mangozeen: ROADS OF THE FLYOVER by Peter Nolan Smith CHAPTER 4

Heading north we passed rivers on the verge of bursting their banks and I explained to Brock, "Last year an epic flood submerged Cedar Rapids, but it hasn't rained in days."

The radio weatherman had forecasted a pleasant day for Northern Iowa and Minnesota. I stepped on the gas. Everyone on I-380 was traveling ten miles over the speed limit. I kept pace at 85.

North of Cedar Rapids we got off the highway and twenty minutes later on a back road Brock spotted buffalo grazing on long prairie grass.

"Stop."

I braked the rented Ford in a parking lot of a small state park.

We approached the fence.

A state ranger was inspecting the wooly bison and told us, "They once roamed the Great Plains in the millions, but were reduced to 750 by 1890."

The small herd was fenced into a park and the ranger said, "This isn't a petting zoo, so I have to make sure no one thinks it is."

A good-sized buffalo weighed more than a ton. One came up to the fence and Brock touched its head. He passed me the film camera and said, "Keep me in focus. Barry's going to love this."

Brock and I ate a late breakfast of left-over ribs from Des Moines. They hadn't gone bad in the back seat and Brock put on a KC Royals baseball cap, which he had bought in that city two days ago.

"How many miles you think we've driven so far.

"Almost two thousand." Most of it had been on dirt roads cutting straight through the farmlands. Brock lived in London with his wife and two kids.

"If we drove two thousand miles from London, we'd be in Istanbul."

"Which probably doesn't look much like this."

"This is a big continent, especially from south to north." I dumped my gnawed ribs into the trash.

"Which is why I'm heading north with the Chicken Messiah." Brock wiped his hands on the back of his jeans. He was getting to be a real American.

"It's almost 5000 miles from London to Kabul." Brock couldn't get Afghanistan out of his head. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers felt the same. "Back in the 70s hippies drove to Kabul in school buses and vans. Next stop was Kathmandu and then Kuta in Bali."

"A long time ago and Iowa was never Kabul."

"Except with Rockford."

"And Barry's in Ibiza."

"My kids are in Thailand."

Like the Hare sculptures we were scattered across the globe far from home.

Corn was everywhere.

Brock shot everything.

"This will be Barry's last trip to America."

“You know I haven’t really looked at his sculptures.”

My daydreams were dominated by premonitions of seeing my son and daughter in the coming month. This driving job for Brock would pay for a ticket to Thailand.

“You shouldn’t look at anything.” Brock put down his camera. “You have to see or hear or feel Art. Open your mind to another dimension.”

“I’ll try.” We had one more Hare statue ahead and I gripped the wheel with both hands.

Driving through a forlorn valley leading to the Mississippi a giant crane crossed the two-laner and I swerved to avoid the collision, thinking that the big bird was an alien from outer space.

"Minnesota." I couldn't see the crane in my rearview mirror and even better its body wasn't smeared across the windshield.

"Probably still does to some." Brock looked at the flow with a glowing wonder, for like any European he thought the West began at the Atlantic.

We arrived in Minneapolis and checked into the motel. I was done driving for the day.

That night neither of us drank and we called our wives from the motel room. Brock spoke to Joanna in London and I talked with Mam in Thailand. Afterwards we fell to the black hole of sleep.

The next morning we woke early and ate the complimentary bagels at the motel. The fresh coffee served its purpose. I drove us to Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. We arrived on time. The director was waiting for Brock. The Scotsman set up his camera and interviewed the woman, who spoke about Flanagan's challenge to the status quo by reverting to the representational figure of a Hare.

"He's telling a story with each of these bronze pieces. One of fertility and flight."

I wandered out of the museum grounds to cross the highway into another park. I knew no one here. I tried calling New York. Once more no one answered my call.

A stranger in this city, but the landscape looked familiar and I realized that Mary Tyler Moore had stood on this spot for the opening of her long-running TV show. Not much seemed to have changed to the city since the series cancellation in 1977.

I touched the metal. It was cold, but I felt the warmth of the sculptor exorcising emotion from base metal. His hand print was everywhere over its surface and I once more wondered why I had so much trouble seeing.

Brock motioned for me to join him. It was time to go. Tomorrow we had to catch a plane in Chicago.