Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  “I admire that,” Sam said. “I tried to give up meat. Couldn’t make it stick.”

  Curly noticed me. Sam turned around. “There she is. How was the walk?”

  I took a seat opposite the girls as Sam introduced us. Their names ricocheted off my ears and went zinging into the ether. Legs didn’t stop chewing to gag a hello, but Curly’d adopted a nasty smirk that hid in her voice when she said, “Hope we didn’t scare you. In the bathroom. You know, when you found us asleep?”

  I grabbed the last biscuit. “No, you didn’t scare me at all.”

  “They’re hitchhiking,” Sam said. “I’ve given them my lecture already, but since you’re just joining us: The last time it was safe to hitchhike in this country was before it had a space program. The last time hitchhiking was safe, automobiles had not been invented yet. It was not safe when a man on horseback offered you a ride on horseback.” He pointed between himself and me. “Is this getting through?”

  “What about rickshaws?” I said.

  “No rickshaws. No gondolas, no bicycle package carriers.”

  “No ice-cream trucks?”

  “No snowmobiles,” he said.

  “No dogsleds?” I broke first and laughed. “No unicycles?”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Now you’re being ridiculous.” Still trying to play straight man, he offered up one more: “And no skateboards without a helmet.” Which wasn’t that good, but somehow that made it better. I applauded. He took a bow.

  “You guys are great,” Curly said. The pitch she used cut across my laughter perfectly. “Really great.”

  “She’s great. I just work here,” Sam said. “These ladies would like to tag along with us for a while. The cabin we’re going to has plenty of rooms. Plus, I’ve got some travel board games in the car, and those are always better with more players.” He glanced at the highway and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Heeeeere’s Johnny!”

  The station wagon sailed up the ramp. Curly’d turned to watch it, and she was clapping, hooting, wolf-whistling, for reasons that were beyond me. I got up and collected our garbage, registering how mad I was by how anal I was being, fitting the small bowls into bigger bowls into boxes, wanting to get the shapes right, arrive at the smallest possible package.

  “One thing.” Sam nudged Curly’s backpack with his toe. “I can’t have you doing drugs around my daughter.”

  Curly turned to Legs, who put down her third piece of chicken and hiccupped.

  “I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday,” Sam said. “I’m in no position to judge, but I do have to set an example. I’m going to need you to give me your stash. I’ll hold it for you and return it when we part ways.”

  Curly looked at me like this was my fault, and I couldn’t resist: I gave my nose a quick scratch with a carefully chosen finger. Legs was unzipping her backpack, extracting a baggie with a few tablespoons of white powder at the bottom, as well as a razor blade and a mirror. Curly snatched it from her and gave it to Sam.

  “Thank you,” he said, folding it into his jeans. “You two go ahead. Kat and I will clean up.”

  The wagon parked. I admired our new Montana plates as the girls hefted their bags, pouting. I kept my voice low out of some weirdly misplaced desire not to hurt their feelings. Mostly Legs, since she appeared to have feelings. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “What, bringing them with us?” Sam put our bundle in the garbage bag and tied the handles tight-tight. “You want to leave them here?”

  “They threatened me. In the bathroom.”

  “You weren’t upset.”

  “They don’t scare me.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” He put the bag on the tips of his fingers, shot it like a basketball—and got nothing but net. “You’ll be in the guesthouse. Johnny will make sure you have everything you need. They won’t bother you, I promise.”

  “Yeah, but what about you?”

  “I’m a big boy. I’ll be okay.”

  I yawned. The yawn spawned another, and another. I heard Sam say, muffled, “You poor thing.”

  I staggered toward the car in an apathetic daze. He was advising I should take the back, and I was only too happy to comply. I crawled in, tossed the for sale sign to the floor, and took off Blaine’s coat, rolling it into a pillow. The wagon’s heater was on. It blew soothing, warm wind. As I lay down, Sam was digging in his paper bags. He brought out a board game. “You ladies up for it?”

  He murmured, hushing them anytime they said above a whisper, “Sorry!”

  Rolling the dice and whispering, “Sorry!”

  Knocking each other back on the board and whispering, “Sorry!” “Sorry!”

  I dropped through the bottom of consciousness like a lead anchor, and hit dreams.

  Eleven

  There was a knife. That’s most of what I remembered as I started the waking-up process. The low-angled sun was getting hacked up by some tree branches, flashing into the car, each flash as sharp as a dagger.

  Dreams were the brain’s compost pile. Mine were so vivid when I was a kid that I’d wake up thinking they were real, and I’d run down to Mom’s room to tell her. She’d get mad. Interrupting her sleep messed with the sleeping pills, but she’d give another reason: nobody wants to hear about dreams. As it happened, I agreed with her. Still, I dreaded the violence mine always contained, the solitude.

  The radio was playing that Superman song. Not 3 Doors Down. The sad one. Usually I hated it, but tonight it tugged at me, crooning at very low volume. The girls must have picked the station. Mountains had us surrounded. A watch for avalanche sign blipped past. I imagined looking out the window and saying, There’s one.

  “Wild,” I said.

  Sam undid his seat belt and lifted the armrest so he could sit sideways, his legs filling a gap between the seats. “We’ll be at the cabin in a half hour.” He spoke quietly, lifted the shopping basket from the floor. “Do you need anything?”

  I leaned forward, wondering how the girls could lie down and sleep in that small an area. “The cigarettes,” I said.

  Sam handed them back. He remembered the lighter. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but cigarettes are bad for you.”

  “I’ve heard this one.” I tore cellophane, smiling cutely. I had nothing to ash into, but that was never true. I dug into a hip pocket and hit the remains of Blaine’s money. In the other hip pocket, I found an old quiz paper. I folded a firm cone with a double-enforced bottom. Instant ashtray.

  Sam laughed. “I would applaud, but then I’d wake them for sure.” The radio was fading; he shut it off. “Not much reception up here.”

  Go ahead, I thought. Go ahead, ask me whatever.

  Sam said nothing. He gazed at me with frank adoration. It got old quickly.

  “When did you meet my mom?” I said.

  “’75.”

  About ten seconds went by.

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Waitressing,” he said. “She ran away.”

  “Where’d she run away from?”

  “Oakland.”

  “Why?”

  Sam’s cheek twitched, and he looked down. He stirred the basket. Held up the powdered doughnuts. “Mind?”

  “Go for it. Why’d she run away?”

  “She had it rough at home. So did I.” He dropped his snack. “I prefer not to discuss the past.”

  “Why?”

  He peered sideways, where the road dipped into a valley. “You’ll understand when you have children of your own.”

  “I’m not having kids.”

  “You’ll change your mind about that.” Sam said it casually, a truth so unimpeachable it didn’t require an inch of room on any side.

  This boat of a car was suddenly small—much too small and much too stationary. He watched the road ahead, oblivious that my fuse, lit, was sparking toward an ammo cache I’d been storing since my earliest l
esson in what it means to be ignored, your convictions deemed unworthy.

  “I’ll change my mind, huh? Why will I change my mind? Because having children is noble? It’s an automatically selfless act? I disagree. People have kids because their limbic systems tell them to pass on genes. Cop to it; say that. Say that and I’ll respect it. I’ll respect it more if you’re dead honest and admit that you had a kid to give yourself a sense of purpose. To give yourself. A sense of purpose.”

  My voice rose on the emphasis. I heard Curly grunting awake, sensed the wagon angling downward—but those things were dull input, because Sam and I had one of those eye locks going that builds a metaphysical tunnel between two starers. There was the itch of my chromosomes knowing him, wanting to see an expression other than this friendly giant, whose smile was fading as sure as Top 40 radio in a deep mountain valley.

  His grin narrowed; mine widened. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Wanting a kid’s got nothing to do with the kid. With who they are, the person they are—the kid doesn’t exist yet. It’s maybe got something to do with the person you’re making the kid with. You want a sense of mutual purpose. You want a camaraderie that isn’t present in the relationship, so you figure the kid’ll be the glue. Look around—it happens all the time. Babies are great glue. You’re too fucking tired to fight with each other.”

  Curly was stirring, waking.

  “Or, in Harmony’s case, you’re too tired to fight with yourself. When I was a baby, she was the greatest. Her insanity had to take a backseat, because here’s this simple simian thing with a brain the size of a peanut who shits its diaper and cries about it, gets hungry and cries about it, wakes up and cries about it. She changed it and fed it and rocked it, and she felt like a hero because it worked. It was simple. It was one-to-one.”

  A giggle bubbled from the middle seat.

  “Problem is,” I said, “kids grow. They get more complicated. It happens wicked fast. And those parents who wanted purpose discover wicked fast: Purpose. Is. Hard. They wonder how this project of theirs went so awry, like the human being they brought into the world is a fucking basement remodel that’s going overbudget. It’s too much work. It shouldn’t be so much work. ‘Hey, you piece of shit, you shouldn’t be this much work!’”

  Sam twitched. A new face was being born from the placid mask. His chin, his forehead—jumping, contracting. I was excited; I wanted to see it. I felt powerful, midwifing this shift, making him push with my provocations.

  “So they disengage. They pink-slip it. They know they’re wrong to be doing that, and sometimes they’ll play a sexy trick and get all up in that kid’s grille, bitching at them about grades and why don’t you get a boyfriend and why don’t you have a job, giving such a conspicuous damn that nobody can accuse them of quitting. But they’re done. And kids aren’t stupid—we know when you’re out. Most of us still get our three meals a day, the roof over our heads. But so do prisoners. Right, Sam?”

  The valley grew around us, more pines and shadows. Sam’s attention veered to those in lieu of me. He was almost here. His eyes were slits. His mouth was convulsing—he’d open it, and then I’d meet my father for real. He’d tell me what he really thought about who I really was, and I could not wait. “See?” I said. “Do you see now? I’m ruined. Harmony ruined your kid while you were weight training.”

  “Nice,” Curly said, disentangling from Legs, who was glaring at me, too. They got on their knees and crawled to him. “It’s okay,” they said, stroking the veins in his muscles, “That’s okay.” Legs used the cuff of her hoodie to wipe his tears.

  Even Sam’s tears were huge. “What was I supposed to do?”

  The van went dark. We’d driven into the tree canopy.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Sam was taking gulps too large for his throat. It was an ugly sitting-down dance, and he was shaking his head, like he knew how sick it was to witness. The girls patted him, whispered to him, while I apologized and apologized—in my head.

  I’d never needed to have somebody understand as badly as I needed Sam to understand in that moment. But how to make it make sense? If you’re lucky, your childhood makes sense. If you’re not, you do your best to impose sense on it, heat it like a red-hot piece of iron and slam it with a hammer until it’s a shape that at the very least jibes with the future you want. How to convey to him how much work it was? I had this idea he’d be proud of me if I could only say it right: Another person’s crazy is viral. If you’re in it enough, it affects you. If it’s your mother, it infects you. You can’t help it. She decides you don’t exist, and you find a way to make her viciousness the jet engine that powers you forward, even if you have no real clue where you’re headed, which means you take wrong turns and run over people all the time.

  The road snuck right. The car was slowing, coming to a halt.

  I had to try. “Sam—”

  “Guesthouse is down the path,” he said. “Let Johnny Blue know if you need anything.”

  The van stopped. We were at a lake. There were a few stairs leading up from a tiny dock. A red fence was next to us. When Legs opened the door for me, it clipped the red paint, and snide comments about her clumsiness splashed across my brain. But I kept quiet, realizing that right now cruelty was the only eloquence I was capable of. I groped for the bulk of Blaine’s coat and hugged it, getting out.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Sam said.

  The door slammed. The car drove away. In a couple of seconds, I heard the soft whir of a garage door opening, closing. I put the coat on and sat by the fence, my feet on the top stair. My father had known me for one day, and he already needed a break.

  Like I could blame him. Like I wouldn’t love a break from me, like I enjoyed being the thing I’d become.

  “Stop,” I said. “You can stop.”

  The lake’s still surface was black, with blacker lines of branches reflected in the water. Hardy winter birds were screaming at each other; I searched for them, but they were invisible. That got me anxious, got me looking around. At the cabin, tall and narrow. It had huge, posh windows, and stairs that terraced to landings with squares of garden—just space and soil now. Past the driveway was a break in the trees. Johnny stood there, smoking. He was spooky-thin; I’d already divined that much. His shirt billowed at the sides, and light showed through it. I still had no idea what he looked like, which was illogical and understandable at the same time. I’d been so focused on Sam.

  A half-or-less moon cleared the trees, whitewashing the gravel road. The mountains were crowned with gold from the setting sun. My bare arms prickled. The driver scared me.

  He scares you, he scares you: I told myself this.

  So, what? What do you want?

  I got up, started walking toward him. His name’s Johnny Blue; his occupation is driver; his hobbies include stalking girls in rearview mirrors.

  He’d found the gap between the sun’s gaudy exit and the moon’s graceful entrance, a pocket of shadow. He moved deeper into it. He threw his cig by his feet and blew a long V of smoke. I was five yards away, getting closer, and all I could see was the part of his dark, messy hair.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m gonna go ahead and be blunt here. I realize you probably know my dad from prison, and he’s got you, like, guarding me for the night. So if you’re gonna rape me, could we get that out of the way now?”

  His head snapped up. His face was pretty like a girl’s. And horrified. I felt regret, but not for offending him: I was bummed that the most beautiful male I’d ever seen outside of an Abercrombie ad had to be wearing pure disgust. Johnny Blue just needed a pair of wings on his back, then he could fly up and report to his boss what an icky person Rainy Cain was.

  “Kidding,” I said. “I was kidding.”

  He turned abruptly and walked down a terra-cotta path that curled to the right. He followed it into the woods. I jogged to catch up. The path seemed longer than it was, farther than it was, since forest hemmed us in. The main house wasn�
��t visible. I was squinting hard to look for it, and I bumped into Johnny’s back. “Sorry.”

  He took a key from his hip pocket. “Guesthouse” was too generous. This was a shack. The terra-cotta led right up to the threshold. The exterior was very vinyl, very pastel, very ugh. At either side of the faded front door sat a giant tire heaped with marigold carcasses.

  Johnny pushed the door open, stepped aside. He drew a circle in the dirt with his toes.

  “Johnny, right?”

  He nodded at the ground.

  “Could—” Go ahead. Embrace the idiocy. “Can we talk or something?”

  Johnny shook his head at the ground.

  “We can’t talk?”

  He reached for his back pocket and brought out a pack of Newports. Bit one, lit one.

  “Well, this hasn’t been weird at all. You’ll be right here, I’m assuming.”

  Nod.

  “All night?”

  Nod, nod.

  “All righty roo.” I went in and batted the door shut. It had an inlaid window; the blinds shook. The guesthouse looked perfect for the Seven Dwarfs. My knees would poke into my armpits if I sat on the sofa. A twin-size bed was behind it, down three pointless stairs. To my left was a dinette set with two chairs, a mustard-colored kitchen, a fridge straight out of Leave It to Beaver. A framed needlepoint on the sofa’s end table read home sweet home.

  A bunch of brown and amber bottles glowed on top of the fridge. I took one, not caring which. I unscrewed the cap and knocked it back, forcing as much down as I could before the taste hit. I coughed and found I was conveniently bent over the sink. Also, I was elbowing the stove.

  “Only two dwarfs,” I said. I snorted, picturing how they’d still bump into one another while cooking breakfast. Bid­ding each other good morning. Asking, How’d you sleep?