by Shawn Vestal
She puts on the headlights. Boyd is looking at her now, moon-faced, eyes black in the shadows of the car, waiting for a declaration of purpose, a statement, she knows, like those she made back in the hotel room before they left—It will be me and you. Isn’t that the way you want it, too? Don’t you want to be alone with me, Boyd?—and now those statements feel like a nest of tethers around her feet, ready to tangle her up any way she tries to move.
“We’ll get to Short Creek. We’ll figure this out,” she says at last.
“He was my best friend. Really my only friend. In the whole world there’s just my mom and him and nothing else. Nobody. Assholes. What kind of a person does that to his friend?”
“Boyd, he’s going to be fine.”
“That’s not exactly what I’m wanting to hear from you right now, Loretta. I wish it was him I was worried about, but it’s not.”
“You’re not a bad person.”
“That’s not it, either.”
A tiny cluster of lights appears, far ahead in the cave of darkness. Ely, Nevada. Halfway.
Boyd says, “What happened to the you from yesterday?”
“Right here.”
“The you from last night?”
Loretta is visited by a pang of conscience regarding her sexual sin—for doing that with someone she had just met, like some whore. Her father had talked about her purity constantly. She remembers him counseling her, giving her bedtime chats, reading her verses about her virtue, the talk of righteousness flooding her mind with thoughts of sin. “The Lord delights in the chastity of His children.” Does she still believe that, though she thinks she does not? Is she wrong that she can simply decide what she believes?
“Same me,” she says.
• • •
Jason sits in the room at the Stockmen’s with the note. Seventy-five hours pass. One hundred forty-three hours pass. Five thousand three hundred fifty-four hours pass. He will live in this dim room forever. A numb, gentle throb in his cranium. He remembers the LeBaron. His father’s car. The keys are no longer on the countertop by the TV. He looks around, digs through pockets. Goes downstairs and out into the parking lot, where there is no longer a pea-green 1970 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron. The sky blazes, summer blue and winter cold.
He will live here. At the Stockmen’s. Maid service. Buffets. Perfect.
He has fifty-two dollars and fifty-two cents. He goes inside and pays for another night. Eleven dollars. There is a mirror behind the counter and he assesses himself: gawky and tall, monster ears, hair starting to frizz out of its bun, a bright rash of freckled self-consciousness on his cheeks. He hates the way he looks. It is all there, every time he examines himself for the signs. The failure is all right there.
He sits on the lobby couch, a burnt-red leather with a fake rustic wood frame. He wants to lie down. Someday, this will be a story. Maybe it will develop a moral. His mom could figure that out. He wonders if he will ever tell her this story and listen as she makes it a lesson. He wonders if he will ever tell his father and listen as he identifies the mistakes Jason made, looking backward for the blame.
He can afford three more days here.
He thinks of his grandfather. Crusty old Grandpa. How did such a tough guy create the family line that leads to Jason? When he was Jason’s age he left home and went to kill people in another country. But Jason—a little pain makes him cry. When Boyd shot him in the arm with a BB gun last summer, burying the BB in a gray lump under his skin, they’d gone to Grandpa for help. Jason’s lower lip trembled, and when Grandpa saw it he turned away, embarrassed. “Don’t start bawling,” he said as he squeezed out the BB like a pimple.
Jason opens his eyes to bright sunlight. Lying on the couch in the lobby, head on a big leather pillow. The high afternoon sun slants in, pushing a boundary of sunlight across the ornate maroon and gold carpet. A loud ringing bursts from the casino. Somebody’s luck has gone right.
Good luck. This will be the place to wait for it.
He walks outside. For some reason, his head doesn’t hurt, though the hangover slows him down. Bile burns the back of his throat. The cold tightens his face. Feels good. His clothing is huge, heavy. He has been physically shrunken. What a preposterous person he is, to shrink like this. He thinks of heaven, of the idea that our lives will be played out for all to see. In heaven, on the movie screen, will everyone see this? His shrinking? He used to live in terror that everyone in heaven—his family and friends, the angels and the heavenly host, God himself—would be forced to watch him masturbate seven thousand times. And now, though he is done with God, bored with God, the idea of that heavenly scrutiny reenters his mind with the force of pure belief.
Everyone in heaven who watches his movie will be stronger than him. Everyone he knows is stronger. Boyd and Loretta are stronger. Evel Knievel is stronger. That guy from last night, whoever he was. Stronger. Mom and Dad. Every kid at school, every dull old farmer at church and his wife—stronger. Uncle Dean, that crazy fuck: way stronger.
Jason decides to pray.
“Our Father in Heaven,” he whispers, standing on the bright concrete outside the Stockmen’s, folding his arms and bowing his head.
His eyes burn and fill. Naturally, he thinks.
He stops. Opens his eyes. Unfolds his arms. What could he even ask for? Make me happy, please. Give me what I want.
He eats alone in the Stockmen’s. Cheeseburger deluxe and fries—$1.95. He remembers when the idea of eating hamburgers every day was thrilling, but this tastes like feed. Like fodder. Goes to his room. Takes off his shoes. Turns on the TV. Baretta rerun, in the middle of the afternoon. Strange. Lies on the bed, head propped on two pillows, and watches the screen between his feet. Baretta talks to his cockatoo. The loosened toes of Jason’s white socks are pooched up, like tiny elf hats. He thinks of the elves in The Lord of the Rings, fleet and deadly with bow, light and magical, and he thinks of Samwise Gamgee, the loyal friend, and he thinks maybe he ought to get that book out and vanish into Middle Earth. Remembers that the book is in the box in the trunk of the LeBaron. With his Evel Knievel scrapbook and his box of eight-tracks.
Someone bangs on the door and calls, “Jason?”
Is that Boyd? Sounds like Boyd. It’s Boyd and Loretta. A massive flood pours out of Jason, tumbles him off the bed, carries him to the door. “Catch you later” meant later today. It meant now. They are back, it is them at the door. Of course they didn’t leave him. They wouldn’t do that.
Another knock, rapid, impatient.
Jason pulls open the door. A man he knows but can’t place stands in the hall, one thumb in a belt loop and a cocky grin filling his face like stones in a bag. Who is he? Why is he so familiar? He wears a hat that reads “Sandy Excavation.”
“Hey, bud,” the man says, peering past Jason into the room. “Where’s Lori?”
• • •
By the time they reach Hurricane, Boyd is asleep. The dusk, the wintry landscape of red hills, pine, and scarves of snow, the familiar pattern of lights, and then the town itself as they draw into it—every mile nearer to home, nearer to Short Creek—feeds Loretta’s anxiety as it becomes more familiar. Hurricane is where they came for supplies. It’s where she came with Tonaya when they were chasing around after the party boys. She pilots the LeBaron carefully down Main Street, twenty-three miles per hour. She passes the bright Texaco station where she met Bradshaw. She passes the Safeway, where she spots a Chevrolet van that she realizes is probably the one that Brother Gardner and his two wives and eight children pilot around town.
They’re out of Hurricane and back on the highway. Almost there now. She will be driving past her home inside of an hour, past the home where she grew up and to the home where she moved in with Dean and Ruth. Her mother will be sitting somewhere, mending or a book in her lap, and her father will be in the lighted garage, space heater at his feet, planing or sanding a
piece of wood. She barely knows her parents. She barely understands them as people. She thinks of the things that Jason and Boyd said about their parents on the way down here—for them, their parents are individuals, with characteristics. Boyd’s mom is funny and irresponsible and permissive and, occasionally, unexpectedly cruel—she’d had his dog put down after it shit on the carpet. Jason’s dad is serious and punctual, dour and dull; he turns everything into a lesson about some form of looming danger, whether it is moral disaster or pinkeye in the herd. His mother is, somehow, he had said, exactly the same, except that where his father sees doom, she sees joy; where he is grim about the dangers of life, she is optimistic. She remembers thinking how wonderful they sounded.
The sprinkled lights of Short Creek emerge. She can identify two thirds of the lights by family name. A tiny constellation, spinning around itself. She could find Dean’s place with her eyes closed. She remembers moving there. The ache of disaster in her heart. She remembers his visitation the night of their wedding. His hand on her knee. Holding her in place.
• • •
Baker says, “I guess you pups thought you were pretty smart.”
Jason doesn’t want to answer. He wants to throw up from somewhere deep inside his bones.
Baker says, “Pret-ty smart.” He acts very happy, pepped up. The smell of liquor fills the car. Baker taps a ring on the steering wheel, chews gum like he’s trying to kill it. The front end of his Nova shimmies, shaking the steering wheel, but he keeps the gas pedal pinned to the floor. The needle flutters past ninety.
He says, “Got balls, though. Gotta say.”
Every now and then they pass a semi, but mostly the freeway is deserted. The sun droops behind them, a blurred white disk with a golden rind. Far ahead, hanging above the horizon, a blurry gray storm smears the sky. They drive past Wells, and the next sign reads: WENDOVER 59, SALT LAKE CITY 179.
Back in Elko, Baker came into the hotel room asking questions, scanning the place. Jason felt groggy, stoned. It took him a long time to remember who Baker was. He kept saying, I don’t know, I don’t know, and Baker would ask again, screwing his head to one side while he squinted at Jason. Where’s Lori? Where’s your Indian buddy? Sure, you know. I guess I’m not as stupid as you might think, bud. Why’d they leave? What happened? You all have a falling-out? The road crew broke up? Answer me. I ain’t such a bad guy if you just answer me. Here. He took Jason’s ear between thumb and forefinger and twisted it so hard Jason thought it might rip. Jog your memory? No? Okay, try this: Where were you going before the breakup of the fun-time crew? Where were you pups headed? Nowhere? Just going nowhere? He wrenched the ear again, stretching the skin like taffy, and Jason howled in complete surrender. He kept saying, I don’t know, I don’t know, which was true, but he was also getting ready to say something else. It didn’t take much. Jason was lying on his side on the bed, trying to squirm away, and Baker was kneeling over him, the liquor smell making Jason sick. Baker wrenched again. Hush up now, Jason. So, were you all headed down to Hilldale? Jason shook his head. He said, I really don’t know, I really don’t know, they left me. Down to Nephi? He shook his head. Back to Short Creek? Jason doesn’t know what his face did then, but Baker let go, clapped briskly, and said, The Crick. All right. He stepped to the door, stopped with his hand on the knob, and looked back at Jason, curled on the bed. Pondered him for fifteen seconds, ticktocked his head sideways, made an aggravated face, shrugged, said, Get your crap. And then they were in his Nova, and they were going.
“Only thing is, you were not that smart,” Baker says now, waving his index finger back and forth like a windshield wiper. “There was a flaw in the design. Can you tell me what it was?”
“No.”
“Guess.”
“I don’t know,” Jason says, holding wadded-up toilet paper from the Stockmen’s against his ear.
“Jesus, you’re a baby.” He says this the way he’s been saying everything, as though nothing could puncture his happy mood. “I’d have guessed you were a little tougher.”
A thin, cold draft whines in along the door. The rearview mirror blazes with reflected sun, and the Nova’s shadow races ahead of them on the pale asphalt, veined and crossed with black tar. It will take seven hours or so, Jason knows, to get to Short Creek.
“The fatal error,” Baker says, “was the checks.”
“The checks?”
“The checks.”
“What do you mean?”
Baker laughs out loud.
“Are you shitting me?” He looks at Jason again with that screwed-in focus, as though he could auger the truth out of him, and then relaxes and laughs, deep and real. “Lori, Lori.”
“What?”
“Let me tell you something about our Loretta,” he says. He cocks his head and looks at the road thoughtfully. He smiles, starts to speak, then stops, frowns, smiles, scratches his jaw. “Naw. Never mind.”
“No, what?”
“Naw. So. They really ditched you. Just split.”
Jason doesn’t answer.
“That is unfortunate. That does suck.”
He hasn’t stopped smiling. He fidgets, snaps his fingers. He lifts a silver flask from his shirt pocket, unscrews, tips it, and gasps happily.
“She ain’t so great with the promises, little Loretta,” he says. “So, yeah, that does suck. But your deal was gonna go bad eventually, one way or another.”
Jason thinks about checks. Dean’s checks? Tries to piece it together.
“So you’re here for Dean?” he asks.
“Some for him, some for me.”
They drive. They pass West Wendover, a tiny town before the Utah border, and as they come to the state line, a white, flat plain opens, a cracked moonscape running so far and so flat that Jason thinks he can see the earth curve. It could be purgatory, with Baker as guide. Jason has died and is being ferried to hell.
A sign says: BONNEVILLE SALT FLATS VISITORS CENTER 1.
“I love this place,” Baker says. “This is where the Donner Party got itself shitwise. Didn’t bring enough water. Lost livestock. Got weak and sick. Took too long crossing, so they were still in the mountains when winter came.”
He laughs. They round a bend and town lights appear, yellow in the dusk.
“Remember this for your next big adventure, kid,” he says. “Things don’t go bad at the end. That’s just when it becomes obvious. First, you cross a desert of salt without enough to drink. Then your oxes die. Your kids get scurvy.”
He laughs again. “Next thing, you’ve eaten all your horses and it won’t stop snowing.”
The lilac light on the salt pan is turning black, grain by grain. The world seems too large, too empty, for them to simply drive a few hours and catch up with Boyd and Loretta, but the car’s velocity and Baker’s focus convinces Jason that they will find them, and that it will be bad for Loretta, maybe very bad, and it will be bad for Boyd and bad for Jason. And that it is entirely Jason’s fault.
Baker says, “You hungry? I could eat the ass out of a cow.”
In the café, Baker gathers huge mouthfuls of hamburger and chews mightily, like he is working a hand crank. Every so often he yawns. The café hums with table noise, plate and fork, the talk of truckers and country people. The waitress tops Baker’s coffee.
“Looks like somebody’s got a long drive,” she says. “You hauling a load?”
“Naw,” he says, and winks. “In a rush to meet a gal.”
Baker looks at Jason’s plate and says, “Your hamburger ain’t gonna eat itself.”
“What happens if we find them?” Jason asks.
“When we find them. Think positive.”
He reaches over and grabs Jason’s burger. Bites off a third of it, chews and chews, staring at Jason, then takes another bite, then says, “One step at a time.”
The snow starts as t
hey drive past the southern tip of the Great Salt Lake, which lies like a great blankness under the cloudy night. Everywhere else, the valley between the mountain spines glitters with light, and a thickening layer of white covers the freeway but for the parallel lines of wheel paths. The Nova slides and spins, but Baker doesn’t ease up on the gas. He grips the wheel with both hands and leans forward, as if he can keep them on track with sheer will.
Jason wishes for a crash. He might be praying for one. He’s not sure he really understands the difference between wishing and praying. But he notices—here, where the Mormon Trail ground to a halt, where the pioneer handcarts stopped and Brigham Young declared this was the place, where God sent the seagulls to save the crops, and where a shining new city was built, where the church settled and grew, where the temple and the tabernacle arose, where the Saints gathered twice a year to worship, to separate themselves from the world; here, where his parents would bring him every couple of years, to visit Temple Square and stay at the Hotel Utah, their capital, their Mecca—even here, feeling desperate and forsaken, he is not turning to prayer. Not really. He remembers the long-ago game of Yes or No?, Boyd and him playacting at a serious business, and realizes that he has arrived at an answer that is really just a feeling. A guess. Just another kind of faith.
They pass semis in a blind wash of white. Station wagons and pickup trucks. The Nova swishes but stays road bound. Sometimes Baker lets out a little whoop, and sometimes he yawns and then shakes his head violently, as if to drive away his fatigue, but mostly he stays clenched, focused, two hands on the wheel, leading with his chin. The flask stays in his pocket.
An hour south of Salt Lake, the snow stops and the freeway clears. Baker slowly relaxes, sits back, and holds the wheel with one hand, but he still seems agitated. It is past ten.
“So, tell me,” Baker says. “Were you fucking her? Was this other kid fucking her? The Indian? God, let’s hope not. Let’s hope not for her sake. I mean, she’s in a big enough shit storm already without fucking some mongrel dog.”
