Gerd was the only man Ellis had met who could eat pizza, smoke a cigarette, watch television and read a Graham Greene novel in his second language at the same time. He was waiting for Ellis at a coffee bar in Boston airport, an ashen-faced forty year old with potholed skin and a lost, thin-lipped smile. Ellis would learn that Gerd rarely laughed, although occasionally he smiled a narrow slit of a smile. Many things fascinated Gerd but few things amused him.

“The diner we were going to shoot in Famingham is off,” Gerd said, shaking Ellis’s hand, stubbing out his cigarette and standing up, all in one languid movement. He spoke with no expression, his chin raised and his eyes peering down his nose through a pair of non-existent half-glasses.

“Right.” Ellis smiled eagerly.

“Let’s go.”

Gerd wandered away, carrying a silver metal suitcase in one hand and a carton of cigarettes in the other. Ellis followed on his heels.

“I’m Ellis,” he said.

“OK,” Gerd said.

Gerd placed his silver flight case in the trunk of the hire car, next to his camera case. He opened it to dig out a fresh cigarette lighter and Ellis saw that it contained a pair of jeans, a grey V-neck sweater and a white T-shirt, all identical to the ones Gerd was already wearing. There were two pairs of socks, no underwear, a toilet bag and a dozen cheap plastic lighters. Gerd had no coat, only the Mod-like charcoal jacket he wore every day.

They drove out of Boston on a series of looping highways.

“I have no interest in food, Ellis. Sometimes the thought of putting more matter into my mouth makes me temporarily depressed. So you are going to have to say when you want to stop and eat otherwise you could starve for being polite.”

“Right.” Ellis smiled. “Me, I love food.”

“You’re heading for small-town America so you might change your mind about that,” Gerd said, lighting another cigarette. “They serve coffee in this country, so I’m happy.”

You look happy, Ellis thought.

In Buffalo, Ellis had a motel room wedged between the sound of the elevator and the noise of the ice machines. He found a present from his dad tucked amongst his clothes. It was a brown leather travelling pouch and in it was Denny’s fountain pen with a small tag tied to it on which Denny had written Postcards please. Into the pouch Ellis put his own camera, a notepad, the postcard he had written for Tammy and the photograph of him and his dad standing in the snow, taken by Mafi.

They went to a timber-clad bar beneath an ancient tulip tree. The roots of the tree were breaking up the surface of the Lake Erie highway and the deep crevices in the bark hinted at a less modern, more robust America. Ellis met an elderly man named Moses Mahler who told him that he had lived at number 121 Lackawanna Street all his life, and still slept in the room he was born in. Ellis asked him about his life and Moses told him and Ellis bought Moses a drink and, later on, Moses bought Ellis a drink back.

“Don’t you think that’s amazing, Gerd, to live in the same house for seventy-five years? Why don’t you do a book photographing people who have lived the same place all their lives?” Ellis suggested, as they drove back to the motel.

“Why don’t you?” Gerd said.

“’Cos I’m the assistant, not the photographer.”

Gerd emitted a despairing breath, an expression Ellis came to learn signalled mild amusement, mild reproach or both.

“Ellis, yesterday I spent three hours deciding not to photograph a barber’s shop sign. Today, I spent eight hours photographing a juke box. I think you’ll find time to fit in your own photographs here and there, don’t you?”

Gerd photographed the neon lights of a bowling alley in Cleveland, a street lamp in Akron and a rusting 1940s petrol pump in Coshocton. The drive from Columbus to Cincinnati was dull but Gerd scrutinised the faceless Ohio road for something of interest. Ellis watched the road signs with naive fascination. He saw turnings for towns called London and Lebanon and Portsmouth, and was surprised by all of them. He took out his pen and paper with the intention of writing a list of what he saw but found himself putting them in a letter to Tammy instead. He was hungry and felt hot in the glass-sharpened sunlight. In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Gerd leaning forward to light his cigarette and he saw his dad doing the same thing a thousand times before. He pictured Denny’s profile at the wheel. He remembered when his own feet didn’t reach the floor. He heard Radio 3 playing on the car radio and the faint whistling sound his dad made when he was happy or thoughtful. He abandoned his letter to Tammy. There were too many things to write. He didn’t know where to start.

In an effort to put thoughts of home behind him, Ellis decided to like Cincinnati the moment they arrived, to preoccupy himself with liking it. He liked the circular concrete of the Riverfront Stadium, home to the Cincinnati Reds. He liked the River Ohio cutting between the city and Kentucky, and he liked the steel bridges spanning the river like a jaded Meccano wonderland. He liked the rust-red roller shutters on the pawnbroker shops in the blazing sunshine. He liked the swagger of the people at the run-down end of Elizabeth Street, he liked the way the sunlight glistened on the downtown office blocks and the elevated walkways and he loved the warm breeze rising up off the river and sweeping through the streets.

They watched the Cincinnati Reds play the Florida Marlins and when the game halted at the seventh innings, Ellis climbed to the back of the stadium and surveyed the suburbs at dusk, the reflections of a pearl-pink sky embossed on every bridge and window. The city grew dark and became a sparkle of lights. Ellis watched the brooding, unlit goods trains drag themselves out of the metropolis. He saw car headlights appear and disappear amongst the forested hills. He imagined the lives going on beneath him. Millions of lives. People who had never seen England and never would. People whose every thought and action and influence was entirely unconnected to his own. He asked himself, What does it mean to travel? What am I meant to learn from this? How should the world change me? Could I change it? He shut his eyes and wondered if everything laid out before him would cease the moment he left the city and only resume if he returned. In a country this size, he reminded himself, towns and cities he had never heard of were in existence every day. In them were millions of people, each one as wrapped up in their own life as he was in his. When did we become so many? When did we build all this? How did it all ever get so big? He pressed his hands against his head and felt a surge of panic rear up in him. Before he could identify the panic, there was a tap on his shoulder. It was Gerd, wearing the expression of profound disinterest that only sport could bring to him. Behind him, thousands of people were leaving the stadium. They joined the exodus. Not until they were outside did Ellis realise that he had left the leather pouch under his seat. He ran against the crowd but the bag had gone.

There was a Hoover at one end of the motel corridor and it caught Gerd’s eye as he and Ellis walked to breakfast. The corridor was bathed in meagre, deep green light which seemed to make the interminably long and narrow passageway darker not brighter. Carpet covered the floors and the lower half of the walls.

“Go on without me,” Gerd muttered.

Ellis reported the stolen bag at the stadium office and to the Cincinnati PD.

“It’s the photograph more than anything. I haven’t kept the negative, I’m a bit disorganised. I don’t care about the rest, just the photograph, you see?”

They didn’t see.

He watched the steam boats on the Kentucky side of the river and listened to the rumble of cars on steel bridges. The vast maze of rail lines converging on the city made it all seem like a toy and he realised that he had to forget about the bag and its contents and make the decision not to care.

You can make that decision, Ellis, he told himself. You can choose to make it matter or let it be of no importance. You can decide what sort of person you are going to be when it comes to dealing with these things.

He found Gerd motionless at his tripod in the motel corridor. The German was transfixed by the Hoover, as if it were about to perform a trick.

“You been here all day?” Ellis whispered.

Gerd laced a barely noticeable nod into his stillness. Ellis looked at the frame counter and then for evidence of how many films Gerd had been through.

“You’ve taken three frames in eight hours?”

Gerd nodded again.

“Three …” Ellis repeated. “What have you been doing all day, earning its trust?”

Gerd put his eye to the viewfinder. “Get me a coffee.”

“You’re the Dian Fossey of the electrical appliance world.”

“Coffee …” Gerd muttered again, “or I’ll kill you.”

Across the river, on the quiet streets of Covington, Kentucky, jobless men and uninterested children slouched on benches kicking up the dust. Next to the German washhouse, where women sat on the steps, Gerd parked in the forecourt of the Anvil Bar and Grill. A red neon sign flashed OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY 7 DAYS A WEEK. Beneath it, on a white-painted wall which glared harshly in the sun, were painted large blue letters, WE MAY DOZE BUT WE NEVER CLOSE.

Sitting at the horseshoe bar of the café was a thin, elderly woman who had lost most of her hair. Beneath her apron, her loose, sagging body was visible through the arms of a man’s singlet. Her skin was the colour of ash. She was so lifeless, she made Gerd seem excitable.

A maze of small eating rooms led off from the bar. Each was clad in darkly veneered wood panelling and lit dimly by orange bulbs in wicker shades. It took time for Ellis’s eyes to adjust to the gloom.

“This place I was told about,” Gerd confided, examining a coffee-stained menu and turning to look for a waitress.

From the shadows in the corner of the room came a drawl. “It’s order at the counter before noon.”

The man who had spoken was sitting with two other men. All three of them looked to be in their seventies. They wore identical red and black checked shirts, the sleeves rolled up into a tight, thick, rope-like hem around their biceps. They had thinning hair, greased back. The man with his back to

Ellis was a little slumped, as if he’d fallen asleep. Ellis stepped back into the dazzling sunlight of the bar and wondered how, in a town where the sun beat down so hard, the people could look so pale. A television was on in the corner. The bald woman smoked a cigarette and read the paper. Two elderly men sat on bar stools looking at their coffee as if it were newly invented. A goods train crossed the steel bridge one block south, prompting a flock of pigeons to evacuate the bridge and land on the concrete forecourt of the Anvil Bar and Grill, projecting a dazzling waterfall of bird shadows on to the white wall as they landed.

“What’ll it be?” the bald woman asked.

“Scrambled eggs, home fries and toast, please. And a pecan pie.”

“You want cream or ice-cream with the pie?”

Ellis stepped back into the gloom. “Cream or ice-cream?”

“Is it fresh cream?” Gerd asked.

“Is it fresh cream?” Ellis repeated to the bar.

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh.”

Gerd nodded.

Ellis returned to the bar. “Cream, please. Also, a coffee and a glass of milk.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Not eating?”

“Yeah, I’m having the eggs.”

“Then how about your friend?”

“Eh?”

“He not eating?”

“He’s having the pie.”

“Oh.” The lady raised her eyebrows at the facts before her and shuffled into the kitchen. “He don’t want eggs?” she called out.

“No, thank you,” Ellis called back.

“And you don’t want pie?” she called.

“No … thank you.”

“So, you’re not having dessert and he’s not having main?”

“Er … yeah.” Ellis called.

A man at the bar winked at Ellis and muttered, “She’s on fire today.”

As he sipped his milk, Ellis stole a glimpse of the three old men in the gloom. The man who had spoken stared back at him and didn’t blink or look away. A waitress brought the food.

“Excuse me,” Gerd said, the effort of trying to look pleasant neutralising his attempted smile, leaving only a grimace. “They said the cream would be fresh.”

Ellis and the waitress peered at Gerd’s bowl. Alongside the pie was an embankment of fluffy whipped cream, straight out of a spray can.

“That is,” the waitress said, and walked away.

Gerd shrugged fatalistically.

“Pick a tune.” The drawl came again from the man in the corner, who slid a nickel out in front of him and gestured Ellis to come over. Ellis obeyed. The man whose back was to Ellis was an identical twin to the man who had spoken, but his head was bowed and one side of his face was fallen. There were remnants of food and dribble on his shirt-front. Ellis looked at the nickel and yearned for the open road.

“Any tune,” the man said, his southern accent hiding his tone from Ellis’s untrained ear. He pointed to a small juke-box selector on his table.

“One on every table,” he said.

“Oh,” Ellis said, straightening up.

“The nickel goes straight through,” the man said.

Ellis pulled a face at Gerd as he returned to the table and found the music selector hidden behind ketchups, napkins and the menu.

“What if he asks me to dance!” Ellis whispered.

“Choose carefully,” Gerd advised.

There were seventy songs. Ellis didn’t know any of them.

“Go E10,” Gerd whispered.

Ellis peered at the machine. E10 was “Runaway Train” by Bo Fordford. He jabbed the buttons but nothing happened. The Anvil Bar and Grill remained musicless.

“Probably takes a while,” Ellis muttered.

“I’ll have that nickel back,” the man in the shadows said.

The nickel had, as promised, gone into the slot and straight out again. When Ellis returned it, the man pointed to the bench alongside.

“Have a seat.”

Ellis sat there, beside a Zimmer frame.

“Where you boys from?” the man asked.

“European, I’d say,” the non-identical third man added.

“From London,” Ellis nodded.

“Your friend sounded German to me,” the man said.

“Yes, he is,” Ellis conceded.

“Then he’s not from London,” the non-identical man stated.

“No.”

Gerd came over. “Hello,” he grimaced. “My name’s Gerd. I’m a photographer. We’re doing a road trip. Ellis here is my assistant.” He shook hands with the two men facing him. When he held his hand out to the man with the bowed head, the talkative man raised his hand to block him.

“My twin, Dutch, is disabled by a stroke.”

Dutch moved his head slowly round and smiled a lopsided smile at Gerd.

“We’re both seventy-two years of age. This here is Warren, our younger brother by a year.”

The men exchanged nods and smiles. The talkative man, the one whose name they didn’t know, asked Gerd what sort of thing he took photographs of. Gerd told him. The men laughed.

“You make money doing that?” Warren asked, on cue.

“They make books of my photographs,” Gerd said. “If the books sell, I make money.”

The talkative one leant across to his twin.

“These boys here take photographs of vending machines for a living, Dutch!”

Dutch sneered with half of his mouth.

“You don’t like to photograph people?”

“This man does,” Gerd said, slapping Ellis on the back. “He’s photographing people who have lived in the same place all their lives.”

The talkative one took the bait. “You notice Walnut Street when you came into town?” he asked Ellis.

“No, sir,” Ellis replied, scolding himself immediately for adopting Little House on the Prairie lingo.

“This here is Main Street we’re on. Us three boys were born on Main Street. Now me and Dutch live on Walnut Street which is directly off Main Street and Warren lives on Main Street with his wife. I’d say we all live within two hundred yards of the house we were born in.”

“Right,” Ellis said, non-committally

Gerd stood up. “I’ll leave you to it, Ellis.” He wished the men a good day and went outside with his camera. Ellis cursed him for leaving and stared at the empty doorway a little longer than he should have.

Dutch raised his head slowly. He was dribbling. His younger brother leant across and wiped his mouth. Dutch fixed his eyes on Ellis.

“Hit the black button,” he croaked.

“The black button,” Warren repeated. “You haven’t hit the black button.”

Warren’s eager eyes directed Ellis back to the table he and Gerd had eaten at. Ellis went to the juke-box selector, found the black button and pressed it. The music started and with it a high-pitched whine from above Ellis’s head. Looking up, he saw, in a corner of the room, a small flower-patterned curtain sliding noisily along a rail to reveal a curved glass cabinet. Inside the cabinet, a miniature model jazz band played to the music. The band members were a foot tall. They were figurines of large-headed black musicians with white tuxedos, fulsome pink lips and oversized toothy smiles. One sat at a miniature drum kit, one held a saxophone to its mouth, another a trumpet. There were a dozen of them and they jigged about with their instruments as the music played. In one corner, a trombone moved back and forth on a rail and where the trombonist had once been there now sat a Barbie doll in a sequined blue evening dress. The handle of the trombone drilled repeatedly into Barbie’s face, where a disheartening hole had been gouged out of her eye socket.

“What happened to the trombone player?” Ellis asked, with a forced smile.

“Someone hung him,” the unnamed man said, patting the bench next to him.

Ellis sat.

“Barbie’s been there many years,” Warren added. “She wasn’t there originally, as you’ve worked out for yourself.”

“We didn’t hang him,” the man said. “There was some of that going on when we lived on Main Street in the fifties, but not us. Murder is wrong when you count to four and stop to think about it.”

“Have you tried the pumpkin pie?” Warren asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Ellis said, feeling his enthusiasm for his first photography project wane.

“Can’t beat Dolly’s fresh pumpkin pie. Why don’t you order some?”

Ellis presumed that Dolly had to be the bald lady at the bar. He wondered if Dolly was dying. He felt queasy about eating food prepared by a terminally ill person and was pretty sure that midsummer was not pumpkin season. The whole issue of what constituted fresh food at the Anvil Bar and Grill was not one he wanted to raise again.

“I’m full,” he said, and patted his stomach appeasingly.

Dutch slid his bowl of half-eaten pie and dribble towards Ellis and nodded, inviting Ellis to finish it.

Ellis’s heart sank. “That’s kind of you, but I’m stuffed, really.”

The unnamed one picked up the conversation. “When we lived on Main Street, we devoted a lot of our time to the battle to keep America as God intended it to be.”

“Right …” Ellis murmured.

“A battle we lost.”

“Mmmm …”

Warren leant forward and fixed Ellis in the eye. “Poor Dutch, here, he still enjoys a slice of pie. He ain’t been robbed of that pleasure. He eats a bowl of pie with cream most days of the week. We come here every day. Dutch enjoys it. He’s still the same brother we knew and loved.”

“It’s important to enjoy these things,” Ellis agreed.

“We don’t mind black people so we none of us didn’t become militant,” the unnamed one continued. “We remained affiliated but we never saw anyone go a certain way. Like I say, I don’t mind them …” he paused for far too long for Ellis’s liking, “but I choose not to mix with them. We have the right to choose, see. Don’t see them rushing out to mix with me, so no one’s missing out.”

“Anyhow,” Warren added, “water under the bridge and Barbie plays that trombone good enough.”

Interstate 48 from Cincinnati to Indianapolis took them across a razor-thin landscape beneath deep skies.

“Why didn’t you go with those brothers and photograph them?” Gerd asked, 175 miles west of Cincinnati.

“They weren’t up for it,” Ellis said.

Twenty miles of silence later, Gerd said, “You’re lying, Ellis. Look, you don’t make a book of photographs called Things I liked along the way. The book is Things I encountered. Not everyone out there is sweet old Moses Mahler.”

Ellis thought to himself that this was pretty rich coming from a man who photographed Hoovers.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Gerd said, “but I’m telling you, Ellis, you can’t photograph from the outside looking in. You can’t do anything meaningful without getting involved.”

Ellis let this advice hang in the air for another twenty miles of highway. Then he lit two cigarettes, passed one to Gerd, and said, “You’re right. But you’re also a motherfucking German whore for leaving me alone with them.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Gerd roared with laughter. It took forty miles for the grin on his face to subside, slowly and evenly, almost unnoticeably, until his face had settled back to its preferred doom-laden setting.

If I achieve nothing else in life, Ellis told himself, I made Gerd laugh.

On the Fourth of July 1988 at three in the afternoon, Ellis was woken from a deep, sunburnt sleep by the realisation that the car was not moving. He heard the lapping of water and felt a cool, drinkable wind blow through the open windows. He dragged himself out of the car and took in the view of a river so wide and strong that it made him gasp. To the north, two miles away, was a bridge bearing the interstate. Near to it, lining the great river on both sides, were low wood-clad dwellings which gave way to a community of houseboats. Gerd was at the water’s edge where the riverbank was undeveloped and one could pretend that America had not grown up so fast.

“Unphotographable!” he said, with reverence. “Except from space. Do you know what you are looking at, Ellis?”

Ellis shook his head.

“The Mississippi river, Ellis. That’s what you are looking at.”

The river bank rose to a knoll. They sat there and watched the currents toy with the driftwood. Ellis settled on to his back and the blue sky laid itself across his line of sight. He told his dad that he was on the banks of the Mississippi. He pictured the day his dad was strong enough to travel with him. He brought him here, to the great river’s edge, and they watched God flow past, wide and majestic. He felt sure that such a day would come, a day just like today, when his dad was well and life was infinite again. This time next year. When the days are hot but the river breeze is cool. This time next year.

By nightfall they had checked into the one remaining room at the Barron Motel, Barron, Iowa, a shaky L-shaped establishment alongside the railroad. At one-thirty in the morning, Gerd was woken by the clanging bells of the railroad crossing and the passing through of a goods train of great length and little speed. The walls began to vibrate.

“Ellis! Wake up,” Gerd said, lighting a cigarette.

Ellis stirred. “What?”

“How can you sleep through this?”

Ellis turned over. When the train had passed, Gerd was left listening to the steady breathing of Ellis’s sleep.

Barron was a town of one main thoroughfare, which was wide and quiet and ran from Church Street at the top of the hill to the railroad crossing at the foot of it. Three silver silos towered over the railroad tracks. They shimmered in the wind and sunshine.

There were few people to be seen in Barron during the day and none at night. Those that were there were at ease with the blistering heat which Gerd and Ellis sought shelter from in the cool rooms of the Barron Candy Kitchen. Michalis and Cynthia Eugenikos had run the soda jerk since 1930, when Michalis took it on from his father, a Greek immigrant. The chrome fittings and appliances were original and mint. It was the last of its kind and that was why Gerd had come. They arrived there late because Gerd had been distracted by a dead cockerel lying at the side of the road.

“For the record,” Ellis said, “if, like last night, you find yourself watching me sleep through the train thing and wondering how I do it, it would be better to ask me how I do it the next day, after I have finished doing it, ‘it’ being sleeping through the train thing.”

“Be quiet, Ellis,” Gerd muttered, ushering him up the steps of the Candy Kitchen.

Cynthia Eugenikos threw herself at the Europeans as soon as they triggered the cow bell. She took a piece of paper from the pocket of her red and white striped apron and read a quick welcome speech. From the ceiling hung a banner: BARRON WELCOMES OUR FRIENDS FROM EUROPE, GERD AND ELI.

She led them to a table where two menus and a posy of flowers awaited them. “You’ll sit here, on the Gregory Peck seat.”

Cynthia placed a hand on Ellis’s shoulder and he glanced at her bright red fingernails and wrinkled, liver-spotted skin.

“For as long as you’re in town, everything here is on the house. The soda jerk is your home. I’ll come take your order in just one moment when I’ve explained to my other customers who you are and exactly what your exciting photography assignment is all about.”

“I’d be interested to know that myself,” Ellis said with a smile.

Cynthia looked at him helplessly, pushed the menu closer to him and scuttled off to her other customers, none of whom was south of seventy.

“There’s a place for sarcasm, Ellis,” Gerd said strictly. “And it isn’t Iowa.”

There were thirty-four different malt milkshakes on the menu. Ellis went for a Malt Peck, formerly known as the Chocolate Truffle Malt until ordered by Gregory Peck on an impromptu stopover in May 1978. A silver plaque on the wall commemorated Peck’s visit. Gerd toyed with the idea of a raspberry and pistachio milkshake as this was the other celebrity item on offer, having been ordered by Brooke Shields and her mother when they visited in 1984, the menu explained.

“I wonder why they didn’t name the milkshake after her like they did with Peck?” Ellis whispered. “Maybe they only do that if you’ve won an Oscar.”

“Maybe they just loved Moby Dick?” Gerd said. “Either way, I’m not having one. I’ll have a Butterscotch Malt.”

“They aren’t going to have named a milkshake after Gregory Peck on account of Moby Dick. It would have been To Kill A Mockingbird. Surely?”

“I agree with you one hundred per cent,” Gerd said.

“You agree as in you agree? Or you agree as in shut up Ellis?”

“The shut-up-Ellis one.”

“It was probably that shot of her having her first period in the Blue Lagoon,” Ellis said. “Put them off naming a milkshake after her.”

Gerd shot him a certain look.

“Brooke Shields,” Ellis explained unnecessarily. “Especially a raspberry milkshake.”

The German grimaced and lit a cigarette. “You’re a strange man, Ellis O’Rourke.”

Ellis lit one too. “But you’re not. Everyone spends two hours photographing a dead chicken.”

The Candy Kitchen was an orgy of original Light-Up Soda Fountains, Palm-Press Syrup Dispensers, Royal Crown Coolers, Rippled 12oz Soda Glasses, Classic Double Ring Bar Stools and more, at every turn and glance. Gerd was in chrome heaven. Ellis observed his choice of lenses, the use of long exposures in preference to flash and the painstakingly slow deliberation over composition. The stillness of the soda jerk during its many quiet hours was finally focusing Ellis’s young mind on the opportunity that watching Gerd offered him. The key to successfully assisting Gerd was recognising when to leave him alone. In such moments – which lasted for hours – Ellis stepped outside, or if Cynthia were loitering he’d divert her to the far end of the counter, sit on a high stool and let her talk. The more he listened to Cynthia Eugenikos the more she spoke and the more she spoke the closer Ellis grew to understanding what it meant to travel.

“Just listen,” Gerd had advised him, after his failure to stick it out in the Anvil Bar and Grill. “And when you’ve listened, listen some more and then you can photograph … maybe.”

Cynthia seemed set on calling Ellis “Eli”. He decided to let it go. A comfortable opportunity to correct her hadn’t materialised and suddenly it was too late. She got distracted by a ninetieth birthday party and Ellis escaped outside where the air tasted crystal clear. Ellis sucked it in and thought of the meadow above Innsbruck where he had slept in the long grass. He found Michalis Eugenikos sitting on the railroad track reading a paper.

“Don’t get run over,” Ellis said.

“One train a day,” Michalis replied, “and that comes at night.”

“Every night?”

“Every night.”

“Gerd will be pleased.”

Michalis folded up his paper and slapped it down on the dust track.

“I don’t want to disturb your paper,” Ellis said.

“You’re not.” Michalis stood up and wedged his hands into his pockets. He was barely five feet tall, a foot shorter than his wife. He wore a bow tie and his shirt-sleeves were rolled to below his elbows. He had thin straight hair, more of it than he might have had at eighty-four years of age. It was combed back and he occasionally ran the palm of his hand over it.

“I’m not really a newspapers man,” Michalis sighed. “Just like to get out of earshot of my wife now and then.”

Ellis watched fast-moving clouds reflected on the silver silos. Michalis yawned. The railroad tracks stretched infinitely into the flat open plain.

“How long you been on the road?”

“A month.”

“I’ll tell you something for free,” Michalis said. “Where you are standing is just about as far as it’s possible to be in this great country from the ocean shore.”

“How far are we talking?” Ellis asked.

Michalis pointed due east along the tracks, then due west. “Either way you go, more than a thousand miles.”

Ellis grimaced at the thought. “But what about going to the seaside?”

Michalis shrugged. “I’ve raised three children, seven grandchildren, two great-grandchildren so far. Love my wife, though by Christ she can talk. Love my home town, though by Christ that can talk too. But I’ve never seen the ocean.”

“Never?” Ellis was incredulous.

The old man looked at him inquisitively. “So, what’s bugging you?” Michalis asked.

“Me?” Ellis was taken aback. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

Michalis dismissed Ellis’s answer, swatting it away with one hand.

“Something’s on your mind,” he said, wandering away, back towards the Candy Kitchen. “I still drive at my age,” he called out. “If you ever need a ride.”

Ellis looked west, where the clouds marched towards the horizon, slipping through an invisible slit between the domed sky and the land. The sky hummed a monotone drone, as if the clouds were scraping against it as they hurried through. He shut his eyes. For all the open space around him, Ellis felt he could scarcely find enough air to fill his lungs. A panic swept through him, a fear that he would not breathe in again after he next exhaled. When he opened his eyes, the strength of the sunlight made him blink and in the highest part of the sky, where the clouds were still, he saw the shape of his dad’s face amongst the white wisps.

“Found me,” he whispered.

Ellis couldn’t sleep. He felt a thousand miles of America press against each wall of the motel room. Then he heard the train. He watched Gerd begin to stir. The rumble strengthened, the railroad crossing bells sounded and, on cue, Gerd’s eyes opened. The German stared at the ceiling, his body motionless, then rolled his eyes to the side and saw Ellis watching him. Ellis winked at him and whispered, “Tray-ayyyy-n!”

Gerd sat up and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I’m gonna count the bastards!” he said, lighting a cigarette.

The train was 134 carriages long. Gerd was wide awake and wore the haunted look of the sleep-deprived. He switched on his bedside light, dragged himself into the bathroom and, without bothering to shut the door, took a pee. As the toilet flushed, he screamed and locked himself inside the bathroom.

“What the hell’s wrong?” Ellis asked.

“Fuck me!” Gerd said, trying to be calm.

Ellis went to the door. “What is it?”

“Spider … the size of a train!” Gerd shouted.

The spider was on the bedroom floor, tucked against the wall by the bathroom door. It was huge. Ellis gazed at it as if it were the first familiar face he’d seen in America.

“Hello, old friend,” he whispered.

Gerd shuffled nervously on the other side of the door.

“Ellis …?” he said. His voice was meek and it made Ellis laugh. “What are you laughing about?”

“Nothing.”

“You little shit!”

Ellis knelt by the spider and placed his index finger near to it. It flinched and withdrew its legs fractionally, lifting its body. Ellis stared at the spider and felt a calm overcome him. The calm went deep and filled him with a sensation of understanding, although there was no detail to the understanding quite yet.

“Has it gone?” Gerd whispered, through the keyhole.

“Not yet. We’re still discussing it.”

“Ellis!” Gerd hissed. “Get on with it!”

“It’s a lynx spider,” Ellis said affectionately. “Don’t get them in England.”

He cupped his hand and placed it over the spider. He slid his other hand underneath until he felt the faint tickle of its legs on his palm. He felt a wave of love sweep through him. Love for the spider. Love for its weight resting on his skin. Love for its impending safety. He opened his hands a touch and peered in. The spider looked back at him.

“Are you going to kill me?” the spider asked, in an American accent. It sounded more pissed off than scared.

“Uh-uh.” Ellis shook his head. “Put you outside.”

“What you say?” Gerd asked.

“Nothing,” Ellis said.

“Can I come out now?”

“Not just yet. He’s a tricky bugger.”

The spider winked at Ellis.

“Just stamp on it!” Gerd pleaded.

Ellis winked back reassuringly. He went to the door and let the spider out and sat on the doorstep. He checked that the calm was still in him. It was. A mighty calm. A momentous, all-embracing peace with a hint of enlightenment and a sense of direction.

“Safe!” Ellis called out.

Gerd opened the door tentatively. “Definitely gone?”

“Promise,” Ellis assured him.

“OK, thanks,” Gerd said, and joined Ellis on the doorstep.

Ellis drew in a lungful of air, then let it go with a sigh. He wandered out on to the moonlit forecourt, leant backwards and gazed up at the stars. Gerd wondered if aliens might beam his assistant away. The night had that sort of feel to it.

“The old man told me that they don’t have autumn out here,” Gerd said. “He said that in October one day it’s hot, like today was, and then the winter comes across the plains overnight and the next day the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. That’s it. Summer’s over. Winter’s here. Nothing in between.”

“Gerd … I’m going home.”

Gerd waited for Ellis to say more.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tell me why,” Gerd said.

“My dad’s dying. Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

They had breakfast in the Candy Kitchen. They ate well and they didn’t talk and they felt good. Michalis Eugenikos arrived with the newspapers.

“Michalis?” Ellis said. “Could you drive me to Chicago?”

“Sure. When?”

“This morning.”

“Sure thing. I’ll go tell Cynthia.”

Michalis entered the kitchen with a spring in his step.

“That’s a three-hour drive,” Gerd said, in protest. “I’ll take you.”

Ellis shrugged. “He wants to take me.”

They joined the highway at Rock Island and when they saw Chicago signposted Ellis panicked, momentarily, that he would never leave America, that he and Michalis Eugenikos would drive on the interstate for eternity. Amongst the cornfields of Lockport county, he thought of Fanny Robin running from All Souls to All Saints. It had taken him five months to read Far From The Madding Crowd when he was thirteen and Mr Pulman had said to Ellis’s dad that “the boy may be slow in some way, perhaps dyslexic”. In response to this, Denny O’Rourke had asked his son if he was enjoying reading his current book.

“I love it. I’d like to live there if I could.”

“Where?”

“1874.”

“You’ve been reading that book a long while.”

“It’s a long book.”

“But you’re enjoying it?”

“Oh, yes. I like it so much I read passages of it again and again until I can taste the words. I read descriptions of Fanny and Bathsheba until I know them off by heart and I whisper their names aloud at night until I feel one of them in the room with me, lying next to me, stroking me.”

Denny and Mafi had looked at each other, taken aback, whilst Ellis returned happily to his food, adding, “I’m not the runt my teachers think I am … so don’t sweat.”

Ellis delved into the grocery bag Cynthia had packed him for the journey. It was not small.

“What in Christ’s name has she given you?” Michalis sighed.

“Let’s see … extra large Chocolate Malt, two spare straws, chocolate brownies, one … two … four of them, two iced doughnuts, packet of cookies, packet of marshmallows, two packets of Reese’s peanut butter cups and an apple.”

“Good Lord,” Michalis said, “where the hell did she find an apple from?”