“Welcome to USA!”

“I know what it feels like to be dead.”

When people asked about his six months in Kansas that’s the first thing Elias would say.

Arriving in Downs was quickly followed by driving through Downs and then nearly leaving Downs. The stores on Main Street were mostly empty. A coffee shop opened at 5am and closed at 11am. The movie theatre last showed Mr. Mom and had been dark since.

“Does everyone go to the drive-through instead?” Elias asked. Don said he was pretty sure they’d never had one. Elias asked about cattle auctions, the corn maze, a Dairy Queen, dances on Saturday night and picnics on Sundays. None of these things rang true. A comforting certainty Elias had had mere hours ago began to slip away from him.

They pulled up to the house and Elias stepped out into the pre–dusk driveway. The quiet was total and complete. It was suffocating. With nothing else to compare it to Elias concluded that this must be what it feels like to be dead.

A moment passed and he heard the sombretic beating of his own heart confirming he was alive. Don pulled Elias’s suitcase from the trunk and ushered him inside.

Katherine was excited and sincere. She hugged Elias and asked about his trip. He saw the postcards he’d sent them affixed to the refrigerator. Ahead of the six-month student exchange program [“Welcome USA!”] he and Braden had exchanged postcards and a few letters. Downs had not been his first - or any - choice. He wasn’t sure where Kansas was other than that it was far from anywhere else.

Stephan had gone to Seattle. Orvig to Chicago. Ella and Susana were both in California. But it was Braden’s letters that drew him in. A recent, and regretful, reading of On The Road had also worked wonders. Perhaps no sentence would have as great an impact as, “East Kansas grasses become West Kansas rangelands that climb up to the hill of the Western night. And I saw God and he smiled at the dawn of the land.”

Braden wrote of the “sepia sunsets” and how the nights “smelled of molasses and stolen kisses down by the creek.” Braden’s telling of “afternoons of ice cream and evenings at the drive-through under the stars and the canopy of night” he told his friends that he didn’t want to go to Miami, but Kansas. He was going to see the real America and breath in the air that smelled of molasses. Perhaps he would end up having a real “down home good ole time” just like Braden said.

A map of Europe had a thumb tack sticking out of it. It was a reminder of where Elias was from [Oslo] and where their son Braden now was [Oslo, also]. He was beginning to feel a warm fear pooling in his stomach. There was no drive-through and the only creek Don knew of had gone dry twenty years prior. He was too nervous to ask about the “wild stallions” Braden had promised he could help name.

He must go outside. Get some air. Be alone and think. Just as Elias was walking out the door Katherine caught him a moment. “Here, got something for you.” She handed him a small white envelope. “It’s a note from Braden welcoming you to town, I expect.”

As clear as it was that she wanted him to open it in front of her he pocketed it and continued.

The streets were laid out in a grid. North, south, east, west. No diagonals or alleys or culverts, cul-de-sacs, or confusion. There was a useful finality to the streets in that they all ended in a dirt field. You drove until there was nothing left to drive on and then you turned left.

The world was opening itself up to Braden just as it was collapsing around Elias. It was all too much. Too quiet and vast. Unending and empty. He took a deep breath. The air smelled of manure, not molasses.

Elias walked down Dennison Street. The pavement ended broken and unfinished. Beyond that lay endless fields, rolling hills, and America.

Pulling the envelope from his pocket Elias initially thought it was empty. What could be less than a note but more than nothing? A slip? It was a slip of paper.

Braden’s message was written in pencil and obvious haste: sucker. That was it. He was a sucker. He had been suckered. Brad sucked him in.

Back inside and Katherine encouraged him to go upstairs and “wash up” before supper [he wasn’t sure what “supper” was but went with it].

There was very little left in Braden’s room. A bed, a dresser, a desk and chair. There were no framed certificates of competition. No trophies or medals. There were pictures of pictures from a few magazines.

He began to wonder if the kid was ever coming back. If he didn’t, would he be allowed to go home? Or was this a kind of “eye for an eye” situation? 

Atop the desk were a stack of thin paperbacks. Their bindings near creaseless. The “Laredo Trilogy” by Louis Lamour. Elias had never heard of Louis Lamour.

The illusion Braden had created came directly from these pages. He’d borrowed entire passages, characters, places, meals. Descriptions were lifted in their entirety from The Rider of Lost Creek, Where the Long Grass Blows, and High Lonesome.

He could see Brad’s plan coming together as the underlines and annotations became increasingly effusive. “Yes!” and “Put with thing Chris said about sun sets.” It was all there.

“The streets don’t end as much as they surrender to the land...”

“The night aches with fireflies under the canopy of night...”

“Here, the past hangs close as the mornings smelled of molasses...”

The words of Louis Lamour were the bait and Elias the bounty. Braden had needed a way out and Elias provided it.

“Don’t hate Braden,” would become his mantra, Elias decided. Forgive him. Let it go. As deeply the dislike for Braden was becoming don’t let it destroy you. Or keep notes in case this anger will one day serve you better than it does right now.

Elias lay down on the bed and let his eyes close. He thought of his home and his parents. Right now all he had in common with them, it seemed, was shared DNA and an affinity for oxygen. He might as well have been on Mars.

Katherine’s calling for supper brought him back. He stood slowly and instinctively emptied his pockets. Boarding passes and Krone arrayed themselves on the desk. Turning off the desk lamp he walked out of the room, downstairs, and in a few minutes he’d be closer to tomorrow.