Road to Paradise Read online

  “Faster, Shelby,” ordered Candy.

  The road was not deserted. There were other cars, pulling into strip malls and gas stations, stopping at lights. I had to dodge and zigzag, I had to slam on my brakes once and swerve, Gina screamed, but I kept going, through three or four red lights. Finally we hit a flat stretch without traffic lights, red, green, or yellow, and I revved it up to 110, then 120, like all was one great big green light ahead of me. We were going too fast to see the road signs, Candy grim and silent, Gina praying. “Oh God! Oh God. Please! Oh God, we’re gonna die! We’re gonna crash! Slow down, Shelby, please, slow down. Oh God!”

  “Don’t you dare, Shelby,” commanded Candy. “Go faster, if you can. Fly, girl, fly!”

  So that’s what I did. I flew. The Shelby Mustang the burly man was so envious of did what it was supposed to: rocket down the empty highway at 136.7 miles an hour without so much as a wheel tremble. Soon the F-150s were left in our dust, far away in our rear window, white dots now, small, smaller, then gone.

  “Are we going in the right direction?” I breathed.

  “Who the fuck cares?” exclaimed Gina. “Any direction away from them is the right direction.”

  I felt Candy staring hard at me from the backseat. “What?”

  “What?” she said. “I don’t understand you. What the hell were you doing back there, talking to him? Why in the world would you talk to a stranger in a parking lot, knowing what we’re up against?”

  “It wasn’t Erv,” I defended myself lamely.

  “It’s Erv’s proxy! He just says, hold them for me, just keep them in place, and five thousand dollars is yours. Who knows, it may be up to ten now. Twenty! I told you. He can throw as much money at the CB handles as he needs to. This isn’t Surio, bought for thirteen cents. The fact that there were three of them coming so willingly, risking themselves on the highway, says to me the ante’s been raised quite a bit, raised to make it worthwhile for three men in fairly new Ford pickups to put themselves in such jeopardy. Why did you do that, Shelby? Why did you continue to talk to him?”

  I didn’t want to tell her why, feeling terror and guilt for getting us into such peril. I continued to talk to that man, because he said something I could not let go of, could not believe, and still did not believe. His regular, run of the mill ’66 Mustang went for 15,000 dollars? Fifteen thousand dollars for a ’Stang that wasn’t a Shelby? If I sold mine, how much could I get? Was he right, ten, twenty? And if I sold it, could I give that money to Candy so she could take her daughter and fly away? That’s why I talked to him.

  Sell my Mustang. It was like saying, change your name. How could I explain it to Emma? Was this my moral choice—to sell my only beloved possession given to me by my Emma (oh, see me calling her my Emma!) to give the money to a child bride who had a baby and needed to hide?

  Hide from men who wanted her dead. To save her, could I sell the car?

  I tried to imagine it. I couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I said.

  Neither Gina, who was busy ripping out hair from her head, nor Candy, who sat with her hands on her lap and eyes closed, said anything. I slowed down a little, to ninety. I asked Gina to look at the map.

  Angrily she did so. “Yes,” she said. “We’re going north to the Tetons. Is that what you want?”

  That wasn’t what I wanted.

  The Wind River Range passed me on my left, laid out in the valley at the foot of the mountains, the top hits of 1981, “Hungry Heart,” “Hearts,” and “Stop Draggin’ my Heart Around” passed me, too. Gas stations, Wind rivers, ragged rock peaks of mountains passed me by as I gripped the wheel and gradually returned to being myself. And what if I gave her the car and still didn’t save her? Would it be worth it then? If I had a crystal ball and could see how this all turned out, would I give it to her?

  “The trucks saw us going north on this road,” said Candy grimly.

  “So what? We smoked ’em,” I said.

  “What about the trucks up ahead at the next stop, at the next town, waiting for us?”

  Almost in a whisper, I said, “You said there aren’t any trucks in the mountains.”

  “What a fucking disaster,” said Gina.

  So Wyoming did turn out to have mountains, after all. But my mind and heart were so full of other things, I barely noticed.

  Gina spoke at last. “The Wind River Range was formed when a compression in the earth thrust a block of granite hundreds of miles long upward,” she said, slowly twirling and pulling out strands of her long hair. “Nice, right?” She, too, slowly returned to the little she had in her arsenal to block out what she couldn’t think about.

  Candy wasn’t speaking. Mutely she sat in the back, staring at the mountains, her face like a mask of a child, her vulnerable mouth slightly open, her deer-like eyes agape. Her lips were moving; in prayers?

  “A penny for your thoughts, Cand,” I said.

  “A penny for yours.”

  I couldn’t tell her. And she said to me, “I just want to get my baby, Shel. That’s all, I just want to get her, and then find a little place for us where everything will be all right.”

  “I know, Cand,” I said. I tightened my hands around the wood of the wheel.

  “Candy,” said Gina, in her practical voice, “I don’t understand. Erv’s chasing you because he wants to get this stupid film, which you don’t have. Why can’t you just tell him you don’t have it? Ask the driver of the next truck we see to use his radio, call Erv’s handle, say, Papa Bear, this is Goldie Locks, leave me the fuck alone, I don’t got what you want.”

  “Okay,” said Candy, “and Papa Bear says, Goldie Locks, if you don’t have it, who does? What do I tell him then? Should I point him to New Melleray? Is Erv the kind of man who will back away when he hears the word Abbey?”

  “No,” said Gina. “just tell him you destroyed it.”

  After a pause, Candy said, “Why don’t I just tell him a little fairy came and whisked it away, never to be seen by anyone in the land of sprinkle dust?”

  “Fine,” said Gina. “I’m just making suggestions here, and you’re shouting me down. That’s what I get for trying to help.”

  “I’m not shouting,” Candy said in a whisper.

  We had driven through more than half the country now. Soon, I knew, it would be over. But I was thinking how not ready I was to face the last act of our journey. I couldn’t fathom it. I didn’t know how to get Gina to Bakersfield or Candy to Paradise. I didn’t know how to get Gina to Eddie, Candy to Tara, me to Lorna Moor. I didn’t know how to begin to look for my mother in Mendocino. As I realized this, my foot lifted off the gas pedal. I was flying through mountain passes, and the summer was here. The sun was shining, the valley was green with verdant bloom, and the river rushed by. Marty Balin was crying on the radio. I really can’t believe I’m here . . . We were heading deeply north even though Salt Lake was south and west. We headed north even though Reno was south and west, though California and our mothers-daughters-lovers were south and west.

  Lost in ourselves this way, we passed a small green metal sign. It was embedded at the foot of a mountain, tilted to one side, partly covered with leaves and twigs. The sign read: “CONTINENTAL DIVIDE ELEV 9658.” I pulled over onto the narrow shoulder and stopped the car.

  “What are you doing?” said Candy.

  “So this is the continental divide?” I said, lumbering out. “This sign?” We looked around. Green fields full of yellow dandelions ran up to the feet of the mountains, the snow-capped ranges sloped high and wide.

  And here, by the side of the road was my Great Divide.

  The girls looked at me in frustrated puzzlement. “Um, when do you think we can get going again?” Gina asked.

  “No, no, you take your time,” said Candy. “It’s not like we have anywhere to be. Or like anyone’s following us.”

  We were completely alone on the road. “But Candy, this is it,” I said. “This is the Great Divide.”


  “Okay, Shelby, I can see I’m going to have to explain a few things to you,” Gina said. “The Great Divide is not just one place.”

  “Oh yeah? Then how come this is the only sign we’ve seen?”

  “Ahem, sign doesn’t actually say Great. It says Continental.”

  “Same difference, smart aleck.”

  “Have we been looking for the divide?” asked Candy, prodding me to the car, pushing between my shoulder blades.

  “I have.” I wouldn’t budge. “What I want to know is,” I said, extricating myself from her, “is the change in me that apparent? Is it unmistakable, like that sign?”

  “What change? What are you talking about?”

  “See, I always thought the Great Divide would separate the country into a before and after.”

  “Yes, Sloane,” said Gina, “all your waters now run to the west.”

  They were making fun of me. But I really had expected the Great Divide to be a monumental thing, like a chasm in the earth that ran for miles that we had to zigzag around, something visible, something tangible. It wasn’t called the itty-bitty partition. It was called The. Great. Divide. I got sulky. “Well, what about this sign makes the rivers flow west or east?” I said with indignation. “I just don’t see how a little sign can do that.”

  “Kind of like the cross?” said Candy.

  Gina and I both looked at her glumly. “No, nothing like the cross,” said Gina. “The divide is an actual thing, not a symbolic thing.”

  Candy stared. “The sign that says CONTINENTAL DIVIDE is an actual thing?”

  “Nooo,” Gina drew out. “The ridge that runs underneath the sign that breaks the continent into an east and a west is an actual thing.”

  Candy nodded. “Like I was saying.” She crossed herself.

  Gina harrumphed back into the car. I stood forlorn by the pine. Candy draped her arm around me. “Honestly, Shel, do think of it in terms of the cross. This isn’t the thing, but it doesn’t make the thing you’ve been searching for any less tangible. Any less real.”

  But I didn’t understand.

  “Someday you might,” said Candy. “You want me to tell you the miracle of the fourteenth station?”

  “No,” I said. “I want to understand now. And I don’t.” Unhappily I got back in the car. “All that time waiting for it,” I said, so disappointed, “and that’s all there is?”

  “In the wintertime,” said Gina, “the sign must be covered by snow.” That’s all she said, like it had some mythic meaning.

  “Like that plane in the Andes,” Candy offered as an example.

  “Nothing like that plane!” Gina exclaimed. “In the winter the rivers can’t see the sign, yet they know which way to flow. How do you think they know that, Shelby?”

  “Oh, clever.” I fell into silence. “Is there just one place for it?”

  “Mostly Wyoming.”

  “What about Nevada? Montana? Utah?”

  “Utah and Nevada are west. They’re part of the Great Basin. Montana yes. The divide runs through there, too.”

  “Is it the whole of Wyoming?”

  “No, Sloane.” Gina was using her teacher to child voice.

  “Is it a straight line, then?”

  “Not at all. It’s a meandering, freedom fault that trails for hundreds of miles. Like a river. Or a mountain range.”

  Back into silence I fell as I got on the road. I couldn’t gawk at the mountains; I was driving and the road swirled downward along the decline of the hill. We would crash if I didn’t pay attention.

  “Your Great Divide,” said Gina, “is part of the sagebrush sea, that vast expanse of sage-dominated canyon and range country that we drove through on the way to Riverton.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “When it was raining and invisible?”

  “But the rivers now all flow west!” Gina exclaimed. “That’s not invisible. That’s the most tangible thing there is. What did you think the divide was?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I thought it was going to be a canyon in the earth.”

  “So let’s drive to Yellowstone,” said Gina. “We surely want to get as lost as possible and it’s only a few hundred miles from here. I’ll show you what I mean. There’s a place called Two Oceans Pass, where you can clearly see the thing you’re looking for. One stream splits into two brooks. One brook becomes the Snake River 1,300 miles to the Pacific. The other, 3,500 miles away, is the Mississippi.”

  “How in the world do you know this?” Candy asked in amazement.

  “I’m going to be a teacher,” replied Gina authoritatively.

  “Well, Professor Reed, we’re not going to Yellowstone,” said Candy. “That’s where hell bubbles up from the earth every 90 to 120 minutes. Sloane is just going to have to take your word for it.”

  Like I would.

  Gina was right. The mountains did become spectacular, in deeper contrast to the sky and the flat fields; they turned into snow-capped towers, their outlines etched, their colors vivid. The river was greener, the sky bluer. There was a range up ahead particularly striking, and at the first scenic opportunity, we stopped. A river below us ran into the mountains in the far distance. Gina and I studied the map. She couldn’t wait to get to a little skiing town called Jackson, right at the foot of the Grand Tetons. “Jackson has the world’s largest ball of barbed wire,” she said.

  “Let’s not miss that,” said Candy. “What are we waiting for?”

  No sooner had we pulled out of the rest area than we were stopped by a state trooper. I had just passed someone in my little bird, and his lights flashed on. I sat quietly, got out my license.

  “Hello, girls,” he said, leaning in, his eyes scanning the three of us. He was full faced, freshly and closely shaven.

  I explained I was passing a slow-moving vehicle.

  “Oh, I don’t have a problem with that,” he said. “What I have a problem with is you continuing to maintain the speed of seventy even after you passed him. The speed limit here is fifty-five, or were you going too fast to notice?”

  My face must have registered rank shock because he said, “Do you know why it’s fifty-five? Because of the wildlife. The bison keep crossing the road.”

  “Oh,” I said regretfully. “It’s to protect the wildlife.”

  “No,” he replied. “It’s to protect you. Do you know what happens to you when the bison hits your car at seventy miles an hour? You don’t want to know. I’ve seen it many times, and believe me, it’s not pretty.”

  “Although, technically,” whispered Candy, after he took my license and went back to his squad car to call it in, “the bison is not actually hitting you.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell that to the police officer,” snapped Gina. “When he returns.”

  Candy just smiled from the backseat when he returned. And he smiled back. He didn’t give me a ticket, just told me to be careful. “Okay, officer,” I said. “Thank you, officer, have a good day, officer,” and cut away from the curb at what I hoped was less than seventy an hour. Afterward I wasn’t even noticing the countryside, I was so happy not to get a ticket.

  My joy was short-lived. We were on a two-lane highway, a road so flat and straight in the valley between the far-away mountains, it went eleven miles to the horizon and still made no turns. His lights came on behind me again. With angst I pulled over.

  “Officer?” My smile was so fake. “I wasn’t speeding, was I?” I said through my teeth, staring at him pastily through my window.

  He looked inside, eyed me, eyed Gina, stopped on Candy, stared at her a nice long time. Then he said, “Through the entire state of Wyoming we keep hearing CB alerts of a wild search for a yellow Mustang with three young women inside it. This wouldn’t happen to be that yellow Mustang?”

  My heart was on the floor. “No, officer.”

  “And you wouldn’t happen to be the three young women, would you?”

  “No, officer.”

  “CB keeps saying, one of them is a ru
naway minor.”

  “We’re all over eighteen,” I said. “Would you like to see our IDs?”

  “I don’t want to see your IDs,” he said. He was a smart guy. “Where are you girls from?”

  “New York,” I said. “Larchmont.”

  “All of you?”

  “Yes.” Now I was outright lying, but he had said he didn’t want to see our IDs. “We’re high-school friends. Just traveling to California.”

  “Where to?”

  “Mendocino.”

  “All of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your business there?”

  I spoke slow and measured. “My mother lives there. Thought I’d visit her. Didn’t want to go alone. They’re along for the ride. They’re my friends.” My plates did say New York. The car was a Mustang. And yellow. There were three of us, and we were young, and I’m sure if anyone cared to give a description of us, he’d describe us pretty well. All he had to do is mention one girl’s pink-streaked hair.

  “Just so I understand,” the trooper said. “Someone’s looking for a yellow Mustang with New York plates and three women in it, and you’re saying it’s not you?”

  “That’s right.”

  He eyeballed me with a skeptical twist.

  “Not us,” I repeated. “It’s a big country. Mine is not the only yellow Mustang on the road, is it?”

  “No, no.” He was pensive. “Well, yes, actually. But. What’s odd to me is if there really is a runaway, a missing persons type of situation with a minor, the police are always involved. Why wouldn’t they be? We get bulletins on runaways all the time from other states. Why would only the truckers be involved instead? Why wouldn’t the girl’s parents get in touch with the police?”

  “Good questions. All very good,” I said, solemnly nodding my head. “Definitely bears further investigating.” Candy kicked my seat from the back. I cleared my throat, ladylike. “Officer, if there’s nothing else, we’ve got to be in Utah by nightfall. My uncle is meeting us in Salt Lake, and we’ve got a long way to go.”