Amarillo, and there are no rooms at the inns, until we get to pay $70 for a barely livable shithole at midnight. Somebody’s else’s leftover water bottle comes free with rate.

I say to her: I miss Covid.

What I really miss is the emptiness and silence on the roads.

One time when I was just old enough to have my own car and drive it, I did that, on a Thanksgiving Day in the snow in my mountain home town. The emptiness reigned then too, and the giving of thanks for it was heartfelt and real.

The bug brought that back over a stretch of months.

They were long months, but not long enough for me.

I’m not saying it was a good thing in any ultimate sense. America has four percent of the world’s population, and had twenty percent of the Covid deaths. Those people didn’t deserve to die.

But the blooming cancer of capitalism reaching its fingers out even into the larger side roads, that does, and I can say it and feel it and mean it, with no remorse at all.