the crossing

On a Kansas summer night, the blue and pink cotton candy in the sky touched like an estuary. A veil of stars sown into the deepest crust of blue. The dome—cage—of extraordinary life.

Dust powdered the air, kicked up with the groan of a car’s engine. Dean Martin on the radio; his mom loved Dean. She’d sing Mambo Italiano to him in the car in her happiest moments of being alive, finally forgetting how much pain she was in for a minute. That and when he made her laugh so hard their guts burst.

Crick pat his dog’s head to calm her down in the passenger’s seat. She was so nervous on rides, but after a while she learned to accept it. For a few hours, she even slept.

Everything was alright for a while, on their way. Then the space between running establishments and street lights grew wider. The color of the roads changed. A chorus of loose gravel ferried the car on toward country homes. Then farms and livestock, grain silos. Abandoned barns.

The orange magnet in GAS decided on half a tank. He breathed through his mouth, 8 seconds. In through the nose and hold for 7 seconds. Out at 8 again. Inhale. Exhale.

“Why don’t we just change the music?” he mumbled to no one. On the passenger seat, Holly blinked slowly as she tucked her chin. Crick switched the station.

They floated through evening blue that too soon turned to black and white. Headlights cast a tongue of unmarked road, plus the occasional yellow Caution sign for deer. He hoped deer wouldn’t be out in the endless fields of grass.

Finally, a gas station beamed.

He looked around the empty lot as the gas pumped. Wide pools of light on pavement, store bright Inside but a block-letter CLOSED sign in the door. The skin at the nape of his neck prickled. Holly’s nose fogged up the backseat window as she watched him, her tail sweeping madly.

A cool breeze kissed the sweat at his hairline.

The new song that faded in the radio as they hauled away was a calming one. The backseat was still empty, he reassured himself, otherwise Holly would be going nuts.

They made it into another flyover town.

Holly whined and licked at his ear, and he sighed.

“Really?” he said.

A 24/7 Walmart lit up a lot the size of a football field. Nothing but thin trims of grass and front lawns for the next couple of miles. The ants in his stomach began to gnaw. Rubber of the steering wheel creaked under his grip.

“I hear you, Holly, okay?”

A diner buoyed on the black horizon and crept toward the reach of his headlights. Every other letter in its sign was out, but up close it read Buster’s. Few cars populated the parking lot, and it was surrounded by moats of grass. His belly shot off a noise like some feral bird. The place was no Village Inn, but it would do.

He parked at a curb away from other cars and walked Holly by her leash into the grass. Holly sniffed loudly and ramped her back to piss. Buster’s was shaped like an ice box, single-level, room enough for maybe 100 people. Silhouettes of power lines floated in the distance. He wondered if The Village Inn in Derby looked the same anymore. The mansard roof, orange vinyl cushions, brown carpet. His mom and grandma would take him there all the time. He tried to remember what his mom would do or talk to him about in those days when she didn’t have a smartphone. Once, they had taken him after one of his secret internet porn adventures, and he kept remembering those naked images while they all sat in booth and had to excuse himself to the restroom so as not to vomit.

He followed Holly’s lead, lost in thought, until he looked back at the car and realized they had strayed too far for comfort.

“Come on, girl,” he said to Holly’s ducked head. “Just shit already.”

His stomach gurgled again, and he looked back toward the diner. Someone was outside with him.

A woman, by the shape of her body and what he guessed to be long hair. She meandered out to the middle of the lot, one arm bent inward, she was talking on the phone. The closer she got to his car, the colder the wind that blew against his back. He scanned the area around her for signs of someone watching. Was she the bait?

Holly arched her back to crap and looked up at him.

Crick exhaled heavily, slowly.

When he looked again, the woman was nowhere near his car, her back turned to him. She probably doesn’t even see me, he thought.

“This is why I can’t watch crime documentaries,” he said to Holly as she kicked up the grass behind her. “I’ll go insane.”

Holly leapt into the backseat while he rolled down the windows enough to let in the breeze. In the rear view mirror, the diner looked practically empty.

“You stay here, I’m gonna just go inside and pee.”

He gripped the car keys to his chest in second thought. Then he shook his head and went inside. It turned out, thinking 100 people would fit was generous.

Striped valence framed the windows, the walls mounted with old photographs and aluminum signs. A water-stained ceiling and bruised tile floor. Pendant lights dangled, shedding pools of filtered dimness over tabletops. At the four-seat bar, a man with a cowboy hat bowed his head as if in prayer. On the other side of the bar was a single-stall bathroom.

As he passed the cowboy, someone’s voice snarled at him through a portable radio sitting on the bar. The words were garbled, but the tone was clear. Crick glanced over his shoulder to make sure the cowboy wasn’t staring at him, but he was. Crick scanned for a waitress or cook anywhere, but only a handful of patrons answered. They didn’t all seem to be aware he entered the diner at all, except the cowboy. The bathroom door creaked on its hinges.

A pungeant stench assaulted Crick’s nose. Water in the toilet bowl was clean enough, but everything else was caked with grime, stained. The roll of toilet paper was bald. No paper towels in the mounted dispenser. Crick pushed the lock down in the door knob until it made a click.

Over the thrum of fluroescence, Crick’s heels scuffed against the tile. Words carved or scratched into the wall hurled insults. Color of his pee was neon yellow.

The faucet spat cold water only, and there was no soap or cabinet to check. He shook his hands out and then rubbed them on his jeans. Using his shirt as a glove, he opened the door.

A young woman in the corner booth’s mouth was agape, and he met her gaze. She didn’t look away. The cowboy’s head was turned away, but his cheek curved in the arc of his smirk. An old couple had turned around to stare at him. Crick’s blood froze over, silent flood lights flashing in his insides. He walked through the thorn bush of their attention and kept his eyes on the door.

He listened for footsteps behind him as he crossed the parking lot, now regretting that he parked so far away. By the time he saw Holly’s whipping tail and heard her cries, he began to question what he truly saw back there. Were they all actually staring at him, or had he just imagined it?

Holly’s ears smoothed back as the whimpers whistled through her snout, and her body wobbled from side to side.

He decided he imagined it all and would prove it to himself. After he shut the door behind him and gave Holly some scratches on her head, he adjusted the rear view mirror.

“See? No—”

He was cut short by the figure standing across the lot, outside the diner’s front door. The cowboy. Crick twisted around in the seat and studied the windows to find that everyone was still there. Watching.

Holly paused as she looked through the back windshield, and the hackles rose. Loud barks burst from her in short but firm succession.

Crick’s engine purred to life and the tires screeched on the asphalt as he hauled out of there. The orange gas magnet sat comfortable at F. Half an hour passed before the whooshing noise in Crick’s ears died down enough for him to realize he hadn’t turned the radio back on.

“That was fucking weird, huh?” he said. He put a hand on Holly’s warm back. In the wing mirror, a wall of night and soft red glow of the car’s back lights.

Fatigue itched in his eyes, and he yawned so big his vision blurred. An all-white billboard with black letters asked him if he knew whether he was going to Heaven or Hell. The next one advertised the Lion’s Den, just off the next exit. The first time he went to a sex shop, Patricia’s, the clerk said he seemed much more seasoned than an 18-year-old. He flicked through the radio channels but landed on mostly static or muffled voices.

The dash clock was an hour behind, green digits read 11:57.

He powered through another hour 1/2 and then pulled into a Lebo inn, parking between two vans. On the street behind the lot, a truck with no headlights rolled by, silhouette of the driver’s hat blipping on Crick’s periphery. Crick rubbed his eyes and let it go.

The floors were cold, hard tile, floral duvet and cream sheets starched to oblivion. Smells of cigarettes and alcohol nested in the walls. Holly’s nails tip-tapped against the floor, her droopy ears whipping back and forth as she sniffed every corner. A gutteral sigh escaped from his chest, mattress springs creaking with the weight of his bags. Holly hopped up to inspect the pillows.

Crick had hoped for cold water, but the best the faucet spurt was lukewarm. He splashed his neck and scratched the back of his head, eyes closed.

A knock at the door. Holly’s high-pitched barks popped off like gunshots, and his ears rang. The knock wasn’t at his door.

“Holly!” he moaned. “Please. Fuck.”

She didn’t stop, so he clapped at her. After a minute, she calmed down, and he started to undress.

Steam from the shower curled out from under the door and fogged the outside mirror, and he turned his face up to let the water pound the memories from his eyelids. A shadow fell over him, and his eyes flipped open again. He whipped the curtain back but saw only the door, lock still turned.

“Christ,” he breathed.

Holly nestled at his back. The airflow sucked, good thing the bedsheets were thin as paper. Blue and white light flickered off the walls in the dark, and eventually he slipped under the TV voices.

Through the slit of his eyes, a shadow cut against the corner—the cowboy’s hat. The TV’s light blinked on his smile.

Crick sucked in air as he jolted upright, and the room was washed in sunlight. A headache bleated against the backs of his eyes. He waited for the drum in his body to quiet, and then he reached for Holly.

His hand fell on an empty mattress. The sheets showed no extra bumps other than those of his own legs underneath.

“Holly?” he said. He flung the sheets away and checked under the bed, in the bathroom, in the bathtub, as if she had washed down the drain or hidden behind the toilet.

Sunlight was blinding and concrete white hot on the bottoms of his feet. From both sides of him, nothing but the empty balcony and stretch of doors. He gripped the rail and bent over it, calling her name to the bleached blacktop. Both vans he had parked between were gone.

Tires screeched around the corner, and a pickup truck skidded to a halt in the middle of the parking lot. Crick saw the cowboy before he got out, a beastly snarl on his face as they locked eyes. A crow cawed.

The cowboy sprinted toward the stairs.

Crick’s blood rang in his ears, and numbness washed over his legs, sealing him to the walkway. Time moved slowly, like in a dream. The cowboy’s encroaching heels beat against the steps. Crick tore his stiff fingers from the rail and flew by the balls of his feet. Sweat poured down his back, the wind cooling the damp sides of his head.

All of his thoughts cleared. His world narrowed to a single goal: survival.

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