They drive through the night and stop around noon the next day at a campground near Springfield, Missouri. Bleary from the road, they tumble from the van, squinting into the steamy daylight. It is already ninety-five degrees in the shade, thunderstorms promised for the evening. Simon has fallen into a fitful sleep. He wakes as Duane pulls off the main road onto a winding country road and sits up to find a landscape thick with kudzu, lined with campsites and RVs. Dust rises from their tires.
Louise rolls her window down, letting in a loud insect thrum. This is her first time in what people on NPR call rural America. The woods are filled with tents and lean-tos. Makeshift laundry lines have been strung from the trees like spiderwebs. Corduroys, blouses, underwear, socks. They pass a Subaru station wagon surrounded by bookshelves, an elderly man seated in their center reading aloud to a group of children.
“Where are we?” Simon asks.
“More important,” says Louise, “did those clowns murder, like, a thousand people back there? Is anybody else freaking out?”
Simon feels his stomach turn. For some reason he thinks of an old woman standing at the stove in her kitchen. He watches as they drive deeper into the park. There are vehicles everywhere, campers and bicycles, people’s living rooms set up right there in the open under plastic tarps. Somewhere a radio is playing loudly—a sonorous voice broadcasting a conspiratorial tone.
“…trust the plan—we know this. Do your research, and remember—you are the news now.”
Megalophobia is defined as the fear of large objects.
What is this place? Simon wonders. A music festival? Are they refugees?
Are there refugees in Missouri?
His short-term meds are all the way gone now, a hot tingle returning to his thumbs. Anxiety, the devil’s tickle torture. There is a small-town pharmacy, his brain whispers, in a rust-belt river bend that ordered more than 5,700,000 pills between 2005 and 2011. Three hundred and eighty people live in that town. In 2008 alone, the pharmacy received 5,264 pills for every man, woman, and child.
He shuts his eyes, tries to squeeze the balls back into his head.
Stupid brain! Why won’t it stop whispering?
There used to be a place called Central America.
There used to be a place called Sudan.
There used to be a place called the Mekong Delta.
But now there is just the oven.
Hyperobjects are what we call concepts or phenomena that are too large to grasp with the human mind. A planet without ice. A forest without trees. An ocean without life.
In the woods, someone has constructed an outdoor shower from buckets and junk lumber. Simon watches as men and women wait in line holding towels and toothbrushes. Ahead of them an all-terrain vehicle moves between people’s campsites collecting trash.
“If it helps,” says Duane, “pretend you’re at Burning Man.”
They park next to a massive RV with its own satellite dish, the owner grilling sausages on a hibachi at the edge of a bramble, while his wife sets a folding table for lunch with a plastic cover and metal plates. The smell of cooking meat makes Louise growl.
“We’ll sleep here one night and then head south,” says the Prophet. “There’s someone I need to see.”
“Here?” says Louise.
“I gotta drop a deuce,” says Duane, wandering off. Simon watches him go, heart beating fast. Just the idea of touching his beautiful face makes Simon feel faint. He looks around at the citizens of this shopping cart farm. Nomads on beach cruisers. Gypsies of the dented can emporiums and Walmart discount clubs. He watches children chase one another with secondhand Nerf guns and scavenged sticks. Somewhere in the forest echo Tom Petty sings about an American girl raised on promises. The idea of sleeping on the ground has always horrified Simon, of walking barefoot, of eating Hormel from a can and going to sleep with dirt in your mouth. But, then, he grew up in a mansion. His family’s version of camping was to fly commercial.
“How long did I sleep?” he wants to know. “Did the world end?”
“That’s the thing about the world,” says the Prophet. “It never ends. The Roman Empire fell, not in a day, but for four hundred years.”
The retiree at the grill smiles and waves them over.
“Howdy, strangers,” he says, “I’m Norm, and this is my better half, Glenda. Good to have some new blood around here.”
Louise, who will talk to anyone, anywhere, doesn’t need a more formal invitation. She crosses over into their camp and sits herself down on a folding chair.
“What’s for lunch?” she asks.
“Got some beef franks on the grill and vegetable for the missus. She gave up on animals after that second round a’ colon cancer.”
Louise mimes lighting a cigarette and exhaling.
“I’m Louise and this is Simon, and that’s Paul. We’re from St. Louis, just out for a roam in this great land of ours, which—you wouldn’t happen to have a spare beer or two for some weary travelers looking to celebrate their newfound freedom?”
Glenda studies them. “How old are you?”
“Old enough to survive a drunken father with fists for hugs,” says Louise, “and a mother who fell asleep with a needle in her arm and never woke up.”
Louise sticks out her bottom lip and widens her eyes. Lying is easy for her.
“For Chrissake, woman,” says Norm, “give the girl a Miller Light.”
Simon stands awkwardly, not sure what to do with his hands.
There used to be a place called India.
There used to be a place called Africa.
“Simon?” says Louise, and when he looks up, everyone is staring at him. It’s clear this isn’t the first time Louise has said his name.
“What?” he says.
“I said grab a chair. The Goodwins have invited us to lunch.”
Simon finds an aluminum folding chair, tries to figure out how to unfold it. He has never been in a campsite before. It is a foreign country filled with strange customs. When Duane comes back, he finds them all sitting around the card table eating Ball Park franks and drinking light beer.
“Wow,” he says, “what did I miss?”
“This is our savior, Duane,” says Louise, “driver of the mythic Ram van, and broad swordsman extraordinaire.”
“Peace,” says Duane as Norm pulls over a cooler for him to sit on.
“Have a seat,” he says, cracking a fresh can and holding it out. Duane takes it with a smile.