It was somewhere between Iowa and Nebraska, forced off the highway by a heavy downpour, trapped in my car in front of the Midcountry Chicken & Fries, a fast-food outlet that looked like it could use a facelift, that I began to feel my own presence in the middle of America. I had no signal on my phone. The rain was showing no sign of abating. And I had no idea where I was.
There was a gas station to my left, thirty-five-odd yards away, and beyond that the edge of a cornfield, or what looked like a cornfield.
The sound of the rain, monotonous and hypnotic, became the sound of memory, replaying my time in Boston and the chain of events that brought me to America.
I heard Perky’s voice, soft but firm in its reproach. ‘You blew it, Frank, you blew it big time.’ She’d slammed the trunk of her car after saying this, watching me transfer my suitcase to the red Prius at the Avis car rental on Mass Avenue, where she was dropping me off. I wondered out loud how I’d blown it, to which, folding her arms across her breasts and leaning back on the trunk of her car, she responded in a sharp voice, ‘That’s the problem, Frank, you can’t seem to get outside your head.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked, looking her in the eye for the first time since leaving her house that morning. She did not answer. Instead she sighed and shook her head. Then she fished out a brown Manila envelope, handed it to me, and gave me a long hug.
I tried to force Perky off my mind by straining to see the shape of three wind turbines to my right, their expansive blades almost fading into haze and low clouds, rotating slowly but effectively through empty space.
Cars pulling in and leaving. Middle Americans entering and exiting the fast-food outlet. I, too, needed to go inside for lunch. I was starving. The thought of starving to death in the centre of America’s corn belt amused me.
For some reason, I guess it was the thought of corn, I recalled a documentary I had seen many years earlier, about Khrushchev’s visit to Roswell Garst’s farm in Coon Rapids, Iowa, how both men bonded over that great crop, how ordinary farmers and locals, outside the volcanic hotness of Cold War politics, came out en masse to see the Russian leader.
I was so lost in my corn fantasies that I didn’t hear the sound of someone knocking on the trunk of my car. The rain was still falling, pounding harder and harder. I thought the sound was coming from the inside of my car, perhaps something installed by the rental company to remind me of a problem with the engine. Then I assumed it was the echo from a car door slamming shut over at the gas station. But it grew louder, repeating itself, a series of bang, bang, bangs with smaller bangs in-between.
Alarmed, I looked back but could not make out what it was.
I saw a shape, blurred by the rain, towering behind.
And then it banged again, once, walked around to the passenger side, and tapped on the window. There it was, a broad-shouldered man in a worn army raincoat, smiling and knocking and demanding attention.
Looking at him – the missing front teeth, the sunken eyes, the tufted hair from his broad nostrils – I felt trapped and obliged to be nice. Besides, he was a ‘brother’, and I could see him mouthing it, ‘Brother, please…’ with his head cocked to one side, and with the stupid rain now a drizzle we were both in full view, with the staff at the Midcountry Chicken & Fries able to see us through the wide window.
I thought to myself, if this was the streets of Port Jumbo, or anywhere in Nigeria, I would have done one of two things without feeling any type of ‘brotherly’ guilt, or worry that I might be reinforcing or perpetuating or breaking any ‘brotherly’ code: I’d either frown and ignore him, or yell something like, ‘My man, the country no good, no money,’ at which the beggar would leave or reply with a string of insults. It was a game of mutual loathing played by the down-and-out against the down-and-out, without recourse to some abstract ideology or morality. But here in the heart of America, in a space where we were the only ‘black bodies’, I felt like I needed to respond to a ‘brother’, to perform a humane gesture.
For a moment I had a feeling he knew what he was doing. I thought I saw a twinkle in his eyes, as if he was saying, ‘Ha, you better be brotherly or…’
And to make things worse he had a small cardboard sign that announced his status as a veteran: fought for the united states.
So I raised my palm to plead for patience. I mouthed, ‘Wait, I’ll give you something.’
He waved to decline, and mouthed a reply, ‘No, I don’t want your money,’ and gestured towards the entrance to the Midcountry Chicken & Fries.
He wanted lunch and was firm about it.
I pictured the growing sea of eyes, watching, curious.
Ahead, I saw a plump fellow in cargo trousers at the entrance to the Midcountry Chicken & Fries fiddling with his wallet, or pretending to do so, casting us quick glances. I had seen him earlier on when he pulled up in a white utility van and spent a minute or two considering us, squinting, unable to conceal his concern. The ‘brother’ and I were already a spectacle in the corn belt, in a place where, in my mind, there was little or no drama besides farm animals escaping captivity. The presence of two curious figures was enough spectacle, with the potential to spin into a tale that would resound and retell itself for years to come.
Again, I raised my palm. He gestured to press his point: he wanted me to buy him lunch.
I squeezed out a smile.
I performed hospitality.
I could sense his satisfaction at my defeat.
I stepped out of the car and inhaled the fresh smell of the wet open fields nearby.
I took another deep breath and offered a contrived smile.
I noticed that the smell of the open fields had been displaced by a violent odour that was hard to place. For a second the open sewers of Port Jumbo, their contents overflowing, flashed before me. I shuddered and repressed the memory.
I offered him a handshake. The texture of his palm was coarse as sandpaper, and his stone-solid grip, almost crushing my vegetable-soft palm, struck me as an attempt to humiliate me.
‘Firm handshake,’ I mumbled and repeated my contrived smile.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and cackled as though I’d said something funny.
I ignored his laughter and pointed to the door, where I saw a couple entering, the man awkwardly holding the door for a woman who seemed to hesitate, as if to say, ‘Gee, thanks, but I was going for the knob.’
The stranger made no attempt to move, to follow my hint. He had stopped laughing. And now, as if on cue, he steadied his gaze, holding my eyes with his.
If the eyes are windows to the soul, his were gateways that led nowhere. What you saw was all you got.
We were almost the same height, but his wild hair gave him an extra inch or two. And his longish face, in contrast to my squarish head, created the illusion that he was taller.
I spotted a small, almost invisible scar above his left eye, between his brow and lid, that made it look like he was winking. I averted my gaze and began to walk towards the entrance to the Midcountry Chicken & Fries, hoping he would follow me and that after lunch he would go his own way and leave me to go mine.
I’ll regret this, I said to myself, a few paces ahead of him.
At the entrance, I turned to see him standing where I left him, his eyes on me, his mouth drawn as if a sneer was brewing.
It was warm inside the Midcountry Chicken & Fries. The walls to the left, right and back were painted white, changing to yellow on the other side of the counter. The counter was red except for the wooden surface. The entire space was smaller than I had thought. No windows except the wide rectangular glass by the entrance.
With just a few tables arranged against the walls, leaving room only between the counter and the entrance, I saw myself standing in the centre, bare and vulnerable. I tried to read the badly calligraphed menu above the counter.
I approached the two staff, one slender and the other not-quite-slender, both motionless, standing side by side.
‘I’ll have a veggie burger,’ I said, and the slender one, breaking her blank face with a grin, responded, ‘Oh, honey, we’ve not had those in months, you know, they’re not popular around here.’
I took stock of everyone I had seen so far and I agreed with her.
I re-examined the meat-centric menu. ‘The cheeseburgers look good,’ a flat voice spoke, just inches away from the back of my head. ‘I’ll have one,’ he added. I turned and it was my man standing there, holding his oversized raincoat.
‘A cheeseburger?’ the not-quite-slender one asked.
I sensed a sharpness to her voice, a marked difference from the sweet ring of her colleague’s response to my order. I was relieved to know that they saw the difference between us, that I was the real customer and my man, now inching forward to stand beside me, was an unwanted appendage.
I suppressed the rising guilt in me.
I took another step back and gave him a full look.
He was in good shape. A full head of hair with only dots of grey. How old was he? His navy-blue shirt had a wide hole on the left shoulder, baring skin as black as mine. I looked down to where his worn army trousers were tucked into military boots caked in mud. I wondered where those boots had been. Some field in that corner of the corn belt, where he helped out on a farm? Some village in Asia, if truly he ‘fought for the United States’? The possibility of finding out over lunch temporarily diluted the growing anxiety of sharing a table with him.
‘And for you, sir?’
‘I’ll have the same,’ I answered.
‘Two cheeseburgers, fries.’ She wondered if we were ‘together or paying separately’.
‘We’re together,’ I said, stressing together with an air of brotherliness. I handed her a ten-dollar bill with an exaggerated air of being in charge of the unfolding scene.
‘I’ll have your orders ready,’ she said in a neutral voice and disappeared through the door behind her.
I turned around to see that my strange companion had retreated from the counter and planted himself at a stool by the window, elbows on the ledge, rubbing his palms together and looking out as if to take stock of everything out there.
Looking beyond him, I saw a truck pulling in to the gas station.
I stole my gaze away from him and the window, lingered at the counter, and pretended to look through the selection of beverages.
‘I can tell you’re not from around here.’ It was the slender one, Nicole, as her name tag said. There was certainty in her voice. There is no way, I imagined her thinking, that he is from around here.
‘I’m not,’ I answered. ‘I’m on my way to Colorado,’ I lied.
‘Neat,’ she said. ‘It’s beautiful out there.’ She said this in the voice of those who have perfected the art of apathetic chatter. ‘I have family up there,’ she added for good measure.
‘Oh, where?’
‘In Lawrence,’ she said, and shared more about Lawrence and how it was now ‘part of the greater Boulder’ area but used to be ‘very distinct and different’ back in the day, with more ‘charm and character’, without the new ‘fancy restaurants’ and the ‘California transplants’ and so on and so forth.
Her careful choice of words and the sequence in which she said them surprised me. I resisted the urge to share how impressed I was, how unexpected her articulacy was considering where she was from. In a slow fashion that again caught me off guard, she brushed back a strand of blonde hair straying from a corner of her red Midcountry Chicken hat. She asked, ‘So, where in Colorado?’
‘Palisade,’ I said, dropping the name of a town I had read about in a book years ago.
‘Never been but I’ve heard good things. Any family there?’
‘Oh no, just going to work on a peach orchard for a few weeks.’
‘You’ll like it down there,’ she said, ‘it’s pretty this time of year.’
I sensed a warm undertone this time, a hint of sincerity, a departure from the practised disinterest of small talk. Maybe it was the mention of working at a peach farm. Some kind of working-class solidarity? The cheeseburgers appeared and I didn’t get the chance to gauge where the warmth in her voice was coming from.
I sat next to the stranger, suddenly feeling so self-conscious that I couldn’t touch my burger. I could sense all the eyes looking at us. And that distinct smell of stale urine and unwashed flesh was present, coming from him. He was also hesitating to eat.
Instead, he unscrewed the cap on a bottle of Mountain Dew that he’d picked from the fridge. The loud escape of gas startled me and intensified my sensitivity to the eyes around us. I looked around and noticed how quiet the place had become. The steady hum of kitchen machinery and the occasional shuffle of feet from the handful of seated customers faded into the background, outdone now by the loud glup, glup, glup sound of Mountain Dew going down his throat. The radio, which had been bleating country tunes, had for some reason gone silent.
I finally divided my burger into equal halves to ease the stress of handling the horrendous mass of beef between the buns. I picked the left half and bit with care.
‘You’re making a mess, son.’ He spoke without looking at me. I was indeed making a mess. The grease was all over the place. The meat was sliding out of the bun. A ring of onion had escaped onto my lap.
‘So, you were in Afghanistan?’ I asked, just to change the topic, picking up the ketchup-stained onion ring.
‘Iraq,’ he answered, ‘different country.’
‘Of course.’
‘It fucks with your head, you know, war and all that shit.’
He had raised his voice a bit, enough for the good customers around to hear the last word. I tilted my head away from him, took stock of our environment, and returned to the second half of my burger.
The silence around us intensified. A ripple of panic ran down my spine. A unique kind of panic, different from the fear of a looming physical attack. The heightened consciousness of being watched.
‘Are you OK, son?’
There was a kind of certainty in his voice. It made me uneasy. Son? He could be my father all right, but why perform a familial bond with a total stranger?
I’m not OK, I wanted to say, but I remained silent. I also wished I could ask how he managed to stay calm, composed and sure of himself in a place like that, where folks did not hide their curiosity but instead inflicted it on their object of interest. I, for one, could not wait for it to be over, to leap out the door and hit the highway.
I thought of following up on the thing about war and how it fucked with your head. Maybe start one of those little talks about the invasion of Iraq, the politics involved, those who benefited from that war, and those whose daily lives were shattered and altered forever. But I knew nothing about the specifics of that war and had only followed reports of the looting of the National Museum of Iraq. I recalled getting a kick out of the image of a stolen sacred vase that was recovered in the profane trunk of a car in Baghdad. But bringing that up might be a waste of time, I thought.
A couple walked in, holding hands. Twenty-one at most. They were incredibly fit, both with long black hair, in matching black pants. I could see their yellow van outside, with a Nebraska licence plate.
‘I’ll be back in a second,’ I said to him and headed to the restroom.
I wanted to be alone.
I closed the toilet lid and sat on it, looking at the door, reading the inscriptions and drawings left by previous users.
Just as I began to study those inscriptions, to distract myself by figuring out what they were, I heard a loud crash followed by gasps and the disordered movement of feet.
‘Call 911,’ I heard someone say. ‘Call an ambulance,’ the voice continued, and asked, ‘Where’s his friend?’
I lingered to catch my breath, and when I emerged I saw the stranger on the floor, motionless, both legs stretched out evenly and head tilted to the side, right arm akimbo, left arm tucked in by his side, a small circle of white observers peering into his face.