A Prayer for Travelers

by Ruchika Tomar

  “Look, I don’t need—” But what was it that I didn’t need? An escort. A cop who thought he could protect girls who weren’t like his daughter from turning into her. I hesitated, the story of the sand-colored man on the tip of my tongue, as if the strange intimacy created by the darkness, and the evening spent in each other’s company, necessitated confession. Fischer pulled the sedan into our driveway and we sat for a moment, the engine idling. There was a dog’s sharp bark from the backyard, then another. Wolf, testing my proximity, the range of his guard. I reached over and hit the radio, a booming, dynamic voice kicking over the stadium’s roar—“bottom of the eighth lad-ies and gentle-men, Rodriguez at bat showing no signs of mercy, we’re looking at the ab-so-lute”—I hit the button again, plunging us into silence. I thought I saw Fischer smile, but then it was gone, a trick of the headlights. I was beginning to sense how alone we were, sitting side by side in the dark. I tensed at the sound of a chamber falling, but it was just the doors unlocking. I felt my own confusion, the thorny shape of it. A part of me, disappointed.

  “Don’t forget,” he said as I climbed out of the car. “You’ll leave it to me.”

  I stood on the drive and watched the sedan ease down the hill, slipping back into night.

  78

  24

  The dogs were in Carr. I blew cigarette smoke out the window into the hot air rushing by, watching the road get eaten up by our tires. Penny fiddled with the radio. For a few minutes Chuck Berry bopped in the dash before crackling into static. I hooked a finger under my bra and pulled it away from my skin for a moment of relief. Yet we were well past the hottest hour of the afternoon. The sun had nowhere left to go but down.

  “We should see the exit soon, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.” Penny shrugged. “I’ve never been.”

  “What?” I straightened behind the wheel. “Penny, you said you had.”

  “No,” she said, fiddling with the radio some more, “I said I’d been to Corken and Jasper. What’s the difference? All these shitty places are the same.”

  “You said you’d been to Carr.” I heard the accusation in my voice, residual angst from the morning waiting tables. Ms. Potter, the prim elementary-school teacher who wore her harlequin eyeglasses on a beaded chain, had come in requesting a booth and three runny eggs. When I brought them to her, she sent them back, snapping her laminated menu back and forth like a fan. I can’t even look at them, runny as all that! Finally she’d nibbled at a stack of buttered toast and left a plate full of crumbs, no tip. Penny had taken the previous night off; I was careful not to ask her how she spent it. Tonight Clara would work the overnight shift alone.

  “Do you want to check your phone?”

  “You just stay on this until you get on the interstate, then take the 210 all the way out. That’s what the lady said.”

  But for how long? We had already been driving an hour. It took an hour and a half to get from Pomoc to Sparks, half that to get from Pomoc to Jasper or Noe. The way people talked about Carr, it had always sounded close by, too. The sky was beginning to bleed coral and tangerine, swaths of violet in the cirrus. Dusk, lowering onto us. We drove on, watching the chaparral fly by, spasmodic radio activity filling in the silence. After twenty minutes I spotted our connection to the 210, and we took a long, arching off-ramp depositing us onto a local two-lane freeway, the cars thinning out. It felt like a narrowing, funneling us toward our destination.

  “Do you know I took acting classes in Tehacama once, at the community college?” Penny asked. Both of us, watching the cars going by.

  “No.” I glanced over. “Actually, maybe I heard you wanted to be an actress.”

  “Can you see it?”

  “Of course,” I said, but the longer I thought about it, the more difficult it was to conceive, Penny trying on all those different personalities like dresses, as if she were not already so impossibly, indisputably herself. “Weren’t you in the school play?”

  “They made me a cheerleader. An extra. Four lines. And you had that part at the end, what was it? Something serious. I was in fifth grade, so you must have been—”

  “A librarian? I don’t remember,” I said, but I was beginning to. Lamb’s dubious expression when I had asked to buy a navy blue skirt to play the part.

  “A curator! You were the museum curator at the end.”

  “That’s right,” I said, but I was also watching the highway signs that had begun to drop away, just sprawling desert and clumps of creosote for miles, though the mountains were still visible in the distance, like colossal watchmen guarding the horizon. By the road, short blond weeds covered patches of ground, their prickly burrs turned up to the deepening sky. We had yet to find the second exit, and I was beginning to realize that when it grew dark, the rural highway would lack any of the intermittent lights of the interstate in Pomoc, whose exits we knew by heart. Finally I saw a sign approaching in the distance and began to slow. The pole had suffered a clash with some vehicle larger than itself, bending it askew, the words half obscured in slant. Penny rolled down her window as we approached.

  “I can’t make it out. Jenson Ave.?”

  “Maybe we should call,” I said, slowing further, looking for a turnout, somewhere to pull over. Penny dug into her bag for her phone and held it in the air to search for a signal, as if it were a face mirror and she was examining her angles. She dialed, transferring the call to speaker. The phone rang loudly before a woman answered, the kind of scratchy voice that belonged to a life lived between drags.

  “Hi,” Penny said, “I called earlier, about the dogs? We’re trying to find you now, but I think we might have gone too far. Are you past the Jenson exit?”

  “You want Pasco,” the voice said. “Keep going. When you get close, turn right at the fork.”

  “But how much farther is Pasco?” I asked. The sky seemed to be dimming too quickly, but it was only the lack of streetlamps that made it seem so, the unfamiliar roads, the way pockets of shadow seemed to deepen and spread. I looked up from the road back to Penny. She was still studying the phone, pressing a button to illuminate the screen.

  “We lost her,” she said.

  Ten exits past Jenson, or thirty miles that felt like sixty, the sky was darkening still.

  Penny pointed at the windshield, the outline of a ghostly moon.

  “We should have started out earlier,” I said.

  “But you didn’t get off work any earlier. Anyway, I’m hungry now. Where do you think these people eat?”

  “There was a Burger Barn back there.”

  “That was thirty miles ago,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “The sign said No gas next forty miles. We must have gone most of that.”

  I hesitated. “Maybe we should turn around.”

  There was another exit approaching, but I couldn’t make it out. Penny leaned forward and slapped the dashboard with a flat palm, triumphant.

  “That’s it. Pasco, two miles.”

  “Okay. But how are we ever going to find our way back?”

  “Just turn around. Easy.”

  I nodded, but I was beginning to feel, as we coasted the off-ramp onto a dirt road, that we had already gone too far. There was no sign to indicate what lay ahead in either direction. I looked down the road to the left and saw nothing but shadows. I took a right; our tires already pointed that way. We drove for several minutes in silence, seeing nothing except for an occasional, indistinct silhouette in the distance, that, driving closer, became a boulder, a tumbleweed. I turned on the headlights, illuminating a small pool of gravel ahead.

  “There’s nothing here,” Penny said. “I think this is the wrong way.” The interior of the cab lit up by the light of her phone. “I still don’t have any service. Is this a two-lane?”

  “I’m not sure I’m on a road at all,” I said, and the uncomf
ortable feeling grew. “What if we run into another car?”

  We saw it at the same time, flashing by the window. I braked too hard, and Penny threw her hand on the dash. It was a wooden pole hammered into the ground, a street sign handwritten with white paint. If it had been difficult to read signs in the failing light, it was nearly impossible now.

  “Whoa,” Penny said. I took my foot off the brake, and we inched along by degrees. More street signs marked the dirt lane at odd intervals, the writing indistinguishable in the growing dark. The road narrowed, then a slim white edge grew in the dark as we came closer, until it became a porch, then a house, and another, the houses spaced far apart, all of them shuttered and dark. I felt struck by a thought too terrible to consider. What if we weren’t really heading toward dogs at all? What if Penny had brought me along for another reason entirely, the way she’d taken me to Rena’s, and the husky voice on the phone was just another customer waiting for pills, a setup for some lonely Texaco regular who asked Penny to bring a friend? I flashed the truck’s brights, illuminating the shape of an old metal mailbox in front of one of the houses, its red flag raised to signal a pickup. The next house we passed had a similar mailbox, the same raised flag. I took it as a sign of civilization that a postal worker was still coming by, unless no one had ever bothered to lower these flags and there were still letters trapped inside these mailboxes, like messages cast hopelessly into bottles, never to reach shore. Penny unbuckled her seat belt and scooted forward with her hands on the dash, pointing ahead where the road split in two.

  “That’s it,” she said. “The woman said turn right at the fork.”

  I took the turn, the path running rough, the truck pitching from side to side over chunks of gravel. I understood it now, the expression on a townie’s face when someone mentioned Carr, the precise degree of isolation they were calling to mind. I kept the brights on, which made everything both better and worse, illuminating the immediate swath of gravel before us, plunging everything else into sharp contrast, sacrificed to the darkness. At least we finally knew we were headed the right way.

  A moment later Penny tapped on the passenger window to get my attention, and I turned down a long empty lane into a hamlet of trailers that made the Crossroads seem like a bustling social enterprise. I slowed the truck to a crawl and parked in front of a long peach trailer in lot six, the number listed in the advertisement. Half of me hoped the raspy-voiced woman had already split and we would have no choice but to turn around and drive home. We climbed out of the truck, our boots crunching on the gravel. A collection of ceramic wind chimes strung up between two trailers snapped in the sharp breeze, making frenetic music. The wind felt stronger across Carr’s flat land without the mountains to offer shelter.

  Penny rapped on the trailer door. A gooseneck lamp lit up in the window, followed by a tall woman answering the door, rail thin, her smile wide enough to reveal a dark hole where an eyetooth was missing, her chin and cheeks bumpy with raw scabs. I recalled the billboard we passed on the interstate, a pair of ashen feet sticking out of a covered gurney, the morgue’s hangtag from one big toe spelling out METADONES MUERTAS in white block letters, a 1-800 number printed across the bottom. I prayed Penny wouldn’t offer any of her own wares.

  “Thought you got lost,” the woman said. It was the same scratchy voice as on the phone.

  “We did, and then we found you. I’m Penny, this is Cale.”

  The woman looked us over. I smiled. We followed her into a small trailer overwhelmed with the smell of wet dogs, urine, the fading aroma of buttered popcorn. To the right was a cramped kitchen, a foldout table set against the far wall. In the middle of the room a futon had been turned around so that its wide back formed one makeshift panel of an octagonal exercise pen. Inside the enclosure, several black and tan puppies lolled around on the floor, each about the size of a man’s shoe. They didn’t look much like wolfdogs, but who was I to diagnose origin? An adult shepherd brushed past and I reached for him instinctively, my fingers sticking in his thick, matted fur. I thought he’d snap at my hand, but he just fixed me with a weary look as he continued on his way to the water bowl by the fridge, bending his head to drink. After he had his fill, he settled down on the linoleum, lowering himself with visible effort. Sore in the hips, getting on in age.

  “That’s Hank,” the woman said, noticing my attention. She stepped over the pen and Penny followed suit, both of them reaching for the puppies. I hung back, not trusting myself to get too close without bringing another dog home. One of the puppies, gold around his nose and tail, raised his head and gamboled over to Penny, who knelt on the carpet to meet him. He set his front paws on her knee and yipped.

  “We were going to get Hank fixed, in the beginning,” the woman said. “Lord, my son raised hell. You’re not taking his balls, Mom, you don’t know what it’s like.” She rolled her eyes. “We let the neighbor’s bitch get at him and sold the puppies. I swore it was the last time. But Hank likes being a father, even if it’s a lot of work for me. My son promised to help out, but they never do. You all have kids?”

  “No.” Penny was scratching the masked puppy behind the ear. His diminutive tail wagged in response. “No kids.”

  “I always wanted twins,” the woman continued. “I saw those commercials when I was a little girl, you know, the Doublemint twins? But I had my son instead. My husband worked eighteen years over at the air force base. Twenty-five and they give you a real pension. Every time I went by the hangar I could see how they were living. Coffee cups everywhere, hydraulic on the mat. You become a mother, you don’t get any say. They’ve got people to clean up, he said. Eighteen years and he gets his boots wet coming down a ladder. He only ever got well enough to hunt pussy after that. If he can get another family, why can’t Hank?” She laughed, a sound so coarse I wondered if it didn’t hurt her doing it. She was watching Penny cuddling the cinnamon-colored runt, making cooing noises low in her throat. “I’d let that little one go for two-fifty. The black and the fawn are three each. Where’d you come in from?”

  “Pomoc,” I said. “I don’t think we realized how far the drive was. We probably shouldn’t stay too long.”

  Penny’s new friend wandered off to a patch of newspaper and raised a stubby leg, a dark spot of water spreading underneath him. The black puppy came over to investigate, biting the runt on the nose.

  “I’ll take the black one,” Penny said. She dug in the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a wad of cash, counting off five twenties too many, and folded the wad into the woman’s open palm. We still didn’t know her name, even though we’d told her ours.

  “Let me get you a box,” the woman said, excusing herself. “You picked some trouble.”

  She disappeared down the hall, and I tried not to notice one of the other puppies scrabbling at the baby gate, yipping in my direction. Would Lamb understand if I brought another puppy home now, how all the world’s remainders shared a responsibility to stick together?

  Before I let the thought go too far, the throaty, deafening sound of an engine filled the air, swelling louder and louder, fracturing all rational thought. I felt the vibrations in my skull and covered my ears, certain that whatever vehicle it belonged to was going to run the trailer right through. When I thought the noise would swallow us, the engine cut. Penny picked up the puppy again, nuzzling him underneath her neck. I stifled an urge to remind her that the animal licking her throat had just recently rolled in its own piss. She didn’t seem to mind. A door slammed outside, a pair of booted footsteps heavy on the stairs. The front door yanked open and a medium-sized man with sand-colored hair walked through the door, carrying several bags of groceries. I could just make out the red and blue dots of a loaf of Wonder bread through the plastic. He took in Penny right away, eating her up with his eyes. She stiffened a degree, the animal sniffing her chin.

  “Hey,” he said. His resemblance to the woman was betrayed by his heart-shaped face, t
he pointy chin. Here was the prodigal son, staunch opponent of neutered dogs. He looked only a little older than us, a slim margin of years that placed him on an island of neighboring experience, a murky horizon I sensed but couldn’t touch. He was still staring at Penny with the frank, intrusive interest she inspired in all manner of men: hoary diner regulars, truckers pumping gas, high school boys angling the wide stance of their legs in her direction. What simple power her beauty had to arrest. Would she ever try to temper her appeal underneath a baggy sweater or ugly clothes, a pair of oversized glasses? As if it might make any difference.

  The man turned his attention to me, his eyes an unnerving cobalt blue. I looked away, to the puppies still penned in, to Penny standing in their midst, cradling the black puppy in her arms. The litter had come to gather at her feet, sitting on their haunches like rambunctious schoolchildren called to attention, tilting their faces toward her sun. Surely there had been more than four of them once? Surely they could understand what had to happen now?

  The woman reemerged from the hall, carrying an empty milk crate. She handed it to me. Her son moved away, beginning to unload groceries in the kitchen. If she noticed he had returned, she didn’t pay him any mind. I could still feel his attention trailing Penny as she stepped over the gate. I held the crate out to her and she settled the dog inside, our eyes briefly meeting. How do you explain the unique physiology of girlhood friendships, the telepathy formed fast and fierce between hometown strangers?

  “We should go,” I said to the woman. “Is there a better way to get back to the 210?”

  “There isn’t any 210 here,” the man spoke up from the kitchen. But the woman interrupted, cutting him off.

  “When you get out of here go left, drive down a ways. You’ll find it. You want a little towel for him? I hate this part, I’m not ashamed to say it. Just hold on,” she held up her hand to stay us, hurrying back down the hall.

  “The 10 turns into the 210 at Norman,” the man continued, watching us from the kitchen. He smoothed one of the plastic bags flat against his chest, pressing out the air, his eyes shifting back and forth between us. When it was thin as paper he began to fold the plastic into fourths. “You should turn right out of here, there’s a small off-road path that loops back to the 10. It’s faster that way, but the ramp’s tough to make.”