“I thought we’d show that friendship
could be stronger than the crossroads devil”
–Dar Williams

The sun was resting above us in the harsh sky. Translucent waves of air rose from the baked road stretched out before us. I had all four windows and the sunroof open, music was blaring from the car speakers mixing with the oppressive and stale wind.

We were somewhere in the middle of the Crow Indian Reservation on the Montana-Wyoming border on our way to Washington. This was a brutal stretch of road, brown hills rolled around and into us and there wasn’t an exit for miles. I was hoping there was enough gas in the tank to take us to Billings, the closest thing resembling civilization within one hundred miles. These are the hills where Custer made his final stand, I was thinking to myself as sweat dripped out of me like a saturated sponge.

Jessica, my “road buddy,” was sitting in the passenger seat looking out onto the road that seemed to fold in onto itself before continuing out into infinity. There was a blank look in her dirt brown eyes and her dark hair was waving wildly in the wind and those eyes were squinted against the sun. She was sitting on the edge of her seat, her face close to the windshield. Her right hand rested on the dashboard and her left hand pressed a cell phone up to her ear.

Jessica was my best friend and in two weeks I would be leaving Kentucky to move back to Texas. This was our last hurrah, our last great adventure.

“Okay.”

The road stretched out in front of me.

“Okay.”

The hills looked to me like giant waves of earth getting ready to crash down on the road.

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

She hung up the phone and settled back into her seat. I looked over at her and saw that she was looking out at the hills. “This really is beautiful country,” she said out loud.

And it was beautiful country. “Big Sky Country” is what they called this place and it seemed aptly named. The sky went on and on until it swallowed the Earth and the two became one. But after three days of driving and listening to only half a conversation, I wasn’t in any mood for beauty. Whenever I turned my head to look at hills that rolled into the mountains which cut into the sky, or a lake with buffalo wandering lazily around, I had to look at her, past her. Eventually, the only thing I could see was her. Her with a silver, brain-cancer-causing contraption pushed up to her ear as if she wanted to push it inside of her head. If only it was inside of her head, then she wouldn’t have all these distractions to distract her and she could completley concentrate on the call. I looked out on the dancing road and continued forward in a silent rage.

I knew who she had been talking to on the phone. It was a girl that she had met about a week ago and was quite smitten with. I think her name was Amy. Was I jealous? Maybe.

“Do you want to smoke a joint,” she asked after several miles had passed in a strange kind of silence that seemed to suck all of the sound out of the world like a massive black hole.

“Sure,” I answered because I really did want to smoke a joint. In fact, it was the only thing I wanted to do. Something to relax, maybe put things in perspective. So she was on the phone, big deal. It wasn’t really the end of the world or anything. So we rolled up all the windows and she reached into the glove compartment to pull out our stash.

I could hear Ani Difranco oozing out of the speakers now that the sounds of wind and heat were gone. Her voice was both sweet and bitter at the same time, dripping with emotion. She was singing something about 9-11, about tall buildings falling and planes crashing and tears mixing with dust and Jessica passed the burning cannabis to me and I inhaled as if my life depended on it. We passed salvation between us until it became as small as a distant memory and she finally put it out.

I suddenly felt good and was able to forget about everything that was bothering me. The road continued on into nothing, snaking its way through towns that once were and lives once lived. The sun was dropping down into its cradle. Everything was dead and hot.

Then my phone rang and Jessica grabbed it and answered, “Hello! Hey, I missed you.” And then she was gone from me again.

I continued on towards the Pacific. The fat and dripping sun dipped below the horizon and the sky turned a strange pink with black getting ready to swallow it and claim the night. A flashing yellow light suddenly reminded me that the car needed gas.

“Hey, we need to stop up here for gas. Are you hungry?”

“Hold on,” she said into the phone. “What?” she asked me with a tinge in her voice that told me she was annoyed by this distraction.

“I said we need gas. Also, I’m hungry. Do you want to get anything to eat?”

“Sure. Sounds good,” and she turned back into the phone.

I pulled into a generic looking gas station and started pumping gas in the heavy, stagnant night. When the tank was full I drove across the road to a McDonald’s for dinner. I was in a parking space, the car turned off, and was looking over at her before she finally got off the phone. “I have to go. Yeah, we’re getting ready to eat. Okay. I’ll call you back when we’re done.”

We fell into the harshly lit restaurant, exhausted from the combustible afternoon and walked up to the dirty counter for our daily serving of fat and grease and indifferent service. We picked up our food from a dead looking teenager and sat at a table, eating and making uncomfortable small talk as if we were two strangers sitting next to each other on a cramped and crowded airplane stuck on the runway. After dinner we were back out on the road again, heading west. Always west, chasing the sun that had just disappeared from us. I was driving and she was on the phone. As always.

After several more hours I had had enough of driving alone. I pulled off the highway and into a hotel parking lot. As I went inside to get a room for the night she was on the phone wondering out loud why we were stopping. She could drive all night.

When I came back out to move the car, the phone was in the cup holder.

“Why are we stopping? Do you want me to drive?” she asked.

“Why do you want to drive all night?” I asked back, tersely. “We’re not really in a hurry and I’m tired of this road.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” she answered. “It’s just that I’m not very tired and didn’t want you to spend money needlessly.”

“It’s okay. I need to rest for a while.”

“Okay,” she said while reaching for the phone.

This was the final straw. “What are you doing?” I asked her.

“I’m calling my friend. Why?”

“Well, it just seems to me that you’ve been on the phone a lot lately.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it bothers me. I feel like I’m on this trip by myself. The whole point of this trip was to hang out one last time.”

“I know. Look, I’m loving spending time with you, but it shouldn’t bother you that I’m on the phone,” she said, not even looking at me. She was looking down at the lit cell phone, dialing Amy’s number. “And, you’re not by yourself. You can talk to me while I’m on the phone you know.”

She hit the ‘talk’ button, looked over, and smiled.

“Fine. Okay. Look, I’m headed up to the room. Are you coming?”

“No. I’m just going to stay down here and say goodnight to Amy. I’ll be up in a few minutes. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said and closed my door, went to the trunk, grabbed my bag, and walked up to the room. I watched T.V. by myself for a little while. I wasn’t paying attention to it though. I was thinking about how everything had gone so wrong.

Around one in the morning I turned off the lights and went to bed. Sleep wouldn’t come and I heard her when she came into the room about two hours later. She came in quietly, like a timid mouse who knew a cat was stalking somewhere near. I laid in my bed looking up at the cracked ceiling, seething.

After thirty minutes her breaths became soft and rhythmic. She was sleeping, finally.

It was a cool morning filled with stars and a full moon was shining down on earth giving the parking lot a strange glow. I got into my car, started it up, made my way to the highway, and headed back to Kentucky. With tears of rage and frustration streaming down my face, I watched in the rear-view mirror as the lights of the town, nine hundred miles from home, and Jessica both faded away from me.