By Javia Bordignon
I’m in Nebraska. Or Iowa. Or Illinois. I stopped caring a while ago. It doesn’t even really matter anyway. It’s all the same. Rows of half-consumed corn pass through my window and I can’t be bothered to put a name to where I am other than ‘right here’. Right here, in the passenger seat of a b-double, driven by someone whose name I didn’t quite catch. Right here on the interstate, miles of road ahead and miles of road behind. Right here without any destination and without any anchor.
It’s a mentality that I decided to adopt a few weeks ago, and I can’t say that it’s worked out horribly. Right Here-ism and right now-ism, no place, no plan, just a mindless existence that’ll lead me to nothing, or something, but that’s not right here, so I don’t care. My feet are kicked up on the dash, half because all my legroom is occupied by my backpack, and half because it suits this carefree aesthetic that I’ve retrofitted to my life.
I send a glance to my left, trying to take in anything notable about the man that I’ve found myself with. There’s nothing to write home about him, all I’m met with is a run-of-the-mill middle aged white man, patchy brown hair with a thriving moustache, eyes covered by blue-tinted sunglasses. I think his name might be Huck, or maybe Cisco, or something else overtly Americana.
He’s spent most of the ride silent, which I appreciate. It feels natural, like an extension of my newfound, blithe demeanour. Talking takes so much effort; it’s not a tenant of Right Here-ism. HuckormaybeCisco makes pretty good company compared to some of the other truckers that I’ve met. The quiet is nice, but he also keeps the truck going fast, and his music taste isn’t awful, plus the air is running cool which I appreciate.
“Hey, um, you gotta…” I break the silence reluctantly as my eyes meet a locust that’s landed to the right of the steering wheel, a couple of inches from my shoes.
It’s a fat little thing, a disgusting brown-green flecked with what looks like black liver spots. It makes eye contact with me, black bulging circles inspecting, as if determining if I’m going to start attacking it.
And for this aggravation I almost do, just to show it that I’m capable of harm. But physical damage probably isn’t a part of Right Here-ism, and defying the inescapable definitely isn’t. So, I keep my eyes trained on it, unmoving, devoid of the bitter malice that should run through my veins. HuckormaybeCisco seems to agree, voicing only a confident “hmmph” and flicking his eyes to see if I was referring to what he thought I was. We both sit unmoving, waiting until it flies away, or until we both don’t care enough to consider it anymore. Whichever comes first.
My attention returns to the cornfields outside my window. If I were allowing myself to find anything poetic under my new religion, I would probably write something about this, but I wouldn’t be able to find the words even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. Plus, I’m not poetic in the first place. I can just recognise the accidental irony of destruction. Before I left—which also means before I adopted Right Here-ism, I guess—I did some research into how corn was planted. It was part of my planning; I wanted to look into questions that couldn’t be answered on the road.
Most of the it’s planted in April, a bit in May, and then it’s ready to be harvested in September. It was late July when I left, so, mid-August now. But this corn won’t be harvested. Its youth has been ruined by the locusts, and now it won’t ever get out of its stalk-hood adolescence. No wonder I can find irony in the corn’s death. Though, I probably shouldn’t be empathising with corn. That seems like a slippery slope. Soon I might jump out of this truck and spend the rest of my decaying youth amongst their near-corpses. Maybe that’s why it’s called maize, because it would be so easy to go in there and never come out.
“I gotta refuel soon,” HuckormaybeCisco says, interrupting my thoughts. “It’ll probably take a while; I’ve got some stops around here as well. I’m happy to keep you ‘round if you’d like, or I can call ahead and see if anyone can take ya.”
There’s nothing really keeping me here, tethered to this truck. In fact, it’s probably for the best that I leave now. Part of my reason for getting into the b-double was a resigned obligation, or an unknown desperation for my previous plans to follow through, but now that I recognise this, I can tell that it’s unhealthy for me to remain here.
“I think I’m done here.” And so, when we pull over, I start to walk.
¶
I’m in a church. I don’t really know how that happened, but it’s where I am. Where I was before isn’t right now, so it doesn’t matter. Maybe I was in the truck a few hours ago, maybe a few weeks ago. I could still be in Nebraska, or wherever else I thought I could have been before. I could be in Mexico, or Canada, or Granada. I haven’t heard any Spanish, but I don’t really know anything. Well, besides the fact that outside is hot and the church is cold and silent, and my phone is playing music—slow, but I don’t mind. I wonder how much thinking is involved with becoming a nun. Or maybe a priest, if they let women do that. I can’t be bothered to check, but something in me doubts that. Being a nun wouldn’t be awful.
My fingers are placed around a cigarette Paris style, my middle and pointer finger overlapping in an attempt to emulate some sort of chicness. I don’t particularly like cigarettes, something about my lungs being on fire doesn’t really appeal to me. But I had half a packet that I found on the floor back when I still cared where I was and it’s something to do. Atlanta floor cigarettes are timeless no matter how much the world is falling apart.
“You know we’re closed?” A woman’s voice calls out to me, shocking me slightly.
I didn’t know churches ever closed. She approaches me, holding out her hand when I’m finally able to make her face out. I didn’t realise it was this dark. She looks older, but not geriatric, as if approaching that latter of her middle-aged days. Thin lips and eye-bags stand out on her face like they were made for somebody else. It’s her hair that’s most striking. Box-dye red, cut into a chin-length bob. It should look out of place on her, but somehow it doesn’t. Her hand hovers near my chest, and after a second, I pull the cigarette out of my mouth, starting to place it in her hand. She has an air of authority about her.
“I was in the ballet – Russia,” she begins, noting “Not your used one, kid. Do you have any spares?”
She nods in thanks as I place one in her hand, waiting patiently for her to adjust it to a position I can light it. She doesn’t contort her fingers to accommodate the flame though, instead directing it straight to her mouth.
“We’d have them all the time, between classes, when we woke up, for dinner.”
Nostalgia paints her face. “I gave up a while ago but holding them takes me back. It reminds me how much better I have it now.”
“Are you a priest?” I hear myself ask.
“No, no. I’m… something. The old guy, a pastor, left a few months back when news broke. Figured that God probably wasn’t real if he’d do this to us. And nobody took over, so here I am.” She chuckles slightly before starting to consider me. “What do you do?”
“I’m thinking of becoming a nun,” I say, “or dying with the corn. I don’t really know yet.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Not really. But I might pick up whatever religion you follow here if it helps me.”
“Helps you with what?”
“Becoming okay with dying.”
She scoffs a bit, probably admonishing my youth. Whatever. She can think what she likes.
“You never answered my question,” she states, “What do you do?”
The question continues annoying me the second time around, much to my behest. Annoyance is an emotion rooted in the past, not the present. Where I am. Still, I feel obligated to answer her question for some reason. Maybe it’s because I want my Atlanta cigarette back eventually.
“I was a playwright,” I say.
“Published?”
I shake my head. Admitting that I eventuated to nothing stings too much, so I try to find another way to say that I’m useless.
“Aspiring,” is the only word that I can think of.
“No one is aspiring. You either write shit or you don’t.”
She’s surprisingly petulant. Or maybe I am and I just haven’t been able to recognise it. I haven’t done too much introspection lately.
“I didn’t know not-quite-priests could swear.”
It’s silent for a bit after that. Enough time passes for me to think about how I don’t really know much about anything. A lot less than most people at least. What little I do know doesn’t hold much weight in the grand scheme of things. I know a bit about corn, and what other people look like. There’s some other stuff too, but why list them if anyone could search stuff up and find out. I want answers to things that have been asked for years. I could write, hypothetically, but nobody would ever put on a play while the world starves. So maybe this is a good alternative. Because no matter how much I try to commit myself to Right Here-ism, the world is still ending.
“Do you believe in God?” I ask. Maybe this can help answer my questions.
“Sometimes.”
She pretends to take a drag, taking an exaggerated exhale where I can almost see smoke coming from her mouth.
“You know,” she says, “the world’s been ending since I was a kid.”
It’s not a question I asked, but it’s a story that I want. Stories are answers in a way.
“In one way or another,” she continues. “I was in Russia during the cold war. The latter half, but still, everyday people would talk about how nuclear war was going to happen any day. We had drills, hid under our desks, ran to shelters. And then when I left the ballet and ran across the world it seemed like everyone was out to kill me and everyone that I was around. And then there was Y2K. I wanted to go out on New Year’s, but my boyfriend was so confident that computers would break and send us back centuries and we’d die for sure. In 2012 the Mayan calendar ended and they were talking about some unpredictable Doomsday on the news. And every time in-between when there wasn’t something named or someone trying to hurt people it felt like my world was ending. That crushing feeling of hopelessness where it feels like there’s no point in going on because nobody is talking about the world ending this time so everything must be fine. But it isn’t.”
She finally takes a breath, and it’s only now that I realise she hadn’t stopped at all while talking. As if the words would disappear if they didn’t come out as soon as humanly possible.
“But the locu-”
“To hell with the fucking locusts, kid. The world either ends or it doesn’t. Just like you either write or you don’t. And right now, as far as I can tell, the world is still alive. I’m still alive, you’re still alive, the trees are still breathing or whatever they do. Right now, there’s still time for the world to not end. And even if it does, the world doesn’t really end. We do, but the planet goes on. And there’ll probably be another society that won’t let themselves be destroyed by insects. But that doesn’t matter at the moment, because right now you still have time to write and to break into churches and to kill yourself by smoking.”
I nod, standing up. The church is still dark. I don’t know how I forgot that. My legs start to move, and then my arms, swinging slightly by my side. Soon, I’m outside, the summer night air embracing me softly. There are locusts all around me, swarming the church as if trying to attack it and not the corn surrounding it.
I won’t let them get the sort-of-priest, though. So, my limbs start flailing idiotically in protest, attacking them to varying success. I hit some. I miss more. I hit some. I’m a sword and shield and I’m going to protect the person in there. I can’t remember if I smiled, or said thank you, but I really hope I did. I hope.
