Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  “Don’t piss him off.” Translation: “Don’t light the fuse.”

  I’d been inspecting Sam closely, and there’d been no strong indication whether he had a long fuse or a short fuse. What buoyed me, though, was that he gave every indication of having a sane fuse. If someone is able to sit still, it’s an excellent sign.

  I moved to the bench on the right side of the aisle. Ever since Sam had fallen asleep, the driver’d revived his one-sided staring contest in the rearview mirror. He moved the mirror to follow me. I gave him an eye roll and kept my eyes rolling, to a billboard for a restaurant called Ground Round in Bismarck, North Dakota. Eighteen miles. Applebee’s, Cracker Barrel, and Perkins signs counted the distance down, until we crested a barely-there incline and the horizon glittered with light. Bismarck’s outer fringes included a terraced white building that resembled an Aztec temple. I wondered what it was. We passed hotels for eighty bucks a night and a steak dinner special for $12.99. Under three overpasses, and we were entering Mandan: where the west begins. A cemetery lazed off an exit. My ability to see it notified me that the sky was going gray with dawn.

  The horizon behind us turned vivid. Its color soaked the bus and the ice and the black pavement. The sun poked its head up. I squinted and turned back around.

  From the front, Sam was smiling at me, sort of shyly. I answered in kind, thinking only afterward, Smile the same way back at him. Smile shy.

  He stood. He didn’t have to bend much—he wasn’t that tall, just muscle-massive. He negotiated space as if there were a man of average stature inside navigating, and his packed-on poundage was this constant, happy surprise. My best math put him over forty, but his skin was lineless, palest pale, almost waxy. His features were outsized: eyes, mouth, nose, name it. It made him look weird. Engineered.

  He sat down on the bench one row up and across. Sideways, his back to the window. The sunrise found his bald head and grooved there. “Hi,” he said.

  You’re humbled, I thought. Only, I was, was the thing. I went with it. I waved.

  “My name is Sam. I’m your dad.”

  I tried to say, “I know.” Tried twice, but I couldn’t shake my enthrallment with his scalp, how the sun was making it shine.

  “Yes,” Sam said. “Mr. Clean. I started losing it ten years ago.” He rubbed his head. “I decided, why fight it?”

  I’d never done theater, but I guessed this was what stage fright felt like. “I—” I took a piece of my hair that had curled. It did that sometimes if I sweated during the night. “I screwed up bleaching it. Left it in too long, so now it’s—”

  White? Do I say it’s white?

  He was waiting.

  “Ridiculous.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” Sam said. “You’re gorgeous. I knew you had my eyes, but it’s—it’s remarkable.”

  He was right. Our eyes were an odd muddy moss green I’d only ever seen in a mirror.

  “How’d you know what I looked like?” I said.

  “Harmony sent your school picture. Every year.”

  I’d been throwing away my school picture proofs since sixth grade. “Did she write you?”

  Sam shook his head. “I worried. About you with her. How bad was it?”

  “Not too bad,” I said, and locked my jaw shut.

  Sam shifted his line of sight to the scenery. He let me stare, take him in. Maybe hoping it’d normalize him for me. Exactly the opposite was happening. I looked outside and searched for a handhold, a way to take control.

  “We came here in seventh grade,” I said, sounding all kinds of laid-back. “That billboard? Medora? It’s this trip my junior high did, a welcome for the incoming class. The teachers participated, so for phys ed we rode horses, for bio we dug fossils. There’s fossils in the Badlands.”

  “Badlands?”

  “You’ll see them. Orange brown, pretty funky. It was a fun trip.”

  Playing minigolf with our geometry teacher. Taking a tour of Teddy Roosevelt’s cabin for history class. I went on and on about meeting my best friends, Heather, Ally, and Ty. We got assigned the same hotel room. We stayed up all night talking. I rooted in memories of them, in the version of me they’d believed and befriended. “We were comatose on the ride back. I mean, passed out, just—” I pulled a face, letting my tongue loll.

  Sam laughed like a shout.

  I reacted as if he’d shouted at me; I flinched. In the long silence that followed, I traced cracks on dry seat leather with a fingertip.

  “Kat?”

  “Rainy,” I said. “It was raining when she had me. She hadn’t thought of a name. She looked outside and said the first thing she saw, and they wrote it down.” I looked outside. First thing I saw was a dead rabbit on the shoulder. Could’ve been worse.

  “Katherine was my grandmother,” Sam said. “I loved her very much. She once scared a grizzly bear off our porch by banging a soup pot with a ladle.” He laughed a lot more quietly. “She loved the Mormons who’d come around. They were the only ones who ever did. We didn’t get much company.” The motor filled a few heavy seconds. “She died when I was six.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Thank you.” His hands folded. He shook them at me in what looked like supplication. “I didn’t want it to happen this way. I need you to understand that. We got to Minneapolis on Thursday night. I saw you sitting on the back of an ambulance, your house full of police. When I found out what she did—” His mouth worked around the soundlessness of shock. He waved vaguely toward the driver. “That’s Johnny Blue. He’s a good friend of mine.”

  I glanced to stick a name to the face, forgetting he was the creep in the mirror.

  “We followed you.” Sam’s tone lowered further, to confidential. “That policeman you stayed with, was he at all inappropriate?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Good. I was concerned. That wasn’t professional of him. It’s far from standard procedure, so I was—concerned. I said that already.”

  I made a T with my arms.

  “Absolutely,” Sam said. “Time-out. Take as long as you need.”

  Sam’s head was turned. He was giving the headphones a longing look. Sparing me his scrutiny, as I’d requested. Up to now, he’d mostly done what I’d requested. Would he answer if I simply asked what he wanted? Probably, but how true would the answer be?

  He should be covered in tattoos. He should have a gold tooth, brass knuckles, and ritual scarification denoting how many inmates he’d murdered while incarcerated. He had on blue jeans and a white T-shirt. His flesh was unmarked, as flawless as the sky outside. He was peeling off the tip of his middle fingernail with his teeth.

  I remembered his file. “You grew up on a farm, right?”

  Sam turned back to me, smiled. “I did,” he said. “Not much to tell. Chores and more chores.”

  I lit my last Parliament, nodding. A blur of red ran behind him. I traced it, or tried—it was too fast. A red car, passing us and vrooming ahead to a pinpoint. Our driver leaned way over the wheel and shook his head—I doubted in disapproval of its speed.

  Blaine and his classic Corvette: he got on the highway right after the hospital released him, and there he goes—he’s chasing us; he’ll save me, my hero.

  Sure. Yeah, he hopped in the family suicidemobile and drove all night. Blaine and his concussion. Blaine and his head wound. Blaine bleeding, offering me one last piece of counsel. Which I now drop-kicked. “You could have killed him.”

  “Who?” Sam said. “The policeman? That was an accident.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “I told Johnny to dent the front. We hit a patch of ice, honey. We couldn’t slow down.”

  “You said you’d hurt him.”

  “I said no such thing. I said he’d be fine. And I’m sure he is.” Sam sat tall when I didn’t pander to this, as I’d been instructed to do. He swelled; his clothes strained to contain him. Color should have filled his cheeks, but years of lacking sun must have caused his epidermis to
forget it had rosy possibilities. What he said next was so mismatched to his foreboding physicality that he had to be kidding. “Would you like to call him?”

  I didn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny.

  Sam leaned over to put his arms on his thighs, making himself smaller. I looked at him and thought: Know who you’re up against, man. I play this every day, I’m a pro.

  But what if he was sincere?

  Did I want to call Blaine? I used a motion I could disavow. I dipped my head once.

  Sam erupted from his seat, and my musculature tightened, all of it—it was like my vagina did a sit-up or something. He blew straight to the front. His legs were underdeveloped compared to the top of him, and his ungainliness got worse when he moved fast, very Tasmanian Devil. He plopped beside Johnny Blue, pulled a spiral-bound book from one of the paper bags. It was a road atlas. He showed Johnny a page, pointing. He put the headphones on and peeked back at me. Gave me a thumbs-up.

  I entered a perfect, refined present. It was wonderful.

  “Ten minutes, Kat.” Sam set the headphones back on the floor. “That cool?”

  “Cool,” I said. Because it was cool. I’d call Blaine, say ’sup: “’Sup, Blaine? I’m feeling an Egg McMuffin, wish you were here.”

  A blue services sign announced fast food and gas ahead. The level plain couldn’t hide anything. To our right was a ramp. We took the exit and passed a gas station. Fifty yards more, and the van pulled over.

  Sam turned around. “Do you need any money?”

  “For what?”

  “For the call.” Sam made a phone of his hand and put it to his ear.

  “No.”

  “Use the back door,” he said. “This one sticks.”

  I went to the door, pulled the emergency lever, jumped down, and watched the bus roll away. I was on the side of a wide road, approaching a Texaco station. I sensed someone watching me, millions of someones. Or just him, but he’d left. I was alone.

  I turned and walked backward. The bus wasn’t on the road. I shaded my eyes to see the fast-food places, check the drive-thrus. Maybe they were getting breakfast? Couldn’t tell. Too far.

  It struck me I should run, but when I turned around, I’d arrived. I went inside. The clerk was watching a tiny TV. He wore a red Texaco hat. The bell had rung when I’d entered, but he didn’t look away from his talk show. If he had, he’d have seen a young girl shocked out of her better judgment, hair gone white, wearing a cop coat and gawking around like she’d never seen a convenience store before.

  The pay phone was on a far wall, between the restrooms. I picked up the receiver, dialed collect, and waited all of five seconds.

  “Are you okay?” Blaine said.

  “Yeah, are you?”

  “Is he right there? Is Sam right there with you?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me where you are. Right now.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ask someone.”

  “Where am I?” I yelled at the clerk.

  “Beach,” he said. He picked up a Coke can and spat in it.

  “Beach,” I said. “He’s lying. It’s land.”

  “Beach, North Dakota? I’m turning around. I’m turning around right now.”

  “Did you go to the doctor? Do you have a concussion?”

  “I’m on Ninety-Four. I’m in my car, do you understand? I’m less than fifty miles from you. Listen, Rainy, really try and listen. Has he hurt you? Has he hit you, is that why you sound so out of it?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you get away from—Never mind, never mind. Did Sam switch cars?”

  “Yes.”

  “To what?”

  “Blue bus.”

  “What?” Blaine said. “Light blue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kids painted on the side?”

  “Yes.”

  Blaine swore fluently. It was impressive.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I’m really tired.”

  “I know. I know you are.”

  Motion at the store windows. I hoped for a bright-red Corvette—but bright-red Corvettes didn’t galumph. That’s what Sam did, he galumphed.

  “Here’s what you do,” Blaine said. “Hang up and call 9-1—”

  “Too late.”

  “Why?”

  The door dinged. Sam smiled at me pleasantly. He paused at a display of gummy snacks and took a bag of worms. He waggled them, like, Am I right or am I right?

  “Rainy,” Blaine was saying, “hide. He doesn’t like it when people get away from him. Hang up the phone and hide.”

  “Blaine,” I said, “are you sure you’re okay?”

  Sam opened the bag and ate a handful.

  “Are you sure? Are you sure?”

  Sam signaled to give him the phone. “You’re frightening my daughter,” he said into the receiver. Listened. “That’s quite a threat, Officer Friendly. I don’t appreciate it. Almost as much as I don’t appreciate your interest in my seventeen-year-old.” Listened. “Your language is quite colorful. You should do stand-up comedy.”

  He hung up—“Sit, Kat”—and reached out to assist, like I was going to fall. I got to the floor and put my head between my knees without his help. Sam folded my hand around a Powerade. “Here, drink this.”

  “Hey,” the clerk said. It sounds idiotic when Mid­westerners speak sharply. Like a three-year-old with a stuffy nose trying to impart discipline. “You’re paying for that, hope you know.”

  Sam went toward the counter. “I apologize. My daughter needed sugar. She’s a type 1 diabetic.”

  The clerk turned in his chair. He pointed the brim of his hat back. “Oh, hey. Hey, sorry.” He stood to get a clear bead on me. “You drink up there, hon. Take what you need.”

  “Thank you for that,” Sam said. “Do you rodeo?”

  “Oh, you betcha. How’d ya know?”

  “Your hands. I have a good friend with hands like that. He can tell a man anything he wants to hear about rodeo and about a hundred things he doesn’t.”

  The clerk spat into his Coke can and smiled brownly. “Where’s your buddy ride?”

  “Upstate New York. Used to.” Sam picked up a Bic lighter out of a display, began bouncing and catching it. “Some fat cats had him fix a few races and he got five years. Guess what the fat cats got?”

  “I’m gonna guess they got zero to no years.” The clerk drooped onto the register. “See that camera there? My boss put it there to catch whoever’s been picking out of the till. He’s got a house in Dickinson I could put twenty of my trailer in.”

  “I’m Sam. I haven’t shaken with a rodeo grip in too long.”

  “Harvey. Harvey Meyer. I tell ya what, most of what I get in here’s a buncha jerks treat me like the help, know what I mean? I’m their cleaning lady and their butler and their goddamn chef.” He tapped a case of pretzels turning on hooks.

  “I hear you,” Sam said. “A man can’t even protect himself anymore. A man needs a permit to keep his family safe.”

  Harvey nodded vigorously. Sam lifted the back of his shirt and reached to the waistband of his jeans, pulling a giant gun out by its wooden butt. Harvey’s neck quit moving the second he saw it.

  Sam set it on the counter. “That’s a .44 Magnum. That’s a Dirty Harry gun. That’s a man’s gun right there.”

  “Oh, yeah, you got that right. But, you know—my boss, he don’t allow any guns in here. We got that sign there in the window.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Sam said, his hand not on the gun but right above it. “That’s what I mean. Your boss with his mansion—he doesn’t understand. He’s not like us, Harvey. He’s got servants to defend his property, servants like you. He’s got you sitting here watching Povitch all day, making his money.”

  Harvey blew out a sigh and hunched over farther. “Yeah, you got it. He’s a real piece of s-h-i-t all right. But that’s how it goes.”

  “Hey, Harv. What if that wasn’t how it went? What if w
e turned it around on him?”

  “Well, heck, how do we do that?”

  “How many other cameras does he have in here?”

  “Just this one.” Harvey reached up and flicked its underside. “Corporate’s got a couple out front, though.”

  “They all closed-circuit?”

  “Yeah.” The word angled up, a question.

  “Give me the tape. Say I robbed you.” Sam tapped his gun’s silver nose. “Put all the cash from the drawer in a bag, and we’ll split it. I’ll leave your half under the freezer outside.”

  For no clear reason, I deemed this the moment to stand. I got a grip on the pay phone and jostled something, snapping Harvey and Sam out of a shared trance.

  Sam peeked sideways at me. He winked.

  Harvey took off his hat and fanned himself, laughing. “Ho there, you got me. You got me, Sam, I hafta give it to ya.”

  “What would be the harm?”

  “C’mon now.”

  “I could tie you up. I could blindfold you. You could say you didn’t get that good of a look at me. At her.” He stuck a thumb over his shoulder, where I was holding the pay phone like a life ring. “How much is in the drawer right now, Harv?”

  “Been a pretty busy morning. Four hundred, give or take.”

  “And what could you do with two hundred bucks? Take your girl out? You’ve got a girl, right?” Sam eased the gun off the counter, pointed the barrel toward the ceiling. “Tell them I pulled a piece on you. It’s the truth.”

  Harvey darted his eyes from Sam’s to the gun a few times. He went “Hah!” and clapped his hands. “Jeez Louise, can’t believe I’m pullin’ this, but what’ll they do? Fire me for getting robbed?” He opened the till and flapped open a paper sack.

  “Wouldn’t make your boss too popular around here,” Sam said. “You could get the town to boycott him ’til he gave you your job back.”

  “Hah!” Harvey glanced out the window, raised the cash tray, and took out two hundreds from underneath. “I want the Benjamins for my half. Make sure and weigh them down.” He took a handful of lighters off the Bic display. “Use these.”

  “What do we tie you with?” Sam accepted a bag full of small bills. “Kat, lock the front door.”