The Fragile World

by Paula Treick DeBoard

  “Hey,” Dad said softly.

  I sniffed. “Hmm?”

  “Some things are hard to talk about. You know?”

  I nodded.

  “Look, do me a favor, will you? Get out that atlas and tell me how far we are from Imlay.”

  It turned out that we weren’t far at all. “What’s in Imlay?” I asked.

  “Just wait,” Dad said, and a few miles later, he slowed for an exit that read “Thunder Mountain.”

  “Another mountain?”

  “Patience...” Dad said. “When we took our trip out here, along I-80, your mother had us stop at every single brown historical marker. You know, every place a president spent the night, every stop on the Pony Express.”

  I smiled. That was Mom. Give her a teachable moment, and she learned or taught or both. “So, what president spent the night in Imlay, Nevada?”

  Dad shook his head. “Look.”

  And then in front of us, a strange mountain was rising on the horizon, a mountain made of stone and metal and wood, a giant man-made sculpture.

  Dad told me the story: A man from Oklahoma had relocated to Imlay after fighting overseas in World War II, and he’d built the monument with scraps of found art as a tribute to Native American life. As we got closer, I spotted car hoods, a giant metal arch, a white staircase leading to an upper level. Dad and I circled the monument on foot, pointing things out.

  “I bet Mom loved this,” I said.

  “She was fascinated, of course. We spent hours crawling all over this thing. The owner was alive then, and he gave us a guided tour in return for a small donation.”

  “Someone lived here?”

  “Part art, part insanity, I figured,” Dad said.

  Back in the car, I was suddenly starving, my buffet salad long forgotten. I popped the top of a can of Pringles, fished out a handful, and passed them over to Dad. “Original flavor, the way you like them.”

  Dad must have been hungry, too; he downed the chips with little concern for chewing before swallowing. “The original is always better.”

  “You sound like a cheesy inspirational poster.”

  “That’s me, a walking cheesy inspirational poster.”

  “All you need is a backdrop of snow-capped mountains or hot-air balloons.”

  “Or a rainbow.”

  I laughed. “Definitely a rainbow.”

  Dad was quiet a minute, crunching. Then he said, “I think I got pretty lucky with my road trip companion. Not everyone’s as funny as you.”

  I pretended to glare at him. “You calling me funny?”

  He grinned back. “I mean, not funny-funny, but cool.”

  “Dad, I got news for you. I’m definitely not cool.”

  “Sure you are, kiddo. In every way that could possibly matter.”

  It was almost too great of a compliment to take, and to deflect the awkwardness of a father-daughter-Disney-Channel moment, I had no choice but to reach in my backpack for my iPod and snug the earbuds gently into each ear.

  curtis

  The closer we got to our hotel in Winnemucca, the more jittery I felt, as if I were coming down from a major caffeine overdose. Even though reception had been spotty, I kept checking my phone obsessively for new messages. “In case Mom calls,” I said, when Olivia noticed.

  “Since when does Mom call you?” she asked.

  “Like I said, just in case.”

  “Just in case what? That something goes wrong in Omaha and you have to change into your superhero costume and fly there at the speed of light?”

  I stopped checking my phone, although it didn’t stop me from being nervous. Sometimes Olivia could be a bit of a pain.

  The hotel was decent, part of a budget chain that wasn’t connected to a large casino, although there were two rows of slot machines in the lobby. A grizzled-looking woman was planted in front of one of the machines, pressing buttons repeatedly with her right hand and inhaling intermittently from a stubby cigar in her left. I caught Olivia’s raised eyebrow and asked the front desk attendant for a nonsmoking room.

  After Olivia pronounced our room—with its double queen beds and bolted-down television—“do-able,” I stepped out with the ice bucket and took my time coming back from the lobby, wandering the perimeter of the property instead of cutting through the parking lot. In a few hours I would be meeting Zach Gaffaney; I would be buying a gun and crossing a boundary, and there would be no going back. I slowed further, wandering past the pool, a dinky rectangular hole with greenish water and a dozen SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK, NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY signs. The air was markedly cooler than it had been in Reno, and it definitely wasn’t swimsuit weather. I glanced at the license plates in the parking lot: Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona. Ours was the only California plate, which didn’t surprise me. Most of the Californians I knew didn’t venture beyond Disneyland or the San Diego Zoo or Las Vegas, unless they were on a plane. I figured this accounted for the weak grasp of geography among my students—they knew the states that bordered the Pacific Ocean, plus Texas, Florida and New York. If I had mentioned Nebraska, they would have had to Google it. No, Winnemucca, Nevada, was far off the radar of anyone I knew, save Zach Gaffaney.

  “Dad?”

  I whirled around, ice spilling out of the plastic bucket. Olivia was on the balcony above, barely visible since she was standing well back from the edge.

  “What are you doing? You were just staring into space.”

  “Just thinking, I guess.”

  “Well, don’t think so hard. You freaked me out. Plus, the ice is melting.”

  “We’ll get more later. You hungry?”

  “For real food, you mean? Not a bacteria-laden buffet? Not candy and cookies?”

  I started up the stairs. “Real food. Tell you what, kiddo. We’ll drive around and you’ll pick.”

  “Breakfast for dinner?” This was Olivia’s favorite meal—maybe because the fantastic weekend breakfasts Kathleen had made, bacon and eggs and sausage, sometimes pancakes or waffles, too, had disappeared along with Kathleen. Most mornings, we were lucky if there was enough milk to cover our stale cereal.

  When I reached Olivia, I gave her a little squeeze and then removed my arm carefully. Could she tell I was shaking?

  It wasn’t hard to find a restaurant with a twenty-four-hour breakfast, probably because everything in Nevada seemed geared to a round-the-clock schedule. Olivia ordered the endless stack of pancakes, and I went for the French dip, taking only a few bites before setting the sandwich down.

  “Must be all the sweets along the way,” I said.

  “I didn’t know it was possible for your appetite to be ruined,” Olivia commented. She had taken on Kathleen’s role of monitoring what I ate, commenting when she found an empty container of ice cream in the trash can or a candy bar wrapper that had gone through the wash with my pants. “So, what is it? Are you nervous or something?”

  I tried not to react. “About...?”

  “Um, seeing Mom. Hello—your wife? My mother?”

  I took a sip of water. “Aren’t you?”

  “Was that a ‘yes’?”

  “Sure, I suppose,” I said. Over Olivia’s head, I kept an eye on the clock, watching as the second hand raced around the digits. Stop, I thought, willing the universe to understand my wordless plea. Just give me another minute to think.

  After dinner, I pulled into a parking space at our hotel. Liv unlocked her door manually and let herself out, then looked back at me, realizing that I hadn’t turned off the engine. Her look lasted a long moment. “What.” Her voice was flat, as if she couldn’t bear to ask a question because I would have to answer, and the answer wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear. Or, more likely, it would be what she wanted to hear, but it wouldn’t be the truth.


  It was hard to look at her. “I think I’m going to drive around for a few minutes, clear my head.”

  “We’ve been driving all day, clearing our heads,” Olivia pointed out. She was standing in the gap of the open passenger door, probably considering whether she should hop back into the car. But I couldn’t let her, of course.

  “Twenty minutes,” I told her. “Half an hour, tops.”

  She laughed. “Is this some kind of test?”

  “Test?”

  “You know, throw the girl who’s afraid to swim into the middle of the deep end and see if she can make her way out?”

  “Liv. No.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Dad, what’s going on? Are you trying to ditch me here or something? I mean—” she spoke through my protests “—it would make a great headline and a nice chapter in my memoirs and all, but I’d just as soon not be the girl who has to make her own way in the world after being left at a second-rate hotel in Winnemucca, Nevada.”

  I put my hand over my heart, offended. “You think this hotel is second-rate?”

  It was the best flippant comment I could come up with on short notice, but it must have worked. Liv shook her head at me and fumbled in her pocket for her room swipe-key. “All right, Mr. I Don’t Want to Spend the Evening in the Company of my Eccentric Sixteen-Year-Old Daughter. If you’re gone for more than half an hour, I’m alerting police and local authorities and Mom. We’ll put out a—what do you call it?—elder alert.”

  “Deal.” Even though my entire body was on edge, and the few bites of French dip were threatening to make a reappearance, I grinned at her. Everything’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be? “Hey, I’m going to make sure you get in okay. Why don’t you get into the room, look around and wave to me from the balcony. And I’ll have my phone on, just in case.”

  She nodded slowly, then shut the door and walked away, her hands balled into fists, her fists crammed in her pockets. I tracked her all the way up the outside staircase and watched her use the swipe-key at the door. The interior light flicked on. A few seconds later she stepped back into the doorway. Instead of a wave, she gave me a military-style salute, turned on her heel and closed the door behind her.

  It wasn’t too late to back out of this. The words played like a broken record, stuck on the needle of my conscience. I could dial Zach Gaffaney’s number and feed him some excuse about government surveillance and wiretapping. It wasn’t too late to slide the gearshift into Park and head upstairs with the doggy bag of French dip I was never going to finish. Olivia and I could settle into our beds and watch some mindless TV together, like a dancing competition or a celebrity cook-off, things that were high stakes for other people, but not for us.

  I could try again to forget Robert Saenz.

  I’d almost managed to do it before, during his short prison tenure. And maybe I would succeed again, at least for a while.

  But I knew he would always be there, in the wrinkles of my brain, waiting. As long as he was alive, I would think of him, the man responsible for the death of my son and the wide swath of destruction in its wake.

  So long as he was alive.

  What’s your purpose in life? Bill Meyers had asked. And in my mind I’d answered, To make things right. To kill Robert Saenz.

  I pulled over a block from the hotel and dialed Zach’s number. The phone rang once, twice. Maybe he wouldn’t be home, and I would have to call it off.

  “Yeah?” It was the same suspicious voice, wary. What had happened to Zach Gaffaney that living in a trailer with all his guns was the life that made the most sense? Was he wondering what had gone wrong with me, for me to be making this call?

  “It’s...Curtis.”

  “You got the money?”

  “Yes.” My right hand went to my wallet, instinctively. It was fatter than normal, stuffed with twenties.

  “Cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re alone?”

  “I’m alone,” I confirmed.

  He gave me directions to his place on the outskirts of town, and as I drove, I wiped my clammy palms on my jeans. The night was clear, every branch and mailbox standing out in relief under a garish moon. The whole world was trying to get my attention: This is real, this is no joke. I glanced in my mirrors, half expecting lights behind me. Or maybe judgment would come from above—a single bolt of lightning out of a clear sky.

  Zach was waiting for me, peeking out of his trailer to make sure I was alone. He took a half step onto a metal fold-down stair, looking twitchy and restless. I might not have recognized him—when he’d been with Marcia he had been more or less clean-shaven, even if he had preferred concert T-shirts and jeans with ragged hems. Now he wore camouflage pants and a stained wife beater, and his hair hung long down his back.

  He held out a hand, palm up, and I passed him the wad from my pocket. He counted it slowly out loud.

  I glanced around, but the nearest residence, another trailer, was at least a quarter mile down the road. I had been prepared to say no if asked inside, but Zach seemed as uneasy about having me there as I was uneasy to be there. For all I knew, his entire property was rigged with homemade explosives, ready to be detonated at the first sign of trouble.

  He reached back through the open door into the trailer and came out with a revolver—a Colt .38 special, as we’d agreed. “It’s loaded,” he said, and I took the gun carefully, remembering the golden rule I’d learned in my research: keep your finger off the trigger and the gun is completely harmless. Again, I felt the shakiness in my hands and tried to hide it by stowing the gun in my waistband.

  When I looked up, Zach was studying me, more relaxed now that the money was wedged deep in his pocket. “So, you’re just passing through or what?”

  “Yeah, passing through,” I confirmed.

  He seemed to consider me, more focused now. I wasn’t sure if he remembered me from all those years before; he wasn’t the only one who had changed. “Well, you take care,” he said finally, and with a last look around, he vanished inside the trailer, the door slapping shut. He must have pressed a switch, because a second later the light outside his trailer was extinguished, and I had to stumble my way, half running, back to the Explorer.

  It wasn’t until I was back in the hotel parking lot that I gave into my fear, realizing how wrong things could have gone. I might have walked into some kind of sting, for example, with an entire SWAT team waiting for me at the other end. Zach might have been waiting to rob me, the unsuspecting moron who had shown up at a secluded location with hundreds of dollars in cash. Any number of things could have happened, and then Olivia would have been left in our hotel room, waiting, her anxiety escalating to full-blown panic.

  But somehow, it had worked. I almost felt like laughing—this was exactly the sort of nightmare that gun control advocates worried about, if even an idiot like me could get his hands on a weapon.

  Now I just had to get to Omaha, drop Olivia off safely and finally, be on my way.

  olivia

  In the morning Dad was awake before I was, showered and dressed and sipping coffee from a paper cup by the time I opened my eyes.

  “Ready for some fun?”

  “Um, no,” I groaned, looking at the digital alarm clock on the nightstand. “It’s only 7:45.”

  “Usually we’re at school by now,” he pointed out.

  “But this is vacation. This is our grand voyage.”

  Dad rolled his eyes. “Still. Bus leaves in half an hour.”

  I struggled to a sitting position. “What bus?”

  “It’s an expression.”

  “I don’t think that’s an expression.”

  He sighed. “Just hurry up, Liv. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  Grumbling, I dragged myself out of bed and began digging around in
my suitcase, sorting my clothes into piles. I’d been living out of a suitcase for exactly one day, and already my whole world felt disorganized.

  We were on the road by eight-thirty, an undigested, doughy cinnamon roll from the sorry-looking continental breakfast lodged awkwardly in my stomach. I dug in my backpack and came up with my Fear Journal, just so I could have it at the ready. I’d filled several pages last night, while Dad was “clearing his head,” but he’d been back within a half hour, as promised, bearing his and hers giant blue slushies. We’d fallen asleep in front of an episode of Law and Order: SVU and I’d woken with an electric-blue tongue.

  And now this, whatever this was. We passed Battle Mountain and Elko, the towns resting flat on the horizon, their buildings as small as doll furniture. I squinted into the distance, trying to figure it out. Surprise! I’m leaving you in the middle of Nevada. Or Surprise! We’re not going to Omaha at all. We’re going to drive all the way to the East Coast to get some really great lobster. Whatever he was thinking, Dad seemed more relaxed than he had yesterday, but more focused, too—like a ship captain following the route that had been charted for him.

  Eventually, we took an exit marked by a small sign: Bonneville Salt Flats. I took off my headphones and sat up straight, paying attention as we drove north, the freeway behind us.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We went miles without passing another car. I looked at my cell phone: one single bar for reception. A mountain range was ahead of us; to the right was a vast, empty space that I realized must be the salt flats. The experience was freaky in an end-of-time sort of way, as if we were driving into a Twilight Zone version of our own world after it had been decimated by an asteroid or whatever it was that decimated entire worlds.