No-wheres-ville, Kentucky

No-wheres-ville, Kentucky

By: Liz Buttermore

What were you thinking? Or were you? And how did you even end up here? 14 years old and a runaway. The road was no place for anyone, let alone the face you saw in the reflection of the store window. But there you were sucking on a cigarette outside the Family Dollar Store in “No-wheres-ville”, Kentucky, or so you named it. “What a dump town,” you whisper, as you take another draw off the cancer stick between your lips. Two stop lights one block apart from each other. A Piggly Wiggly, post office, and Masons Lodge within spitting distance of each other, and a boarded up laundromat with white shoe polish on the windows that reads ‘Closed for Business!’ “What does is it even take to graduate high school here?” you think. Just then a middle aged, middle weight, middle class, pale woman approaches the store, and you do the only thing you know to do. You nod casually, acting like the heat radiating off the brick store wall you’re leaning against, isn’t burning your arm. Like Clint Eastwood in some famous movie, you just nod at the lady. Like you own the joint. Like every stinking Friday afternoon this is your regular hangout. Right here, propped up against the wall of the Family Dollar Store in No-wheres-ville Kentucky.

 Throwing the butt to the ground, you look around in wonder. How did you even get here? You had the foresight to pack a small bag of clothes. In a rush, you later realized you left with a flannel shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. In the dead of summer. Brilliant. What a reason to leave, you thought. Mom and Dad were into it all the time. You hated the shouting. Couldn’t invite friends over. And then there was Billy. The golden child. Your nemesis. Not really. Billy was okay… for an older brother. Busy with basketball. Of course basketball….home was after all, Indiana. Billy was working on a scholarship, something you thought you’d never likely attain. Billy was Mom and Dad’s pride and joy. You didn’t care. You were your own person. You’d decided fairly young you were going to make your own life, your own way. If that meant leaving the nest early, so be it.

What a plan. Leave Evanston and end up in Rolling Hills, just over an hour and a half away. “What a great escape,” you say under your breath, looking at the circular black dots on the concrete under your feet. “People are slobs,” you think. “They throw their chewing gum down on the ground and over time it just becomes part of the mosaic of filth. Just beautiful, Nowheresville, just beautiful.” You head out across the street to the Piggly Wiggly, where thankfully they have single bottles of water on sale for 25 cents. A little refreshment on such a stinking hot day…in a long sleeved flannel shirt, and cowboy boots…..in Nowheresville. A similar middle aged, middle weight, middle class, pale woman checks your purchase out at the register. “Will that be all?” she asks. You nod again in confirmation, like Clint Eastwood. “You’re a pretty girl. You kin to the Mathis bunch?” she asks. “Nope, not from around here,” you mumble, “Just passin’ through.” The lady replies, “Have a good day, hun.”

“Well that must have been the welcoming committee,” you think, as you walk through the automatic doors. “Friendly enough,” you say as you light another West cigarette. Laughing out loud as you realize the name of the smokes matches your garb. “What a hoot.” Walking across three parking lots, a gas station can be seen. Chicken livers, gizzards, honey biscuits and curly potato slices called “sidewinders” are what’s on the menu.

 After choosing the lesser of three evils, you leave with sidewinders and a biscuit, walking across the street and back to the fleabag motel that should have been shut down ten years ago. Fishing the rusted room key out of your front jeans pocket, you turn the door handle, eager to get inside and wash your hands. An old, square, tan, landline telephone with push buttons sits on a dusty mismatched end table next to the bed. In the past 12 hours you must’ve looked at that phone a million times… longing for home.

Clean home. Sweet smelling, home. Green grass, home. Billy’s basketball hoop under the carport, home. Jasper, home. “Jasper!” you shout, and quickly cover your mouth as if the person on the other side of the wall cares who Jasper is. Just a dog. Just a sweet, good, loyal, best friend, dog. Glancing at the phone, you pry open the box of sidewinders, pick up the remote control for the TV, choose a channel, and wash your hands again. Tearing off a piece of toilet paper, you gingerly wrap the biscuit and take a bite. “Thanks for no napkins, gas station guy!” A few more bites, a slug off the water, and kicking off your shoes you sink down against the headboard.

Soon enough you zone out to the sound of a couple arguing in the next room, a bittersweet reminder. A replay of a 1990s episode of Jeopardy is on the tube, as you try your hardest to remember the capitol of Bermuda. Lighting another West, you look for an ashtray, deciding to use the sidewinder box. What would it take to walk back through that door? How much courage? Do they even know you’re gone? Do they even care? An Amber Alert comes across the crawl on the bottom of the TV screen. …Last seen in Evanston yesterday afternoon, Hailey Borrows is missing... Your most recent school picture flashes on the screen, taken last Fall, you’re wearing the same flannel shirt. Shoulder length brown curly hair and freckles, there you are in all your glory, on TV screens everywhere in Nowheresville. Now the lady at the Piggly Wiggly knows who you are. So does the truck driver who gave you a ride, and everyone at the Family Dollar. Oh… and the sidewinder salesman.

You decide to put it out of your mind and deal with it in the morning. A few minutes later a knock on the greasy door reveals a local police officer, and the motel “manager”. “You need to come with me young lady,” says the officer. He seemed friendly enough. Tall, dark and ruggedly handsome and about 6 years older. “Not bad Nowheresville,” you think. Settling down in the passenger seat of the squad car, you listen as the officer makes small talk. Back at the station, he calls Mom and Dad and you notice Mom is quietly crying in the background. As the officer makes arrangements with Dad, Billy shouts, “Let me speak to her!” All of a sudden you want to be where they are. They want to be where you are. “Just say it,” you silently remind yourself. You knew you’d regret it if you didn’t. “Love you guys! Miss you!” It wasn’t so bad after all, they do care. And then you hear it. That growly bark. That best friend bark. It’s Jasper!