Dylan said this was as good a place as any to break for lunch, so once Shanelle was done with her call we got a bite on the patio of the Red Mountain Grill so we could see the water. I couldn’t get enough of it.
The world is so wide, I thought, and my remaining choices so narrow.
Talking about death and dying has always been easy for me, because in some ways it was easier than living. But now that death is nearly here, now that it’s real, a part of me is afraid to go forward. But I’ve come too far to go back. I’m committed to the choices I’ve made.
Pushing down the thought and the panic made the world suddenly seem very far away, as if it had nothing to do with me anymore. It’s too big for me. My world is the bus, and where it’s going, and what happens when we get there.
I was afraid to go home, but going home was inevitable.
I am afraid to go forward, but going forward is inevitable.
And with every breath, I fight the urge to flee.
* * *
Karen_Ortiz
After lunch we got back on the road, and by five we were in Fruita, Colorado, the last town with any decent motels before the Utah border. Dylan said he picked the Balanced Rock Inn because it was walking distance to a drugstore, a couple of bars, a park, some fast food places, three banks, and two churches. Something for everyone. But mainly I think he liked the name.
When we checked in, Dylan said he was going to take the room across the hall from me rather than sharing the same room. Now that we were close enough to pick up the Utah PD on the police scanner, he wanted to get up early to get a sense of what’s in front of us without having to wake me. I told him I love that he’s considerate, but I’d happily trade a few hours of sleep to lie against his warmth, so we’re back in the same room for the night. I don’t think we have many more nights together, and I’ll fight for every one of them.
In the end, we both lost sleep when Dylan got a midnight email from his lawyer friend. Would post more, but just really exhausted now. More later.
* * *
VaughnR
After we got into the room, Shanelle seemed distant, almost sad. I asked if everything was all right and she said she was just tired, but I could tell there was more going on inside. I thought maybe it was something I’d done, so to make up for any accidental stupidities on my part I went looking for food while she took a nap since the motel didn’t have room service. At a City Market two blocks away I loaded up on salads, turkey, ham, snacks, beer, and bottled water. And yes, I was that old guy you see wheeling a stolen grocery cart down the street because there’s too much to carry.
The room table was pretty small, but I managed to cover it with enough food to feed a small South American village for a week. She laughed when she woke up and saw it all, but when we sat down for dinner she barely touched any of it. By now I was sure that she was going to say that what happened between us was a mistake and that we should move into different rooms. Instead she asked if we could go lie down together for a while.
I was married for over forty years and I still have no idea how to read women.
With both of us still dressed, she spooned on the bed with me tucked in behind, her head resting on my arm. I assumed she just wanted to take a nap, but then I felt tears on my arm.
I tried to nudge her back around so I could see her, but she wouldn’t roll over, like she didn’t want to face me. “What’s going on?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said, but the tears kept coming.
“I’ve seen nothing, and this ain’t it. What’s going on, sweetie?”
“I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what?”
“When I talked with my mom today,” she said, the words tumbling out, “she was just so happy to see me, and we laughed about a million things and I told her I was seeing somebody and she was so pleased to hear it, all she asked was, Is he good for you? and I said, Yeah, he’s so sweet, he’s the best thing to happen to me in a long time, and she teared up, she was so thrilled that she didn’t need to hear anything more, she just kept saying she loves me, so much, over and over.
“And I can’t do it, Vaughn. I can’t finish this with the rest of you. If I do, it’ll break her in half. She’ll never get over it. She’ll blame herself for the rest of her life.”
“But it’s not her fault.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’ll never believe that. She’ll agonize over every conversation we ever had, everything she ever did or said, or didn’t do or say, looking for the one thing that she can point to and say, It’s all my fault.”
She finally turned to face me, her cheeks covered in tears. “I didn’t know how to tell you because we’re all in this together. We said we were going all the way, and I don’t want to let you or the others down, but I can’t do this to her, Vaughn. I just can’t, and I’m sorry.”
“You’re not letting me down, Shanelle. Far from it. I’d accepted that you were going to end it with the rest of us because that was your choice and I had to respect it, but I hated the idea of a light as bright as yours going out so soon. If you want to get off the bus, there’s not one of us who’d complain about it. Especially me.
“You said I was the best thing to happen to you, Shanelle, and that means the whole world because you’re the best thing to happen to me. Until I met you, I thought I’d have to walk off the earth alone.”
“But you are!”
“No, I’m not. I’ve got the others now. More important, I’ve got you, right here inside me, and nothing can ever take that away. If anything, knowing you’ll still be in the world after I’m gone will make my part of it easier.”
“You don’t have to go,” she said. “If I’m staying behind, you could too.”
“Can’t, sweetie. I appreciate everything you said about how I shouldn’t blame myself for Carolyn, and some of it may even be true. But I did what I did and my soul says there has to be a reckoning, there has to be balance. Besides, I’m not a good prospect for any kind of long-term relationship. At my age, it’s only a matter of time before my dick falls off and my brain turns to oatmeal.”
She laughed through the tears. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”
“Maybe, but it’s true. I don’t have a future, Shanelle, but you do, and the idea that you’ll be out there somewhere living it is the happiest thing I’ve ever heard.
“I want you to get off the bus,” I said, and I realized I was crying now too. “I want you to live. For me, for your folks, for the others, for yourself. I want you to chase your dreams and live your life. Run as far and as fast as you can, and never, ever look back.”
“You’re sure you’re not disappointed in me?”
“The only thing that would’ve disappointed me is if we made it all the way to San Francisco, and just as we went over the edge of that cliff you turned to me and said, On the other hand…”
And she laughed and kissed me, and we made love for the last time, and it was tender and gentle and sad and beautiful.
It was the whole world.
It was everything.
Thank you for this, I thought at the universe after she fell asleep. Thank you for Shanelle, and thank you for getting her to change her mind. I can go easy now.
Let her be happy. Please, God, let her be happy.
* * *
PeterWilliamRouth
Well, that was unexpected.
We’d just gathered in Dylan’s room to see if he had any updates about our situation when Vaughn told us that Shanelle had something to say. Half in tears, she explained that she’d changed her mind about going all the way with us, that she was going home, and that she hoped we’d understand.
The whole room cheered. Good for her, I thought. Nobody should go on the rest of this trip unless they’re 100% sure they’re doing the right thing for the right reasons.
It was Theo, of course, who said it best. “Shanelle, I think anyone who can stay in the world a day or a week or an hour longer than we can needs to do it. I ca
n’t, but I love and honor the knowledge that you can. You have no idea how happy this makes me.”
Of my own uncertainty, I said nothing.
When she was ready to go, we hugged her and said all the expected things, like Don’t forget us, and Go kick ass, and We’re proud of you. Then we escorted her to the cab that would take her to the Denver Airport. Before she got in, Vaughn handed her the bag of cash. At first she didn’t want to take it, but he insisted. It’s not like I’m going to need it, he said. I wanted to do some good with it. Well, now’s my chance. Please. Take it, for the college fund if nothing else. Become that Super-Psychologist, Shanelle. Do it for me.
Still crying, she nodded, took the bag, and hugged him so hard I thought she’d snap him in half.
Then she got in the cab, waved one last time, and drove out of our lives.
* * *
IamTheo
Maybe it’s the curse of having a writer’s eye, but even before Dylan started talking I could tell something was wrong, so I was glad of the diversion as we said goodbye to Shanelle.
“We have a problem,” he said after she’d left. “Last night I got an email from my attorney friend Jamie, who’s been in touch with a guy he knows in the Assistant District Attorney’s office in Provo. He had to push pretty hard for information because this guy didn’t want to risk losing his job for talking about internal decisions, but Jamie was finally able to piece together where we stand and what’s been going on while we’ve been on the road.
“As Jamie suspected, the Nebraska police contacted the Utah AG and told him what happened and what we’re trying to do, and now he’s got a serious hard-on about us. He’s afraid that if we finish this the way we want to, it’ll inspire copycats to pick up busloads of people who want to commit suicide, or who say they want to help as a way to lure vulnerable people into situations where they can be exploited or killed. So he’s decided to make an example of us, to discourage anyone else from doing the same thing.
“He started by raising hell with the Colorado AG’s office, demanding that they pick us up before we crossed the border into his backyard. Colorado told them no, same as he told Nebraska, because he doesn’t want the heat. But there are rules requiring cooperation between state law enforcement agencies, and when he said no, the Utah AG threatened to take legal action, so they compromised: Colorado would technically continue to ignore us, which saves their ass politically, while providing Utah with any information they had that would help them arrest us if we entered their jurisdiction. So now the Utah AG has detailed descriptions of us, the bus, at least some of our names, the license plate number, and, worst of all, location data from the traffic cameras.”
“Wait, you’re saying they know where we are?” Peter asked.
“Only roughly. Most of the cameras are on the freeway and in the big cities; the farther we went off the beaten track, the fewer times we pinged the system, so they know our general vicinity but not our exact location. One other thing in our favor is that they have no idea when or even if we still plan to cross the border. We could do it tomorrow, the day after, next week, or never, and Utah can’t afford to have squad cars waiting around for us indefinitely.
“So I spent this morning on the scanner listening in on the Utah Highway Patrol to try and get a sense of what the odds are. The good news is that I only heard a couple of calls from dispatchers to units responding to calls along the border reminding them to keep an eye out for us, so overall it seems pretty quiet, but that could change in a second.
“Here are the variables,” Dylan said, and for a moment I could imagine him as he was back in the army, giving a briefing to other soldiers. We have to cross the frontier before the enemy knows we’re there. The odds aren’t great. Here’s the breakdown.
“One: there aren’t a lot of roads in this part of the world, so from where we are, the only way into Utah is the 70 unless we want to go almost a hundred miles south, then take back roads across terrain where we can’t go very fast, and even those run out so sooner or later we’ll still have to get on the 70. All the alternate route does is take more time, and the longer it takes for us to cross the state, the more we’re at risk; the faster we go, the better the odds we make it to the other side before they can catch us.
“Two: even though I don’t think there are any police units parked on the other side waiting for us, the Highway Patrol still has our plates, which means they’ve almost certainly programmed the traffic safety system to flag us the moment we’re picked up on camera.
“Three: once we cross the border, there’s not a rest stop or a gas station for over a hundred miles, so we have to make sure the bus can go flat-out without stopping for at least that far.
“And four: because there is so much open ground between us and the next big city, even if the traffic cameras do manage to ping our plates, it’ll take them a while to get anyone on our tail; how quickly they can respond will depend on where they’ve deployed their forces. If we move fast, we could be miles away from where they think we are by the time they get the call.
“So given all of those variables, unless anyone has a better idea, I suggest we avoid the back roads and stick to the 70—that way we can at least put the pedal to the metal. Speed is the only friend we have right now.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to cross Utah?” I asked.
“It’s a bit over four hundred miles, so if we get on the road super early, before heavy traffic, and drive nonstop, we could reach the other side in about five hours. It all comes down to how quickly they ID us, how fast they can react, and how many cars they can mobilize in time to cut us off.”
Five hours. Under other circumstances it would be an easy drive, but with what was waiting for us on the other side of the border, five hours sounded impossibly long.
“What if we put mud on the license plates, obscure the numbers?” Peter said.
“Traffic cameras look for obscured plates all the time—we’d still get flagged.”
“Yeah, but we wouldn’t get flagged as us, only as one more car with dirty plates. Might buy us a little more time before they put it together.”
“Possible,” Dylan said. “Wouldn’t hurt to try.”
Vaughn crossed his arms, weighing the information. “Assuming we make it out of Utah, what happens then?”
“There’s a little strip of the 70 that runs through Arizona,” Dylan said, “maybe twenty, twenty-five miles long. I’m not sure that the Utah AG would reach out to coordinate with the Arizona AG given that we’d only be in the state about an hour. And even if he did contact them, the Arizona police might not want to get involved with this mess since we’re going to be in and out fast. So if we do get that far, it might make sense to stay off the main road long enough to catch our breath, refuel, and figure out our next move from there.”
“You mentioned odds,” Vaughn said. “Mark said you’re a demon at the casinos. If you had to lay down a bet, what do you think the odds are of us reaching Arizona?”
Dylan looked down, and his eyes were tired. “If everything goes right, I’d say 50/50. It’s possible. But if the cameras catch us early, and there’s even one police unit near the border when we cross, we’re screwed. We’ll be in the middle of the desert with nowhere to hide, and there’s no way we can outrun an interceptor. Everyone on the bus will be arrested. It’s that simple.”
Nobody spoke; the news took the wind out of us.
Finally, Dylan broke the silence. “You all agreed to stick together as far as the Utah border, then figure out what to do from there. Now that we’re here, and now that you know the latest on where we stand and what we’re up against, I suggest you take some time to weigh all the facts before making your final decision. That’ll give me time to go over the bus, top off the radiator, check the tires, tighten all the bolts, and make sure it’s ready to go if you decide to make a run for it. I also want to buy some extra cans of gas so we won’t have to make any stops along the way. So let’s meet at the bus at
4 a.m. and you can let me know what you want to do.”
“One last thing,” Vaughn said. “You said you wanted to make sure that we won’t have to make any stops, but if we decide to go for it, you don’t have to come along, you know that, right? We’re more than able to take it from there.”
“He knows,” Karen said, and threaded her arm through his. “We can take it from here.”
Dylan nodded in agreement, but there was something very different behind his eyes when he did it.
* * *
VaughnR
* * *
PeterWilliamRouth
If this was going to be my last night on Earth I didn’t want to spend it sober, so I walked down a few blocks until I found a tavern on Mulberry that was still open. It was a little hole-in-the-wall kind of place with a bunch of motorcycles parked outside. None of them were Harleys and they were all pretty well looked after, more daddycycles than choppers, so I figured they catered more to the suburban biker crowd than Hells Angels.
Sure enough, most of the customers were on the older side, and were more interested in drinking beers and telling stories on each other than starting anything. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer and a burger since they were about to stop taking food orders so the cook could go home. They must not get a lot of newcomers in this part of town because everybody wanted to know who I was and when I got into town and what I was doing there and how long would I be staying? I didn’t want to get into it, so I told them I was on my way to Utah when I hit car trouble and had to stop for the night.
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