North along the Panamerica

From the bus window, bougainvillea blooms over a rebar fence. Rows of corn, with their encircling wreaths of bean plants edge concrete buildings and spill into empty lots. Cement blocks, in their own rows dry in the sun. Where corn occupies the horizontal spaces, advertisements fill the vertical ones: Claro, Movistar, Oreo, Pilsner, Sunny D.

On the LG flat screen TV at the front of the bus, a Coyote picks up a woman and her two children, driving them north to the boarder in preparation for a crossing.

From the bus window, a roasted pig, propped on cement blocks, awaits carving. Next door, three chickens spin on a spit over embers. Tethered cows graze circles into the grassy shoulder. I watch the landscape oscillate between pastoral Vermont and Montana’s Ranchland.

Tempers flare in the desert. The route has changed. The immigrants are running out of water.

From the bus window, a boy in a yellow shirt levers against the stubbornness of two piglets. A little girl walks with her mother, clutching the pleated fabric of her skirt. The woman's hands are clasped behind her back.

On the LG flat screen TV a reunion. The credits roll. The next movie begins. Vin Diesel steals a Corvette Grand Sport from a moving train.

From the bus window, a festival in action. A crowned man astride a horse with burgundy saddle blankets carries a dead chicken slung over his shoulder. On the opposite hillside five men wind in a serpentine dance carrying flags and a pole from which four more chickens hang by their feet. Trucks parked on the shoulder sell drinks and provide music, while campesinos claim their hillside perches for the show.

Guns are drawn on the streets of Rio. Drivers downshift and seek and opening. A ten-ton safe wrecks havoc in the wake of two Charger SRT8s.

From the bus window, a kestrel plunges for a sparrow. Concrete canals line the road, and the precise plantations of pine and eucalyptus.

The credits roll, the bus pulls into the station.

I am in a land between lands. What America do they know? What Ecuador do I?