Road to Paradise

  That got a gasp from me, a “holy shit” from Gina.

  There was one avalanche, Candy continued, then another, which buried the wrecked fuselage and the survivors. They had to dig their way out. Finally two men said, we have to go to look for help. We know we’re in the impassable Andes, and we have no compass. We don’t know which way to go, we don’t know if we have enough strength and we don’t know if we’re going to find anything. We may take a step and it will be in the wrong direction. We’ll never know if we might’ve been saved had we walked a different way. But one thing we do know for sure, for absolute certain. If we stay here, we’re dead. We won’t make it. We’ve been here too long, and no one has come. They’ve assumed we’re dead, and why not? Most of us are.

  Thus they set off. Wounded, depleted, freezing, they walked, in December, over some of the steepest mountains in the world and, after many days, finally found a peasant farmer, who ignored them, thinking they were joking. When eventually they were rescued, they had been stranded for sixty-two days.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “How long?”

  “Sixty-two,” repeated Candy. “Not including the ten days they walked through the Andes. Seventy-two days altogether.”

  “So what’s the point?” asked Gina.

  “It’s a story. Does it have to have a point?”

  “To be any good, yes. To have lasting effect. To mean something.”

  “My story fits all those.”

  I drove slower. “That’s an unbelievable story. It’s not true, is it?”

  “All true,” said Candy. “My father told me. It happened a few years ago, in the early seventies, when I was still living with him.”

  “By Jove,” I said. “This was the worst story I ever heard. It’s worse than Judas.”

  “Worse than Judas, no! Why?”

  “Because this one is real.”

  Candy raised her eyebrows at me and laughed. “Right-o. But you’re looking at this all wrong. It’s not the worst story. It’s the best story. They did what they had to do, and made it against impossible odds. Sixteen of the forty-five people were rescued, two days before Christmas. The story of these rugby players is called the Christmas miracle. O give thanks unto the God of heaven.” She shook her head. “The worst story? You’re nuts.”

  “Sloane’s right,” said Gina. “What about a little Christmas miracle for the other twenty-nine unlucky bastards who were eaten, huh? It all depends which way you’re looking at that half-filled glass, Candy Cane.”

  “Yes, and the glass is overflowing. Just open your eyes, Gina, and you will see, and you will be answered.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  After thinking about that plane crash and seventy-two days in the snow, I don’t know if we were answered in Riverton, which turned out to be a place for founded fears. It was a small frontier town, and what if East Coast justice and Christian mercy had not come here yet? The town was isolated and mostly deserted. The Riverton Inn didn’t look like a safe place for girls. Older men were camped out on folding chairs, smoking their cigarettes, looking for us to drive up to the reception area. Well, Gina and I weren’t going to be the twenty-nine wounded on that plane. We drove away from Riverton Inn and found a Holiday Inn instead. It was too rich for us, too expensive, but at this point, I would have paid double. Of course after ten in the evening, there was no decent food establishment open. Only bars were serving food. Riverton was an outlier, and there was no way I was walking into a bar in a no-limit town with a no-boundary sense of justice.

  “What are you going to do, starve because you don’t want to walk into a bar?” said Candy. We were in the darkened parking lot of the Holiday Inn. That was bad enough.

  “We’re not bar food, Candy,” I said.

  “Candy’s right,” said Gina. “As always, you’re being ridiculous.”

  I stared at her. She glared right back. “In Interior,” said Gina, “I bought your little threats. I thought you were serious. But since now I know for a fact that though you might leave me, you will not leave her”—she pointed at Candy—“I’m going with her with no worries. Because I’m hungry.”

  “Park all the way in the back,” Candy called to me as they strolled away. “Between two other cars.”

  “Why can’t there be a Burger King,” I whined, throwing up my frightened hands. “Why in this whole state can’t there be a McDonald’s, or a Kentucky Fried?”

  They went. I couldn’t. God, I was so afraid.

  I stayed in the room tracing the map of Wyoming with my fingers, and my two food hunters didn’t return till nearly midnight. The burger they were carrying was room temperature. My windows faced the unlit parking lot at the back where there were no cars except ours.

  “Where’s our stuff?” asked Gina, dropping my food on the bed.

  “Still in the car,” I replied guiltily. I couldn’t manage my terror alone in the lot at night. I parked the car, but couldn’t spend a second fussing with our bags, and left them all, every one, even the toothbrushes, and the underwear, everything, I just ran madly to the door. In front of my eyes was the man leaning into my car at the Argosy in Sioux City, and the strange staring men at the Riverton Inn sitting on their little chairs in the waning light, smoking, looking us over from the side of the road. God, all I wished for was a little courage, but it wasn’t for sale in Riverton parking lots.

  “Sloane, what the hell is wrong with you?” said Gina. “We went to a bar, but you can’t get a bag out of a trunk?”

  “Shelby,” Candy said affectionately, “eat your food before it gets cold and gross.”

  I ate my food. It was already cold and gross.

  We took off our clothes and crept under the sheets, unclad and fully burdened. Another long day tomorrow, said Gina.

  “It’s a long life,” said Candy. “And even after the worst happens, and you don’t think you can endure, can continue without perishing, you somehow do, beyond all scope of what you thought you could bear.”

  It was still such a long way to Paradise.

  “You think I could live in Salt Lake City?” Candy asked me. She was in the other bed with Gina. We alternated Candy between us. It was understood that the one in need of the most protection was not going to sleep alone. I missed her. Last night in Rapid City (I couldn’t believe it was only last night!) she was so warm and sad against me. I wanted the feel of her again. So tonight, missing her, I listened to her trembling question.

  “How would I know?” I said. “I’ve never been to Salt Lake City.”

  “Why not?” said Gina. “You’d like it there, Cand. They’re Christian.”

  “They’re not Christian. They’re Mormon.” She lifted her arms straight up in the air, and caressed the insides of her forearms. “Question is, can I fit?”

  As I lay in the bed by the window at the Holiday Inn under the pitch black Wyoming night, trying to catch the shadows of her on the wall, this is what I was thinking. I had initially believed that Candy was a small distressing part of my life. That I had been living my life, la-di-da, and she walked into it, like a dress on legs, flew in like the fly to the waiting spider. But here in Riverton, land-locked for good, it suddenly dawned on me at midnight: what if she is not playing a major part in my life, but I’m playing a minor part in hers? What if she is not the fly?

  I had long put away my spiral notebook. I couldn’t remember the last time I made a schedule, checked my to-do list, wrote down the mileage. I felt more and more that not only was I not in control, not only was I not in charge of even the smallest detail of my own life, but that I wasn’t even living my life. I was trespassing through Candy’s—who was also not in control! Her life was the house, and I was crawling from the front door to the backyard.

  As if to affirm the central role in her own life, Gina asked Candy a question she actually needed an answer to. “Candy,” she asked, “why is it when you talk about Eddie, you sound so skeptical of him, though you’ve never met him?”

  “I’m no
t skeptical. I’m cautious,” Candy replied, winking at me in the dark.

  “But why?” and when Candy didn’t answer, Gina said, “Sometimes I think you want to say that the worst that can happen to me is if I find him unmarried in Bakersfield and hitch my star to his.”

  “I’d never say that.”

  “But sometimes I think you want to.” And when Candy again said nothing, Gina said, “See?” and sighed deeply. Candy had fallen asleep. Curled up into a fetal ball, facing me, blankets over her hips, in her underwear, makeup still on her face.

  “Sloane,” Gina whispered, propping herself on her elbow. “You awake?”

  “Yes,” I said, but didn’t want to be.

  “What’s she going to do?”

  “Find her baby. Go live somewhere.”

  “Where? Here?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where can she live where Erv won’t find her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But doesn’t Erv know that she’s got a kid? That’s the kind of thing that’s not easy to hide. A kid is like your yellow Shelby. If he can’t find her on the road, here in Riverton, back in Wright, won’t he then go to Paradise and lie in wait for her to come to the only thing that means anything to her?”

  I sucked in my breath and held it, because it hurt to breathe out.

  “Maybe he doesn’t know where the girl is,” I said.

  Still curled up in a ball, Candy opened her eyes. She lay there blinking, her doe eyes dark and full of sorrow. For a moment she appeared to me like a fawn that had been shot and was lying on her side, only her eyes moving because nothing else could. I realized somewhat belatedly that the past radius of my life being confined to only a few miles was not just geographical. That the vast mystical entities out there that were completely outside my understanding were not just about the spectrum of a country four thousand miles from stem to stern. I couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. I turned away, and prayed, actually prayed. This is what I prayed for: Please dear God, let it be morning. Let it be morning of someone else’s life. I wish I hadn’t turned away, but I just couldn’t face myself with her bleeding-out eyes staring at me.

  3

  The. Great. Divide.

  Riverton at morning was still an outpost of civilization. A few cars on Federal Boulevard, the mountains distant, the sky too, the air thin, the people watching suspiciously. They answered questions but you would not call them friendly. More like reserved, with shotguns on their backs. At the agonizingly slow breakfast in the hotel restaurant we were quiet, desperately trying to think of some trivia to pass the time. Oh for the Goethals and Outerbridge arguments! Oh for the talk about Baba, the spiritual swami! There was no one else in the place, and yet we had to wait ten minutes for someone so much as to take our order, and only when I stood up and said loudly, “We’re the only ones here. I understand sometimes it’s busy and you can’t get to your customers. But what’s your excuse this morning?”

  A waitress drifted over, obese and cranky, and silently wrote down how we liked our eggs.

  “Gina, aren’t you going to call Eddie?” Candy asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Now’s a good time. Before we get started again.”

  Gina, suddenly impatient to save time, said she’d call Eddie at the next stop, and reiterated that she thought we’d be okay on the open road, okay on the interstate. Candy wouldn’t even respond, drinking her coffee. I was torn.

  “What do you think, Sloane?” said Gina. “You look so pale and exhausted. Look at your eyes, they’re almost crystal clear, they’re sapped of all color. Come on, a few hours on I-80, zip-zip, and we’re in Salt Lake City.”

  Candy stared at me, her own leached-out eyes caked with yesterday’s makeup, and the day’s before. With all of Gina’s eyebrows and eyelashes gone, I noticed a few bare spots at the crown of her head. If this trip went on any longer, she wouldn’t have any hair left.

  “I thought we were going to bleach you?” I said to Candy.

  “Yeah. But.” She sighed. “We checked out of the room already. And I want to get out of this town. It’s not for me. Plus the few motels are all on this road. What if Erv is going from motel to motel, looking for our car?”

  “Okay, back to reality,” Gina said impatiently. “What do you say, Sloane?” she implored. “The interstate?”

  I looked from one wan face to the other. Imagine anybody in this world looking to me for answers to anything. Me! I nodded somberly. “I don’t think we’re safe on the interstate. I’d rather take my chances on the smaller roads.”

  “Oh, God! You want to go through the mountains? Did you not hear the story of the mountain cannibals yesterday?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I, for one, don’t believe Wyoming has mountains, so there. We’ll go north and be in Idaho tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  “Fewer trucks in the mountains,” said Candy.

  “There are no mountains!”

  “You two are ridiculous,” said Gina. “Ri-di-cu-lous. Half a day from here to Salt Lake, or three days in the Snake River Canyon. Is that what you want?”

  “I’d like to not run into Erv,” said Candy. “If it’s all the same to you.”

  Outside the remarkable morning, the parking lot didn’t look as scary in the crisp, dazzling sunlight. There were no strange people sitting on benches, there was no noise. There was just one tall, heavily built biker guy smoking near his beat-up pickup. We scurried like three blind mice. He walked over to my car as I was fumbling for my keys in my too-tight shorts pocket. Served me right. “How you doin’, ladies? Love the car. Yours?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Yes, mine.” Still so proud!

  “How much d’you pay for that?”

  “Don’t know,” I replied. “It was a gift.” Candy pushed me, wiggled her fingers into my shorts pocket herself, got out the keys.

  “I had one once,” the man continued, in a nostalgic drawl. “A 1966 light-blue ’Stang. Like yours, oh, it was a beaut. Paid fifteen for it. Would’ve paid twice that.”

  Candy unlocked the doors. Gina opened her side, pulling forward the seat. “Get in,” Gina said to Candy. She didn’t. She came to stand next to me on the driver’s side. Gina started to say, “Cand—” but Candy interrupted her with a sharp loud grunt, like an ace serve in tennis, all without taking her eyes off the man. “Let’s go,” she said to me, almost in a hiss. “We’re going to be late.”

  “You girls headed somewhere nice?” the man said amiably. “Skiing maybe?”

  “Get inside,” Candy repeated to me out of the corner of her mouth.

  I didn’t get inside. I was looking up at the man in blank confusion. Did he say $15,000? For a 1966 Mustang? “What happened to your car?”

  Candy pulled on me, opening the driver door.

  “Oh, you know,” he said, taking a step to us and scanning the parking lot. “Sold it to pay the rent.” He smiled. “Now I drive this.” He pointed to his roomy GMC truck. “Not as good, but I can afford my pad. But your Shelby is even rarer. It’s a collector’s item. Might be worth twenty, twenty-five. And what a great yellow. I didn’t think they made Shelbys in that color.”

  “Clearly they did.”

  Without referring to me by name, Candy bodily moved me toward the open door. The man took another step toward us and shook his head. “Seven colors for the ’66 Shelby, none of them that one.” He whistled. “I know that model like the back of my hand.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said to the man, who looked down the road at two white pickup trucks driving fast behind the Holiday Inn, about to pull into the lot. Without saying another word, he reached out and grabbed Candy by her forearm. I yelped, but she yanked herself violently away and kneed him very hard in the groin, instantly shoving me down into my seat, and while he was still doubled over in pain, kneed him again in the face, jumped over, ran over the hood of my car to Gina’s side, threw herself in, clambered in the back, yelling, “Drive, Shelby! Drive
!” the passenger door still open.

  Gina must have slammed it shut, I don’t know, but I didn’t have to be asked twice to drive. I couldn’t hear what the man was yelling to his buddies who had pulled up to him and were trying to block us, but he was shouting, incoherently, and gesturing to them like he was having a seizure. Going over a low curb, I screeched out of that parking lot. The white trucks weren’t fast enough to flank me, though they tried. Right behind, they raced me to Federal Boulevard. My light was red, but Candy yelled, “Go, Shelby, go!” and I went through, which is harder than you’d expect, so hardwired is that stop on red. They followed us across the main road, one after the other. I made a sharp left, a sharp right into a residential development, right, left, right, left, right, left, I didn’t know where we were anymore, but there was no stop sign I respected.

  “Are they still behind us?” I panted.

  “No,” said Candy. “But they will be. Keep going.”

  “They won’t catch us.”

  “They’ll follow us. Keep going, Shelby.”

  “What in fuck’s name just happened back there?” exclaimed Gina in a disbelieving voice.

  “What happened,” said Candy, “was our Shelby forgot who she was dealing with. Drive, Shelby!”

  Gina started to wail. Her hands went up to her hair, twirling it around her fingers. I know Eddie liked her long hair, she’d told me enough times, but did he like her bald? Candy was panting in the back. I was crying behind the wheel. My heart was thundering. “Are they behind us?” I asked. I was afraid to look in my rearview mirror.

  “Yes,” said Candy. “Go straight and make a right on the highway. Then drive, Shelby. Drive as fast as this car can go.”

  But they were no slouches in their Ford F-150 trucks. Those trucks must have had some power to them, too, because I came out onto the highway, revved up my engine from three to six in two seconds, and was hurtling at a hundred miles an hour, but when I peeked in the rearview, they were not receding as fast as I would’ve liked.