Call Me a Cab

40

Noon, and we were at a baking Texaco station somewhere in Utah, talking to Barry on the phone. The receiver was almost too hot to touch, and when I held it to my face sweat droplets formed all around my ear, under my hair.

This was the worst day of the trip. The dream had ended with a vengeance. I’d awakened at seven to the thumping of Mrs. Hilyerd’s bony fist on the door, and I’d known at once some point of no return had been reached last night. Critical mass, flashpoint, whatever the right image would be; Katharine and I could no longer glide effortlessly along together, that’s all. No more sidetrips, no more delays; I had to get her to Los Angeles as fast as humanly possible, and end this thing.

When I entered the enclosed porch for breakfast I saw at once from Katharine’s face that she’d reached the same understanding. The pressure at the table with us was so intense that afterward I couldn’t remember what I’d eaten; which is undoubtedly a shame, given Mrs. Hilyerd’s class as a cook. We ate, Katharine paid, we loaded the cab, the Hilyerds came out to wave us goodbye, and we drove silently to Route 70. Katharine rode up front with me, but I think that was only because the tension would have become even more blatant if she’d sat in the back.

Interstate 70 is discontinuous through western Colorado, so from time to time we were dumped onto US 6 for several miles, a slower and narrower road, where the slow-moving big rigs crawling through the endless curving hilly no-passing zones came very close to snapping my taut brain. On the existing stretches of 70 I floored the accelerator, and the poor cab quivered as I strained it at the very limit of its capacity. If my father had seen me, he’d have torn out his last six hairs.

Fortunately, 70 was complete for the bypass of Grand Junction, the only town of any size we came to during the morning. We were running along beside the Colorado River now, through rough tumbling magnificent scenic country, and neither of us cared about it at all.

Not far from Grand Junction we crossed into Utah, and the countryside became wilder and wilder, the towns fewer and smaller and more temporary looking. The landscape was like something from another planet, like movie recreations of Mars; barren chalky cliffs, great gray hills of what looked like ashes, pink and purple stony valleys. It was an unpleasant land, inhospitable, perfectly matching our mood, and we fled through it like Bonnie and Clyde.

Route 70 failed again in the middle of this wasteland, leaving us more of US 6 to contend with, and when signs began to appear warning of a hundred-mile stretch ahead without gas stations we stopped to fill up and Katharine said, “I have to call Barry.”

“Yes.”

She looked small and forlorn in the phone booth at the edge of the station’s blacktop. She was still on the call when I’d finished at the pump, so I drove the cab over and stopped by the booth. After a minute she stuck her head out and said, “Barry wants to talk to you.”

“All right,” I said.

There was a small fitful breeze and the air was dry, but it was very hot. My T-shirt stuck to me, front and back, and the phone booth was like a sauna. Katharine stood outside it, watching me worriedly, and I said, “Yes?”

“First of all, Thomas,” said the voice, “I want to apologize for the way I talked to you last time.”

“That’s okay,” I said. It was okay; we were far beyond that now.

“I can’t bring myself to get mad at Katharine,” he explained, “and I just took it out on you. I’m sorry.”

“Situation understood,” I assured him.

“Okay. Thank you. Katharine tells me you’re in Utah.”

“Right.”

“How far do you figure you’ll get today?”

“Nevada,” I said. “We’ll go down Interstate 15, and I’ll stop at the first Holiday Inn I see the other side of the Nevada line.”

Surprised, he said, “That’s a hell of a long distance, isn’t it?”

“About six hundred miles. We got an early start today, we’re making good time. And that’ll give us less than four hundred miles to Los Angeles tomorrow.”

“Then I apologize all over again,” he said. “Not only shouldn’t I have taken my frustration out on you, but you were right and I was wrong. You know your business, Thomas.”

“It’s Tom,” I said.

“Tom? I’m Barry, Tom, and I’m looking forward to shaking your hand.”

“Yeah,” I said, and then felt impelled to add, “Me, too.”

He wanted to talk to Katharine again. I waited in the car, feeling the sweat driblets running down my body beneath my shirt, and when Katharine finished and got back in I started up at once, wanting that breeze. She said, “You told Barry we’d get to Los Angeles tomorrow.”

“Right.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes, it is.”

I could sense her looking at my profile, but I kept my own eyes facing front. After a minute, very softly she said, “I’m sorry, Tom.”

“Hush,” I said.