THE FLY-OVER Chapter 2 by Peter Nolan Smith

CHAPTER TWO

“There's nothing like this in Afghanistan.” Brock had spent the last two months outside of Kandahar. shot the spreading Mississippi with his movie camera. Farm houses seemed to float on the flood plain like Huck Finn's raft.

In the 90s I had driven across the Roof of the World. There were few trees and little water, but lots of desert.

Here the unplowed fields bloomed with flowers.

"Is this going to be in your film?" 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 he counted me as a driver. He stopped shooting. "But this film is for Barry. Imagine yourself trapped in a failing body. You'd want to see all this, wouldn't you?"

"And more." Every mile was new to me.

We traveled US 54 to Vandalia, then 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.

Yesterday I had explained why we were on the backroads, but this was my scene for the movie and I said without taking my eyes off the straightaway, "They're out on the Interstates revenue hunting. Remember this is the deep Flyover. No one from not here comes here, except anyone who lives here, but it's not a wasteland. This is America's breadbasket, although most of the corn goes to cows."

We passed a farmhouse and Brock said, "I feel like we're in COLD BLOOD."

The Scottish filmmaker had chosen Truman Capote's opus about two drifters murdering a Kansas family as his travel book.

"We don't look anything like Hickok or Smith." The young killers had been hung at hanging at the Kansas State Penitentiary in 1965.

"Or Truman Capote."

"Not much has changed out here since then."

"And not much will in the future."

My book for this trip was ON THE ROAD. I looked more like him than the killers.

I had yet to open Kerouac's homage to America, but his trip had begun up the Hudson at the Bear Mountain Bridge. I knew it well.

"The last time I came through the Midwest was in 1994 in a Studebaker Hawk." Meg had done most of the driving.

"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.

Fifty miles east of KC rain sploshed off the four-laner and I slowed to 50.

THE WIZARD OF OZ belonged to Kansas. The sky turned black.

"Stormy weather." It scared Brock.

"Nothing to worry about."

I had never seen a tornado, but I didn't need to tell Brock that.

Twenty minutes later the rain stopped and the sun broke through the clouds. Kansas City rested on a hill and a golden nimbus transform the city into Oz.

"I love America." Brock filmed two minutes of our approach.

I doubted any of it would be in 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 the song."

"He 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."

Downtown Kansas City mimicked St. Louis' purgatory and we booked a room in Kansas not far from the house of my old friend from the South Shore, Ray Santo. 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. Ray hailed a taxi.

"Kansas City cops hate drunk drivers."

Ray gave the driver directions.

""But not drunks," I muttered, because Kansas was next to Oklahoma and that state didn't believe in curved road, 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 a Corvette. He played good hockey and shot better pool. My mother didn't approve of his dating my younger sister. "Back in 1970."

"That's almost thirty years ago."

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

Drinking beer was good and listening to music was even better, espically since they did have pretty girls in Kansas City.

The next morning we had coffee and donuts at the motel and then I drove us to Overland Park. Flanagan's Hare statue was in the middle of the Johnson County Community College campus.

Guns were not allowed on campus.

A uniformed guard gave us a pass. Our parking space was reserved for 'visitors'. The art director met us on the walkway.

"Not many people around," said Brock.

"School's not in session. It's Spring Break."

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 and we entered the interior quadranlge of 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 was very 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 threatened rain and the clouds weren't telling any lies.

An hour later Brock ran to the Ford to beat a downpour. He carried the camera bag under his coat. I was listening to Dave Van Ronk's BOTH SIDES NOW and I turned down the volume, as the Scot sat in the car. Rain dripped off his hat and he wiped his face with a 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?"

"Freedom and wildness."

"And those are good things."

"Always for us. so now what now?"

"North to Iowa."

"On the highway?" Brock was a little concerned about his schedule.

"Not a chance." I pulled out of the parking lot certain no one had said 'North to Iowa' in this century and more importantly I was glad to have heard it at least once in my lifetime.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 4 by Peter Nolan Smith

Heading north we passed rivers on the verge of bursting their banks.

"Last year Cedar Rapids was inundated by a flood, but we should be all right." The sky held no promise of rain and the radio weatherman forecasted a pleasant day for Northern Iowa and Miinnesota. 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 Brock spotted buffalo grazing on long prairie grass.

"Stop."

I braked the rented Ford in a parking lot.

A state ranger was checking the wooly bison.

"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 he said, as Brock filmed him, "This isn't a petting zoo, so I have to make sure no one thinks it is."

A good-sized 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 took a break and ate a late breakfast of left-over ribs from Des Moines. They hadn't gone bad in the back seat. The sun was burning away the clouds 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 a thousand." Most of it had been off the Interstate, but roads were straight through the farmlands. Brock lived in London with his wife and two kids. "If we drove a thousand miles from London, we'd be in Poland."

"Which probably looks like this."

"Maybe." I had been no farther east in Europe than Berlin and Germany looked nothing like Iowa. I dumped my gnawed ribs into the trash. Brock wiped his hands on the back of his jeans. He was getting to be a real American.

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.

Brock was already asleep.

I hadn't gotten enough sleep last night.

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.

"Where are we?" Brock asked without alarm.

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

"Are you okay?"

"Just fine." I slowed down to 60.

The river widened into a marsh of white reeds. Spring was still distant from this valley. The Mississippi was up ahead.

The Father of All Waters was narrower than its last sighting in Missouri.

"Two centuries ago this marked the East and West."

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

"Watch out," shouted Brock and I swerved back into the highway.

Cars around the Ford beeped their horns.

"Sorry about that." It wasn't easy driving with closed eyes.

We were almost in Minneapolis and once we checked into the motel I would be done driving for the day.

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

The six days on the road was getting to us.

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. The director was waiting for Brock. We were on time. He set up his camera and interview 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. 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 happened to the city since the series cancellation in 1977.

I returned to the sculpture garden and stood before the statue. It was a rabbit to me and not a hare. Brock motioned for me to join him. It was time to go. Tomorrow we had a plane to catch in Chicago.