Whatever You Do, Do It in Cookietown

“Tess was involved in that horrible streetcar accident a few months ago,” Harold said, “when that mad driver plowed into it.”

I couldn’t resist correcting him, a habit I knew annoyed all those familiar with me. “Horrible? The streetcar was parked. The man who slammed into the side? Fifteen miles an hour. Oklahoma City officials never commented on it.”

“Then you can see why Tess felt so embarrassed” Harold said with no added explanation except, “that she was so shaken up.”

Harold had drunkenly come by with an unannounced knock around two in the afternoon. We traded banal gossip about our old workplace. I once caught our former boss on a date with his secretary. Harold insisted the secretary was a spy. For whom? Harold could not answer. Half an hour passed before he got on the subject that really interested him—his wife.

Those thirty minutes made no positive dent in his insobriety. While he had momentarily paused drinking, the effect was getting worse. Not that you couldn’t blame the man for drinking—we’d been laid off from the airplane factory two days ago. If not for my wife Sierra’s unwavering optimism, her teaching at the local elementary school, and my ability to waste hours in a YouTube hole of early 2000s basketball highlights, I might have been drinking with him.

I glanced at the clock again. I pictured Sierra waving goodbye to her third-grade students as they exited her colorful classroom. She’d tidy up, finish some paperwork, prepare for tomorrow then head home. With any luck, she would miss this visit. Sierra remained loyal to her Harold-free minutes.

“People used to do this,” he said, a bit slurred. “Show up unannounced.”

“People also used to pretend to not be home,” I responded.

Harold waved off the sarcasm. He went into my fridge to grab a Corona without permission. Whatever afflicted him had taken hold of his mind. Harold hated Corona.

“So, Tess was in this streetcar?” I asked, trying to keep him on subject.

Harold pointed at the framed Mexican flag on the wall, “What you got that for?”

“I told you before,” I said, “both my and Sierra’s parents aren’t from here.”

“I always forget that about her.”

Boy, that comment erased the last of my patience. Perhaps Sierra’s distrust for the man rubbed off on me. Perhaps he reminded me I was jobless, with no good prospect, living off a wife’s underpaid schoolteacher salary, and ignoring my father’s efforts to contact me via a letter in a green envelope. I received it last week. Seven days of not knowing how to respond.

I shouldn’t have dropped out of medical school. I should have taken out a life-long student loan. I shouldn’t have let my father’s mistakes cause me to drop out. I should have persevered with my studies. If I had? Well, I’d probably be complaining about life as a doctor—at least that would have meant something impressive.

“What do you want, Harold?” I asked.

“Help,” he said, “from a doctor.”

“Can’t call me that.”

“You went to medical school. You are a doctor.”

“I could be arrested for claiming that title.”

I pushed my father’s unwanted letter away on the kitchen counter. There was coffee left over from this morning in the pot. I poured and drank it at room temperature in three large gulps.

“It’s Tess,” he said, “and that accident. I think it shook something in her. Messed with her head. I’m hoping you can help me uncover what it is. Help heal this trouble.”

Tess and I spoke just twice. Twice in the two years since I’ve known Harold as a coworker and neighbor. Her father came from Mexico’s Zacatecas. Her mother was third generation Irish American. She told me that she visited her Mexican family just once as a kid. She couldn’t remember a thing about them except a cousin wore a white shirt with a sombrero-wearing Pikachu on the front. I described a childhood trip to see a dying grandfather in Guadalajara. I could not recall his face. Our second conversation was about how best to cut an onion without crying.

“What can I do?” I asked,  incredulously.

“Help me. Like I said. Help me uncover what it is bouncing in her head. Shouldn’t be hard. All it will take is finding her.”

“Finding her? Are you saying she ran off?”

“To another ghost town.”

“Another ghost town?”

“Are you going to parrot me this whole time?” He squinted at me like I was a mile off and not in the same room. He had a drunkard’s impatience. Better to stay quiet and let him finish. He kept on: “After the streetcar accident, she became obsessed with small, dying Okie towns. Those destined to fade off the map. Don’t know why she had to go to these towns. We live in a dying one now.”

I considered the motivations behind Tess’s interest:

“There’s something to seeing an old, ghost town. Reminds you that people in the past can relate to what you’ve gone through—the anticipation of things disappearing. Reminds you that any of us, our lives, and our settlements are vulnerable to time and memory washing it all away.”

“Huh,” he said, “Vulnerable to time? Memory? You’re talking like a book, and I am speaking about Tess.”

I sighed. “Why don’t you tell me what else I should know?”

“Alright, but you better write it down.”

I opened the notes app on my phone. Like a proper sleuth, I jotted down the details. They were helpful in reconstructing a narrative.

*

Tess, over the last week, started reading a green-colored hardcover without a dustjacket. Harold was used to this readerly image: her legs folded, feet curled up on their chipped-grey wooden chair, and her body so still the chair never moved despite a wobbly leg. Tess held the green book out the way she’d hold a dance partner. Normally Harold observed the names—Mary McCarthy, Silvina Ocampo, Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, and Manuel Puig. A mix of the English canon and overlooked Latin American geniuses. To Harold, these names were as famous as they were anonymous. Their single use was to remind him of his incuriousness for fiction. He never combatted this tendency with the most important question for a reader: is the story any good? Why would he? Tess did not like to discuss her reading until she finished a book.

But this one time, Harold broke free of his normal disinterest. Joblessness had him searching for any distraction to kill a directionless minute.

“What’s it about?” he asked, pushing the book down at the center of the pages. Touching the words did not reveal their truths.

“I’m not sure,” Tess told him.

“Not sure? You’re pretty far into it?”

“And I’m not sure. Some stories are like that. You need an end before you can make sense of the beginning and middle.”

She carried on and on. Forty minutes passed before she put the book down and said she needed to check on a neighbors’ dogs. She put on her shoes, grabbed her book, and said goodbye. That was that.

She did not return.

*

“There has to be more to the story,” Sierra said on speaker, “There’s not much to go on.”

I was going down the road. Five miles below the speed limit. Two white trucks passed by. One driver flipped me off then cut in front of me and zoomed towards the unknown. Meanwhile, I had a destination: Cookietown. Tess had used her credit card last night at the ghost town’s visitor center.

Sierra came to the same conclusion I did. Harold’s story couldn’t explain everything behind her running away. Yet, it had to mean something. How else could I validate my accepting this quest?

I said, “Harold seemed to think it was important. So important that he shared the story twice. Then he stole another Corona and shared it a third time.”

“Hmmm,” Sierra replied. She always voiced her deliberation. “Hmmm…”

I waited.

A roadside billboard announced a mega-church in three exits where Jesus Waited.

Sierra, at last, continued, “I always liked Tess. Honestly, she was too good for Harold. Too pretty. Too clever. I wouldn’t blame her for running off except… she did love that fool.”

“So, you don’t think it’s anything typical? Bored wife? Awful husband?”

“Of all the criticism I have about Harold, a bad husband is not one of them. But why is he not out searching for her?”

“Should have seen the fellow. He was a mess. Better for him to stay home.”

“And you didn’t want to wait for me? I could have helped.”

“Perhaps I should I have. It’s just…it feels good to have a task…something to do. It’s been a while. Hell, I feel useful. Haven’t had that feeling in a while.”

“I know.”

Sierra sounded genuinely apologetic. She knew I didn’t want to work at an airplane factory. She also knew I didn’t plan on getting stuck out in nowheresville, Oklahoma. What other choice did I have back then? Without a medical degree and without a dollar in my wallet.

At least we did not starve.

“Hey,” I said, “I don’t need you becoming a pessimist.”

Sierra laughed—slightly. That emotional state was better than knowing a frown touched the phone. She asked me to call her if I needed anything. We hung up.

It was summer. The sun was high. Plenty of daylight left. Despite weeks of high heat, the grass along the road was a healthy green. Short and sparse trees were too. Punctuating the sky were immobile wind turbines. Residents voted in the last election to get off renewable wind energy. A shame. But what else do you expect of Oklahoma?

I kept on the road. I didn’t bother with streaming music. I enjoyed the silence. Another truck passed by and sped up. I was in a hurry. Not in such a hurry as that.

*

A mother was scolding her son at the gas station. The kid, no older than thirteen, was in the backseat as she pumped gas. The passenger window was open. Her wagging finger crossed that divide. Seemed she caught him watching porn on his phone.

“It’s not real,” she said, fretting for a proper way to educate him. “It’s not real.”

She explained the simple difference between pleasures of lust versus mutual love. The artificial grunts and gestures to please the position of a camera versus the dirty, but intimate act of lovemaking. These points came and went with the same permanency of a teacher’s lessons delivered on the cusp of summer break. The mother knew she’d failed. She resorted to her previous point:

“It’s just not real.”

I walked away from the poor sexual education to purchase a bag of peanuts and a coffee in the gas station’s convenience store. When I came back out, the mother and son were gone. I returned to the gas pump and got in my car.

*

I approached Cookietown’s visitor center around eight in the evening. It was a well-lit building glowing yellow in a sea of flat red dirt. A red semi-trailer dragged a tiny wooden bungalow home out of the lot and toward the road. Parked beside the center was an unhitched white trailer. A trucker in a blue cap smoked a cigarette and walked beside it, speaking to the horses inside who neighed in protest to their stopping.

“Not much further, boys,” he said. “Not much further.”

When he caught me staring, he inhaled and exhaled deeply enough that the smoke obscured his face. The bright blue OKC Thunder logo on the hat was all that was noticeable. I locked my car—one of eight abandoned. I clicked the lock button on my keys twice. Beep. Beep.

Crossing the short distance of the parking lot to the visitor’s center had me running hot. Visible seeds of sweat bloomed on my blue t-shirt when I finally entered the air-conditioned room. A stuffed owl had membership in the welcoming committee. Its wings were closed. Its yellow eyes were not.

“Ominous,” I said.

“We think so too,” said a man with his back turned. He shuffled some paperwork on the room’s back table into a neat pile and placed it beside a green hardcover. That was Tess’s. It had to be.

I pinched a spot near my left wrist to keep my heart from racing. Adrenaline would have me accuse any innocent of wrongdoing. Still, I wanted to reach over and grab the man, to shake him down for information on Tess like a cop in some bad pulp fiction.

Patience, I thought. Patience. Patience. Patience.

Despite the heat, this man somehow wore a dark sweatshirt. Maybe it was the frail body of a middle-aged man destined to notice his bones with age. Blue eyes struck me for their shine. Danny was written on a fading badge.

“It’s a little late for a tour,” Danny said. “And tomorrow we are sold out without an appointment.”

Eight cars were in the lot. Not including mine. Or the semi. Or the trailer. “Don’t take it mean, but I can’t believe you guys are so busy?”

“You’d be surprised,” Danny beamed.

“Maybe next time I’ll book ahead. But I am here for a different reason.”

“Oh. Are you helping? I don’t recall mention of an eleventh volunteer.”

“What? Help with—no. I am looking for a woman. She shouldn’t be hard to forget.”

I hurried to produce the digital photo Harold had sent me. A phone is fast until you need to show a person something important.

“It’s not loading,” I said. “Must be the signal.”

“Not much reception in this area. Very in and out.”

“Well, I can describe her. Her name is Tess. Pretty. Latina. Five-five. Long hair. Lyrics to an Arctic Monkeys’ song tattooed on her left arm.”

He began to shake his head. Like I was mad. As if people like Tess were as common as wrinkled cash.

“She used a credit card at this place. She was here.”

“I believe you,” he replied, “it’s just hard to remember a single person.”

I pointed at that green book on the shelf. “Could you tell me how you got that book?”

Danny stopped. Coming up with false explanations was obviously not his strong suit because after too long a beat, he tried to pass off the pause with a poor joke. “Lots of people got books.”

I am far from a threatening man. I am less than average height, skinny fat despite laboring at a factory, and I got thin arms that could not punch a hole in a wall made of cotton candy. Yet this clerk was a bit unnerved by my presence. I used that. I puffed my chest. I grew half an inch.

“Listen, Danny,” I said, “Tess was here. Tess was—is—not someone who you would forget in a ghost town. Hell, her presence could bring it back to life.”

“Yes,” he responded. “But that’s not quite what’s going on.”

“I am confused,” I admitted. “Why don’t you stop joshing around?”

He sighed, “Tess is a great ally for this place. She asked me to keep quiet if her husband came around. She’s the type to make you want to keep your promises.”

“I am not her husband.”

“Oh?”

“I am only here to make sure she’s alright.”

“Well,” he paused and decided it was not a breach of his word to tell the truth, 

“She’s helping build the town.”

“What does that entail?”

“Why don’t we go ask her? She’s out in Cookietown.”

*

The moment I stepped outside the visitor center, my phone shook like it hoped to knock me out of late afternoon nap. A banner on the screen announced three missed calls from Sierra. Danny walked ahead toward Cookietown’s welcome sign. I lingered behind to return the call.

We connected without a single ring.

“There you are,” Sierra said, “I’ve tried calling you.”

“Terrible signal in this vanishing place,” I grumbled. “Everything alright?’

“I got home and noticed you left a green envelope on the counter. A letter from your dad.”

Fuck, I thought. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I meant to hide that better.

Sierra grew annoyed, “were you not going to say anything?”

“About what?” I asked. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. Your dad hasn’t spoken to you since you dropped out of medical school. And here he is, contacting you?”

Danny waved for me a bit too eagerly to join his crummy tour.

“Did you read the letter?” I asked.

“I did.”

“Then you know it’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. He apologizes. He says—”

“—Sierra. Please. Not now.”

“Why? Why wait?”

“Because I am about to find Tess.”

She didn’t like the response; she nonetheless acquiesced. What other choice did she have?

“You can’t avoid one problem because you can solve another.”

We said our goodbyes, our iloveyous, and hung up. The truck driver remained near his horses. I joined Danny. I lost my cell service as I did.

*

Cookietown’s yellow letters were faded on the blue sign. A night sky would render it imperceptible. Under it, a dirt path stretched into the town. Around it all was a trimmed green field. A tree some distance away did not possess the same health. Its leaves were gone, its branches withered, and its trunk split. A proper storm might slice it in half.

I looked around for other signs. There weren’t many. A stone foundation of some unknown building interrupted the flow of the grass. Danny caught me looking.

“That’s where we are heading,” he said.

“To what?”

“A former house. Tornado came and destroyed it in 1958. But first…” Danny produced a small chocolate chip cookie and held it up with a small, rehearsed smile. “People like to pose for a photo under the sign.”

“Cute,” I grumbled. He held it out for me. I waved off the opportunity. “I’m not one for photos or souvenirs.”

Danny shrugged. He ate the cookie with a sharp bite. The stale treat snapped in a rapturous half. He repeated the gesture until it was all gone.

“Let’s head to the torn structure,” he said. “We’ll see the town from up there.”

He crossed onto the grass. The spots he stepped on were already flat. He had memorized the path, never looking down, and never stepping onto the tracks of another soul. Those were smaller than the boots he imprinted on the grass.

I stepped over his footprints. As I copied his gait, I glanced upward. The sun started to forget us humans. The sky pinked a dim, glorious glow. Say what you will about Oklahoma. Sunsets are something special. Maybe that is the reward for living out in the devil’s state.

I had to hop onto the concrete platform that contained a pile of wood and a single vertical beam which held up nothing. The wood was rotting and brown from an unabsorbed rain.

Danny pointed with three fingers. “There she is.”

It was her. No doubt about that. In a gorgeous yellow gingham dress. Out of a large wooden building with chipped white paint marked GENERAL STORE she led a group of men into the street. As the sun came down it was hard to see what she pointed to because she and the foundations of structures faded to shadows.

Suddenly, I rushed to cover my eyes.

Two dozen portable light towers had come alive. Set to their highest setting, they would have been visible for miles around. I squinted, never quite adjusting to the bright, unsettling electric illumination.

Tess waved her hands toward her chest. The red semi-truck with the attached home from earlier backed up to her direction.

Beep! Beep! Beep! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I fell in love with/rediscovered quiet again when the truck stopped. The men hurried around the attached wooden bungalow to break it free. The truck slowly pulled forward. The home started its slow slide off the bed toward the ground.

“The second home is finally here,” Danny said. “I’m glad. All the way from an abandoned town in West Texas.”

Tess brought her hands together in a quiet prayer. The group of men broke into clapping. The tiny home was free.

“Pretty soon,” Danny continued, “We’ll have a saloon and a small school.”

“Soon?” I asked.

I studied the dirt field. Foundations were ready for other buildings. Foundations comprised of freshly poured concrete and clean, wooden beams. The suggestion of new construction ruined any sense of the town’s cohesion. I looked at the rest of the buildings. I discovered a vortex of uncertain temporality.

The transported bungalow contradicted the historical period suggested by the GENERAL STORE. The store was the sort of structure found in Hollywood representations of the Old West, but the bungalow was scarcely half a century old. Other relics were no less confusing. A clay bank at the far edge of town had a distinct Spanish flair found in the Southwest. The other single-story home at the end of the lot seemed extracted from New England. Further ahead lay a plain squared building fit for any suburb in the country. An orange sign remained out  of a restaurant: Howard Johnson’s.

“This ain’t a ghost town,” I said, “You guys are just bringing over random buildings and businesses.”

Danny squinted and recoiled. Riled up, he spoke up with a harsh inflection. “What is a ghost town? Really? Define it for me.”

“A place—abandoned or forgotten—to time. Washed away. All that’s left are symbols of what once was.”

The answer wasn’t so wrong, but Danny shook his head with a ridiculous laugh, as if I tried to convince him a backyard pool was as big as the ocean. When he was done, he spoke in a calm manner:

“Is Cookietown so different? It is a place for, as you put it, the abandoned and forgotten pieces of this country to wind up. It’s where the ghosts of this country wind up.”

“Building a ghost town? Huh.”

I understood what he meant. Around us were decaying old buildings that once had a purpose, that once served a community before they fell apart like fallen dreams. Here they had another chance to be remembered.

“Are you convinced?” Danny asked.

“Not quite,” I said.

“Talk to Tess. She possesses a vision for this place.”

“Before I do, what’s planned for where we’re standing? A 1950s soda pop and candy store? An Old West Brothel?”

“Eventually? A Blockbuster Store.”

*

Under the artificial glow of a portable lamp, Tess took a sip of water from a plain stainless steel water bottle. She swished it around her mouth for a temporary cooling effect. Despite the sun’s descent, heat radiated off the ground to suggest a long, sweltering night lay ahead.

“Hello neighbor,” she said, “Did Harold send you? Was my husband too lazy to make the journey out here?”

“Was more worried than lazy,” I said.

“And drunk?”

I nodded.

“He needs a purpose. I tried to get him involved in Cookietown’s construction. He’s a bit confounded by my interest.”

“Harold knew what you were up to?”

“Within reason.”

So, Sierra and I were right. Our unlucky neighbor did not give us the full story. That left a single question: why not?

“How did you get involved?” I asked.

“It’s going to sound a bit silly. But Danny almost killed me. If his car traveled about fifty miles faster.”

“He’s the one who crashed into the OKC streetcar?”

She beamed, “It’s an unusual way to meet someone, I know. Somehow, after the accident we got to talking about ghost towns. I visited many. Then I came over and loved the idea of making one. Harold, as I mentioned, doesn’t understand. He thinks I’m having an affair. The last time I saw him, he told me not to let him know if I am. Want to know what he told me? He said, ‘Whatever you do, do it in Cookietown.’ The fool. But I love him. If he could only understand this place.”

A Borders bookstore hummed with a warm glow while the General Store and newly installed home depended on the light from the portable lamps. It gave the town a curious aura.

“Danny mentioned a Blockbuster might open up.”

Tess grinned, “with any luck we’ll have a sign and building coming from Louisiana.”

“Hopefully they can forgive any late fees I created as a kid.”

Tess stared.

“Sorry,” I said, “terrible joke.”

Her enthusiasm somehow survived. “Did Danny tell you we are also thinking about adding a Toys ‘R’ Us? After that, some friend of his mentioned some developers could offload a parish church made of stone for cheap. Danny dreams big. He even thinks we can get a Pan Am plane out here.”

She invited me to walk into the general store with her. The wooden platform creaked as we walked on top. And inside the general store, low lit flame-lamps partially illuminated grey shelves filled with rusted cans of beans and corn and flour. On the middle shelves were cast iron pans. The scattered goods lent the place an authenticity. I bet if I walked into that Borders Bookstore, I would find entire shelves of books for sale.

“How is this all possible?” I asked.

“Danny has the money,” Tess said. She reached for a lamp on a shelf and held it out. I followed this flickering flame to the back of the store to reemerge outside. Workers sat around on construction equipment. A neon red Howard Johnson’s sign glowed behind them, giving them an artificial quality. They looked up. If Tess uttered a command, they would run to complete it.

“You’re skeptical,” she said. “Like Harold.”

“I guess I am. And I think that’s why your husband had me come. To see if I could understand your devotion. To see if I could explain it to him”

She nodded, “Harold has trouble with the sentimental. But when I fell into leading this project, I believed in it. Maybe more than Danny. It began when I noticed how many of the places and stores from my childhood were gone. Then I realized there were totems to lives before me that were falling apart. Not appreciated or sacred enough for a museum. Whole generations fading without these physical spaces. It had me thinking we should preserve the pasts by bringing what we could together. It’s a new sort of ghost town.”

I shook my head. “Isn’t there a danger to surrounding yourself with too many ghosts? Why stay so stuck in the past? It wasn’t all great. Some of it was pure capitalism. I mean, Blockbuster? Do people not recall the horror of the place? Sometimes, we need to move on in thinking. Stop considering so much about the past. Accept the ruins. Build on top and move on.”

“People crave nostalgia. We already have waiting list. People who want to come and pretend to sit in the Howard Johnson’s like their grandparents. Be like their parents and stroll through Blockbuster. And to act out their childhood in a toy store.

“I suppose you are right.”

Tess ran on ahead to speak with Danny. I looked around. A part of my chest fluttered with a warm recall. Forgotten stores resurrected for a second chance. Walking in and out could evoke eerie memories of our lives as children, of our parents as youthful teens, and our grandparents as young adults. It meant a charming glance backward—and only backward. That left me crestfallen. Others wanted the past. I wanted the future.

There was no agreeing on the subject.

Before I left, I asked to wander in the Borders.

*

I drove back the way I came. I stopped again at the same gas station. I washed my hands, bought a coffee drink, and pulled into a parking space at the darkest corner of the lot. I didn’t do anything. After twenty minutes of this, I finally called Sierra back.

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry for bringing up the letter. It’s your father.”

“It’s alright,” I replied. “I suppose you’re right. He’s doing his best to make up for past mistakes.”

“Hmm…” she said. After the pause, she decided I was right. Not that she admitted it. “And Tess? You found her?”

“I did. She’s out here in Cookietown. Searching into the past. Searching how to keep it going.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. Not fully.”

“What will you tell, Harold?”

“The truth. Some people live their whole lives in memories. His wife is one of them.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It’s why I should reach out to my father. He hurt me years ago. I dropped out of school because of him. What did I get? A bruised ego, a need for therapy, and no medical degree. All these years I blamed him for how I got here. But I should not dwell on it. Not anymore. You can’t always think, what if my life went a different way? Eventually, you’ll go mad.”

“What did you do in Cookietown to have such a realization?”

“I walked through the ghost town.”

*

Harold did not answer my three calls. Perhaps he was asleep. It was almost midnight. Tomorrow would be a whole new day to devote to staying sober.

Then I realized I forgot about the green book, what Tess read before she vanished, and what lay on Danny’s worktable.

Oh well.

Some things are not known until a story is done. I will ask about the book when I am confident Cookietown is complete. If it ever could be. Seems like there’s just too much past nowadays.

Up ahead, billboards lined the highway. A yellow billboard announced a new destination in bright red paint: “Cookietown! Where history survives!”

I sped past it.