The Drive

by Tyler Keevil

  ‘We almost made it, cat,’ I said. ‘We got as far as California, even if we didn’t reach the coast. That must count for something, right?’

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t even raise her head.

  ‘I would have liked you to meet Beatrice, though.’

  Thirty miles past the border, near a town called Truckee, I saw a sign for the Boca Reservoir. The sign had a little green triangle on it, the symbol for a national park campsite. I looked at the cat. I was thinking of the way she’d crawled under that bush. Maybe Boca would be the same – a resting place for the both of us.

  I turned off. The reservoir opened up before me. I pulled over at the welcome area and got out to take a look. The sides were shaped from sloping mud flats, soft and pale and stomach-smooth. The water was low, even for the dry season, but still looked appealing – winking like a sequin in the sun. I considered running down there, stripping off as I went. I’d hit the shallows going full-tilt, triathlete-style, and when it got deep enough I’d dive in.

  ‘You feel like going swimming, cat?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘I guess it’s too much effort.’

  The welcome area had an information board, with a map that showed where to find the campsite. I followed a one-lane road around the reservoir, then turned on to a dirt track that wound into the nearby hills. A few miles up I came to the campsite, nestled among a copse of Jeffrey pines. Parked near the entrance was a silver Airstream trailer. Its back-end was set on cinder blocks, and nettles and dockleaf had sprouted up around the wheels. Out front stood a big man in denim suspenders and a red undershirt. He was hitting pine-cones with a baseball bat. He hit one – smack – as I pulled up.

  I got out and walked over. He waited for me with his bat raised, poised to swing again. He had a full head of white hair, like my grandpa, and a face tanned the colour of saddle leather. A set of dog-tags hung on a silver chain outside his shirt.

  ‘Are you the warden?’ I asked.

  ‘That I am.’

  He hit another pine-cone. Smack. It sailed off among the trees. Behind him, the door to the trailer opened, and a woman poked her head out, like a mouse.

  ‘Can I camp here?’ I asked.

  ‘That you can.’ He waved his bat in a sweeping motion. ‘Plenty of space.’

  Camping spots were interspersed among the trees. Most were empty, but in a few places dome tents bulged up from the ground like gigantic fungi. The dirt track carried on past the pitches and descended into a gulley. I nodded in that direction.

  ‘What about down there?’

  He rested his bat on his shoulder, like a club. ‘That section is for overflow.’

  ‘Oh, let him camp where he wants, dear.’

  That was the mousy woman. The guy looked back at her. Sternly. It was enough to make her withdraw into her hole. He tossed another pine-cone up and caught it, one-handed.

  ‘Guess it can’t hurt,’ he said, scratching at his chest. ‘It’s ten bucks, wherever you pitch. And open fires aren’t allowed. It’s forest fire season.’

  I told him that was fine, and paid him the money. As I drove on he was still hitting pine-cones. Smack. Smack. Smack.

  I found an isolated spot near a stream-bed. It was dry and the bottom was filled with smooth, rounded stones that looked like fossilised eggs. After scoping the place out, the first thing I did was check on the cat. She felt hot, feverish. Her fur was damp, her nose was runny, and her bad eye was weeping. I didn’t know much about animal health, but all that couldn’t be good. I placed a saucer of water on the seat beside her, and tried to get her to drink some. She wouldn’t take any from the dish but she licked a few drops off my fingers.

  My glovebox was hanging open. Inside it, I could see the pieces of my dad’s cellphone. I’d forgotten all about that. While I sat with my cat, I put the pieces back together, then gave the phone a try. The battery still worked, but there wasn’t any signal. I took a road pop from the trunk, tucked my gun in the back of my jeans, and told the cat I was going for a walk.

  ‘Don’t die on me, okay?’

  I hiked up a nearby hill, clambering over fallen branches and kicking my way through the scrub and underbrush. At the top I got a good view of the reservoir. I also got a sliver of signal on the phone. I hadn’t really expected that. I tapped in Zuzska’s number and stood with my thumb resting on the call button. I stared at the water below me. A wind was stirring the surface, and the reflection of the surrounding landscape looked both perfect and blurry, like an Impressionist painting.

  I didn’t press call. Instead I stuffed the phone in my pocket and got out my Glock. I couldn’t fire it that close to the campsite, so I removed the clip. Propping my beer can on a nearby log, I took aim and fired. Click. I kept doing that, practising mechanically and firing blanks, as night came on. The sky turned black and the reservoir turned black with it. In the blackness I looked up at the stars. There were no star-threads tonight, no mezcal visions or tricks of the eye. The stars were cold and distant, indifferent as diamonds.

  After a while I returned to our campsite. The cat hadn’t moved, but she was still breathing. Barely. The sweat had cooled to clamminess on her fur and she was shivering. She had the chills. I wrapped her in one of my shirts, but she needed more than that. She needed real warmth. Our camp spot had a fire pit. So long as I kept the fire small, I figured the old man wouldn’t notice. From the surrounding forest I gathered moss, bark and twigs, and built a little teepee in the centre of the fire pit. I lit it with my grandpa’s Zippo, then added larger branches. The wood was dry as old bones and burned clean and smokeless.

  I carried the cat over and laid her next to the flames, all bundled up. With her head poking out of my shirt, she looked like one of those moles in the ‘whack-a-mole’ game you play at the arcade – waiting for the hammer to fall. I sat and talked to her for a while. I told her about how I’d almost given in and called Zuzska.

  ‘But what would I say to her, cat? That I’m a fuck-up, a nothing. That she was right to screw around on me and break up with me. She’s better off with this new guy, whoever he is. He probably has a real job and can provide for her and will know how to take care of her and make her happy. He’s probably a real person, like her.’

  The cat emitted a little sigh. She already understood everything I had to tell her.

  ‘So I didn’t call her, obviously. I’d rather kill myself than admit all that.’

  I got out my phone. Zuzska’s number was still on the display. I deleted the digits, one by one, then tossed the phone in the fire. The plastic case bent and cracked apart, and the screen started to melt. Then the whole thing exploded like a cherry bomb. The battery must have blown.

  ‘Sorry about that, cat.’

  I stroked her for a while. I couldn’t tell if she liked it or not. She wasn’t purring. I knew my other cat – the one who’d died of cancer – had wanted to be left alone at the end. She’d crawled into Zuzska’s arms to say goodbye, and then she’d crawled under our couch to die. Maybe this cat was the same.

  ‘Remember we’re in this together, cat,’ I said. ‘If you die, I’ll die. And if I die, you’ll die. Like Butch and Sundance. So you’ll just have to pull through. You got that?’

  She opened one eye, and squinted at me, as if to say, You are so full of shit. She didn’t believe in my pact. She was a cynic, my cat, hard and jaded till the end. I walked over to the Neon and popped the trunk. The only supplies I had left, apart from the mezcal, were two cans of beer, a few packs of smokes, and a single bottle of bourbon. Everything was running out, coming to an end. I cracked open the bourbon and took two long slugs. It didn’t help much. I tried to think of something to do, something to prove how serious our pact really was.

  ‘I got it, cat,’ I said.

  I flipped back the trunk mat and checked beneath. Along with the spare tyre and car jack, I found a shovel – one of those emergency snow shovels that come in three pieces.

  I assembled that,
and started digging our graves.

  chapter 55

  Digging graves, even with a shovel, was difficult. The shaft of the shovel was short – about the length of my arm – so I had to stoop real low to get any leverage. The dirt was hard, too, on account of it being summer and the dry season. But I tried. I dug a small cavity for the cat, and a wider depression for me. It took a while. After an hour my palms were blistered and stinging with sweat. The graves didn’t look like much, but they would have to do.

  ‘It’s been nice driving with you, cat.’

  I dropped the shovel and picked up my gun. Standing over the graves, I gave a mock soldier’s salute, and pressed the gun muzzle to my temple. The steel felt cold and made me shudder. The safety was still on. I slid it to off, and imagined pulling the trigger. I could see the bullet driving through my skull, and dragging everything out the other side in a streamer of blood and brains. I wondered if I’d feel anything, or if it would just be like falling asleep.

  Then I heard a sound behind me. I lowered the gun and turned around. A shadow, tall as a sasquatch, rippled across the trees. At the base of the shadow was the warden. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was carrying his baseball bat with him. I slipped the pistol into my pocket and stepped away from the graves, into the campsite clearing.

  He saw me then. He stopped and pointed his bat towards the fire. ‘Thought I told you fires weren’t allowed.’

  I agreed he had told me that, then tried to explain about my cat being sick, and how she’d needed a fire to keep warm. He didn’t seem too interested in the cat. He was looking at the bottle of booze next to her. He’d spotted that, straight away.

  ‘Whisky?’ he asked.

  ‘Bourbon.’

  He nodded and stared at me. You could tell he was waiting for me to offer him some. Apparently he hadn’t noticed the graves behind me. They were fairly shallow graves, really.

  I picked up the bottle. ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘Don’t drink much these days.’

  He swaggered in a circle around the fire, twirling his bat in this casual, one-handed fashion. When he got to my side he took the bottle from me. At first he didn’t drink any. He just rotated the bottle by the base, studying the label. Then he capped it and held the mouth of the bottle under his nose and inhaled deeply, as if smelling a bouquet of flowers.

  ‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘We don’t keep none in the trailer no more.’

  I waited. Eventually he had a small sip.

  ‘That’s good stuff.’

  ‘For sure,’ I said, even though it wasn’t. It was bargain-basement rotgut. But I guess any liquor would taste good after being dry for so long. ‘You want to sit down for a bit?’

  ‘Might as well.’ He scratched at the collar of his shirt, making his dog-tags jingle. ‘Seeing as you’re asking.’

  ‘Hold on. I’ll get you a seat.’

  At the edge of the clearing was a chunk of tree trunk, which had been sawn on both sides to form a slab. I rolled that over to the firepit, laid it flat, and brushed it off for him. I had the notion that he might give me some sage advice – the kind only an old man can give.

  ‘There you go,’ I said.

  We sat down across from each other – him on the slab, and me on the ground next to my cat. I added more fuel to the fire. He didn’t seem to mind it now. We passed the bottle back and forth and stared at the flames.

  He said, ‘Car looks like it’s got some miles on it.’

  I glanced at the Neon. She was speckled with dead bugs and spattered with mud. The sparkling maroon paint-job was now obscured by layers of grime. Then there was the missing window, the dented bumper, the scraped wheel well. I explained about where we had come from, and where we were going – without telling him why.

  ‘And you?’ I said. ‘You look after this place permanently?’

  ‘Nah. We move around in the trailer, from year to year. By acting as warden, I get to stay for free. We’re trying all the different campsites. Mainly in California.’

  ‘On the road, eh?’

  ‘For the past ten years or so. Came from back east, originally. But it’s warmer out here. Good for old bones.’ He shrugged and took another sip. ‘The wife likes it, anyhow.’

  ‘She seems nice.’

  ‘She behaves herself.’

  He still had the bourbon, throttling the bottle by the neck. For a guy who didn’t drink much, he could really put it away. He kept licking his lips, making them glisten, and his face had a liquor-flush to it.

  ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘You got a lady-friend?’

  ‘No.’ I was looking at the flames. ‘That’s why I’m out here, really.’

  He offered me the bottle, as if he could tell I needed some courage to say what I said next. ‘Had a lady.’ For some reason I’d started talking like him, in that hokey and humble way. I took a swig, wiped my mouth with my hand. ‘But she cheated on me, the bitch.’

  The fire popped, like a cork coming out of a bottle.

  ‘That sure is tough, son.’ He scratched around his collar again. It looked as if he had some kind of scar under there. ‘But a woman will do that to you, when your back is turned. Unless you keep an eye on her, keep her in check.’ He looked at me. Significantly. ‘Were you doing that, son?’

  ‘It was tricky. She lived in the Czech Republic.’

  He slapped his knee, as if he was trying to kill a fly. ‘Shoot – no wonder she cheated on you. You let a filly roam, she’ll start looking for a stud. That’s just nature’s way, son.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do say so.’ He snatched the bottle back from me again. Each time it was his turn, he held on to it longer and took bigger swigs. ‘Trust me, son. You got to corral that filly if you want to make it work.’

  ‘Guess it’s all over now, anyways. There’s no coming back from something like that.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  I looked up from the fire.

  ‘Take me and my wife. We had our problems. One problem in particular. Similar to your problem. You understand me?’

  I told him I did.

  ‘I’d been working long hours back east, for the army vets. Both our boys had left home. They run off someplace. So my wife, she had nothing to keep her occupied. She got to roaming. I’d been too lenient with her, see? I’d let her have free rein of the house and home. She put it to good use, all right.’

  He laughed – a dry, hacking sound, like a cough. He held up the bottle and tilted it back and forth. The remaining bourbon ran one way, then the other, glinting like oil in the firelight.

  ‘But I took care of that. Took care of the guy, too. That was when we came out here.’ He tapped his nose. His eyes were heavier, now, the lids weighing down. ‘That was all she wanted: a little attention. When a woman acts up like that, she’s asking to be put in her place, begging to be punished. It’s hardwired in their systems, see? Like cats.’ He gestured with the bottle towards my cat. A bit of whisky spilled out and sprinkled on her, and she made a confused sound, as if to say, what the hell? ‘You ever seen cats hump, son? It’s vicious, is what it is.’ He nodded, and repeated the word, savouring the sound: ‘Vicious. But sometimes you got to be a bit vicious, to get what you want from them.’

  ‘Cats?’

  ‘Don’t get smart, son.’

  By then, he’d started to sweat from the booze and the heat. He hooked a finger in his collar to loosen it, then undid a couple of buttons, and I could see the scar on his chest more clearly. It was a burn scar, a bad one – the kind of scar that itches and peels, no matter how long it’s left to heel. He saw me staring and smiled, craftily, as if he’d wanted me to see it.

  ‘All your girl needs,’ he went on, ‘is a bit of a heavy hand. You show her you’re in charge, and she’ll bend to you. You got to break her in. And then she’ll be yours for life.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t want to be broken?’

  ‘Oh, she does. She might put up a fight, but that’s just to te
st you. Even now, once in a while, my wife needs to be reminded. Of her place, I mean.’ He stroked his bat, running his palm over the hard, varnished wood. The flames gleamed in the whites of his eyes. ‘And I give her exactly what she needs. Exactly what she deserves.’

  I looked away, cleared my throat. I was thinking, so much for that sage advice…

  ‘Where are your sons these days?’ I asked.

  He waved a hand, as if they didn’t matter. ‘Somewhere out here. Running with a bad crowd, last we heard. They were never no good, anyways. Didn’t listen. Always butting heads with me, shirking their responsibilities.’ The guy took a final swig of bourbon, draining the dregs. He’d guzzled the last quarter of the twixer, fast – without offering me any. He held up the empty bottle. ‘Got any more of this?’

  ‘That’s the last of it.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  He stood up. He was a big man, in height and girth. He loomed above me, lit from below by the flames, holding his bat in one hand and the bottle in the other. He tossed the bottle and caught it, tossed the bottle and caught it – like one of his pine-cones.

  ‘Watch this, son.’

  Flipping the bottle up, he took a full swing. The bat caught the bottle cleanly, and it exploded in a shower of shards. They went everywhere: all over me, all over my cat, all over the campsite. They went all over him, too. A few even caught in his hair.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  He was cackling and wheezing, hacking out laughter. Then he stopped, and his face got serious – so fast it was as if he’d changed masks. He poked around in the fire pit with his bat. The glass that had fallen among the coals was beginning to glow yellow, like brimstone.

  ‘You put that shit out now, son.’

  ‘What about my cat?’

  ‘Forget the cat. You can put her out, too. Out of her misery.’ He hefted the bat, gripping it mid-shaft, and made a hammering motion. ‘I’ll handle it, if you ain’t got the balls.’