52: Washington, DC

51: Puerto Rico

“Bienvenidos   Puerto Rico!” went the note on my desk. Something seemed wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I looked out the window. I’d just moved to this city to supervise the U.S. Census. I knew no one.

“Perdon,” whispered this timid voice through the open door. “Un momento.”

I looked up, flustered. “I’m sorry?”

“Como?” Enricuo replied, smiling.


Months went by. Enricuo’s English got no better; mine got worse. I lost one phoneme first, then the second … soon whole words, whole sentences were gone. I tried to stutter through it, but one morning my tongue fell completely silent.

“Es Ingles,” Enricuo told me. “Borinquen resiste. Lee este.” He set some book on the desk. “Un mes. Espero que mejore.”

“One month!?” I scribbled on the cover.

He shrugged. “O dos.”


Terrified, I went to the doctor. “De donde es usted?” the nurse inquired.

“The U.S.,” I wrote, holding my notebook out to her. The doctor looked me over one or two minutes longer before he spoke: “Por que?” then, seeing my confusion: “Why? Why did you come here, to Puerto Rico?”

“For the longest time, I felt something missing,” I wrote. “There’s this hole in my life, this … void.” I stopped, pencil hovering, wishing I could find some word we both could use.

"Un hueco," he whispered to himself, then he pointed to the door. “You should go home.”


But it’s not so simple. I sit with my pencils splintering the moment they touch my notebook, my thoughts coming unmoored the moment they occur, then drifting off, gone … somehow I keep getting to point B only to discover it's the point of no return. I flip through once more from the beginning; count down to the closing line. There were only twenty-five letters left—how could it just end like this?

50: Hawaii

Aloha, Aloha Oe
(to the tune of “It’s Only a Paper Moon” as played by Cliff Edwards; sweetly, with Slothropian ennui)
by King Kainoa Dotcom


Well, “Aloha,” aloha oe.
Sail away on the trash-strewn sea.
‘Cause the springs would be sweeter here
If we said farewell to thee.

Like the sun in a vog-free sky,
It’s as clear as a thing can be
That there’d be fewer tourists here
If we said farewell to thee.

Akahai Lokahi 

Oluolu Haahaa Ahonui.
Revive the cause
Of Queen Liliuokalani.

So, “Aloha,” aloha oe.
You’re to blame for 1893.
A-and we wouldn’t be Americans
If we said farewell to thee.


(kazoo solo)


(repeat from bridge)

49: Alaska

These are dark days in Unalaska, a slog. Rain and snow fall almost sideways; even the sun’s scared to stay for long.

My Goose’s over at DUT. I’ll be down at Amelia’s if anybody’s looking, watching the north wind whip up whitecaps in the harbor, drag clouds across the sky; waiting for the moon to show above the mountains where the sun may rise.

48: Arizona

Start
You lean in to blow on the fire, gently coaxing the flames from tinder to twigs to branches, then sit back on your heels to watch.

The desert is pink and purple in the sunset. In the distance, the dark green wooded mountaintops of the Sierra Madre float like islands, rising up from the ocean of the plains.

You take the letter from your backpack and read it again. “Tucson High School class of 1980 30-year reunion,” it says across the top, “November 24, 2010.”

Well, why the hell not. You climb into the dirt-brown Chinook and pat Rusty on the head. His tail gives a halfhearted, sleepy wag.

Spit in your hand and brush back your hair, check your face for stubble in the mirror, sniff your armpits and smell your breath. Nothing. You smile.

It’s been 30 years; you could tell them anything … so which story do you want to tell?

For denial, go to 1
For anger, go to 2
For bargaining, go to 3
For despair, go to 4
For acceptance, go to 5


1.
“Everything went great at 3M after my big invention,” you tell Rob, whose fat, sagging face you barely recognize. “I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

You wait for the obvious question but he’s busy drinking, so you take a sip of scotch then go on. “Anyway, that’s around when I finally married my sweetheart Shelly and bought our house on Lake Superior. It’s beautiful up there.”


2.
“Actually, Larry, the whole story about how I invented Post-it Notes is a joke, and I never liked that bitch.” You wink and clap him on the arm. “Truth is, I’m an assassin.”

Larry laughs. You toss back your scotch and reach inside your jacket. “You think that’s funny?” you ask. “Say you prayers, asshole.”


3.
“It wasn’t fair!” You’re talking to this girl you had a crush on all through 10th grade, you’re pretty sure. “Shelly got pregnant and I had to marry her. She’s been holding it over my head ever since.”

You finish off one scotch and hoist the other. “I’ve made a killing,” you continue, “but it’s all gone to her … for another house, another car, you name it.” You lean in for a kiss. “But if I could turn back time, I’d trade it all for you,” you glance down at her breasts and nametag, “Brenda.”


4.
You’re six or seven scotches in when Shelly finds you slumped over at a table in the corner. “What are you doing here?” you ask, the words slurring together, like somebody tried to scrub them out with an off-brand eraser.

“I heard about that dirty movie you made of us, you pig,” she says. “Now you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”


5.
“I live in a van out in the hills by I-10,” you shout from your perch atop the DJ table. “I lost my job at 3M last year. The bank took my home, my wife left me; my kids won’t answer my calls. I’ve lost everything,” You look at the glass of scotch shaking in your hand, and put it down, “but I’ve found myself.”

The DJ, Scott something-or-other, is nodding his head, either in agreement or to the music. “I wanna rock with you,” the speakers sing, “all night.” Everybody keeps dancing.


End
You open your eyes and stare out the windshield. Another stupidly beautiful sunset is just ending. Beside you, Rusty barks and wags his tail.

You fold the letter up and put it back in its envelope, get out of the van, and toss it into the fire. The ashes and embers rise like moths, the invitation going up in smoke, like a dream.

47: New Mexico

It’s a player’s house, I know it; there’s magic and XP everywhere in this bitch.

I start searching the crates, the barrels … the medicine cabinet is the fucking motherload: more bottles than I can count, pills in every color of the rainbow – ambien, benzedrine, codeine, diazepam – “Are you a believer in miracles,” I sing to myself. “Da-doo una time some-thing miracles.”

I’m popping them into my mouth like skittles when the old man comes in, a huge chrome revolver in a holster on his hip. “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouts.

I give him the signal, slapping two fingers on my arm. He pulls his gun and drops into a crouch. Time for plan B, I think. “Can I get a couple of extra-large chalupas?” I ask, “And an orange coke?”

A metallic click echoes off the bathroom tile as he cocks the hammer back. “Sorry, I thought this was a Taco Bell.”

He shakes his head. “Son, do you think this is a game?” He asks. “Shit,” He stands up and looks at the gun in his hands. “What kind of world are we living in?”

“The World of Reality,” I say, but he ain’t listening.

46: Oklahoma

Dust rising from distant horizon. Pickup truck streaking along perpendicular gravel roads. Route 66 stretching south, southwest.

Cement road running through ruins. Houses falling into their foundations. Ghost towns returning to prairie.

Smoke rising from faraway refineries. Rusting oil derricks pecking at barren cornfield. Fat crows chasing the worm.

Rows of parallel lines intersecting. Some solitary farmer plowing rows of stones. This dry landscape, ever changing. His straw hat shading faded gray overalls. A scarecrow harvesting bumper crops of nothing.

White clouds turning gray, coalescing. Raindrops kicking up footstep puffs of dust.  Dark sky spiraling down, funneling. Dirty road turning muddy in the mirror. A tornado slashing unmarred plains like calligraphy.


Country giving way to city. Buffalo retreating from the roadside. Trees turning back into houses.

Round red barn crouching, windowless. Glowing soda bottle reaching 66 feet high. Giant metal crucifix standing empty.

Turning south into Oklahoma City. Golden sunlight falling on buildings, reflecting pools. Countless chairs lying in rows.

Red traffic lights turning green. All-glass building complex reflecting all the others. Elevated walkway spanning the street. Skyscraper shadows standing as still as scarecrows.  Sundials marking movement of space and time.

City limits decaying into suburbs. Telephone poles and wires springing up alongside. Passing Will Rogers World Airport. Predator drone floating in the cornflower sky. Listless guard watching the horizon for tornadoes.


Driving along route 66 again. A lonely highway chasing the setting sun. A hitchhiker looking westward, squinting.

Following a route on GoogleMaps. The Great Plains forming an upturned palm. Oklahoma’s finger pointing the way.

Driving an unmarked black sedan. Cameras automatically snapping nine frames at once. Making panoramas of the states.

45: Utah

In the other room Bryce is crying. I rub my eyes, waiting for the Oxy to kick in. “God, just shut up,” I whisper. Why isn’t John home yet? He knows I’ve got a reading to finish. The words have all run together. Where the hell was I?

… and while recent studies have shown the popularity of online pornography in Utah (Edelman 2009), the topic of sexuality has been of interest there from even before the states conception, as can be seen in this early proto-Harlequin:

“Message for you from Deseret, Miss Smith.” She took the piece of paper from the telegraph operator:

“Take off your petticoat stop now ride me like the transcontinental railroad.”

“Oh John,” she swooned. The Western Union man stepped forward to catch her as a wave of pleasure spread outwards from her sacred wound.

What is captured in this scene is both the tension between spirituality and sexuality, between technology and distance peculiar to the Utah Mormon experience …

Bryce starts crying again. I lean back in the chair and rub my swelling belly. John still isn’t home. “Who do I need to massacre to get a bottle of gin and an abortion in this town?”

44: Wyoming

That body tied to a buck fence, beaten, bloody: a roadside scarecrow.

Scared, cowed; nobody asked and you never told. Now dress for the day. Put your camouflage on. Look in the mirror: Are you a victim or an actor? Is that a costume or a uniform? What are you fighting for? Who are you hiding from?

43: Idaho

“I just had the best idea.”


“Well, remember when I told you the Amish were coming?”


“On account of I read about it in the paper. Anyway, I got to thinking: sure they might find a little farmland here and there today, but what they really need is a home they can take west on the Oregon Trail tomorrow. That way when the evils of the modern world and the coyotes come a-calling they can just pick up and move on.”


“Not just any mobile homes; log cabins. Just like our Founding Fathers, and like the settlers of old. This is bigger than you and me and Boise. This is the American Dream all over again. This is Manifest Destiny.”


“Look it up. Anyway, we’ll worry about all the details later. The slogan is the best part. Just listen to this: Horsepower Houses – As Green As Grass.”

42: Washington

Jay kicks the back of your chair again. “Dyke,” he whispers, just loud enough for you to hear.

You keep doodling without looking up. It’s hard being a vampire, you think, for like the zillionth time this year.

A spitball flies by and lands on the floor. Monique giggles and you hiss at her.

The problem isn’t that no one understands you, it’s that they think they do. You’ve known you were destined for immortality since you read Anne Rice when you were 10, but since then your subculture has been totally co-opted, your own identity subsumed under a trend that you’re outside of.

It started with those stupid movies, the ones where the vampires all have dramatic hairdos and preppy clothes, and their pale skin sparkles like they shower in that stupid glitter from Claire’s. Since then instead of being a freak, you’ve become a vampire fashion victim.

The wall clock ticks one minute closer to 7:30. You tap your pointed pewter rings on your desk, rolling them – clickclickclick – like claws on linoleum. In the corner of your eye, Craig is wadding up another spitball. You sneer and put your pen to paper.


The bell dies away. “We have a new member of our class today,” Mrs. Schreiber says, after everyone has more or less settled down. “I’d like you all to say hello to your new teaching assistant, Mr., um …” She glances at a piece of paper. “Collins.”

“Cullen,” a man’s voice says, softly, but in a way that cuts through the classroom chatter. You look toward the door. An impossibly handsome man is standing there, auburn-haired and dressed like a cloudy sky, with pale white skin and piercing blue eyes. He looks at you and smiles. “Call me Edward,” he says. Your blood runs hot in your veins.

He takes a seat by Mrs. Schreiber’s desk, and class continues more or less like normal, except every time you look, he’s watching.

Or, rather, every time he looks up, you’re the one watching him.


The bell rings, followed by the shuffling cacophony of a classfull of students fleeing their desks as quickly as possible. By the time you’ve finished the last sentence and closed your notebook, even Mrs. Schreiber has vanished.

You reach down for your backpack, and when you look up Edward is watching you again. He meets your gaze for a moment, before dropping his eyes to the leather-bound book in his hands. You stand and walk toward him. “What are you reading?” you ask.

“The Götzen-Dämmerung.” he says. “It’s about hammering,” he adds, smirking.

“Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” you say, rolling your eyes.

He laughs and you sit on the corner of his desk. “So what’s an interesting girl like you doing in BHS?” he asks.

“Wishing I could get the hell out of here.”

“Everything ends eventually.”

“Does it?” You glare at him pointedly.

He coughs and looks down at his book again. “Anyway,” he says, “aren’t you a little young to be reading Nietzsche?”

“Aren’t you a little old to be a TA?”

He looks up just like you wanted. You lean in and kiss him, biting down on his lip, letting the littlest trickle of his blood flow into your mouth. You can see the cracks in his ice blue eyes. You see yourself reflected in them.

After what seems like an eternity, he breaks away. “I should go,” he says, standing hurriedly. “I’ve got to call Bel… um, my friend.”

You follow him to the classroom door and watch him walk down the hall. “This isn’t over,” you say.

41: Montana

The wolf is dead by the time I reach it, its eyes already going glassy, its tongue lolling out. The bullet hole is a spot of lichen, spreading. A thin red line runs down from its mouth like a riverbed.

I breathe in, deep. There’s a chill on the mountain air, sweet to the tongue and clear.

I sling my rifle and kneel down, run my fingers through the matted fur. I taste the blood that coats my hand, rust red.

I throw up on the rocks beside the body, then sit down and watch the clouds. The world spins. Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?

40: South Dakota

To the whiteman standing by the Coffee Corner in Regent Sunday morning.

I saw you watching, just like I saw the unpainted metal silos rising over the buttes and grasses, like I saw the low hangers and fenced-in lots at the edge of town, the concrete wall with its painted sunset over pitch-black plains.

I’m through with two-state solutions: I’d erase the lines and start again. Hit me back if you want in. This land could be our land.

39: North Dakota

You hear the Indian Chief thundering down the enchanted highway, heading south, long before you see it at the edge of town.

She tears down Main Street, deep red and gleaming chrome, dragging a giant metal head. White sparks weep from its painted face where it strikes the ground.

A red light catches her by 2nd. She turns to look at you, revs her engine, and then she’s off again.

38: Colorado

Another morning at the campus in the mountains. I push a button for another cup of coffee. A light turns on, a cup drops, a stream of tepid brown liquid trickles down.

I open the manila folder again and look at the blurry photo paper-clipped to the front flap, a short, skinny, dark-haired man in a blue tracksuit, leaning over a table, caught in action.

Age: 38

Birthplace: Shanghai, China

Grip: Shake Hand

I’ve only been working as a tech here for a couple months, so I got stuck in the final group, picked last like in grade school gym class, working on this middle-aged guy who probably wouldn’t even have a shot at the games again.

The idea of one country against another doesn’t seem to apply anymore, since Team U.S.A. is mostly Asian at this point, half-Chinese. The lobby is empty again. I shake his hand, thinking: You’ll show me, will you?


The equipment manager takes him off to get suited up. I tinker with the sensors, run the system test another time.

“Man, I’d totally bone that Natalie chick,” one of them says, a trainer, says.

“Dude,” the physician replies, “she’s like, fourteen.”

“Nah, bro, she’s just Asian.”

The Chinese guy starts to stretch his arms, does a quick Tai Chi like warm-up, followed by a couple of test swings while I calibrate the sensors. I turn the difficulty up, increase the speed, and watch his arms move even faster, a blur. The balls were smaller back then, faster.


We break for lunch. The Chinese guy hits the showers while I shut down the robot and run the data-processing algorithms. “Bro,” says the physician. “Mr. Miyake. This is, like, some total Karate Kid shit.”

The equipment manager brings the Chinese guy back, dressed in his tracksuit again, then they all head out the door together. I’ve got a salad in the fridge, so I don’t mind staying behind to analyze this morning’s data, recalibrating TOPR, preparing the table for this afternoon’s training, starting to draft our group’s report.


The athletes all come in to the OTC in the morning, then go out and party at night. Team U.S.A. may not have taken home any medals in 2008, but they totally owned the competition during the after-parties, playing champagne-pong. There’s always another game, another season.

The Chinese guy has been nice enough, and I can see why they keep him on the team. The data is pretty interesting, actually. The changes in speed and spin, the variance with different coefficients of friction, the effect of hardness and softness of rubber and sponge.

Word has a special AutoSummarize feature. No one is going to read the short version either.

37: Nebraska

I was standing in a field with Dusty when Anne called to wish us a happy belated something. “Was it a holiday yesterday?” I asked. “I must’ve forgot.”

Dusty wandered off to relieve himself. Anne said something about an international day of morning. “Yep, I had one of them once,” I said, “over in Ogallala, at IHOP.”

I zoned out for a bit after that. Anne tends to ramble; always has. Anyway, I must’ve been thinking of Denny’s.

Next I knew, she was talking about this mosque, how it was a slap in the face; that there ought to be a law.

“Shucks, sis, do you even know how big a block in New York City is?” I asked. “You probably can’t even see one from the other. And I know you can’t from Kenesaw.”

Anne cussed and hung up, and I walked back to my truck with Dusty, looking at my phone, waiting to get that wasted hour back. “You agree with me, don’t you, Dusty?” I asked. He just shook his head.

“Ah, what do you know?” I said, and spat in the grass. “You’re a cow.”

36: Nevada

“Get your claws off me, you fruit-faced iguanodont! Not in a million years!” You try to upend the table but it’s too heavy. Plan B: grab the rake and send the chips skittering like beetles around the wheel. “And that’s Dr. RD to you!”

The croupier takes your card. “Typographer, Lexicographer, Lotus-Eater, Astrologer, Numerologist, Freelance Writer,” she reads. “Well, aren’t you just a jerk-of-all-trades.”


Out at Red Rock Canyon, gray burros watch you through oversized black eyes. The prostitute mutters something from the trunk. She was more comfortable back there, she said, with the drugs.

You take a swig of Jack. Machineguns fire across the ridge. The road signs are shot to hell. You know how the people of Nevada feel. Las Vegas is Area 52. The aliens are among us.


Nearing Black Rock City, you see it. A figure with arms outstretched, burning up like Touchdown Jesus, red on black.

First the satellite images and now this: A crescent moon inside a pentagon. A beastly number somebody miscounted. A warning sign everybody missed.

One of the guards looks uncomfortably familiar. Black bug-eye shades block half of her red duck-billed face. She smiles, says: “What are the odds?”


You drive like you’re trying to set the land speed record, salt and dirt and dust kicking up to the big black empty TV-screen sky, gone.

35: West Virginia

Since the accident I’ve felt like half a person, or less. If anybody asks, I tell them that the problem is I haven’t got a leg to stand on. What I mean is that outside of complaining I can’t do anything for myself.

Useless. Fucking useless.

When we talked about posthumanism in college it seemed like a good thing, sort of. We would all become better as post-people, perhaps. Fitter. Happier. Something else.

So where have you gone, Giorgio Agamben? Do you have a theory for this? How one stupid thing changes everything—a piece of coal falling from a truck, a car tumbling into some abyss. Is this bare life? Is this what letting be looks like? Is this what indifference is?

The worst is that I thought I was done with Appalachia, but here I am: back in my old bedroom, all tucked in and waiting for dad to bring me dinner, a child again.

I wonder what he thinks about it, my father. Whether he ever wanted me to leave. Whether this is better. Whether it matters to him that I’m the last man in our family, or was.

Do I need to tell him this is it? That we’re living at the end of history?

34: Kansas

The house is at the end of a long, cracked asphalt road, fenced in. The field around it has gone to seed. I peer in through yellowed, ruffled curtains. An old television in the den is on, but I don’t see anyone.

I return to the front door and ring the bell. There is no name on the mailbox, no address, just the words “20th Century Castles.”

The chimes decay into a humming sound, a rumbling. The plate glass vibrates against my cheek. Inside, a man and woman appear, walking toward the door.

I step back as they open it. They’re wearing matching gray coveralls. The man is balding and the woman has a beehive. They’re blinking like they haven’t seen the sun in years.

Louis Armstrong is singing softly in the background. “What are you doing here?” the man asks after a long time. He draws his wife closer to his side. “How did you find us?”

“I work for the United States Census,” I say. “This is the last household on my list.”

“We’re not on anybody’s list,” he says.

I blink, and he grabs the notebook from my hand. I watch him leaf through its yellowed pages, shake it. Blank forms flutter to the ground. He closes it and looks me up and down, taking in my tangled hair, my stubbled cheeks.

I look at my feet. My soles are worn to paper. My satchel is stuffed with leaves. My pen is out of ink. My pin says “Census 2000.”

The door closes. The man and woman watch me through the glass. “How many people are living in this home?” I ask. I press my hand against the window. “Is there room for another one?”

33: Oregon

“So,” Zil said, “Marge will lead the main group along the official route while the black bloc splits off and does direct action?”

B nodded sharply, or seemed to, his chin half-buried in a black bandana.

We all looked at the map, a red-sharpied route drawn arbitrarily through a mass of green. It had been my idea to stage a city-style protest in Deschutes National Forest, a huge parade chanting “Whose trees? Our trees!” past a line of riot police poised uncomfortably in a patch of wildflowers. Now we’d been planning this thing for days, or plotting I guess, and I couldn’t help but feel like the absurdity of it was getting away from us.

Marge was already in the middle of a new sentence. “And we need to keep the non-arrestables separate,” she was saying. “Maybe that’s something for the street medics?”

“You mean tree medics?” I asked.

“What?” I shrugged and Marge started talking again.

My gaze slid over to the window, over the parking lot of the Bend Super 8, a semi-derelict strip mall, the highway. Suddenly everything seemed to come apart before my eyes, exploding into component parts and processes, multi-dimensional schematics of materials and labor stretching back through history.

In another time and place it might have been a religious experience, struck me as a divine plan, but here and now it just seemed incredible that so much effort could go into something so banal, that this was the world we all agreed upon.

“The chants need to be inclusive,” Marge was saying. “I feel like no one should feel like their voice is being silenced.”

Zil nodded. “Maybe we should schedule another meeting to come up with ideas?”

B shook his black-hooded head. “Fuck more meetings,” he said.

“Did we ever agree on a plan of action?” I asked.

“Oh for Goddess’ sake,” said Marge. “I propose we follow Zil’s.”

“Seconded.”

“Major objections?” Zil asked. “Minor objections? Friendly amendments?” We all looked around silently.

“Consensus.”