Dishonorable Discharge: K-9 Units Snorting Coke (The Big Nothing Part 8)

The sun blazed high into the sky, the highway looking more and more like an image burned into the back of the retinas, and the cornfields slowly turned brown and cooked into popcorn. I don't know just how long I had been looking out into the small intersection by the main highway, standing in the middle of an abandoned gas station, wiping the sweat out of my eyes; slowly canvassing the area for any signs of life.

It was called The Pitlane Travel Plaza or Met Chim's Subway; either way, the place was abandoned, but not enough to have three or four cars still parked in the driveway to get a healthy meth sandwich. There were three gas pumps, one had fallen over and had it's pipes ripped out from beneath it, and the others were either nonexistent or in disrepair. The trash cans in between each pump were jammed full of roadside trash; you could see inside the gas reservoir.

  

Hours later, with The Inchmobile II having less than half a tank of gas, we stopped inside a small campground just before a small town to let The Inch whiz. The campground was sleepy, the forest around the site was thick, and the roads were tight. It was at this point, and at this speed (as the average was mostly 90mph), that the automatic steering started crapping out. The Jaffer was driving at this point and didn't hesitate to jerk it around mercilessly to make The Inchmobile submit; it basically floated down the gravel and to the end of the site with the bathroom in front of us and the river flowing strong to our right.

Overlooking the river, an old man sat on the edge of a parking block, watching the river in the parking lot beside us, he avoided eye contact and kept to himself; wondering just where his long dead wife had gone. 

We had all just started walking out of the tetanus ridden, tin roofed, bathroom when we noticed there were good ol boys circling the campground in street bikes. They were out for the old man. He didn't seem to care about the speeding hornets nest buzzing around him with the tire smoke and the desperate craving for chew. He was ready to return to the elements which bore him. He stood with his back to them and continued to stare deep into the river. We left before the beatings got brutal. 

The town we had been looking for, Aredale, town of less than seventy people, was just five blocks long. The local restaurant was closed due to lack of staff, the houses displayed half of their contents of their lawns, and the town grain mill towered over it all; the burnt grass swayed in the summer wind around the whole town.

An abandoned house, by fire, laid right on the main road that led in and out to the highway. The grass around it had taken over, almost completely, the whole front; the fire damage made the upper left side of the house slant inwards with melted shingle, and burnt wood, the windows blasted out and door knocked sideways inside the frame. I tried walking in the backdoor but, after looking in the side window to see overturned couches and blankets around the broken glass of the window, I quietly observed what was left of it; which included a broken window in the back and an empty gas canister laying on the very small back porch. The wind began to pick up, causing the grass to crescendo into a progressive sway; the heat being alleviated for just a moment.  

 

Devil's Country (The Big Nothing Part 7)

The sky was completely filled with stars, they exploded out in the night, and were sprawled across the universe. We were entombed in a stretch of rock and trees on the sides of the highway; a clearing opened and we saw some type of yoga ritual and I openly rebuked their pagan gods out of the passenger window. It was a sleepy campground with lazy dogs and good ol' boys watching the fire with their wives. 

Later on, out in Monmouth (just before Illinois), one half of the entire town was closed off as we backtracked around the complete other side. The gravel slid The Inchmobile around but we got in. The town was quiet but still stirring. 

We passed the local schoolhouse up on a hill; red lights from a local power transformer blinked through the trees as we came into the small main stretch of town. The scene was eerie. ''I don't think it's a good idea, man. I really don't. It's closed, like, this is somebody's house...yea, it looks like a met shack...I don't ****** know this methole..okay, somebody's gonna wanna shoot us anyway with how loud this ****** car is''.

'Looks like something Indiana Jones would of crawled inside of...to avoid a nuuuke...but if it's lined with lead, you'll survive'' said The Inch as he peered down the strip of abandoned buildings in the middle of the town; trees growing outside some of the windows. ''You won't get incinerated but you'll grow a ****** third and forth arm''. Junkies screamed out in the darkness.

I hadn't had enough. I sat outside The Houndog Food and Drinks bar, in the middle of the small town square, and smoked a cigarette on the plastic bench that had two glass ashtrays on it. 

Down the road, in front of the bar, was a scene of headlights and people; looked like some type of drug deal. People scurried in and out of apartment buildings, getting in and out of cars parked in the middle of the road with their lights still on, others stood around flicking cigarettes' butts on the ground. It seemed like 80% of the population was out in this small street that more resembled a bizarre flea market stocked with drugs, cheap cigarettes, and depression. 

As I waited for Met Jim to come out of the bar and fry up some steak for me, I didn't even realize the place was still open; I peered inside the window and only saw the blue glow of the booze lights inside. It was too strange. In the alley, behind the bar, about ten different cats looked out at us with glowing eyes as they appeared from trees and underneath the bar. They had started to surround us when I decided this was the time to leave.

As we left town, we followed a car that had left the drug deal. We were bumper to bumper with the drug car out of town; two beagle dogs chased the car until we got back on gravel.