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Eleven months earlier…
A dinged-up, dust-covered ten-year-old Subaru Outback bumped along a fire road that ran downhill from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, through an old patch of controlled burn that had renewed itself with shoulder-high aspen saplings, and then back into dense stands of dark green piñon.
Lionel Scott was lost in northern New Mexico, as he had intended, but after four nights of meditation and his personal version of prayer, he could use a shower and a salad.
Now, he focused on missing the larger stones. He didn’t always succeed, both hands tight on the steering wheel, glasses bouncing on his sunburned nose; every once in a while, he had to stop, get out, and move a fallen log or clump of brush. The battered wagon was reasonably tough, took the knocks with good grace, and they eventually debouched onto a gravel road.
Scott was of middle height, short of six feet, and thin, almost gaunt, with lines of muscle cut in his arms and neck. His salt-and pepper hair fell to the middle of his ears, and one lock constantly fell over his left eye. His nose was long and straight, his eyes blue-gray, his skin fair, but roughened with outdoor wear.
So: left or right? Scott looked both ways, and then at the gas gauge. He had a quarter tank, and decided to take the downhill route away from the mountains, where he would be more likely to find a gas station. The gravel was noisier than the dirt road, but smoother, aside from the occasional washed-out dip. Taos, he thought, was probably off to the north, but he wasn’t entirely sure of that—he had no GPS, nor a signal on his cell phone.
The landscape was dry, and warm, but not hot. Maybe upper seventies Fahrenheit, he thought, getting warmer as he dropped down the hills; bright sun, puffy white fair-weather clouds. A flock of crows was working the mountainside. Scott could never quite make out what they were doing, but they were working hard at it, whatever it was, ink spots against the blue sky. He drove with the windows down, breathing in the scents of piñon, juniper, aspen, the silver-green chamisa, and his own dried sweat.
Scott didn’t know precisely where he was, but did know he was headed west, unless the sun had changed its position in the solar system. He was more or less driving into it, given the wiggles in the road, and at this time of year, it should be setting generally to the northwest. As it would be in two hours.
He thought,A motel would be welcome…a martini with three olives?
The gravel track took him up a hillside, then down again, then up even higher, with a dirt cutbank to his left and a drop-off to his right, then back down a long, steep pitch. He rounded a turn and found, tohis surprise, an intersection with a real gravel road and two more fire roads.
The side of the gravel road was edged with a ramshackle brown trailer, now up on blocks, that long ago had been converted into a convenience store. No sign of a gas pump; a pickup was parked in front, another around at the back. A neon-red Budweiser beer sign glowed from one window.
Scott could use something cold: a beer, a Coke, even water. He pulled in next to the pickup, a Tacoma older than his Subaru, climbed out, stretched, and walked over to the front door. A sign above the door had two words in large hand-painted letters: “More, Store.”
Above the large letters was a hand-painted script in much smaller letters which said, “Everything Costs…” and beneath the “More, Store,” an additional script in small letters which said, “Because I have to Drive to Sam’s Club to Get It.”
Almost made him smile.
A lot of things in the American West almost made him smile, especially the essential emptiness. If the entire world were as empty as America between the Mississippi and the Coastal Ranges, there’d be no global warming, no melting glaciers. Earlier in the spring, he’d made a pilgrimage to the Lightning Field art installation in southwest New Mexico. The field consisted of hundreds of steel poles sticking up from a level plain, apparently designed to attract lightning strikes from passing thunderstorms. He found that only vaguely interesting, but he was gob-smacked by the night.
There was no light but that from the stars. No moon, no artificial light sources within dozens of miles, and dry, crystal-clear skies. He spent hours staring at the Milky Way as it turned overhead, the stars dozens and hundreds and thousands of light-years distant, but rightthere in his face…think of all the life out there, thriving, finding a place under different suns. And think about Gaia’s death spiral, the end of life on Earth.
—
The convenience store:
As he stepped toward it, a bulky Hispanic man in a battered straw cowboy hat walked out, carrying an open bottle of Corona, nodded, and said, “Hey,” and Scott said, “How are you?”
The man slowed and smiled and said, “You English?”
Scott: “Yes, I am.”
“Don’t hear that accent around here, much,” the man said, “You’re a long way from home, buddy.”
“America’s my home now,” Scott said.
“Hope you like it. It’s a nice place, mostly,” the man said, and he went on to his truck. Scott pulled the screen door open and stepped inside. A radio was playing an old Lynyrd Skynyrd tune, “Sweet Home Alabama,” and dust motes floated in sunlight coming through a west-facing window.
The old trailer had been hollowed out into three separate sections: to his right, a counter, a tired-looking Indian woman behind it, and a rack of cigarettes. To his left, the main body of the store, perhaps fifteen feet long, featuring racks of snack food, warm beer, and soft drinks. A formerly white, now yellowed, refrigerator stood in one corner and had the words “Cold Drinks” written on the front with a Sharpie. Further back, a closed door had “Private—No Restrooms” written on it. The place smelled of beef jerky, overripe bananas, and nicotine.
The woman behind the counter took a cigarette from the corner of her mouth and asked, “How y’doin’?”
“I’m doing well enough,” Scott said, though he also might have chosen among a variety of approved Americanisms he’d picked up in the past year: “Okay,” or “Doin’ good,” or “Just fine.” But none of those were how he felt. He was doing well enough, but no better. “Would you have cold beer? Or a soft drink?”
“In the fridge,” the woman said, poking her cigarette toward the refrigerator. As Scott walked back to it, she asked, “You English?”
“Yes.” He walked back, opened the refrigerator door, found a mixture of Miller Lite, Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, and a few tall bottles of Mexican Coke. As an Englishman, Scott thought Miller Lite tasted like beer that had been recycled through somebody’s kidneys. He took a bottle of Mexican Coke, for the sugar load, closed the refrigerator door, and returned to the counter.
“What’re you doing way the hell back here?” the woman asked around her cigarette. And, “Four dollars.”
