ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 3 by Peter Nolan Smith

"Where are we going?" Brock studied the map. We hadn't seen a single human being for an hour. The low sky muttered distant thunder. To the west clouds gathered in a darkening threat. I had never seen a tornado and stepped on the gas. "North." The rural dirt road paralleled US 169. No one in New York or London had ever seen this route through Iowa. "I know that." The Scotsman couldn't drive, but knew the points of the compass. "When you think that family left that house." "Back in the 90s." The paint peels off its wood like potato chips. "Stop." He was the boss and I punched the brakes to batslide to a halt. I got out of the rented Ford. Metal ticked on plastic and the V6 was in time. Brock set up his movie camera. I had been on film shoots before. His was the most minimum set-up of all. "Barry once said to a journalist, “I enjoy the third dimension and I appreciate material in time and space. I find it exciting to the eyes.” "Then he'll love this." The house was timeless. The sky was changing. The May trees bend to the wind. "Let's go." We stopped at the Blackcat Fireworks store. "I love a little pyrotechnics." Four days ago Brock had been in Afghanistan. He spent $100 on rockets and M80s. He was homesick for the noise of war. We blew up the fireworks on a dirt road. Iowa had them by the thousands. I lit the fuses and Brock watched the explosions. "Not even close," he said as the report of the last M80 faded into the treeline. We got back in the car. Des Moines was Iowa's capitol. We arrived after 5. The city sidewalks were empty of people. "Is America dead?" Brock meant that a plague had killed everyone. "Only sleeping." I wished it was the truth. We visited the city's hare. Brock focused his camera on the statue. I sat in the car and called Thailand. My son Fenway was better. His mother was angry at me. "Why you go trip? Why you not see son?" I said nothing, for a man is always wrong in the eyes of his woman. We spent the night in Des Moines. Brock and I ate ribs. The restaurant was next to the motel. The TV over the bar showed fast cars. At the end of the meal I ordered a doggie bag. "Why did Barry sculpt hares?" I saw no different between hares and rabbits. "One day he bought a dead rabbit from a butcher in England and remembered a jumping hare. To him it represented freedom. All kinds of freedom." Freedom was hard to find in America of 2009 and I called Rockford in Iowa City. The old hippie was looking forward to seeing us. The next morning we left Des Moines. Silos towered over the old highway. "This is farmland." Iowa was the center of America to me. "Corn and wheat." "Tortillas and bread." "And prisons." "My friend Rockford spent two years doing hard time. The cops found something else other than the grass they knew he had." Snitches were a problem everywhere. "And we're meeting him tonight?" "But of course." Rockford and I went back to an acid trip on Moonlight Beach. The year was 1975. He was more than good people. Train tracks were quiet out of Des Moines. I took to the Interstate. Rockford had called to say he was holding something special. Rockford and his son met us at a bar on the outskirts of town. I hadn't seen John since he was a baby. The years went fast. I gave John a Ferrari jacket from my defunct internet site. He loved it being red. His friends picked him up. We spoke to the bartender. Jake was back from a 3rd tour in Iraq. "It sucked." Three right-wingers were drinking Bud-Lite at the bar. A chubby one said, "This country was founded on conservative values." I slammed down my PBR. "This country was founded on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, so shut the fuck up about your conservative values." I liked Obama as president. "Calm down, my friend." Rockford suggested we move to the Deadwood, which was Iowa City's best dive bar. "Sounds good to me>" Brock and I had more front teeth than any of the regulars at the Deadwood. Rockford broke out a bottle of Bolivian Pink 1975. "I've been keeping it for a special occasion and nothing more special than an old friend visiting me." Rockford offered me the first blast. 1975 had been a good year. "Was he a hippie back then?" Brock's 'he' was me. I hated being third-person. "Not even close, but he was good people." Rockford knew my soul. I got another blast. 2009 was even better, because we were alive and alive was all there was everywhere in the world. Rockford was still at his pile at dawn. We had to go. A museum in Minneapolis was expecting Brock. We said our good-bye and hit the road. It was heading north.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 2 by Peter Nolan Smith

“We have nothing like this in England,” Brock said, as he filmed the Mississippi spreading onto its broad flood plain north of St. Louis.

"Is this going to be in your movie?" I hadn't asked too many questions about his Barry Flanagan project.

"You never know what will mean something in a film." Brock was a one-man crew. Two, if you counted me a driver. He stopped shooting. "But this film is for Barry Flanagan. He's in the last stages of his disease. Imagine yourself trapped in a failing body. You'd want to see all this, wouldn't you?"

"And more." I had seen a good part of this world."

"Barry just has the view out his house on Ibiza."

"I imagine it's a good view." My French side of the family came from the northern Catalan of Perpignan. I had never crossed the seas to the Mallorca.

"Santa Eulalia del Río dates back to before the Romans. There are too many tourists, but this time of year."

"Same as here."

We traveled US 54 to Vandalia. We counted twenty-three cars and fourteen pick-ups on the state road. I turned northwest to Paris on US 25. The rental Ford hit 80 on the straightaways. The V6 could go faster given the right conditions.

"Aren't you scared of police?" Brock aimed the camera at me.

"They're out on the Interstates hunting revenue." I hadn't seen a cop car since a Highway Patrol cruiser in St. Louis stopped me for speeding. "Remember this is the Flyover, but it's not a wasteland."

Miles and miles of newly plowed fields wasn't much of a thrill, but a week's parole from New York was soothing to my eyes.

"No, I wouldn't say that." Brock put down his camera.

"How do people live out here?" Brock shook his head, as we passed an abandoned junkyard. Both of us were hungry, but US 24 offered little in the way of eateries. We were holding off for ribs in KC.

"Farming."

"I feel like we're remaking the last chapters of COLD BLOOD." Brock had chosen Truman Capote's opus about two drifters murdering a Kansas farmer as his travel book.

"Not much has changed out here since then." My book was Herman Melville's TYPEE. He had romanticized the Pacific cannibals of the Marquesas. They were good eaters, but I hadn't even opened the tale of a whaler stranded on a cannibal paradise.

"The last time I came through the Midwest was in 1994 in a Studebaker Hawk."

"That's why I wanted you with me. You're American."

I pressed PLAY for Arthur Lee and Love's IF 6 WAS 9 and my foot hit the gas.

The Ford was all go.

It hit 90.

Rain splashed off the four-laner. The sky was an ominous black. The tornado of THE WIZARD OF OZ belonged to Kansas. That flat state lay straight ahead.

"Stormy weather." It scared Brock.

"Nothing to worry about." I slowed the Ford to under 50 to prevent us from aero-planing into the scenery.

The rain stopped after a torrential deluge and the sun broke through the thick clouds. Kansas City rested on a hill. A golden nimbus transform it into Oz.

I was no Dorothy and stepped on the gas.

"I love America." Brock had been filming for two minutes.

I doubted any of it would make his film.

"My friend, Joe, ran away to Kansas City in 1965. He was 13 and wanted to see if there were any pretty girls there."

"As Wilbert Harrison sang in that song." Brock had a good voice typical to the Scots and sang the chorus.

"Joe found none and the cops sent him back to Boston."

"But he got here and here is a long way away from there."

"And that's the truth." I aimed at KC, thinking of pretty girls.

Downtown Kansas City mimicked St. Louis' purgatory. The pretty girls were heifer-fat from fast food. We booked a room in Kansas not far from Ray Santo's house. The South Shore native was free tonight and we met for ribs. Brock and I got sloppy. Ray stayed clean.

"I have to play later." Ray was a drummer in the KC scene.

"We're coming with you." Brock ordered another round. The three of us left the restaurant in a taxi.

"Good idea, Kansas City PD are always on the hunt for drunk drivers.

"But not drunks." Ray gave the driver directions.

"Not yet." I muttered, because Kansas was next to Oklahoma and that state didn't believe in curves, unless they were connected to a tornado.

Five minutes after we arrived at the crowded nightclub, Ray hit the stage. The band performed a tight set of country-western music. Brock yee-hahed during a break.

"How do you know Ray?"

"He went out with my sister." Ray had driven a red Corvette. He played good hockey and shoot better pool. My mother didn't approve of his dating my younger sister. "Back in 1970."

"That's almost thirty years ago."

"Yep." I hadn't seen Ray in too long. I yee-hahed and Brock joined me.

Drinking beer in Kansas was good and listening to country music was even better.

We were all friends for life and called it a night at closing. We dropped ray at his apartment and the taxi took us to our hotel. I fell asleep dreaming of my wife in Thailand.

Mem was not Dorothy and my son Fenway was my Fenway.

The next morning after coffee and donuts at the motel I drove us to Overland Park. Flanagan's Hare statue was supposedly in the middle of the Johnson County Community College campus. Everything about the school said suburbs, except for one thing.

Guns were not allowed on campus.

A uniformed guard gave us a pass. Our parking space was specified as 'visitor'. The art director met us on the walkway.

"School's not in session."

JCCC offered its student body of 37,000 the chance of changing lives through learning. It was a big school.

"That's fine. We're here to see the Hare." Brock broke out his equipment, as we entered the Administration Building.

"Well, here it is." The director stood before the 11-foot statue of a Hare on a Bell. I liked the one in St. Louis better. It had been more Nijinsky.

Brock asked our host about the Hare. I made myself scarce during the interview. I liked to know nothing and pulled out my cellphone to call New York.

No one answered, so I visited the Nerman Museum attached to JCCC. The sky was threatening heavy rain and hard winds. This was tornado country.

The statues and paintings appealed to the flatness of the Midwestern psyche. I tried to Vulcan mind-link with the atmosphere without success. I left the museum and reached the car before the sky opened for a deluge. I popped in a CD and read TYPEE.

An hour later Brock ran to the Ford in a downpour. He carried the camera bag under his coat. I was listening to Dave Van Ronk's BOTH SIDES NOW.

"Sorry about the wait." The Scot sat in the car. Rain dripped off him.

"The movie's more important than me." Brock wiped his face with a paper towel.

"That was great. I interviewed seven people. They really understand the Hare."

"So they don't think it's a rabbit?"

"They think it's something much more."

"Like what?" I was curious.

"You'll see."

"See what?"

"The difference between a rabbit and a hare."

"If you say so." I backed out of the parking spot. "Where to now?"

"North to Iowa." There was a Flanagan statue in Des Moines.

"Right." I headed toward the highway. It was the fastest way out of here and I was happy, because 'North to Iowa' was as good a destination as any and my friend Rockford would be waiting in Iowa City.

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.