I couldn’t stop picturing our progress from above: the blue dot of the pickup creeping along a thin black line, bisecting a checkered expanse of barren fields regular as graph paper. “So, this is Kansas.” It was the first thing O’Connell had said since we’d started driving this morning. “We’re not in Missouri anymore,” I said. She didn’t get the reference. I glanced down at the map on my lap, then back out through the dust-bright windshield, looking for a mile marker. Playing navigator. Del led, I thought. Paradoxically, the extreme flatness of the terrain made me acutely aware that we were living on a big round spinning planet. Though the horizon looked as level as a windowsill, I could sense the Earth curving out of sight, the vast sky bending over us. We rode toward an immense wall of clouds, unguessable miles away. My arm rested on the back of the seat.
