Mapmaker

by Mark Bomback

  As I paid for the clothes, I smelled the stale stench of cigarettes. A man stood right behind me, a little too close in the line. He smiled at me when I turned around. He had short, ginger-colored hair, and wore a suit shirt and tie with a brown leather jacket. I don’t know why exactly, there were lots of people in the store, but something about the way he smiled as though he knew me gave me the creeps.

  I hurried across the station into the women’s bathroom. Now I was down to forty-eight dollars. But as I washed up in the bathroom, I knew it was worth the money. I looked human again: clean from head to toe, with a matching cap and pants. Even the navy-blue sweatshirt didn’t look so out of place.

  After that, I stood in the line for the ticket window, mostly to kill time.

  A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman with bright white teeth and brown hair in clips smiled at me.

  “How can I help you?” she asked in a singsong voice.

  “Um, how much is a one-way ticket to Elk, New Mexico? On the next train?”

  The woman turned to her computer screen, typing slowly. I could see her fingers were knobby, her joints swollen. My grandmother had the same type of hands. I felt sorry for her, that behind her happy smile she must be in pain. I understood her, too.

  “That would be train one seventy-five, leaving at twelve oh five P.M. … let’s see.” She stopped and squinted. “You’ll have to transfer with a two-hour layover in Boyston. The fare is three hundred twenty-five dollars.”

  “Three hundred twenty-five dollars?” I repeated, before I realized how stupid I sounded.

  “Yes, that’s correct.” She flashed a sympathetic smile. “If you had booked it two weeks in advance, the fare would have been two hundred and ten dollars.”

  I blinked. I wanted to answer, “Well if I’d known two weeks ago that I would have been kidnapped from my office, drugged, and driven to Virginia to be murdered, then absolutely I would have booked the special discounted two-week advance fare.” Instead I forced a smile back at her. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  At 11:40, train number 175 was announced on the departures board. Track 11N. I scanned the station to find track 11N so I would know where I’d have to run. It was 123 feet from the closest ATM machine to the gate. I positioned myself next to the machine so I could butt in front of someone if I had to at the right moment.

  I started counting the minutes.

  At exactly 12:01, I swiped my card. Punched in my password. I took one last glance around the huge station. No one seemed to be watching me, except for the fish-eye camera on the ATM. I felt my heart ticking like a bomb. The red pin on the map had dropped. Tanya Barrett was here. Even as I saw my new balance, $2,097.00, I wondered why Harrison hadn’t frozen the account. He was my legal guardian, after all. Maybe he believed that if he kept me afloat, I would eventually come home. Or maybe he was keeping me out in the world for some reason.

  I pressed WITHDRAW and punched in $300. I could hear the clicking sound as the machine counted out the bills in twenties.

  As soon as I grabbed the money I bolted for the gate. My palms were sweating now. The card slipped from my hand, falling to the floor. Time was speeding up. My heart was racing. I didn’t have time to pick up the card from the station floor. But that was fine. I didn’t need it anymore, anyway. I had enough to get me to Elk, plus an extra $23 for food. My trail would go cold at Union Station, Chicago.

  “Wait!” I called to the lone conductor on the empty platform. He held his hand on the door for me. I jumped on and he stepped in behind me. A loud bell rang and the door closed quickly behind us. I pressed the automatic door that led to the passenger car and collapsed into the nearest seat, sweaty and shaking, as the train pulled out of the station.

  The midnight train wasn’t crowded. After a few minutes, I moved closer to the center of the car and took a window seat. Harrison had probably already pinned me at Union Station ATM. But 400 trains left Union Station a day.

  Good luck picking the right one.

  “Tickets, please.” The conductor’s voice jolted me up.

  “I don’t have one. I have to buy one,” I said, faking a yawn to disguise my strange behavior as fatigue.

  “Reservation number?” He stared down at a rectangular black box in his hand, slightly larger than an iPhone.

  “I didn’t have time to make one. I’m sorry. This was a last-minute family emergency. I barely made the train.”

  He was tall, in his thirties, with brown hair and a nice, friendly face. There was a gold wedding ring on his finger.

  “Okay, no reservation. Where are you heading?”

  “Elk, New Mexico.”

  He took a book from his back pocket flipping through the thin phone book like pages. “Let’s see … Elk, New Mexico. That’ll be three hundred eighty dollars.”

  I shook my head. He must have got it wrong. “But I thought it was three hundred twenty-five?”

  “If you buy on board, there’s a penalty charge.”

  My throat felt thick. “I only have three hundred forty-eight.” I reached into my pocket and shoved the wad of bills at him. “I’m so sorry. Can you help me out?”

  He flipped back through his book of fares and destinations. “It’s three hundred thirty if you get off the stop before, in Montgomery.”

  “Montgomery is one hundred forty-nine miles from Elk!” I cried.

  The conductor raised his eyebrows, surprised. “You know your geography.”

  “Whatever, I’ll take it,” I said. My voice cracked, and I had to grit my teeth to hold back tears. It felt like the universe was conspiring against me in every way possible. Even Amtrak was against me. And I should have kept my mouth shut about geography.

  “It’s a two-day train journey. How are you going to eat or drink?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  The conductor glanced over his shoulder, toward the front of the train. “Here,” he said, handing me a receipt for Montgomery. He counted out change and placed the remaining eighteen dollars back in my hand. Then he took a pink slip and wrote ELK on it, and stuck it in the slot over my head. “Keep this with you at all times, and take it with when you transfer at Boyston,” he said. “Café car’s at the end, five cars down.” He winked. “Go Bears!”

  Now I couldn’t hold back the tears. I managed a grateful laugh between sobs. I knew my face was turning red. I sniffed loudly.

  “Thank you, sir,” I stammered.

  I lay down on the empty seat beside me, hoping the train would lull me to sleep. But when I closed my eyes, I could see the train moving through Chicago. I was watching it from above, like always. Every street was imprinted in my brain; I’d been to Chicago as a kid with my parents. I knew if this didn’t stop, it would drive me crazy. I needed to sleep. I had pills for this, but they were in my medicine cabinet at home.

  When I was younger, when I was helping my dad map the walking trails in the Amherst woods, I had the same sort of insomnia. At night, when I tried to sleep, my brain was tracking each step we took in the woods. From above, I could see all the trails, I could see my father and myself and everywhere we walked. After I was awake for two nights straight and verging on delirium, Dad took me to a doctor who prescribed me what Dad called “kiddie Ambien.” I was eight and taking sleeping pills. I still took them sometimes, but I could control it better.

  My dad credited the insomnia and compulsiveness to my gift, but it was one of those times that I didn’t see it as a gift at all. Then, as now, it haunted me, like nightmares. Or more accurately: a waking alternative to nightmares.

  I felt really, really alone staring at the dark window. I let myself think about Connor, about what he might be doing now. Right now. He was probably out somewhere with his girlfriend and Stanford friends. The last text he sent still made me miserable. I’d lost my phone but cruelly the text played inside my head.

  “Sorry I didn’t get to say bye in person … I might not be exactly where I want to be but I’ll keep looking.”
>
  What did that mean exactly? Why even write that in a text? It was probably Connor’s longest text ever. Maybe it was long because he felt so guilty over being such a coldhearted person and terrible friend. Not to mention just stupid for spelling Piri Reis wrong.

  Wait. There was no way Connor would have written such a long text, first of all. Second, after he wrote that my dad was such a big influence on him, he completely misquoted my dad’s words. Then he spelled Piri Reis wrong. All of this wrapped up in a goodbye text?

  Through the dark train windows the lights of the town we were passing by shone through the darkness. I felt freezing cold suddenly. Connor disappeared that night. The night we hacked into the emails. Harrison knew by the next morning and threatened me with criminal charges. Did he also threaten Connor? Did he punish him some other way? Did he force him back to California? Or worse, did he have someone kidnap him like they had done to me?

  No. Harrison loved and adored Connor. He’d even given him a percentage of MapOut. No, I was just making up excuses for Connor. Making excuses, trying to find reasons why he could so easily just dump me as a friend. But it was still weird that he misspelled Piri Reis and even stranger that he misquoted my dad and that he talked about my dad at all in his text.

  To change my thought process I focused again on the Alaska acronym I still hadn’t uncovered. If Alaska was an acronym at all …

  A is for Alison

  L is for Lake

  A is for Aptitude

  S is for Snake

  K is for Kettle

  A is for Arsenic

  I was delirious again, clearly. But exhaustion was able to take hold. Somewhere between Richmond and Harrington, I fell asleep.

  It was noon the next day when I woke up. Fields spread out for miles and miles and the sunlight was a gold color. I took the Elk receipt and walked to the bathroom. I washed my hands and face at the small sink. I tried to fix my hair as best I could. Then I walked up the five cars to the café car.

  I read the menu for a while, but for some reason I had no appetite. I bought a can of Sprite and sat at one of the windowed tables in the dining car.

  A group of old ladies was playing gin rummy. They all had southern accents; they jabbered at each other over a large cooler of sandwiches and snacks. At another table sat a family, a mother and father, a boy of about twelve and his teenage sister. The parents were texting on their cell phones and the boy was playing Subway Surfers on his iPad. The teenage girl wore black eyeliner and glared out the window with her headphones on, a sour look on her face.

  Lucky girl. As miserable as she was, she still had both parents and a brother.

  I suddenly realized why I wasn’t hungry. It was because I felt a sickening dread. What if Harrison had already gotten to Cleo?

  “Remind you of your family?” a voice asked.

  I jerked up to see a strange man smiling down at me. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and tie with a brown faded leather jacket. I instantly placed him; this was the same paunchy middle-aged guy I’d seen in the souvenir shop back at Union Station.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I travel alone a lot for business and I sometimes find myself staring, too. Staring at families that remind me of my own, when I’m feeling especially homesick.”

  I shook my head, my mind whirling too fast for a response. This guy must have been following me. Which meant he must have been sent by Harrison. His ill-fitting suit smelled of stale cigarettes. Could he be the smoker who’d been with Alison?

  His smile faltered. It went from apologetic, to confused, to something else. “I’ll leave you alone,” he said, hurrying off to get in line for food.

  I ran back to my seat, lurching through the train cars and spilling my soda as I went. I switched cars, and then switched cars again. And then I waited for the man.

  At 7:00 P.M., hunger finally compelled me to return to the café car. The man was nowhere to be found—at least that I could see. I spent ten dollars as carefully as I could: the most food for the least amount of money. Chips, fruit, granola bars. No more beverages; I’d drink water from the little cone cups. As I returned to my seat, I saw the man sleeping, his hands on his lap. I headed to the very last car on the train.

  The next thirty-six hours were a blur of panic and hunger. But at three A.M. in Boyston, where I transferred to a new train, I made sure to pass by the man with the tie and leather jacket on my way out. He was on his cell phone, but he didn’t exit. His eyes met mine as I did. The kind conductor who’d saved me nodded as I exited. I wanted to hug him, to thank him, to get his name so I could somehow repay him, but I just waved.

  The train pulled away, I clutched my ticket and phony receipt, hoping it would get me there.

  The last two hours between Montgomery and Elk were the longest in my life. At ten o’clock in the morning, I stepped off the train. The sun felt warm against my skin, and the air smelled like grass and sand. Only two other people exited with me: a couple in their forties. I took off my sweatshirt and tied it around my waist. My undershirt felt sticky. I followed the couple around the train station—little more than a red clapboard shack—to the two-lane highway in front.

  The hot sun glared off the sparkles in the asphalt road. The road was flat and long, running due east and west, parallel to the train tracks. The desert spread out on toward distant mountains on both sides, dotted with scrub brush and cactuses.

  My ankle was sore again. What was I supposed to do now? From the east, I heard the loud roar of a motor. A moment later, a jeep appeared. A wild-looking, grey-haired woman in a bright sundress skidded up, and in hopped the couple. I was half tempted to ask them for a ride, but I had no idea where I was going. The jeep sped off, leaving the smell of gasoline mixing with the sand and sun.

  My mouth felt dry. I hadn’t been drinking enough water. Would my ankle hurt for the rest of my life, always reminding me of this time? I had to erase that thought from my mind; I couldn’t think of the future now. There might not even be one. I’d banked everything on finding Cleo here, and that might not happen. I needed to sit down; I needed water. I stared ahead at the desolate line of road, and then turned back to the station.

  A furry grey cat slept in the sun on the doorstep as I made my way up, leaning heavily on the banister. As I walked from the bright sunlight into the shade, I suddenly felt dizzy. The station was little more than a single room cluttered with old junk, manned by one attendant, an old man with a shock of white hair who sat in a booth. A battered schedule hung from the wall facing him, surrounded by framed black-and-white photos of cowboys and desert scenes. A box of Astro Pops sat beside the man at his post, along with a cash register. Next to the booth stood a side table with the white pages and an old-fashioned, clunky rotary phone. The whole place looked like it was from another era.

  “You okay, miss?” he asked.

  “Just thirsty,” I said.

  He pointed to the bench under the schedule. Beside it sat a metal bucket of ice with bottled water. I took one of the bottles and started chugging.

  “You wouldn’t happen to sell aspirin?” I gasped, once I’d drained nearly half the bottle. “Or ace bandages?”

  He reached into a drawer, taking a bottle of aspirin. He poured two out in the palm of his hand and extended out the booth window. It took me a moment to figure out he was giving them to me.

  “Thanks.” I washed them down. “How much for the water?”

  “On the house. No ace bandage though.”

  There was no way I could make it any distance on my ankle. “Is there a cab service around here?”

  “There’s a guy in Jackson,” the man said.

  It didn’t sound promising. “Can I use your phone? I’ll pay.”

  He grinned, as if he’d heard this question a million times from out-of-towners like me. “Sure, but don’t talk for too long.”

  The white pages were labeled ELK, JACKSON, RHINE, and CANE COUNTIES. They were half an inch thick. I flipped to the let
ter W for Wright.

  I ran my finger down the names.

  Mr. and Mrs. Allen Wright

  Brett Wright

  C. Wright 725-445-3897

  The number looked familiar, but I couldn’t be sure. I knew I needed it to be hers, so my mind could be deceiving me. I picked up the receiver. My hands were sweaty. I put my finger in four, pulling the dial around and letting it go. The only other time I’d ever used a rotary phone was at Beth’s grandmother’s house. It didn’t work. I’d tried it just for fun. Now I pressed the heavy handset to my ear, listening to the faraway sound of the ring. I had a hopeless, sinking feeling that she wouldn’t pick up.

  “Hello?”

  Cleo. I took a sharp breath in, stunned. “Cleo. It’s Tanya. Don’t hang up.”

  There was silence on her end.

  “Cleo, please.” I blinked and realized tears were streaming down my face. Relief that she had answered the phone turned to fear that she would refuse to speak to me, that she would hang up on me like before. “I’m begging you—”

  “Tanya, just tell me where you are.”

  I took in a gulp of air. “I’m at the Elk train station …”

  “Hang up the phone and don’t move. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I did as she said. The receiver felt as heavy as an anchor in my hand as I placed it back on the hook. I gave the man a dollar bill, the last I had, for the call. He asked me something as I left, but I was still in shock, too dazed to hear his words or respond as I stepped outside. The door swung shut behind me. I sat down on the steps next to the sleeping cat. The air was still and hot. I held my ankle where it throbbed.

  The cat stood and stretched, then nuzzled against me. I rubbed her soft grey fur and stared out at the empty highway. Another tear fell from my cheek. Did she remind me of Bootsy? I couldn’t tell. A secret part of me wondered if I’d already died, if I’d reunited with my dead pet at some bizarre weigh station on the way to the afterlife.