Manifest

The light breaking over the flat midwestern plains at dawn does not brighten gradually, as it did over the forested hills of New England, back home. Here the dawn happens all at once, an explosion of light tearing open the sky at 7:35am with the rigid punctuality of the clock’s cuckoo. Ahead lay nothing but road and sky and endless symmetrical rows of green cornstalk, stretching ceaselessly toward the horizon without even the suggestion of curve. Out here it could be possible to believe the Earth truly were flat. No other cars in sight behind or ahead, a birdless sky, the only living soul for 7 observable miles the sleeping child in the seat beside. How long had they been driving? She couldn’t recall when they had set out from the cheap hotel — the worst they’d found, a loud midnight buzzing which turned out to be an actual flying roach, actually flying about the room like a 3-inch demon, causing them to flee at God only knows what hour.

It was the second day of their ride, the great westward migration in the wake of her marriage’s sudden and irrevocable collapse. Her husband, a former used car salesman turned air traffic controller with teeth too-perfect for his radio-ready face, had chosen the eve of their 9th anniversary as the perfect time to reveal all that she had long feared and suspected. It had been no less difficult to hear despite her having basically understood all in advance. She had scooped up their daughter that very night and fled, first to her brother’s home in New Haven, then to her mother’s and eventually setting out westward, for parts unknown, where letters and insistent phone calls could not follow, another American lighting out for the territories, the never-ending cycle, chasing Destiny’s manifest. A soft rustling from the seat beside announced her child’s awakening. A yawn, the exaggerated groan of a good after-snooze stretch, the small cracks and pops of tendons and cartilage under stress, almost inaudible over the hum of the road.

“Whr’rwmma?”

“Don’t talk and yawn like that, no one can understand you.”

“I said, ‘Where are we, mama?’”

“I’m not sure, Bon-bon. Kansas maybe?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“And what should I call you, Sweetums?”

“Not ‘Sweetums,’ and definitely not ‘Bon-bon.’”

“(exaggerated retching sounds).”

“Oh, don’t be that way, Honey-pie!”

“(involved pantomime of shotgun being loaded, cocked, inserted between teeth, and fired, complete with clicks, explosion and splattering sound effects).”

They went on like this for about twelve minutes, a favorite game of theirs. At quarter past nine they stopped at an IHOP for a breakfast so loaded with sugar and carbohydrates it might as well have been ice-cream sandwiches and chocolate frosting. The bill paid, skimping on the tip a little, the two returned to the monotonous slog of the Migration. Cross-country driving is not so much an activity as a test of endurance. For mile after identical mile of yellow-lined pavement with only corporate radio and your own thoughts, it’s a race to reach the coast before you fall asleep at the wheel or else deliberately wrap yourself around a tree or telephone pole to escape the weight of intense boredom. Thank your lucky stars you’ve got a companion.

“How much longer, mama?”

“Another two days, at least.”

“Will they have ballet in San Francisco?”

“Of course they will, pookums!”

“(imaginary pulling of noose complete with dangling of head above the neck and creepy swing from side to side).”

And on like this, past Missouri, into Colorado, up, over, and through the country’s rocky spine, dipping into Arizona, through Nevada, onwards toward the sunny coast, and farther, out over the wide Pacific, across the islands and over the Orient, on and on the light carries us in its westward way, until the last human memory fades, all alone, together.