C. Box - The Highway

As he climbed through the gears and rolled past the refinery he placed two calls from his cell phone. The first was to his dispatcher. He held the phone away from his ear until her railing subsided and then raised it back up.

“I told you,” he said, “Your Qualcomm unit is acting up, just like before. It ain’t my fault you installed a defective unit.”

“I still can’t find you,” she said. Her name was Yvonne and she was a bleached-blond fatty with moles on the folds of her neck. Like all dispatchers, she thought she was God.

“I told you,” he said, “I’m sitting in traffic outside of Park City. The state patrol has the roads shut down and I don’t know how long I’ll be sitting here before they let us go.”

Yvonne started screeching about his failure to call her sooner or she could have told him about the accident. That it could be hours before they’d open the interstate again.

“What do you care?” he said. “I’m half empty and every delivery was on schedule. I’m on my own time now.”

“You know you need to come into the office,” she said contemptuously, and he hoped no other truckers were listening in. “You’ve got a month’s worth of logs and receipts to turn in. DOT wants an audit on all our drivers like I told you weeks ago.”

“Screw ’em,” he said. Nearly adding, Screw you, too.

The Lizard King was an independent contractor, although it didn’t ever seem like it. The trucking company he was signed on with took 15 percent of every payday in exchange for brokering trips and administration. Between his company, the state regulations and rules, and the ever-growing federal regulations and mandates, it seemed like there was a conspiracy to throw every long-haul trucker off the road. There was the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Safety Measurement System (CSA scores), random drug testing, rising fuel costs …

He pressed the phone against his groin so she could talk to his genitals.

Finally, he said, “I’ll call tomorrow after I get some sleep.”

“You need to get that Qualcomm looked at-”

He punched off.

* * *

Then he made another call as he exited the ramp. The Ford was a long way ahead but he could see the lights. It didn’t turn at Laurel, which meant they were headed for the Beartooth Pass. As it rang, he could imagine her cursing, pushing away her lap blanket, and struggling to get up to answer the phone. He could see her two large hands folding over the grips on the walker like reptilian claws and the lenses of her steel-framed glasses winking in the reflected light from the television screen. Her massive thighs rubbing together as she moved, those fat white cylinder-like ankles pinched into dirty shoes …

Just picturing her as she grunted and shuffled in that close house with dark paneling that smelled of stale cabbage and bacon and rotten garbage made the bile rise in his throat.

7:32 P.M., Tuesday, November 20

Danielle and Gracie were in Yellowstone and it was spooky. The roads were fine-no snow-but it was oppressively dark and it seemed like someone had flipped a switch and turned out all the lights. The sky was clear and it had stopped raining but the only illumination came from a thin sliver of moon and the gauzy, ghostly wash of a million stars that seemed close, as if tamped down by an unseen hand from above. The road was banked with walls of thick black pines that occasionally opened up to reveal grassy meadows. Although the tires hummed on the pavement, Gracie got a sense of immense quiet all around them. They’d encountered no oncoming cars since they’d entered the park out of Silver Gate, a tiny and sleepy town where the only human activity existed around a couple of bars.

“We’re back,” she whispered to Danielle.

“So let’s get the hell out of here as fast as we can.”

“The speed limit is forty-five,” Gracie said.

“Screw that.”

But her sister’s emphasis wasn’t on the circumstance that they were back in Yellowstone, Gracie thought, but because she wanted to see Justin and talk to him. Talk him back onto Planet Danielle.

Simply being in the park wasn’t as horrifying to Gracie as she’s anticipated it would be. The things that had happened to them there were the result of evil people, not the place itself. She still had nightmares, but they weren’t about Yellowstone. Her nightmares came from what she saw and experienced when the door had opened to reveal evil and violence that until that trip had been closed to her. Now she knew what some people-despite their manner and packaging-were capable of. It still shook her to her core.

And there was a bizarre kind of symmetry going on, she thought. They’d met Justin and his father Cody in Yellowstone and the bonds they’d forged were so strong that here they were, some time later, going to see them in Montana.

Gracie didn’t know how she felt about leaving the interstate highway. Despite their size and dominance and the close encounter they’d had with one, the stream of big trucks was also reassuring because it meant there were people on the road if something went wrong. Now it felt like they would be alone out there.

* * *

They rounded a corner to a constellation of piercing green dots ahead in the road. Danielle braked and waited for the small herd of buffalo, whose eyes reflected back green in her headlights, to amble across the cracked blacktop.

“That’s why you shouldn’t go so fast,” Gracie said. “Can you imagine hitting one?”

“My poor car,” Danielle said, petting the dashboard.

Danielle had attached the GPS unit to the windshield by its suction cup assembly and after fumbling around for twenty minutes finally figured out how to plug it into the AC outlet. Its glow and brightly delineated roads and lines was a comfort to Gracie and made it seem less like they were in the middle of Siberia. The feature she prized the most was the readout that claimed they were three hours and thirty-eight minutes from Helena.

* * *

“Oh my God,” Danielle gasped.

Her tone frightened Gracie, who peered ahead on the two-lane to see what had alarmed her sister.

“No signal,” Danielle said, staring at her phone. “I forgot there’s no cell service in this stupid place.”

Gracie said, “I can’t believe you forgot that. Don’t you remember getting hysterical about it when we were here? I do.”

* * *

Gracie sniffed the air and asked, “What’s that smell?”

“What smell?”

“Like something burning. Don’t you smell it?”

Danielle rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

“How do you know? It seems like it’s coming from the motor.”

“Because I know my own car,” Danielle said with anger. “She’s been running for hours and she’s probably getting tired. Just don’t worry.”

“You mean you’ve smelled this before?”

“Of course,” Danielle said. “Besides, we’re in Yellowstone with all the geysers and such. They all smell a little like toilets.”

But Gracie wasn’t sure she believed her.

* * *

There was a long straight run and Danielle obviously felt comfortable speeding up. To the south was a wide-open vista that stretched out for several miles until it butted against dark tree-covered foothills. A wide black river serpentined through the meadow, the surface of the inky water reflecting the sliver of moon and the stars. Elk and bison grazed near the banks framed by wisps of thermal steam. Huge white trumpeter swans nested in the tall grass near the river. Danielle seemed transfixed by the screen of her cell phone and the NO SIGNAL message where bars should have been.

“It’s really kind of pretty,” Gracie said.