Yeshimon

Nevada. One of the strangest places in the U.S.

It’s a big, barren, arid desert with nothing for miles except military bases, reservations, casinos, and strip clubs. Dave is driving 95 miles per hour in his 1973 Cadillac de Ville. The sand and pebbles flicking up from the ground and pinging off the refurbished cherry colored sides would peeve him any other day, but not today. He doesn’t have a destination in mind, but he’s using the process of elimination. The one place he is not going: home. He just can’t.

Dave’s home is in Adaven, Nevada. That’s where he just moved. He moved there to escape his cushy job in the Upper East Side; to escape the exchanges of polite how-do-you-dos with the doorman and the keep; to escape his nagging bitch of a wife and his spoiled no-good kids. He just couldn’t take it anymore, any of it. Except for his de Ville, of course. He spent too many years fixing her up. She was the only thing he had ever loved. So he took off, left everything else behind him. Simple as that.

He bought a cheap camper off Craigslist and drove to Nevada. He set up the camper in Adaven. He started waking up in the mornings and, instead of putting on his three-piece suit, he’d stay in his wife-beater and boxers. With a freshly brewed cup, he’d stroll out of his camper and sip his coffee in a folding chair, watching the sun rise over the vacant desert.

That’s what he was doing when he heard the morning drills of the Air Force Base half a mile north of him. The jets of the F-22s are loud— really loud. The sound starts during their takeoffs as a slow rumble of clanking metal parts. Once the jets are in the air, the sound turns into a fast, jumbled circus of screeches and shrieks. Dave hears them every morning now. It drives him mad, but not because it’s loud. Something about it is just bad and wrong, and he would rather not think about the Air Force in this place— this place that is supposed to be his haven away from all things bad and wrong. So he hopped in his car and drove away, trying to escape again.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been driving, but he’d guess thirty miles or so. His skin has turned crispy and brown from the hot sun. He sweats. His dry eyes are wide and bloodshot, and his lips have turned into phyllo dough— all flaky and thin. He reaches a shaky hand into his pocket and pulls out a limp cigarette, lights it; puts it in between his phyllo dough lips.

He hasn’t seen another soul on the road, and that’s the other thing besides the base that drives him mad out here. It’s empty. He left Manhattan because it was too much, but this feels like far too little. It’s just him, the F-22s and the sand. Dave keeps driving 95 miles per hour down the straight, never-ending road. Pebbles ping, ping, pinging his side doors, and the howl of the engine is all he can hear. That’s the only noise there is for miles anyway. Nevada is one of the strangest places in the U.S., and it’s not just because of the military bases, reservations, casinos, or strip clubs. It’s the empty, isolated nothingness of a big, empty desert.