Allen is pissed. But it’s the middle of the day and he is sober so instead of starting a fight with an entire fraternity and throwing furniture through the window of a retail establishment, he is refusing to look at me and being snarky and passive aggressive.
“Well I hope Sarah enjoyed her tour of the poverty sideshow. I hope she got lots of good pictures of other people’s misery. I’m sure that will help her on her final.”
This is directed at me, but he is staring towards the door of the coffee shop with a forced smile plastered across his face. I have seen this guy spit in the face of men twice his size and get up smiling, genuinely, after they punch him.
Allen is pissed at me because I took Sarah, a mutual friend and a photo major at Washington University, down to my hometown and its surrounding environs so she could take some photos. Sarah is not from around here and she wanted to head down to some of the more blown out parts of the state to get some documentary style shots. Sarah has long dark curly hair, a curvy figure, and a smile that looks like she is seducing anything and everything that might drift into its paralyzing tractor beam. I didn’t mind showing her around. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to happen there and nothing did. But I enjoy her company. Aside from being cute, she is smart and funny, and I’m willing to do her a favor.
Allen, who is likewise a towny from a background of poor, ignorant, violent criminals, regards this as a sort of class betrayal on my part. We are both friends with many of the Wash U students, but we are also keenly aware that we are not part of their club. We have each had our run ins with getting into fights or bed with our social betters, depending on how the night turned. We both feel out of place even though we were born not that far away. But for all we have in common, we have clearly hit an impasse in how we view my trip down south with Sarah.
“Nothing is as much fun as a trip to the zoo, I suppose.”
And, weirdly, Allen is being a girl about it. The man is a classic car mechanic with a nose that has been broken more times than an Indian Treaty and suddenly he has become Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I understand his feelings. I don’t feel them as deeply, because by this time I have cut off all contact with the vast majority of my family. This is not something you should attempt unless you are sure you can grow that scar nice and thick. Allen still lives in his Grandmother’s house. If everything outside the city limits burned to the ground, I would regard it as an opportunity to start this failed experiment over. Allen would have more mixed feelings.
moved next door.
But that isn’t the whole of it. I had something I wanted out of this. I wanted Sarah to take a photo of this one building. And up to this point, I have not put into words what this building means to me.
It is the office of a feed and tractor lot on a back woods stretch of highway called Cherokee Pass. The building is barely big enough for two aluminum desks, some filing cabinets, and there is a door that I assume leads to a very small bathroom. I know this, in spite of the fact that I have never known the place to be open, because the building is almost entirely glass. It is a coming together of a bare minimum of white and green siding arranged at a jagged angle as a cage for plate glass, the roof larger than the base and angled so as to point slightly higher than the horizon. Spreading out from the roof is an awning that cuts another ambitious reach out over the gravel parking lot. The entire structure seems to be pointing up and away, towards the future.
Of course, that future never came. Someone built this thing out in the middle of nowhere southern Missouri and pointed it at a destiny that it never had any chance of keeping up with. It is a carport for a space car, surrounded by John Deere tractors that someone seems to have given up trying to unload. But it is a sign that someone had a different idea than what came to pass, it wasn’t always going to be methamphetamine and random shootings. There was clearly a belief on somebody’s part that the rising tide of fifties and sixties American prosperity would lift all boats. I picture a round faced guy with store bought suit, a perpetual smile, and a thinning hairline, standing in this gravel parking lot with his hands on his hips and hope in his heart. That guy’s dream was utterly doomed, but just from the fact that he had that dream, it makes me feel like something else was once possible out here, something else had a fighting chance. The place is a time capsule from a future that never happened. I want a picture of it. Maybe it will make me feel like a psychic from another dimension. Who knows?
I don’t tell Allen this. I suppose I should come up with something. Before I can, Sarah walks in with a set of proofs from our trip. She sees Allen and hits him with her best sleepy eyed smile.
“Allen! I haven’t seen you in weeks. Get your butt up and give me a hug.”
Allen stands up, as instructed. His face turns a bright shade of red and his demeanor goes from put out housewife to “Aw Shucks” cowboy. Then Sarah shoves him back down into his chair and announce that he has to stay and have a look at these shots she got. Allen stays seated, as instructed. Face still red. It might be permanent. I look at him, waiting, but he won’t make eye contact.
Really doesn’t matter, what I was going to say, anyway.
