'Did he die or simply ascend into Heaven?' Mortimer asked. 'Making a noise like a dove, perhaps. Whroooo!' Mortimer blew on the palm of his glove and white pigeon feathers fell in the car like snow. 'And dropping doo-doo on people underneath.'
He was killed in a car crash, thought Jonathan, bitter with grief, as if it were some kind of vindication. Mortimer grinned back at him. Jonathan searched his mind and really did find his father without blemish.
'He never did anything wrong!' Jonathan was shouting aloud.
Silence, and a numb smile.
Jonathan muttered, 'How else are you supposed to discipline kids?'
'Oh! I am in complete agreement,' said Mortimer, hand on breast. There was an instrument of torture, rather like a corkscrew, on his lap. 'In fact, the differences between me and your father might be less than you think. Do you like my dress?' Mortimer batted his eyelashes.
Go away! thought Jonathan.
Mortimer's eyes went evil. 'I thought you wanted to see Kansas!'
He pressed his face against Jonathan's again and grabbed Jonathan by the chin and made him look in the rearview mirror.
'This face is Kansas. A country is like a child. Smooth and new and virginal until Daddy slashes its face.'
Mortimer fell back into the rear seat. Jonathan felt Mort's sweat still on his cheek. Mortimer was opening the back door. 'Don't kill any babies,' he warned, and launched himself out of the moving vehicle under the wheels of a truck.
Jonathan swerved violently as the truck roared past, horn blaring. Jonathan pulled over onto the soft shoulder and stopped the car, his hands weak, his heart pumping. In the side-view mirror, Mortimer lay on the road like a prairie chicken. A loose, broken wing stirred in the backwash of air from other cars.
Jonathan sat shivering in the front seat.
My God, he thought, my mind is going. I really am going crazy. I shouldn't be let loose, I shouldn't be driving this car. I don't even know what country I'm in, and I haven't been able to keep anything down, even water, since breakfast yesterday. What am I going to do in Manhattan, Kansas? He ran a hand across his damp forehead.
There was nothing he could do, but press on.
Kansas, he told himself, as with extreme caution he moved the car back out onto an empty stretch of highway. I'm in Kansas. God knows why.
Then he looked up, across the road into the fields, and he thought he was having another vision.
Some way back from the road, there was a white schoolhouse. It was one-roomed, immaculate, blazing white, with a blazing white bell tower. It was nestled in trees. Beside it, sitting in a field of autumnal red sorghum heads, was a two-story frame house. The windows were not set square in it. There was a porch. Behind it there was a windmill.
Jonathan pulled the car over once more. He reached over the back of the seat and pulled out his new camera. He had bought it, credit card once again, at St. Louis airport. He had read the instructions on the airplane.
He began to feel his old hunter's urgency. PRIVATE, said a sign. That's okay, he told the sign, I'll photograph it from here, safe in my car. Hands in a tumble of nerves, he pulled off the lens cap and looked through the viewfinder.
1000 1000 1000, blinked the camera, over and over. It was saying the vision was too bright.
Scowling, hands still trembling, Jonathan took out and reread the booklet. Yes, his new camera was on automatic, and yes, a flashing thousand meant too bright, okay, yes, so what do I do about it?
Anyway it was only sunlight. How could ordinary sunlight be too bright?
1000 1000 1000.
He took the picture anyway. There was something dead in the way the shutter clicked.
Suppose, he thought, suppose I hit it in one, right the first time? Suppose this was where Dorothy lived?
He held the fantasy glowing in his mind for a moment. It was enough to comfort him.
Time to move on.
Jonathan got lost. There were interchanges, small cloverleafs, and signs giving highway numbers and town names that meant nothing to him. Jonathan did not have a map. He found himself driving on a wide, sweeping dirt road, between balding hills. They were dotted with small evergreen shrubs. He stopped the car, and got out.
Crickets were singing. At first he thought they were birds, a flock of them, the sounds they made were so loud, so sweet. But the sound was too mechanical, too regular. He looked down on a valley full of trees and white modern houses. In the far distance was a rounded white water tower, stranded alone, it seemed, in a forest. Where was the town? Why hadn't he asked for a map at the airport?
There was a rumbling sound, like thunder, as if thunder had giant hollow wheels and were driving over the hills.
'Rain,' said Jonathan. He wanted an umbrella, and he turned and looked at the empty prairies. No rain. Only sunlight.
He got in and drove down the hill. MANHATTAN, said a sign, and as if someone had switched on a light, the road was paved. At the first cross street, Jonathan turned right, and down.
He was very tired. He forgot where he was again. Confused, he thought he was lost in some suburb of Los Angeles. He passed one crossroad, scowled and stopped.
He got out. There was a low modern house, with a long sloping sunroof, and some kind of wooden jungle gym for kids to play on. Jonathan heard the rumbling again, perhaps a bit different in sound.
