Prius, for God’s sake. They were talkers. They hated the government—they hated the U.S. occupation of the Republic—but they had never taken any action outside of circulating petitions, holding protest signs on downtown corners. And then she remembered her father’s words: “There are things you don’t know.”
Maybe the answer was in the letter.
When they parked at the travel plaza in Frazee, Minnesota, Elwood left his hand on the gearshift and said, “End of the road.” He lifted his eyebrows expectantly. “Unless you want to head back to Twin Cities?”
She did not.
“Didn’t think so.”
She had been using his jacket as a blanket, and when she tried to hand it back, he shook his head, told her to keep it. “Somebody looking for you?” he asked, and when she did not respond he blew out a sigh and said, “You be careful. And you stay off the interstate if you don’t want to get found.”
It isn’t until he drives away—the gray exhaust rising from the truck’s bullhorn pipes—that she realizes she forgot to thank him. She lifts a hand as the truck departs, growing smaller in the distance, and she hopes he sees the gesture in his mirror. Then she turns around in a circle and feels lost and utterly alone, realizing she has no one to trust, nowhere to go.
The gas station is part of a larger travel plaza. There is a Subway attached to it and a video-game parlor she can see flashing through the windows. The parking lot is busy with cars and trucks, people pumping gas, cracking open sodas, sipping from steaming mugs of coffee. An SUV beeps its horn and the driver irritably lifts his hand off the wheel and she realizes she is in the way, standing in the middle of the lot, in the middle of all this traffic.
She starts toward the store, her wrist pulsing with every step, and when she pushes through the door, a bell chimes. One thing at a time, her mother always said. She tries to wrap her head around a plan. She needs a bathroom, a map, some ibuprofen and food. She can manage that at least. The rest can wait.
Behind the register stands a heavy woman with black roots showing through her bleached-blond hair. She stares a beat too long and Claire feels a surge of panic, wondering if her face has appeared on television, if the woman recognizes her. It seems impossible, but so does everything that has happened to her.
Once in the bathroom, she feels encouraged by her reflection in the mirror. She looks like hell. Her hair—which has always been a problem, a wavy blond tangle she conditions and straightens every morning—is snarled up in every direction. Her face looks like a piece of old, darkened fruit. And then there is the gash across her forehead, a second mouth. Who wouldn’t stare?
The daisy-patterned linoleum, peeling up at the corners, is littered with cigarette butts and toilet paper confetti. It is a four-stall bathroom, and as women walk in and out, their voices chattering, their eyes lingering on her, she tries to pay them no mind, draping her jacket over the paper-towel dispenser, tearing off a long sheet, dampening it, frothing it up with soap. She cleans up as best she can.
The travel mart has bins of five-dollar DVDs, open-air coolers full of cheese and sausage, racks of T-shirts with eagles and wolves silk-screened across them, display cases full of lacquered log clocks, and several grocery aisles crowded mostly with chips, pretzels, cookies, and candy. She selects an off-brand backpack from a rack, unzips its mouth, braces its strap in the crook of her elbow, and begins to stock up. A Rand McNally road atlas, ibuprofen, tampons, a blister pack of pens, a notebook with a cartoon football on its cover, two wolf T-shirts, duct tape, a bag of jerky, a box of granola bars, a bottle of Coke. And a newspaper, its headlines concerning the terrorist attacks.
She tries to smile at the woman behind the register—tries not to wince when she jars her wrist with the backpack, lifting it
Scott Hildreth, SD Hildreth