Long Way Home by Bill Barich

Author:Bill Barich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

MISO SOUP FOR breakfast. I recommend it as a remedy for too much Kopper Kettle. It came in powdered form in little sachets tucked in among the Lipton Tea and artificial sweeteners at my motel, slipped in there like a secret. Just when I thought the predictable would swallow me whole, the unexpected sounded a grace note.

I dumped the contents into a coffee cup and added hot water. Delicate green shreds of seaweed and scallion swirled around as I inhaled the gingery, head-clearing fumes and studied my road atlas. The Illinois of U.S. 50 amounted to fewer than two hundred miles between Lawrenceville and the suburbs of St. Louis, a drive of two days or a leisurely three.

The miso mystery was solved when I paid my bill. The motel’s Japanese owner did a steady trade with Toyota executives who flew over to visit the company’s factory in nearby Princeton. Perhaps it was my grogginess, but he seemed hyperalert for so early on a Sunday morning, one of those energetic, probably clean-living types who cause a certain unease in backsliders like me. I asked him for directions to Olney.

“Olney,” he remarked genially, tapping at the atlas. “White squirrels.”

Had I been given a koan to ponder? I remembered the great poet Basho and the tribulation he faced on his long journey to the far north of Japan. On his return, fed up with others invading his peace of mind, he closed the gate of his hut for a month and wouldn’t see a soul, only to emerge with a renewed acceptance of the mundane world. I’d try to do the same.

Lawrence County, on the Illinois side of the Wabash, was farm country writ large, and the look of it differed considerably from southern Indiana. I don’t understand why this should be—such a radical alteration in a matter of miles—but everything changed, not only the look of the land but the smell and feel and very texture of life.

The prairie ran flat to the horizon, and the woods had been thinned to make room for crops. Here the autumn color wasn’t so ravishing, reduced instead to a few modest flickers of red, yellow, and gold. The air carried a tinge of chemicals and fertilizer. Grain elevators and water towers were fixtures along the highway.

In an age of agribusiness, Lawrence County defied the trend. Individuals or families owned the vast majority of farms, but the impact of GMOs was still immediately apparent. The soybean yield had roughly doubled in the past fifteen years, while the amount of wheat grown had been halved.

There was lots of corn, too—77,429 acres as opposed to 86,971 for soybeans—and hog pens aplenty, but farmers rarely bothered with other vegetables and had planted just 21 acres to orchards.

The clock had not yet struck nine, but Lawrenceville was already wide awake. The IGA supermarket was open and had been since five-thirty A.M. Farmers are early risers, so the place was packed. As I stocked my cooler, I noticed another difference, one of tone.

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