(Nebraska: almost nothing as far as the eye can see.)
Laramie in the rearview mirror, in the memory, already growing smaller. Vote Linda Heath. Fat-bellied military planes flying low in the sky.
Sere fields suddenly interrupted by green swath of a ground-hugging, unidentifiable crop. Square hay bales scattered over acres. Nothing on the radio between calls to come back to Jesus but static.
Attraction
Exit 401.
Gators Motel. Truck wash.
Exit 59.
Rest area 2 miles.
Next rest area 55 miles.
No rest in between.
Pine Bluffs
Kearney
275 miles.
Speed Limit 75.
Pine Bluffs 1 mile. A&W All-American food. Windows on the Past. Windshield bug-splattered again. Tract homes in the middle of nothing. Nebraska…the good life. Exit 1. Home of Arbor Day. Jokes about escaping Cheney country with all organs intact.
Bushnell 7 miles. Travelers Information Call 511. Tractor trailer: Prima Express.
Nebraska, for the time being, same as Wyoming. A red pick-up speeding like a comet along a dirt farm road raising a long funnel of dust.
Bushnell exit right. No services. Nebraska not looking like Wyoming anymore but not looking like anything else, not looking like anything. Kimball 10 miles. Sidney 50. Otis Redding suddenly on the radio just sitting on the dock of the bay.
Kimball Exit 20. Information Center. Chimney Rock 45 miles north. A combine sitting motionless in a field. Where are all the farmers? In over 4,000 miles haven't seen a single one yet. Fur Trade museum 127 miles north.
I-80 closed ahead when flashing.
No mountains on the horizon. Remembering Camus's Caligula "I'm still alive!" as he lay dying in a Coliseum corridor, torn by assassin's knives. Gering. Scottsbluff. Black cow head-down in brown grass.
Dix 1 mile.
Passing prohibited next 11 miles.
Potter Motel Cafe Museum Gas & Repairs. Obama okays 53 million in aid to Ukraine; three minutes later an appeal for the Paralyzed Veterans.
Exit 55 Sidney W. entrance.
Three wooden crosses on top of a bare rocky bluff. Sexual fantasies of crucifixion. North Platte 123 miles. Green water tower: Cabela's World Headquarters. Writhing in mock sexual agony on rough wood watched by taciturn farmers and truckers with hard-ons in their scratchy jeans. Hospital Exit 59.
Sunol 1 mile.
Road closed. 11:56am. Passing prohibited next 7 miles. Roadwork. Tractor on overpass crossing over highway. Nebraska, briefly, looking like New Jersey.
How hard and long and ugly most people's deaths are. Do not pass. Do not resuscitate. Crossover 1000 feet. Lodgepole 1 mile. Suicide, so irrationally maligned. Why? Fear, denial of death?
1959 vintage Ford pickup.
People stupidly always taken by surprise by death, as if it were some unforeseen and not inevitable tragedy. Exit 85. Chappell. Oshkosh. Exit 9. As if they had a thousand years to live, make amends, forgive. Cowboy Capitol and Boot Hill.
So many Indian names on highway exit signs the only visible evidence they were ever here. Like tombstones.
Empty fields, as usual, fenced off.
Old fantasies of resort/clinics where you can contract for an assisted sexual suicide. Erotic euthanasia. Julesberg Exit 95. Truck parking 2 miles.
Scenic view next right.
1:22pm.
Lunch: bread, cheese, sundried tomatoes, olive spread. Hair-whipped mouth, holding dress down with one hand while eating, squinting into sun. Cows. Long freight in the distance like a toy, fifty cars, at least. Winding ramp to top of concrete lookout. On this very day 137 years ago Sam Bass led accomplices on a train robbery in Platte, according to the plaque. Mooing back at the cows in the distance.
Back on the road within half an hour. Flying J gas. A flock of thoughts like crows scared up from a field gone too quick to record individually except for the last two: begging to come last night at the urging of fingers even more knowledgable than my own, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, how unexpectedly funny she can be.
Laughter and orgasm: two things, not abstract, i.e. family, children, work, religious beliefs, that keep suicide at bay.
Left lane closed 1/2 mile.
Land so flat you can see it looks like rain half a day away.
Exit 117.
Brule 1 mile.
A mindless pleasure: untangling hopelessly tangled ponytail with fingers.
Ogallala.
On the radio: four classical music stations in a row. Smell of cow manure penetrating air-conditioned car. Lake McConaughy. Hospital Exit 126.
For sale 185 acres.
Roscoe Exit 7.
1.49pm.
Tractor trailer filled with cows passing on right. Vague fantasies of hijacking truck and letting them free.
Sutherland Reservoir.
Exit 158.
Wallace Lake.
Maloney
Buffalo Bill Ranch.
Exit 177
Falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep, waking up.
Miles, signs, fields passing unseen. Asleep again, pen in hand, uncapped, touching page.
Waking to unidentifiable marks.
North Platte just ahead.
"I'm still alive!"
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