Something in the bike starts to grind just 20 miles out of Missouri. It’s nothing ugly at the outset, but I check Shitholes for the nearest likely pull-off and find a scene of autumn that has persisted well into the summer months.

A grove of dead trees stands at the border, tormented (and made greener) by thick ropes of manicured ivy. Clouds hesitate in the sky above, churning out a pink-tinged storm that looks like the underside of a sea creature. Two women toil in the grove with a hickey bar and a long piece of rusted metal. Together, they prop up the branch of something that could be an oak.

‘Maria Vasquez, owner of ‘Cold Grove,’ carefully avoids questions about her mid-west installation. Her acreage is thick with extinct trees- dead, of course, or they wouldn’t be extinct- held up and together with conspicuous pieces of metal and constant, obsessive maintenance by those in her employ. The sources of the unprocessed specimens is a mystery- the trees themselves are unlabeled and have only undergone amateur identification. The gates of ‘Cold Grove’ are opened inconsistently and trespassers face prosecution with an infamous zeal. It’s not friendly enough to be an educational center and it lacks the careful whimsy of art.

Former ‘Grove’ employee, Richard Denner, has famously (where fame is relative) accused Vasquez of occult motivations. ‘Cold Grove,’ he claims, has been erected to attract the ghosts of things long dead. Like columbine, which can be propagated as an invitation to humming birds, ‘Cold Grove’ requires no explanation because it is the means to an end and not the end itself. All said, there is evidence that Denner’s departure from the ‘Grove’ was an unpleasant one and he has since proved himself to be a man of little relevance.’

Finding the gates to ‘Cold Grove’ are open, I shake the bike a few times and leave with the vague idea that it might sort itself out over the duration of a walk. Inside, I see the women across the ‘Grove’ notice me and I pretend not to see them, taking on the guise of a non-intrusive passerby.

Despite care and rounded metals, the trees chafe at their structures, splintering and peeling where the wind has encouraged post-life movement. Something, rain probably (or wooden ennui) has led much of the grove to weep, creating dark, dripping stains where they bend in their death-permanent poses. A majority of their number stand like modern palm trees, great, barren stalks, and each is as cold and as hard as stone.

The trunk of one tree rattles as I pass; its structure buzzes under my fingertips. The head of a boring insect emerges for a split second, just at eye level, before retreating into the dark of the wood. The skin of the tree shifts, then, as a thousand tunnels fill with a thousand heads like the last. They wait and seem to watch me, clicking under insectile breaths.

“Grove’s closed!” one of the women shouts, and I skitter backward for fear of getting caught in a swarm.

But they have gone and the tree is silent.

Twenty miles out of ‘Cold Grove’ the bike makes a sound like an old woman’s cough and the grinding clears.

-traveler

A day passes in which I am pursued by a parade through a small, uninteresting town. The treads of the bike gum up with candy and I weave through crowds of adult men on small tricycles. Each empty road leads me back to the long line of people marching through the streets. They wave from the sidewalks and I wave back, my face a rictus under the helmet, a taut smile that says ‘I’m not supposed to be here but I’m doing the best I can.’

-traveler

At the suggestion of Shitholes, I spend the morning on a park bench near ‘The Gravity Well.’ A family arrives shortly after I do, the first of many. The kids toss things into the ‘Well,’ scouring the forest for rocks and debris. They take turns throwing their finds over the mouth and laughing as it all inexplicably b-lines into the dark. The parents, two men, pretend to be less impressed than they are. They quietly marvel at the silence of the ‘Well,’ how the rocks rarely even clatter against the side on the way down. The children are given coins to buy wishes. An older boy is scolded for throwing an empty bottle in.

“That’s polluting,” one of the men says, “That won’t break down till you’re an old man.”

The boy says the same about the coins and the family leaves before the argument concludes.

‘The Gravity Well’ does not change in the interim.

A woman arrives later, on her own. She’s looking cautiously over the edge when a ball of bones and feathers screeches past her head and into the ground.

“Did you see that?” she asks me.

“Pretty grim,” I tell her.

She takes a picture of the ‘Well’ with her phone and looks disappointed at the result. She leaves, like the others.

How high up, I wonder, was that bird? It must have felt safe until it began to fall. Does a bird know enough to blame itself for an accident like that?

A man arrives and does nothing to hide his amazement. He does the opposite, even.

“This is crazy, right?” he asks me, “Like, why aren’t we doing something about this? Why aren’t there papers written about this? Why hasn’t someone figured out a way to harness this energy?”

I shrug and put on a face of polite bafflement.

“The world is fucking crazy,” he continues, “This thing is fucking crazy,” he adds.

Another man arrives in the meantime, backing his truck up in the lot. The man that steps from the cab could be a farmer or a meth cook, a toss-up as far as I’m concerned. He pulls down the tailgate and slings a heavy sack onto his shoulder, an assortment of garbage by the look and smell.

The situation dons on the first man as the second approaches.

“You can’t do that!” he says, his disbelief shifting tone, “This isn’t a fucking dump!”

“Is if I dump things here.”

“I’ll call the police! I’ve got your license plate number.”

“Call’em.”

“This is ridiculous.”

The second man tips the bag into the ‘Well’ without another word and the first scowls.

“That was ridiculous,” he says, as the truck pulls away. He shakes his head and I nod.

Several minutes later the man is holding his arm out over the mouth of ‘The Gravity Well,’ leaning over the short protective barrier installed there. His fingers creep across its radius until his hand and arm suddenly drop and he stumbles backward, smacking his thin wrist on the stone edge in the process. He looks at his swollen hand and he looks at me with the face of a man that is deeply disturbed by what he felt, by a close brush with the inevitable.

He leaves without another word.

I leave a short time later, frightened by the man’s fear and unwilling to perform tests of my own.

‘‘The Gravity Well’ is another of the Earth’s overlooked miracles, too strange to truly comprehend. With no sign or description available (and only the barest information to be found online) most visitors are left to assume that science can explain the existence of ‘The Gravity Well,’ (it has yet to do so). Local legend says the ‘Well’ will occasionally reverse and spill forth the secret disposals of the previous generation, though this occurs on the scale of centuries and long after the pertinence of anything contained therein has expired.’

-traveler

‘Richard Langley of Canton, Mississippi claims to be the nation’s oldest living man, though no authority has yet graced him with the title. By his account, and by the account of a tattered document, ‘Dick’ is 154 years old and an 89-year citizen of the United States. The document is nigh unreadable but the man looks the part- looks older even. Dick Langley aches with age and the world aches around him, his floorboards creaking- the spines of his books (and his back) twisted with the long burden of life. His is not the story of a man that lives well into his hundreds, but of a man that lives unwell, that lives nonetheless.

Due to Dick’s inability (and now, unwillingness) to verify his age with any legal institution, the man’s claims only serve as an introduction to his small, roadside collection of teeth. The collection is a mere 85 pieces but each (excepting one) has been genetically verified to be a Dick Langley original- the initial 20 baby teeth, the full set of adults, and then a third set of haunting bones that grew into Dick’s mouth beginning in his 126^th year. ‘Dick’s Senior Teeth’ are milky and vaguely translucent, their tips ragged like an old dish towel. One is streaked red throughout, some stray nerve or blood vessel that remains sealed up in the dense enamel. Another is curved like an elephant tusk and hollowed by a deep cavity.

There are pictures of the teeth coming in, all the blood and pain of a child’s teething in the mouth of an old man. Copies of Dick’s dentist reports are spiral-bound and available as a perk of the ‘show.’ They detail astonishment, mostly (“Where are they coming from?”) and concerns for the man’s health (“…suggests removing them may be as dangerous as leaving them in.”). They come to few conclusions before Dick runs out of money and spends the following decade with his new set. As we know by now, these too will eventually loosen at their anchors.

The one tooth in the collection that doesn’t belong to Dick arrived in his mailbox in 2007, as twisted and malformed as his own. The sender, a woman in the Ukraine, claims to be 134 and has gone through the same oral molting.

‘Dick’s Senior Teeth’ is an uncomfortable attraction. The facilities are unkempt and Dick himself is hardly a draw, so near death he seems to be. Despite its welcome mat, an entrance into ‘Dick’s Senior Teeth’ feels like an intrusion and the sight of the teeth will leave even the hardiest traveler’s jaw itching for some time after.’

A plague of detours means I arrive at Dick’s too late, the man having passed away in the night.

-traveler

Preoccupied, I pass the same sign several times before I realize it is the same sign and not just iterations of the curt message it bears:

‘WEIGH STATION – ALL VEHICLES MUST TURN OFF’

The same pull-away ramp follows just a quarter-mile down the road, skirting a little hut and looping neatly back around to the highway. I pass it again and see the sign soon after, it having only just disappeared from the rattled mirrors of my bike.

With a dramatic (and singularly personal) show of reluctance, I gather the scattered pieces of paperwork that have proven necessary on the trip thus far: several licenses (current, expired), registrations for the bike in two states (solid, gray), a handful of drawn charms for safe passage, luck, wealth, a ward against nightmares (cold iron, I’m told, just a rusted rod of it) and proof of insurance. I loose two rings from my key chain, one for the right hand (the tell symbol for a secret society) and another for the left, under a glove (the tell symbol for a splinter of the same society).

I remind myself of my aliases, of their ages, occupations, and previous addresses. I remember the reasons, true and false, that my own appearance has so changed from even the most recent pictures of me (missing teeth, close-cut hair, patchy beard). I clear my throat and practice greeting someone in a way that communicates, through tone, a tired willingness to cooperate with authority. It comes easy.

Finally, I rev the engine and pull forward, past the sign and up the infinite ramp to a platform set into the road. Red numbers flick across a digital display on the small, fogged hut and something shifts inside, taking a step back from the window as though uncomfortable with my mild attention.

For many months the scale has settled on a negative, registering my missing shadow (and eventually the lighter, false shadow) as an absence. The negative has been the cause of a good deal of bureaucratic grief on my part, a good deal of grief all around. There is an expectation here, as well as just about anywhere in the nation, that a payment is involved and that the payments flow in a particular direction. For the weigh station to suddenly owe money (at least, according to their systems) is unwelcome. I’ve probably earned thirty dollars this way, thirty dollars in crumpled bills and loose change (as though from the pockets of the collectors themselves). I’ve lost a lot of time.

When it settles, the scale registers in the positive and a second screen tallies the Gray Toll- $2.75. I put the money in the bin and the blurry collector waves me through. The ramp and the sign stay behind me this time. The air grows cool and dry.

An early autumn.

‘Given the inconsistency of toll prices, the author has taken it upon himself to compile a short list of variables that appear to, in some way, affect the scales. At the time of writing, the author’s average toll in a small car is $4.10.

+ Hauling 5-20 lbs of salt (steady increase)

+ Accompanied by two passengers

+ Dried leaves blowing across platform (dramatic increase)

+ Raining

+ Driver waves at hut (in a friendly manner)

– A/C or heater is running

– Dog is in car

– Driver slept particularly well the previous night’

 

-traveler