Dakota Blues

by Lynne Spreen

  “Fine.”

  Karen pulled the curtain away from the window and peered upward toward the moon, a sliver in the east. The wind began to die, and the dark campground grew silent except for a distant barking dog. A sodium lamp hanging near the office flickered greenish-white, the camp’s only illumination.

  She let the curtain fall back and pulled on another blanket. If Cheyenne was like this in the summer, what was winter like? Under the massive pile of cloth, she began to relax in the growing warmth, until she remembered Steve, and the fact that she needed to call him. She wanted to hold him off as long as possible without appearing punitive, thereby losing ground at the negotiating table.

  As she thought about her arguments, though, punitive looked more enticing. If not for his wandering libido, she’d still have a home and financial security during her unemployment. Now she didn’t even have that.

  A cramp made her wince. The thought of wringing cash from Steve didn’t feel good even if he deserved to be punished. It wasn’t her way.

  Maybe it should be. Maybe I’m being too nice.

  She needed to stay positive. Good news was just around the corner. One day soon, a call or some kind of referral would come through, and then she’d be back at work. Her lengthy list of contacts would pay off and she’d be working at another big corporation. Another spasm twisted her gut.

  Or not. The economy wasn’t getting any better. The unemployment lines were getting longer. Maybe she should think about another line of work? She knew a colleague who went from selling corporate print jobs to selling a dozen different kinds of pipe for natural gas drilling, and that woman loved it. What else could Karen do?

  She pulled the blankets up higher, frowning. She didn’t want to do anything new. She loved human resources. If Steve had only honored his vows, she wouldn’t have to think about reinventing herself.

  Reinvention. What a load of crap. She didn’t want to reinvent herself. She had worked too hard to invent herself. Reinvention might be a fun choice if you were bored with your life, but for Karen it held no appeal. She wanted her old life.

  But she had to be realistic. At the age of fifty, it was only due to unbridled optimism that she called herself middle-aged. Maybe she should accept she was on the downhill slope, too old to change. Maybe she should accept a check from Steve, find an apartment somewhere, and start learning how to live alone.

  She turned over, feeling too warm now, and fear crept into her heart. The world was a scary place. People got lonely and sick and old. They died. It was hard enough if you were part of a team, taking care of each other. What would it be like if you were alone, maybe in a new place where you knew no one?

  She thought of Curt, and threw off a couple of covers. Hot sex– would she have to live without it? At least now she knew nothing was wrong with the way her body worked. If anything, it was better than ever, something she would never have realized were it not for the randy professor. The man shook her right down to her toenails. She would have to give that up, because no way was she looking for male companionship in the pink-hands metropolis of Newport Beach. Nobody there was interested in a fifty-year old woman. At her age, it wasn’t going to happen.

  The thought pissed her off, or maybe it was the blankets–she couldn’t get comfortable, and now she felt sweaty and hot. She kicked off a few more layers, but it didn’t help, so she kept peeling off blankets until she was completely uncovered. Her skin was so hot it felt as if it glowed, and the air in the van was barely above freezing. The sleeping bag felt hot against her back, and her face and ears burned. I shouldn’t have had that last margarita, she thought, opening the window and letting in a stream of icy air. The sensation gave her relief for five seconds. Then sweat beaded on her forehead, and a furnace roared to life on her chest.

  She scrambled out of bed wearing only a tee shirt and panties, tiptoed to the door and went down the steep aluminum steps, barefoot, nearly naked. The lights were still on in Barb’s coach, but the rest of the campground remained deserted. A raccoon dropped a trashcan lid over by the restroom, and a pack of coyotes called to each other from the distant fields. In the glare of the sodium lamp, Karen wiped her forearm across her face, slick with sweat.

  She pressed her back against the searing cold metal of the van, enduring her very first hot flash and the realization of her own pointless mortality.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next morning, Karen dragged boxes of mementoes from the van.

  “You planning a yard sale?” Frieda stood in the door, blinking.

  “I’m reorganizing for when we get to Denver.”

  “What a mess. Where’s my overnight case? I have to go to the ladies’ room.”

  “Right there on the front seat.” Karen went back to unloading the boxes of photo albums and paraphernalia. In the two days they’d been on the road, the van had become cluttered and she didn’t want to have to repack everything in Sandy’s driveway. Plus the spoilage in the small refrigerator had stunk up the place. She heard the distant sound of the restroom door slamming in the crisp, high-desert air.

  Karen swathed the poppyseed grinder in a towel and returned it to a cabinet. Outside, dried leaves scrabbled past in the chill wind. Across the deserted campground, the store was closed and the office wouldn’t open until noon, today being Sunday. Barb had decamped hours ago in her big motor coach. Karen had been awakened by the slamming of doors and ring of hardware until the rig rumbled past in the dark.

  She reached for a box of her mother’s needlework, but stopped at the sound of voices. Peering around the van, she saw a pocked and peeling Ford Bronco had pulled into a campsite next to the restroom. A man in a hooded sweatshirt hunched against the wind, firing up a pipe while his friend waited. A third man unzipped his slacks and relieved himself against the restroom wall.

  The driver, a shirtless skinhead in a leather vest, hopped up on the table top and began dancing and playing air guitar to the asskicking concert in his brain. He screamed the lyrics, pausing only to finish the beer and heave the bottle against the wall. The urinator jumped up on the table as if to punch him, but the skinhead kicked him in the chest and danced away.

  Karen ducked behind the van. After living in southern California for almost three decades, she knew well enough the behavior of urban wildlife. Best to lay low and hope they didn’t get curious about the Roadtrek or its occupants.

  But what the hell was taking Frieda so long? Karen snuck another look as the skinhead leapt to the ground. He bounded over to an empty metal trashcan and, shouting at no one in particular, picked it up and heaved it against the wall of the restroom. The small building seemed to shudder, the noise echoing through the campground.

  Frieda would hide, afraid to come out. Karen wanted to go get her and hurry out of the camp, but what would the men do when she appeared? She touched the edge of her sweatshirt, measuring its length in relation to the coverage it would afford her hips.

  Not good. She pulled the hood up over her head, hiding her blond hair. Maybe she could get in the van, drive over, and pick Frieda up.

  The skinhead strutted to the back of the Bronco and opened the tailgate. A dozen empty beer bottles fell to the blacktop. He picked up an armful that hadn’t shattered, lined them up in the roadway, and pulled a gun from his waistband.

  Hiding behind the van, Karen flinched as the gun roared twice. She cursed her stupidity. Back in Dickinson, she had refused when Curt tried to give her his pistol. What would she do with a gun, she’d asked, laughing? She hated guns. A cop friend had taken her to a range one time, intent on teaching her to shoot, but her hands had shaken so badly she gave up.

  When the gun’s report faded, she took another peek. Having hit everything he aimed at, he was lining up another dozen bottles, and judging from the whooping and yelling, his friends were loving it. Her heart raced as she tried to think of how to get Frieda out of harm’s way.

  Then the restroom door slammed.

  The men stopped what they wer
e doing to watch Frieda limp toward the RV. She walked with her head down and her shoulders hunched forward, picking her way across the uneven blacktop.

  One of the men fell in behind Frieda and began mimicking her halting gait. Frieda, clutching her overnight bag, churned toward the van, ignoring their howls and taunts. Karen watched in horror. The old lady was almost ninety, and barely four-eleven.

  The man reached for Frieda’s bag.

  “No!” Frieda held on to one end of the strap.

  “Come on, grandma, gimme the purse.” The man flashed a knife.

  “I will not! Let go, you creep!”

  “Ya old bitch!” The man screamed and fell to the pavement as a jet of bear spray hit him in the face. Karen stepped over him and gathered Frieda under her arm, all but carrying her to the van. Jumping into the driver’s seat, she stuck the key in the ignition as one of the men emptied a beer into the downed man’s face.

  “Lock your door. Seatbelt!” Karen started the motor. Thirty feet in front of the van, the skinhead stood in the roadway, his vest blowing open in the breeze. He fondled his bare belly, eyes cold as hematite. Slowly he raised the pistol.

  “Get down!” Karen slammed the shifter into gear and stomped on the gas pedal. For one sickening moment the motor lugged. Then it caught and hurled the RV toward the men. She heard the gun fire as the men scattered and the van blew through them toward the gate. Seconds later, she heard a boom and a thunk at the rear of the van.

  “Goddamn it! They hit us.”

  Frieda cowered in her seat. Karen whipped the RV around the corner, out the gate and onto the narrow highway. The road was clear in both directions as she accelerated south. Hopefully they’d take the man for medical help instead of chasing her. She glanced in the mirror. Nothing yet. She took a ragged breath, trying to calm herself.

  Nothing in her life had prepared her for being shot at. All she could do was run. In seconds the van reached top speed. Karen breathed a prayer of thanks to Russell for keeping the van in mint condition until the day he died. She glanced at Frieda. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. Where’s our stuff?” The back of the van was empty.

  “God.” Karen’s face fell. “It’s back there. I had to leave it.” The needlepoint. The photo albums.

  “Don’t think about it. Just drive.” Frieda clutched her bag in her lap.

  Karen took a deep breath for courage. “Okay. I don’t think they’ll chase us. That Bronco’s a piece of shit, and we got a head start.” Fired by adrenaline, she couldn’t stop babbling. “We’ll find a place with a lot of people. Hide. Call the police.”

  “We should have gone north.”

  With sickening clarity, Karen saw that Frieda was right. Heading toward the far-distant Denver, the land was deserted in every direction. At least in Cheyenne, they might have made it to a mini-mart or gas station. She checked the rearview again.

  The Bronco turned onto the road behind them.

  Her stomach lurched as she saw it accelerate. The front of the Bronco lifted as it raced toward the van. Karen gritted her teeth. Of course it would be fast. They probably did this for a living. She pressed harder on the accelerator, trying to keep the van steady on the narrow road. Luckily she had a tailwind, but so did they. Behind her the Bronco closed in, its massive grille a metallic snarl.

  “Get my phone out of my purse! Dial 9-1-1.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Under your seat.”

  Frieda opened the bag, fumbled around inside, and found the phone. Bouncing around, she flipped it open, squinted at the display, and snapped it shut. “No reception,” she yelled.

  “Shit!” Karen could not allow them to catch up. If the men forced the van to the shoulder, she and Frieda would be their toys.

  Frieda had found Karen’s rosary in her purse and now she fingered the beads, praying.

  The Bronco was closing fast, the road ahead empty. Karen veered into the middle, straddling the line to block them, but the driver found a wide spot and inched alongside, forcing her back into her lane. A meaty arm waved a pistol out the window.

  Karen had the van at top speed. She couldn’t possibly pull away. Could she slam on the brakes, maybe turn and head back to Cheyenne before he could recover? No. If she could get away with such a cockeyed television maneuver, he could too, and probably better. The Bronco was much more nimble. It swerved toward the van, nearly sideswiping it. Karen glanced over quick enough to see the bald and bolted young men brandishing guns. One made a “v” with his fingers and waggled his tongue between them. A bottle sailed through the air and smashed against her window, cracking the glass and scaring her so badly she swerved hard to the right and almost overcorrected. The men hung out of the windows, taunting her.

  When Frieda screamed, Karen saw the eighteen-wheeler.

  The rig had crested a hill and now bore down on them from the south. The driver of the Bronco honked his horn, laughing and pointing at the big rig. He eased the Bronco closer to the RV. His buddies, however, had stopped clowning.

  The eighteen-wheeler flashed its headlights again and again. Forty tons of truck would not slow quickly. The Bronco raced alongside the van, inching forward but not able to pass unless Karen slowed, and she would not.

  As the road curved slightly, Frieda cursed, and Karen saw what her friend had seen: the eighteen-wheeler led a convoy. Karen would have to choose. If she kept up this pace, the men would have to back off or die. Or she could slow down and let them cut in front of her, avoiding the head-on and letting them live, but endangering herself and Frieda.

  She knew what she should do. Karen was a good person. She’d been raised to a life of sacrifice.

  Her hands tightened on the wheel.

  The van flew down the road shoulder to shoulder with the Bronco. The trucker flashed his lights.

  Acid flooded her gut.

  The pedal was flat against the floor.

  Her hands were numb, death-gripping the wheel.

  I’m doing everything I can. I think this is it. There’s nothing more I can do. I gave it my best.

  As Karen raced toward the big rigs, the roaring in her ears began to deaden all sensation. A cool fog wafted into the darkest remote conduits of her mind, and her heartbeat seemed to slow.

  I did everything I could.

  But if you give up now, you’re going to die, she thought, trying to elicit the sense that this was an important fact and that some emotion should rise from it, yet she felt increasingly detached. What does it mean, she wondered, as the sound of the road receded, and the lights and the horns faded, and she drifted into the silence within, when you’ve tried hard all your life to do everything right, be fair to people and play by the rules, you take care of your family and don’t steal and you lift up your employees and…and you’re erased from the earth just for sport?

  I don’t deserve this. I’ve been good all my life, and for this? I was a good kid, a good adult. Even when Dad got in his moods. “Try to be good,” Mom would plead, as if that would stop him from beating the shit out of both of us.

  An epitaph, carved in a chunk of granite, flashed before her eyes: “She was a good girl.”

  Karen blinked. The Bronco was still beside her, the rigs roaring down on her, horns blaring, lights flashing. Elbows locked, she held the wheel steady, refusing to yield. The men jumped around inside the SUV like wild chimps.

  At the last second the Bronco braked and swerved hard to the left, careening off the shoulder and out of control. The convoy roared past, partly hiding from Karen the sight of the Bronco cartwheeling across the prairie, spewing a roostertail of dirt and carving a swath through the sagebrush.

  Frieda clawed at the seat and twisted around to see the wreckage behind them. The smoking Bronco lay upside down in the scarred landscape a hundred yards from the highway, its wheels spinning, roof crushed. The convoy slowed, and the last eighteen-wheeler pulled to the shoulder. The driver, holding a fire extinguisher, ran toward the wreckage.
/>   “Aren’t you going to stop?”

  Karen barely heard Frieda’s voice above the roaring in her ears. She muscled the RV into a sweeping curve, too fast.

  “Karen.”

  The tires screamed in protest.

  “I think they’re dead. Karen?”

  The van slowed slightly. “Good,” Karen tried to say, but couldn’t, because she had no spit left. She began to shake and eased her foot from the gas pedal. Her elbows floated away from her body, and her hands couldn’t feel the steering wheel.

  “Dear.” Frieda’s hand reached over, trembling, her grasp warm on Karen’s forearm. “Please.”

  The van rolled to a stop on the shoulder as the first ambulance appeared over the next hill.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The trooper finished scratching notes on his clipboard and handed Karen’s license back to her. “If we need to, we’ll be in touch.”

  Karen nodded, her jaw clamped. Wordlessly, she and Frieda walked back to the Roadtrek, arms linked tightly. She helped Frieda into her seat and rounded the back of the van. Shaking, she rested against the bumper, her eyes blurring the red-dot fence line of burning flares that stretched around the emergency vehicles. A fireman in yellow slicker directed traffic past the mess, traffic that slowed to eyeball the smoking wreck as they headed northward.

  Her veins throbbed with the charred remains of adrenaline and emotion, and she wondered by how many years this incident had shortened her life.

  Not as much as theirs.

  She pushed herself into a standing position, the effort almost too much. Feeling as if her feet were weighted with cement blocks, Karen climbed back into the van, put it in gear, and began driving slowly toward Denver. Thankful for Frieda’s silence, she played the decision over and over again in her head, but for all her torment, when she reached for guilt she came up empty.

  It was bizarre. Fifty years a Catholic, and she felt no compulsion to race to Confession, no burning need to call out to the heavens for forgiveness. Even though her failure to Put Others First had directly resulted in their death.