"Which way to Aneroid, Saskatchewan?" Jon asks the man at the gas station who is filling his tires with air and checking the level of wiper fluid---things Jon would never think of, especially when he is making a 3,700 kilometer cross-country drive with little more preparation than an address and a grade six crash course in geography, a vague recollection of a map of Canada criss-crossed by the blue veins of rivers and studded with mountains to the north and west.

He knows he made it out of Ontario, and the odometer reads 1,152, but he can't remember if he reset it before starting out, or if that includes yesterday's trip to town for the drycleaning and the groceries and a sandwich from that one place he likes. Which, all told, probably doesn't make that much of a difference; but all the same he'd like to know if it's really 1,152 km he's driven, or if it's closer to 1,120, or even a flat eleven hundred. That would be an extra 50 he'd have left to drive, and the sky is getting dark now, bluish-grey like in most of the cities he's been to in his life, nothing like the stark, consuming blanket of sky and stars that hung over the island, back home, which may or may not have been 1,152 km away.

The service station guy has stopped talking to him, probably because he can tell Jon hasn't heard any of it and won't remember it for more than a few minutes if he has. Instead he hands him a mini travel map from a rack on the counter, says the tires are back to their optimal psi for this kind of weather, and sells him a litre of oil and a can of cherry-vanilla Coke. The Coke tastes like the remains of a forest fire, ashy and woody (and cherry-y and vanilla-y) and he sips it all the way to Winnipeg.

*

Somewhere in Manitoba (and the pocket map, which has become a fixture in his life comparable to car keys or coffee, is no help at all on narrowing down the exact location) Jon loses his shoes and his passenger-side mirror, and almost spends the night in jail.

It isn't as long a story as it sounds: somewhere in Manitoba he pulls over for the night and decides to have a few drinks, because he's a stranger in a strange town and that seems like the thing to do in sleepy, dusty places like these, and he can feel the ache of hours on the road settling into the small of his back, curled up in the joints of his fingers and knees.

A few drinks turns into a lot of drinks, and the next thing he remembers is waking up outside the bar to some guy trying to pull his other shoe off, because one of them is already under the guy's arm. He comes to too late to save the shoes, but as the beggar runs away he has the presence of mind to find his car and give chase. He's driven roughly 20 meters when he hears a wrenching crack and looks back to see that he's clipped the front railing on the bar with the truck, knocking off the side mirror. The owner yells for what feels like hours through a slow-blooming hangover, but in the end he settles for a handful of cash and autographs for his kids, and Jon sleeps the rest of it off in the driver's seat before heading out the next morning just before dawn, too afraid to ask for directions and focused only a city and a face and a place called west.

*

On the road to Regina he listens to the local radio; spins the dial with a quick smooth flick of his wrist and just lets it flow over him, whatever it is, until he can't stand it anymore. The static or the commercials or the reedy folk songs about lost loves and drowned tears. When his fingers and his ears and his heart get tired he pops a tape into the deck and turns the sound up just enough so that it blends with the whirring scrape of the tires, rather than drowning it out.

It's a tape he's never heard before. Most of the songs are unfamiliar, although if he listens closely he thinks he recognizes a few of the melodies, seeping through headphones on a cross-continental flight at sunrise, the memories tied up with blue airline blankets and blue eyes and the vast blue expanse of the sky over his shoulder. They are simple and they are overwhelming, they are soft and angry and shaking, the voices clear but the words hard to untangle, a mystery he is afraid of not breaking.

Masking tape on the front of the cassette, and one penned-in word: PROMISE

No punctuation, no lean to the letters or unsteadiness of hand to give a hint. Is it a question? A command? A statement of fact, a threat, a dare? What is he promising, what has been promised to him?

We're not afraid to ride... we're not afraid to die...

He lifts his eyes to the sky and feels each word press into his skin, a throaty sweet voice like something coming undone, something just beyond the vanishing point as he crosses the border into Saskatchewan.

*

Getting to Saskatchewan is a lot easier than being in Saskatchewan. All you have to do is drive west and mind the U.S. border. Once he's there, though, Jon realizes there are maybe a few holes in his plan.

For one thing, a lot of people have never heard of Aneroid. Now, while the average person can not be held responsible for knowing every single city in their province, Jon expected everyone in Saskatchewan would not only be familiar with the city, but able to provide clear, detailed directions on the spot. It seemed like their provincial duty.

Then again, he's known the guy for four years, and for all he knows Aneroid could be within throwing distance. It probably isn't, but the point stands.

He hits up a pizza place for breakfast, both because the smells drifting out to the sidewalk make his stomach rumble and because it's the only place open at 5 a.m. Stepping inside, he spies a framed jersey hanging on the far wall and figures he's found his target. The parlor owner, a heavyset woman with auburn hair and a small scar to the right of her nose, regales him with the day's baseball scores and gives him free refills. She is only too happy to chat about the local hero, and maps out the next 500 km for him on the back of a napkin.

He glances at the address printed on the front as he stuffs it into his pocket; 2482 Dayton, Moose Jaw. For a moment, he misses home. Then he switches the headlights on and pulls the truck out onto the road, continuing the long sleepless drive to Aneroid.

*

He takes Highway 1 out of Moose Jaw, which really isn't at all like the one that runs through L.A. (back home his mind thinks fuzzily, though he knows that isn't right), except that it has exit signs and dash marks and cars. Not so much on the cars, really.

The tape plays over and over as he drives. None of the songs are like any of the others, and he feels like he's filling out a crossword in a foreign language, trying to forge a meaning between the sandpaper drawl and the stiff-backed PROMISE and the pale eyes that followed him four thousand kilometers.

everybody seems to wonder what it's like down here
i gotta get away from this day-to-day running around,
everybody knows this is nowhere

As the hours pass he runs out of cars to count (54 black 17 silver, 1 teal if he squinted just right), so he starts to count houses, but he runs out of those eventually, too. The land around him is unrelentingly flat, the kind of flat that makes him think maybe that whole the-earth-is-a-sphere theory is bullshit, he's sure he can see the Pacific from here.

And then, like a hit from behind, like nothing he ever saw coming, he comes upon it: the wire sculpture bearing the name of the town and its greatest achievement, the only export ever to come from Aneroid, Saskatchewan. A smaller sign below it states: Population 75 56.

He looks at the tired old farmhouses leaning against grain pillars, the unpaved road running like a knifewound through the belly of the town. If there are 56 people here, Aneroid, Saskatchewan is hiding them well.

The tape turns over and one of the few songs he knows begins to play. It sticks in his mind particularly because there are only two words he can understand.

dans leurs yeux des dollars
dans leurs sourires des diamants
moi aussi un jour je serai beau comme un dieu
Sexy boy, sexy boy.

*

Funny how in 3,700 km he never played out this moment.

The house is old and stout, though a little less tired-looking than most, a slapdash facelift of primer and potted flowers lining the walk. There's a big comfortable porch that wraps around it like all good farmhouses, and also like all good farmhouses (in Jon's opinion) there are a couple of skinny dogs dozing in the shade beneath its boards. There's a dark-haired boy out front dribbling a soccer ball around a scruffed-up and tomboyish girl, and then there's him.

He looks up as Jon pulls the truck into the gravel driveway, and the way his shoulders go back, the way he squints into the morning light, reminds Jon of a picture from an article from 1998 that someone tacked up in the locker room once. His eyes are the same clear blue as the sky at his back, arms bronzed and baked the color of the earth, and Jon is struck dumb by the sight of him, halfway out of the car but with nothing to say, never expecting to really find him, never expecting him to be this beautiful.

They watch each other in silence. The dying sun slants into his eyes, setting them on fire, picking out the lines of his body in shades of gold. Jon's back is to the horizon, throwing him in shadow; light and dark, perfectly balanced, each waiting for the other to move first. Jon's mouth cracks dry as the hot earth beneath his shoes, and his tongue stalls and drags on the only words he's come up with in the three-day journey to this place. The wind tears them from him, and the little girl shrieks with joy as she steals the soccer ball and goes pelting down the road with the boy at the her heels, but it's okay. He reads them on Jon's lips, small and sincere, feels them in the thrumming line of Jon's body as it pulls against his and tastes them at the back of his teeth; two words that cost Jon three days, 3,700 km, a broken sideview mirror, side roads and fist fights and a tape worn through like an old t-shirt. Countless cans of vanilla coke and only a little of his pride, something he valued overmuch and would destroy with those words again and again if meant he could stay forever in this moment with this man on a farm in Aneroid, Saskatchewan.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws