She attacks me in the subway of a city while I try to find ‘The Rat Museum.’ I push her into the path of an oncoming train.

She overturns my rented canoe and pulls me into a lake which is rumored to have flooded a town. With her rope around my neck, I am dragged underwater until I think I see the ghostly buildings of ‘Old Fredericktown’ swimming in the depths, but her lungs give out before mine do. I use her body to jettison me toward the surface.

She chases me through ‘The Bear-Proof Field’ until we each fall to the traps, just a few yards apart, and while I pry the jaws from my leg she rakes the ground with her fingers, stripping her ankle of flesh in an effort to reach me. I leave her to bleed out in the dirt.

The Woman is still limping the next time I see her. She hobbles in front of the bike as I swerve to take a familiar gray road, going well past the posted speed limit. The front wheel strikes her just as the world loses its color and we fly forward together, the heavy frame of the motorcycle spinning back up and over us. There is a moment of weightlessness followed by a good deal of pain.

The world is still gray when consciousness returns. I’ve landed in a ditch, spared serious injury by the thick mud there, churned up by run-off from the snow-capped mountains. The Woman, when I find her, is not so lucky. She is on the side of the road, undoubtedly dying again.

Her bag is at her side and, in it, I find the same objects- a shattered phone, a broken hairbrush, crushed make-up, and a ratty copy of Shitholes. I also find her wallet, tucked away in an inner pocket. I find her ID and recognize the name immediately.

This woman is the editor of ‘Autumn by the Wayside.’

My revelation is cut short by a sudden, sharp pain. The Editor has twisted her body in such a way that she is able to weakly bite the top of the hand that supports me on the asphalt and she takes a piece of me when I pull away, struggling to my feet.

The gray world has shrunk to a small triangle in an attempt to expel us. Its corners have stuck on the bike, the Editor, and myself, but it will collapse soon and we’ll be pressed out somewhere along the side of the highway. I walk to the motorcycle and grip the handles, hoping it will be enough to ensure we end up in the same place. The world shifts until it’s only a gray line that connects me and the dying woman. She sees me, because I am the only thing left in this transient reality to see.

I circle the entry for ‘The Last Sectioned Diner’ in her book and toss it to her without thinking. It lands on her broken ribcage and she curls into a ball and the sight of her pain makes me forget what I had planned on saying.

The last she sees of me is an apologetic grimace and a half-wave.

-traveler

In all of my travels, I have never been to ‘Yellowstone National Park.’ From what I’ve read and from the pictures I’ve seen online, it is a strange and beautiful place. ‘Yellowstone’ is a landscape that boils beneath its surface- a place of scalding, prismatic pools that will dissolve a man’s body in a day. It is a home to wild animals and raging fires, a place to buy expensive souvenirs and to hide one’s irritation at the lack of cell service. It is a completely natural place, and, though the Wayside runs through it, ‘Yellowstone’ is a destination, not a detour. It has no place in Shitholes.

But I am compelled to go, all the same.

How much of this is the magic of the postcard? I tell myself that I am going to meet the woman, to settle this before things get out of hand. I tell myself that I have been travelling so long for this project that it could be a relief to travel somewhere for myself- somewhere made safe by the rangers, with no hidden agendas or gray histories. I tell myself that ‘Yellowstone’ in the autumn will be an experience worth having, and that I have reached a point where I might blend in with crowds again. My hair has grown out. My old injuries have healed over. My teeth are still gapped but I have learned to smile with my mouth closed. I tell myself all of this, but when I look at the speedometer, I see Alice’s pick pointing down any road that will take us in the opposite direction.

She doesn’t trust the Woman. Or she doesn’t trust me.

Have I become an adult somewhere along the way, no longer willing to run from my problems but prepared to face them head-on? Or is it the card that compels me: a volcanic spring in vintage, WPA-style, with the message overlaid: ‘Wish you were here?”

Surely not into the simmering pool itself.

When I reach the gates and pay my entry fee I wonder how she plans to find me in a park so big. I stop for lunch and ask about the specific pool depicted on the postcard. I follow their directions, several miles down the road, and pull up to see it.

And the moment I see it I realize I have no desire to.

The Woman tries to kill me. She leaps out from behind a tree and shoves me into the railing so that all the air leaves my lungs and I double over the inconsequential barrier, smelling the rotten-egg stench of the boiling water below. The Woman shifts backward to push again and I roll out of her grasp, my ribs bruising on the rusted metal. I try to hit her before I see she’s drawn a knife and she slashes me clean through my jacket, a flash of cool pain across my forearm. I run, which she doesn’t seem to expect, and by the time she’s caught on I’m halfway around the pool. She follows me and I run again. She changes direction and I run the opposite way. She throws her knife across the center and it hits the ground behind me handle-first. The water is steadfastly between us.

“What the fuck?” I yell.

It’s more an exclamation than a question but she answers anyway.

“You did this to me!” she screams, “You made me like this!”

The Woman tries to rush me again but the pool is too big. She is screaming and crying now, loud enough that a passing car might hear and stop and sort this all out. We run several more circles before she stoops again and starts to throw rocks at me from across the way, screaming with each stone, screaming with so much force that I think her vocal cords must be tearing, that she must be moments away from throwing-up, from passing out. The stones fly past me, aimed as they are with blind anger. I see my bike behind her, parked at the road. If she runs again, I might be able to break from the circle and reach it in time to drive away.

“NO!” she shrieks, seeing my eyes flick to the road, “No more running!”

She lifts her body over railing and drives herself toward me, splashing into the scalding water. There is plenty of time to run- no chance that she could swim across quick enough to catch me even in tepid water. She boils alive, her face reddening and hair falling out with each angry stroke toward me. She doesn’t make it halfway before her screaming rattles down to a hoarse cough and then sputters out entirely. She floats silently toward me, the chemical pool already loosening her skin.

I step carefully around the water, back toward the road, keeping my eyes locked on her body. I am sure, until I reach the short trail back, that this is some trick. Her bag floats out from under her as I turn to leave, ejecting a hairbrush, a phone, several pieces of make-up, and a book.

‘Autumn by the Wayside: A Guide to America’s Shitholes.’

I am nearly a hundred miles away before I look at the postcard again, realizing too late that there may yet be some magic in it. My fears are unwarranted. Staring at the stylized pool, I know I would rather be anywhere else.

-traveler

‘It is likely by design that the ‘The Postcard Depot’ was built near the geographic center of the contiguous United States and, that, in violation of some soft traveler’s code, it stocks a library of postcards from across the country, available for a quarter each (or five for a dollar) and in seemingly infinite quantity. Among Wayside destinations, ‘The Postcard Depot’ stands out as both cleaner and more strictly organized than most. It is broken into sections by state and then alphabetically, by county, with clear tabs to indicate the popular landmarks one might be pretending to visit.

Conspicuously separate from the others are those that state, in one form or another, ‘Wish You Were Here.’ These are kept in a glass case, available at $250 a piece (or five for $1000), with no indication as to why they might be worth more. They are stiff and new, with crisp white borders and razor-sharp edges. These postcards take the ink of a pen as though thirsty for it.

Those in the know would have you believe that the cards do exactly what they suggest, which is to say that they compel the receiver to the advertised location. The cards are wishes in one form, fickle occult contracts in another- they must be sent through USPS- hand delivery will not do- and there are no guarantees as to when the receiver will heed the call. The only guarantee is that the card will sit with them, a window that overlooks a place far away, and nag until they finally crawl through it.’

By the time I understand the consequences of reading the card, it’s too late. The woman has realized I could outrun her indefinitely and now she’s cornered me with an over-priced souvenir. I should have guessed the moment a mail-carrier arrived at my tent in a dusty cornfield in the middle of the night. I should have guessed the moment I saw my full name written across the back, pressed into the cardstock so that I can feel the indention of it on the other side.

The woman compels me to Yellowstone and I turn myself toward it, somewhat relieved to have her in front of me now, rather than behind.

-traveler

‘Summit County, Ohio is home to ‘Old Towne,’ described as your run-of-the-mill reenactment village by colorful brochures found in motel lobbies of the surrounding region. Pictures inside reveal homesteading women hard at work, churning butter or tending fires that heat their theoretical soups in hanging iron pots. They suggest that, for a small fee, bearded men in stiff flannels will guide you in and around their simple (but sturdy) homes and allow you to take selfies in their simple (but sturdy) chairs, marveling all the while at the complicated (and fragile) ‘magic color box’ you keep in your pocket.

The parking lot of ‘Old Towne’ tells a different story.

The complex is walled off, as one might expect, but the entry gates are permanently closed. The townsfolk sealed them from inside shortly after the 2013 grand opening, during which the reenactors were said to have screamed at the sight of waiting customers in their modern clothes and shining vehicles. These events, and several shouted exchanges over the following hours, remain the last verbal contacts that have been recorded with the people inside ‘Old Towne.’ Transcripts consist mainly of accusations of witchcraft, prayers to God, and desperate threats coupled with the clanging of simple (but sturdy) farm tools. The walls of ‘Old Towne’ are not so thick that they cannot be spoken through and they are not so tall that crumpled letters cannot be thrown overhead, but the reenactors have decided to ignore further attempts to reach them and seem to carry on the illusion of homesteaders living out a miniature apocalypse in a makeshift fortress.

Several theories have emerged in the wake of the ‘Old Towne’ apocalypse, the foremost being that this is all some sort of complex art installation (which would explain why an anonymous entity funds new billboards, prints new flyers, and pays property taxes on the land). It does not explain why no charges were brought against the reenactors when, in July 2017, a woman snuck over the wall with a hand-written guide for their reintegration into modern society and was photographed, several days later, hanging from simple (but sturdy) gallows by a helicopter flyover.

Theories from the furthest fringes would have you believe that the apocalypse truly has befallen ‘Old Towne’ and that we are the doom that manifested in 2013 at the beckoning of some unknown force. The world has certainly grown stranger since then, and we, with out flashing phones and roaring engines, torment them so.’

-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

The roads I take become more treacherous- narrow and gravelly or too wide altogether and so busy with other vehicles that I am sure I will be crushed between two well-meaning commuters. I go out of my way going out of my way, often losing myself on dead-end service roads when I could be cruising smoothly down the interstate, wondering what music radiates from towers in the distance. I lose myself trying to lose her.

At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the woman that seems to be following me. I thought, maybe, I would be brave enough to face her. She has it all wrong, of course. She writes about the burning of beloved roadside attractions (the strangers, remember?), and the extinction of a species of fern (I am not convinced it did not survive the destruction of the Boone radio station). She writes about the body of a man in a rest stop (I tried to save him) and the near-death of a self-proclaimed witch hunter (who nearly killed me, if memory serves). She mentions a run-in with a predatory shadow (as though cut from dark cloth, crumpled, torn, and stretched) and I admit that it might be my carelessness that let it loose on the world. I had assumed the Black Tailor’s false shadow had died long before it tore free from my socks.

What I mean is that everything could be excused in one way or another if I were to just stop and wait a while and prepare for her to speak her piece. That’s what I intended to do at the next comfortable town: spend a little extra time writing a particularly polished entry while she catches up. But Alice has been acting strange, her pick in the speedometer swinging erratically, taking me in wide circles sometimes, leading me down an off-ramp and then back onto the highway.

“What a shame,” I whispered to myself, “This will make me difficult to follow.”

And, with the thought of her further behind me than ever, there came a great sense of relief.

And then I knew I was running.

‘On a planet inhabited by creatures that can fly, swim, climb, and jump, humanity has historically risen above its terrestrial kin in one physical domain: running. We are not the fastest runners, by any means, but we are certainly the most dedicated, capable of wearing down prey and losing predators over distances their own bodies refuse to endure.

‘The Retrospective on the Human Runner’ should be a celebration of this accomplishment, and it does begin that way, providing peer-reviewed back-pats to the men and women who arrive at the building, dressed in athleisure that reveals the rigid definition of their calves. ‘The Retrospective’ takes a sudden turn at its midpoint, however, and becomes a venue for the owner to air their concerns about the current state of humanity.

‘We are still running,’ he writes under an exhibit featuring a man sitting at a desk, filing his taxes, ‘What are we running from? We cannot outrun the inevitable.’

‘This is running!’ he claims of a scene in a strip club.

‘This is running!’ he claims of a woman paying for coffee.

‘We were not meant to go this far- not yet!’ he says of the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth, ‘It isn’t ready!’

‘The Retrospective on the Human Runner’ should be a short museum and, like many things that go on too long, it leaves the visitor feeling tired and hurt and hardly more capable than they felt when they began.’

It strikes me, upon leaving the ‘The Retrospective,’ that I cannot picture the woman behind me in a car. I cannot see her on a bike, like mine, or with a vehicle of any sort. I have a clear picture in my head of what she might look like, and when I hold that image in my mind, I see her running as well.

-traveler