A Prayer for Travelers

by Ruchika Tomar

  “Flaca?” I said finally. “It’s Cale.”

  “I know it’s you, dummy.”

  “Are you still bored?”

  “Why?” she asked. “Whatever it is, just tell me. You’ve got to be in some deep shit, if you’re calling me.”

  “Actually, my shit is medium,” I said. “Thanks for asking. Although, who better to call? But it’s our friend who has bigger problems.”

  It took a moment for her to sink in. Her exhalation was slow and steady, a pressure valve releasing steam. The background noise faded as she got out of bed and moved to somewhere else in the room.

  “Where are you?” she asked finally. “Where is she?”

  “Do you remember the Aztlán in Reno? Where Lourdes’ tía—”

  “Yes.”

  “Drive south from all the lights. It’ll seem like you’re driving into nothing. About ten miles out, there’s an old petroleum factory. Pull around the back. About a quarter mile down the road, there are a couple big trees—alders, I think—you’ll see where the fence has been cut. You’ll have to get out and walk to the warehouse on foot. There are three doors on the side of the right building. The last one, the one closest to the street, we broke the lock.”

  “Jesus, Cale.” I could hear the sound of a door squeaking, drawers opening and closing. “You can’t just drop a pin?”

  “No phones,” I said. “You should leave yours behind.” I paused. I could feel a wave of something hot and ugly coming on, everything I had been driving away from for several weeks, all speeding now to catch up. I squeezed my eyes shut, banging my head gently against the pay phone’s plastic shield. “I hope your piece of shit car makes it.”

  “You know what? This must be your white side talking.”

  “Can you hurry?”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. Will I see you there?”

  “No. You’re free of me now.”

  “Good,” she said. “Great. Finally.”

  But neither one of us hung up the phone.

  For the first time ever, I heard her hesitating. “Is she okay?” Flaca asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “No.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.” I said. “But we have to go, anyway. You’ll be safe.” I said it firmly, like I could will it for them both. “Flaca? You will. You’re going to make it.”

  The sound of something in the background—a duffel bag, a suitcase—zipping up.

  “I always make it,” Flaca said.

  76

  I crossed over at Verdi, heading south through Mystic, the descent through the Sierra Nevadas obscured by low morning light and an evanescent fog like dispersed crystal clinging to the pines. The mist filled the ravine over the Truckee River so that the sound of rushing water seemed to come from an invisible place in the distance. Climbing the mountains’ steep elevation, the truck’s red temperature needle spiked over Floriston and Hinton, then leveled over Donner Pass, as if in reverence to those famished pioneers made so desperate by snow.

  I pulled off the freeway into the woods, parking under a thicket of incense cedars to let the engine cool. I hiked to the white elders peppering Secret Ravine and tramped the slippery banks before returning to the road, my boots slickened by a fresh layer of mud, cupping my hand against the truck’s hood, hot as a sick dog’s belly. When I started her up, the red marker had barely moved. I drove cautiously past Colfax’s railroad depot, recalling Rhyolite and Gold Butte and Lucky Jim, all of Nevada’s ghost towns long since gone bust.

  By noon the overcast burnt off or I had descended the mountains far enough to escape it. I kept a steady crawl through Concord until hitting the 101, praying the engine would hold. It did, past Santa Clara County and Gilroy, but by the time I spotted the sign for Monterey whorls of thick white smoke were twisting free from the hood, fogging up the windshield. I coasted into the nearest gas station and killed the engine, the cab filling with the odor of rotten eggs. This, too, Lamb had predicted, warning me not to travel too far on the old truck’s last legs. I hadn’t listened—not to him or to Jackson, who, had I let him, would have had me coasting along in the refurbished Nova. I got out of the truck and pulled my long shirtsleeves over my fingers before popping the hood, hiding my face from the plumes of steam that rolled free. The radiator looked too hot to touch.

  It had warmed up some outside, a bright sun filtering through the clouds. There was a supple brine to the air that clung to my skin, kinking my hair. Funny how, having never smelled the ocean before, I knew it all the same. But for all I knew, Catherine’s daughter had been here before; maybe I had, too. I left the truck and made for the station. Inside I was soothed by the endless rows of packaged nuts and cough drops, the cold cases full of beer; the unrelenting human drive to categorize objects, as if doing so might begin to clarify the chaos within ourselves. I swiped a bag of gummy bears off a low shelf and wandered over to the soda machine, where a redhead was playing the dispensers like piano keys, mixing sodas into her Big Gulp with a chemist’s singular focus. She wore a robe of patchworked velvet, her pale, elegant hand made remarkable by an assortment of cumbrous silver rings: carnelian and moonstone and blue lace agate, malachite bright as a parakeet’s feather. She glanced over at me, a feather earring brushing her shoulder.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’ve just never seen a hippie before,” I said. I left her there, looking offended. In the next aisle I grabbed coolant and a gallon of water, trying to recall Jackson’s technical sermons. At the cash register I fondled packets of gum to avoid small talk with the toothless man who rang me up. There was no longer any need to reach into my purse for Penny’s flyer or unfold it on the counter between us, to mine strangers’ depths for sympathy. Penny had already been lost and found. I was the only one left to seek.

  Outside, the redhead was smoking near the truck and sipping her Big Gulp, walking around to peer curiously under the hood at the truck’s splayed guts. She backed off as I approached, but stopped a few feet away, watching as I set the coolant on the ground. I unscrewed the radiator’s cap with my sleeve, feeding coolant and water in slow increments, pausing in between. I sensed the hippie’s scrutiny, her bangles clinking with every drag.

  “I’m actually not a hippie,” she said, as if reading my mind. “Who even still uses that word?”

  “Me, I guess.”

  “Yeah? Where are you from?”

  “Not here.”

  “Oh, obvious and friendly. Do you know what you’re doing to your car?”

  “Kind of. I’m not sure it’s going to help.” I added more water and walked around to try the engine. The needle popped right back up the dash, well into red. With the hood up I could now discern a distinct plastic rattle—cracked flexplate? Loose drive belt? I killed the engine and grabbed the duffel bag before climbing out again, locking the door.

  “You fucked?” she asked.

  I gave her a sidelong glance. “I didn’t think hippies smoked.”

  “I quit,” she said. I stared at her cigarette another second. She waved it impatiently. “E-cig,” she explained. Nodding at the truck, “Maybe it’s like a computer—you know, turn it off and on again.”

  I screwed the radiator cap back on and lowered the hood. “It’s not. Which way are you headed? Could I bum a ride?”

  “Sorry. I’d love to help, but that’s a lie. I have to get back to L.A. tonight.”

  “Los Angeles?”

  She snorted. Then, sensing I was serious, tilted her head, Trixie-like. “No one calls it that.”

  “I thought you wanted to be friendly?”

  She gestured with her e-cig. “It’s a smoke-chat,” she said.

  “But that’s where I’m headed. There’s a new restaurant looking for waitresses.” I unzipped the duffel and pulled a crinkled sheet of paper from the pocket, offering it to her. She transferred
her cigarette to her other hand and reached for it, glancing up at me. Her pale green eyes keenly focused. She scanned the paper. “This is on Melrose,” she said. “That’s L.A., L.A. Have you been there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they dress better than you. Where’d you get this?”

  “The internet. I already called. They said I could come by.” I took the advertisement back from her, trying not to snatch it. “I can pay for gas.” I dug in my duffel for Jackson’s white envelope and pulled out a twenty. She bypassed the proffered cash and reached for the envelope, slipping her nail under the ragged edge I had ripped open in front of Penny at the old petroleum factory, our fingers still pruned from the pool. The hippie removed the contents, counting out twenties. When she finished, she gave me an exasperated look and replaced the cash, looking as if she had aged ten years.

  “You cannot move to L.A. with a hundred and sixty dollars,” she said flatly. “Are you serious?”

  “I had to repay a friend.”

  “My god.” She gave me back the envelope. “They’re going to eat you alive.”

  “Look,” I tried again. But I didn’t have anything else to show her.

  “You can tell me about it on the way,” she said.

  “I don’t think I can. Not for a long time.”

  She rolled her eyes, motioning for me to follow. “I can already tell you’re going to make me want to start drinking again,” she said.

  I trailed her to the other side of the station, past a row of cars, stopping in front of the kind of calypso green convertible Jackson wouldn’t even start working on without clearing a deposit. I slowed at the sight of it, ready to plead my case all over again. She removed the duffel from my hands and settled it in her back seat without a word. I went around the passenger side and climbed in, sitting on my hands to keep my nerves from taking over. There was something too heavy about being in a stranger’s car, leaving the old truck behind. This is your heart line. This is your fate. She started the engine, turned up the radio to the sound of old rock ’n’ roll—road songs with their insistent, pounding beat. We pulled out of the station and down the street toward the winding 101, picking up speed until the wind was whipping our hair from our faces. She grabbed an elastic band from the dash and tied back her wild curls. I held my hair with one hand, watching the coast open up along our side like a vast blue mystery. She reached for the radio and changed the station once, twice. I tensed—but desert news wouldn’t reach us here, not until it was too late to change. After some time, I twisted around in my seat to watch the long strip of tar fading behind us. Her eyes, when she glanced over, were impossible to read behind the dark glasses she had pulled on. I could hardly hear her in the wind.

  “Don’t look now,” she said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank The Center for Fiction, Vermont Studio Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Creative Writing Department at Stanford University for their support. Thank you to Ashlee Miller and Mark Rodriguez for research assistance, and to early readers Katherine, Anya, Lulu, Hilary, Taryn, Danny, Sam G, and Callan for their valuable feedback. Thank you Elizabeth Tallent, Adam Johnson, and Chang-rae Lee. And thank you, finally, to Joy Harris and Cal Morgan for supporting all the women of this novel, including me.

  The line “The sea is smooth. It is a flat stone without any scratches” appears originally in The Island of Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ruchika Tomar was raised in Southern California. She holds a BA in English literature from the University of California, Irvine, and an MFA from Columbia University. A recent Wallace Stegner Fellow, she is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.

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