Like Ants Marching

Photos by Caleb Kinnear

Words by Norm Schoff

I’m in my room at our Airbnb in Milwaukee. There’s a rocking chair in the corner, that’s where I’m sitting. There’s an Alfred Hitchcock poster by the bed. Next to me, hanging from the wall is a painting of…well…I don’t know. There’s a girl, floating, with wings and talons. The floating girl has two heads—both children—where her feet should be. The children have no noses, no mouths. There’s a sea and above the sea the sky is like fire, but pale, the way a burning forest might look from a distance, through a field of smoke. There’s a sailboat but it’s been painted under the water. Next to the boat are the words, “3 feet from sharks” and under that is a red line painted horizontally across the canvas. On the other end of the line, everything is white and there are five shotgun shells and two arrows that point up towards nothing. Next to all of that, on the edge of everything, are the words,

“Bull

White tip

Blue

Blacktip

Nurse”

I stare at the painting for a long time and when I look up, I notice that the lamp on the nightstand by the bed has a crooked shade. Benny is walking by. He stops in the doorway.

“I feel like someone died here,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say.

I stand up but the hardwood floor under me means nothing. It doesn’t register. There’s only some foggy idea of what the floor might feel like, but it isn’t real. I take another step and the floor still isn’t there. I haven’t been able to feel my toes since Omaha.

Jesus, Omaha.

That was only last week. What happened to the drought? That’s how it started anyway, running from a drought.

When Dyl's not behind the lens, he's in front of it

The Drought:

It’s been a long time since anything important has happened, half a year maybe. That’s why we left. We need to do…something, anything. We need to do what we can with what we have, which, now, is nothing. The plains are dry. We drive down the highway and the plains are dry, and the grass is showing. Benny is in the front seat, facing back at me talking about things I’m not listening to. Jib the cows, I hear him say. I don’t know the context (does one even exist?). Outside, through the window, I see a large herd, maybe a hundred cows, all packed together tight. We keep driving and soon I forget about the cows. I can’t focus on them. I’m thinking of other things. I’m thinking of the snow, wondering where it is. I’m wondering how long we’ll be gone for, wondering where we will go. Right now, we’re just driving. We have nothing more than a few cities that look like they might get snow. But now, nothing looks good.

“Cable has to piss,” Dyl says, he’s looking at me through the rearview mirror.

We’re slowing down. Our eyes meet for a moment but then I blink and sit up in my seat. I was asleep. The GPS now says three hours from where we need to be. How many did it say when I passed out? I look out the window, there’s nothing but land, uncovered, dry land. The door opens and Cable gets back in. He breathes out an exhale, a deep, chilled-to-the-bone exhale.

“It’s windy,” he says.

We pull away, get back on the highway.

I stop trying to look for snow. I know there is none.

And then we were in Colorado. Just for a day. Then we went on.

Between here and there:

It’s the smell of a thousand cows that keeps me awake. They’re all standing by the highway. They are looking at us. We are looking back at them. It seems like they go on forever. The cows are eternal.

“I just saw two of the cows fucking,” Benny says.

“Really?” I say.

“Yeah.”

We keep driving.

“O” Benny yells, pauses, then continues “MAHA!”

“O” Dylan yells, “MAHA!”

“You know that?” Benny says, turning around to face me in the backseat. “Peyton Manning?”

I don’t know it but we’re in middle America now so I probably should.

The cows are gone. It’s all fields. I don’t know when the cows left, but they did. The cows, the smell, they all left at some point. I wish I could remember when it was.

Omaha :

We go across the bridge, Nebraska to Iowa. We go back, Iowa to Nebraska. We go to Iowa again.

Jesus.

It’s late. It’s cold. It’s so cold. The blood is making the shirt stick to my back.

Fuck.

How have we only been gone five days? I want to go home. What state am I in right now? How many times have we crossed the bridge today? Where am I?

Another front board, this one from Derek

We drive down the same road three times. The plow driver idling in the parking lot probably assumes the worst: prostitution, murder, a bank job. We’re casing a getaway route.

“Picture,” Dyl yells from behind the wheel. “Somebody take a picture. Pin it.”

“I got it,” Cable says.

We keep driving. Finally, we don’t loop back.

“Wait,” Benny says, “is that something?”

I turn my head, but I don’t see what he’s looking at.

“Earth it,” Dyl says.

We’re parked, sitting in some lot in front of some building. It doesn’t matter which. We’re all on our phones. I’m useless though. I don’t Google Earth. I can’t. It’s a curse. Benny, Dyl, and Cable are earthing and I’m on Tinder.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Wait, how far are we from Lincoln?

No.

Why are there so many Republicans? Oh yeah, middle America.

I’m nobody’s type here.

Matthew 6:34 is in this girl’s bio. Another girl writes, “If we are meant to be together, God will let it be known.”

I’m nobody’s type here.

Still, I swipe. We are parked. All of our heads are down, we’re each looking for something different.

The temperature on the dash says -6 but the feels like is -35. My toes are numb little bricks. I haven’t been able to feel my toes since this morning. That was three spots ago. Everything is numb. I’m a grumpy pile of frozen layers. At the spot earlier Benny kept having to pull the hoodie string away from my facemask because they kept freezing together. I want to go home. I ask if we can go back to Salt Lake. Everyone laughs. I laugh. We keep driving. I wasn’t kidding.

Between here and there:

The sign says we’re entering Illinois.

“Isn’t this where Lincoln is from?” I ask.

“Park?” Cable says.

“No,” I say. “Abraham.”

Fuck my toes hurt. I can’t feel them. How far are we from Milwaukee? Why is it so cold? I take two hand warmers out of my bag and shake them. I take off my shoes and put the warmers in. There is no warmth, only some detached voice, something that is happening to someone else. The voice whispers your feet should be warm now, but the voice doesn’t belong to me. I smack my shoes together.

Anything?

No.

Milwaukee:

“Derek!” Benny yells. “Derek roof! Derek! Derek!”

“Roof!” Dylan yells. “Roof! Derek roof! Roof!”

Derek looks.

Whether there’s a roof isn’t important. It’s all part of the bit. Derek’s the roof guy. When we pass roofs, people yell.

“Wait what am I then,” Cable says, “in the crew?”

We pause. Everyone thinks.

“You’re the stoner,” Benny says.

“I don’t even smoke that much weed. Besides, you know if Derek had weed, he’d be smoking way more than me.”

“Damn right,” Derek says. “Damn right.”

We meet Al Nash at the DFD. Everything is overgrown. There’s a down tree next to the rail and there are shrubs all through the run-in. We cut and move snow. We—all six of us—move the downed tree that lies next to the rail. The sun is setting. It’s cold out but we’re working. This is good. Milwaukee will be good. We’ll come back in the morning.

When you go to Milwaukee you learn two things and you learn them quickly. First, do not enter city limits in a Kia. Never enter city limits in a Kia. Second, if you’re looking at a spot, Blake Lamb has probably hit it. We drive with no direction. Up one street and back down it again. Blizzy hit this and Blizzy hit that, we say.

It’s cold here. The cold has followed us. I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense.

“I have a pin we can check out,” Benny says. “A little curved DFD.”

We go to the pin. Why are people standing here? They look like jibbers. Fuck, the Canadians. This is awkward.

We had seen the Canadians two days earlier at a spot I was hitting with Cable. They came by and we tried to have a little trashcan fire, but nothing would catch. Now, like the cold, they appear again.

“Boarder!” I hear Marty yell.

“Boarder!” Jesse yells from behind the camera.

“Boarder!” Quin yells then shovel pulls Dan from the pallet drop.

We walk up.

“Boys!” we say.

Dan unstraps. Marty and Quin walk down.

We talk for a bit, let each other know how we’re doing. Apparently, the people of Milwaukee don’t know what to make of the Canadians. Quin tells us the worker at McDonald’s got some other workers from the back to come out and ogle over them. “Ugly ass white boy,” was the term they used to describe Dan. Someone in Home Depot muttered to Quin: “the fuck are you wearing?”

“I thought I looked pretty good,” Quin says.

We all laugh. We’ve all been there. Misfits, defective, jibbers. We’re not sixteen anymore though, we can laugh about it now.

Crew plus Canadian | Photo: Jesse Jarret

We can go back to the DFD, we think, the one that had all the shrubs. There’s unfinished business there. We move on. We leave the Canadians for what we all know will be the last time on this trip. It’s ok though. Canada’s not going anywhere.

“Yooo,” someone says, I’m not sure who. “The fuck?”

We pull up to the DFD and, again, there’s a boarder, just one, his name is Mike Liddle.

Mike waves as we pull up. We park and walk over. Murph is there, waiting for Mike to make up his mind about what to do. The light is going down. They’ve already hit a spot.

First the Canadians and now the Minnesotans, maybe this is what the article will be about. Milwaukee: The Oslo of Wisconsin. I don’t know though. This probably won’t come out until the spring. Will Oslo still be funny then?

The Ending:

Everything was the same, except we were going backward, and we were minus one taillight (but that’s a different story). We left the way we came. From Milwaukee out, back through Illinois. It’s strange, being on the road for so long and leaving one city when you know you’re not headed for home. Illinois became Iowa. Soon we would be back in Omaha, but you don’t have to come for that. We’ve been together long enough.

An Adventure to the Unknown: