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There are few landmarks on these roads... they are quiet, they are alone, they are barren. If you travel them regularly, you eventually know the various shadings on the barns, the particular spacing of the fence posts, or even, simply, the feel of the road. How much gravel crunch, how much sand kick, and is there any grass? Depending on your direction, if you're lucky once every twenty or thirty minutes there will be a gas station that may or may not double as a grocery store and social center. The Minute Market wasn't far outside of Eldon and functioned as, essentially the last gasp of civilization for nearly two hours, until they would reach the outskirts of Indianapolis.

Dale and Frank step out and into the small parking lot. Beside them an elderly woman rocking quietly back and forth on a bench. She smokes Camels and drinks coffee out of a mug-- the sort you have at home, not one that you bring to a gas station. Dale crams a third of his breakfast sausage, then sucks on a Mountain Dew to wash it down. "That's fuckin' great."

Frank sips his coffee and lights a smoke. The car starts with a whine, uneasy, as though it was nauseous or ambivalent. "C'mon baby."

Dale downs the rest of his drink and throws the bottle onto the floor. He lights a Salem, drawing it in deep, releasing it in bulbous curls out his nose. "You change that oil like I told you to?"
"Naw. We'll make it."
"Shit, we still got two hours till Indy, man! Better not break down, goddammit." Dale is a bully, he always has been. They met in middle school, formed a lunchtime group and fucked with the oddballs. Frank was a balance on Dale, a softer, lighter temperament that mellowed him, toned him down when he got out of hand. Frank kept Dale out of trouble then and still does, and is glad to do it, because he continues to trust that his oldest friend is, at heart, decent, and that his lifestyle is just a product of how he grew up. It's not something that can be attributed to his genetics or merely to chance, but instead, one could truly say that he was raised to be a dickhead.

"Drink a beer, Dale."
The car moves back onto the highway. Dale reaches in the back for a Coors. "You want one?"
"Yeah, crack it open for me."
Frank dislikes the taste of beer, but once he's had a few, it's easier for him to palate. It settles him. He places his half-empty coffee into a cupholder on the dashboard. "Did you see me talking to that old man back there?"
"Which one?"
"The one with the coffee."
Frank remembered Dale had been admiring a Mustang magazine at the time.
"Eh, nevermind. Just this old guy, he amused me for some reason."
----------------------------
"That right there, it's regular coffee, not decaf." The fellow looked about 80, but physically healthy. Still, he seemed... tired, exasperated, strung out. He was pointing to a coffee pot with a green handle-- Frank knew from experience that, at Minute Market, the Decaf is in the green, so he wants the red.

"Okay, thanks." There are others standing around them. It is a sort of early morning ritual for many of the older men in this county. They stop in around six or seven, pour some coffee, stand by the pots, talk about your crops or about the Democrats or about the Mexicans, then go off to work in the fields, drive their trucks or tractors, or, for some, head back home and be quiet. It is their time, every morning to be together. To vent, to mourn, to discourage change and welcome the sameness, to find fraternity in the last years of their lives.

"The other ones, two of the red ones, they cracked!" says the coffee maestro, who works on preparing another pot. He doesnt work for the Minute Market, of course, but he not seems to consider it his responsibility. "The girl, she left it on the burner with nothing on it."

"Yeah, that'll happen."

"And then, crack! I just couldn't believe it." He sneers over at the counter girl, whose back is turned to the men while she counts cigarettes. "Pretty early, ain't it? Are you headed to work?"

Frank pours the regular into a large cup, then pours six yellow packets of Splenda into the brine. "No, no, I'm going to a concert in the city. Me and my buddy're goin' early, gonna run around until then."

"Is it a band?"
"Yeah, the Rolling Stones."
"They're a pretty big band, aren't they?"
"I always liked them. I figured this might be my one chance in my entire life to see them."
"They a big ticket item, ain't they?"
"Hundred and forty eight dollars, and they ain't the best seats, really. Last minute sorta thing. Never really been outside of Eldon without my family."
The old man's eyes narrow, like he can't see Frank, as though he's suddenly been knocked out of focus. "Buddy, let me tell you, there's plenty of life left, you're not missing anything yet."
-----------------------
An hour later, eighty miles in, it all looks the same. Corn runs straight down the road in thick rows. Their conversation topics exhausted, the two boys are quiet. Ahead a while, Frank can see the road come to a T-- they're supposed to take a right hand turn. There is a stop sign also, the first in over ten miles.

Da dum dum, da dum dum, da dum dum, da dum dum.

"Fuck, this song again?"
"It's a CD, we've doubled back on it."
"I'm switchin' to Froggy." Dale reaches for the radio knob.
"Dale, goddammit, get your hands off it."
The stop sign comes closer.
"Fuck, Frank, you always pull this shit-- I'm in the car with you all day today and I gotta listen to all this bullshit, can you let me control the music for at least fifteen minutes?"

The turn is only a few seconds away, but now Frank's focus is on Dale. Frank has few rules in his car. Smoke with the window down. Don't litter too much. Stay away from the music. Dale cannot bully Frank, there will be no precedent set, there will be no bitch in their relationship. "Dale, I made a CD just for this trip, simply because I'm shit and tired of having to listen to Froggy whenever I'm with you!"

"Whatever, fuckin-- FRANK, STOP!"

The wall of corn past the T is only twenty feet away, and the car is doing nearly eighty. It is impossible (and, on a back road in Indiana, mostly unnecessary) to make that stop.

Frank spins the wheel hard to the right and swings the car around the corner. The inertia, the beer, the adrenaline all combine, and he doesn't hear the SMACK KRENCH from the side of the car. "Aw shit, we're fine."

There are a few seconds of cold silence as the car continues down the road. Dale speaks, his voice is monotone. "Frank, we oughta turn around and go back."

He points to the car's windshield, which is sprinked with red droplets the size of a grain of sand, each slowly trailing down the glass, reforming and creating larger drops.
----------------------
"Shit, you killed a spic, Frank." Dale sips the warm remainders of a Coor Light and tosses the can into the field.

"Shut up, Dale." Frank's hand can't hold it in much longer, and it can't protect him from what lies on the ground. The boy's body is twisted, his hips no longer lining up with his shoulders. The head is flat on the concrete, his lips limp and bleeding, his eyes empty. He is about eight years old. A small Huffy bike lies next to him, its' front tire bent into a ninety degree angle. A few feet away are the remnants of a small, cheap cassette player, its headphones are still on the child's neck.

"See, he wasn't paying attention. He woulda heard our car if he hadn't been listening to music."

"We were supposed to stop, you jackass!" Frank's eyes open up, they gush. "I was distracted, fucking with you and the radio. And I didn't stop. I killed that boy, Dale, I killed him."

Dale stands over the boy and looks at the sky. There's no sound other than the crinkling of corn stalks in the breeze. He can see miles away on all three branches of the T, there are no cars coming. Light, feathery clouds are above them, brushing past one another, and they are the only witnesses to this scene.

Dale reaches down and grabs the boy's legs. "Frankie, grab his arms."
"What? No, don't touch him! I'm going to call my daddy and tell him what happened." He pulls out his cell phone and flips it open. He does not, he can not start dialing, because he realizes he is not ready to verbalize what's happened. "This boy's family is gonna be looking for their son, we've gotta fess up and take the consequences."

Dale drops the boy's legs like they were a pile of small limbs he'd been collecting. His voice is calm, assuring-- it's lost the edge it had in the car and in nearly every other time he'd ever spoken to Frank. "Ain't gonna be no consequences, Frank. You're not calling your dad."
"Yes I am."
"No, you're not.” Dale walks up and stands only a few inches from Frank. “First off, ain't much gonna happen to me, I wasn't driving. Second, what do you think your dad's gonna do for you?"
"He'll make some calls, I don't know."
"Frank, that boy is DEAD and we've been drinkin'." Dale reaches over to Frank's hand and closes the cell phone. "He ain't coming back, no matter how many years they want to punish you for. And they will, too, you're too old for juvie."
"But, his family--"
"Forget his family. Forget his mother and father and entire family, they don't matter to shit right now. We're going to put him and his bicycle in the corn, so that the next car that drives by ain't the one that finds him. No one is around here, there aren't any cameras, nobody has seen us or heard us-- in fact, nobody out home knows we took this route.” Dale reaches into his pocket, pulls out a pack and lights another cigarette. A light breeze picks up. Dust and pollen rise into the air and pepper Frank, Dale and the little boy's body. “Yeah, we'll put him in the corn, Frank. That way it won't be hard to track him down when they really get frantic and start looking. We'll wash the car in one of those automatic places in Beulah. There's only a little dent and ain't nobody gonna be able to tell the difference between that dent and all the others." He wipes his sweaty brow with his shirt tail, then takes another look back at the boy. "Plus, man, this kid's a beaner, his family's probably illegal. They might not even report it."
"That's what I'm saying, we should tell someone. Someone needs to know about this."
"You're half drunk and you just killed a kid, you really want people knowing about that? Look, you go to the police, your life is never the same. When you're being buttfucked up in Acadia Pen by some nigger, you'll be wishing you hadn't called your daddy and that you'd just put the kid on the side of the road. This ain't Cub Scouts, you don't gotta take responsibility just cause that's how you was raised. It ain't gonna bring that little boy back, it's just going to ruin your life, your family's life, and, shit, my life. This will fuck you forever, you will lose for the rest of your life because of this one day, because of this one mistake."
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Da dum dum, da dum dum, da dum dum, da dum dum...
Later on, the sky's gone dark and the stars unfold. Dale smokes a cigarette and lets his hand drift through the breeze... it falls back and down and up again. He has not spoken in more than an hour and fifteen minutes. Frank opens his phone and calls home.

"Yeah Ma, they cancelled the concert. Dale and I're on our way back."
"That's terrible," Miss Woodcock says, "And as much as you spent on those tickets!”
“I'll get the money back. It'll be okay.”
“Why'd they cancel it?"
"One of the guys in the band is sick, apparently."
"Well, hopefully nothing too bad. They've been around forever, those guys. It would be a shame if they died before you got to see them."
"Yeah, but it's alright. There's... plenty of life left.” His eyes drift off the road for a moment, as he watches the corn rustle and sway in the wind. “I don't think I've missed anything."