Page 39 of What is Lost

As John recalled, he and his older brother, who was almost fifteen, said something likeOkay, coolbut, being essentially teenagers, thought,Sure, Dad, whatever.

The Goingto the Sun Road has two lanes. The road is very steep and also very narrow, snaking and coiling along the flanks of enormous mountains. This becomes even more of a problem when that car is towing a camper, even a small pop-up. On the side opposite these flanks, there is frequently nothing but air and pretty views of high mountains and deep, forested valleys.

There are also no guardrails. All that stands between a car and thin air is a line of large, but very low rectangular stone blocks.

A ranger they met at St. Mary Visitors Center explained why the road could be rough and the reason for those stone blocks. Regular guardrails wouldn’t work.

“Hit one at speed, and the metal just crumples.” The ranger had a laconic, back-country, almost Southern drawl, the kind that cloaked sarcasm with a cloying, saccharine turn of phrase. Any second, John expected the guy to say,Well, bless your heart.Which, John knew, often meant,Really, just go to hell already.

“Or you flip. Same difference.” In fact, the ranger confided that you could always tell when there was a newbie on the road. “Cuz of the smell of burning rubber, on account of them stomping the brakes instead of shifting to a lower gear to control their speed.” The ranger shook his head. “Worse, if they’re towing a camper. On account of sometimes the camper outruns the car and then you jackknife. Which is hard cuz the road’s too narrow to turn around.”

This all sounded to John like an excellent reason to avoid this road.

“And slides,” the ranger went on. “You gotta watch out for those. Real common during spring thaw on account of the ice. Snow gets in those cracks and crevices and then it kinda compacts and turns into ice and ice, you know, that expands and rock splinters. Only then it melts in the thaw and then…” The ranger shrugged. “Nothing holding that rock to the mountain, you catch my drift.”

On the other hand, this same guy claimed the Park Service did regular patrols and closed the road if the event of a slide. “So, you folks don’t have anything to worry none about that.” Yawning, the ranger dug at the scruff under his chin. “Don’t let your camper run away from you, is all,” he said, inspecting his nails then flicking something awaywith a thumb. “And stay away from them grizzlies.”

They hadthe road to themselves. Their tires hummed on asphalt. Though this was mid-May, the air was chilly enough for his father to have cranked up the car’s heater. Something country burbled, rhythmic and mournful, from the radio. The sun was bright enough for the snow dazzle to cut tears. Meltwater coursed down the mountainside to their left and streamed from platters of stone topped by evergreens. The view on his right—deep forested valleys edged by craggy, snow-covered mountains—was both beautiful and terrifying. His motheroohedandaahedand took pictures. John’s brother, who sat behind their father, had his eyes closed and a pair of headphones for a portable CD player snugged over his ears. Over the hum of the car’s tires on asphalt, John still caught the faint, tinny clash of something raw and angry. Nine Inch Nails, probably. The kind of music that made John’s ears feel as if they were bleeding. Every time his brother spun up something like this on his player at home, their dad hollered up the stairs for him to turn that crap down before it drove him crazy, fer chrissakes.

John sat behind his mother. He had beenreadingCatcher in the Ryefor school but had lost interest in Holden Caufield’s problems. Because, seriously, he had plenty of his own at the moment.

Like the way his dad was driving. John was going nuts watching his dad’s head swivel right and front, right and front, right and front as he steered and peered, steered and peered. The worst was when he steered, peered then took his right hand from the wheel and exclaimed,Look at that!OrWow, isn’t that something?The car always jerked a little to the right—to the valley side—when he did.

“Dad,” he said, “we could pull over at a turnout, you know?”

“Too short with the camper.” His black eyes glared at John from the rear view. “I know what I’m doing.”

Maybe. But maybe not. Even his mom stoppedoohingfor a second and said, “There’s no one coming. If you want, we can stop and switch places so you can look and then it won’t be as dangerous?—”

“The only danger is you arguing and your son yakking. Igotthis!” his dad snapped.

“It’s okay, Mom,” John lied. The last thing he wanted was for his dad to lose his temper ten trillion feet above sea level.

His mom shut up. John shut up. His dad went back to his swiveling. John’s brother only switched out Nine Inch Nails for Mayhem.

Man, they were going to die. John chewed the inside of a cheek. His dad, a film-and-TV nut who had just about every DVD and VHS known to man, had decided John was finally old enough to seeThelma and Louiseabout a month or so before their trip. John liked the movie, although it was hard tolikesomething where women like his Aunt Jess and his mom got beat up by their husbands or bad boyfriends or whatever. Like, the way his dad sometimes yelled so hard, his eyes went all buggy and the cords stood out on his neck…did that count? What if Mom got fed up and ran away? So far as he knew, his dad never smacked her. Those, he reserved for him and his brother. (Open palm, mostly. Stung like all get-out. Worse was having to try and explain at school or to his baseball coach how he had run into a wall in the middle of the night. Sometimes his mom even grabbed a slipper and came after him or his brother, but they just laughed and danced away. Even those times she caught them, she hit like a girl. No big deal.)

But, boy, his dad could really let go with both barrels. John’s Uncle Dare said it was on account of Vietnam, but that was, like, ancient history. And, anyway, Uncle Dare had been in Vietnam, too, and he didn’t yell. Dare also didn’t live near other people, though, and only folks from the cities...Houston or Austin...ventured out to the lakewhere Dare lived in a cabin he built. So, there was that.

Anyway, what really stuck with John: when ol’ Louise stomps on the gas and that ’66 Thunderbird hurtles off that cliff. He remembered being relieved the film stopped then; he could almost believe that Thelma and Louise kept on flying, like angels. (Of course, he knew that couldn’t be true. He might be a kid, but he wasn’tstupid.Like, that hubcap coming off and beginning to fall? That kind of destroyed the illusion right then and there. He had cried, too, but later and under the covers so no one could see.)

On this road, withthesebends…he couldn’t stop thinking of that last scene. He was convincedthatwas going to bethem, but with no freeze-frame to catch them in mid?—…

“Whoa!” Their dad stomped on the brakes so hard and fast John’s head jolted forward and then back with enough force that it was some kind of miracle his skull hadn’t popped right off his spine. There was a high scream as their tires burned rubber. If they hadn’t been wearing seat belts, John would’ve smashed into the back of the front seat. The car rocked on its chassis; the engine sputter and died. Their luggage pounded against John’s back as suitcases slid suddenly forward in the trunk and piled on top of one another, and then there was a flash of silver out of the corner of John’s right eyeas their camper, still rolling, tried racing past their car and then his father was cursing and wrenching the wheel as their car, tires still screeching, twisted and torqued almost ninety degrees—and stopped.

For a second, no one said anything. The only sound was the tinny leakage from his brother’s headphones.

Then John said, “Dad?” at the same moment their mother put a hand to her mouth and said, “Oh my God.”

Rocks,big and small, were strewn over the road. The asphalt had buckled in the center to form a huge crater in which a boulder as big as their camper was buried halfway. To John’s twelve-year-old eyes, the mountainside looked as if a giant had hacked off a thick slice with an enormous cleaver.

He remembered the crispsnapof his father turning off the radio. He remembered his brother stopping his cassette. The car was quiet. His mother’s face was the color of bone. Even his dad had paled.

“Up there.” His brother aimed a forefinger to a point high up the mountain, which was on his side of the car. There was a gigantic raw, black gash in the rock face where ice and expansion and then water had forced enormous stony chunks awayfrom the mountain. “You can see where the rocks came off. Pretty recent, too. Rocks on the road are still wet.”

“Oh.” His mother put a hand to her mouth. “If we’d been going faster…”

“But we weren’t, and we’re fine.” Popping his car door, his father said, “Let’s get busy.”

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