Yes, do come down to the farm, Thompson says, cutting him short. He has limited tolerance for the seriousness of these men; they seem consumed with the chore of faith. He shakes John’s meaty hand. The horse—a beautiful brown and white marbled roan—clomps the pavement. The Amish men shuffle into the tobacco shop (Thompson with them), peruse the racks of girlie magazines, sneak them into the safe confines of pastoral titles: Farmlife. Horticultural Digest. Organic Farmer. Model Railroader. There is comfort in eyeing the gaping lipped pinkness that (I figure) somehow reminds them of farm-work. Thompson carries the story of me with him into the sweet tobacco smell, orders a pouch of Captain Black Gold, watches as the girl named Irene moves about behind the counter. She’s a high school dropout in bib overalls. Her breasts lie behind the right angles of taut denim. He loves the way the straps, secure in the metal hook-button contraption, put forth an illusion of restraint and looseness at the same time. In those overalls, her body never fails to remind him of the horse-harness physics that governs the use of John’s buggy parked just up the street. The strange conspiratorial relationship between the horse—blinded on both sides by small rectangles of black—and the owner’s whip. Taking the tobacco pouch into his hands, he squeezes to test its moisture; a soft spongy feel indicates a good seal, soft sugary strands ready to be lodged in his pipe. He loves the sensation of his thumb entering the bowl—creosoted and sticky—and packing it soft, lovingly, intuitively not too firm or too loose—the same way he had stuck his fingers into Irene. She smiles uncomfortably and tries to conjure me up. Never heard of bog people, she says. He mentions others—Scotland, the peat there. The best she can do is imagine a decomposed corpse, something from a horror movie, arms and legs akimbo, skin peeling in raglike sheets from his body. If I had my way (and I do, sometimes), she’d visualize one of Matisse’s bronze sculptures, from the Jeanette series, a fine abstraction indicating both my primal elements—the stately elegance of my form—combined with the modern thrown-back motion of my arms, the movement into space, a diver launching cleanly into a universe of blue and white.

4

I’ll come to be known as the Elyria Man, uncovered several miles to the south of that city, just as the Grauballe (original name: Hans) became the Grauballe Man. If you have to be named for a geographic region, this one is as fine as any, boring and nondescript in what most agree is the most mundane and utilitarian of states, a state that openheartedly loves blandness. (On hearing this, Ohioans gather themselves into a defensive hunch.) Thompson embraced Ohio. He embraced John Glenn as the state hero. What more starkly boring symbol than a man circling the earth in a capsule equipped with outmoded gear, leather strapping, already ancient at launch time, spinning in the silence of space only to plunge back and sponge upon that act for the rest of his life? Thompson and I both agree that it would be better to remain up there, to be slung by gravity’s twirl out into the void until radio contact faded out. Or better to return to earth, heat shield failing, in a blooming orchid of raw flame and burning metal, striking the Atlantic landing zone in a geyser of steam.