I’ve been on the road now for seven days and I feel no different, but the engine of this burnt out Model T is humming on, and so I feel as though until it chokes I can’t give up, either. A row of telephone poles has been following me since I left Buffalo. They stand slightly oblique, as if a child had placed some flimsy twigs upright in a foundation of snow. Their taut black cables make somber faces across the horizon, blemished sometimes by a flock of birds at roost. Ha! That would make Sadie all hot with diagnoses. Contrary to popular opinion, my face isn’t so much sad as it is indifferent. She would have told me that I [i]see[/i] sadness because I [i]feel[/i] sadness, which just isn’t true. The Good Lord knows, if I could just wink a tear I would. I would cry like a goddamn child just smashed his finger in a door jamb, if I only could. The first rest stop in six hours, and it looks like it was christened by a docile Jesse James—log cabin, swinging saloon doors, pink floral curtains. Something inside makes me hesitate before entering a bed-and-breakfast called Seven Sisters’ Southern Comfort seeing as I’m in the middle of Canada and having honest doubts as to whether the Wild West trekked to Desolate and Bleeding Cold Snow Territory, Nova Scotia. But, dusk is descending quickly so I resolve to stay the night. I walk toward the check-in kiosk. On the counter sits a brass bell, a stack of business cards, and a guestbook. There is an empty swivel stool behind the desk, a pink cushion tied onto the seat. I shove my fists into my pockets and watch my feet. I can hear the ticking of a clock from another room. It’s a Benson grandfather clock, very popular during the turn of the century because of their stately copper gild and also because of their dirt cheap retail value. Like thousands of other Americans, my grandmother snatched one up the first day it hit stores. Its gongy toll, like a Chinese dirge, still reminds me of Christmas holidays to Vermont, peanut butter fudge, and menthol cigarette smoke. She always smelled cloyingly of antiseptic and mint and I never wanted to get too close to her. When she died she gave it to me with the rationale that I had as a child enjoyed watching the fan-shaped window rotate from grinning sun to man-in-the-moon. I accepted it reluctantly because it was a piece of junk and far too titanic to fit in my low-rent New York City flat. Besides which, I don’t have a single nostalgic memory linked to it. For all I know, she hated it as much as I do and held a secret grudge against me only to be realized by the eventual thrusting upon an unaware grandson this crude excerpt of American clock-making history. But, it sits in my living room looking terribly lost and probably embarrassed because it’s rare that any guest move past it to the kitchen without nicking their elbow across a corner. A clamorous bang, making adrenaline kick through me. I stagger backward. It’s only a stack of folders colliding with the front desk. The pile is so high that I don’t notice at first the man standing behind it. He appears alongside the pile, his face knotted with gruff dissatisfaction. I am afraid to ask him for a room, but he saves me the labor by speaking first. [b]STOP[/b]