To Indiana

You were a shock. A bigger shock than my first car accident. A bigger shock than moving to New York. You’re right up there with having a baby and traveling to Cyprus.

I never thought about Indiana. The most I knew was that Indianapolis had the Indy 500, but I didn’t know what that was. Something about cars. John Mellencamp sang proudly of you and a woman from somewhere in Indiana lived on my dorm floor freshman year. Sure, I could pick you out on a map, but your name conjured nothing for me. Blank. Empty. As it turns out, much like your stretches of highway.

And I was torn. Graduate school decision. My first-choice school, Northern Arizona, accepted me and when I went to visit, the director advised I go where I got the most money, do not go into debt for a degree in poetry. They all gave me money, but Purdue gave me the most. Goodbye Grand Canyon. Goodbye Florida oranges. Hello…..? What? What the hell is in Indiana?

First, I noticed all the young men. Not because I was a straight, single young woman, but honestly, I’d never seen so many look like this. In one place. It was like the Twilight Zone episode where everyone is creepy-perfect. Their jaws too squared and sharp. Their shirts just a little too tight and their chests just a bit too wide. Jeans with shirts tucked in. Baseball caps, always backward. White. They were all white. All my students. I would just call on “Michael” or “Justin” and 12 would start to answer. I learned all their names; I just didn’t know who was who.

A shocking number were farm kids. From actual farms. They grew up waking before dawn to feed huge animals. I learned about de-tasseling and combines and grain silos and the ways a farm can kill you.

They wore flannel plaid shirts. Unironically.

I was surprised by the architecture. Old wooden Victorian houses on 9th Street, one after the other, rising up the hill. Slightly tilted, the siding askew, either from shifting foundations or poor craftsmanship or the wind from the plains beating them. Not like the unmovable brick houses of Texas. These houses aged as if they were alive. I lived in one: second floor apartment, looking out onto the street. When winter arrived, I heard the couple below argue. He hit her. I froze.

Small town, mid-America. I should have known it before I got there. It’s TV America, radio America, Hollywood-makes-a-football-movie America. If you were French and someone asked you to describe America, you would first say New York and then a place like Indiana. Open fields. A little church. Everyone a few pounds heavier than they should be. Big smiles and people who say “fella.”

But you are a place where things grow. You have an actual harvest season. Men and boys, women and girls hunt in the fall. They get dirty and bloody. They put their hands into nature daily and grab it. They rise and brush their palms on their jeans. They walk away satisfied.