by Deb Caletti
“I know I’ve seen you somewhere recently. Maybe you just look a little like my niece. That’s probably it,” the waitress says. “Where are you guys headed?”
It’s the usual truck-stop talk, Annabelle guesses. Where are you from? and Where are you going? are probably the most essential things to know about a person.
“DC,” Grandpa Ed says.
“Wow. Long trip. You guys drive safe and get yourselves out of Montana fast. We’ve got a bad thunderstorm coming tomorrow. You don’t want to be out on the road in that, unless you want your bells rung.”
“Electroshock therapy,” Grandpa Ed says, and stares right at Annabelle, who stares right back at him.
“Zzzz,” the waitress says. She slashes her arm across the air.
Gone like that, her arm says.
• • •
Maybe there is just bad electricity in the air, because, that afternoon, Annabelle’s mood gets worse. And Grandpa Ed’s mood gets worse. He wants to find a place to fix that tire, but he’s having trouble finding a garage that’s open. It’s Sunday. Che cazzo! he says. (Don’t ask.) On any other day, Annabelle would have been on the road for hours. But she’d shut off her alarm. She went back to sleep. They went to the truck stop for breakfast. She is taking a “personal day,” like Gina occasionally does at O’Brien and Bello’s Attorneys-at-Law. This is Annabelle’s second one since she crossed the Montana state line.
Her will is leaving her. Each day’s run takes longer and longer. She doesn’t know if she can go on.
Annabelle has fallen into a depression on the Lonesome Highway, and who wouldn’t. Fallen into a depression. It sounds like a misstep causing a tumble into a dark and dangerous crevasse, which is exactly what has happened. Grandpa Ed has fallen in, too. He hasn’t taken a cheerful evening walk in a week and a half, ever since phone service disappeared. You’re a hard worker, Bella Luna, he said. It’s his highest compliment. You aren’t a quitter. We know that. But you can stop whenever you want. She doesn’t know if this is him saying, Please stop. Saint Christopher just swings silently from the lamp by her bunk where she hung the medal. He’s keeping his mouth shut.
More numbers: There are more than five hundred miles of Montana yet to go. It’s almost the same amount of miles that she’s come. The state lines are the big prizes along the way, but this one seems so, so far away. She’s lost track of why she is doing this. It’s easy to lose things on the Lonesome Highway. A tire, a life, hope. Your sanity.
Her depression is laced with anxiety.
Each step forward means she gets closer to Seth Greggory. Her mind bings and shrieks like a pinball machine.
They spend the rest of Sunday at Hal’s. Hal’s is really Hal’s backyard. Hal sprays the tire with soapy water to locate the bubbly leak, splotches on some rubber cement, sticks in a plug, and charges them fifty bucks.
“Fifty bucks! You think I don’t know a criminal when I see one? Mortacci tua!” Grandpa Ed says as they drive off. He gestures with his flat hand.
Mortacci tua: Your feeble ancestors. Take that, Hal.
That night, Annabelle lies in bed and listens to the rumble of distant thunder as Saint Christopher swings over her head ominously, like a vial of incense during mass. If this is the supposedly big storm, even it is a disappointment.
16
1. Louise de Quengo, who died in 1656, and her husband, a knight named Toussaint de Perrien, were buried with each other’s hearts as an act of love and devotion.
2. In a story traced back to 1150 AD, a husband forces a wife to eat her dead lover’s heart out of fury and revenge.
3. Love and devotion, fury and revenge—enough said.
Grandpa Ed opens the door of the RV, steps down the two metal stairs, and surveys the sky.
“Well?” she shouts.
“Get down here and see for yourself.”
She is wearing her old Batman T-shirt that goes down to her knees. It’s on its seventh day, which means they better find laundry facilities soon. The sink-rinsing and air-drying just isn’t the same as a good tumble in a machine.
She climbs the stairs and stands next to him. They’re parked on Cemetery Road (cruel, but true) where the dry grass blows pleasantly.
“Sunny as the day is long,” he reports. “We’d better check the forecast again anyway.” It’s flat out here. Lightning could be deadly to her. She’ll be the tallest thing on the ground.
“I already did. The waitress was wrong, or else, that was the big storm last night.”
“I didn’t hear no storm.”
“There was, like, two seconds of thunder. The forecast only shows a few clouds, is all. Who do we trust, locals or forecasters? I mean, locals named this place Cemetery Road. Where’s the cemetery, anyway? I don’t see one.” Annabelle taps her fingers with her thumbs. “It doesn’t look like a storm to you?”
“Nah. Look. Not a cloud in sight. But this is your call, Bella Luna.”
She groans. How can you believe in thunderstorms when all you see is a mostly clear sky?
“Hey, I got a surprise for you when you get done today.”
“A plane ticket home?”
“Nah. You get one of those after you get to DC.”
“Why did I start this? Why am I even doing this?”
This morning, he does not blow air out of the side of his mouth at her whining. He’s patient. He’s riding his own roller coaster of endurance. He puts his hand on her shoulder. “Why does anyone do anything impossible? To be bigger than the big bastard.”
“I’m not bigger.”
“Yeah? Who is standing here? You, or the bastard?”
• • •
She has not forgotten about the tape and the tape player and the old earbuds that Luke Messenger gave her on her birthday at Big Chuck’s, way back in Washington. Big Chuck’s seems like a lifetime ago. The cassette is tucked down into her pack, where she keeps her private stuff. There’s the acceptance letter to the University of Washington, folded up small. There’s the new Alice Wu novel, pages crisp and cover tight and unopened. There’s the Thinking of You card with a long handwritten message that Father Anthony sent after the tragedy. There’s the small crucifix on a chain, given to her by Pastor Jane at the funerals. It doesn’t represent God to her so much as a piece of herself that still holds out hope. You might say that this is true for all of the things in that corner of her pack. Hope not for someone or something specifically, but a general kind of hope. A hope that she might one day have hope.
Annabelle has been afraid of music, and books, too. Music and books stir up emotions. They make feelings rise and clatter and wreck, and sometimes that’s dangerous. But music can make you rise up and clatter and destroy when you need to, too. And, today, as she finally leaves the Lonesome Highway to face the next five hundred miles of Montana, Annabelle needs to rise.
This is about perseverance, not about Luke Messenger, who she will likely never see again. In her mind, he’s got a big X over him, as do all boys. As does flirtation and infatuation and love and sweetness and generosity and openness and belief and trust and safety, basically all the good stuff. Maybe it’s a smaller X than she thinks, because she is a tiny bit curious. How can anyone sit at a birthday party for her, Annabelle Agnelli, just sit there with his hands folded across his lap, looking relaxed? Maybe the music will give her clues into someone who she’ll never see again. This is the tiniest bit of boy fun at a safe distance, same as wondering about a cute movie star in a People magazine.
There is much arranging and scooting. The tape player rides on her hip, and the cord of the buds has a short in it, so the speaker annoyingly shuts off in one ear unless she settles it just so.
“See you later, Lonesome Highway. It wasn’t nice knowing you,” she says.
Outside of White Sulphur Springs, the land is all hilly green, and she passes farms and tractors trundling up dirt roads. It’s going to be a hot day; it’s already warm out. In the pastures, there are giant bales of hay—some uprigh
t, some tumbled on their sides. It looks like a chessboard of a sore loser. There’s the great smell of cow shit in the air. The smell of cow shit lifts her spirits.
“Hey,” she says to a bunch of cow ladies who watch her along a fence. One moos at her. “I am glad to share the world with you,” she says.
She presses the button and the music plays. Whoever is singing is runnin’ down the road, trying to loosen his load, with a world of trouble on his mind, and the music reminds her of the flag-waving Americana Heartland stuff Father Anthony used to listen to while mowing the lawn, just before cracking a cold one. This was before the days of the Blood of Christ, in the time of the Brew of Budweiser. She maybe sees why Luke Messenger is so mellow if he listens to this.
Next up, a song called “Road to Nowhere,” which is quite fitting, given what surrounds her—miles and miles of ranch fencing, and then brown and green and yellow hills marked with green scrub. Occasionally, she feels the rumble of ground and she’ll look over her shoulder as a semi passes her. The whoosh makes her hair fly into her mouth and cools off the sweat on her skin.
After the dark but somehow upbeat “The Passenger,” and then “The Distance” (He’s going the distance, he’s going for speed), and then the not-mellow-at-all “Highway to Hell,” she sees the theme. She realizes it’s not just a mixtape he had lying around, but one he made just for her.
It’s silly, but her cheeks grow warm. Her cheeks are already warm from the heat of exertion and the April sun, but this is an actual blush.
She presses stop. She flings the buds from her ears.
She feels like she’s suddenly left the party. Everything goes silent. The beat and thrum had been awesome, actually. But now it’s a party gone bad.
Stop! Stop, stop, STOP!
She checks her distance: eight miles already. A mile faster than usual, thanks to those songs. Still, kindness like that from a boy is unwanted. And it’s not the sort of unwanted of romantic comedies, where it means they’ll end up together in the end. This is unwanted-unwanted. This is a she-can’t-even-look-at-it unwanted. This is an absolutely-no-way unwanted.
Now, with the music off, there’s just wind, and rustling brush.
Wait, though.
What is that? She thinks she hears something.
She stands very still. Was that a rumble? No. Please, no.
She listens. She can’t hear it anymore. The sky is sweetly blue. This is her anxiety talking, and the post-tragedy sense of doom. She’s nerve-racked, because of the waitress and the mixtape and her own certainty that things are always about to go terribly wrong.
Just in case, she’d better hurry the heck up to Bair Reservoir, where she’s meeting the RV. A storm would be very dangerous out here where lightning travels fast.
She eyes the landscape as she picks up her pace. Nope. It’s calm. She was imagining things.
Still, going that fast felt good. It was because of that music. She let it back in, and it was awesome, not awful. But, wow. That must have taken a long time, to make a tape like that. She pictures Luke Messenger’s shoulders hunched—
There’s a rumble and a crack. Shit. Shit! There’s no doubt about it now. God damn it, the waitress was right after all. She squinches her eyes and sees them, the clouds, creeping over some low-lying hills.
Jesus. She’s got to hurry up.
When thunder roars, go indoors, Gina always told them. And now this plays in a loop inside Annabelle’s head. When thunder roars, go indoors. When thunder roars, go indoors. Those clouds—they are definitely moving in her direction.
She runs hard. Her feet slap the road. Where to? Just forward, until Grandpa Ed shows up in the RV. He’s bound to come back for her the second he hears that thunder.
She flies. It’s the pace of a sprinter, not the pace of a person running sixteen miles a day. It’s a good way to get injured. Plink. A drop lands on her arm. Plink-plink. More, on her shoulder. It reminds her of that first night, when she fled from Dick’s. But that was home rain, city rain. Shelter was everywhere if you needed it. Here, the clouds gather and darken, and it’s just her and them.
This is the problem with danger, isn’t it? You can even be warned and ignore the warning. Danger can seem far away until the sky grows dark, and a bolt of fury heads straight toward you.
In an instant, everything changes. The rain is coming down, and the clouds are an unfurling carpet of gloom. The asphalt highway is a shiny, wet black. The heat rises from it like steam in a sauna. In all that open space, she is the sole upright creature, an easy mark.
God, what were they thinking? Why had they taken this chance? How could they have been so careless? Where is Grandpa Ed? The noise, the rain, the sky—he knows by now that she’s in danger. She doesn’t want to waste a moment, but she fishes her phone from her pack. Her fingers don’t work. She’s shaking. She is out here all alone, and the lightning will find her.
She’s surprised there’s even service. Still, Grandpa Ed’s phone only rings and rings and rings.
She tries again. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Something’s wrong. Something besides this storm.
It’s eerie when a sky moves toward you. She is getting drenched now.
There’s a deep rumble, and then a shattering crack. Holy hell. Her only chance is to outrun what’s coming. She knows she needs to seek shelter. Every long-distance runner knows that the goal in a storm is to get to a safe place as soon as you can: a car, cover, any refuge.
It’s a deluge. Her hair is soaked. She’s wearing compression socks to help with the recent swelling in her knee, and they are soaked, too, and so is her shirt and shorts and pack and even her shoes. She can feel wetness down to her skin. But she has no time to wade in her own misery. She flies against the rain, eyes fixed on the horizon, hoping to see the hulking form of the RV coming to save her.
The rumble that follows is the largest and loudest yet. And then there is a huge and thunderous boom, one that makes her rib cage rattle and shreds her nerves. There is a pop and a crackle. It is like a firework; it is like—
Stop!
She can’t think about this now, but of course she does think about this now. A pop and a crackle, and she is there, and she sees—
PTSD, Annabelle, Dr. Mann says.
She sees—
She wants to cry. Rumble, crash! She is a sitting duck.
Stop!
She does cry, now. She makes awful, animal sobs. She is scared. She is worried about Grandpa Ed. There is no house or gas station or shelter. How do you hide, what will cover you, what will save you? Nothing, sometimes.
Her chest heaves, and tears are running down her face along with the rain, which drips off her hair.
BOOM! Crack, pop! There’s a jagged bolt of brightness, and then another. More than one across this flat, flat land.
“Please,” she cries.
She wants to crouch down right there. It seems the only thing to do, to crouch and huddle, to not be big and tall. To be small. She knows how to do this, how to be small and quiet and nice, hiding under the radar. But crouching is not the answer here. Crouching does no good. The ground charge will move through her body regardless, entering at the lowest point, shooting through her heart, exiting at the highest.
Another rolling rumble, and a thunderous crack. She is a moving target.
“Please, please,” she begs. A tiny realization edges in: In spite of all the times she thought she wanted to, she doesn’t want to die.
“Please come, Grandpa.”
Annabelle is crying, and rain is falling on her face, so it is hard to tell if it is her own imagination again, or if she truly sees something in the road ahead. She squints. Yes. It’s a little square of white. A little square of white, getting larger.
Coming closer. Someone is coming! Grandpa Ed! A rise of relief presses her forward. And, then: crack! The lightning crashes right next to her. She is in a shooting gallery—
Stop!
As the vehicle in the distance gets ne
arer, though, she is starting to understand. The shape is wrong. Even though her face is so wet that it’s hard to see anything, she sees that. The shape is wrong, and maybe even the color. What’s coming is not the bright white of Captain Ed’s RV. It is a murky yellow-white, with rounded corners.
Does it matter? It doesn’t matter. She waves her arms. She probably looks like the victim of an accident, someone struggling into the street with their injuries—
Stop! Stop! Stop!
She waves. She waves and jumps. It is not Grandpa, but some stranger is safer than being a mark for the monsters of lightning all around.
The wipers of the approaching camper are flicking madly as the rain beats down. It won’t miss her, will it? They will see her, right?
She shouts and jumps.
None of it is necessary, though. The camper slows to a stop. And now the driver’s side window rolls, rolls, rolls down, and a head pops out.
“There you are! God, get in!” Dawn Celeste says.
Dawn Celeste says?
The camper door flings open. There is the calm, curly-haired Luke Messenger, in a warm, dry flannel shirt and jeans.
He spots the earbuds, still jammed into her waistband. He smiles.
17
“ ‘We’re on a ride to nowhere, come on inside,’ ” Luke Messenger sings.
“Highway to hell, more like it,” Annabelle says. “I don’t understand. What are you guys doing here?”
Dawn Celeste turns the big camper in an arc and heads out. She drives that baby with the easy confidence of a trucker. “I got a call from Ed. He knew we were doing some hiking in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. His tire blew out on the way to get you. He said he just got it fixed, too.”
“Wow. Well, thank you,” Annabelle says. She says Wow. Well, thank you, while taking in the facts: Grandpa is okay, but Grandpa and Dawn Celeste have been in touch all along. They were in Idaho when she was in Idaho, and now they’re in Montana, and now, here she is, with them in their camper. Her anxiety zings. Every part of her is dripping, too. So much water runs down her face and off her clothes that she is standing in a little creek of her own making.