by Rio Youers
Evelyn didn’t answer this because she didn’t want to tell Bob how she was doing. Now or ever again.
“I was having the craziest dream.” He said, rubbing his head where he’d hit it.
“Oh?”
“I dreamt I was late for something . . . or really early. Either way . . . it had to do with time. Either squandering it or having too much of it.”
“Do you feel bad?”
“Not really. I mean, it was weird but–”
“About leaving your wife. Today. Do you feel bad for doing it?”
Bob slid deeper into the seat. He opened the window a crack, watched dark Iowa blur past.
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because we only live once, I guess. I don’t know.” Then, “Because it wasn’t the right life for me.”
Evelyn didn’t respond. The weird thing was, the closure she’d longed for hadn’t come, but she wasn’t so sure she needed it now.
“Well I hope you find the life you’re looking for out west,” she said.
“Hey, you know where my smokes are? I didn’t leave them somewhere, did I?”
“I took them.”
“Oh, good. Can I have them back?”
Evelyn turned to him, her face lit up by the dashboard, the teeth in her smile blue from the odometer.
“Sure. Just give me those thirty-one years back and they’re all yours.”
Bob’s stare back was almost blank. There was a single speck of fear in it.
She tossed him the pack and got off at the next exit. She slowed to the pump and Bob got out. As he shut his door, Evelyn’s phone rang.
It was Sherry.
Evelyn watched Bob cross the lot, didn’t answer. Instead, she texted her daughter.
Near Nebraska. Good thing I drove alone. Getting answers after all.
***
Past Omaha, just shy of Lincoln, they fought.
Bob had got to talking about how eager he was to get out west. Said he would never work at a place like Miller’s again. Evelyn asked him what else he had in mind. Bob said he didn’t know. Evelyn told him he might want to have planned that part out first, rather than leaving his wife and life because of a few questions and a vague feeling that there was something more out there. Bob told her she didn’t understand. Evelyn told him she did.
“Look,” Bob said. “I get it. I’m sorry that your husband left you. It’s an insane coincidence that’s gotta be driving you nuts. Here you’ve been left and here I’m leaving someone. I understand.” Twelve hours in a car together, it was the most philosophical thing he’d said so far. “But don’t take your anger out on me. Whatever happened with you is different than what’s happening with me. We’re not the same people.”
“We most definitely are not.”
“You’re . . . what? Sixty?”
“Fifty-six.”
“Oh. Well, I’m twenty-five. It’s a different world now. In your day people stuck together no matter what, through thick and thin, like they were all arranged marriages. As if you weren’t allowed to leave. But it isn’t like that anymore. Things are freer now. People understand. You know? And my wife? She’ll understand. She’ll be upset for a few days, but she’ll get it and she’ll be happier for it.”
“She will, huh.”
“Yes. Because we’re progressive people, her and I.”
“Sounds like someone you could’ve talked to then.”
“Yeah, I know. But I didn’t. And she’ll realize two weeks from now that I wasn’t worth piss to her.”
“Maybe she’ll realize that today.”
“Yes. She might. I hope she does. I hope she wakes up and feels relief. I know I do.”
“You’re a cruel man, Bob.”
“Cruel? You don’t even know me.”
Evelyn turned to face him. She had no way of knowing but, because of the darkness and the blue light from the dash, her features were made younger again, just enough so that Bob actually leaned back in his seat, as if he’d suddenly realized he was riding shotgun with an impossibility behind the wheel.
“I do too know you. I know you all too well. You think your life matters more than the life of the people around you. You think you can take a vow, go on a honeymoon, move into a new house, and then leave your wife with a nine word note of goodbye. You think you can justify that by imagining a wide-open west, a world of plenty. But the truth is, out west isn’t going to be any different than it was in Detroit. You’ll meet a woman there, you’ll marry, you’ll honeymoon in Hawaii, and one morning you’ll leave her, too. You’ll head east and the whole way there you’ll tell yourself it’s your roots that you really need.”
Silence then as they passed Lincoln.
Eventually, Bob pulled a smoke from his pack.
“Wow,” he said, staring through the glass. “Did I tell you all that at Miller’s?”
“All what?”
“I don’t know. Hawaii?”
“No. You did not.”
“Well shit. What can I say. It sounds like you do kinda know me.”
***
“It’s three in the morning,” Evelyn said, acknowledging one of the blue signs on the shoulder, the kind that announced the services and restaurants in a town. “Let’s get a hotel.”
“Okay. That’s a good idea. Sleep. Then start all over again.”
He’d been talking this way for the last few hours; brief clipped sentences that suggested deeper sentiments. Start all over again. Big world out here. There’s a lot of living in life, huh.
The blue sign told Evelyn there was a Roadway Inn in Cozad, Nebraska. Good enough. She needed to get out of the car. Book a room. Walk to it.
“Ah shoot,” Bob said. “They’re full.”
They were. The sign told them so.
Evelyn drove on through the small town, saw the red single word they were looking for a half-mile from the Roadway.
Vacancy at the Haymaker Hotel.
She pulled the Skylark into the gravel lot. It was the ranch sort, a long row of rooms, no second floor. The room doors all faced the lot. The office was lit up.
Evelyn parked. They got out.
“Two rooms?” he asked. The way he asked it, so completely uninterested in her, even now, even here in the middle of the trip, the country, the dark. She knew some part of her must have been his type. He’d married her younger self, after all. But it wasn’t that. That didn’t bother her. It was the fact that he’d consider getting his own room and not contribute to the cost of the room for the person who just drove him fifteen hours from his wife.
“Absolutely,” Evelyn said.
She entered the office first and he followed. Behind the desk, a woman much older than Evelyn sat reading a paperback.
“Latecomers,” the woman said. Her sweater was of a fishing scene. A man catching a fish bigger than himself. “One or two?”
“Need two,” Evelyn said. “Gonna work?”
She nodded. “Full price, though. Late night or not.”
“That’s fine.”
It took the woman a long time to write up their bill, to take the money from them, to give them their keys. When Bob handed his money over, Evelyn saw it as her own, money she’d had a claim to thirty-one years ago. She wanted to ask him how much he had on him. And did he think maybe his abandoned wife back home might be able to use some of that?
They exited the office and walked the planked boardwalk to their rooms. Room 3 for Evelyn. 4 for Bob. Bob unlocked his and walked right in. Evelyn watched him disappear into the small room then opened her own. She walked in, too, left the door open, turned on a lamp, and sat on the edge of the bed. She stared at the yellow carpet beneath her shoes, shoes that had pressed the gas pedal for fifteen hours, driving her away from home.
Her phone rang. Sherry. This time she answered.
“Hello.”
“Mom! You good?”
“Yes. I’m good.”
“Where are you?”
Evelyn looked to the nightstand. Stationary there? What town was this?
“Cozad, I think it’s called.”
“Nebraska?”
“Yes. Well into it.”
“Hang on. Let me check my phone.”
Evelyn waited as Sherry looked for Cozad on the map.
“Ah! You’re ahead of us!”
“Is that so?”
She felt behind. In the half darkness of the Haymaker Hotel, with the door still partially open, she felt very far behind. In the room next to hers, Bob was most likely already asleep, able to despite the incredibly cruel thing he’d done this day.
“Yeah. We’re an hour behind you,” Sherry said. Evelyn heard Mark call her a lead-foot in the background.
A fist appeared in the open door frame. Bob. Knocking. He peered around the corner.
“Can I come in?”
“I’ll talk to you in the morning, Sherry,” Evelyn said. “Good night to you both. And thank you, again.”
She hung up.
“Come on in,” she told Bob.
Bob entered, still wearing the leather coat, still looking like a man who had something on his mind after all.
“Look,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.” Evelyn tilted her head the way a dog does when it hears something curious but can’t make complete sense of the sound. “I’d like to go back.”
She felt her lips part. Knew her jaw was hanging partially open. Bob was saying he wanted to go back. Back home?
“Why?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, then brought them out again.
“I don’t know. All that stuff you said. All those questions. Just . . . got me thinking I wanna turn back. Go home. Talk to my wife.”
“Really.”
But the rush of golden relief she imagined would follow words like these did not come. There was no sense of vindication. No feeling that she was in the right or had been righted. She still sat on the edge of a mattress in a hotel room in the middle of Nebraska. She still wore her jacket because it was a cold night outside.
“Well,” she finally said. “I’m heading west. But you’re welcome to hitch a ride home.”
Bob smiled uneasily.
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking you’d take me back. That’d be crazy.” Then, “I just wanted you to know . . . I might not be here in the morning.”
Evelyn smiled, and it felt like her face was made of taffy. Candy so close, but none she could eat.
“Alright, Bob.”
“Yeah? You think it’s a good idea?”
Evelyn held his gaze. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep. If you’re here in the morning, I’ll take you west. If you’re already gone . . . you’re already gone.”
“But do you think–”
Evelyn got up and removed her coat. She stepped to the sink outside the bathroom door and set her glasses on the counter. She ran the water and started washing her face. Behind her, she heard Bob mumble thanks, then exit the room.
She did not dry off. Rather, she gripped the edge of the counter like she’d been gripping the wheel all day and stared into her own wet face, as if finally she was able to see all the tears she’d shed for thirty-one years, all in one frozen moment at once.
***
Despite the long hours behind the wheel, she did not sleep. She didn’t even pull back the blankets on the bed. Rather, she sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the ugly carpet before she finally rose and stepped to her door. She believed he was asleep. Bob had always been the sort to fall right to sleep the second he laid himself down. She wondered if he’d found peace in that room next door or if peace really mattered to him at all.
Outside, the air was warmer than it’d been all day. Spring was rising, winter lowering, and it felt good against her face and hands. At the door marked 4, she paused.
She knew Bob. Knew him well. Knew he childishly slid all the greens from any meal to the side of the plate. Knew he didn’t hold doors open for people. Knew he didn’t lock doors either.
It was something she’d noticed before Hawaii, in Hawaii, and of course when they found their home and moved in together. She’d asked him, Why don’t you ever lock the door? To which he’d answered, in character, I don’t?
Maybe she shouldn’t have asked him. Maybe she should’ve just told him to lock it next time.
She reached for the handle now, found it turned easy, and entered his room.
Silence. Only silence. She imagined him sitting up in bed, staring at her by the closed door, knowing she was there but waiting for her to do something before asking what she was planning. She waited for her eyes to adjust. Listened for any sign of him sleeping. Bob usually snored. But there was no snoring. Had he already found a ride back? Back to his wife? Was he already an hour closer to Detroit again? An hour closer to erasing thirty-one years of confusion, grief, and a confounding eternal hollow?
When she could see the shape of the bed and blankets in a bunch upon it, she stepped to the nightstand. She crouched till her knees touched the carpet and she reached behind the nightstand until she found the plug for the lamp. She unplugged it. When she got up again, she eyed the bed. Where was he in all that tangle? Hard to know. But she thought she knew.
She lifted the lamp from the nightstand and brought it down upon his head. The crack it made sounded like a toilet exploding from pressure, sounded like a porcelain egg dropped to the driveway from the roof of a house. A hushed grunt accompanied the cracking and Evelyn brought the lamp up, then back down again. Sounded more like footsteps in rubble now; shoes upon broken hope. She stood above him for some time, bringing the lamp down over and over, on repeat, like revolutions around the sun, like years passing, piling up.
Finally, exhausted, she set the lamp on the nightstand, got to her knees, and plugged it in again.
She turned it on.
Kneeling there on the carpet, still wearing her jacket, she saw him on the bed. A red smear at the top of a naked chest.
She turned the light off. She got up, left the room, and closed the door quietly behind her.
Back in her own room, she sat on the edge of the bed until the sun came up. She called Sherry.
“Meet me in an hour? I’ll buy you two breakfast.”
“In Cozad?”
“Sure.”
“Is there a diner?”
“We’ll find one.”
“Okay. Yeah. Then we’ll . . . ”
“Then we’ll caravan the last four or five hours to Denver if you’d like.”
“Awesome. Leaving soon. Love you, Mom.”
“Love you, too.”
She hung up. She stared at the carpet and watched the sun climbing, by way of shadow and reach, until she’d guessed something like an hour had passed.
***
They ate at the diner, the three of them, all so far from home. Mark said how cool it was that they were still in America but in a completely new setting. Sherry said it felt good, like she was recharging her mind. Evelyn agreed with it all. There was something extraordinary about moving on, even if only for a week, a month, the rest of your life. Just to wake up under a different sky, to look out a different window, was really something and did something for you. They feasted on omelets and toast and drank juice and coffee and they talked with the energy of people on the road. When they were done, Mark and Sherry hopped into the U-Haul and Evelyn got behind the wheel of the Skylark. She thought of how she’d signed in at the hotel with the name “Eve” and how close that name was to her own and how, when they found Bob, they’d probably contact her or call her because her name was Evelyn and he was married to her after all. But as she pulled out of the diner lot, as she watched the U-Haul start up and follow her in the rearview mirror, she knew this wouldn’t happen. Because thirty-one years ago she never received a phone call telling her Bob was dead. She’d never received any information at all. Why would she now?
She rolled down both windows and took a cigarette from the pack Bob left in the car. Sh
e smoked it and turned on the radio and listened to modern music, music that hadn’t been made in the 1980s, hadn’t been dreamt of thirty-one years ago, new stuff, new moods, new points of view.
And she drove.
Toward Denver. Toward who knew what in a city she’d never been. She thought of new homes there, new windows. She even thought of new men. She imagined one who held doors open and didn’t mind answering the questions of the person he’d agreed to share his life with. She imagined the kind of man who, when struggling, didn’t only talk to her about it, but was excited to do so, believing he might find some solution to his problems in the form of the union he’d vowed.
She drove.
To Denver.
Only moving on.
THE WIDOW
RIO YOUERS
“What are you doing?”
“I’m stopping you.”
The man drew whistling breaths and his chest flexed against the rope that bound him. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth. Naked light washed him, emphasizing every bruise and abrasion. Had she thought him immortal . . . supernatural? Here he was now, weak and bleeding all over her floor. His ancient skin could break, after all.
“Stopping me?” He blinked and shook his head. A tear gathered in the corner of one eye. “From what, exactly?”
She stepped towards him, throwing her shadow like a blanket. A large woman. Not fat, but solid. Her thick arms were packed with toil and angst. She had a prominent brow and square shoulders. Very little could be described as feminine. Not her military surplus jacket, nor her scuffed leather boots. Only her fingernails, perhaps, painted—incongruously—bubblegum pink.
“By my count, you have killed a total of fifty-three people.” Cloud-coloured eyes peered through unkempt hair. “Fourteen of them were children. I can only go back to when records began, of course, so the actual number may well be greater.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“And now it ends.”
“This is madness.” He fought the rope again, twisting his upper body. It chewed into his arms and chest. No give. He pushed against the wooden post he’d been bound to. It creaked but didn’t budge. More blood leaked from his nose.
There was a workbench against the back wall, strewn with tools. Various wrenches and screwdrivers. A handsaw. A nail gun. A claw hammer. She turned and walked towards it, her heavy boots kicking up dust.