Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  Sam flapped the photo, fanning himself. “What if I don’t know where this was taken?”

  “Mom said you would.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam smiled winningly and leaned around me. “She has Harmony’s rebelliousness, pig. Don’t worry—I believe in discipline. But you know that, since you read my file. I invite you to imagine. Imagine what I’ll do.”

  Blaine hmphed and grmphed in weak rage. I stared at the open door ahead, and I didn’t project my own imaginings onto that sun-white rectangle. I let it remain blank. When Sam tucked my wrecked wrist in his arm and pulled me toward the exit, a gentleman escorting a lady to dinner, Blaine’s mangled protests got fainter.

  “He’ll bleed out in a few minutes anyway,” Sam said.

  We walked outside, the sunlight a wave of scalding bleach. Sirens shrilled somewhere in the distance. From much closer came a car sound that was more familiar: Ding! Ding! Ding! My eyes adjusted. There was a truck that was a huge, unwashed, ancient automotive mistake. Its door hung open.

  So I’m walking, indifferent to direction or speed, and my dad’s got my arm, my dad’s leading me. And I’m looking over at Sam, and he could be on his way to a semi-important appointment. Dentist, podiatrist—nothing pressing. And Blaine’s Corvette is idling. Its topper is flipped in the dirt. Its plates now hail from California. Johnny, in the driver’s seat, catches the full wrath of the sun. As his head lolls sideways on the headrest, the bloodless cast to his skin makes him match the dead truck, and the truck matches the dead town, and I’m sure I do, too, as I grumble and groan across Only Street. The ’Vette’s red is shiny, despite its coat of dirt.

  Sam knocked on the back of car, and the trunk popped open. “Get in.”

  I inspected the trunk, stretching every second as much as I could. Doing so, I caught sight of something that planted my lifetime’s most annoying seed of hope. I bent my leg in a tentative, agonized attempt to climb inside, but Sam gave me a push. I landed in a sprawl and made whatever sounds felt like coming out as the trunk lid clapped me into perfect darkness.

  Rainy’s gonna fight you all the way, he’d said.

  “Here we go,” I sobbed quietly. “Here we go, Rainy, go get ’em.”

  The engine purred. A speed that couldn’t be much slower than Mach 1 yanked us away from the approaching sirens. I listened for them to get closer. A slipstream blew over the trunk, obliterating them. I shivered, wept, beseeched permission to forfeit, not sure who I was asking or what form permission would take. I started a grotesque horizontal wiggle-rumba, turning around in a series of painful movements. This was a Minnesota car. He was a Minnesota cop. I was probably wrong. The bag I’d seen was probably just a castoff from some long-ago vacation.

  The warm zipper glided easily. Exploring by touch yielded metallic cylinders, ribbed plastic wrapped in flimsy labels. I found a tube with a fat end and a switch on the side. I told myself that it wasn’t a flashlight, and when it wasn’t a flashlight, that was my sign.

  I pushed the switch with a quavering thumb.

  Blaine’s winter survival kit was well stocked.

  Sixteen

  My favorite thing in the bag wasn’t the water. I made a rule of a bottle every hour, but after five bottles, I had to pick an empty to pee in, a predictably moist procedure. My favorite wasn’t the food, and not just because I couldn’t work the can opener, meaning I was stuck with the pull tabs, meaning I forewent the precious Chef Boyardee ravioli for generic ham-and-navy-bean soup, which I ate condensed with a foldable spoon. It tasted like sodium squared. My favorite wasn’t the cooking fuel—like I’d fire up some Sterno when I had a few square feet of space and I was swaddled in a polyester blanket. My favorite wasn’t the blanket, though that was a close second.

  My favorite thing was the watch. Still in its packaging, it had Day-Glo, a timer, an alarm, the whole nine. I read the instructions, took my best guess at the hour. Pro­grammed it, played with its functions. It surprised me how much it helped. To know time was passing, that I existed inside it.

  I put the watch facedown and rifled through the bag a bit more. Handled the road flare carefully, opened the buck knife. I entertained fantasies of giving Sam a surprise hello. Then I checked the time.

  I popped more Advil, waited for it to take effect, checked the time.

  I found a smaller, cuter first-aid kit and wrapped my wrist in an Ace bandage that did precisely nothing. Checked the time.

  It was 7:27 p.m. when the roar of our momentum quieted. The car stopped. A door clicked open, and feet scuffed on pebbles. They became one foot, hopping, to where the top of my head kissed the side of the trunk. I heard Johnny open the flap for the gas compartment and unscrew the cap. He socked home the nozzle; fuel rushed in. Had he even bandaged his leg?

  I could smell the desert outside. I didn’t hear any voices, save the Stones on the car’s radio, so I pictured where we were as another blank, tan haven for tumbleweeds, its vistas a tight contest for most boring. This was probably some miniscule fill station on a route rendered obsolete by progress. I imagined a geezer inside protecting the cigarettes. Maybe he didn’t like the look of the big guy lazing in the passenger seat. Maybe he was concerned about the boy hopping on one leg. Maybe he was calling the cops this very second.

  Johnny thudded a finger on the car’s side in that classic “Are you there?” rhythm.

  I tapped back, insanely grateful to communicate. I wished I knew Morse code. I had no idea what I’d tell him, but the fact I couldn’t tell him got me desperate and weepy. I imagined the pain he must be in. I hoped his wheels were turning as fast as the ones underneath us, trying to find another way out.

  We were back on the highway after four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. I timed it.

  My mind wandered. I tried keeping it occupied by singing Rumours, the whole album front to back, but it wound up soundtracking these incredibly vivid visuals of the places we’d been. The stable, where the police were no doubt finishing up by now, Blaine in the back of a slow-moving ambulance, on the way to a morgue drawer. From there, I went to mountains, the cabin, where Ellie’s and Becca’s bodies were gone but the stains they made in the road had sunk into the soil. Was Harvey’s two hundred still under the convenience store’s freezer, or was he right now reaching to get it? Did that church in Nowhere, Minnesota, miss its bus yet, or were they right now noticing it was gone?

  Right now, everything was happening right now.

  For instance, the flashlight was dying. I began a frantic search for batteries. I glanced at the watch and saw it was midnight, which took my hysteria to new levels, because I couldn’t account for the last five hours.

  Winter survival kits have spare batteries; that’s 101. I dug through the bag again, but there weren’t any. Luminescence was dimming on my creepy little nest. The light went out. I banged on it, and it stayed out. I hit the watch’s Day-Glo, its blue-green light soothing. My eyeballs rolled, tired wheels taking me somewhere.

  The Future Is Now: Where’s that from? It’s true. It’s laughing its ass off at your plans. Your cravings for getting good and lost—the future is saying, Here you go.

  We stopped again, at 1:48 in the morning. I heard glass break. The tires echoed on a smooth grade. Inside somewhere. Sam and Johnny got out of the car. They conversed, and a short while later, a wrench tapped below.

  I squeezed the Day-Glo button again. 1:57 a.m.

  The trunk lid thunked, lifted. My space filled with blotchy moonlight. Footsteps scraped, and a big shadow covered me. I was curled toward the back of the trunk. I raised my head up. At first, I thought Sam was playing a joke, that he’d spray-painted himself for a prank. His bare chest and shoulders and belly were dark maroon. His face was scaly. The top of his head had sprouted bubbly white pustules.

  Behind him were oil-stained floors, a smatter of old rags. A long door yawned open, letting in silver light. Beyond was a driveway cloaked in trees.

  Sam sat on the
rim of the trunk. “Johnny says there’s a bad sound coming from the engine. He wanted to check it before we went any further. In case you were wondering.”

  I wasn’t.

  “We’re close. I remember this place. They used to serve egg creams. Have you ever had an egg cream?”

  I hadn’t, but they sure sounded gross.

  “We were happy here, your mother and I. It was the only happiness I ever knew. What your friend the pig said about me isn’t the full story. It’s much more complicated. Not even I understood it until now. Now that I have a child of my own.”

  It was incredible he could still confuse me. This should have had me laughing inside, but I listened, serious. I put down the watch and twisted to get on my back. The pain was amazing.

  Sam stroked along the trunk lid. “It’s hard being a father. The disappointment. You can’t know how heartbreaking it is. You broke Daddy’s heart, Kat. But even if you hurt Daddy, even if you reject Daddy, he still loves you. Daddy loves you so much.”

  I didn’t answer. There was no point.

  Something was off about him. The way he fidgeted, picking at the rubbery stuff that insulated the trunk. He seemed oddly shy. I wanted to write his mood off to sun poisoning; his burn was definitely bad enough.

  “Darling, I’m uneasy.” Sam reached with one finger and touched the top button of my jeans. His other hand joined, helped unbutton it, opened the flap to a row of four more. “Your pet policeman, the way he talked about you. If he was inappropriate, I think you’d be afraid to tell me.” The tip of Sam’s tongue peeked out, wetting his upper lip. “Daddy’s going to check, all right?”

  Any fear I’d ever felt had been practice for this moment. I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening. I was pulling my stomach in, to get it away from his fingers, which were weirdly decorous and well mannered. Like unbuttoning my button fly was part of a Victorian high tea. I wondered if I could I pull a my-mom and unplug from reality.

  Could I get back if I did?

  “Johnny?” I said. The wrench stopped tapping. A sliding sound along the floor.

  “There’s no need to speak to him.” Sam said, one button to go. He’d only half turned when Johnny Blue appeared. He did a double take.

  A bulky wrench was poised high in Johnny’s hand. Sam flung himself backward—no time for anything else. The wrench winged him in the elbow. Sam cried out, going for his gun.

  I battled to sit up, couldn’t, push up, couldn’t. Johnny brawled ahead with a crazed Geronimo yell. His pant leg was hiked, a soaked cloth tied around the hole in his calf. The wound tore as I watched, as he made it take his weight and ran at Sam, putting the wrench sideways while Sam’s fumbling left arm found the gun, got it around. Johnny swung, and Sam fired. They sprang apart. Sam’s gun fell to the floor.

  I rolled and fell out of the trunk like a rag doll, crawled across the garage floor. I beat Sam by so little I pulled the trigger without aiming. The recoil jerked me into something soft. I nearly dropped the gun. I couldn’t believe how heavy it was. In front of me danced a riot of blobs and surfaces, a blurry figure advancing. I pulled the trigger again. The kickback made me squeal.

  A stooped thing ran out of the garage, its footsteps chittering on pavement. My ears rang.

  Slowly, the ringing became a whistling. The hole in Johnny’s chest blew fizzy bubbles. His inhales were prolonged hihs, his exhales short hoos. It didn’t take a medical degree to grasp that his lungs were trying to pull air from wherever they could get it, including from this new portal, and that it wasn’t enough or it was too much or not pressurized right. “Don’t try to move,” I said, getting around him. I put his head in my lap. “Don’t move. You’re going to be fine.”

  He held up a finger, pointed at the soot on the floor. He started writing in it.

  He wrote: RUN.

  “I will,” I said. “In another minute, okay?”

  Johnny was crying. And underlining and underlining RUN, hell-bent, gritting his teeth at that one word and how emphatic he could make it.

  I took his hand and folded it. He fought me about putting his hand on his chest. “I know,” I said. “I know. I remember.” Because there was blood on his chest, lots of it. He didn’t want me to touch it. He turned his face up, pleading. Muscles strained in his neck.

  “Remember when we were in a boat?” I said. “I was hungry, so you caught a fish. I got thirsty, so you made it rain. And you were scared of the dark, so I sang to you. Remember?”

  He nodded, a corner of his mouth lifting.

  “Moon River. Wider than a mile.” I sang him the whole thing, my voice a dry, broken wheeze. It was such a short song—where were the other verses? He stopped moving at “dream maker.” His chest quit bubbling at “two drifters.” I called him “my huckleberry friend,” this dead boy in my lap. “Moon River. And me.”

  Far down in his eyes, our boat was bobbing away. “I won’t leave,” I said. “All I ever do is leave you.” I gathered him, rocked him, told him I’d protect him. I noticed cigarettes sticking out of his hip pocket. I stole them.

  “What do I do? I won’t tell. I won’t tell if you talk to me.”

  None of this was really happening. All of it had been a goof, a performance. Sam would come in through that door he just ran out of and take a bow. Blaine would follow, bow, pat Sam on the back for a job well-done. Johnny would spring up out of my lap and join them. I’d get up, unhurt, and give the whole ensemble a standing ovation. They deserved it.

  This notion was so persuasive, so comforting. I used it to get myself under control. Budgeted a few minutes to actually believing that it was all a gag. Meaning: Your heart doesn’t have to slam like this, you don’t have to gasp for breath. You’ll look down, and Johnny will be smiling at you like he does.

  Once I believed it, I looked down. Johnny was the same.

  I put his head on the floor and walked on my knees to the trunk. I pulled out the blanket and covered him, hiding all his wounds. I put his hands on his chest and set my hand on top of them. I had to say something. It had to not be bullshit.

  “You were the best thing about the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

  That wasn’t it. True but still wrong. I knelt there, pushing his eyelids closed and getting his hair in some kind of order, patiently awaiting inspiration. I found it in RUN, written in the dirt. A final wish that had nothing to do with him.

  “Easy,” I said, standing. “Easy, easy.” I slapped my jaw, making myself wake to reality. I checked to see if the Corvette’s keys were in the ignition, the visor, the glove compartment. They weren’t. I set the gun on the hood for a few seconds so I could button my pants. I looked toward the door. I couldn’t go out there. I couldn’t; it was impossible. I should stay, stay with Johnny and wait.

  My left thigh was wobbly. It didn’t hurt, or maybe its hurt didn’t translate through the noise of all my other hurt, but it definitely shortened each stride.

  RUN. Johnny’d underlined it a dozen times.

  This wasn’t the desert. There were gas pumps. There had to be people not far from here.

  I approached the unsheltered night, my walk peg-legged, my pulse thudding, my gun hand wanting to stiffen. I crossed outside, turning awkwardly in circles.

  The garage had a store conjoined to it. A sign in the window read pepsi 10¢. The gas pumps weren’t digital; they had those numbers that whirled on dials. I kept rotating, expecting Sam to jump out at me. I climbed the driveway’s steep grade to a ratty two-lane, thinking he’d be straddling the centerline.

  Except there was no centerline. The pavement had cracked. Dandelions divided the lanes. I spun around, aiming the gun in all directions.

  “Stop,” I said. “You can stop.” I was wrong, I couldn’t. But I slowed enough to confirm where the moon was, and clock directions from that.

  North and south, forest squeezed the road as if trying to smother it.

  To the east, the trees canopied tightly, letting almost no light in.
<
br />   West, after about two hundred yards of darkness, the road broke from the tree cover. Then the cracked blacktop shot straight and moonlit into a hazy distance. There was a sign not far away. I squinted, couldn’t make it out. I thought the moon must be obscuring the print, but that wasn’t the problem. The print had worn off. So had most of the paint. It was orange once, now dulled to silver with stray streaks and dots.

  Behind me, a spot of light shone through the garage’s door. I could see Johnny’s shoe.

  Don’t look back, they say. What you survive stays behind you, forget it, move on. But that never works. Pretending it does just keeps the damage sitting on your shoulder, until inevitably, you become your damage. It’s the type of realization you want to pass on to somebody. It’s the type of realization you get when all your somebodies are bodies.

  I turned and limped west. Thinking: I was young once.

  Seventeen

  Those woods were pure hell. My single attempt at running almost made me crash to the ground, so I sacrificed speed for vigilance, constantly verifying that the forest did indeed peter out. When I exited to open sky, I walked backward for a while, gun waving in my hand. I wanted to watch the muzzle flash, listen to Sam howling as he took a bullet right through the heart. I turned around only because the road was cracked in more places than it was whole. The thin moon lit the tripping hazards beautifully. It also gave an unnerving glow to the flats on either side of the asphalt. Thousands of stumps poked from the dirt, their wide bases covered with mushrooms.

  Strange they’d build a logging road, harvest a football field to the left and right, and leave. I wasn’t complaining—it would be tough for someone to sneak up on me—but there were no structures, no houses, no people, and no signs of people. I had to pep-talk myself pretty hard to avoid a despairing certainty that I was the only biped for quite a distance. Except for Sam, of course. And Bigfoot, if he was around.

  The temperature was high forties, max, and my naked arms never tired of telling me this. My gawky walk had to be pulling fifteen-minute miles, if that. I didn’t want to estimate this distance, so instead I watched the night sky and listened to the world around me. The forest came alive with birds, what sounded like infinite birds, arguing, taunting. The sky above them phased out of black, to gray, through all the purples. I’m not sure when I started smiling, but when the purple turned pink, I told it, “Thank you. Thank you.” There was heat on my back and my shoulders, and I was grateful for that. Things had gotten easier, here at the end. The new goal was the oldest goal—don’t stop.