Sunflower Graves

The houses of the town were crooked and falling apart. Gray skies and mist plagued the day. Men in long wool coats stood amongst themselves, laughing, arguing, gossiping. The bus that I’ve been on since Berlin stops at a bus station in the middle of northern rural Czech Republic. I went straight to the first place I see and order French fries that come in a cone slathered in mayo. I hadn’t eaten in two days, but I couldn’t afford more than this. I sat down and eat slowly. The savory and salty soothe my nervous system.

My road dog went across the street to sneak in a beer before we got back on the bus. We had been fighting since the day we got to Germany.

I sat alone, watching the eastern Europeans rush from bus to bus. An old man approached me. “American?” he asked. I nodded, expecting a similar response that we got when a German man asked us the very same thing at the train station in Frankfurt. The German man responded with two thumbs up and exclaimed, “Obama!” with a smile smeared across his face.

The Czech man, however, said to me, “Watch out for the Gypsies. They’ll pick pocket you and steal all of your money. Believe me.”

As the bus turned out of town, a field of dead sunflowers stood under the clouds. The day was so dark, the window of the bus looked like a black and white movie passing by. The sunflowers’ stalks were cracked and their heads bowed to the sky, staring down to their graves.