by Heather Gray
Chapter Four
Edgewood, NM
December 23, 4:00 p.m.
“I’m starving, Mom. We missed lunch because of the hang-up with the rental agency. Let’s stop and get something to eat.”
“Get something out of the snack bag, Eli. We haven’t even been on the road an hour yet. It’ll be sunrise before we pull into Nowhere, and I don’t want to make a bunch of stops along the way to slow us down and make this drive stretch out any further than it has to.”
Gavin was hungry, too, and he wasn’t about to let Avery keep him from a meal. He had to admit, the fruit smoothie he’d had did not count as food. It was, however, far too early in their trip to start conceding victory to his traveling companion. He’d seen the way she’d inspected his drink, her lips thinned and eyes narrowed in disdain. Because of that, he planned to keep his opinion of that fruity midday snack entirely to himself. “I’m hungry, too. Mexican sounds good.”
“Yeah!” from the rear seat.
“Guys, let’s forge ahead. Maybe after we get a hundred miles behind us, then we’ll stop.”
Avery’s stomach growled then. Loudly.
“Admit it, you’re as hungry as the rest of us,” Gavin said.
“Come on, Mom,” wheedled Eli.
“Fine,” she grumbled. Then she added, “I could use a pit stop, anyway.”
“Mom makes lots of pit stops,” Eli piped up. “She has a tiny bladder.”
Gavin noted the blush that crept up Avery’s neck and colored her cheeks. He was sure she didn’t appreciate her son sharing that particular bit of information, but she didn’t bite back. Instead she said, “I don’t have a small bladder. I have a bladder permanently damaged from having carried and brought you into this world. You weren’t exactly a small baby, you know.”
Eli pointed out a sign on the side of the freeway advertising a Mexican restaurant on the corner of Walker and Edgewood 7.
An ulterior motive behind his words, Gavin casually wondered out loud, “Who puts a number in the name of a street that way?” He wanted to watch the conversation between mother and son. The interplay between the two of them was unique, to say the least.
Avery spoke first. “Albuquerque has First Street, Second Street, Third Street…”
“That’s not even close to being the same thing.” Eli laughed. “It sounds like a movie theater to me.” Mimicking a deep theater voice, he said, “The Edgewood 7 Cinema with seven screens showing all your favorite films.”
As she deftly moved through traffic and led them to the restaurant, Avery said, “You don’t get to mock me, kid. I’m your mother.”
“You’re being crabby because you stayed up all night reading a book and didn’t get enough sleep. I told you not to drink the coffee, but did you believe me when I told you it would put you in a bad mood today? No.”
Gavin listened as the two Westons volleyed their conversation back and forth.
The car stopped, and Eli said, “This might not be such a good idea.”
Looking at the restaurant, Gavin had to agree. The paint was peeling, there were exactly two cars in the parking lot, and he wasn’t sure, but he thought some of the restaurant’s windows might have peeling faded tape on them. Whether it was to cover cracks or hold the windows together, he couldn’t tell.
“We passed a sign that said there’s a drive-in further down the road. Should we go there instead?” Avery asked.
Gavin had the feeling Avery was used to being in charge and didn’t often ask anything. He wondered if she even realized she was deferring this decision to him. “It’ll be fine!” he said cheerily. “I’m sure it’s better on the inside. You know how these little hole-in-the-wall places are. They usually have some of the best food.”
“Then why isn’t anybody here?” asked Eli.
“It’s Christmas Eve eve. Everyone’s out shopping.”
“Christmas Eve eve?” Avery asked suspiciously.
“Sure, haven’t you heard of it before?” Gavin questioned. “It’s the night before Christmas Eve. People are either out shopping or too broke to eat out. That means we’ll get fresh food and great service. Come on!”
It took a little work, but they all did manage to climb out of the small car without falling to the ground in the parking lot. Having been raised a gentleman, Gavin held the restaurant door for Avery. By the time he stepped through behind Eli, she was already out of sight. He removed his sunglasses and searched for her.
“Bathroom,” was all Eli said.
“How big a baby were you, anyway?”
The teen shrugged. “My birth certificate says ten pounds, but if I’ve ticked her off, it can be as much as fifteen.”
Gavin chuckled as he moved off in search of a hostess or waiter. “Hello? Anybody here?”
The man who came out from the back had food stains on his shirt, some refried beans stuck to his beard, and teeth that shined oddly when he smiled at them in greeting. After he seated them and moved away, Eli asked, “Were his teeth gold?”
Trying to think of a good way to get them out of the restaurant without having to admit he may have been wrong to insist they eat there, Gavin barely heard him. Before he could come up with a good plan, Avery slid into the booth next to her son and picked up a menu.
“Did you ask the waitress what’s good here?” she asked as she scanned the menu.
“Not exactly,” Gavin answered.
As Avery perused her menu, Gavin studied her. She was wearing comfortable jeans and a long-sleeved olive green shirt. Wrapped around her neck, a knitted scarf that should have looked old-fashioned complimented her outfit and set off the green in her eyes. No, wait. They’re brown.
Gavin blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Green. It was almost as if her eyes couldn’t make up their mind which color they wanted to be. He wondered if they changed with her mood. If so, her mood was skipping faster than a flat rock on a still pond.
Gavin had read enough of Avery’s work for the newspaper to have formed an impression. He’d always thought she was a good writer but had sometimes found her approach to certain topics a little unusual for a man. Now that he could see Avery was most definitely not a man, he needed to reevaluate the opinion he’d formed of her.
A woman approached their table. She wasn’t covered in food stains, but Gavin winced when he saw her bare feet. Hoping neither Eli nor Avery would notice, he hurriedly said, “I’ll have a Number One.” He hadn’t examined the menu yet, but there was no way to admit that without confessing that he’d spent the entire time studying the woman across from him, which he was loath to do.
“I’ll have the chicken chimichanga,” Avery said politely.
“The taco platter, please,” Eli said when the waitress looked at him. “Could we get some chips and salsa, too? With, like, five extra little bowl-things of salsa?”
His face must have given away his surprise. As soon as the waitress left, Avery leaned partway across the table and said in a stage whisper, “Trust me, we’ll go through it all. I tried to teach Eli it’s kinder to make the waitress get it all up front instead of making her run back and forth to the kitchen to get more the entire time we’re here.”
“You two must enjoy your food spicy,” he replied.
Avery shrugged, but Eli said, “Mom swears the only way she could get me to eat anything when I was little was to put cayenne pepper on it. I haven’t seen any pictures to prove it, so I’m still not sure I believe her.”
Before too much longer, the food arrived. They all gaped at their plates. Eli was the first to speak. “Well, I guess it could be worse.” It wasn’t so much that the food had a horrible appearance. There simply didn’t seem to be a lot of color. Everything was covered in pale iceberg lettuce and chopped tomato that seemed to have been leached of its color.
Eli took his fork and scooped all the lettuce and tomato out of his three tacos. He piled it all on top of his beans which, Gavin surmised, were not going to be eaten.
Avery clea
red her throat and gazed pointedly at her son, who put his fork down. “We pray at mealtimes. You’re welcome to participate.” Her voice was kind and matter-of-fact. Gavin respected that. Some people could be obnoxious about their faith, and other people could be too timid to speak up at all.
“That’s fine,” he said in answer.
Her mouth forming a soft O, Avery’s eyes widened for a moment. Then she nodded, bowed her head, and began, “Lord, thank you for this food. We ask You to see us safely on our journey to Nowhere and back.”
Eli snickered and then said, “Ow.”
“Keep us all in the palm of Your hand and help us to remember the reason we celebrate Christmas,” she continued. “Amen.”
Gavin opened his eyes to see Eli reaching for the salsa. He dumped one entire bowl of the stuff over his Spanish rice and split two more bowls between his three tacos. Then he watched as Avery picked up a bowl and scooped the entire contents onto her chimichanga. When she reached for the last bowl, he raised an eyebrow, and her hand stilled. “Were you going to use that?” she asked, blushing again.
He looked down at his plate. Before his brain had time to process his thought, the words came out of his mouth. “What on earth did I order?”
“You got a Number One,” Eli answered between bites of his salsa-drenched taco.
“Go ahead and use the salsa,” he said to Avery as he continued to ogle his plate. He took a fork and started shoving the lettuce and tomato out of the way so he could see the food. Unearthing what might have been a burrito, he cut into it and peeked inside to find crab meat and some kind of fish with celery, beans, and rice. The second item on his plate was flat like a tostada, but it was covered in a red sauce scraped out of the bottom of a pan, possibly a week-old pan. Unable to identify the third item on his plate, he debated whether or not to risk a bite. It might have been a taquito… or something else entirely.
When the waitress came back to fill up their drinks, though, he said, “Three more bowls of salsa, please.”
****
As they left the restaurant, Gavin offered to drive.
Avery shook her head. “I’d rather, if you don’t mind. I’m not much for night driving, so I’ll gladly let you take the bulk of the shifts once the sun goes down.
Before their little white hatchback had even made it all the way onto the freeway, Gavin’s stomach started clenching. He broke out in a sweat as he clutched his middle. The cramping pain intensified with each little rut in the road. Gavin glared at Avery, certain she was hitting every bump and pothole on purpose. There was no way she could accidentally hit every bad spot in the road.
Eli’s voice sounded hollow. “I don’t feel so good.”
Gavin sucked shallow breaths in through his nose, trying to minimize the movement of his diaphragm so his stomach might have a chance to settle down. Each breath, however, sent shards of pain shooting through his middle. “I’m with Eli,” he managed to gasp.
Avery, who had been studiously driving with her hands at ten and two o’clock on the steering wheel, started darting her eyes between the rearview mirror where she could watch her son and the road ahead. Concern in her voice, she asked, “Do we need to stop?”
Gavin didn’t hear Eli’s answer, but Avery was rapidly moving toward an exit that boasted a rest area. For the briefest of moments he wondered if she’d have stopped for him. Then another cramp doubled him over, which was at best awkward in the confined space of the car, and he no longer cared why she was stopping, just as long as she did stop.
By the time the car came to rest in its parking spot, Gavin and Eli had their doors partway open. They both ran for the bathroom as fast as they could, impeded by crippling stomach cramps as they were.
Gavin couldn’t tell which of them was whimpering the loudest – him or Eli.
Chapter Five
Moriarty, NM
December 23, 5:30 p.m.
Avery sat at a picnic table outside the rest area building. About twenty minutes prior, the sun had painted the sky in brilliant shades of pink, yellow, and orange. The sky is so big here. A New Mexico sunset can’t help but last forever. Those previously brilliant colors slowly faded, and the last little bit of daylight seeped away.
Rising from her seat, Avery stretched before striding toward the car. She fought with the driver-side door and seat as she tried to get to her suitcase. When she got it wrestled to the ground outside the car, she opened it and rummaged through until she found what she was looking for. Once she was done, Avery zipped the suitcase closed again but decided against trying to force it into the back seat. Settling it on the front passenger seat instead, she managed to keep it there long enough to allow her to slam the door closed.
Now how am I going to do this?
She paced uncomfortably outside the door to the men’s restroom for ten minutes before knocking. When she got no response, she cracked the door open far enough to yell in, “Is everything okay?”
“If by, ‘okay,’ you mean, did we get food poisoning, and are we going to die from it, then, yes, everything is okay.” Eli’s voice was void of its usual vim and vigor.
“I brought medicine,” she called through the two-inch opening she’d allowed herself. Neither of them will thank me for invading their privacy if I walk in there.
“What kind?” Gavin yelled.
She scrutinized the box in her hand and shouted back, “The generic of some sort of diarrhea medicine. It’s a pill you take.”
He hollered out, “Grab us a couple bottles of water, can you?”
Avery fetched the waters from the trunk of the hatchback and went back to the men’s room door. After knocking loudly, she opened it the requisite two inches and asked, “I’ve got two bottles of water and the pills. What do you want me to do with them?”
When she got no answer, she shoved the door further open. “Tell me where to put these, or I’m bringing them in there myself!”
This time it was Eli who called out, “Don’t even think about it! Set them on the ground outside the door!”
Shaking her head, Avery backed out of the bathroom and set the two bottles on the ground, balancing the box of pills on top of them. Lord, please make them read the directions.
****
Avery decided to take a stroll around the grounds and dug a flashlight out of her suitcase. Hoping to kill some time, she began exploring the area. When insects chasing her light began gathering in hordes, though, she returned to the relative bug-free safety of the car. She battled with the suitcase for nearly ten minutes before she got it shoved into the rear seat, and even then she wasn’t convinced it was going to stay there. After that accomplishment, she settled into the passenger seat with her tablet and tried to read a book.
Concentration, unfortunately, proved elusive. She gave up on the book and played a mindless card game.
After more than a half hour, Gavin and Eli made it back to the car. They both climbed in, and Gavin handed her the box of medicine. “You might want to keep that handy,” he said. “You never know.” His face was pale and waxy, his brown eyes glazed over. He’d removed his stocking cap, too, and his hair stood on end. If he’d looked anything like this when she’d met him, she would have given him directions to the homeless shelter, maybe even offered to take him there herself. Avery shook her head as she remembered feeling the need to protect her son as they’d passed near the shelter that morning. I need to be kinder about those things.
She twisted around in her seat to look at Eli, who seemed a little better off. His skin looked washed-out, and he was still perspiring, but his eyes were alert. “You going to make it?” she asked him.
Eli shrugged and said, “I’ll live.”
“Alright then, people, we’ve got a road calling our name!” She started the engine, but before she backed out, she had to tell them something. “You’ll never guess what the name of this rest area is.”
They both peered at her, but neither was willing to hazard a guess. “It’s the Rattlesnake
Rest Area! Wonder how it got its name?”
Avery put the car into reverse and pressed on the gas as she eased up on the clutch. The car moved, but something felt off.
“What’s wrong?” Gavin asked.
“It’s squishy,” she answered.
“Squishy?” he asked.
“Oh no,” Eli said. “Asking Mom to explain a car problem is worse than asking a toddler to explain calculus.”
Avery ignored him and said, “The car feels squishy when it moves. Something’s wrong.” She pulled forward back into the spot. “Yep. Still squishy.” Then she shut the engine off and got out. Gavin, looking reluctant, climbed out too.
“Well, there’s your problem,” he said to her. When she walked around to his side of the car, she saw what he was looking at. The rear passenger tire was flat. “Believe it or not, Eli, your mom’s dead-on. With a flat, the car would feel squishy when driven.”
You don’t have to say the word as if it’s a communicable disease.
Gavin sauntered around to the back of the car and opened the hatch. “We’re going to need to get all the luggage out. The spare tire should be under the carpet back here.
Avery knew how to change a flat, but she was more than happy to let Gavin take the lead on this. She would contribute by helping to remove the luggage. When Gavin set his last camera case on the ground, he lifted the carpeted bottom of the hatch.
“Well, there’s the doughnut,” he said. “Too bad it’s flat.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Avery said. “You have to be wrong. Maybe it’s similar to one of those rafts in airplanes where you have to pull a cord in order for it to inflate.” Gavin stepped to the side, and she pulled the small tire out of the back of the car. She examined every inch of the tire then held a flashlight in her mouth as she examined the compartment from which she’d pulled it.
When she was done, she stood up ramrod straight, pulled the flashlight from her mouth, and tossed it into the back of the car. She put her hands on her hips, and narrowed her eyes at him. “So now what?”
