Leaving Unknown (5 page)

Bonnie Bunn, of Bunn In The Oven, stared at me blankly. “You want to what?”

I gave her my most engaging smile. “I have this donkey suit, see.” I displayed it. “And you sell burritos. I’d attract customers. We’d make you a reputation as the best burrito in town! People
would think Bunn, and crave a burrito.” It was a thin argument. Burritos occupied a wafer-thin slice of Bonnie’s menu, which was heavier on baked goods than sandwiches, never mind Mexican entrees. I’d had better success at Loco Taco in Loco, Oklahoma, and Bell-A-Burrito in Uncertain, Texas. But Bonnie offered the only burrito in Ding Dong, Texas, so I had to give it a shot. I was a little desperate. Given the distance between West Texas towns, I didn’t want to leave Ding Dong without plenty of money stockpiled. It was a long way to Noodle.

Bonnie wasn’t convinced. “You mean like the guy used to walk around in the cell phone suit in front of Hank’s place?”

I was about to launch into an emphatic explanation of why Hank was a brilliant marketer, when I stopped. “Used to?” I said instead.

“Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Where is Hank’s exactly?”

Five days later my guilt as I drove off in the middle of the night with Hank’s cell phone suit was eased by the fact that I’d lured fifty people into his store, and my use of legalese in the IOU approached official. More important, I had enough gas money to get to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, which had both a Mexican restaurant and a cell phone store.

I
tapped my pencil against my teeth as I studied the map. Unknown, Arizona, looked pinprick tiny. I was seasoned at route planning now, triangulating desired towns, available campgrounds, and potential burrito, cell phone, and (after Sunshine, New Mexico) chicken restaurants. The small towns were the trickiest. I’d arrived at faded crossroads “towns” to find they no longer existed, their entire memory reduced to a dot on an outdated map, dependent on lazy fact-checkers for this fragile proof they had ever lived. It shook my self-assuredness that something as seemingly substantial as a town could fade just like that. If we can’t keep a town alive, how vulnerable was something fragile like me? I reapplied SPF 70 sunscreen.

I could go the lower Arizona route, entering at Portal and passing through Paradise to Greaterville and Tombstone, before reaching Unknown. Beyond the irresistible Unknown was
the equally alluring Why, Arizona, on the Tohono O’odham Indian reservation.

“Tohono O’odham, Tohono O’odham, Tohono O’odham,” I said three times fast, just to see.

My other option was the northerly route, through Superior, Carefree, Surprise, and Nothing. There was also the appeal of a little town named Brenda near the California border. I wondered if the whole town dressed in dowdy clothes and was secretly resentful of a prettier older sister town somewhere named Betty.

It was a difficult choice. I called my sister.

“It’s early, cruel wench,” Vi mumbled into the phone.

I looked at my watch. Oops. “Sorry. I’ve driven across three time zones in two weeks, including states and Native-American reservations that don’t observe daylight savings. The actual time can ricochet wildly within sixty miles, so my understanding of it has devolved to ‘diner open’ or ‘diner closed.’ I’m in a diner.”

“Diners allow birds?” Oliver was talking up a storm, wooing me for some pancake.

“This one does.”
Diner
was a strong word for the folding chair I occupied in the back of the local Texaco store, but the Pancake Breakfast #2 Thelma had whipped up for me between register sales was good. It was a $3.99 splurge, but a stomach riot was incipient at the prospect of another hard-boiled egg and I’d had a lucrative cell phone stop yesterday in Rodeo.

“So what’s up?”

I explained my dilemma.

“Brenda is tempting,” she agreed. “You could see if the residents wear funny outdated hats. But Superior, Carefree, Surprise, and Nothing denote a negative emotional trend from vain purposelessness to unanticipated emptiness. It sounds like bad feng shui to me. In contrast, Tombstone, Portal, Para
dise, Greaterville, Unknown, and Why all tap into the fundamental questions of life, the afterlife, and why we’re here. You could actually drive through a version of heaven on earth. That sounds much more interesting. Besides, I’ve been to Surprise, and the surprise is that it’s a boring suburb of Phoenix. Nothing to see but Old Navy. Better to go to Surprise, New York, in the Catskills.”

Trust my sister to know about both Surprises. I didn’t ask. She had a brain like a sponge.

“Philosophical genius.” I complimented her. “There’s an Eden around there too.”

She laughed. “Now I want to go with you. Call me if you find the Fountain of Youth.”

It might not be heaven on earth but the drive from Tombstone toward Unknown was gorgeous. The sky was blue and impossibly large, the road a ribbon of asphalt snaking across the wide golden prairie. In the distance the grasslands met sloping brown hills. I fancied the hills were great slumbering creatures that dozed off when the earth was young and were gently overgrown with a blanket of grasses and flowers. When they were fully rested, they would wake and stand, rubbing decades of soil from their eyes and shaking off crumbling sod and scrub trees like I dusted off sand from the beach. Then they would lumber gently into the distance to wherever mythical creatures go for a bite to eat after a long nap.

I’d enjoyed my detour to Tombstone, the “Town Too Tough To Die,” and site of the most famous shoot-out in the Wild West. I’d visited the very spot where Sheriff Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday battled cattle rustler Ike Clanton and his band at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, and followed it with a quick lunch and Elsie photo op at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon.

As I headed south, the distant hills became more pronounced, pushing upward to full-fledged mountains and jutting cliffs. I was driving through the cradle between the Santa Rita Mountains to the west and the Huachuca Mountains and Canelo Hills to the east. Cattle and the occasional cluster of deer roamed the high desert scrublands. I felt like I’d stepped back in time to the cowboy era.

“Howdy pardner,” I said to Oliver as we cruised past steel windmills and the occasional ranch, with charmingly authentic gates proclaiming C
IRCLE
Z or L
AZY
B
AR
.

“Carrot,” said Oliver.

“Howdy pardner.” Oliver cocked his head inquisitively. “Howdy pardner.” I repeated, waiting for him to catch on.

Silence.

“Howdy pardner.”

“Carrot.
Squaaawk.
Are you thinner?”

“Never mind. How about some Death Cab for Cutie?” I named a favorite band.

A few miles ahead, a road traveled off to the east. I consulted the map. It looked to be the turnoff for Unknown. I took it, looking at the sky to assess the time. Not that I had any tracker skills or anything like that. I couldn’t tell time from the sun any better than I could put my ear to the dirt and detect the approach of a stagecoach. Still, I’d acquired some road savvy. I’d learned that in small towns people stop at yellow lights and you’d better be ready not to plow into the back of them. I’d learned that Slim Jims were popular with truckers but not their intestines, so it was best not to use the gas station men’s room if the women’s room was occupied, no matter how bad you had to pee. And I’d learned that the sun dropped fast in the West. From about four the sun’s rays slanted noticeably, permeating the sky with a day-is-ending feeling. When the sun itself began to set in earnest, you had about an hour before it dropped like
a stone and everything became as dark as ink. At that point you wanted your tent up for the night.

As I was mentally counting my remaining pairs of clean socks, Elsie emitted an ominous clunk and rattle. A horrible grinding noise came from under the hood and the car bucked once before all momentum ceased. At that moment the music ended, and it was to the sound of utter, penetrating silence that we coasted to a stop on an unnamed road in the least-populated place I’d ever been.

For a moment I sat there, my mind not grasping our predicament. Stupidly, I looked at the gas gauge, but I wasn’t out of fuel. I’d filled up in Tombstone. Next most stupidly, I looked at my phone. I hadn’t had a signal since Rodeo this morning. Besides, who would I call? Vi, can you magically appear from DC to save your little sister again? Dad, you’re helpless to aid me but in my panic I’ll tell you all about this predicament beyond your control so you can have a heart attack worrying from afar? This bad-luck curse was getting out of hand.

I unbuckled my seat belt but hesitated, reluctant to exit the car. If I got out, it became real. If I sat in the car, I could pretend I had merely pulled over to take a scenic photo. Or check the map. I dug out my camera and cranked down the window. I shot a picture of the stretching yellow grasslands and distant rolling hills. I looked at Oliver. He looked at me.

“Howdy pardner,” I said.

“Oh shit,” Oliver said.

I opened the door and stepped out. The silence wasn’t really silence when you listened. There was the whisper of the slightest breeze and gentle rustling of blades of grass. Birds chirped. My pulse thumped triple time.

I released Elsie’s hood and stared at her mystifying guts as if the problem came with repair instructions, like one of those guns where you pull the trigger and a sheet of paper
rolls out with the word
BANG
on it. Except my blown gasket or whatever would release detailed instructions that could be completed with water, some extra motor oil, jumper cables, and an old T-shirt, because that was pretty much all I had in the way of car-repair supplies. I closed the hood.

I looked up the road, which stretched without variation to the east. I looked down the road, which stretched without variation to the west. I felt the impending presence of bad news, as in a long-ago waiting room. Cameron had not been doing well. Her family had asked me to wait outside her room for a bit. A white-coated doctor stepped out. He conferred with a nurse, and she pointed. They both looked at me. He started in my direction, shoulders weighted with news I didn’t want. The room pressed around me, and I wanted to escape, to run away from that white coat that was going to ruin things.

I looked up the road again, and broke into a run. I sprinted for all I was worth, arms pumping, braids flying, knees lifting higher and faster, inadequate Converse low-top sneakers blurred with motion. I raced against panic, running hard. All thought disintegrated into pounding feet, burning lungs, pouring sweat. I ran until I thought my lungs would burst, then stumbled to a stop, doubled over gasping, sweat dripping from my face. I let out a yell that came from deep within, expelling all my frustration. It felt good, so I did it again, straightening.

“Dirty rotten luck, you won’t always win,” I shouted at a sky that calmly absorbed my rage into its wide unwavering depths. I shook my fist for dramatic emphasis, which made me feel both silly and satisfyingly cinematic. A butterfly drifting lazily on no particular trajectory briefly lighted on my fist, then floated on. I watched for a minute until its butter-yellow wings got lost among a host of languidly circling butterflies. Then I turned and jogged slowly back to my life.

Calmer this time, I again looked up the road, and again
looked down the road. I absorbed the unchanged setting of nothing but road. I regarded the sun, relentlessly speeding its course toward extinguishing in the ocean somewhere near where I wanted to be. I looked at my trusting bird. They all seemed to be waiting for my decision. I realized I was waiting too, and shook myself. No one else was going to magically take care of this. I had to figure out what to do.

First, ascertain the level of hopelessness. I slid behind the wheel and tried the ignition. Nothing. That combined with the lack of any
BANG
under the hood meant Elsie was out. But she was presumed reparable. Elsie always bounced back. She was older than me. Her determination to live was why I liked her. The last thing I wanted was for her to get plowed under by some semi-truck barreling down the road after dark. I shifted the car into neutral and got out, wishing I’d packed lighter. I angled the wheels, then put my shoulder into it and pushed. It was slow, sweaty, exhausting going, but I eased the car over to the side of the road. Then I dug around in my purse until I found a compact. I opened it and placed it in the back window to, hopefully, reflect a warning to any approaching headlights. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I felt clever for thinking of it, which gave me a needed confidence boost.

Next, I considered Oliver. I hated the idea of leaving him. The sun was setting now, promising cool temperatures, but who knew when I’d get back tomorrow? It could get hot. Roasty, even. I could never live with myself if I returned to find Oliver dead on his perch like a cooked quail. No, there was nothing for it. I’d have to take him with me. Thank God I’d had his wings clipped right before we left. He was so particular about who did his nails and feathers that I’d made sure we went to his favorite birdie spa one last time predeparture, forestalling the need to break in a new LA groomer as long as possible. Cockatiels don’t like change.

“Want to go for a walk, buddy?” I gently extracted him from his cage.

“Road trip. Don’t forget the bird!” He chirped happily.

“Yeah, this is all fun and games to you,” I chided as I secured a loop around his right leg that connected by a long cord to a bracelet I secured to my wrist. It was an extra precaution, considering his clipped wings and the improbability that he’d stray far from me, but it made me feel better. I perched him on my shoulder. He promptly clambered up my braid like a rope ladder to settle down on top of my head. I slipped his Snuggle Hut inside my jacket. When it got cold, he could nestle in and I’d tuck it inside my jacket.

I removed extra sweaters and socks from my overnight backpack, and replaced them with my sleeping bag, my current book, and essentials from my purse. I tied my tent to the bottom loops. I looked longingly at my Therm-a-Rest, but there was no room. It would be an uncomfortable night. I tested my headlamp to make sure it had full juice. No telling how far I’d be walking in the dark. Finally, I grabbed two large bottles of water and stuck a boiled egg in my pocket.

With a last pat for Elsie, I locked the door and started walking.

“I’m a girl with a bird on her head, destination Unknown,” I said to no one in particular. I amused myself with all variations of heading into the unknown as I kept a slow pace so as not to unsettle Oliver. I didn’t want to burn out my own energy either. The landscape was still unchanged when the sun selfishly abandoned me. Soon after, the darkness was impenetrable and I was dependent on my headlamp. I prayed that Unknown still existed. Then I pondered whether the unknown
could
exist in tangible form. My anxious brain spiraled into a loop where I almost convinced myself that I wouldn’t find anything there because there was no “there” there and to get to Unknown I
had to travel within. That’s what walking alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere will do to you.

Frogs and crickets sang a lively chorus. I sat down after a while to rest and put on an extra sweater. Oliver clambered down my arm to my wrist, not liking the cold either. I tucked him into his Snuggle Hut and both into my jacket, and he gave a happy
tut
, comforted by my heart beating beneath his cocoon. I resumed walking. Tree cover over the road was thickening, fracturing the moonlight. I hadn’t seen a single car in three hours. It was only around nine but I was getting tired. I figured I’d walk another hour.