North Dallas Forty

I am kneeling on a square of dirt near the Texas/Oklahoma border, petting and scratching an appreciative older bulldog. Through the cell phone pressed to my ear, one of my editors bellows at me from 1,500 miles away; calls everything I am and do into question. I move to scratching the dog under the chin, and it smiles and wags its long and sloppy tongue. A few feet away, an aging Football Hero whispers to his champion horse, easing it around the entrance to the barn.

The editor begins to screech. I say nothing, simply move to rubbing the bulldog's belly. It chuffs softly, rolls over for more. The sun moves like liquid over the Texas Hill Country, making the shadows under the trees sweep and dance. I gaze at the slope leading past the stands of green trees to the far distance. In New York City, the editor launches into his second wind, a true Homeric rant -- and the bulldog chuffs again.

"Huh," I finally grunt into the phone. My first and only word in twenty minutes.

The aging Football Hero has his shirt up, showing off the scars of old Super Bowls. He laughs, heartily. And even though the editor later calls up again, and apologizes, and says none of that was directed at me ("It ain't personal"), the feeling I had looking over those hills stays with me: That I could chuck the open phone casually into the nearest ditch (the device still squalking with righteous indignation even as dust filled the speaker holes), hop the fence, and stride into the sun-dappled grassland; to become one with the beasts and the grasshoppers, to somehow sink roots deep into the Earth, into something eternal and with meaning.

--

The essential existential conundrum, Dallas, late-night: *What* exactly do you choose to eat from the lobby venting machine -- Cheez-Its, or Fritos? What does this say about you as a person? And why is it that Chicago, DC, NYC and LA seem to be the only cities in America that serve real food after 8pm?

For lunch, we stopped at a gas/BBQ/groceries complex carved from dust and weathered boards somewhere in Oklahoma. Great ribs; soggy fries; names and dates written on the walls in Sharpie, reminding me of Morgan Freeman's bar in Mississippi. A plague of black and somehow antedeluvian crickets had swept through, filling the bathroom, hopping on the warped wood of the porch. Before climbing back into the SUV I wiped the dirt from my boots, patted the pocket of my cargo pants where the digital recorder with the Football Hero's stories about Super Bowls and plane crashes, cheerleaders and finding salvation, sat waiting for transcription; within 24 hours I planned to be on an island far southeast of here; I paused for a moment to breathe in the dry air.