Further back on I-38 we stop so the Editor can investigate what I assumed to be a military graveyard, its headstones white as teeth in orderly rows. She returns sober and aghast at something she refuses to articulate because it has no entry in Shitholes and therefore has no bearing on my journey.

In the false privacy of her helmet I sometimes hear the Editor calculating their number. It seems she’s never satisfied with the result.

-traveler

Somewhere in the southeast, the Editor and I fall for a ‘Faulty Road Sign’ and end up on I-38 (which shouldn’t exist). The author of Shitholes includes this little byway as an addendum in the book where one might only find it if one were looking. One would think that, in most cases (including ours), a reader would only attempt to look for it if their GPS had already failed them and if their internet search had already suggested that there were no I-38, and if the only mention of the road online were several pages into a pirated PDF copy of the Shitholes appendices at which point one might turn, frowning, to their own copy of the book and find the entry there, clear as day.

Put simply, a reader will most likely learn about this trap after it has sprung.

‘It can be assumed that there are a few misprints in each lot of road signs that the Federal Highway Administration has produced and, just as a mis-made cell might spiral into cancer, these signs make their way into the system, forming great, redundant interstates that weigh on the taxpayer like a tumor. These ‘Faulty Road Signs’ are distinguishable from their official counterparts only by the absence of a small holographic sticker on the back and, more practically, by simple context clues.

‘Why,’ you might ask yourself, ‘does I-67 consist only of a series of on and off ramps?’ ‘Why does I-21 post minimum speeds as 40 mph when it remains largely unpaved?’ ‘How many times does I-33 split into carpool lanes, their tolls increasingly expensive and their passenger requirements increasingly bizarre?’ ‘For how long does I-38 proceed with a mild right curve toward a sunset that never quite dips below the horizon (shining, always, in the eyes of the driver)?’

You will not likely find the answers to these questions, but you might rest easy with the knowledge that, in asking them, you have narrowed your location to just one of the dozens of feral American roadways that stripe the aging country like varicose veins.’

We burn a pile of books on the side of the road, all copies of ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ from paths the Editor insists we have left to be overgrown. We are not cold and the books were a nominal burden- the Editor burns them with the grim pleasure with which she sometimes considers the gun hidden in her jacket. I’m not sure she remembers revealing it to me at the ‘Parade,’ and neither of us have brought it up since.

It was a gun that made me leave the Stranger.

The Editor prides herself on the narrative layout of ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ and, in the few instances that we have been drunk together, the conversation will turn inevitably to this achievement. It happens again at a bar off I-38 where every menu item is misspelled and the locals move like spiders in short, unpredictable bursts.

“It’s about the reading experience,” she says, her voice the loudest thing in miles, “A normal travel guide is written like an encyclopedia but this is a narrative. This,” she says, jabbing a finger in the appendices, “is the friend that pushes you into the lake when you hesitate on the rock. This is the intervention from on high when you’re too spineless to take the last step into the unknown.”

Light from the sunset pierces the window. Its reflection off the laminated menus makes it difficult to see her expressions clearly. Her eyes well up when she speaks like this, though I haven’t seen her cry since our first encounter at Yellowstone. I shift and the light reflects there, instead. Her eyes are so full that the slightest movement might set them overflowing: an arm around her shoulder, a pat on the back, a hug. I don’t offer any of these things and her gaze remains thick. Flooded.

We’ve been moving backward on the interstate for an hour, carefully straddling the shoulder, though we’ve seen no other cars. We pulled off for a break here, seeing that the lot exited from the left as though its common enough for travelers to be re-tracing their drive. The Editor became drunk immediately, almost as soon as she walked through the door. I took my time- two paths to the same place. We can’t leave until we sober up and, while we wait for that to happen, we drink.

“I don’t care what you think,” she continues, reading disagreement in my relative silence, “I’m proud of this thing. I’m proud of what I made here. This is a work of art- a book like nothing else that’s come out of our company. I couldn’t be more proud.”

Her insistence on the word speaks, to me, of a deep-seated denial- of a story she tells herself to sleep well at night or to return from the dead. I do think she’s proud, but I think that might be the only positive thing she experiences, which makes it difficult to feel complimented when her face breaks into a wide, weepy smile and she says:

“You should be proud, too.”

-traveler

‘South Dakota boasts a peculiar slogan, ‘Great Faces, Great Places,’ and they would have you believe this was in sole reference to Mt. Rushmore. Beyond this, they would have you believe that Mt. Rushmore accounts for all of the stone faces available along the Wayside and that it is the creation of a species that, admittedly, so enjoys seeing itself that a great portion of its artistic endeavors attempt what a mirror or camera or a well-programmed 3D printer could create in an instant. Can you imagine, reader, if we were not alone in this motivation? Can you imagine the statue of a buck fashioned by its own hooves, the pointed horns a still-green pine branch that shivers in the wind and the eyes, black stone?

The truth is that there are faces everywhere and there are more faces every day- the warped faces in the wood grain of your childhood wardrobe, the crude gaping mouths of cliffsides and ancient trees all early stages of the same phenomenon. These faces did not always exist but, having recognized the faces in the Black Hills, the nation can no longer contain them.

The first time the faces were brought to the attention of America’s colonizers occurred when a pioneering woman named Leana Brookings fell into a sinkhole that she hoped would lead her to gold. In excavating several similar pits nearby her family revealed the face of a great uncle, screaming (or yawning) at the cloudless sky (the initial pit being just one of his deep-set eyes). So struck, were they, with the dread of deep space and dark water (seeing something so familiar made monstrous) that they set to leveling the land. The second recorded incident was of ‘The Overhang Smile,’ a beloved natural fissure observed by the denizens of a canyon settlement. The fissure is said to have dissolved in a sudden rockslide, killing a man and simultaneously revealing his own smiling face below the rough caricature that had previously been the center of sentimental stories (most of which seemed to suggest the white man had always been in the Black Hills).

The faces occur on a small scale as well, looking down from cavern ceilings, their gaping mouths serving as handholds to unwitting spelunkers (whose lights make shadows and faces of everything in the dark). Some emerge, smooth and cool, from river-washed stones. Others break fully-formed, a blight in the crystal hearts of local geodes. No matter the size, the faces play on the human psyche like an itch- sometimes fearful like the crawling of an invisible insect and sometimes annoying like the peel of a dried scab. In either case, the faces seem to call a viewer to scratch and, in either case, the scratching only seems to worsen the condition.

Aside from Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse (which emerges inevitably despite a concerted private effort to demolish it), undamaged specimens can be viewed in a shallow cavern outside the ‘Gas n’ Begone.’ Zelda Flanders, owner, does not publicly advertise the faces but will sell you instructions to the trailhead and rent you a flashlight with the same demeanor a conservative drug-store cashier might employ in selling condoms to a nervous teen. She will offer no rules to guide your tour, secretly hoping that someone will do away with the silent audience that darkens her property like mold in a closet.’

– excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

The Editor chews slowly, her eyes drooping and unfocused. Syrup glistens at the corners of her mouth and her voice is thick.

“I’m fine,” she says, “Just tired. And this place… is gross.”

A young woman walks behind us and she slides a pancake onto the Editor’s plate. The air is thick with melted butter. I’ve hunched my shoulders to protect my own eating area and I take small, regular bites. When I’m not eating, I hold one of the few of Alice’s remaining picks between my lips. This appears to be one of the few acceptable non-eating activities.

Unfortunately, the pick seems to invite conversation, so I eat instead, feeling the edges of my inner-self expanding uncomfortably.

The Editor gags in her chair and I try not to let her disgust spread to me.

‘There’s no magic greater to middle America than a pancake feed. Ostensibly for charity, these events probe the deep stomach of the corn-fed lower class to fund causes few participants will remember past the drive home. In truth, a pancake feed represents the classic capitalist trade-off: money for cleansing.

The cleansing ritual of the ‘Pancake Feed’ involves the three-part dedication of time, sacrifice, and debauchery (making it distinct from those that require only one of the aspects, say, the sterile donation of money by mail, the hammering of a few nails in the skeleton of a charity house, or the straightforward gluttony of an all-you-can-eat buffet). It is an archetype (in miniature) of the American dream in which the lower-class is encouraged to show up, to invest money, and to reap the promised benefits (in the form of the nation’s principle cereal grain, no less), failing to realize that it is the lower-class working behind the scenes as well: a sloshing-about of money in an already shallow pool.

All this to say that the ‘Eternal Pancake Feed’ is an American abomination. 2019 marks its 32^nd year of continual pancake production, locked in place by a single participant, Edith Baker, who has consumed pancakes at a steady pace since the fateful July 4^th on which it began. Baker has grown to an enormous size and has not responded to attempts at communication since the late nineties when she apparently said “Pass the butter, if you would.” A conservative estimate suggests Baker has eaten 24 tons of pancake in the last three decades, all for the entry price of two U.S. dollars. The feed continues as long as she eats, fueled by a certain sense of obligation to uphold the ‘all-you-can-eat’ promise and, no doubt, by grim curiosity.

Despite opening the ‘Eternal Pancake Feed’ to further customers, the event ceased being charitable, or lucrative, a long time ago. It has bankrupted the food bank that it once partnered with and remains a minor drain on the state’s budget: a single citizen’s mindless greed funded by taxpayers through the exploitation of a minor loophole.’

“She’s like those little Venus figures.”

The Editor’s sudden interjection catches me off guard. Alice’s pick slips from between my teeth and lands upright in the soft flesh of the pancake on my plate.

“What?”

“Like the… the fat women they dig up. The old goddesses.”

I look down the table at Edith Baker, who sits at the head. I wonder if she sat there originally, knowing what was to come, or if they’ve since moved the table to indicate her legacy. I retrieve Alice’s pick and suck the crumbs from it.

“The Venus statues never had faces,” I say, “No mouths to eat with.”

“No mouths to talk with.”

“You think ancient humans had pancake feeds?”

“Just a comment,” she says.

It’s good to hear her talking, I realize. It’s the first unprompted thing she’s said since I found her again.

-traveler

The Editor does not reappear for quite some time and I lug her books aimlessly into the south, where autumn is warm and dry. She has left her journal behind, the book she uses to keep track of the differences between Shitholes editions. The first hundred pages are beautiful, looping scrawls- as clear as the night sky. The writing degrades, though, her form as well as her words. By the end she’s writing in a shorthand so frantic it might as well be code. She has predicted I would read this all, someday, and she rails against me when she remembers to. The Editor insists that I tell her once I have and is so sure that I won’t.

She’s right, of course.

I wonder what she thinks of me, sitting as she does on the bike.

There is a picture of us on a rollercoaster- a place ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ said was haunted by spirits from all over the country.

‘What?’ it asked, ‘You don’t think ghosts can have fun? Free from mortal concerns, the previously-fearful departed have no reason not to try these things. Though, spirit photographers have captured increasingly long lines…’

The Editor has no interest in the places we visit, only the order in which we visit them. Had she asked why I bought the picture (priced steeply at $29.99 for the smallest option) I would show her that my family’s dog sits just behind me, its semi-transparent tongue dripping ectoplasm into the wind. The dog, I would explain, was alive when I left. But she was old, so…

So it’s not a surprise.

I have not pressed the issue, though, because behind the dog and behind the Editor, as far back as the camera has captured, the ride seats are busy with her own spirits, each stern-faced in turn. I look at the picture, and I wonder if the new Editor is the one I should tell. She doesn’t seem to think these little deaths matter in any iteration, and truthfully, each Editor is identical to the last. I would not have guessed there was a tally and, faced with it, I’m not sure what it means.

-traveler