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slicker.   I focused on the map’s tiny lines, tracing them as though following the broken veins on an old man’s cheek.   Still, I couldn’t remember if I’d passed the Thompson River or not.   Surely I had, I decided.   The river must have been at a low or possibly no flow level.   Or maybe the bridge was disguised by vegetation, and I’d whistled over it while imagining first Faith Hill, then Martina McBride, and finally Heidi Klume in tight, threadbare jeans.
    I squinted back down the road, trying to resurrect images of what signs I’d seen.   Then I moved my finger slowly back and forth among the tiny eclipsed and broken capillaries that attempted in vain to suck life from the blue artery coursing out from Des Moines.   But the lines in Adair county, west of Madison county, were as white as Winsdon’s hair.   Was I lost?   If so, I couldn’t remember when I’d last been lost.   Only hours ago I’d been within rifle range of the White House.   Now there wasn’t even a farm house in view anywhere.
    â€œHello!” I called.
    I felt my voice being absorbed by the distance and by the endless curtain of corn as a shadow suddenly passed overhead.   I looked up to see a circling buzzard, its wizened meat head angled downward, its wide, looping wings pulling it concentrically into spirals.   But it wasn’t circling me.   No.   Something out in the field.   Something dying, perhaps.   Not far away.   A rabbit?   A possum or skunk?   I sniffed the air, but couldn’t smell anything except the hypnotic incense of the tasseled corn.   And after only five minutes standing in the warm silence, I decided to leave the car and walk in the direction where I somehow felt I’d been traveling all my life.
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    Although the hard packed dirt radiates less heat than blacktop might, I began to wonder how long I might walk before thirst took its toll on me.   The thought was interrupted by a bee, which dive bombed into my chest and took a disorienting swipe from my open palm before flying off in a haphazard trajectory, but in the general direction of the cow.   Approaching a bend in the road, I turned to look back one last time at my rental Taurus stuck in the ditch half a mile behind me.   In doing so, I nearly walked right into a sign, half hidden in the corn.
    Zion, Iowa, pop. 166
    Well, I’ll be a —I stopped, wondering what I should call myself, now.   A lucky S.O.B.?   If I was truly lucky I wouldn’t be stuck, in more ways than one.   And so I wouldn’t be out there in the middle of nowhere, walking toward what Jay Leno or Dennis Miller might have referred to as “Hayseed, Iowa.”   Or worse.   Of course, any small town between New York and L.A. would garner a Hollywood comedian’s appellation, I was sure.   To them this was flyover country, something their celebrity colleagues flew above between various awards shows and acting gigs.   Still, just being here didn’t make me an ignorant redneck hayseed yet.   Although if Walter Mills turned out to be only a prankster, and if I then decided not to return to Hepker’s insufferability , my neck might turn some guilty shade of red, in time.   In the meantime, I still had my graduate degree in biochemistry from Long Island State University.   That should console me, at least.   That should last for a while, surely.   And so I shouldn’t feel personally insulted when some talk show host came up with such jokes between canapés at Spagos .
    Well, I’ll be . . .
    Damned?   That had a truer ring to it.   I’d go with that one.
    Hi there, I’m ‘Damned-If-I-Know.’
    Further around the bend, as if in answer to my quietly breathed prayer, the tiny town of Zion came into view.   And as I imagined, there wasn’t much to it.   Fronting the sun drenched corn fields,