A Lite Too Bright

by Samuel Miller

  4.

  “GOOD EVENING, FOLKS, it’s that time of the night. The snack car’s closing, the lights are dimming, and that means we’re signing off for the evening. Closing time; you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Actually, you can. Actually, you have to—this train’s not stopping until Salt Lake.

  “Any insomniacs with us on the Zephyr this evening, you can stare into the infinite darkness outside your window and know that I’m boldly leading you through some of the most beautiful territory that you’ll never be able to see. We do ask that if you are awake during these midnight hours, you kindly make your way to the observation cars, lest one of our sleeping passengers wake up and try to throw you from the train. I am not screwing around, these people are serious about their sleep.

  “If you’re leaving us in Salt Lake City or Green River, an attendant will be around to wake you when your stop is approaching. If not, we’ll be back with the good news at seven a.m. tomorrow morning with the first call for breakfast and the breaking of the new dawn.

  “That’s all for tonight. In the immortal words of Dylan Thomas, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light’ . . . and in the words of our own Chester Sayer, if you are going into that good night, go gentle with Tums, available at your local food and beverage car.

  “Good night and good luck. That’s all, from your brilliant and loyal conductor.”

  5.

  I’M CRESTING INTO the Portola Valley dive. The wind is behind me, just like it always is, and the sun is rippling across the valley, just like it always is, and I’m hitting maximum acceleration as I reach the top of the hill, just like I always do. This is the part where the dive gets interesting, where the simplicity ends and the skill takes over, where the car demands the most of its driver, where the average motorist would pull off to the side of the road, take a picture from the scenic overlook, and then proceed with caution, but I proceed entirely without caution.

  The nose of the car tilts, the downhill begins, and the natural speed urges the wheels to spin faster. I’ve taken the perfect angle, clinging to the outside of the road before—

  The process freezes. My brain slows. My hands start to doubt me. My foot wanders toward the brake—this has never happened before. I know this road; why should I doubt where I’m going? I slow down against my own will, fighting my intuition. I scream at my foot to return to the accelerator, but it doesn’t answer. It continues to brake gradually, naturally, until the car is stopped, one hundred yards over the dive. I’m perched like a bird, the car a perfect forty-five-degree angle with the ground. There’s no sound at all, inside or out of the vehicle. I have no control over the car or my own feet. I can’t move at all.

  Without being pulled, five seat belts slither out from below the seat and across my chest.

  The silence ends with the sound of collision. I lurch forward, metal snapping and twisting all around me as another car, an enormous car, a semitruck, collides with the back of the Camaro. We’re back in motion, sliding toward the edge, the cliff, the fall, the water below, the colder water below that. I can’t see the face of the other driver, I can’t control the movement of the car; I can’t bring myself to fight the seat belts. I’m completely still.

  Exhaust starts to form around the car, boxed in by invisible walls, and warning signs scream at me. Twenty feet from the edge, the car begins to shake; not a full vibration, like the result of prolonged and aggressive friction between the wheels and the road, but an unnatural shake, an explosive shake; the entire car being jerked up, and down, and up and down, my body convulsing with it against the seat, up, and down, and up and down, limp and floundering, my swinging forward, and back, and forward and back, and forward and—

  6.

  MY HEAD SLAMMED against the back of the seat.

  “Jesus!” A face swam into focus in front of me, warm hands on my shoulders, shaking me. “Wake up!”

  The features crystallized. Soft, wide eyes. A tiny nose. Light brown skin. Short, bobbed brown hair.

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Are you alright?” Mara’s face was electrified in confusion, as were the seven faces behind her.

  I sat up quickly, orienting myself by the swirling balls of colors jumping around in front of me. It was still ink-black outside, but my yellow overhead light was on. My chest was pumping. My left hand was aching. It throbbed worse than it had when I fell asleep, and didn’t stop when I folded the cast over.

  “Yeah, what’s, uh . . . what’s going on?”

  “You were screaming in your sleep,” Mara said. “Really loud. We all thought you were getting murdered or something.”

  I looked behind me. The entire coach car was awake and glaring in my direction.

  “I, uh, I’m sorry. Sorry, everybody. I get weird dreams.”

  “No shit,” Mara muttered. The crowd behind her began to drift back toward their seats.

  “Thanks for that.” I swallowed. “I’ll, uh, I’m just gonna—”

  “Yeah, like hell you’re going back to sleep. These people wanted to kill you.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock in the morning.”

  She was still crouched in front of me, and I could feel her arm against my leg. “Look, at least go sit in the observation car, okay?” she whispered. “That way, I can stop you if you go Lady Macbeth on us again.”

  It looked like she wanted me to follow her, so I did, not entirely convinced she wasn’t in my head, another dream uprooting the first. She sat in the same booth I’d seen her in the night before, and she didn’t look upset about me being around, so I fell into the open booth across the aisle from her.

  “You were here last night,” I said, my voice still groggy with sleep. “I saw you.”

  “That was you on a different train and everything. You’re lucky I stopped in Reno.” She smiled, and I knew it was really happening. Dreams were never this vivid. “And where is your final destination, Arthur?” She strung out my name, her accent squashing the first r so it sounded more like author. “And why are you lying to your poor father about it?”

  “You heard—”

  “Yeah, and you should probably know, you’re a shit liar. You stuttered the whole time. I could’ve watched you have that conversation at a church camp or whatever and I still wouldn’t have believed you.”

  “Well, he did,” I said, trying to wipe the sleep from my eyes. “He still has no idea I’m out here.”

  Mara had been folding a napkin on the table in front of her, forward and backward, and she paused. “Probably better that way, right?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Somerset, outside Bristol. England?”

  I nodded. “And your dad . . .”

  “Also doesn’t know where I am. I left a few years ago—”

  “How old are you?”

  She side-eyed me. “Nineteen?”

  “You ran away from home when you were seventeen?”

  “Sixteen, yeah, but my sister basically raised me, and she was living in America already, so I just followed her.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “Left when I was four.” She’d resumed folding the napkin, over and over so it stacked up like a tiny paper building.

  “Where does your dad think you are?” I asked.

  “Right now?” She smiled devilishly. “Australian boarding school. Or the Italian military. Or dating an American celebrity.”

  I squinted.

  “I send lots of postcards,” she said, and held up a glossy photo of a ranch in Reno, Nevada. “From all over the country, too. I figure it’s fun then, for him to try and put it all together, right?” She flipped it over. “‘Dear Dad. Howdy from the American West. No one rides horses anymore, but that hasn’t stopped me in my search for gold. Prospecting, they call it. I’ve got a lucky streak in me yet. Your daughter, Mara.’”

  Mara’s smile was a kind that I wasn’t used to. It was bold and honest; it crept
its way onto every line of her face, filling them with an understandable warmth and an impossible mystery at the same time. It gave me a strange, inclusive feeling, like everything she said was an inside joke, and the rest of the world was trying desperately to figure it out, but I was on the inside. At least I thought I was.

  “So are you going somewhere specific, then?” she asked. “Or are you just running away?”

  “I’m—” My tongue lurched, but I caught it. A small part of me wanted to try to impress her, but it was the stupidest, most impulsive part. “I guess both. I’m . . . trying to find something.”

  “You know,” she said, cocking her head, “noncommittal and cryptic is really only interesting for so long, right?”

  “Right. I guess I’m going to Green River,” I committed.

  “You know, I was hoping to explore Green River. Maybe if the train gets in early enough—”

  “Maybe you could help me,” I said, before I could stop myself. She buried her face away from me toward the window, probably avoiding me.

  We both watched as a man in a black jacket, clearly drunk, stumbled from the dining car to coach. Three times, he looked back at Mara, and she rolled her eyes.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Why are you here? Unless you really are . . . dating an American celebrity.”

  “Well, no,” she laughed. Her accent was music to me. “Not yet. I have a job, in Denver. And I get to travel sometimes, so I’ll sneak off and go study your protest history.”

  “Protest history?”

  “Anti-Vietnam, Haight-Ashbury, the Summer of Love? My sister used to be really into it, traveling around the US and whatnot, so she gave me this amazing list of secret little spots that used to be important.” She didn’t make eye contact when she spoke, like she was always looking past me to the more interesting thing just beyond me. “It’s spectacular. If there’s one thing Americans are good at, it’s getting pissed off at yourselves for fucking things up. I find it . . . confusing and beautiful.”

  Mara tried asking a few questions of me, so I told her about my Camaro, and Palo Alto, and everything that didn’t involve Kaitlin, or Mason, or my dad, or my restraining order, or my cast, or my life in general. Three times, she reminded me that I hadn’t actually told her anything about myself, but I knew it was better that way. Eventually, her head slipped to the table and her eyes closed. I didn’t want to risk sleeping again, so I sat up, staring out the window and watching the nothing fly by.

  No one knew where I was. I could’ve been dead for hours, and no one would have noticed. I thought about texting Kaitlin, telling her I was okay, and I was in Nevada, and I was doing something, but I knew my number was probably blocked, and it wasn’t attention she’d give to me anyway. My stomach turned thinking about it, how I’d had to start competing for her attention when she used to give it to me so willingly. When we were sophomores, I never had to tell her when I had a tennis match but she’d be there anyway, the only one cheering whenever I lost the first point in a set, because she’d “always root for love.” She’d bring me orange Gatorade and drive home with me, she’d tell my dad how great I’d been, she’d stay until we both fell asleep. She always wanted to know where I was and what I was doing. Now that I was out in the world by myself, and no one knew where I was or what I was doing, it was hard to imagine anybody ever caring about me like that again.

  The train ran forty-five minutes early into Green River. Mara’s head was still lying against the table, unmoving, and I thought about shaking her awake. She’d said she wanted to explore Green River; maybe I’d be doing her a favor. Then again, maybe she just wanted the sleep, and I’d be overeager and annoying. Also, again, there was Kaitlin. I shouldn’t have wanted Mara’s help. I should have wanted to see Kaitlin.

  I didn’t have to. Mara rolled over and her eyes opened to me standing over her. I didn’t say anything, just stared back, watching her blink the world back into her view. “Arthur,” she said, almost as if announcing it. “We have a little time, yeah?”

  “Um—yeah.” I didn’t have to say anything more. She rolled out of the booth, and before I could move, she was leading me off the train.

  7.

  THE SKY IN Green River was a perfect and resolute black, dark enough for stars but starting to illuminate the streaks of clouds and the street around us.

  “All that depressing fluorescent California light dies before it gets out here.” Mara’s neck was tipped back, taking in the whole sky. “You only really find this kind of sky in the middle of absolute nothing. This is what the stars are supposed to look like.” She was right, they were incredibly bright, as if in higher resolution than the ones in California. Streaks of light shot down over a large plateau in the distance. “Heat lightning,” Mara explained. “They get storms in the mountains up north, and you can see the lightning from here.”

  “How do you know so much about Utah?”

  She shrugged. “Read about it, mostly poetry. There’s an old Beat generation bar here; they used to write about Green River all the time. My sister went a couple times. Ah!” She pointed upward. “Shooting star, right there. Nothing insignificant about that, is there? Go on, have a wish, make it a good one.”

  We continued walking in silence.

  “I do this thing,” I started slowly, “where, whenever I see a shooting star, I pretend it’s a planet that sustained life for millions of years, but then one day got too hot, and it burned up and streaked across the galaxy, and all of its life-forms died.”

  Mara stopped walking. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

  “I think it’s kind of nice to know that one day, our whole planet, and everybody that ever is or was here, is gonna burn up and disappear, and all that’s going to be left of us is one single, insignificant streak across some other planet’s sky. Makes this”—I gestured around us—“all of this, what’s happening right now, feel a little more important, you know?”

  Mara considered it. “I think . . .” She chose her words cautiously. “I’m beginning to understand why you might have woken up screaming.”

  I smiled. “I don’t know. There are one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, and I’m a tiny, fractional, and insignificant part of one of them. I think it’s . . . confusing and beautiful.”

  We kept walking, down one street, then back on another sidewalk. The town was eerily empty, even for the middle of the night. I scanned for signs of my grandfather, but none showed up. We were the only life in Green River, Utah, and it looked as though we had been for a long time. On the first block, there were four businesses that had been looted or burned down. The sign for Frank’s Pizza had snapped at its center and was crookedly wedged against the roof. Even the frames of the buildings looked slouched, like they got together and decided it was time to all give up. On the side of one of the abandoned buildings closest to the train, someone had spray-painted a stencil reading “YOU ARE HERE, FOR A GREAT PURPOSE.” Maybe, I thought, but we’re the only ones.

  “So, any particular reason you’re sad?” Mara pulled a pack of Marlboro 27s from her bag. “Or are you just a sad kind of person?”

  “What, what do you mean?”

  Her hand cupped the flame. “I hope that’s not offensive. Just thought I’d ask.”

  “I’m not that sad of a person.”

  The paper sparked. “Looking at the ground, lying to your dad, running away on trains and whatnot. Most sad people I know, that’s pretty standard behavior. You’ve just told me shooting stars remind you that we’re all gonna die someday.” She exhaled. It wasn’t a cigarette. The smell was thicker, staler, stickier, more obvious. It was marijuana. She offered it to me. “And what is it with your car, then?”

  I rejected it. “It’s a Camaro.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s a kind of car.”

  “Right, yeah, whatever, I’m sure, it’s a big, super, war gun car, or whatever.” She inhaled delicately. “You keep talking about it. Even in your sle
ep. What’s that about?”

  “Oh.” I swallowed. “It’s nothing.”

  “There it is again! ‘It’s nothing,’ ‘it’s not a big deal’—what is it with you and this idea that nothing is significant?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, we can’t all be . . . chill, and happy all the time.”

  “I’m not chill, ever. Or that happy, really. But at least I’m trying, you know?” She stopped to examine a telephone pole. “At least I’m talking about it.” She pulled out her phone and used the flashlight to inspect it; it was splintering and covered in half-assed graffiti.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m trying to find.” She studied it a moment longer, then walked back in my direction. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re looking for.”

  “My grandfather,” I told her, wincing as I felt the information slip away from me. “That’s what I’m trying to find.”

  “He’s missing?”

  “Well, no. He’s dead.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re trying to find his body?”

  “No.” I tripped over the details. “He died a while ago. Five years ago. He just . . . he traveled before he died. And I’m trying to figure out where he might have gone.”

  I could see her breath in the cold. “Why do you think he came to Green River?”

  “He had pretty severe dementia, so . . . really, it could have been anything.”

  Mara kept her eyes in my direction as she processed this information. She had a perfect processing face. Behind the crescent creases at the tops of her cheeks, still flushed red from sleep, I could see tiny gears turning in my direction, tiny brain people holding tiny conferences with a tiny version of my face on a PowerPoint on the wall, trying to understand and communicate with me. Most people didn’t look at other people like this. Most people didn’t look at me like this.