“Jesus, Bobby,” says Stan when he picks up. “We thought that guy might’ve murdered and ate you or something. You okay?”
“Man. That guy had a whole lot of what you’d call opinions regarding the rules of the road and his rights as a citizen of the United States in possession of an automobile that he drives on roads his taxes pay for. Good lord. Sorry about that—it was him who hung up on you, not me, by the way.”
“But did he have any information?” I ask. “Anything useful and not insane or irrational?”
“No.”
“So those ten minutes after that guy hung up on us . . .” says Stan.
“Lucky me, I got to spend those ten minutes listening to a series of lectures about the aforementioned subjects, given while his five-year-old daughter was knocking her head against the backseat window. I wish I knew Morse code, it could have been an SOS.”
“Damn,” says Stan. “Stay strong, little trouper.”
“Anyway, there was one helpful person. I think she just wanted us to shut the hell up and give her some peace, but she was helpful nonetheless. She said that the AM traffic band had been offline for nearly an hour. Apparently it started fritzing out when this big standstill started. Which doesn’t seem ominous at all, right?”
“Nope,” says Stan.
“Totally not at all ominous in any way,” I say.
“Great,” says Bobby. “Real glad we’re all in agreement here. Anyway, she also said she heard that the AM band would be back up anytime now, so we can stay tuned for that.”
“Can’t wait,” says Stan.
“I’m gonna get back to Greta,” says Bobby. “Keep in touch?”
“Roger that,” I say, and Bobby heads back to the french fry mobile.
SO WE SIT there for exactly thirty-six minutes. Maybe thirty-six minutes doesn’t sound like a crazy amount of time to be stuck in traffic in the grand context of terrible traffic jams all over the world, but when you’re stuck in traffic because just ahead of you is most likely a veritable sea of cops in their cop cars, and you’re in the car with your siblings with whom you’ve run away from home, and the government possibly suspects those siblings are weapons who mean to harm our lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, then trust me: thirty-six minutes is a very long time.
We’ve been tuned to the AM band with the traffic broadcast, which spits to life after thirty-six minutes. “The northbound lane is closed,” a canned voice keeps saying, over and over again. “Unforeseen maintenance,” says the radio.
“Unforeseen my ass,” says Stan.
I follow his eyes to the off-ramp off the shoulder. I can tell what he’s thinking: He could make it. We could all make it, pretty quickly. We could weave through two lanes of traffic and make it to the off-ramp, keep going, to wherever. This is assuming that the cops don’t see us fleeing and shoot us on sight. This is also assuming that there aren’t helicopters hovering above, filled with a different sort of cop who will see us and shoot at or follow us. That there aren’t any passes to head us off at. That this doesn’t end like Thelma and Louise did, with some happy, smiling montage of us flashing before our eyes, and whatever images Callie and Ted remember the most flashing before theirs.
Then, suddenly, something starts to move all around me, tearing apart my dark daydream.
It’s the traffic. The traffic has chosen this moment, when Stan and I are gazing at the shoulder like it’s an oasis and we’re dying of thirst, to start to move. Honestly, it’s more of a lurching, a crawl. But still. Progress! Stan rolls down the window and leans his head out to try to see better.
“Wait, Lorna,” Stan says. “Hold on.”
“Look,” he says.
“What the hell?” I say, because I look and can’t believe this.
The cops are guiding traffic through to the northbound lane, which I guess isn’t closed after all. They’re smiling and waving and moving cars along.
“So . . . there wasn’t any problem after all? They’re just letting us through?” I say.
Stan shrugs. “Maybe there was an accident and they cleared everything away?”
But then we get a bit farther along, and it turns out the cops aren’t letting all the cars through after all. An elderly couple in a Buick is directed toward the off-ramp. A middle-aged lady traveling solo in a small SUV follows after. But then a crappy sedan with two teenagers in the front seat are given the wave-through to keep going north.
They’re only letting Iceling cars through. Stan realizes what’s going on the same time I do, and then . . . this one car.
This one car—one that a cop had just signaled off the road—pulls into the Iceling lane. The cop reacts, and I crack the window a bit so I can hear. The cop tells the driver, a dad-to-grandpa-aged man, to please move his vehicle out of the northbound lane and to direct himself toward the off-ramp. His voice is loud and stern, but he’s not yelling. Not quite angry.
“I have a right to be here!” says the driver.
“Sir, please move your vehicle,” says the cop, stone-faced.