I left town via Plum Street, out of Reno County and into McPherson, turning onto Highway 56 and its sign for yet another county, Rice. The band of asphalt stretched before us, shimmering and curved like a water moccasin. August’s sun scorched the flat fields, and we saw three different ditches burned black by grass fires. Grain silos disrupted the smooth tedium of the land, their silver cylinders reflecting nothing but blue sky. It seemed that Rice County had emptied of people. In one pasture, a group of palominos lazed beneath a single tree, so exhausted they didn’t bother looking up when Neil reached across my arm and blared the horn. We filed past the array of towns-Windom, Little River, Mitchell, Lyons, Chase, Ellinwood-all the while nearing Great Bend. As much as I wanted to hate Kansas and its smothering heat, it dawned on me that the state was almost beautiful, almost like home.
Neil’s mom consulted her map, filling us in on historic landmarks and population numbers. She scanned the sketch of Kansas from top to bottom, announcing noteworthy town names: “Protection. Nicodemus. Medicine Lodge.” She pointed to Holcomb, home of the murdered family in that famous book. She pointed to Abilene, Emporia, Dodge City. She showed us the tiny Herkimer, where an ex-boyfriend had lived. “What a waste. Driving that far just to be wooed by that shit-for-brains.”
Neil nodded as she spoke. He chewed the same gum he gave for foul balls at Sun Center, blowing bubbles as wide as his face.
Billboards announced Great Bend’s restaurants. The Black Angus, Smith’s Smorgasbord (“Down Home Cookin’ at Rock Bottom Billin’”), Jim-Bob’s, and Country Kitchen (“Free 72 oz. Steak if Eaten in One Sitting”). Neil’s mom leaned into the front seat. “Who’s hungry? Let’s get something in our systems before the wine and cheese and the trek through nature.”
We decided on the Kreem Kup. Its sign sported a towering ice cream cone that twinkled and glittered in white neon even in the blistering daylight. Mrs. McCormick led the way, the licorice still in her hand. The twenty-or-so customers stared as we stepped inside, some literally leaning from their vinyl booths, their heads craning toward us. The waitress scurried away from a frying cage of onion rings and took position at the counter cash register. Neil ordered for us.
“You’re not from around here, right?” the waitress asked.
“We’re exchange students from a small carrot farming community in Iceland,” Neil said, scratching unabashedly at his crotch. He indicated his mom with a nod. “She’s our geography teacher, who joined us to write a book about the flora and fauna of Kansas.” Neil’s lies were amazing.
“Is that right.” The waitress handed us a plastic placard displaying the number twenty-nine. I grabbed it and slid into a booth, across from Neil and his mom. On the café’s opposite side, a group of teenage boys watched us. They were all ugly. Their eyes gave close scrutiny to my haircut, my eyeliner, Neil’s earring, my clothes, my fever blister, and Mrs. McCormick’s breasts. I heard a drawling voice spout the word “homosexuals,” almost cheering it, as if it were the final word in a national anthem.
I mouthed “white trash.” Neil’s mom winked at me. “They’re just jealous,” she said. Neil stuck his chin in the air. He was relishing the moment, having grown accustomed. I feared he would spit or throw ice at them.
The waitress brought the food and plucked the twenty-nine card from our table. Cocktail toothpicks skewered each bun like teeny, festive swords. Mrs. McCormick’s pork tenderloin leaked a puddle of grease, tomato slices and wilted lettuce leaves beside it. “This should hit the spot,” she said.
Under the table, my foot brushed Neil’s ankle. He moved his leg and looked out the window.
We were half finished before the assholes at the neighboring table mustered enough courage to approach. One of them accepted some sort of dare and walked toward our booth. His front tooth was chipped. He wore a studded leather armband, black cowboy boots, ripped jeans, and a T-shirt showing an intricate drawing by some German “artist” who’d been popular with kids in art class at school. In the drawing, stairs spiralled and wound around and between and across each other, creating an optical illusion. The scene was the exact opposite of Kansas’s elementary landscapes.
The lamebrain crossed his arms, biceps flexing. He cleared his throat, and I knew something wounding and sarcastic would spew forth. “We could tell you weren’t from around here.” His chipped tooth resembled a minuscule guillotine, suspended from his puffy upper gum. “And we just wanted you to know”-pause-“this is an AIDS-free zone.”
My mouth opened. I wanted to bludgeon him, but instead attempted to send him an especially damaging telepathic message. Drop dead, shithead was all I could generate.
Mrs. McCormick fared better. She looked him straight in the eye. “You are an evil little man,” she said.
It was Neil’s turn. “Fuck off,” he told the kid. Then he leaned across the table, in full view of the entire café, and placed his tongue between my still-parted lips. He was only doing it for the effect, but I closed my eyes, forgetting the context for a split second, letting the restaurant’s humdrum atmosphere melt around me, cherishing the tongue that hadn’t been inside my mouth in months.
“Fucking faggots,” the kid said, and headed back to his buddies.
I remembered how, before sex, Neil would crunch cupfuls of ice; the chill that emanated from his tongue as it searched my mouth. There, in the Kreem Kup, his tongue tasted just the same, felt just as cold. I wanted him to thrust it past my teeth, down my throat, to choke me.
“Let’s leave,” Mrs. McCormick said. She dropped the remainder of her sandwich, and we scurried off. As we passed the jerks’ table, two legs arched out to trip us. Neil breathed in deep and belched at them, and I remembered the little boy’s voice on the tape I’d heard in his room. I still hadn’t asked him about that.
Without turning to the café’s windows, I could feel their eyes on us. “That was horrific,” Neil’s mom said. She crawled into the Gremlin and started laughing. “And greasy, too. We’ll not come to the Kreem Kup again.”
On to Cheyenne Bottoms. I pulled into a gas station, its green brontosaurus logo painted on a cement wall. Mrs. McCormick leaned from the back window and asked directions. “Two blocks that way, make a right, then two more blocks, watch for the sign,” the attendant said. He fanned his arms back and forth like windshield wipers.
We followed his instructions. I piloted the car onto a road that twisted away from Great Bend’s city limits. We moved farther from everything. Two signs advertised the nature conservatory, one in the right ditch, one in the left, simple black CHEYENNE BOTTOMS block letters against white. The left sign had been tampered with, and the words now read HEY TOM.
When we reached the place, the world seemed to open up and level out. Cheyenne Bottoms was a five-mile-by-five-mile stretch of marshland, a scene that seemed more typical of, say, Louisiana than Kansas. Its air was heavier, smokier. There were few trees; in their places stood tall, rustling grasses and ferns, azure reeds and bracken. Banks of cattails swayed in the breeze, poking from shallow ponds and mud hills. Everything looked scrubbed with bleach. “Amazing,” I said. We left the city behind, going deeper into this new realm.
Birds ran everywhere, their matchstick legs skittering across mud the color of peanut shells. Killdeer mingled about, thrilled, guests at an amazing party. Their forked footprints left zigzagging patterns on the mud. A cream-colored egret stood alone, looking forlorn. “Look there,” Neil’s mom said, indicating a glassy pond where wood ducks swam in figure eights. The scene looked unreal, almost comical. I half expected a crocodile’s jaw to pop forth and devour the birds.