When the Light Goes Out

by Shawn Bartek

  “I’ll staple it to you if you can’t remember,” Robert said.

  Robert was a peach no matter the situation.

  “I’ll try harder to remember.”

  “No, you won’t, because your mom never wants to punish you and that means I can’t, ‘cause then I’m the bad guy.”

  “Are you still at work?” Marc asked.

  “I’m at Fred’s,” his dad said.

  “Who’s Fred?”

  “The bar.”

  “What? Did you even consider coming to get me?” Marc asked.

  “Of course. What? Do you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t really know,” Marc said.

  “I would have and I’ll still come get you if you want. I want to know exactly what you’re getting at. Besides, I was told your school was evacuating to Hamilton. We were told not to go get our kids.”

  “Okay,” Marc said, “I think I have a ride anyways.”

  “No, I insist. I’ve had a couple of beers, but if you’d feel better, I’ll take the risk and come get you.”

  “No, I think Ami’s giving me a ride,” Marc said.

  His dad’s voice perked up, “Ah ha. Atta-boy. Making some headway.”

  Marc regretted ever telling his father about his crush on Ami. It was their only topic of bonding since his mom moved back to Utah. It was also the reason he told his dad he wanted to stay in Missoula. His dad was always asking about progress; clearly he had become more sentimental since the separation. Marc also suspected that his dad, with all of his bullshit macho tendencies, was taking more joy in the fact that Marc wasn’t gay.

  But even when his dad was an asshole, Marc saw that he was an asshole with a broken heart and he felt the need to look out for him. Marc wondered what the evolutionary purpose of sympathy was. It wasn’t as useful as a thumb and he wished it could be cut off in the same way.

  “I don’t think this situation counts as headway,” Marc said.

  “Winners know how to turn every opportunity into an advantage.”

  Marc reached his limit. He was done talking to him, “Whatever. You enjoy yourself and maybe we’ll see you.”

  He hung up the phone without waiting for a response.

  * * *

  “So,” Marc said to Ami, “Would it be too presumptive to assume I’m hitching a ride with you?”

  “I’m not going to Hamilton,” Ami said.

  “I know.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather flee to safety, say, like a person with a brain?”

  “I think getting your sister is more important,” Marc said, “It’s a categorical imperative.”

  “Is that what it’s called?” Ami asked.

  “You can thank Human Dignity class for that gem.”

  “Marc, you’re being sweet, but why would you risk yourself to do this?”

  “You don’t have to do this alone,” Marc said.

  Ami’s diaphragm spasmed and the wind left her lungs in a dash. As the tear ducts stood on standby, she stifled this feeling immediately.

  With my subterfuge, I will spare everyone the obligation of awkward solace.

  “Okay,” Ami said, “Categorical imperative. Fuck, yeah.”

  “High five,” Marc held his hand up and Ami smacked it.

  Then she asked, “Where are your parents?”

  “My dad works in Frenchtown,” Marc said, “So he’s already safe and sound.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “My mom lives in Utah,” Marc said.

  Ami realized that she knew severely little about her new friend. He had just been there to cheer her up in art class. She wasn’t expecting them to form a close-knit friendship; he wasn’t really part of her imagined future.

  But it was also his fault she didn’t know anything about him. Ami remembered specific instances in which she was expecting him to divulge information about himself as the average person would and instead he’d cut the conversation short. There was a distance about him. He was like a stand-up comic that kills on stage; then when you run into them off-stage on their smoke break, they’re in another world.

  Scott and his crew had been in their own separate huddle. The huddle broke apart and Scott walked their way.

  “Hey,” he said, “What did you guys decide about how you’re getting to Hamilton?”

  “I didn’t realize there were any other options except driving out of here,” Ami said.

  “Oh, I thought maybe your friend here would be driving,” Scott patted Marc on the shoulder. Marc flinched at the contact.

  “Nope,” Ami said.

  “That’s perfect,” Scott said, “Is there any chance Shane and Jodi could hitch a ride with you guys? Leslie’s car is only a two-seater, so two of us are stuck.”

  “You’re riding with Leslie?” Ami asked.

  “Well, yeah. I wasn’t sure if it would be uncomfortable for you and me to be in the same car.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well…our history?” Scott said.

  “Nah, I’m cool with it if you are,” Ami said, “But we’re not actually going to Hamilton, so it’s moot anyways. I have to go get my sister. As far as I know, she’s home alone right now.”

  “We could probably go with you for that. So you’d go get Dana, then what? Go to Frenchtown?”

  “I guess that would be the plan.”

  “That’s kind of perfect actually; we were thinking of going to my house anyways since it’s only a stone’s throw from Frenchtown. We should be safe there. We thought maybe we’d make a fun night out of it. Nobody’s home. Free access to booze. That’ll be like our return favor to you for the ride.”

  “Wow, that sounds fair,” Marc said.

  Scott ignored him, “It would be great, and it could give us a chance to catch up. We haven’t really talked much since your whole dad thing.”

  “You know, that ‘whole dad thing’,” Marc snickered to Ami.

  “Scott, I don’t know,” Ami said.

  “Do it,” Scott said to her, as if they were making a devilish decision together, “It’ll be fun. Hey—there won’t be any cops around to be charging any certain people with their second M.I.P.”

  Ami now saw alternatives to her standing perception of Scott. Maybe Scott had been keeping his distance from her because he was afraid she was too delicate. Maybe he really did break up with her for fear he’d neglect her. Maybe he wasn’t dating Leslie. And maybe this would be the situation that would make him reconsider.

  “I’ll have my little sister with me,” Ami said.

  “Do you think you’d really have to go get her? Aren’t there police that can do that?”

  “Everything I’ve tried so far has been worth shit.”

  “How about this,” Scott said and pointed to the cluster-fuck blooming in the parking lot, “We’ll have some time to get a hold of someone that can pick up Dana. Reserve Street will be our point of no return. Maybe by then you’ll have got a hold of the cops and it’ll all be worked out and Dana will be safe, then we can head out towards my house instead.”

  “Alright,” Ami said, “Let it be known that if I’m driving, I call the shots. We’re going to go for Dana if I don’t have explicit confirmation that she’s okay.”

  Scott smiled and raised his right hand, “I solemnly swear, boss.”

  “Good,” Ami said.

  Scott hopped back to his friends and let them know. Ami couldn’t hear, but she wasn’t seeing the reaction she had hoped for. Shane looked annoyed by the conditions and Ami heard “—the fuck?” come from Jodi. Finally, they all calmed down and Scott jogged back to her.

  “Okay,” Scott said, “They’re all on board. But Jodi is insisting to ride with Leslie, so I guess you’re stuck with me after all.”

  Ami smiled. That turned out to be a bonus; maybe everything will be okay.

  * * *

  The group walked through aisles of cars that were becoming embroiled in breakdowns of courtesy. Cars inched out of parking spaces and o
ther cars spit their horns at them.

  Marc called shotgun. He had no interest in sitting next to either Shane or Scott. He didn’t know Ami’s friends very well—in fact, he thought Shane was a dick. Being trapped in the backseat with one of them and not having Ami as a buffer sounded worse than gas poisoning.

  They reached Leslie’s early graduation present, a blood-red Smart Car. Jodi and Leslie climbed in, but not before Ami caught Leslie make a quick attempt to hug Scott. He had pulled back from it; then looked straight at Ami. She wasn’t sure how to interpret that.

  Ami’s late-Eighties Ford Festiva looked like rubbish next to Leslie’s new ride. It was fortunate to still be on the road; the mileage a month away from ticking over two hundred-thousand.

  She folded the front seat forward and presented the back seats to Shane and Scott like a game show model. They groaned and squeezed themselves in.

  When Marc got into the front seat, he quickly snagged a piece of gum from a pack on the dash.

  “Hey,” Ami slapped his hand, “Ask first.”

  “Okay, geez,” Marc said.

  “No, Marc,” Ami said, “I’m kidding, robot. Knock yourself out.”

  “Thanks, I have a bit of a breath complex,” Marc said.

  “You should probably get some help for that?”

  “For the breath or for the complex?”

  “Oh, the breath, of course,” he laughed, “It ain’t a complex if it’s true.”

  Marc blew a minty gust in her direction. She nudged him.

  “Ami, I can chew in your car, right?” Shane said, holding up a can of Skoal.

  “If I smell it, you’re spitting it out,” Ami said, “And if you leave your spit-can in here, I’ll make you drink it.”

  They took their place in the single-file car line, waiting to leave the parking lot. Cars lined up, horns blared, and hand gestures were thrown around. From the back of the Smart Car’s window, Jodi feebly waived to them.

  Ami dialed her home phone again and met no resolve. She left another message, this one consisting of the words “Pick up” repeated seventeen times without a pause. Her demands went zero for seventeen; Dana did not pick up.

  As Ami threatened to pull the steering wheel off its column upon hearing another busy signal, Scott offered to take over 9-1-1-duty. Both of his ears were now occupied with phones. In one ear, he was acting as Jodi and Leslie’s security blanket. They weren’t even talking to him, just holding him through the phone.

  In his other ear, Scott was greeted by the harsh busy signal from the 9-1-1 call center.

  Ami could hear the garbled sounds of Jodi and Leslie’s chatting from the other car, but nothing intelligible stood out. Ten minutes passed and they were only a few car lengths closer to the parking lot’s only exit.

  “Okay, Ami,” Shane said, bottom lip stuffed with chew, “This is taking forever. I think your sister is going to be fine. Why don’t we just head right to Scott’s? ”

  “You know you have a choice,” Ami said, “You can walk to Scott’s.”

  “It’d be faster if you did,” Marc said.

  “What did you say?” Shane said to Marc, “I can barely hear you, quiet-talker.”

  Ami held up her middle finger at him, “Can you hear this?”

  “Just fuckin’ around,” Shane said, “Seriously, what if that train really drops and we’re just sitting here?”

  “Just hold your breath if that happens,” Ami felt sassy.

  “That’s not gonna help,” he said.

  “You have to put your head between your legs, too,” Ami pushed.

  “Why’s that?” Shane spit into an empty can of Diet Coke.

  “Oh my God. Trust me, it won’t affect you. Can’t kill a brain that’s already dead.”

  He kicked her seat, “Easy little lady.”

  “Talk to this little lady,” Ami extended her middle finger again.

  “I seen it already,” Shane said, “Put it away.”

  “Both of you shut the hell up,” Scott said, pulling away both phones from his ears, “I can’t hear Jodi and Leslie.”

  It took twenty seven minutes to make it a quarter of a mile. That meant an average speed of half a mile an hour. Marc was correct; it would have been faster to walk.

  Ami mapped out the route with her inner GPS: South Ave to Brooks, then Higgins, then Broadway, quick left on Van Buren and they’d be in her neighborhood, the Rattlesnake.

  South Ave looked like a standing room only concert with cars snugly packed together; overloaded and gently rocking with the hyperactivity of the evacuees. Some cars drove onto the gravel shoulder, gained a few car lengths, and then butted their way back into traffic. Traffic stalled for everyone because of these assholes.

  “How in the hell does 9-1-1 stay busy this long?” Scott said, “I’ve dialed it literally fifty times. I mean it—literally.” He tossed Ami’s phone back into her lap. The muffled sounds of Jodi and Leslie quietly talking could still be heard from Scott’s phone.

  When they came to the intersection of South Ave and Reserve Street, they saw the severity of the traffic had multiplied. The police had reprogrammed the street lights to a four-way stop.

  Ami’s heart sank when she could see the sawhorses and two police cruisers blocking eastbound traffic on South Ave.

  Her inner GPS recalculated, imitating a gentle monotone voice:

  Rerouting. Left on Reserve. Continue North on Reserve Street for four and a half miles. Take the exit to the I-90 East freeway. Take exit 105 to US-12 W/Van Buren St. Turn Left on Van Buren Street. Make a hard U-Turn at the crash of a falling tanker. Slight right at the burning of the nostrils and the suffocation. Your destination will be in the ground.

  But as they got closer, they noticed no one in their lane was turning left. There were sawhorses preventing northbound traffic, too. She could see the officer now, on foot, waving an orange baton, forcing traffic to go south, which would put them on their way to Hamilton.

  “Ah, shit,” Ami said, “What the hell. I can’t go north now?”

  “Just plow through,” Marc said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “The officer won’t mind. There’s only one of them.”

  “That’s not very many officers, is it?”

  “I’m telling you, just go for it,” he said.

  Marc was acting cute, but Ami was growing serious. They were now a few rotations before they would have a turn through the blinking four-way. She had to go north. There’s no way a few painted two-by-fours were going to come in the way of getting Dana.

  Just then, Ami was able to decipher a single sentence from Jodi through the phone garble: “Oh good, I’d rather go to Hamilton anyways.”

  Ami floored it.

  She watched the officer’s face turn from stoic to bewilderment as she flew past him. When she returned her eyes to the road, a Dodge Ram was coming at them head-on. It blared its horn and Ami swerved around it.

  “Jesus Christ, I was kidding!” Marc said.

  Ami plowed through one of the sawhorses. She expected it to blast apart into a thousand pieces like movies had led her to believe, but instead it bounced up onto the hood and over the roof of the car.

  She looked in her rearview and saw that Leslie followed her through; the sawhorse thumping down in front of the Smart Car. Leslie slammed the brakes and then swerved to prevent damage to her new toy.

  As they finished the left turn, the Festiva and the Smart Car were welcomed by two completely clear lanes of road. It was a refreshing feeling, as if the air conditioner in Ami’s car was working again.

  “Whew, mama,” Ami exhaled, “Kiss my ass, traffic.”

  The southbound cars, all stopped cold, whizzed by as the Festiva sailed north on Reserve Street; its speedometer actually hitting forty-five.

  But near Spurgin Street, they quickly met with another parking lot of cars. This was the northbound traffic before it had been cut off. There was a collective gasp and a cloud of profanity that filled both
cars. They took their places side-by-side in the northbound queue. Leslie honked at Marc and then Jodi leaned forward and signed the letters W.T.F. at him.

  Within ten minutes, their cars were no longer next to each other. Leslie’s lane moved slightly faster and there were at least four car lengths between them now. Traffic repeated in the same accordion motion. Marc could occasionally see Leslie’s right taillight flash on and off. The right side of Jodi’s head could barely be seen; the reflection of the sky on their rear window began to obscure her.

  Scott was still apologizing into the phone. Jodi’s indecipherable words were fuzzy and grating coming out of the tiny speaker.

  After a long pause, Scott looked at the phone.

  Jodi had hung up on him.

  “So,” Scott said, “She’s pissed.”

  “What’s new?” Shane said.

  “Eat it, pencildick,” Scott said back.

  “You’d like that,” Shane said back.

  “Anyway,” Scott said, “She said Alice just texted her that Eric Sharp ran into one of the police cruisers about 15 minutes ago.”

  “No way. Is he alright?” Shane asked.

  “She didn’t say, but—”

  The wind was knocked out of Scott when the Dodge Ram behind them thumped into the back of their car. Ami looked in the rearview mirror. It was the same grill that she saw coming at them in their impromptu turn on Reserve Street.

  Shane turned around and flipped them off. Ami couldn’t see anything but grill in the mirror.

  “Fucking pricks,” Shane said, “Sketchy looking motherfuckers, too.”

  “Stop it, Shane,” Ami yelled, “They’ll get out and kill us or something. I think that was the truck I almost ran into.”

  “They ain’t gonna do shit,” Shane said and flipped them off again, “They’re not even reacting to me.”

  Scott hunched forward to the front of the car and switched on the radio.

  Instead of the Emergency Broadcast tone, it was Joe Dragon’s annoying voice arriving from the speakers. His inflections had lost some of the radio-guy posture. There were substantially less fart noises than his typical broadcast. It made no one in the car feel better.

  “...Anyway, I don't need to tell anybody the top story for today," Joe’s voice echoed through the car, “No new developments have surfaced as of yet, although a source at the Missoula City Police Department has informed us that extra emergency workers have been called to the scene and so far, the tankers haven’t moved. I would feel better about this news, but I bet there’s more to the story than even that police source knows. I doubt the Feds would trust our police department to get them coffee.”