It must have been only fifteen or twenty minutes later when Rick pulled off of the highway. They pulled off onto a dirt road that seemed to lead into an endless cornfield.

The stalks were rotting and falling over. They were the grey, earless, leftover remains of last year’s crop, and they were everywhere Liz could see. How many ears of corn on a cornstalk, she wondered. How many ears of corn must have filled this field? Enough to feed the whole world for a day, perhaps.

"Corn, Corn, everywhere but not an ear to eat," said Rick. "A very wise man once said that everything in the world could be put into just two categories. Too much and not enough. Which one is this?"

"Too much and not enough..." repeated Liz. Had they had this conversation before?

"I'm going to get out of the car for a sec, your welcome to join me if you wish." Rick looked at Liz for a response but she was staring off into the cornfield as if she was hypnotized. "Or you can sit there and go mad looking at the corn, if you like. That's what happened to the wise man."

"No, I'll come with you." Liz got out of the car, but she did so without looking away from the corn. There was something about it, like a memory or a dream. The way the wind brushed against the tops of the corn stalks. It was just like this, standing in a corn field in Kansas. But how could that be? That was impossible.

She had never been to Kansas. It must have been in Indiana. They had corn there too. But not like this. No it couldn't have been Indiana.

Maybe it had been when she was small. Maybe being a child made the Indiana corm look bigger. Who was there? Who was she with? She couldn't remember. The sky… The gray sky.

It didn't feel like she was a child in the memory though. It felt like now. How could that be? She turned around to ask Rick if he remembered, but that wouldn't make any sense that he would know. She just met him last night.

Rick opened up the trunk of his car and he pulled out a jug of distilled water. He unscrewed the top and flipped the jug around on his thumb, drinking it from the back of his arm. Liz remembered all this too.

"Stop!" She shouted at Rick, holding her hand up in front of her.

Rick froze mid sip and then slowly began looking around himself for signs of danger.

"You're still doing it!" She exasperated.

"What am I doing?"

"Things! Things that have already happened. This happened already, to you and me."

"The corn has driven you mad."

"I knew you would say that and it's not funny, btw. Oh my god. Just shh... Don't say anything. Be quiet."

Rick just stood frozen for a moment. Liz looked up at the sky. There was something about the corn and the sky and the car and Rick. In the memory, Rick was holding on to her in the car, really tightly. It was so hard that she couldn't breathe and she felt so small. Liz shook her head. She was definitely having a vision, but what was it? What did it mean?

Just as quickly as the vision started, it stopped. Liz really needed a drink, now. She looked as Rick.

"Is it over?" Asked Rick. "This jug is getting kind of heavy."

"I think... Yes... It's over." Liz said, "that was like some super freaky Deja Vu."

"I guess so... Are you hungry?"

"Starving."

Rick handed Liz the water and opened the party cooler in the trunk. He took out some plastic silverware and handed it to Liz.

"Ok, I got sardines and crackers, Cheez Whiz and crackers... I pretty much have anything you can spread on a cracker. Oh and I do have a Hershey bar left."

Liz curled her hand in the 'give me' fashion. She snatched the chocolate out of Rick's hand and tore the wrapper open. Rick cut himself some slices of hard sausage and put them on some crackers, some he just ate sans crackers. Liz handed him back the plastic silverware.

"So what's your deal, dude? You were pretty vague last night about your occupation. What's with all the gear in the trunk? You on the run from something?"

"You mean, like, am I a bank robber?"

"Yeah. That."

"No. I'm no bank robber, although I have cleaned out a buffet or two. Just the food, not the registers," Rick said as he patted his belly. He could tell from the look on her face that she was looking for a more specific answer.

"I'm a musician," he said, "I play the piano. I was in Indianapolis doing a gig at Piano Bar. I didn't want to tell you because I just wanted to see if you liked me as a person. Not just because I'm one of The Funk."

"The Funk?"

"Yeah, you know, the Psychedelic Funk."

"The who?" Asked Liz.

"No, not The Who, The Funk!" Rick laughed.

"Never hear of them."

"Really? You're messing with me."

"Sorry, dude. I guess you're just not as big as you thought you were. So what's with all the gear?"

"I hate flying, so I drive everywhere I go. Most of the time I just setup camp wherever I get tired for the night."

"So you're homeless then?"

"Hey. Not homeless, just house-less. It doesn't makes sense for the amount of time I spend on the road to have my own place."

"I guess that makes sense." Liz was thinking of her place back in Indianapolis. It was really the only reason she would ever have for holding a job. Four hundred dollars a month just to hold some old school books and keep the rain off of her head.

"I did have a place. My own house. I owned it. It was a little mission house near Forest Lawn park. Even had a dog."

"What was the dog's name?"

"Bruiser. But don't let that fool you, she's a real sweetheart."

"What did you do with her?"

"I gave her to a buddy of mine. He doesn't leave the house much. Thought the company would be good for him. How about you? Any pets?"

"Um...yeah. I had a horse when I was a kid. Buttercup."

"A horse? Wow. How does a little girl come to have a pet horse?"

"Well, not really a pet. I used to ride in competitions."

"Like what kind of competitions? Jumping and stuff?"

"No. I would just ride the horse around the coral."

"Like in a race?"

"No. Just riding it around. Equestrianism, which is mostly about how high the horse’s knees are, how many feet it has on the ground at a time, and how much my butt would jiggle in the saddle."

Liz waved her empty Hershey bar wrapper around in the air looking for a good landing place for it. Rick pointed at the white plastic garbage bag in the trunk.

"So what happened to Buttercup?"

"I eventually sold her when I got into high school. I could have kept her, but the stables were very expensive at school and some of the other student were resentful of those who had their own horses. I really didn't want to give her up, but my father made me. He can be kind of a jerk sometimes."

“How so?”

Liz shook her head.

“So how about teaching me to drive this thing?” Asked Liz in an effort to change the subject. ”You said you were tired, right?"

"The food is helping. The conversation too. I'll teach you drive stick before we get to Denver, okay? It's just the weather doesn't look great and these storms can drop pretty suddenly around here."

“Oh I see how it is. You don't trust me. Lady-drivers, right?”

“Hey now! I never said that. You've never seen a storm until you've seen a storm in Kansas.”

About an hour later, Rick's words almost seemed as prophetic as one of Liz’s visions. Even when Liz's view wasn't obscured by the wall of water crashing down on the windshield in between wiper blade swipes, there was nothing to see but a few yards of highway and a fog made of pure rain drops. Liz clutched on the door with both hands as the wind tried to blow the car off of the road for perhaps the third dozen time.

Rick did his best to reflect a presence of calmness, but he was doing a horrible job as his face was leaned way past the steering wheel trying to make sense of the swirling storm of water before him. He had cracked the window to smoke a cigarette but both he and it were thoroughly drenched as the water seemed to fall in whatever direction was least advantageous for him.

“See how I dropped the transmission into third gear?” Rick was shouting over the sound of the rain. “We can't go as fast, maybe fifty tops, but we'll get more torque out of the engine. It reduces our chances of hydroplaning. You just have to be careful not to red-line the engine.”

Rick tried to relight his cigarette but it was blistering with sogginess. He tossed it out the window and rolled it up, reducing the sound of the wind and rain to a dull muffle.

“Perhaps we should pull over somewhere?” Liz suggested to Rick in a strained voice.

“Pull over where? Believe me. If you see a service station or something, let me know. I'm not really focused on sign reading at the moment.”

“How about just over on the side of the road?”

“Not a good idea. Some truck might come by and not see us. It would cut right through us like tinfoil. Even if not, we could get stuck here forever. It's best just to push right through it.”

Then the loud pings of something hitting the metal and glass of the car began.

“What is that? Hail?”

But it wasn't hail. It was combination of dirt, sticks, rocks, and grass. Liz was starting to feel like she did when looking at the corn again. Like a memory she could find. Liz looked out the window and saw the first building she has seen in half an hour. It was huge like a sky scrapper. That's when she realized it wasn't a sky scrapper. It was a tornado.

“Oh my God! Rick!”

“What is it?”

“It's a tornado!”

“Where?”

“There!” Liz screamed as she pointed at the passenger side window.

Rick tried to turn his head and look, but the wind was ferocious and keeping the car on the highway took all of his concentration. A good size branch came flying across the hood of the car. Liz screamed. Rick wanted to scream, but he was petrified. The branch rolled over the roof of the car taking the driver's side windshield wiper blade along with it.

Rick watched the metal wiper arm glide through the wall of water like the tip of a stick in a stream. He let the engine slow before pressing down on the clutch pedal and popping the car into second gear. He leaned his head across the center console to try to see, but he could just barely make out that they were still on the road and not driving through some corn field.

“Liz, I need you to look up ahead and tell me what you see. Are there any cars or anything in front of us?”

Liz leaned forward to get Rick head out of her face.

“No, nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Other than a tornado? No, not a whole lot. Oh, wait! There's an overpass up ahead!”

“Ok, Liz count backwards from five so that when you say zero we're underneath it. Okay?”

“Okay. Five... four...”

Rick slowed the car down to twenty miles per hour. The water on his face was mixing with sweat and stinging his eyes.

“Three... two ...” Liz had slowed her counting to match the descending speed of the car.

Rick popped out of the clutch and wiped his brow.

“One...”

The car rolled out of the wall of water and under the overpass.

“Zero.”

Rick turned the wheel, steering them into the breakdown lane. They came to a soft stop. He put the stick in neutral and took his foot off the clutch. Now that they were no longer being barraged with water, the metal arm of the windshield wiper was scratching its way across the glass. Rick turned off the wipers. Both their hearts were pounding.

“Alright. I'll just go out there and switch the wiper blades. It will be no problem right?”

Liz stared at Rick with her mouth agape. “Are you crazy?” she asked.

Rick cracked the door open and it was instantly pulled open by the wind. The force was strong enough to make both their ears pop. With the door open the wind was no longer a dull roar, but high pitched whine, almost mechanical, like a shop saw. The inside of the car was pelted by the sideways flying rain and debris making its way across the underpass.

Rick grabbed the wet slippery plastic handle of the door. Liz grabbed onto Rick's jacket and together they managed to pull it shut. Rick, who was too exhausted to be embarrassed by his blunder, rolled over to see Liz crouched in her seat like a mouse that has been spotted by a cat.

Rick turned off the engine. He opened up his leather jacket. He reached over the center console and took Liz by the arm.

“Come here,” he said. He put his jacket over her both of their heads and they huddled together like two dogs under a blanket. She was so scared. He squeezed her tight. It was all he could do.

The wind was so loud.