The Sunset Route

by Carrot Quinn

“Everything I own is in there,” said Asaf. He was standing in the rain, moving luggage around in the rear of the car. He was middle-aged, with a thick Israeli accent. He had a big smile and slightly bloodshot eyes. The license plate on the SUV read Show Biz. “I work in the entertainment industry,” he said, speaking loudly, almost shouting. “But I’m moving to Anchorage to be Sarah Palin’s advisor.”

  “Do you know Sarah Palin?” I asked, handing him my suitcase.

  “No, but I’m going to find her.”

  “All right,” I said.

  In the backseat was a young couple who introduced themselves as Meadow and Barry. Meadow wore a torn dress, knit leg warmers, and an oversized hoodie. Her blond hair was loose around her face. Barry had a push-broom mustache and cloudy brown eyes. He clutched a thermos of steaming coffee. Meadow was hand-rolling a cigarette. She tucked the cigarette behind her ear and extended her small, warm hand for me to shake.

  “Barry and I met in San Francisco a few months ago,” said Meadow, as Asaf pulled onto the wet, empty freeway and steered the SUV north, toward Canada. “I was sleeping in the park, and I heard him playing his guitar.” She laughed hoarsely. “Now we’re headed back to Alaska, where I’m from.”

  The sun came up as we crossed into Washington, and the gray day softened. Asaf told us about his passion for Sarah Palin’s political career. “She needs an advisor like me,” he said, in his loud, almost-shouting voice. He told us that he was a millionaire. “Keanu Reeves calls me on my birthday.” Asaf passed back a Ziploc baggie of sesame cookies. “You want some? My mother made these for the trip.”

  Meadow told us about growing up in Cantwell, a little nowhere village in the Alaskan interior. She had lived with her father in an unfinished one-room cabin. Her mother died when she was small. Her father taught her how to fish, hunt, and gather berries.

  “He was a drunk,” said Meadow, “but a happy drunk.”

  “What’s Barry’s story?” I asked. Barry had fallen asleep, his head resting against the window, the large thermos still clutched tightly in his hands.

  “He comes from a rich family,” said Meadow. “He ran away.”

  Around midday we reached Canadian customs at the U.S.-Canada border. I was eating a recycled yogurt tub of leftovers—sweet potatoes and ground beef—and Meadow had produced two bruised apples from her fringed leather bag. Asaf had a turkey sandwich from the gas station as his lunch.

  “Shit,” said Asaf, as we pulled into the line of waiting cars. “We don’t have a story. We’re supposed to have a story. Otherwise they won’t let us in! Okay okay okay. Here’s what we say. We’ve all known each other. For a long time. Ten years!”

  “We’re all in a band together!” said Meadow. “And we’re on tour!”

  I laughed. Barry woke and rubbed his hands over his face.

  “Can I play the accordion?” I asked.

  “Shhh!” Asaf hushed us, as the customs agent approached the SUV. Asaf handed over our passports and the customs agent peered inside. Had we ever been arrested? No. How long had we known each other? Ten years. We were a band. On tour. I held my breath. Of course I had been arrested, but I knew better than to say so. They’d have no way of knowing unless they ran a background check on me, and they wouldn’t do that as long as our story was solid, right?

  The customs agent handed our passports back to Asaf. We were free.

  In British Columbia the rain turned to snow. Piles and piles of snow, mounded up along the roadsides, heaped on the roofs of the houses. Snow falling from the heavy clouds; fat, slow flakes pinwheeling down to the pillowed earth. The thermometer on the car’s dashboard was dropping. While I knew that it was still winter in Alaska, I had not taken into consideration that it would be winter on the way to Alaska as well.

  Neither had Meadow.

  “Where are you planning to sleep tonight?” she asked me quietly.

  I laughed. “I don’t know. I thought I could sleep outside. But this…I guess I don’t have any idea. I don’t have money for hotel rooms.”

  “Same,” she said, drawing her ill-fitting hoodie more tightly around her.

  Asaf fished a camera from the console between the two front seats and held it against the glass of the windshield. He focused on the little screen, attempting to frame the shot. The car began to creep into the oncoming lane.

  “Asaf!” I shouted, gripping my seat. He swerved back into our lane and snapped the picture. The roads were coated in ice, and snow was still falling. He accelerated around a curve—I looked at the speedometer and saw that we were going seventy miles an hour—and lifted the camera to frame another shot. The car again swerved into the oncoming lane.

  “Asaf!” Meadow and I shouted, in unison. He ignored us. The car swerved back and forth, from one lane to the other, as he stared at the tiny camera screen. We hadn’t seen anyone else in a while, on this frozen highway in the middle of nowhere. But what if there was an oncoming car suddenly? We’d be dead.

  The highway uncurled itself and Asaf accelerated to eighty.

  “Dude!” yelled Meadow. “You need to slow down!” Barry had fallen asleep again and his mouth was slack, his breath fogging the passenger window. Asaf acted as though we hadn’t said anything at all. “What the fuck do we do?” Meadow whispered to me. Click, click, click. Asaf’s camera captured more shots of the snowy countryside.

  We stopped for gas at a little roadhouse in the middle of a great expanse of undulating white, and Meadow anxiously smoked a cigarette while I ate a bag of potato chips. Smoke curled from the stovepipe on the roof of the roadhouse, and firewood was stacked neatly against the side of the wooden building. Nearby, an ax rested on a wooden chopping block. Bright shavings littered the clean snow.

  “I’ll sit in the front passenger seat,” I said. “Maybe I can get him to slow down.”

  It was no use, though. I cajoled, I whined, I even shouted a little, matching the volume of his own speech. Asaf ignored me. He held the camera against the windshield and looked at the little screen—click. Click. Click. “I want to photograph everything,” he said. Each bend in the road, each distant line of mountains. He swerved slowly, gently, into the oncoming lane and back. Always staying between sixty and eighty miles per hour, on this highway slick with ice, as it wound around the mountain, just a guardrail between us and the abyss.

  “Why don’t you let me drive for a while?” I asked. “Or Meadow? You must be getting tired.”

  “No,” he said. “Then I could not say that I drove all the way to Alaska. I want to be able to say that I drove all the way to Alaska.”

  Asaf had reserved a hotel room in Prince George for the night, and we pulled in around eight. Asaf, in an act of strange, incredible generosity, had called ahead to all his reservations and upgraded the rooms so that there was enough space to sleep all four of us. Because where else would we sleep? It was sixteen degrees outside and snowing. He didn’t want any money from us, he reiterated. It was his treat.

  Asaf flopped on one of the beds in our room and turned on the television. Barry sat on the other bed, playing his guitar. I opened a can of chili for dinner.

  “You need to shower,” said Asaf, suddenly, to Meadow.

  “I don’t want to shower,” said Meadow.

  “It’s important to shower,” said Asaf.

  “Sure, fine, whatever,” said Meadow. She heaved her backpack onto the bed Barry was sitting on and headed for the bathroom. I pulled the sleeping bag from my pack and spread it in the narrow space between that bed and the wall. The heater ticked, radiating an intense, dry heat. My skin felt parched and tight, as though it might crack. Outside, the snow fell silently, piling up in the village and in the quiet forest that stretched beyond it, into forever.

  Around noon the next day, we stopped at another small roadhouse, a ramshackle building with two ancient gas pumps. The cold had deepened as we�
��d hurtled farther north, and the air bit at my face. Inside the small building one could order a slice of pie or drink a cup of coffee. I spun a rack of old postcards and thumbed through a shelf of worn romance novels. Take a book, leave a book, said a handwritten sign.

  “What do we do?” said Meadow, next to me. All morning we’d been taking turns sitting in the front seat, next to Asaf, and shouting at him. All morning he had acted as though he couldn’t hear us. He’d kept the speedometer between sixty and eighty, all while taking constant photographs, click click click, and swerving across the icy highway, toward one snowbank and then the other. There was little other traffic but now and then a truck would blast by, spitting gravel. Asaf would not slow down. Now, Meadow and I ran through a list of ways to physically stop him:

  Hide his camera

  Throw the camera out the window

  Steal his keys

  We couldn’t do any of those things to him, though. He’d been so nice. So generous. He was driving all three of us all the way to Alaska for no money, and he’d upgraded all his hotel rooms so that we would have a place to sleep! There was no way we could be that rude.

  On the third day, Meadow and I gave up. We were in the Yukon Territory, a few hours east of Whitehorse. The world was a blur of white, the flat boreal forest with its drunken spruce trees stretching on to the horizon in all directions. The temperature gauge on the car’s dash said fifteen below zero. I was in the middle row of seats, eating a can of black beans. Meadow and Barry were in the back row of seats, stretched out together, napping.

  Asaf was taking a photo of a frozen lake when he lost control of the vehicle and we slid toward the snowbank on our right. He yanked the wheel as hard as he could and we spun across the icy road, the car and trailer turning, pointing south. We hit the snowbank on the other side of the road, and the SUV flipped onto its hood. The can of beans I was eating flew out of my hands as we rolled, staining my face, clothes, and the roof of the SUV with purple juice. The trailer caught like an anchor in the snowbank, and the SUV righted itself. The world was suddenly very, very still.

  Asaf shoved open the driver’s-side door and lurched out into the deep snow. He appeared to be unhurt. I was unhurt. Were Meadow and Barry okay? They hadn’t been wearing seatbelts. They were sitting up now, alarmed. A little trickle of blood was running from Barry’s nose. “I’m fine,” he said, wiping it with the sleeve of his sweater.

  The front end of the SUV was smashed in. The right-side windows were all shattered.

  “My stuff!” Asaf was screaming, his voice cracking, standing on the frozen highway, waving his arms in the air. “My things! My life is ruined!” The trailer we were towing had busted open in the wreck, and all of Asaf’s furniture—a shitty-looking desk, an office chair, lamps—was strewn about in the snow.

  “You almost killed us!” I shrieked at him. I was shaking. It was fifteen degrees below zero, and I didn’t have gloves on, or a coat, or a hat. I couldn’t feel the cold, though. “You asshole! You’re a horrible driver and you almost killed us!” Asaf ignored me. He had a cellphone but there was no cell reception here, no way of calling anyone. The last village we passed had been an hour ago.

  “What do we do now?” said Meadow, dreamily.

  A snowplow rumbled along the highway at that very moment, heading back in the direction of the last village that we passed. Asaf stood in the highway, waving his hands in the air, and the plow grumbled to a stop.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted at him.

  “I’ve totaled this car,” he said. He pulled the keys from the SUV’s ignition and pocketed them. “I’ll get a new one. Put my things in the backseat.” He heaved himself up into the cab of the snowplow and was gone.

  “What the fuck!” I screamed after the receding snowplow. I turned to Meadow and Barry, who were standing, befuddled, next to the wreckage, Meadow in all her ill-fitting layers and Barry in just his heavy wool fisherman’s sweater and jeans. “He took the keys. It’s fifteen below. What the fuck are we even supposed to do?”

  Meadow shrugged. “I guess we’ll wait for him, and ride with him when he gets a new car?” she said quietly.

  “Fuck that!” I was still screaming. I couldn’t seem to calm myself. “I’m not riding any farther with that asshole. What a fucking asshole. He almost killed us!” A car crept along the icy road headed west and I stuck out my thumb but the car passed without slowing. I realized that I didn’t even have my things, and that there was still purple bean juice all over my face. I gathered my backpack and my heavy leather suitcase. I washed my face with snow, and dug out my warm coat, hat, and woolen gloves, and put them on. If I’d known that I would be hitching, I wouldn’t have brought so much stuff. Definitely not this dumb heavy suitcase. And I only had these thin wool gloves.

  “All right,” said Meadow, watching me. “I guess we’ll come with you.” She collected her and Barry’s things—a canvas backpack, a fringed leather purse, and a guitar.

  A tow truck pulled up with Asaf just as a dirty, snow-caked sedan stopped for us. Asaf climbed down from the tow truck and stared at us while we loaded our things into the sedan.

  “You’re leaving me?” he said. He was standing in the frozen road, the tow truck rumbling beside him. He appeared to be crestfallen.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course we are. You almost killed us. Remember?”

  “But…you’re leaving me?” the pain in his face was deep and real.

  “Yes, Asaf!” I shouted at him. “We are leaving you!”

  I was shaking from the shock of the accident as I folded myself into the backseat of the sedan. The car was completely full of the driver’s belongings—more full than any hitchhiking ride that had ever stopped for me. The driver was a young man, maybe twenty, with bloodshot eyes and only a Hawaiian shirt on for warmth against the cold. He was driving to the North Slope of Alaska, he said, where he had work in the oil industry. In the sedan was everything he owned, stacked from the floorboards to the roof. I sat next to a tall stack of boxes, and clothing spilled onto my lap. Clutching my pack and suitcase in my arms, I smashed myself against the door as best I could. In the front passenger seat, Meadow sat on Barry’s lap and held their belongings against her chest. Our driver tore off the cap on a 5-Hour Energy shot with his teeth and poured it down his throat. The smell of sucrose and B vitamins filled the cab.

  “I haven’t slept since Seattle,” he said. He hit the gas and peeled out onto the icy highway, tires screaming, and accelerated to ninety miles an hour. Oh my God. I stared at the speedometer, willing it down.

  The young man caught my eye in the rearview mirror.

  “Does that scare you?” he said. “DOES THAT SCARE YOU?” He tapped the brakes, and the rear tires fishtailed a little on the ice.

  “So,” said Meadow calmly, her face a mask of tranquility, “you’re from Seattle?”

  By the time we reached Whitehorse a few hours later, the last of the daylight was gone, and we’d convinced the young man to stop and rest for the night.

  “We’ll pay for the hotel room,” we said. “Don’t worry.”

  Whitehorse was a small, artsy little town, asleep under the heavy cloak of winter, and we found a room for a hundred dollars, which was nearly the last of all of our money. Meadow, Barry, and our new friend dropped their things in the room and wandered off to find a bar, while I brewed tea in the motel coffee maker and sat on the bed, eating an orange, still shaking. I unstuffed my sleeping bag and lay down in my spot between the bed and the wall but couldn’t sleep—my nerves felt full of electricity. At an indeterminate hour the three returned, drunk and covered in shiny green Saint Patrick’s Day confetti. Meadow and Barry were arguing. The young man took off his shirt, flexed his six-pack in the mirror a few times, and then collapsed on top of the covers, starfish position, instantly asleep. I pretended to be asleep as well, and ev
entually I was.

  I said goodbye to my fellow travelers in the morning. I didn’t want to ride one more day with another reckless driver. One accident on this trip, I figured, was enough for me. And I needed a day to rest. Walking slowly down the sidewalks of Whitehorse, my boots crunching on the snow, I looked at the murals and the bulletin boards at the food co-op—“Intern needed on organic farm, four hours per day, as many fresh vegetables as you want.” The notice was soggy from weathering the seasons. I reached the hostel. Up a set of stairs was a sunlit kitchen where a Japanese hipster sat at the table, making paper cranes. There was a teakettle and a shelf cluttered with boxes of tea. In another room someone was playing the flute. I sank into an overstuffed couch. It was so peaceful I almost started to cry.

  I peeled twenty-five dollars off my small roll of money for a bunk, and that night I slept as though I had died. In the morning I fried a few eggs and the Japanese man gave me a paper crane.

  “For good luck,” he said. “No more car accidents.”

  I hoisted my pack and suitcase, cursing myself again for bringing too much luggage, and set out to hitchhike the rest of the way to Alaska.

  Midday, I was picked up by a First Nations woman and her three young nieces. The girls stared at me as we drove west through the bright wintertime—at my wind-burned face, my red fingers, the snot running from my nose. They were coming from a grocery store resupply trip in town, and the SUV was piled with cases of food. They offered to take me home with them, to Kluane Lake, and put me up for the night. I said yes—a place to stay on this frozen journey was a godsend.

  The family lived in a warm, split-level home on the banks of the lake, which was a flat, white expanse that danced with wind-blown drifts. We ate moose meat stew for dinner and then I tucked myself in on the living room couch, lay looking up at all the family photographs on the walls as the house rustled, and then finally fell still.

  In the morning they fed me frosted cornflakes and the children watched as I ate.