Pigeon, Missouri

The propane salesman had bright, red gums and wire Tim glasses. We’d walked into an open door to find him cooking breakfast.

He knew the short, curly-haired man I was with. That made one of us.

They talked about the health problems of Mr. Gums and Glasses. From the stacked boxes of insulin injectors, I took it that he had diabetes.

There was a third man sitting on a stool. He didn’t say a word. There also weren’t any propane cannisters. There also wasn’t a parking lot. No sign. And the doorway we walked in was in the middle of a non-descript brick wall behind a couple of corn silos. We’d walked a winding, worm path through the post-industrial waste of Pigeon to get here.

The curly-haired man gave me started giving me directions as if I was from a neighboring town. He asked if I knew a landmark. He got a look on his face like he thought I was maybe from Mars when I told him I couldn’t even begin to describe where I was. That shocked me. I thought I oozed that I wasn't from around there from every pore.

The only thing I was certain of, as I woke up, was that I was just in the company of two of the fullest people I’d ever met and that we were all in Pigeon, Missouri.