Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  “Not for you,” I said, turning to face a bed that faced a flat-screen. “It’s not about you, Miss Universe, forget it.”

  My suspicious side said differently, but I’d ignored her enough that tuning her out was easy. I went through a few what-ifs: . . they find you on the security tapes and track you here; . . . they show your photo at the check-in desk; . . . they kick down the door and storm in.

  “Can’t control any of that,” I said. “Sorry.”

  So I chose denial. I shut the curtains, hung the do not disturb sign on the door. Got naked and donned a fluffy white robe, hopped into bed. For once, I had the remote control. I planned to imbibe a dumb action movie, but when I tripped over a documentary about Chernobyl, that sealed my fate for a long, rapt evening.

  The camera crew was one of the first to enter Pripyat since the meltdown. They were British scientists. They wore radiation suits, took Geiger counter readings, walked the abandoned city. Over the last aerial shot of the hot zone and its tranquil emptiness, its absolutely normal-seeming topography, a classy English voice-over reminded me that Pripyat wouldn’t be habitable for another ten thousand years.

  I hit the power button and went to the bathroom, absentmindedly turning on the jets in the tub, reassured that if they were going to find me, they would be here by now. I was testing the temperature of the water when I thought of a tub with no jets but with a pleasant rosy coloring, set off by candlelight.

  You say to yourself, “She’ll do it, and then it will be over.” But then she does it, and the fallout keeps falling.

  You tell yourself it isn’t complicated. But family is. It’s limitless love. It’s godlike power attached to someone human. And you can know you mean nothing to her, and she can throw you away like a bag of garbage. Then she can split her wrists open and it’s still a meltdown.

  You can’t get into a tub, but you do. Your tears blend with your bathwater.

  You think about all the things in the world that go wrong. You think about how everything dies. You mentally watch it all happen. You picture the poisoned streets of Pripyat, how life there has come to a complete and utter stop. And you realize that none of that matters to you, that you just don’t care.

  You say to yourself, You’re being kind of an insensitive prick here, Rainy.

  Except your childhood’s a wasteland, a ghost city. You don’t want to think of her as the reactor, with lights still on in the building because people dropped everything and ran. You don’t want to be doing this, weeping uncontrollably in a bathtub. But nobody’s here, no one’s listening, you’re all alone, it’s fine. Walk Pripyat’s vacant streets. Hear the squeak of doors left open. Hear them blow shut on a breeze rich in strontium-90. Look in the windows, many of them broken. Look at the spaces looted of valuables, scattered in trinkets. Toy dolls. Toxic mattresses. Paperwork. Cheap chairs. Look at what gets left behind.

  And know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you will not be one of these things. You will not allow it. Instead, it will be you who leaves everything behind. You will never quit; you will always be in motion. You’ll step out of your own bones if you have to, and keep going, and you’ll be nothing but formless slime, but that is acceptable. That is a price you are willing to pay. You’ll pay more. You’ll give anything.

  I grabbed a bar of soap and scrubbed. Imagining I was on an empty sidewalk, flanked by shops announcing their wares in Cyrillic. I saw my mom. She was wearing the green housedress she’d laid out yesterday morning. She wanted to take me to the amusement park, buy me a ride on the carousel. I informed her I was grown up. She was too late.

  I’d leave Sunday. I might take the train this time, spring for a sleeper car. I could sleep the whole way there. Maybe I’d dream of being a kid again, swinging in one of those swings where the seat looks like a diaper, pleading with my mom to push me higher. Hearing the laughter of other children sharing the sandbox or clinging to the merry-go-round or pumping their legs to move the teeter-totter. And nearby, the fat concrete bellies of the corrupted plant, where the chain reaction can’t be stopped.

  Limitless power. Human error. The sirens start to scream.

  Eight

  The next day dawned charcoal—the shade of a hotel room with its curtains closed tight. I padded to the windows. Fresh, mean white was everywhere. Even the air. It was a level of snowiness that hung the stuff suspended. Not a blizzard but right on the cusp.

  I took out two crisp twenties, ordered crab cakes Benedict. I’d do nothing today. That was my ambition, and it fulfilled a bunch of smart directives. Lie low, let the snow blow over. Then tomorrow, when everyone and their mother is traveling, go be one more face. I couldn’t admit my other reasons. How drained I was. How a patch of the bed was tear-soaked. I had no idea if or how much I’d slept. The whole night was a bad dream.

  I made the whole day a swirl of escape. Leaving the curtains shut, ordering plates of salt and fat. Eating by the glow of movies, TV dramas, and sitcoms I flipped among and fell into. I’d fall out, fall asleep, crawl back to consciousness. I woke to the Friends theme alerting me what time it was. That’s when I got up, pulled back the shades, and looked outside.

  A stormy sea of traffic. A half-moon on the rise.

  I was putting on clothes before I knew why. The resolution for a walk, for a stiff hit of life, had taken me over. I knew if I stayed here, I’d call him. I wanted to ask him . . . anything, nothing in particular. The bills folded beautifully, fitting against my thigh like they were missing parts of each other.

  I needed a coat. I took the Skyway to Marshall Field’s, intent on buying one, but the crowd was even thicker than it had been last night, and the memory of that phone call with Blaine still lingered: “Stay right there.”

  I shuddered, detouring to the customer service office. The guy at the desk was wearing a name tag, and I read it to forget it. He had a bow tie printed with tiny snowmen, along with an expression that suggested he’d been standing at this spot since Black Friday.

  “Hi,” I said, making my voice chipper.

  “How can I help you?”

  “So the other night? When it was warm out? I was trying on jeans, and I left my coat in the dressing room.” I tapped my Vikes cap. “Remembered the hat, brilliantly.” He scooped under the counter and opened a cabinet. “What’s it look like?”

  Play the odds. “Black. Basic.” And you need: “A hood.”

  “Lift pass on the zipper?”

  “Yes!”

  He evaluated me, some sudden burst of professional responsibility. “Where’s the lift pass to?”

  Man, fuck your mother. “I’m not sure where we went last. Either Buck Hill or Hyland.”

  He handed it over. Long and thick, Columbia brand. “Thanks a million,” I said.

  I went through housewares, to a street exit. Ten below doesn’t feel that different than zero. By then, it’s just cold. Long johns would’ve been wise, and I did ponder getting some, but my coat went most of the way past my knees, cutting the wind. I walked south, leaving downtown. Snow-wraiths dragged shrouds down the centerline; they were my only company. My house was several miles to the right. I went left.

  To Powderhorn Park, the lake bathed in light. Southeast, where houses strained the term “houses,” bragging pillars and pricey brick, triple garages, rounded windows. Most of them were dark. I thought how my neighborhood was dinky by comparison—and I shouldn’t have thought that, because then I got curious. Whether my house was different, whether you could tell. I wanted to see if my front door wore a sash of police tape. I guessed the blinds were still open. Did they unplug our tree? Really shouldn’t have thought that, because that made it a fire safety issue, and I was going due west with no further argument.

  The route was quiet. Houses, houses, grocery stores and gas stations that served the houses. I hadn’t smoked since last night. Now I could kill off a pack. I had my eye on a mini-mart to buy some when I realized it was on Blaine’s street.

  Spontaneously, my hood went u
p. I’d check if he was home. I bet he was, since I’d been walking at least an hour. My legs were going rigid with cold, although it wasn’t time to freak out yet. When it was, I’d hit a McDonald’s. Or my house—jimmy one of the windows whose fastenings I kept loose. It appealed to my masochistic side. I’d have to visit her bathroom, make sure they drained the water. I could clean the tub; she’d like that.

  This daydream consumed me. The sight of Blaine’s house was a blip as I continued on my way to macabre chores.

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. The shoveled, sanded, salted sidewalk.

  Blaine’s wasn’t cleared.

  He either hadn’t been home since yesterday morning or he was dead. Nobody leaves a foot plus, especially not on their sidewalk. That’s grounds for shunning. It’s the uppermost Midwest’s most basic, informal, inviolable law.

  I heard his garage grunt. The door opened a few inches. I ran to the house opposite his and hugged the edge. The cruiser floated inside. Blaine got out. He was in uniform again. His posture wilted when he looked at his driveway, and he trudged to where a shovel hung on the wall. We were fifty feet apart.

  I told my body to turn around, and it did. This house’s backyard was unfenced. It was exhausting stomping through snow that cupped my knees, but I went at it with fervor, with passion. I got to the next street and used yards again. I did that for six blocks, ignoring pins and needles in my shins, ignoring shivers. I couldn’t feel my feet as I stepped onto my driveway.

  All the tracks from last night were gone. It looked like nothing had happened. Except the blinds were still open, and there was a garish cross of caution: crime scene on the door. I sat on the stoop, reminiscing. Before I’d learned to rig our windows, I was stuck outside an entire summer night. She’d changed the locks. I was twelve or thirteen at the time. It wasn’t that bad, just boring. I doubted I’d make it very long in subzero temperatures, but I was thinking why not try, when my lizard brain ordered me: Look up.

  A black van was parked two doors down, to the right.

  free tibet, the sticker said.

  My legs snuck from under the coat as I panned the other way, pretending nonchalance. Pretending it was time to go. I was a few feet from the corner of my house when the van’s rear door slid open and a bald man sprang out. He ran straight for me.

  Different from last night. Different from the cops. He was faster. Guys that huge were supposed to be slow, but he could move. But I could move. I was in my backyard, getting distance, when he yelled, “Kat!” right behind me.

  I felt a hold on my coat. The zipper screamed, and it ripped apart. My arms swept out of the sleeves. Red-hot cold hit my skin. I was wearing a tank top in ten below. Up the hill and over it, my legs pumping through the powder like it wasn’t even there. I followed my own tracks, chopping their strides in half. The cuffs of my jeans were pasted in snow. My feet weren’t there. My legs weren’t there.

  He was still there, still coming, but I was going, and euphoric. Rationality couldn’t catch me. Logic ate my snow-dust. I was so fast and so free, and so was he. “Kat!” Then I found a vein of energy deep and buried; I tapped it. He fell behind, but not far.

  I could hear a shovel. I didn’t have the air to say his name. I couldn’t seem to slow.

  “Oof!” Clatter-thwack. Shovel down. “Rainy? Rainy!”

  I clawed at coat. Shoulder of a good, warm coat. Letters I could read: MPD. My knees smacked driveway.

  “Rainy, what the hell’s—” A holster unsnapped, unburdened of a gun. “Freeze,” Blaine shouted. “Freeze, Sam!”

  I had a grip on Blaine’s pant leg. His other leg jerked to give chase, but I grabbed it and tried to say a good, pathetic, “Please.”

  “You’re okay.” He whispered it, moving me. His coat went around me. “You’re here. Stay calm.”

  Suddenly, I was soooo calm.

  “I’m gonna pick you up now. Okay? Stay awake. That’s the important part, stay awake.”

  Progression of sights and sounds that I knew from being through them once before. I gave up and shut my eyes.

  “Don’t do that! Wide-awake now! Right now!”

  Blaine’s neck was at the tip of my nose. I smelled him—good cologne. He was pounding up the stairs. My back pressed into softness. He tried to peel my fingers from his bicep. His cheeks were streaked as if with pink paint. He took his cell phone from a pocket, and it flashed when he flipped it open. I grabbed it, threw it. I heard it hit the master bathroom’s tile and slide. Blaine went to go get it, but I wrapped around him.

  “Rai— You need a doctor!”

  I didn’t answer, except to scream a bunch of things I’d never said out loud, to anybody. “I’m real, right? You can see me, right? I’m not dead, I’m not a ghost, I’m not a devil or anything, am I? She hated me, she hated me, she was sick, but she hated me, too. Was she right? Was she right to?”

  “Everything’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s okay, stop. You can stop.” Blaine rocked back and forth. “You’re okay. Everything stops now.”

  He was so warm. I tried to crawl into him. He was a sleeping bag, and I’d find the flap. I found his back—good enough—and latched my fingers there.

  His tone changed, though the words were almost the same: “Okay?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” His whisper oceanic in my ears. “It’s okay.”

  Blaine’s breath was sharp cinnamon, covering coffee. There wasn’t a light on in the whole house—he’d been in too big a hurry to get me under blankets. Blaine was building an igloo around me out of the comforter. He got into a crouch. “Where have you been?”

  I didn’t see the point of lying. “The Radisson.”

  There was a moment of quiet. Then Blaine laughed. Not the kind of laughter you join, more the kind you break out the backward coats for. He was swiping his eyes with his wrists, settling his hands on his half inch of hair and regarding me with a level of exhaustion that can’t be faked. “Do you have any clue what the past thirty-six hours have been like for me? Any fucking idea? No? Lemme give you a hint: I show up at your school when the bell rings. I’m in civvies, so you’re not embarrassed—”

  “You didn’t say you’d be there.”

  “Well, I was. And you weren’t. You were in your penthouse suite while I’m thinking you’re—” He cut himself off. Started to stand. “I gotta go make about ten phone calls.”

  I finagled my arm free and caught his. “Sorry about the money.”

  “What money?”

  “Nothing. It’s—I found a twenty behind the nightstand last night and I took it.”

  Blaine waved off my apology. He went to the bathroom and hit the light, got his phone.

  “Who’s Sam?” I asked. How had it taken me this long to ask?

  “Right now I need you to stay here.”

  “Fine.”

  “I want your word.”

  “I said, ‘Fine.’”

  “I want you to tell me, ‘Blaine, I’ll stay right here, you have my word.’ Say that.”

  “You’re gonna go set the alarm. You’d know if I left.”

  “But now I’ve seen you run.”

  I dug out of my blanket and began untying my shoes. “You have my word I will not leave your house, and you can have my shoes as collateral.”

  “Keep ’em,” he said, going to the door.

  “Why?”

  “Because if you fuck me over and bolt, I don’t want you losing toes.” He left the room and headed down the stairs. The alarm beeped. He came back up. A door shut.

  I retied my sneaks, offended. Like I’d run again with a criminal landmass after me. And honestly? Couldn’t even go there.

  My legs were stiff. Standing required an assist from the bed. Blaine’s voice rumbled in his office, enough to mask my creeping down the stairs. I was going to put the cash back—what remained of it anyway. I was wondering where his laundry stuff was as I passed the living room, thinking how great it’d be to put my clothes in the
dryer. Ten minutes and they’d be toasty. But I couldn’t come up with a way to do it that wouldn’t make me feel like the sex objects in his DVD collection.

  Peeking toward his porn cabinets, that’s when I saw the file. Alone on his coffee table was a cream-colored folder. It caught my attention because it was so thick, the width of two phone books stacked together. Hundreds of individual papers were warping the sturdy manila they’d been wrapped in, and this problem was exacerbated by the rubber band straining to keep the pile collated, like a Sunday Tribune overloaded with circulars. The file’s label tab was sideways. I tilted my head going by, to read it.

  cain, sam.

  I looped the couch. The door to Blaine’s office was still closed. Beeps in there—he was dialing.

  I got the rubber band off and took a corner of the folder in two fingers, reverently. On top of the whole mess was a black-and-white photograph. Ten people, sitting by a tree. On the tree, some of them, since it was a weeping willow, and a branch near the ground did that thing where it split sideways, made a bench.

  I’m thinking: See? This has nothing to do with you.

  But I’m also bringing the paper to the tip of my nose. There’s two girls making out in the middle. There’s a guy with a ZZ Top beard and sunglasses glaring at them, a homely chick hanging on his arm. There’s a man wearing a dress, bottom center, getting a kiss on either cheek from two more girls. A fat guy falling out of frame.

  Maybe I saved them for last on purpose. At the far right was my mom. I hardly recognized her. She looked happy. She was sitting in some thin grass, her legs stretched ahead, tangling with the legs of the man behind her. His arms were a cage she was elated to live in. He was the bald man, only he wasn’t bald. He had hair to his shoulders. His body was normal in the photo—actually, he was on the scrawny side. He was holding two fingers aloft, showing a sweat stain under one armpit.

  I plunked my ass to the floor, pushed backward with my heels, to a corner. Blaine’s scared bark of “Rainy!” couldn’t reach me here.

  I kept staring at the photo as his steps thudded down to me. He asked, “Water?”