51
The Bronco held a good pace on the interstate, a legal but bold pace for the conditions, which had gone from sleet to a heavy snowfall in a matter of miles as they drove upward and westward, leaving the new foothill greens behind and traveling back into the high old winter of the mountains. The El Camino was not a mountain car nor a snow car but in the winter Billy kept two hundred pounds of sand in tubular bags heaped over the rear wheels, and on this day in early April the snow was not too deep, and he had the tracks of the cars before him, the tracks of the Bronco, to keep his treads close to the pavement, and he climbed the mountain interstate with ease.
The light was flat and gray and there were two good hours of it left and he drove without headlights, keeping well back from the Bronco. He’d passed the exit for home eight miles back and now he was approaching the exit for the pass that would take him up to the divide and down again into the resort town where the Courtland girl had gone missing, in the county where his brother was sheriff, and he slowed, anticipating the exit—but the Bronco’s taillights went on, and the tracks went on, and he shook his head and smiled. Old Steve was a smart one: You did not go hunting in your own backyard. Or shop or drink. You got your goods from some other man’s backyard far away, and up here you did not have to go very far to be far away.
“But how far, Steve?” He checked his fuel gauge and saw that the tank was half full. And half empty.
“Where we going, Steve?”
Fourteen miles beyond the exit, just short of the great tunnel that delivered travelers all at once to the far side of the Rockies—to entirely new weather systems, to the long, slow descent to the western deserts and the coast and the ocean—the Bronco’s signal light began to blink, its brake lights flared and it took the exit for US Highway 6 and the Loveland Pass. It crossed under the interstate and picked up speed again on the winding two-laner and Billy let himself fall farther behind, as there would now be no place for the Bronco to go but up to the top of the pass and down again on the other side.
He took a switchback turn at its posted speed, the car slewing mildly, and when the road straightened again he checked his phone for a signal and found that he had one—a very scant one—and he entered a short text message and sent it.
The road wound high into the mountains, into heavier snowfall and finally into a gusting chaos of snow like the white rioting heart of the storm itself, before cresting and beginning its steep descent into the valley on the other side. Down and down and the snowfall growing lighter again at the lower altitude and the mountain switchbacks cutting once, twice, and
a third time across the Snake River before settling into an easier alliance with the river at the floor of the valley, both road and river turning according to the same geography, the same logic.
He kept the radio off, wanting to hear nothing but the engine and the regular sweep of the wipers. The liquor had left him all at once, leaving him edgy and wishing for a cup of coffee. He asked himself if he knew what he was doing, and answered that he knew exactly what he was doing, he was taking a drive, that was all.
There were no exits or even turnoffs for many miles. Then the posted speed limit fell, and another sign announced their arrival at a resort village, and the speed limit fell again and his heart lifted at other signs of organized humanity: the high shedroofs of the lodges, the Christmassy lights in the restaurants and shops, the cheering reds and greens of traffic lights. But there was little traffic so late in the season and when the Bronco caught the village’s outermost red light Billy knew he would have to pull up behind it or else draw more attention to himself. He was fifty, perhaps forty, feet away—the shape of the driver’s head visible through the rear window—when red turned to green, and signaling, the Bronco turned left.
“Go on through and double back,” he told himself; but he was afraid of losing him in the grid of streets, and at the last moment he signaled and turned through the yellow and followed.
The Bronco immediately turned left again, heading east along the rim of a large and nearly empty parking lot. Then it turned right onto a county road, which took them all at once out of the village and into the long mountainous valley to the east, and as there was no other traffic coming or going Billy let the gap between the cars grow once more. With his free hand he collected his phone and punched up and sent another text.
The road turned south and the speed limit fell and Billy rounded a bend to see that the Bronco had come to a stop at a T in the road. The intersection had come up suddenly and there was no hiding, and if the man checked his mirrors there’d be no missing the El Camino behind him. Likewise when the man went one way or the other there’d be no missing that the El Camino had done the same, and so he hoped the Bronco would turn right, where a sign indicated the town of Montezuma lay, instead of left, where there seemed little incentive or encouragement for any single vehicle to go, let alone two.
The Bronco sat idling at the T as if awaiting a break in traffic, but there was no traffic. The El Camino idling behind it. The snow drifting down.
“Go left, you son of a bitch, I dare you.”
The Bronco signaled left and turned, and Billy took his place at the T, signaled, and followed.
HE CAME TO ANOTHER intersection a few miles on but the Bronco had not taken it, and he followed the tracks deeper into the range. The Bronco ignored two more turns and the road began to climb in increasingly steep cutbacks, as if here were yet another pass that would take them inevitably to another summit and another vortex of snow. But the snowfall remained light and the El Camino continued to find traction. His luck was holding, and he climbed another few miles toward the white ghostly peaks before his luck ran out.
It ran out all at once, without warning, when the Bronco’s taillights disappeared, as though the car had gone off the road. Yet when he arrived at the place where the taillights had vanished he found no tracks careening from the road—found no road at all but only the sudden crunch and ping of loose gravel under him, and the road, such as it was, diving into the evergreens ahead.
He pumped the brakes and brought the El Camino to a halt and sat looking into the trees. The mountains that lay above and beyond the trees were obscured by the trees themselves and by the fog of snowfall. He rolled down his window and looked out into the white emptiness of the gorge, the air thin and cold and pungent with the smell of snow and pine. He picked up his phone and sent a final text, then sat looking at the road ahead. Or what had been the road and which, but for the tracks, might have been just a minor clearing at the end of the road where the makers of roads, going back to men in wagons, had abruptly and inexplicably stopped.
He tugged at the hairs below his lip. He thought of the set of tire chains back at the barn hung on their barn spike with the horse tack. He sat a few moments longer, sensing the rising dusk in the bowl of the gorge, in the shades of the pinewood. Then he said, “All right, son, let’s see it,” and he lifted his foot from the brake and drove on.