The Pursuit of Happiness

I had arrived.

Where I was, I didn’t know but I could sense that it was where I needed to be. The aroma of pine and lemon drifting in the air told me that I hadn’t yet left my car, so I stepped out and breathed in a lungful of diesel and a mouthful of dirt, which tasted vaguely of wheat. I spit it back out.

“Must be North Dakota,” I said just before the wind knocked my feet out from under me, sending me crashing onto the tarmac.

Unfortunately, as it was North Dakota, I had no way of defending myself against the wind as I sought my target: Happiness. Now why I had come to North Dakota, of all places, to find happiness, I couldn’t tell you. All I knew for sure was that I had been led here by whatever Greater Power existed, be it God, the Universe, or Big Ag.

For the first hour, I waited in my car, hoping the wind would die down but it seemed to only grow stronger, as if emboldened by my weakness to its power. I realized that the wind must be part of my quest (and I was getting seasick from the car’s incessant rocking like a ship caught in a bad storm). So I crawled into my trunk (a terrible mistake in retrospect that no amount of air fresheners will be able to rectify) and grabbed my tarp before clambering out onto the gusty plains, ready to enact my daring plan.

That first slap of wind knocked the air out of my lungs and kept pelting me, preventing me from taking in any more air until I was sheltered behind my still-rocking car. As soon as oxygen was once again reaching my brain, I tied the ends of the tarp to my belt, opened it up like a parachute, and turned into the wind.

The wind whipped backward into the sky, like Dorothy’s house in the twister. I was tossed, flung, pulled, pushed in every direction until, also like Dorothy’s house, I came crashing down on top of someone miles away in the middle of a wheat field (sans ruby slippers).

“Are you okay?” I asked, looking down on my poor victim.

She was dazed but able to stand up with a little help from her accidental assailant. At full height, she stood a few inches shorter than me and wore mostly wheat stalks and dirt over a flannel shirt and jeans.

“D.B. Cooper?” she asked me on account of my attire.

“For legal reasons, I can’t say,” I said. For legal reasons, I can’t confirm in this account either. “Are you okay?” I asked again.

She nodded. “You fell out of the sky,” she said, possible suffering from a head injury which made her state the obvious. She looked dubiously at my tarp-achute. “Did you skydive in that?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I was windsurfing.” Smooth as gravel, as always.

“Isn’t that a water sport?”

“Usually, but there isn’t much water around here outside of the crop sprinklers."

She couldn’t argue this point, as I was correct, so she instead took me back to her house to check for any injuries (or to kill me, but I was determined to find whatever happiness this world had to offer, even if only briefly).

If it were any other state, I’d assume we’d crossed through several towns and even a few counties on the quiet walk back to her home but the only place with more endless nothing than North Dakota is the never-ending state: Montana.

Eventually, miraculously, we made it to her home. Thankfully my feet managed to stay attached to the rest of me despite their screams of agony during the final half-mile. It turns out that dress shoes are not the best footwear for hiking, even across the flat plains.

It was a small, yet cozy dwelling of the classic Midwestern house style (a fact I felt confident in, despite never having been to a house in the Midwest prior to that moment, but it felt, as much as anything can, like it belonged in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing but wheat; like it understood that there was no one else around for miles so it had to act not only as home but also as friend, confidant, and sparring partner).

The kitchen table had a red gingham tablecloth, a small herb garden sat in the window, and the fridge was still the kind that locked. Through an open doorway, I saw a disheveled bedroom with piles of dirty clothes and well-loved books.

“Cozy home,” I said, always exceeding expectations at small talk.

“Thanks,” she said, giving me no way to further conversation.

We waited in silence like any normal, definitely-not-socially-awkward people would until there was a natural jumping off point for conversation. Ours came from her spitting out a tooth.

“Did I do that?” I asked politely.

“It wasn’t healthy to begin with.”

“Ah, I see. I have three false teeth from when I crashed into a stop sign as a teenager.”

She chuckled. “I was also a bad driver as a teenager, but I never hurt myself, just crashed a tractor through a fence once.”

“Oh, I wasn’t in a car. I was just distracted by a cloud that looked like a dragon while running for the bus and ran straight into it. Broke my nose and knocked out three teeth.”

She shook her head and shook quietly in what I could only assume was laughter.

“I just don’t know what to make of you,” she said after a minute. “You’re just so…I mean, who windsurfs across the plains with a tarp? And then acts like it’s just a normal day?”

“I do,” I said. “Speaking of normal days, though, would you happen to have anything for dinner? I forgot to eat lunch…and breakfast…and I might’ve forgotten dinner yesterday, it’s hard to know.”

She stared at me, dumbfounded. “You don’t remember if you’ve eaten in the last 24 hours? Did you land on your head?”

“On no, my head’s fine. It landed on your breasts. Which are lovely, by the way.” A totally normal compliment, regardless of sexuality or gender. I assumed.

She simply shook her head and opened the fridge. “How does mac and cheese sound?”

“Delicious! Would you like any help?”

Her eyebrows shot up and her eyes skimmed over my gawky, suited frame. “Are you any good at cooking?”

“I can boil water with the best of them.”

I set to work boiling water (once I solved the mystery of how to light her gas stove). Like it would for any professional cook, the water boiled over and put out the fire beneath the pot. That’s how you know the water is ready.

She was not a professional, however, and panicked when this happened, pushing me out of the way to restart the burner.

“Why don’t you just go down to the basement and get us some beers from the fridge down there?”

I followed where her finger pointed and opened the basement door. Naturally, I expected the basement of a farm house like this to contain some sort of cheese collection, a portal to hell, and at least one dead body, and was shocked to discover none of these. It was, in fact, a well-lit basement that seemed to act as a game room with a couch, a billiards table, and a dart board in addition to the beer fridge (which also had several bottles of white wine).

“What a lovely basement you have,” I said, handing her a can of beer.

“My best friend used to come by once a week and we’d have a game night.” Her voice was sad and she turned away from me to the stove where the pasta was boiling.

“But not anymore?”

She shook her head. “Not since she died. The worst part is,” she added, looking up into my eyes, “she was buried in my favorite dress that I’d thought was lost until I saw her in the casket. She stole it!”

I nodded. “My grandmother was cremated with a photo album containing the only baby photos of me that didn’t look demonic. Now I just pretend that we don’t have any baby photos of me because I really do look evil. My hair grew at the temples first and curled up into horns until I was at least 7.”

“Dead people are so selfish,” she said, smiling. “After the funeral, I snuck by her home and stole her best moccasins. I like to think she’s yelling at me every time I wear them.”

“After my grandmother’s funeral, I went back to her place and ate the entire block of cheese that she kept for the dog. It was good cheese. I still think of her every time I eat American cheese.”

She raised her can. “To mocs and cheese.”

“And mac and cheese,” I added, clinking our cans together.

After we’d finished eating, we went down to the basement and sat on the couch with fresh beers. It didn’t even really smell like a basement, which are usually so stuffy and stale. It smelled like pine and lemon.

“You know,” she said, turning toward me. “You are an odd one, but I kind of like you.”

I smiled. “I kind of like you, too. You make me feel…happy.”

She laughed. “You’re making me happy, too.”

And so it was that I found happiness in North Dakota with the help of the wind, some tarp, and mac and cheese.