Read Online Mission to America by Walter Kirn - Free Book Online

the people I hoped I'd travel any distance for. It was just a hope, though; I hadn't done it yet.
    My partner finally quit scratching about the time the waitress, who seemed so intent on proving that customers who'd finished eating and were using her diner as an arena for feats of mentalism didn't bother or distract her because she had so many pressing tasks, started to look bothered.
    â€œâ€˜As to what the crones assure the maidens,'” he said in his airy, swept-high quotation voice, “‘about how beauty fades, and must, and dry old Time unpinks the dewy cheek, the Discourser spoke thusly to Scribe Lucy: This too is a fib of False Esteeming Thought. Beheld all isolate, alone, and free of prejudicial overlay, the fair are fair forever absolute. Upon which the Discourser darkly reinfolded, undimensioned, and withdrew, resuming beetle form upon a petal.'”
    â€œWrong. So far off, it's ridiculous,” the man said. He was a foul old hog on purpose now. He shouldn't have let the verse go on unfurling.
    â€œJust read it out then.” My partner seemed sick of the whole enchanted mood he'd tried to sparkle us into. He probably thought we were unappreciative.
    â€œâ€˜The cheerful fall is the highest sort of flight.'” The man closed the book. “So that's my stupid message, huh?”
    â€œNo,” my partner said. “It's mine.”
    After we'd paid and gathered our literature and Elder Stark had shut and latched his briefcase, the scratch-card fellow seemed to mellow toward us.
    â€œYou're two good-looking boys,” he said. “You should be out there chasing foxes.”
    â€œWe plan on it,” my partner said.
    â€œSo put on some jeans. Get with it. Buy some crank. The girls in these counties are crankheads. They're little freaks. The trick in Wyoming is show the chicks a party.”
    My partner laughed politely. I did, too.
    â€œI've got the good stuff, the waxy, chunky stuff. A gram is fifty bucks. One gram's a lot. That is if it's the waxy, chunky good stuff.”
    â€œThank you. No,” I said. “But thank you, sir.” I looked at my partner for backup but he gave me none. “Let's go. I'm going,” I told him. I surveyed the place, table by table, stool by stool. No state trooper anywhere.
    â€œI'll be right behind you,” Elder Stark said. He patted his gut through his white shirt. “Those chicken wings. About to fly the coop.”
    I stood by the door and studied a newspaper through the scratched glass window of a paper box. The government had lowered a certain tax and raised another. I wasn't interested. I read the top half of a second story about a California kidnapping involving a male kindergarten teacher and the daughter of a cinema director. The little girl's picture looked like all the other ones I'd been seeing on posters and signs since leaving Bluff, and it made me want to go home immediately, before I spotted one of the lost children and was drawn into a complicated court case. The longer I spent here, the likelier it was that some act of heroism would be required of me, whose consequences might keep me forever. I'd changed my views about any distance necessary.
    Elder Stark emerged from the diner and said, “Don't worry.” He could see my concern and I could see his lack of any.
    â€œYou better not have.”
    â€œIt was too much money. I just wanted to hear what the stuff supposedly does. Better energy and spoils your appetite.”
    â€œYou can get both of those with poplar bark tea.”
    â€œFor a considerably smaller outlay.”
    When Elder Stark sat down to drive, a grumble of trapped gas escaped followed by a long thin whistle of after-pressure. For Apostles, such noises weren't comical but ominous. I sympathized with his desire to foil his hunger with any chemical agent that came to hand. I pretended to concentrate on reading the atlas, turned the radio up loud, and allowed him to vent his