In the bathroom, Joe sits on a toilet in a stall, straining. From the next stall come strange, inhuman grunts, culminating in a loud splash and a hiss of steam. A white liquid runs along the floor into Joe’s stall. It looks like buttermilk with lumps and streaked with green mold.
Joe bolts from the stall, rushes into the dining area, slides into the booth, frightened, out of breath.
Sherry hugs him. “You okay, baby?”
“I’m scared. There’s an alien in the bathroom.”
“Now, honey, calm yourself down. Kenny, please go in there and come back and tell him there’s no alien in there.”
Kenny shrugs. “Sure. I gotta go anyway.”
In the men’s room, Kenny pisses in a urinal, then looks under the stall partitions. No one is there and the floor is clear.
At the booth. Joe looks out the window, sees Moe. “He’s baaaack.”
Moe slides the Baretta behind his belt buckle and slithers into the café. He sits in the booth opposite Joe and Sherry and removes his helmet.
Kenny arrives, stands near Sherry.
Moe says, “Who’s this asshole?”
“Kenny. He’s giving us a ride.”
Moe is on the verge of tears. “Lemme tell you something about love, Kenny. It hurts, like they say. She tried to burn me alive, this bitch did.”
“Get out of my life,” Sherry says.
“You fucked her yet, Kenny? She’ll fuck anything that moves.”
“Look, man….”
Moe, in tears, pulls the Baretta. “You ain’t leaving me! I don’t care what you done. You’re mine.”
Sherry takes Joe’s hand, attempts to exit the booth. “Let’s go, Kenny. He beats his women, but he don’t shoot them.”
Sherry and Joe ease their way out of the booth. Kenny slowly escorts them to the front door, dropping some money at the cash register. The waitress and fry cook stare at all this in disbelief.
Through the window, Moe watches Kenny’s rig pull into a stormy night. He points the barrel of the gun at his temple, straining mightily to summon the courage to pull the trigger, but just as he does, he ducks his head as the bullet is fired — into the back of the fry cook, who falls forward, plunging his head into the deep fryer with a horrible sizzle.
Moe puts on his helmet and makes for the door. To the frightened, sobbing waitress, he says, “Sorry. It was an accident.” As an afterthought, he removes all the cash from the register, then walks out.
Kenny’s rig, dawn. The storm has passed. Joe sleeps in the sleeper, Sherry nods in the passenger seat. Kenny puts his hand on her knee. “Talk to me. I’m getting sleepy.”
She wakes up. “Sure, okay, I’ll talk.”
“So…you tried to burn the guy up? Is that what he said?”
“I did. I shot at him once, too. I missed. He didn’t press any charges. But he beat me. He says I like to be beat. Maybe I do.”
They pass a sign on a fence-post depicting a raw steak: A KANSAS FARMER FEEDS 109 PEOPLE PLUS YOU. Wheat fields stretch to the horizon, stalks waving in the wind.
“Kansas,” Kenny says. “No more purple mountains majesty, just amber waves of grain.”
A huge grain elevator looms ahead. A road sign says: Ulysses, Pop. 2, 014.
Kenny says, “There’s a good place for breakfast up here.”
The rig pulls into the parking lot of the Breadbasket Café, whose logo, displayed on a sign, is a sheaf of wheat. Lots of wheat-harvesting machinery and grain trucks are parked around. Kenny edges his rig into a tight spot not far from a wheat field abutting the lot. A number of stake-bed trucks are parked nearby. He says, “You two go on in and get a table. I’m gonna check my load.”
Sherry and Joe walk to the front of the café. When they are out of sight, Kenny approaches one of the stake-bed trucks. The boss of a wheat harvesting crew sits inside.
“You the boss?”
“Yeah.”
“Got twelve for you.”
“We’ll need ‘em. Lotta wheat this year. Lotta wheat.”
“They’re in the back there. It’s open. Go ahead and load ‘em up.”
Inside the café, the breakfast crowd, mostly wheat harvesting crews, is abuzz with conversation. Harried waitresses scurry from table to table. Two busy fry cooks work behind the counter, frying eggs, making toast, sweating. Sherry and Joe sit at one of the few unoccupied tables. Sherry looks at the menu, says, “I love breakfast. It’s my favorite meal.”
The waitress appears, bad makeup job, popping gum, her mind elsewhere. “Somethin’ to drink?”
Sherry orders coffee. “There’s three of us.” Joe orders a jumbo Mr. Pibb. The waitress sighs, lowers her head, as if he had said something unforgivably wrong. “We don’t have Mr. Pibb. That’s a Coke product. Is Pepsi okay?”
“If you want me to vomit on your floor.”
“What did he say?”
Sherry says, “He’s allergic to Pepsi. It makes him vomit. Order something else, Joe.”
“You got root beer?”
“Uh-huh.”
“The biggest size you got.”
Kenny passes the waitress on her way back to the kitchen.
After serving the drinks, the waitress says,“You want something to drink, sir?”
“Yeah, a glass of milk.”
“Y’all ready to order?”
Sherry orders two eggs over easy, hash browns, sausage.
“Toast or biscuits with that, ma’am?”
“Biscuits.”
“With gravy or plain?”
“Plain, thanks, butter on the side.”
“We don’t got real butter, you know. It’s Country Crock.”
“I know.”
“Sir, what can I get you?”
“Just the milk. You got any antacid up there at the counter?”
“We got Tums.”
“Great. Bring me a pack of Tums with the milk.”
The waitress turns to Joe. “You?”
“Two double cheeseburgers, large order of fries. Don’t cook the fries.”
“We use frozen fries. You want your fries frozen?”
“Solid. Right out of the freezer.”
“You serious?”
“Yeah. They’re great that way. Try it sometime.”
“All-righty then.” The waitress toddles off.
Kenny’s rig rolls through the Kansas plains. Now and then a grasshopper splatters on the windshield. Each splat seems larger and louder than the last. In his jump seat Joe plays “Home on the Range” on his saw. Sherry sings along. “Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelopes play….”
The grasshopper splats increase until the windshield wipers begin losing the fight against the thickening grasshopper goo. Kenny can barely see the road.
Joe snaps out of his saw-playing trance. The sound of grasshoppers hitting the rig intensifies. Some of the collisions are remarkably loud, as if it were raining chickens. Kenny opens the window and sticks his head out. When he does, dozens of grasshoppers fly in. “Holy shit!” He quickly closes the window. The light in the cab dims, as if a cloud is passing overhead. Grasshoppers crawl all around the cab. Sherry tries to shoo them with her folded bra. In all the confusion, Kenny loses control of the rig as it crosses a bridge over a rain-swollen creek. The hind end of the trailer tilts just enough to break the coffins loose from their moorings. The rear doors break open and into the rushing water tumble a dozen caskets. Once the load is dumped, the trailer rights itself.
Kenny, Sherry and Joe stand on the bridge over a culvert and watch the caskets float away. Kenny says, “I’m fucked now, man. I’m so totally fucked. I don’t believe it.”