And then we turned right, down a skinny road that led to nowhere. The pavement stopped abruptly and all around us, as far as I could see, was a shimmering white sea of salt. Above us, the sky was so blue it made my eyes ache.
“What is this?”
Dad explained it to me: we were looking at the remnants of a massive salt lake, now a forty-mile stretch of land so desolate that it was used for setting land speed records. “That’s later in the year, though—August, mainly. Right now we’ve pretty much got the place to ourselves. What do you think?”
“It’s cool.” It was a bit of an understatement for how vast the space was, how shiny and strange.
Dad slid the Explorer into Park and took the keys out of the ignition.
“What are you doing? We’re getting out?”
He unbuckled his seat belt. “We’re switching places. You’re going to drive.”
“Um, no. I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are. Think about it, Olivia. There are no other cars out here, so you can’t possibly bump into anyone. There’s nothing for miles that you could crash into. You can go as slow or fast as you want. There are no lanes, no crappy drivers who don’t use their blinkers. It’s perfect.”
I could see that these were excellent points, but I was shaking too hard to concede. “I don’t know. I think I’m a better passenger than a driver.”
“Well, let’s find out.” He used the lever on the bottom of his seat carefully, inching the seat forward to accommodate my height.
“But I don’t have any training or anything.”
Dad walked around the Explorer and tugged the passenger door open. “Let’s go, Liv. The world is your salt flat.”
I bit my lip. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Definitely not.” He gestured over his shoulder to miles of glistening, empty white. “What could go wrong?”
“That’s the last question to ask me,” I said. “I’m the chief cataloguer of what can go wrong.”
Dad waited.
“It is pretty,” I conceded, stepping out of the car. Pea-sized pebbles of salt crunched beneath my feet like clumps of snow. I took a few steps, digging the toes of my combat boots into the salt, and then picked up speed, breaking into an almost-run, sending salt flying like gravel. “Dad!” I called over my shoulder, the words reverberating off the flats.
For just a moment, I felt like a kid—a happy kid, the one I’d almost forgotten about, who had lived in my body before Daniel died.
“Liv! Catch!” Dad called suddenly, and I turned in time to see his key ring hurtling through the air in my general direction. I sighed, snagging the keys before they hit the ground.
We climbed back in the Explorer, and Dad talked me through it—foot on the brake, shift to Drive, ease onto the gas. We left the paved road and glided onto the flats, the tires slipping at first, skidding slightly before finding their traction.
It was the coolest and the scariest thing I’d ever done.
“Okay,” Dad said, settling back for the ride. “Now don’t be afraid to go more than ten miles an hour.”
I felt his smile rather than saw it, since I didn’t dare to look anywhere other than straight ahead. The Explorer was parallel to the freeway, which was just a tiny gray line in the distance. I took a deep breath, pressed down on the gas and just drove. The sun glinted off the salt, the whole valley a vast mirage of diamonds. Dad rolled down the windows and the air hit us, briny and sharp, the way wet beach towels smelled on the drive back from the ocean. My skin felt tingly and alive. I was having way too much fun to remember how terrified I was.
“Let her loose,” Dad instructed, and I pushed down harder on the gas, squealing as the Explorer lost its footing and found it, digging eagerly into grooves of salt left by other drivers, releasing a reservoir of pent-up energy.
Tears gathered in the corner of my eyes, but I was laughing, too. I brought the speedometer up to eighty before I eased up on the gas and spun the car around in a wide, arcing turn. We lurched forward as the car came to a complete stop, but Dad was right—it didn’t matter. There was just about nothing I could screw up here. There was no speed limit to break and, as long as I stayed clear of the mountains, nothing to brake for, either. There wasn’t one single thing like a tree or a street sign that I could hit, not a single pedestrian in danger. And even though I was in the middle of nowhere, somehow it wasn’t lonely at all. It was almost as if the whole universe had taken me into its arms and given me a big, gentle squeeze.
Let it go, Olivia. Let it go.
curtis
After her drive on the salt flats, Olivia was giddy, putting her feet up on the dashboard, even removing her seat belt for the quickest of moments to struggle out of the cocoon of her sweatshirt. One fear down. How many millions to go?
When we stopped for lunch and gassed the Explorer, she went inside the Quik Mart by herself and came out lugging a twenty-pound bag of charcoal, grinning. We stopped not far from the Metaphor Tree sculpture and made our own monument on the flat canvas of salt, while cars and tanker trucks whizzed by on I-80. First we wrote THE KAUFMANS, and then I stepped back to take some pictures while Olivia continued, adding each new piece of charcoal with studied precision. HERE IN SPIRIT, it said—“for Mom and Daniel,” she explained.
I turned away, tears smarting in my eyes. Remember this, I wanted to tell her. Remember the way the lake reflects the mountains, a perfect doubling of the world. Remember everything good, so you can balance out the bad.
We spent the afternoon wandering around Salt Lake City and the evening in front of the TV with a cheese and extra pepperoni pizza. Olivia fell into a fully zonked-out, open-mouthed sleep, but I stayed awake for a long time, thinking of the gun and Robert Saenz.
In the morning we drove on, Salt Lake City disappearing in the rearview mirror. Olivia pronounced the barren landscape “vastly less interesting than yesterday” and retreated into the world of her black hoodie. As we crested a hill, the engine on the Explorer revved suddenly, the needle on the rpms shooting from 2 to 5 and sinking down again.
“Whoa,” Olivia said, shucking off her headphones. “Is that supposed to happen?”
“I don’t think so.” I considered pulling over, but the Explorer kept right on churning along, ribbons of highway vanishing beneath our wheels and disappearing in the rearview mirror. I shrugged. “Seems to be fine.”
Olivia fished between the seats and pulled out the atlas. “Where are we stopping tonight?”
“Cheyenne.”
I watched as she creased the pages open at Wyoming and traced her finger along the red line of the interstate. “So, we’re only two away right now, and tomorrow we’ll only be one away.”
“Days, you mean?”
“I mean states. We’re two away.”
“By that logic, we’re only three away from Canada, and seven or eight away from the East Coast.”
“Why don’t we go there afterward?” Olivia asked. “We could stop in Omaha for a while, and then keep going to somewhere, like, I don’t know, Atlantic City. Or one of those tiny little islands off the coast of Maine.”
“Right,” I said, anything more frozen in my throat. When we reached Omaha, I would be leaving without her, sneaking off late after she and Kathleen had settled in or early, while they were still asleep, when Kathleen’s breath was coming out in her soft, sighing snore, when Olivia’s face was buried between two pillows. When they woke, I would be gone.
We were only two away from Kathleen now, which meant that I was only four or five, at the most, away from Robert Saenz. The mile markers along I-80 had been slowly ticking off our progress, one tiny green rectangle after another. Two more nights in hotels, maybe six more stops for gas and bathroom and prepackaged convenience fare: packets of chili-lime peanuts, giant cinnamon-sugar-covered muffins, so
das in Styrofoam cups. Two more continental breakfasts, two more fast-food lunches, two more dinners at diners, unless we made good time to Omaha and ate that last meal at Kathleen’s.
It was going too slow and going incredibly fast, both at once.
And then, like a practical application of Murphy’s Law, the Explorer did this weird chugging kind of thing and lurched forward, then choked, then lurched again.
Olivia said, “Um...”
We were going up a hill, if you could call it that. It was more like a gentle rise, not a serious climb like the one just outside Salt Lake City, but for some reason the Explorer staggered forward, as if out of gas, or maybe out of breath. I steered to the side of the road and came to a stop. The car was still running, but nothing happened when I put my foot on the gas. After a moment, I turned off the ignition.
We were quiet for a stunned moment, and then Olivia chirped, “Now we just have to wait for that nice gentleman from the Motor Club to show up.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Groundhog Day, remember? We must have watched that a dozen times together.”
I chuckled, and then, letting the absurdity of the situation sink in, I threw back my head and laughed.
We were in the middle of nowhere. Traffic whizzed past on the freeway, going far too fast to stop. Mostly these were trucks, speeding onward, needing to make good time on the road. When people talked about population explosions and a lack of available land, etc., they were clearly discounting eastern Utah and western Wyoming. It was miles of nothing, as far as the eye could see.
“Okay,” I announced. “I’m just letting the engine relax for a minute, and then I’ll start her up again.”
“Is that a proven mechanic’s technique, letting the engine ‘relax’?”
“I know very little about proven mechanic techniques.” In fact, there were exactly four things I knew how to do to a car: replace the battery, fix a flat, jump-start an engine and change the oil. Somehow, I suspected this was a more complicated problem.
Olivia nodded gravely. “Sounds like a good enough technique to me, though.”
“Here goes. One, two...” On three, I turned the key in the ignition, the engine started, and I turned to grin at Olivia. “See? It just needed to relax.” I grasped the gearshift, shifting from Park to Drive, and gave the car a little gas. Nothing. I tried again. Nothing.
“I can’t help but notice that we’re not moving,” Olivia commented.
I turned off the engine, turned it on, went nowhere and repeated the process once again. “Well, kiddo,” I said. “Time for Plan B.”
Olivia reached into her backpack, rustled around and came up with her Fear Journal.
“What are you going to write? ‘Breaking down in the middle of nowhere’?”
She didn’t look up. “That and getting picked up by a seemingly normal rancher who turns out to be a psychotic killer who hangs his victims upside down in his basement until the blood drains completely out of their bodies.”
I wanted to say something funny like That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, but Olivia was actually writing this down, her brows narrowing with focus. “Geez, Liv,” I said and, releasing my seat belt, stepped out of the car. It was sunny, but the air was crisp. I pulled out my cell phone. No bars. Twenty paces ahead, at the crest of the hill, I finally got some reception. After some consideration, I dialed 9-1-1. It didn’t seem like an emergency, exactly, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. If Kathleen were here, she would have located our AAA card by now. Of course, Kathleen would also have renewed the membership when it expired, and I hadn’t bothered.
“Dad?” Olivia was standing behind me, her arms tucked into the body of her sweatshirt, the sleeves flapping loose. I held up a finger to quiet her while I talked to the dispatcher.
When I finished, I slipped my phone back into my pocket and repeated the news. “Someone’s coming to tow us to Lyman,” I said.
“What’s Lyman?”
“Nearest town, I guess.”
Olivia frowned. “I haven’t seen any signs for Lyman.”
“That’s because psychotic killers who hang their victims upside down prefer to keep their locations anonymous.”
“Dad!”
We waited on the side of the road for about forty-five minutes, me pacing in front of the car and Olivia sitting inside it, probably thinking of more ways this could turn out badly. She didn’t even know the worst of it, that there was a revolver wrapped in one of my T-shirts and wedged tightly into the spare tire compartment, where I had been planning to keep it until Oberlin. This problem with the Explorer, whatever it was, threw a wrench into my plan. I didn’t have a holster; I hadn’t exactly been planning to walk around with a revolver tucked into my waistband. Could I leave the gun in the car, and leave the car in someone else’s hands?
“How long has it been?” Olivia called. “Maybe they’ve forgotten about us.”
Just then a car passed us slowly and pulled over to offer help. It was an older couple; whatever they could offer probably wasn’t going to get the Explorer back on the road. I urged them on with a friendly wave.
“You were our last hope!” Olivia yelled after them mournfully through the open window.
“You know,” I told her, “It could be worse.”
“Of course it could. We could be in the middle of the Mojave when it was a hundred-and-thirty degrees.”
“Or a massive snowstorm.”
“Tornado.”
“Wildfire.”
“And I could have finished my Big Gulp already.”
“And the gas station could have been out of apple-cinnamon muffins,” I added.
“And no cell service. That was the problem with the Donner Party right there, wasn’t it? They took their trip about a hundred and fifty years too early.”
“If only they could have held out for a bit longer,” I said, and Olivia doubled over in her seat, cracking up.
I laughed, too, in tight little barks. The more we waited, the more nervous I became. What was I going to do with the gun? If the car was towed away, someone else might find it, steal it, use it. One phone call to law enforcement and my plan to arrive in Oberlin would be an unequivocal failure. I walked around to the back of the Explorer, popping the latch and staring into our mess. Only two days on the road, and somehow the zipper tab on my suitcase had disappeared. Yesterday’s clothes were now balled-up in a mesh laundry bag. My lone tennis shoe, its mate out of sight, probably accounted for the tumbling sound I heard whenever we took a corner. Olivia’s textbooks, all untouched, littered the floor.
“You think you can fix it from back there?” Liv called over her shoulder.
“Very funny. Just trying to straighten up a bit.” When I was sure she was looking the other way, I pulled up the floorboard and peeked into the spare tire well. Zach Gaffaney had handed the gun to me, loaded; I’d removed the cartridges, figuring if I was found with an unloaded weapon it would be better than being found with a loaded weapon. I’d stowed the cartridges carefully, out of Olivia’s sight, and promised myself not to touch the gun until I was in Oberlin. Even unloaded and wrapped in my T-shirt, the gun managed to terrify me—it was unregistered, illegal, recently transported across state lines. But could I leave my unregistered, illegal handgun in the hands of a mechanic, even if there was no need to poke around in my spare tire well? Desperate, I entertained the idea of ditching the gun along the side of the road now and somehow doubling back to get it later.
“Dad?”
I stood up too quickly, cracking the top of my head against the roof of the car and followed her trembling, pointed finger. A tow truck had passed us, was slowly backing up on the side of the road. Leave it to Liv to be terrified of the one person who could actually rescue us. “Get your stuff ready,” I called to her, unwrapping the Colt and wedging
it inexpertly in my waistband, where I hoped it was hidden by the untucked hem of my shirt.
The tow truck driver was huge—six-five easily, with a stomach that hung over his belt. “Raymond Ellis,” he boomed, stepping out of the truck. “What have we got here?”
“I’m Curtis Kaufman,” I said, coming around from the back of the car. I’d figured the Colt would be small enough to conceal, but now I wondered if I’d only been kidding myself. Was it obvious I was carrying a weapon? Did it stick out like a sore thumb? I cleared my throat. “Well, the engine starts up fine, but then that’s it.”
“Could be a lot of things. Radiator, transmission...”
I described our sudden acceleration just outside of Salt Lake City, more than an hour ago now.
Raymond whistled. It wasn’t warm, but he was sweating, the way big guys did. “Could be the transmission, then. Anyway, looks like you’ll be needing a tow. Someone’s going to have to look at her.”
Olivia had come up behind me, silent as a thief. I felt, rather than heard or saw, her presence. She was probably assessing Raymond Ellis’s height and weight, trying to figure out the level of threat he posed, or how the two of us might be able to overpower him, if needed.
“What are my options?” I asked. I was doing some calculations of my own—“transmission” had a frighteningly expensive ring to it.
Raymond shook his head a bit. “Well, back to Salt Lake City might be best. Course, that’s a ways in the other direction. You’ve got Cheyenne about three, four hours east. Closest option would be Lyman, maybe ten minutes down the road.”
“There’s a mechanic in Lyman? And services? Because we would probably have to spend the night.”
Raymond considered. “Sure—it’s got all the services you would need. Motel, restaurant, the works. Best mechanic in all of Wyoming is in Lyman.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”
Raymond grinned. “Well, I oughta know. He’s my brother.”
A few minutes later, Raymond had the front end of the Explorer off the ground, and Olivia and I were wedged into the front seat of the tow truck, with Olivia’s knees angled sharply toward mine and away from the driver’s seat.
The Fragile World Page 12
