by Greg Fields
The quivering needle touched the hash mark of ninety-nine. Finnegan had the pedal to the floor and was leaning forward as if to nudge it faster. The needle advanced just enough to touch the thick mark that noted a hundred.
“Hey hey, baby, we did it!” screamed Finnegan.
But before the words cleared his throat, the car shook violently. Something under the hood exploded with a huge clanging bang that left their ears tingling.
Finnegan immediately took his foot off the accelerator. In the same instant he turned to McIlweath. They looked at each other, eyes wide, mouths open, not speaking but listening intensely for another noise that might cast them to the side of the road in the middle of the Nevada desert at midday. Something resembling panic rose up from their bellies.
The car decelerated rapidly. It had coasted down to fifty before Finnegan dared try the accelerator again. He put his foot back on the pedal and gingerly pressed down. The pedal was firm; the car started to go faster. A faint rattle from somewhere deep in the engine was its only new sound. Finnegan took it back up to sixty and held it there.
McIlweath spoke at last, his voice several octaves higher than before. “What do you think that was?”
“What do I know about cars, Mac? I can’t say. Maybe we dropped a rod. If we did, we’re damn lucky it’s still running.”
“Will it get us to New Jersey?”
“I’ve got a feeling this thing would get us to the moon if there was a road going there.”
They drove on for several more minutes, listening to see if the car made any other sounds they should worry about. After a bit they both relaxed, out of immediate danger.
“How does it drive?”
“Seems okay. You notice it was fine at ninety-nine but the instant it touched a hundred it exploded. Maybe that should tell us something.”
“Yeah. A man’s reach can’t exceed his grasp.”
“Or no guts, no glory.”
“Do we claim victory?”
“Of course. The needle touched a hundred, and we both can verify it. I daresay no other Dodge of this vintage has reached that threshold.”
“You’re one amazing driver, Conor.”
“Luck of the Irish, my friend.”
The lucky Irishman and his companion drove on and on that day, stopping only once for a late afternoon meal and twice for gas. Across the salty neck of Utah they went, then north into Idaho and Wyoming. The terrain changed dramatically, the bleak desert of Nevada growing at first slightly less dusty and a bit greener, a line of mountains on the horizon looming larger and more present, then rising almost straight up so that they hid the late afternoon sun. The land rose, with trees beginning to appear alongside a roadway that was increasingly curved and narrow. The mountains exuded a rhythm—rises, mountain valleys, small towns, then greater rises, mountains growing out of mountains. The air cooled and thinned. They felt it first when they got out of the car to stretch their leg and pump their gas. Their breathing quickened; their pulses quickened. They felt cool, and Finnegan at least could understand in part what it was that made men forsake other men and head far back into the mountains. They had left the interstate and traffic was slight. The towns, such as they were, drifted by more slowly—a few homes, a store, perhaps a gas station, sometimes a post office. Everything seemed made of wood. Few people were to be seen, fewer still to talk to. The sharp land complemented the sharp air—the space so vast, so remote, and man merely a guest to be tolerated rather than entertained.
The sun fell low, tucked behind the mountains. The sky deepened through blue shades unlike any the urbanite Finnegan had ever seen. As the sun declined, the outlined forms of the mountains ahead of them darkened. Behind the mountains where the highway pointed, tendrils of pastel orange shot upward. McIlweath leaned his arm out the window and glanced from side to side, breathing in the magnificent scenery, trying to absorb everything at once. Finnegan, with the obligation of driving, was fixed on the curving road ahead. It had been a long day, and he was tired. Yet the majesty of that setting, the great height, the thick woods and jutting rocks, the softly flashing colors, conjured serenity such as he had felt only at his most sublime moments.
Purified, and purged of contrivance and complication, Finnegan saw himself atop a magical country, opened at last before and beneath him. He imagined looking over his shoulder to the coast, sparkled by the lights of San Francisco and Los Angeles. He imagined the freeway as night fell, ribbons winding around the tall buildings. He imagined the northwest timberlands, and the coastal mountains like footstools, green and plush. He imagined looking across the plains at his feet stretching eastward, forming criss-cross patterns of farmland and grazing lands, silos sticking out of the ground like matchsticks. He saw in his mind at the heel of the great blue lakes the city of Chicago, where his grandfather tended his now-quiet life. He imagined the glorious cities of the east and wondered when he would see them, and if he would be able to tell them apart by their feel and their character, Boston from New York, Baltimore from Philadelphia. From these mountaintops there could be no place higher. From here he could imagine an endless view, and see how all these pieces he had yet to come to know might fit together.
Neither spoke as they drove into the darkening mountains. They remained as they were for a considerable time, quietly overwhelmed, subtly humbled, immensely content.
Finally McIlweath broke their meditations. “Conor, we’d better find a place to stay tonight.”
“Yeah, there should be a lot of campgrounds around here. The Graaannd Tetons.”
“This is the country for it. Camping, I mean.”
“It’s quiet up here,” said Finnegan. “That’s a hell of a change from what we left behind.”
“These are the Rockies, Conor. I’ve been in this area before, with the Scouts. You’re not going to find much commotion up here. Not by humans, anyway.”
“I like the change. We’re at the top of a continent.”
“You’ve been reading too much poetry. Let’s find a place to pitch camp. I’m beat.”
By the time they found a commercial campground, night had nearly fallen. The tall trees engulfing the roadway cast strange shadows that waved slightly in a whispering breeze. Finnegan drove up to the office, which was only a small cabin near the ground’s entrance. A wooden sign declared that a campsite would cost $5. Finnegan got out of the car and went up to the cabin door, knocked, tried to open it and found it was locked. Do campgrounds ever close?, he wondered. He returned to the car.
“Nobody there, Mac.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“I think we should find a campsite. If a ranger comes along, we pay him then. If not, we get a freebie. In fact, let’s plan on getting out of here early enough tomorrow morning to miss him.”
“That’s illegal, you know.”
“And so my life of crime begins. Besides, we haven’t exactly been respectful of camping laws to this point anyhow.”
They drove up the winding road leading back to the campsites. Finnegan felt more comfortable after passing camps already pitched. There were other people in these parts after all.
By the time they found an empty site it was totally dark. They had only one standard flashlight to find their way about. McIlweath used it to search for soft ground in proximity to two trees to pitch their tent. He stumbled around for several minutes, periodically mouthing curses as he came across rocky or uneven ground. Finally he found a suitable spot and went to work putting up the tent. In the dark Finnegan could be of no help outside of holding the flashlight. As a result it took longer to pitch the tent than it had on previous nights. By the time the tent stood firm their fatigue was complete. The day had caught up with them.
“I’m exhausted, Mac. Let’s turn in.”
“Don’t you want to build a fire? That’s pretty fundamental.”
“What for? All we’re going to do is sleep. We can roast marshmallows tomorrow. Anyway, why draw attention to ourselves?”
Sleeping arrangements fell a bit short of regal. Their tent was only a two-man pup. After fitting their sleeping bags they slept as close as man and wife, each insulated in his own cocoon. In a way he would never admit, Finnegan took great comfort knowing another human body was so close in these remote places. He preferred a roof, but without one at hand, he realized that McIlweath had become a security blanket. Whatever Conor might have to face at night, at least he would not have face it alone.
Subconsciously, too, Conor Finnegan found security in Tom McIlweath. As always, Finnegan remained confident in himself, keenly aware of his capacity to meet people and face new situations with intelligence, wit and composure. But now the process of removal was at last underway. It was one thing to plan, to talk boldly, to scheme of personal integrity and independence; it was quite another to encounter it. He had become aware from the first day, as soon as the exhilaration had worn off, that he had chosen not so much freedom as responsibility. The realization deepened in Nevada when their impetuous attack against boredom had nearly stranded them both in the desert. He assumed responsibility now, perhaps prematurely, but indeed irrevocably. He sensed that, from these days forward, he would face the age-old challenge of trying to take logical steps in an illogical universe.
Tom McIlweath shared these first few steps with him. They assumed this fledgling responsibility, not together, but side by side. And Finnegan felt comforted by that. It was like having a twin, he imagined. Moreover, McIlweath had known him in the commanding glory of the year just passed. They were well on their way to becoming close friends, Finnegan thought, and even though the parameters of that friendship might, and should, go beyond the superficial, McIlweath knew the image. He was a rope around Finnegan’s waist, tied to the rock of his past.
Each man crawled into his sleeping bag. Finnegan could feel McIlweath’s heft in close adjacency. The night was given over to the wildlife.
“Goodnight, Mac. Let me know if you hear anything out there that might eat us.”
“You’ll be the first one I tell. See you in the morning.”
As they had since their journey began, both Finnegan and McIlweath slept soundly. The tedium and confinement of the day’s drive combined with the freshness of high altitude air to sink them even more deeply into a dead night.
Finnegan awoke first the next morning, or what he assumed to be morning, for it was still dark. He woke to a sound he had not heard before. In his semi-conscious state, newly aroused, he blinked at his strange surroundings to sort them out, to remember just where he was. The strange sound continued, and he could not be certain where it was coming from. It sounded far off, distant and remote, something outside and away, but still present. As his alertness grew, though, so did the sound. It became clearer, sharper, until he could have no doubt that something was lightly tapping the roof of the tent just hard enough to be noticeable.
Finnegan rolled to his side and propped himself on his elbow to get a better reading of what was happening. As he did so, he heard a splash, and felt it, too, on his elbow and at the foot of his sleeping bag.
Water. The sound was raindrops. The tent was flooded.
“Mac. Wake up.” Finnegan reached over and shook McIlweath’s shoulder. As he leaned across he surveyed the tent, what he could see of it in the dim light. There was no solid ground. Everywhere he looked he saw the broken ripples of water, underneath him and around him, to the walls of the tent.
“Mac, damn it, wake up.”
“Huh . . . Whazzat?”
“It’s raining, Mac. We’re flooded.”
“What?” McIlweath groggily rolled over to face his friend. As he did, he too rolled into water.
“Son of a bitch. We’re flooded.”
“What I said. My bag’s soaked from head to toe.”
McIlweath sat up and squinted the length of the tent. “Jesus Christ, mine too. The whole tent’s under water.”
“How did this happen?”
“How do you think, fool? It rained.”
“Yeah, but I thought we were on a rise. The water should have drained away from us.”
“No way to tell how high we were last night. For all we know, we might be at the bottom of a ravine.”
“Let’s get to the car and dry off.”
They pulled on their wet clothes, which had lain all night beside the bags, and broke camp, regularly muttering their standard curses. From what they could see the entire area was muddy and puddled. As they carried their gear to the car they sloshed through muck, splattering their already soaked jeans.
“Where do we put this stuff so it’ll dry?” asked Finnegan.
“It’ll have to go in the back seat.”
“You mean lay it over? There’s no room.”
“Unless we lay it over the boxes there.”
“And get everything else wet? No way. Let’s cram it back into the trunk for now and lay it out when we get the chance.”
The sodden tent and bags were difficult to handle. It took a while to roll them up into a tight form that would fit into the small trunk. The space where they were usually stored was too small for them now that they were saturated. All the while they worked at the gear it continued to rain. When they finished they crawled back into the car.
“Mac, we look like we swam here.”
“I’m cold. We’ve got to get into something dry.”
They went back out to the trunk to retrieve their bags and, maneuvering in the cramped space, found a change of clothes. Finnegan grabbed a towel to dry himself. McIlweath’s towels were out of reach. When Finnegan was done he passed the towel to his friend. Squirming and shifting in the tiny seats they managed to make a complete change. By the time they were dressed the window had fogged over, and the air was rank.
“What do we do now, buddy?” Finnegan asked.
“What time is it?”
Finnegan checked his watch, delighted to find it waterproof. “5:30. The sun should be coming up soon.”
“We’re not seeing the sun this morning, Conor. Let’s rest here until it gets light enough to drive out of this slop. I don’t feel like facing the road just yet.”
“God, I’m tired. I feel like going back to sleep.”
“It must have rained pretty hard all night. I’m surprised we didn’t wake up.”
“We did wake up, Mac. That’s why we’re sitting in this goddamned car.”
“Welcome to the great outdoors, Conor.”
With that, the two put their heads back and closed their eye. Finnegan dozed uncomfortably for less than an hour. McIlweath didn’t sleep at all. He wiped the fog from the windows near him and watched the rain.
When Finnegan woke again his neck was sore and kinked. It was barely light. No doubt the camp ranger would be coming soon. “If we want to avoid paying for this glorious experience,” he said, “we better hit the road.” He started the car and pulled onto the muddy access road. “Damn it, I still feel cold and damp.”
“Think of it,” said McIlweath, “as another form of baptism. You’ll feel better.”
***
They continued north and drove through Yellowstone. In the park they saw wildlife that neither had seen before—a family of bears below them on a hillside, and, in a wide clearing next to the road, a moose. The bears, accustomed to such travelers, took no notice of them. The moose, though, paused in his meal of meadow grass, raised his broad head and looked at the car that had stopped to watch him. After a few seconds he returned to his grass.
Nothing else appealed to them in Wyoming. They left Yellowstone via the southernmost entrance late in the afternoon. They had not eaten since breakfast, which they had had at a diner standing absolutely by itself on the road north. It sat there, an anomaly in a wide land, with no other build
ing in sight. Now, hungry again, they decided to stop for an early dinner and plan their next set of moves.
They found another diner several miles outside Yellowstone. As Finnegan pulled into the parking lot, he said, “Better bring the maps. We can figure out where we’re heading while we eat. Not that it matters. The land here is so damn big we’ll never find the end of it.”
The diner itself was just a place, like a hundred other places along the highway, squat and small. Neon signs flashed the names of beers in the two main windows on either side of the entrance.
Finnegan and McIlweath had begun to show wear. Neither had shaved since leaving home. This made little difference for McIlweath, who had a sparse beard. Only an inconsistent stubble grew under his chin and up the underside of his jaw. He had neither mustache nor sideburns. Finnegan by contrast had a darker complexion. A noticeable growth wrapped completely around his face, although the scraggly furze he carried was not thick enough yet to be a full beard.
The rain had tangled and matted their hair, uncombed since the brushing out of the morning rainwater. Each head was taking a shape of its own, wild and bohemian. They both wore faded blue jeans and frayed tees. Finnegan’s jeans had faded to an off-white, and McIlweath’s shirt showed patches of dirt on the sleeves.
When they entered the diner, heads turned and conversations paused. They seated themselves only to wait a full ten minutes for a server to fetch them menus. They were too tired to complain, except to each other.
“Do you feel a little unwelcome here?” asked Finnegan in a low voice.
“In what way?”
“Well, for one thing we’re the youngest ones in here by about twenty-five years. We’re not exactly dressed in the cowboy style, and we look pretty hairy. Other than that, we fit right in.”
“Don’t worry about it,” replied McIlweath. “As long as we can pay, that’s all they care about.”
“The management, sure. But I don’t know about our fellow diners. They’re looking at us like they want to tie us up and drag us behind their pickups.”
“We probably smell like two dead rats, too,” said McIlweath.
