American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,16

corner of her eye, something bulbous and smooth gliding through the air. She can see it only through the gaps in the trees. There is writing on one side, though she can see just two letters: WI.

She sees it is not flying, but standing on a tall, round post. A water tower, she thinks. But she didn’t see any tower before, and she definitely should have…

As she ponders this a splash of red comes swooping out from between the pines: a stop sign. Startled, she comes to an abrupt stop, and discovers she has arrived.

She’s at an intersection, but it’s completely different from those of the rough country roads she’s been traveling: on her left is a small white wooden house with green trim, and on her right is another house, this one of adobe, the walls and corners smooth and brown like a sculpted chocolate cake. Each one expands back into the uneven terrain, disappearing behind thick beds of flowers. The change is so sudden that for a moment Mona sits and stares around, confused.

She realizes she has entered the street grid of Wink. She sees small shops ahead, and telephone wires, and tall pines in the parks. And yet there is no one on the streets that she can see, nor is there any sound at all besides the wind.

This is the town on the federal enclave? she wonders. She saw no signs warding trespassers away, or border guards; the only thing that hindered her arrival was the downward incline of the road.

She starts off into the streets. It is nearly evening, and the first thing she plans to do is ask someone where a motel is. She’ll tackle the issue of her mother’s house in the morning. So long as she presents her identification to the right people tomorrow, the house should be hers.

But she finds no one to ask. As she roves through the street grid (each block is nearly perfect—if she took out a protractor and measured the corners, she is sure they would be at an even ninety degrees) she does not spot a single soul. Every street and every shop and every home is deserted. There aren’t even any cars parked in the lots.

This is why Wink wasn’t on any maps, she thinks. No one fucking lives here anymore. It is just her luck to inherit a house in a ghost town.

But it can’t be abandoned, not really, she decides. It is too well maintained for that: the neon lights of the diner, though unlit, look functional; the cafés all have (somewhat) fresh coats of paint; and as the sun sets the streetlamps all flicker on, bathing the streets in a white, phosphorescent glow, and none of the bulbs are out.

But though it is deserted, the town is quaintly beautiful. Many of the shops and buildings have a faint Googie influence to them, which contrasts hugely with the New Mexican stylings: standing beside a smooth, earthy adobe home might be a metal porthole window and an angular, upswept roof, or an amalgam of glass and steel and neon. Both the diner and the café have parabola-shaped signs done in soft, Easter-egg blue. It feels inappropriate to be cruising these streets in the Charger. What she needs is an Eldorado with tail fins and rocket-ship taillights. Or, she thinks as she passes a round-walled adobe house with pine corbels, maybe a horse-drawn wagon. It is a strangely schizophrenic place, but not unwelcoming.

She tries to imagine her mother living here. Maybe she went to that diner, bought flowers from this shop on the corner, walked her dog down that sidewalk. Jesus, Mona thinks—could she have had a dog? For some reason, this fairly irrelevant possibility confounds her.

Then Mona turns one corner, and she sees the street ahead is lined with parked cars. They are not, as she expected, vintage cars, but Chevy trucks and the like. She speeds up a little, wondering if this could be something, and as she does a wrought-iron railing emerges from the bushes along the sidewalk, and at the next corner is a white wooden church with a tall steeple.

When she pulls up alongside the fence she finally sees what is on the other side, and she slams on the brakes in surprise. The tires squeal a little as she comes to a halt.

Just on the other side of the wrought-iron fence is a huge crowd of people, hundreds of them.

When her tires squeal they all jump, turn, and look