Orion's Cartwheel 4

                         “What place would you advise me to visit now?” He asked.
                         “The planet Earth.” Replied the geographer. “It has a good reputation.”
                                                                            Antoine de Saint Exupery





The buttercups flirting with the bees, on the other side of the world, thirty years earlier, saw the dust cloud. It came sideways off the rear radials of the green Barracuda, rocking to a halt on the TransCanada shoulder.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.
“I’m sure.” He said, closing the door gently, trying to preserve the little
remaining.
The dust returned with silence, broken by the noise of the sun’s heat on his forehead. It caused him to squint. And then he heard the birds.
He was smiling and humming when the little red half-ton came over the rise. His right hand performed a new maneuver. Levitating into the prairie summer sky, his thumb carved an arc. The truck hesitated like a wounded animal, and came to rest beside him.
“Where you going?” The driver grunted.
“Around the world.” He said.
“Well, I’m going as far as Morris. That’s about forty miles.”
He got in.
Nothing was ever the same again.