Chapter Text
There’s a wooden sign about five minutes outside of Lebanon. It’s hammered into the grass in front of a cemetery.
Dean doesn’t know how many times he’s passed that thing.
He got out to read it, once.
He pulled the Impala to a stop in front of a farmer’s field, and walked across the dead empty, three-in-the-morning highway to go see it.
He had to use the flashlight on his phone to make out the letters.
“In a park three miles north and one mile west,” it said, “is the exact geographic center of the 48 contiguous states. The location has been officially established by the U.S. Geological Survey. It is the point where a plane map of the 48 states would balance if it were of uniform thickness.”
He thought about that last part, on the walk back to the car. On the drive back to the bunker.
Tried to picture it, in his head.
Imagined trying to keep the country balanced, like a fork on your finger in a diner. Trying to find that spot that makes everything stay. Hold still for just a second before it comes clattering down to the formica.
Dean wondered if maybe it was the same for time, here. If maybe that stopped too. Stood still for a second.
Maybe everything did.
✦✦✦
Dean passes that sign again, today. On his way out of town. He keeps his eyes on it in the rearview until he can’t anymore.
And he drives on.
✦✦✦
Four and a half hours later, he passes another sign.
City limit. Excelsior Springs.
There’s a bridge up ahead, and Dean thinks he can hear rushing water somewhere not too far away.
He wonders if that’s the spring. The Excelsior Springs spring. Probably not. But it’s a nice thought.
Soon, the sound of the rushing water gets lost in the whoosh of wind coming in through the rolled-down windows, and the whine of the radio, and the engine’s low-down hum.
It all gets mixed and mixed together until it becomes a single stream of sound.
The thrumming, humming pulse of movement.
And Dean drives on.