Archaeology of the Great Plains

Dick Clark is so filled to the brim with word power, so mad in his precision. I imagine catacombed scholars (men in cardigans and Beethoven gray hair) with puffy headphones, hunched and scrambling through ancient manuscripts, consulting one another, a passionate rush to produce the one perfect word to feed the game show host. After the clock runs out, all that desperation over, he approaches the unwinning contestant and celebrity, utters the perfect word, the very embodiment of the little orange triangle's given idea or action. Notebook paper.Things that have lines. Perfection.

I love the wave of realization that comes over their faces, and in the flung out hands, rolling eyes, nods, is a flash of omnipotence, pure understanding, breakthrough, mixed with the unticking clock, heartbreak, disappointment. My best friend Des and I watch $10,000 Pyramid almost every day at 2:30, only for the winner's circle, the tension and suspense. Beforehand, sometimes we make Betty Crocker Home Style Blueberry Muffins. It comes with a little can of saucy real blueberries, Prussian blue, the truest blue, a lumpy ocean of gemstones. Things that are canned.

In the late afternoons, we ride our Huffy 10-speeds around the neighborhood, our little town, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Thrift Store, Brookwood Shopping Plaza, Pottowattamie Public Library, Shunganunga Creek. In Brookwood, there is a dime store, TG&Y. Des' mother said it stands for "toys, games, and yarn," which it carried in abundance, also, in the back corner, a pet section: parakeets, goldfish, hamsters. Things Generic and Yellowed. TG&Y. One of the blue parakeets is sick or injured, damaged. It stays pretty still and has a rotted black mass under its wings, some horror. We bought cinnamon toothpicks, Lifesavers and Choc-o-Lite Bars that tasted like the moist plastic smell of TG&Y. Once we buried two Lifesavers, tangerine and lime, in a cement planter in front of the store, an experiment to see how many hours, days, weeks, years we could dig them up and still find them.

In my bedroom, there is a trap door in the ceiling that leads to a tight attic crawlspace. A ladder unfolds when the door is pulled, an invitation to the stale heat, the planky vortex. There are strips of pink insulation lying around like a grimy path of cotton candy, and one cobwebby cardboard box containing translucent dead spiders, a single filthy golash, inhumanly long, thin, floppy. Also, Gerber baby food jars filled with rusty bolts, old plastic fastenings, and at the bottom of the box, a brittle orange pamphlet, PopularHome Remedies and Superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans. In its foxed pages, a neatly folded letter of correspondence, a letter with an official business heading, Beer Can Collectors of America, with an accompanying illustration--a silhouetted United States, a huge beer can bursting right out of center, out of the Great Plains, and from above, a man's hand descending, cupped, ready to take the can. The letter politely informs Mrs. Judy Davidson of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, that her whiskey-related items are not of interest for purchase to Beer Can Collectors of America. It is signed: Apologies, Mr. Bill Mugrage, BCCA Board of Directors.

The pamphlet of remedies and superstitions, the little book, feels too stiff; I must turn the pages so carefully or it will crumble, disappear into talc, like a moth's wing. I never show it to Des. It's internal, yet foreign, one of my red glistening organs. Kiss a girl while you secrete the heart of a turtledove in your mouth-it will act as a love charm-no one can be certain what will happen as a result.

I show her the beer can letter, and we decide to become collectors; we are always finding beer cans around the creek, in its adjacent field, at the street curbs. We use a burlap flour bag to carry the cans; it smells like pencil shavings, and leaves red marks where it touches my skin. Tough Gunnysack and Your arm. TG&Y. When I see anything that starts with a "G," I make up my own acronym for TG&Y. Ten Geese and Youth. Tender Guys and Yvonne. I am Yvonne. My name is not Yvonne, but it's exotic, sharp, sexual. I become Yvonne for TG&Y. When a child is bewitched, pull its shirt over the head wrong side out and wedge the sleeves or clothes behind the door.

At the library, Des and I eat blueberry muffins and check out the "Official Guide to Beer Can Collecting" and books about New Orleans. When it gets big enough, we want to sell our beer can collection to Mr. Bill Mugrage, and live in New Orleans, where there are parties in the streets, people everywhere, colors, music. To keep a dog from running away, feed him some bread you have warmed in your armpits. We try on prom dresses and trench coats at the V.F.W. thrift store. In the dressing room, I find the remaining muffins reduced to a wet mush in the plastic bag in my backpack. In baking,eggshells should be crushed before they are thrown away, else the witches might use them for boats. We flip through paperbacks; this is the reason for coming. We find all kinds of things in-between the pages: utility bills, greeting cards, shopping lists, photographs.

We don't buy the books, but we take the things we find. It's stealing. We've even found dollar bills, and now, Des has found a $10 gift certificate to Glory Bookstore. All the books are about God, and the whole store smells old, like the pet section of TG&Y. There is a plastic, gilt-framed print of a giant Jesus in a big city peeking around a skyscraper, holding an airplane one palm, his other over a traffic accident, blessing the bodies sprawled; the wispy ghosts of the victims float toward the huge hand. Things you might do if you were Jesus.

We buy a feather-pen and ink calligraphy set, and four handfuls of cinnamon Jolly Ranchers. On the way home, we park our bikes and go through Shunganunga Creek to look for beer cans. I see two pieces of Styrofoam floating, bobbing slightly, stuck in the tall grass of the swampy creek bank. No, there is more, so much more hooked onto the Styrofoam; it's ankles, feet, shins, not Styrofoam, but a hell. Des is screaming, no words, just noise, and we run up the bank, our bikes forgotten, screaming through the field. I will the Jolly Rancher in my mouth to turn into the heart of a turtledove, I command it bewitched, I will sail back toward this dead girl in an eggshell boat, kiss her back to life, but I am screaming with Des still, we are Beer Can Collectors of America tearing through the Great Plains at dusk, the precise scent of cinnamon filling the air, a perfect taste in my mouth.