop is a red halo with not even a metal chain net dangling from the rim. Or we go to the Ball factory and watch them make mason jars, press the rubber lips to the tin lids. They have shelves of jars the Ball brothers canned seventy-five years ago. The seal holds stewed tomatoes with yellow seeds, embryonic eggplants, black butter chips and sweet gherkins no one will taste, okra, of all things. We have been there several times, and unlike other factory tours, there is nothing to sample unless we care to can and wait a season. We do keep our loose pennies in a Ball jar, and Theresa makes the boys reach in it for their tip, a monkey trap. They can't withdraw their clenched fist through the narrow mouth of the jar without letting go of the money. She leaves them laughing, closing the door against them with the flat of her foot.
But all of this is typical here, or, because we do it in Muncie, it is typical. We have seen the sociologists on the sidewalks, shielding their eyes with their clipboards, trying to cross the street. They take pictures of barbershops and trophy stores. Or they sit and count cars in and out of the parking lot or look for butts beneath their feet. In every room there are questions to be answered with special pencils. “What brings you here?“ In each case, love. We write that our dream is to open all the cans one at a time and eat vegetables older than our grandfathers. We want everything delivered to us. Theresa wears nothing but two pasties of pepperoni. I am reading books on pickling. The scientists will figure out what is going on here.
The I States
IDAHO
As he plants, he dreams of potatoes. Enough already with the potatoes, he dreams, but continues to dream of potatoes. In the mountains of Peru, farmers grow potatoes above the clouds in terraced fields each no bigger than a backyard in Illinois. Hundreds of varieties are all mixed together. The tubers are the size of marbles, golf balls, gooseberries, gallstones, mothballs. They look like each kind of toe on a farmer's foot. Potatoes that look like carrots. Potatoes that look like radishes. Potatoes that look like potatoes. And the fields are not contoured but planted in rows with the furrows pointing straight down the slope so when it rains all that Peruvian rain it doesn't rain potatoes. The water runs off quickly, spilling like waterfalls over the sides of the mountains onto fields below before it has a chance to erode the crop on the one above. One day, he thinks, he will buy up the abandoned rail bed here and turn it over, planting his potatoes in one long pass, no turning the machinery. One swipe for the planting. One long haul for the hilling up. Another single pass to root out the fruit that will bubble up in his wake and float on the tide of the tilth. In Peru, the potatoes come in all colors. There is the purple potato. There is the red potato like the red potato here in Idaho. There is an orange potato the size of an orange. There is a green potato that isn't poisonous. There are hundreds of different browns. There is the blue potato, the blue potato of Peru. In Idaho, his seed is certified.
ILLINOIS
The way they see it, it's their job to strip-mine this state. They go from one little town to the next looking for the mom-and-pop shops going out of business and buy up all the inventory they've had in the basement or attics or out back since the forties, the fifties, the sixties. Sundresses and alpaca jackets. Indian bead belts and saddle shoes in their original boxes. Leather letter jackets and tartan jumpers with the mint safety pin. Pegged pants and silk Hawaiian shirts. Rooster ties and Arrow collars. Brownie sashes and Cub Scout kerchiefs. Untouched and packaged, the package as valuable as the thing inside. It's all shipped back East or to the West Coast. And they must eat in the diners on the main streets where they have always imagined the women cooking there would turn to them at the counters and display the secret to the homemade mashed potatoes. Look! The implement itself. The worn wood handle. The chrome tang. The oscillating business end of the utensil, still caked with the milk-white paste of potato. But that never happens. The breaded tenderloins are served with french fries in plastic baskets lined with stained waxed paper.