Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  A stench invaded the air, and I pressed my arm to my nose and hurried. A dead animal lay at the roadside. Its fur was matted. It writhed with maggots. Skunk was my best guess, but it was too big, inflated with death gas. As I passed it, the first blush of sun cleared the woods behind me, lighting a wet-and-wild glimmer of worms in soft meat. I retched and missed a step, but somehow didn’t fall. I followed the crack between lanes, to where the sun spotlighted—

  My finish line.

  Everything stopped at this tree as if this were the whole point, the reason for being there. At this big oak, ugly but powerful. A wall of forest to either side of it was the deadest of dead ends.

  I dropped to my knees. Birds cackled while I put down the gun and dug in my pockets, searching my jeans. All I found were Johnny’s Newports, his lighter, and in my right hip pocket, about $2,000. I laughed, fanning it out, the bills flat and pristine. I thumbed the Bic alight, picked up the two grand, and put the pretty flame to its crisp edges. I lit a butt off their burn and inhaled ’til it hurt. “Best inhale’s the last one,” I said.

  I picked up the gun. It looked mean, and smug in its meanness, and I didn’t want to give it the satisfaction. Plus, shooting myself struck me as grossly immature.

  I swiveled around, still sitting, to face where I’d come from. Johnny’s pack had nine cigarettes left. I smoked them down to two, waiting. If this dumbass fiasco had taught me one thing, it was that the next disaster required me only to wait. If it had taught me two things, it was that Sam could be counted on to show up and tear up what miniscule scraps of peace I’d managed to collect, that he seemed to think it was his job. I strongly doubted he’d disappoint, now that I was cornered.

  And he didn’t.

  At a mass flap and squawk, the birds rose in a cloud of what seemed like thousands. Their climb was the forest growing taller, moving inward. They changed direction, swirling north. Their cries were so loud they almost drowned out the sound of the engine.

  The Corvette rammed from the forest, its bright red and shiny chrome a riot of color among earthy neutrals. I stood in awe; I’d never seen anything move that fast. Sam was going over a hundred.

  The car grew. My feet yearned for a rearward march, but I planted them. Nothing behind me would help.

  Make him go faster, I thought. He might swerve.

  “Yeah, okay. With my handy-dandy telepathy?”

  My head did a repetitive involuntary nod, a physical override of good sense. When a car’s coming at you, you get out of the road. You don’t stand there and bait it. You don’t fool yourself you can jump out of the way when you can barely walk.

  I lifted the gun. I brought my other hand up. The pinkie was busted and wrapped, but the middle one could still extend. I held it high. “Come on, come on,” I said, “come on, come on, come on,” as the engine got louder, as the car got close enough that I could see Sam. He was looking down, frenzied, bouncing in his seat. His seat-belt buckle twinkled beside his ear. As the Corvette’s cherry hood roared toward me, I thought back to Johnny telling Sam we needed to stop. Getting under the car and ting-tinging with his wrench.

  And I knew, without knowing how I knew: Johnny’d used his free hand to bleed the brakes.

  Sam’s head snapped up. He and I locked eyes in a momentary flash that spanned hours. His skin was red as a stoplight. An oddly gallant grin showed one side of his teeth, bewitching me. I couldn’t move. I could practically hear him say, “Daddy forgives you.”

  A front tire hit the skunk, which exploded in a foul mash, its bloat acting as a springboard. The Corvette lifted off the ground. Tires on the passenger side corrected to the right, steered into the rotation, and the car launched into a spiral. A headlight came so close I could have spit on it. I turned, watched the car’s underside sail past me. It landed upside down and did somersaults over the tree stumps, ejecting pieces of itself with each impact. It kept going far longer than I could have thought possible, finally finding inertia, and with one last roll, coming to rest.

  The world went startlingly quiet. I looked back where the car had come from. The road was empty. I turned around again; the wreckage was much more interesting. The ’Vette’s bent hood hung open. Bars of the frame were exposed. The interior was tussled, seats tilting drunkenly. Chunks of paneling were everywhere. I limped toward what was left, scanning, frantic.

  I found him folded in half. Sam’s toes were planted in the dirt, as was his chin. His spine had inverted and coiled to make this possible, and his forehead and temple were flayed, skin erased by gravel. His eyelid hung off the left side, flapping as he tried to blink. He stared straight ahead. His arm reached onto the tarmac. His fist opened and closed, fingernails scraping.

  He paid me no attention as I went by him. I was desperate to never see him again, unable to look away—I shuffle-ran backward until I stumbled and fell. The gun went off, the shot cacophonous. Birds squawked, joining the concert of bullet reverb, my heavy breathing, and Sam’s nails fighting to pull him forward. As the birds rose above him, his eyes rolled up to peek. His hand stopped moving. It continued not moving for some time.

  I couldn’t lower the gun. I decided this was okay—no rush. I said that out loud: “No rush. Take a sec. Time-out.”

  I took stock. I was not dead. Uncertain of that call, I checked my own pulse. It was tommy-gunning in my wrist.

  I cried a little; I’d earned it. Actually, the skunk earned it. I put the gun down, saluted the greasy stain he’d been reduced to, and discovered I was sitting on tree roots. They carved up the blacktop to my right, then went snaking down a path. You had to be here under the big oak to see it, narrow as the trail was. Draped as it was with droopy, sallow leaves.

  It led out of the woods, into a clearing. The leaves were from a willow, and there was a branch slung low.

  Like a long bench. Perfect for taking a group photo.

  I got up and limped, staring at my feet so I wouldn’t stumble on the vines. Arriving at the dirt, I went on, to where the dirt ended and became sand. I lifted my head.

  The Pacific embraced the sky, the two of them reflecting one another’s blues. The beach must have been farther away back then, since the willow was healthy in the picture. Now it had warty salt-sores and leaves close to my natural hair color, a chromatic no-man’s-land between yellow and brown. I went and stood where they’d put the camera that day. A bit behind, letting the chubby guy make his adjustments. He told Sam and Harmony to scoot in. She smiled and she meant it. He was gangly, mop-topped. The camera flash made me wince and turn.

  There was Sam, sun-charred, skinned, and origami’d, lying at the roadside, his reaching arm in a perfect line to this spot. Did he die clawing to get here? Did he want to grab his younger self and shake him, tell that dumb kid what a terrible man he’d turn into?

  I made an odd noise, a combination scream-giggle. I covered my mouth. I wanted to jump forward five, ten, fifteen years. I needed to hear it would be okay. I needed to hear I’d be alive and someone would give a damn I was alive, and I’d be different, better—or at least I wouldn’t get worse. I wished my older self could be sitting on this tree. She was the only one I’d believe. The only one I’d believe who wasn’t dead already.

  I went to the willow and sat, regarding the water, the waves. The ocean put my mind at ease. At rest.

  Suddenly, with a crash, I sank. My ribs found new places to stab me, and I howled. I slapped around, hitting desiccated lengths of bark that my bony ass had evidently caused to cave in. I whimpered at the placid blue sky and asked, “Really?” I was sitting on something mushy and dry—I figured it was another dead animal. My process for escaping was a graceless half cartwheel, which I caught with my bad wrist. I pillowed my head on the sand, groaning.

  There was a duffel bag jammed inside the tree.

  It was gray canvas. Wedged through that knot a few feet over and pushed in from the opening with a foot or a stick. Really cramming so intrepid trekkers on a PowerBar break wouldn’t find it. My t
houghts, always anxious to look at both sides of a contradiction, really outdid themselves here. I knew for a fact it was the money, and I knew with absolute certainty it wasn’t. I got off the ground, maintaining my why-not approach. Why not tug it out of there? Why not see if it’s abandoned camping equipment or an air mattress or Jimmy Hoffa or $3.75 million of your parents’ decades-old robbery take? I mean, what else was I up to?

  I grabbed hold, curled into a ball, and rocked backward. Wood snapped. The bag landed on my shins, larger than I’d thought—hockey-gear huge. I worked the stiff zipper across eighteen years of rust. She’d lined the sides in plastic. I tore it, and cream-and-green bricks tumbled over each other.

  I picked up a stack. My thumb clicked through the petrified bills. They gave off a conspicuous smell of nothing, but I flashed to the everything they could buy. To a future where I had a bunch of nice stuff, where I had throw pillows. Where I owned a car with heated seats, shoes I referred to by men’s names in plural: “These are my so-and-sos.” I had guest soaps. College. Grad school, if necessary. A house is an investment; renting’s a waste. Retirement: never too soon to start; no such thing as enough.

  Awesome, genius. What’s the plan? Drag it? How far, to where? I have a hunch Rodeo Drive is about six hundred miles south. Hide it and come back? You’re never coming back here. If you get out of this, you’re going to have the same attitude toward remote areas as that chick at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—and at least she could hitchhike.

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” I dug sulkily for a cigarette, cursing when I remembered I’d left the pack next to my flambéed two grand. But I did uncover a last treat from the bottommost of my pocket. Bending their bodies over the staple, I counted them. Four more matches.

  I sneered at Sam. He was perfectly still, and still reaching.

  “You want it?” I asked. “Hey, Daddy, want your money?”

  Digging a pit around the duffel, I wished money could beg for its life. Part of me begged in its stead, giving the cash a heart and a mind that could know regret, and regretted being the excuse for all this fuss. It apologized; it was sorry for all the pointless dead. It was sorry for the madwoman who’d stuffed it into a living grave. But it was especially sorry for the daughter who’d freed it, who’d lost two totally fucked parents in its name, who’d never, never have the kind of uncomplicated life she craved. Moon River. All that.

  I folded the matchbook. Popped, tossed. Fire scampered bundle to bundle, treating the hundreds like Duraflame. I collected the nearest pieces of willow wood to build some heft. The blaze grew good and dangerous. I tried not to get too comfortable, but it was hard. Too easy to decide I was safe now. That for sure, forest rangers or state park employees or someone would come soon.

  The fire fooled me best. It told tales about the morning getting warmer. It said I could sleep, that I’d be okay, and the ocean concurred, hushing my worry about slowing breaths and heavy eyes. What it couldn’t quell was my conviction, down-deep and deeply upsetting, that I was not alone out here.

  “Whoever you are, come out,” I tried to yell. “After the week I’ve had, you’re about as scary as a baby kitten on ludes.” I had my ears perked, attuned to a level that was almost superhuman. The wind picked up. The trees swished and clattered. Nobody stepped out of them, but the awareness wouldn’t leave me. Someone was watching. “Come on and show yourself.”

  A grumpy sound came from the ocean. Far, far out, at a distance I couldn’t begin to estimate, clouds in layered slabs were trampling the clear day. I nodded at the approaching storm like it and I had agreed on a matter of huge significance.

  As I dumped sand on my fire, reason raised its hand. I must have called on it. “You should backtrack to the garage,” it said. “You might make it if you hurry. You need to stay dry.”

  “Screw dry,” I said, getting up, going to where land and sea shared their boundaries. The shore unwound in a wavy line as far as I could see and beyond. Behind it, the trees were thick. Behind those, sharp hills spiked in a wilderness of shale and dense pines.

  Prevailing wisdom is, stay in one place if you’re lost. I’d heard this. It was often excellent advice, but—

  “We’re not lost, are we?” Foam bubbled over my shoes. Weedy sea oaks slapped me, in a tizzy about the same fierce gusts of wind that were narrowing my path to a tightrope. I walked it, I’d fall off and get back on. I was dragging my bum leg, with a foot that had gone numb. This couldn’t be the real ending.

  I was being followed.

  “There’s more, right?” I chatted about other stuff over that last impossible mile—how there was a Wendy’s around this next bend of bay, and I’d get a cup of chili and a baked potato so hot it burned my mouth, then the Frosty would feel so good—but I kept coming back to that. “This isn’t it, right?”

  The storm unleashed. My hair was strings in seconds, my clothes these wet sacks of waterlog the wind ripped at like sails. I bowed my head so exhales could stream off my chin; otherwise, I’d drown standing up. The sand disappeared in gushes of angry tide. I staggered to all fours, got up, got going again.

  And I found I had enough left in me to shout. Whoever was there needed to hear this.

  “Look, if all you’re saying is, ‘Well, who the fuck’re you?’ then you win. I’m nobody. But you’re winning cheap. That’s all anyone has to say is, ‘Who are you?’ And it’s over?”

  There was a roar of thunder, followed by lightning, weaving through the whole squall, bright, frightening. I ducked as if that would help. The air filled with the smell of ozone and a subtle high note. An adorable crumb of my psyche as yet devoted to rescue misidentified the high note. It was a release of ionized atmosphere. No reason to get excited, no excuse to turn around. It most definitely was not a siren.

  I looked above me, at a boiling cauldron of gunmetal brew. Beside me, at the ocean all rippling and wild. At the trees I was grabbing for balance: they were mangy. They bent and snapped as I reeled by, my perception shot, imagining a stripe of coffee brown where the foliage gapped back there. I was imagining the gap itself—sure, I was—just as I was imagining that SUV coming around the turn way too fast, sludge spraying from its tires as they slid and corrected. This was followed by the shriek of brakes, the sound of a car door. They were figments of my imagination. Fragments of some coulda-been.

  So when a man came running out of the trees, his momentum almost carrying him into the water, and he dug the sides of his shoes in and he saw me and froze, I’d decided to blow right by him. I couldn’t see him very well, as though he were on the other side of a sodden windshield. The bandage on his throat was worrying. You’re not supposed to get those wet. Delusion or not, I opened my mouth to inform him of this, and expelled whatever fumes of energy I’d been running on. The sand sped up to meet me. I was jostled, spun. I figured a wave, though I didn’t seem to be entirely underwater.

  “Rainy?” Blaine said. “Look up. Look at— Shit.”

  I couldn’t move. My muscles had no volition.

  “Okay, here we go. Up you go, we’re outta here.”

  My neck sank over his arm. I wanted to ask how the hell he’d found me. I tried to force my eyes open.

  “That’s good, Rainy. Blink so I know you’re awake. Keep doing that, okay?”

  I tried. It wasn’t easy; raindrops kept pounding into my eyes. I opened them wider.

  That’s when I saw the woman by the water’s edge. She was just standing there, watching us. The deluge did a lot to hide her. The woods closing behind us did more. I couldn’t make out any details, other than she was tall. Thin but not starvation-skinny, hair the colorless color of dun. She was tipping her face to the storm and smiling, like this was the most beautiful day she’d seen in a long time.

  “What’re you smiling about down there?” Blaine said, breathing hard. “Huh? Can you tell me?”

  She headed south, her bearing not what I’d call regal or snobby or even confident. I’d call it itself. I’d call it content,
if I weren’t so afraid contentment is synonymous with complacency.

  “What? What, Rainy, what are you trying to say?”

  I was trying to say, “Put me down, Blaine, I have to go ask her one more thing.”

  But I doubted I could catch her. She’d covered a good distance already, bound for somewhere she considered important. She was a series of flashes through the trees—cutouts of rogue, unrelenting progress.

  I watched her as long as I could. I hoped she didn’t have much farther to go.

  MY REFLECTION

  County Road 42 was a strip of flypaper, clumped with suburbs. The weekend traffic was sporadic. A police cruiser appeared, driving eastbound. Its horn honked, and a hand waved out the open window.

  “That’s Dougherty. His handwriting’s so bad the department made him take a class.”

  “In handwriting?” I said, talking with my mouth full.

  “They gave him the same workbook his son used in first grade.”

  Blaine was trying to cheer me up. We’d done sandwich assembly, a thirty-minute drive. A climb up the water tower’s ladder with him reminding me every other rung to be careful. He’d okayed it with the police in Savage first, and I’d have loved to hear his end of the conversation: “I’m gonna be up there with a friend this Sunday night around seven. Don’t arrest us, okay?”

  My class was graduating today. From where we sat on the tower’s platform, Burnsville and Apple Valley and snippets of Farmington were visible. Dewey High wasn’t. They held commencement outside. All those caps thrown in the air, birds rising in tandem flight—I couldn’t take it. I never went back for spring semester.