waves away

September 17 When I open my eyes I could be in Arkansas again, with tart juice in a urine sample cup and noxious light in the bathroom. Except now I don’t even have Kansas City and Colorado ahead of me. Only ten hours of Columbia Plateau. When I get home everything I left there will be waiting, withered; everybody’s life will be plodding forward, while I'm pulled back through a geography strewn with new views of a collapsing world.               We pack up our bags for the last time. I arrange my contents in ways that will be easiest to unpack, since I am kind of compulsive about unpacking the minute I get home. Before a trip, I have no problem slowly adding to an open suitcase on the floor of the bedroom over the course of several days, but I don’t want to be visually reminded that a trip is over instead of ahead. Brian (like a lot of people probably) is the opposite—he won’t need these summer...

September 15 Saturday brings room service: espresso and Eggs Benedict in bed (funny, how overpriced food and beverage, unlike fancy cabs and canvas campground tents, never seem too indulgent for us), and a gleaming dual-head shower. Then, bemused, I’m back on the road, and I miss the Chevy Venture, whose passenger seat foam had cast itself perfectly to my behind. I don’t care about the fine safe hotel once I’ve left it; I can now conjure the totally non-synthetic splendor of The Outer Banks and Savannah , the Southern places where I found the formula that was just right. I miss them. I miss the Atlantic spray, the weeping willows and Spanish moss, the hushpuppies and booze-walking, and I miss the Twin Towers , which is a weird sensation since all these things meant very little to me back in August.             The edge of Kansas City , and of Missouri for that matter, is tenuous and confusing, as there are two cities nex...

September 14 Brian sets a tray on the nightstand next to my face; I smell the watery flat zing of orange juice from concentrate and reach for the paper cup without opening my eyes. He’s been poking around the motel lobby and reports that outside on the soggy back yard, as well as on the lower stairs and corridor, are a multitude of frogs. So obviously I think I must still be asleep, in my common nightmare of stepping out of bed onto waves of the slimy creatures I hate covering the floor. But I can taste the orange juice. I open one eye and check the carpet: all clear.               “Where are we?” I ask.             “ Arkansas ,” he says from behind a thin newspaper, “and it’s Friday.” The national Day of Prayer and Mourning. Are people going to work? Are kids excited about a day off school already? Is anybody else high-tailing it across the Midwest with us? ...