Chapter 9

I sat in Queen City Bakery and did a long audio interview with Ted Heeren, easily one of the most likable people I have met, and also a local radio evolutionary. The layout of the bakery shocked me a bit when I first walked in, as I was used to the small cafes and diners of rural South Dakota. Screen doors and flies and sweat, dog bowls and bare feet and good fried food. But it's the working of dials. I met Greg Veerman through Mark Roush back in Portland. Greg introduced me to Ted and a week later we're talking about radio, literature and corn country. The day before, I sold a title each to the Vermillion Public Library, which is always the highest form of marketing for me. There is something so goddamn holy about a library carrying your novel. It is surreal and bright to the core.












I drove through the center of Sioux Falls in the daylight, to a cell store to get my phone fixed, when I noticed a couple on a BMX cruiser, pedaling up Louise Avenue. She sat on his handlebars above his number plate, they had the same hair, cigs dangling in tandem, and they weaved up and down the cubes and around patches of glass and plants. I was immediately brought back to the desert of Phoenix, to the slow and long burn of summer there without a car. It felt good to be where I was, period. But I think owning a BMX cruiser with a number plate and pedaling up the hot sidewalk with a stoner betty on my handlebars would feel pretty fucking good, too.