A Trip to Alte Salem Kirche

"Cathedral towers over the fields. Rotten photo. I took it through the car window after we'd been driving all day, the car still moving. I've only kept it because I remember taking it, remember the feeling of coming in over the fields and towards somewhere I sort of knew. It doesn't actually matter you can't see the towers, I know they're there. That's what I like about this one. That I took it for me. Just for me." --Janice Galloway, Foreign Parts

Stephanie and Amanté
Amanté and Stephanie

driving through the fading daylight of an Indiana landscape.

We're sort of in Evansville still, Evansville according to Google, but I saw the county line back on the highway. Maybe these side roads twisted and turned back that far east as we drove through the gathering dusk, uncertain. My sense of direction stopped following along ten minutes ago. Off our personal maps now, we're chasing something I read about on an Internet forum once. We are somewhere neither of us has ever been, heading toward something neither of us has ever seen.

Ahead, the street curves down into a hollow canopied by trees so dense, the pavement is cast into premature night. I feel my pulse throb slightly, pick up pace.

"So we're definitely going to get hacked to pieces by a guy with an ax out here, right?" Amanté asks.

"Definitely. There's definitely a guy with an ax just waiting for some young people to wander by all the way the hell out here." We're only kidding, of course we are, but I can feel the adrenaline slowly trickling into my veins. Buzzing the way it does before a big storm.

We drive past an unmarked drive that disappears around a curve and possibly leads to our destination. There's a mailbox, which is pretty unexpected. Not even a very old mailbox. It looks so clean and modern that it jars with the backdrop. So we keep straight, squinting into the woods as we pass, but the thick growth is full of late evening shadows and gives away nothing.

"That was the place," Amanté says after a moment.

"It must be..." I falter.

"No, it is. Look." He motions skyward, to where a moldering steeple peeks above the treeline beside us.

There are no suspicious neighbors, no other cars to rush us as his truck circles back. Just this deserted road and the dirt path waiting ahead for us.

As we turn in, the headlights hit a cross. A makeshift cross, devised of haphazardly broken boards and nailed to the gnarled trunk of a tree. Maybe it's a sign for curious travelers like us. Or people who have nowhere else to go. Here in the last strains of daylight, it feels menacing.

But we
            creep
                   forward
                              through
                                        the
                                           trees
                                                                                                                                                 until

the                
church fills          
our view to the       
right, spire dark      
against the deepening sky.

And a fire.

The building rests in a small hill clearing, descending quickly to woods on every side. Google said there was a campground buried somewhere in the weald behind the church, but seeing a campfire so near is unsettling. And there's a trailer beside the fire pit, a dilapidated thing stretching along the forest's edge. Some kind of office for the campsite? Someone's hunting shack? Someone's home? An abandoned structure where local homeless bed down? Meth lab? I'm too unnerved by this unexpected sign of life to study my surroundings carefully, risk making eye contact with someone who might not like it.

Amanté slowly turns the truck around in plain sight of anyone who might be near the fire. He has to, there's no other space to do it and we can't risk backing into a tree in this unfamiliar landscape, it's not even his truck. I pass the time wondering if we're about to be shot at. Finally, we're aimed back toward the main road, separated by the hill from the glow of the firelight. I'm chattering because I'm nervous, chattering with no real idea what I'm saying, only I know I mention that some people have gone inside the building, I've seen photos. Amanté puts the truck in park and jumps out, leaving the door wide to check the padlock on the church entrance that hovers a few feet above the ruin of stone steps. I scan our surroundings like it might be a trap, like I think someone might be sneaking up on us.

And then we're back on the road, deer playing in the dim fields beside us. They stop to stare as we pass.

Nothing's as intimidating in the daylight of the morning that follows. The sky is as gray as the church, with a rain so soft, it might be a trick of the imagination.



I stick to the front of the church, letting it obscure me from anyone beyond, and poke cautiously around in my dress while Amanté sets up the camera. I turn too quickly and catch sight of us in a reflection, nearly have a heart attack. Twice.





After he takes his pictures, I steal back toward the collapsing remains of a house half-hidden among the trees at the same edge of the property as the trailer. Which is when I see something strikingly red in the midst of all those dull browns and greens. Someone's jacket, hood up.

They are facing away from me, looking toward the trailer. They don't know I'm behind them. Before they can turn around, I retreat quietly back to my side of the church. There are no KEEP OUT signs, nothing to warn us that there's NO TRESPASSING or that we're on PRIVATE PROPERTY. All the same, I don't want to rub anyone the wrong way. Or startle them by appearing behind them silently.

Instead, I slowly circle the structure in the other direction, taking in the details.

Most of the glass at ground-level is broken, but when I lever onto my tiptoes to look through jagged panes, I nearly gasp at the vivid blue that comes into view. Stained glass windows on the opposite wall--trailer-side--are completely intact and daylight is streaming through them gorgeously. I back away and try to take pictures on my phone, windows through windows, but it doesn't look right.



And I think I've found the main entrance, a gaping hole that probably once housed double-doors, obscured behind a thicket of trees and bramble in what I first took for a ditch. We could just walk right in. I'm not taking my chances in those bushes, not with my legs bare, but if we wanted to.

There isn't much else to see from the outside. I decide that since we're about to leave anyway, I don't care, so I head toward the house that's falling in on itself and try to get as close as possible, just to see in. Upon closer inspection, a patch near what used to be a door reveals itself to be a sign prohibiting hunting. It probably swung freely from the farmhouse once, but has long since rusted over so thickly that it's corroded into the structure. This is all I can really tell. There's too much tall grass surrounding it, with large shards of broken glass spread around, and I'm aware that probably someone is watching us from the trailer. So we leave.



As we sit at the light to turn back onto the highway, something wells in my throat and I hold it there. While I wait for it to ebb, I snap a photo. The western periphery of my hometown under a sky blue-gray like an ocean. Cars going about their weekday business. A deer sign that I always joke is a flying deer crossing, which literally no one has ever laughed at, not a single time, not even me. The radio is playing "Crawlersout" and Amanté is absently tapping the wheel in time, watching the traffic. It doesn't matter that there's nothing significant whatsoever about this shot, that you don't know where we were or who was with me or how the music sounded in that moment. I know it when I look at the photo. That's what I like about this one. That I took it for me. Just for me.

Highways Are Built to Fold

This was the song of my first solo drive to Indiana. I was making such good time. I wasn't tired, I wasn't hungry, and I'd only had to stop maybe twice for gas and bathroom breaks. The roads weren't exceptionally busy, even though it was Labor Day weekend. Maybe because I'd left Wilmington well before sunrise.

Some time early in the afternoon, I dug an apple out of my purse. Just as I was taking my first bite, this song started. Life was good, but suddenly, everything was infinitely better. The day was still young, though I'd been driving for over eight hours, and I'd made it over halfway to my destination. The weather was perfect, I was getting along with myself astoundingly well, I had an entire week ahead with people I loved, and, damn, was that apple good.

I'm one of those people who sing along to my radio until I pull up beside someone at a light and then I play it cool, because other people might be like, "Hey, check out that chick talking to herself." But I just felt too good to care. I was eating my apple with one hand, steering with the other, and dancing around (you know...responsibly) in my seat without a single thought given to the semis I was passing.

It was a good day. It was such a good day.

Until. A couple of hours later, when my car hydroplaned, spun several times into oncoming traffic, and finally came to a crunching halt in the median.

.........................................

But before all that, before the apple and the dancing and the sound of concrete obliterating my car's steering column, there was "Delta."

I left town early that morning, still cloaked in darkness, car heavy with dew. On my way out, I stopped at my ex's old store.

"Are you on your way to work?" the friendly woman behind the counter inquired, sweet enough or bored enough to sound genuinely interested.

"I'm on my way to...Indiana, actually. Road trip."

Even coming out of my mouth, it didn't sound real.



I started my MP3 player as I left their parking lot and "Delta" began, quietly. It was a song for the beginning of a road trip, if I've ever heard one. Driving down Independence Boulevard to meet the highway out of the city, I looked up at the stars, still bright in the night sky. A few minutes later, I crossed the bridge west over the Cape Fear River and left Wilmington behind.

Outside of town, the blackness was complete. There were no streetlights, no home lights, no "closed" signs glowing softly from empty businesses. There was just nothing for a long time.

What will happen to me today? I wondered as the faintest hint of color smudged the sky in the rearview mirror. What am I setting in motion by being in this very spot at this very moment? Where will I be when the sun sets?

I'm secretly an optimist. I'm a worrier, but no matter what I'm saying, no matter how despondent I sound, an unspoken part of me is hoping like crazy and is naively certain that things will all turn out just fine.

I was scared about this drive and no joke. Anything could happen (and did). But up until the moment my tires slammed an unexpected puddle and fell out of my control, until the second my car began to spin, until the very instant that my brain whispered, Something's happening, and my hair whipped across my face in a sudden, torrential downpour of red, I honestly thought I was going to make it without a hitch.

Even after, I was sanguine. No one was hurt. Maybe the car wasn't totaled. Maybe it would be all right.

The tow truck driver dropped me with my luggage at a 24-hour diner in Bowling Green, where I waited a few hours for my sister to make the journey south from Henderson to collect me. The waitress was very sweet, told me I didn't even have to order anything. She brought me some water. My phone was dying and there was nowhere to plug it in, so I passed the time staring into space, watching a fly make rounds among the booths. The restaurant was vaguely '50s-themed and every other oldies tune was about automobiles or love like a car crash. I always did appreciate a good song gag.

I took a Xanax almost as an afterthought, more because I thought I should than anything. It didn't make me feel any different, because I wasn't even upset. I'd call the insurance company and get a rental and everything would be fine. A headache, but fine.

To answer my question from that morning, I was in that diner when the sun set. Rain had settled in for the night, causing a premature dusk.

On the drizzly drive to my mom's house, my sister pretended she was losing control of the car, as a joke. Twice.

........................................................................

A week later, I sat on a plane on the runway of the Evansville airport, waiting to go home. I was feeling pretty low. I'm never happy to leave, but when your car is totaled, your insurance company is giving you loads of crap, you barely got to spend time with your recently divorced mother, and you're leaving behind so much love, it's a special level of Fuck This Shit.

I put my ear buds in during the pre-flight announcements and stared out the window. It felt weird to turn on my MP3-player and find the song that was playing during my crash there, still paused and waiting. I shuffled to another track and a song--that remix of "Diet Mountain Dew"--started as the plane began to move toward the runway. I thought about that golden, late-summer day, the open road, the apple, the pretty countryside. The rare, heady feeling that I was moving through the world exactly where I should be in that moment.

As the bridge of the song built back toward the beat for the final minute, the ground outside began to roll by more and more quickly, became a blur. My arms came out in goosebumps, skin crushing and uncrushing, shivers racing along my spine as the music and the world outside synced into something perfect. And I was back on that highway, eating some fruit and dancing alone and feeling damn fine.

I have no other pictures from my trip, so here are some scary mannequins from Eastland Mall.

A Trip to Dogtown

"What's that?" I ask, pointing to a spot on my phone's map. "Have you been there before?"

Probably Amanté has. He's lived in Evansville for most of his twenty-nine years and knows all of it. He maneuvers through a maze of side-streets faster than I can keep up with which direction we're going.

But I find a place. I find one place he hasn't been. It's Union Township on a map, but Dogtown from the mouths of locals. It exists in a horseshoe bend of the Ohio River, a mostly unpopulated floodplain that's submerged in water every few years, tucked away at the bottom of Evansville civilization. There's a locally renowned tavern and a boat ramp and...what else? There's no through-traffic, because there's no way through. A ferry ran from the southern tip, decades ago, to take you across the river to Henderson, but not now. Now the way out is the way you came in, so you only go if you need to.

We don't need to, but one evening, we go anyway. There isn't much to see. The main road is an endless narrow loop along the inside of the horseshoe, with crowding trees, a marsh to one side, and the river just beyond. The occasional street of gravel intersects, dust still and long settled. A handful of bungalows dot the way, unmarked industrial buildings like something out of The X-Files, an ancient train trestle leading across the water into Kentucky. It's so strange to be in one state and constantly have view of another. It's really no different, though, I know that. Just a man-made border borrowed from where a river already flows a line between.

Amanté comments that this is where you dump a body in Evansville and he's right. The old train bridge towers against the graying sky with an ominous look. Dark clouds blot out the sun, already hanging low on the horizon. The trees lean over the car like something from a cartoon, like something with bony hands and a long, ghoulish face, obscuring the last of the fading light. I know we're fine, but there's a sense of tension in the air. We are somewhere neither of us has ever been and we haven't seen a soul since we got here and a storm is brewing and I don't know if we even have cell phone service, but I doubt it. If anything should happen...

At the end of it all, we find an abandoned yellow building, piled high with refuse. There are still numbers visible on the mailbox and I jot them down to research later. We stop to gawk from the safety of the car and Amanté points out that there's some kind of artificial light in there, behind all the junk. I think it looks like a meth house. We elect not to investigate.

Imagine this, but grimmer and full of garbage.

I look it up later. The Internet reports:

-The yellow house is often referred to as Old Dogtown School.
-A bunch of people were murdered there.
-It is haunted.

The truth, as is usually the case, is much more prosaic. I find it with a minimum effort at research. Built around 1915, the structure served as the lock and dam house for a reservoir that existed in the area until a flood destroyed it in 1975. Exactly zero people are confirmed to have died horrible deaths in it. The current owners began renovations on it a few years ago. The mountain of garbage inside indicates that they gave up at some point. Maybe that flood in 2011 was just too much and they realized nothing was going to get all that mud out of the basement.

And why is there a basement, when it comes to that? A basement with windows? It was built in--indeed, for--a flood-prone area and even has marks up one side of the building to measure how high the water levels get. I'm not used to this lack of foresight. Houses in Wilmington just don't have basements, for the very same reason, i.e., they're going to flood anyway.

I still think it could be a meth house.

We make it out of the wilderness just fine. Half-drowning in the summer downpour, but fine.

If you're interested in more pictures and information on the dam house or other abandoned buildings in the Evansville area, The Recreational Trespasser (from whom I borrowed the modern photo of the structure seen above) is a fantastic resource.

Other Fourths

July 04th. People milling the downtown streets, heedless of the odd vehicle passing through, the drivers white-knuckled and tense, weaving through a crowd that just doesn't care. We stick to the sidewalk and find a curb that looks fine for sitting.

A bar somewhere nearby plays shitty cover songs. Barefoot children a few feet away dance to all of it, indiscriminate, a startling amount of hip involved. My eyes sweep the mass of expectant spectators, noting the differences from what I'd see at home. Small-town farming families, the parents stuck in some early '90s time warp that involves teased bangs, jean shorts, white sneakers.

When I was a kid in Florida, we used to watch the fireworks display over the Banana River. Someone on Merritt Island put up a show every year. In the back corner of my favorite neighborhood playground along the east bank of the river, we'd sit on a blanket and watch in awe. I'm not sure how our parents tolerated all our heavy-handed oohing and ahhing.

Colorado was different, a lake. Prospect Lake. One year, a heavily intoxicated man sitting somewhere nearby spent the entire spectacle bellowing, "YEAH, BABY! YEAH! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!" in the dark and my sister and I were the only people who acknowledged it in any way.

Living in southern Indiana meant watching from the edge of the Ohio River. Every year, my dad, my aunt, my cousin Lacy, and I would find a spot near the boat ramp and settle in, waiting ages for the sun to set and the fireworks to begin. Lacy and I would play cards and clapping games, guess which summery songs the city would pipe over the sound system along the river walk. I was good at guessing. When the sky grew dark, we'd lie back and look for the first star to wish on, something I got from my mom. I still do it.

Most July 04ths for the last decade, I've watched from along the Cape Fear. The Battleship North Carolina is anchored across the way and the fireworks fill the sky over it while "The Star-Spangled Banner" blares on repeat from somewhere, patriotic as hell. I never see it without texting Lacy to tell her I'm thinking of her. There are always loads of kids losing their minds over sparklers. I envy them.

And here I am, another year, another river. I'm watching from the Ohio again with our small, quiet group. Heather, Chris, my nephew, me.

Which is how it comes to pass that my sister and I watch the 04th of July fireworks together for the first time since we were children, occasionally murmuring, "Yeah, baby! Yeah!" to one another, laughing as a low-quality copy of "God Bless the USA" deafens everyone in that bar.

I picture the tiny versions of us from other Fourths nearly 30 years ago, sitting with my brother in a park that hasn't existed in decades. Indian-style on an old blanket laid out among the faded spring riders that were once meant to look like turquoise sea horses and red lions, our faces lifted to the sky, mouths agape when we're not pointing out our favorite style of fireworks, the smell of sulfur from spent firecrackers mixing with a hundred backyard grills fired up all over the neighborhood. Our parents were always on lawn chairs behind us, guarding the fresh sparklers and their smoldering counterparts, still glowing-hot at one end. We'd watch the show and then they'd walk us home under the safe, orange glow of the streetlights. In the front yard, they'd let us fire up the rest of the sparklers in the box, one by one, etching pictures in the dark that only lasted a moment.

Pictured: Brother (top right), sister (second from top right), me (second from bottom right), kids we might have watched fireworks with at some point (everyone else). Not pictured: The actual 04th of July.