The Beacon of the Prarie
Balloon Short Story
Launch the media gallery 1 playerThe Beacon of the Plains
Rachel Menzel
We’d seen it before—the cheerful, vibrant, multi-colored water tower perched along I-80—but we’d always pass it in a burst of sunlight and speed, knowing we’d see it again next summer, when it would momentarily fill our windshield and then fall away as we sped toward Colorado or Nebraska.
My husband and I grew up in the Omaha metro, so we have a deep appreciation for the Midwest. People of the plains are different. We see things other people miss, like the slate-gray sky of a snowstorm or the shimmer of asphalt on a steamy summer day. More than the landscape, there is a language, a set of common interests that bring us together. Despite our love of the plains, jobs and opportunities took us far afield. We soon discovered that our compatriots from different regions of the country weren’t necessarily as interested in swapping crockpot recipes or guessing which crops were growing nearby. But those thoughts are rooted deeply within us.
In the fateful month of March of 2020, we were living in Querétaro, Mexico. My husband was teaching at an international school, and every day we’d switch on the television to see the Covid numbers climbing. We’d been living abroad for the past four years, and we’d never felt so removed from home. In a time of such uncertainty, our families encouraged us to return to the United States. The decision was made all that much easier when the school closed.
Like most things, the idea came before the plan. Flights from our regional airport to the US were being canceled left and right, and we didn’t want to risk flying out of Mexico City and getting trapped among the crowds in the airport. Our eyes then turned to our tiny Mexican car as our only viable option, purchased solely to take us to the grocery store and back. It had trouble breaking 50 mph, had an engine about the size of a go-kart’s, had no air conditioning or cruise control, and had recently broken its radiator fan, rendering that useless when not stirred into motion by air rushing through the grill. It isn’t imported into the United States because of its failure to meet safety standards. Nevertheless, on March 26, we loaded up all our belongings into said car slightly after midnight and began the drive north. I’ll spare you the details of the drive; the specs of the car should be enough to paint a picture of a miserably hot and terrifying ordeal, knowing that at any moment, the tiny engine could give out, stranding us with no backup plan.
By a wish and a prayer, we sputtered across the US/Mexico border and arrived outside of Austin, Texas eighteen hours later, our destination for a hazy quarantine in a popup camper belonging to my aunt. The next two weeks passed in a surreal fog of avoiding other people and playing countless games of cribbage. Despite being back in the United States, we felt a distance from our surroundings, and when our two weeks were up, we trundled back into the same car to continue our journey homeward.
It’s a long, sparse, and unfamiliar trek up I-35, past landscapes that cannot compare to the gentle hills of eastern Nebraska. As we connected with Highway 81, a kind of urgency took over. There was something in the air that tasted familiar, spurring us onward. And then at long last, a rainbow of color came into view like a beacon: the water tower.
I felt like crying. It was the first familiar sight we’d seen in what felt like years. While all the uncertainty and stress we’d faced didn’t quite melt away, it somehow felt seen. My husband pulled onto the shoulder of the highway and let the car idle. The road was totally empty, and the water tower shone in the golden, late afternoon sun. We sat and stared for I don’t know how long; the car’s clock had never been an accurate source of time. But when we turned off of Highway 81 onto I-80, I felt like a changed person. The water tower had stopped being just the cheerful landmark in York, Nebraska. Now it meant something different. Now it meant home.