back         home
     
 


CLUE NUMBER TWELVE (from Kansas):


For the Hidden Journey:

Each of us lives in a house of memories, identities, hopes and histories. In abandoning one house for another, some things must be left behind.


For the Puzzle:

Here is the twelfth set of 5 letters of the puzzle/cryptogram:

a f a a z

To solve the puzzle, collect the other 13 parts and assemble them in order. This is part 12.

                                   


The Story:

Another funny thing about cruising down the I-States is how you miss where you've already been and are ready to broom where you are. One day I'm motating around Columbia University with Benny because Alex and Tita were off sightseeing, and I suddenly feel depressed by all the crap in the streets, by all the beggars and signs and the compression of everything. Buildings, people, even the air feels overloaded.

That made me remember this two-lane road in Kansas and an abandoned farm we saw there. We're blowing east, and I'm getting tired of I-70, so I'd spun off onto a two-laner. We have this rule that whoever's driving chooses the route unless we have to get somewhere by a specific time.

So I'm happy going 40 miffs on this two-laner and there's no I-State boats or double-trailer big rigs or highway patrol cars, just a pickup or two and Mrs. Jones in her Delta 88 going to pick up her mail

So I tell Benny about this abandoned farmhouse we saw in Kansas. There's only endless corn fields, a hot sun in the cloudless sky and the smell of dust raised off a farm road by a pickup. If you turn off the engine, the only sounds are the whine of machinery far away and a few birds singing.

Nothing breaks the line of corn tassels against the blue sky and then we slide up a gentle rise and suddenly there's this two-story wood house and a big tree, all alone, poking up above the solid gold fields. The house is maybe two or three hundred yards off the road, we can't see it too well, but all the paint's peeled off and some of the top floor windows are missing glass.

The house hits me with this funny feeling of loneliness and I pull over to look at it. Alex lifts out of his drift because we've stopped and I point out the old house. "I'm going to take a look," I say. He comes with me because who can resist an empty old house?

(continued in Chapter Sixteen of I-State Lines)


All content and coding copyright © 2006 by Charles Hugh Smith, all rights reserved

                                    		 
  back         home