BACK ON THE ROAD, Gene finally headed west to Metropolis on 145. It felt like this trip had already taken him longer than his usual Southern Illinois rides, and, with no direct route to his destination, he still had over an hour left. He passed what seemed like a hundred square man-made lakes and old barns in the last stages of decades-long slow-motion collapse. Trailers snoozed along dirt roads, and muddy ditches led to muddy tributaries which spilled into the muddy Ohio which emptied into the Big Muddy. There never seemed to be an end to mud in this part of Illinois. Gene speculated that a glacier had scraped off all the layers of dirt and mud around Carmi, leaving nothing but sand and silt, and dumped it all here.
As he rode west, the forests thickened with conifers, and small valleys plunged into dark greenery on either side of him. Sheared rock streaked with brown and yellow rust stains jutted up on either side of the highway. In one section of the road, many of the trees were snapped and bent and broken, but strangely on both sides of the highway in toward the center. It was like the center of the storm had roared down the broken yellow lines, pulling all the trunks and limbs inward as it tumbled to Metropolis. The broken trees rested on the ground and pointed toward him but slightly ahead, as if he rode into the mouth of a V, giving Gene the sense that the forces of nature were ushering him down the broken trail of highway. It reminded him of his grandfather’s old catfish box traps, with wooden slats which allowed the fish to swim in but not back out. His grandfather would pull out the big casket-shaped, wooden-slotted trap, break it open, and the catfish would spew out all over the bank. When they got home, his grandfather would nail each one to an old plank, then one by one hatchet off their heads, leaving the headless bodies to flex and curl in the sun like they were doing morning exercises. When they were done flexing, he’d clean them and feed the whole family, distant cousins included. He tossed the heads to the farm cats, who snatched up the staring-eyed triangles and darted into the bushes.
An hour from Cave-in-Rock, as his own shadow grew short and squat on the shoulder in front of him, Highway 145 turned onto 45 West and signs of modern life occurred more frequently. Gene passed several signs telling him “Giant Superman Statue Ahead.” A blue highway sign that said ATTRACTIONS listed only one: Five Star Casino and Hotel. A population sign read 6,500, which seemed as exaggerated as his mother’s stories. He passed another sign in front of a brick house that looked to have been converted into an office: Dr. Gary Brush, Dentist. Gene wondered if the eye doctor was named Larry Lens. The KFC was one of the old model Kentucky Fried Chicken stores that still had a giant red and white Colonel Sanders bucket at the top of a pole, though the red had long faded to a pale pink and the white had yellowed to the color of old newspaper. A little further down the road he passed faded plastic signs for a Taco Bell and a 7-Eleven.
Then to his left Gene saw his old friend Big John standing at the edge of the parking lot a few feet from the road. It looked like the same Big John he’d grown up with in Carmi, the same grinning plastic figure who carried four big bags of groceries brimming with cartons of milk and eggs, a few huge corn cobs sticking out of the top of one bag. Maybe Gene would like Metropolis after all. Even in his late thirties, he still loved Big John, and his heart thrilled driving past the hollow giant much the same as it had when he was a boy.
A little past Big John’s, he pulled into a Huck’s to gas up. Standing at the pump, Gene thought of the place his mother had mentioned, the place where Miller used to hang out and get drunk. He still couldn’t place the name, but knew it had “Egypt” in it. Little Egypt Inn? This part of the state, nicknamed Little Egypt, was full of small towns named after ancient biblical regions—Cairo, Lebanon, Palestine, Bethlehem. After gassing up, he walked into Huck’s to ask for directions, and a white teenager with what looked like a small barbell in his nose and his pants sagging low, revealing not underwear in true sagging hip-hop fashion but blue shorts, told him the place was called Egyptian Trails Inn and to keep going straight on 45 until he reached the town square and to look on his left a few blocks past Superman.
At 11:30 Gene rode into the heart of the city, if one could say Metropolis still had one. The place looked like its heart had been cut out and used for catfish bait, sucked as dry of its nutrients as Carmi soil. The houses looked boarded up or abandoned, but Gene could tell most were still occupied because of the satellite dishes on the roofs. Uncollected trash piled on corners, and cars in various states of dismemberment sprawled on yards and in driveways. Even Emanuel Baptist Church looked abandoned.
Aside from nosing around at the bar, Gene had no plan. Instead of making one during his three-hour ride, he’d let his mind meander the byways of the past. Now he’d have to wing it.
He passed the Metropolis Planet, with a gold globe not much bigger than a bird bath on the front yard of the one-story, flat-roofed brick building. It was surreal driving by where Miller had spent every day of the last two years. He thought about stopping, but noticed a Massac County Sheriff’s Department car parked in the small lot to the side and decided it wasn’t a good time. They were probably already looking for Miller. Instead, Gene followed the signs directing him to the giant Superman. He waited for the Vandalia Bus Lines bus, full of retirees, suckers, and marks, to cross the intersection due south, toward the river and Five Star Hotel and Casino, the top of which he could see above the mostly ramshackle houses.
After the bus went by, Gene headed west past an old brick US Post Office, an intricate art-deco-inspired building, and the crumbling façade of a brick movie theater. The theater looked like it had been built in the 1940s, but judging by the rotting wooden doors, had been abandoned since the 1970s. The town square looked like a thousand others across this part of the country. Each one formed around an old two-story courthouse, made of brick or stone, and in the ample lawn surrounding the building rusted some war monument—a World War I cannon or a stack of welded cannonballs or, if the town were lucky, and old fighter plane. Nearby a huge slab of granite listed the names of its long-forgotten dead. Metropolis was different only because on its lawn, instead of a war monument, stood a fifteen-foot Superman, in his slightly faded blue suit with slightly faded red and yellow trim and slightly faded red cape, standing on a podium that bore the caption “TRUTH—JUSTICE—THE AMERICAN WAY.” His fifteen feet made him the smaller brother of Big John down the street, with the same shit-eating grin on his face. A family had spilled out of their minivan, probably on the way back home from the hotel and casino, to take each other’s pictures at Superman’s knees.
Gene rode slowly around the town square, looping past the Superman Museum, then headed north on what would normally function as the main drag, Market Street, if this were a thriving metropolis. Instead it reminded him of the sham town built in Blazing Saddles—a fake town, a ghost town painted up to look like a quaint old town square. Window after storefront window of vacant shops had their glass painted in bright colors “Ice Cream Parlour,” “Barber Shoppe,” and “Ye Olde Antique Shoppe.” Behind the glass was barely illuminated nothing—or piles of boxes and dusty furniture. In the rare case a shop was not a façade, the sign invariably read “Consignment Shop”—the people’s last unnecessary possessions scraped together and hocked next to everybody else’s last unnecessary possessions.
On the left corner, Gene saw an old hand-cut wooden sign painted in log-letters: “Egyptian Trails Inn.” It was as good a starting place as any. Besides, he was hungry and the smell of fries from the exhaust fan filled the air, making his mouth water. He turned around and parked his bike on the street a few feet from the door and went in.
It was cool and dark inside, and he waited for his eyes to adjust as the door closed behind him. He could see a few rough wood tables in dark oak lining the section to his left, all unoccupied, and several men perched on stools at the long wooden bar. Two fans whirled smoky air from the high tin ceiling above, and dead furry animals and animal heads, looking from their dust and mange like they’d been shot long before Gene was born, hung on the dark wooden walls.
The bartender was busy rinsing glasses and ignored Gene as he climbed onto a barstool. Gene could feel the patrons’ eyes boring through him, although no one else seemed to be looking up either.
I haven’t even farted yet, Gene thought and then considered that strangers wouldn’t have received much warmer treatment in Carmi. For several anguishing minutes, Gene wondered if he would be ignored indefinitely and was about to take out his cell phone so he could pretend to be occupied, but the bartender finally wiped his hands on a towel, looked up at Gene, and said, “What can I getcha?” He was a slightly stooped, round-shouldered man, with balding colorless hair and a reddish face. He wore a short-sleeved shirt with a collar and an apron and looked to be in his early fifties. His surprisingly amiable face looked chafed by long hours and worry.
Gene looked down the bar to see what the other customers were doing. Still none of them looked up. An old guy in a John Deere cap and a middle-aged man in a Polo shirt ate sandwiches out of red baskets with fries on one side and a small mound of lettuce or tomato and pickle on the other. Another guy with bushy sideburns and a sun-angered face that could have been anywhere from his late twenties to his mid forties was trying to prolong finishing the last third of his beer. His clothes were smeared with oil and grease and looked almost as if he’d slept in them, and his Adam’s apple protruded sharply from his throat above an oil-smeared neck and blue mechanic’s shirt. He wore his hair in a mullet, but it was so tight and wiry it looked like a helmet, kind of a helmullet.
“Bud Light and a water?” Gene asked.
The barman reached into the cooler and popped one open and put it on a napkin in front of Gene.
“Eating with us today?” he asked, sliding him a small laminated menu.
“What’s good?” Gene asked.
“Burgers are famous. Roast beef is good. Fish and chips today, Friday.”
“Does the roast beef come with au jus?”
“It can.”
“I’ll have that.”
The man bowed his head slightly then went over to a window at the other end of the bar and put an order ticket on the counter. A bulky black man, who looked as if he had played football in high school, maybe college, but had since sucked in through his pores a decade of kitchen grease, took the order and disappeared.
The barman came back and put another beer in front of the guy with sideburns.
“First time to Metropolis?” the barman asked.
Gene decided to play dumb. It was a natural tactic for him, not because he was stupid but because it was the first line of defense for folks in Carmi. People never let on how much they knew, which was always considerably more than other people wished, and it was a skill Gene perfected during his six years in the military.
“Just passing through, enjoying the countryside.”
“Good place to stop.”
“Thought I might visit my brother.”
“He live here?”
“Moved here a few years ago.”
“Yeah? We know everybody here. What’s his name?”
“Miller Barnes.”
The tension immediately doubled, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. The two people eating down the bar froze in mid-bite. Nobody said anything for what seemed like a long time, and out of a need to fill up the air again with something, anything, Gene said, “Busy man. We’ve been out of touch lately, and since I was passing through…. You know him?”
“Sure, we know Miller. Comes here all the time. Edits the paper. Metropolis Planet and Southern Scene.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t there.”
The room began filling up again with movement and noises. The cook made several stainless steel clangs in the kitchen, and the guy in the John Deere cap and the guy in the Polo shirt continued eating. Helmullet took a swig of beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.
“You talk to Cora?”
Gene shook his head.
“She’ll know where he his. Probably tracking down some crazy story or other. She’s advertising manager, production manager, and girlfriend. Sweet girl. She’ll know where to find him.”
“I’ll stop by again on my way out,” said Gene.
“First time you been here, huh?” asked Polo.
“Yep.”
There was another silence. John Deere finally looked up from his red basket. Gene could see various sets of eyes meeting here and there across the bar.
“I’m from up near Carmi.”
“Know Carmi,” said the bartender. “Cross the Wabash from New Harmony.”
Gene nodded his head again.
“So what do you think of our little town?” asked Polo.
“Like it,” Gene said. “Just got here, but the people seem friendly enough. There’s Superman outside to protect us from evil doers.”
“Superman’s been on vacation a while,” John Deere croaked.
The people around the bar laughed.
“What they mean is some people think the casino hasn’t done right by this town, and we’re worse off now than we were before.” The bartender went back to rinsing glasses. “This here’s about the last locally owned place in town.”
“This tavern?”
“Egyptian Trails used to be an inn, then a B&B, but we closed all that up. People usually come here now just to boycott the casino. This is it. Everything else is shut down or fast-food chain. Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep this place going.”
“You’re doing OK, Kenny,” said Polo. “It’s not like you have lots of competition.”
“Not like I have lots of customers, either. People can drink practically for free at the casino.”
“Shit.” Helmullet lit up a Marlboro Light and blew a stream of smoke high into the air. Apparently the state smoking ban was not enforced at Egyptian Trails.
“True enough,” said Polo. “But you still do pretty good business at night.”
“Kenny!” said the cook, appearing at the window long enough to put a red basket down on top of the lunch ticket then disappearing back into the greasy kitchen.
Kenny put the basket in front of Gene.
“Another Bud Light?”
“No, thanks. Could I still have that water?”
“Yes, sir-ee! Sorry about that. Got to talking and forgot all about it.”
As Gene ate his roast beef, nice and pink, just as he liked it, with a little plastic cup of au jus on the side, Polo paid and left. John Deere lit up a Marlboro and took a long, slow drag into his leather-sack lungs.
“That ain’t the original Superman anyway, just so’s you know.” His voice was low, confiding, like he was finally letting him in on an important secret. “The original got all shot up. Some local fellers wanted to see if he was really bulletproof.” He took another drag of his cigarette. “He wasn’t.”
“This one’s supposed to be,” said Kenny, solicitously. “Nobody tried to prove it yet far as I know.”
“Only thing this town got left,” John Deere spat, smashing out his cigarette, He got up to go, leaving behind everything green in his basket—pickle, lettuce, parsely. “Fucking Superman.”
A long silence grew between them after John Deere left. Kenny, Gene, and Helmullet seemed already to have run out of things to talk about. Before it grew unbearably awkward, another man breezed in, a thin man who looked in his early sixties and had a quick toothy grin, sharp features, and wire-framed glasses.
“Afternoon, Mayor McDaniels,” said Kenny.
“Good afternoon, Alderman,” he said in a sandpapery voice, as if the lower and upper registers had been sanded off, “but I’m not the mayor yet, not by a long shot. There’s two other strong candidates on that ballot.”
“We all know you’re the best man for the job, Billy.”
“That’s not for me to say. That’s for youse guys to figure. All’s I can say is we all make mistakes, but there’s no sense in looking back. Gotta keep looking ahead and not point no fingers.”
“Born politician,” Helmullet quipped into his empty beer.
Gene finished his sandwich, wiped his mouth and hands with the paper napkins, then washed everything down with a swallow of water.
“Check?” asked Kenny.
“Please.”
Gene paid the bill in cash and left a four-dollar tip for the owner. He wanted to make friends if he could and was certain Kenny knew more than he was telling. He was apparently an alderman, after all.
“You ask Cora at the Planet and she’ll tell you where to find Miller. If she don’t know, nobody does. Miller’s brother,” he said to the newest customer.
“Miller Barnes?” asked Billy McDaniel.
Gene nodded his head at the mayoral candidate and walked out again into a solid wall of heat and humidity.