With knobby fingers, he unsnaps the button, reaches inside, and retrieves a pair of binoculars. He slowly raises them to his eyes and spies out the window.

Hassan is late returning from the Mosque tonight, but when he finally walks through the open doorway to my room, he is carrying a large, ornate Qur’an. I put away my Neal Stephenson.

There are fathers everywhere glimpsing open space. Sons guessing where the focus is. Sons not guessing anything and stumbling on the answer anyway, churning up highway pavement, traveling west. Always west.

Right at the edge, where cloud wall meets open sky, meets rock ridge, twin rainbows cut through the dark backdrop. We stand on the precipice of badlands, a landscape cradling snakes, bubbling up undrinkable waters, enveloped by a static hum.

Casey Johnson is the first real face I’ve had to the family, and I’ve seen much more than her face now that news agencies are airing her engagement video to Tila Tequila (politely referred to as “Ms. Tequila”) in which the two prance around in their underwear, intoxicated on a little more than love.

Red farmhouses and green fields flecked with bales of hay balled up like fat cigar stubs flank us. Clouds hang lower here, full – but not ominous.

The first time someone dropped a dollar into his case, he asked his son how much rice it would buy—as much as it would take a Chinese peasant days to earn. “We are an American miracle,” he marveled; “America is a miracle.”

After settling back into the car – now a clutter of spilled trail mix and unfolded maps – Lilly and I debate the cryptic cant of locals while crossing into northern Wisconsin.

Since Lilly’s driving now, I lean out the window to take pictures: blurs of green cable, patches of water, crooked concrete towers.