SHARON MAULDIN REYNOLDS
The Geographic Center of Nowhere Sam slips a cassette into the recorder. There’s a brief hiss of blank tape before the man who calls himself Uncle Rick begins his pitch. “Hey, Sam. How ya doin’? Ready to get cooking with those books? We’re going to read about rocks today—something there’s plenty of out there in the badlands. Oh yeah, I know it’s not the most exciting subject in the world. Not like reading about ol’ Darth Vader, is it?” Norma listens from the dark kitchen, sipping sherry and taking long drags from a Virginia Slim. The jagged silhouette of the mesas against a full moon fills the window. Uncle Rick sounds familiar—a cornier version of another Rick she once knew. But this Rick is an inmate at a nearby federal prison. He belongs to the prison’s Jaycees. Their community service project is tutoring children with learning problems like Sam, who’s repeating the third grade. As long as Sam is listening to Uncle Rick, Norma knows her son is safe. Every Tuesday the tapes arrive in a manila envelope at the converted barracks where she and Sam live, one of several hauled down from the Air Force base in Rapid City and set up in the dusty courtyard of the Windy Knoll Motel as extra housing for gypsies like school teachers, combiners, and out-of-work cowboys. She pours more sherry into the juice glass and goes out into the tiny backyard, sinking down onto the frayed green and white webbing of a lawn chair. Thank God it’s Tuesday. A chilly wind is blowing in from the badlands, though it’s still mild for November in the Dakotas. She feels the soft thick fur of their blue heeler, Jesse—christened by Sam in honor
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