Before Mariah found the road, she was sick again. Twice.
The first time was in a place where the ground scabbed into rocky abscesses that made navigation almost impossible. The mountains stood lower here, and in the strange, amber glow the growths on the sand resembled festering boils . . . as if the desert were alive and diseased. She opened the door and stumbled out to puke up the contents of her stomach, which amounted to approximately three ounces of water and two dozen half-digested beans.
The second time sickness hit, she was back in complete darkness, passing through an endless plain of weeds and starved, bristly trees whose shadows seemed to twitch and jerk as they glided into the headlights. She didnât even bother getting out of the pickup; she simply stuck her head out the window, which she had carefully stripped of its jags, and let the bad stuff go right from Johnâs lap. That lap was more than warm now. It was hot. So hot it felt as if his jeans were baking into the backs of her thighs. So hot she could barely sit still. Earlier, his heat had been her protection from the wind. Now the wind was her relief from his heat. She couldnât remember when the fever had arrived, only that it had done so magnificently, blossoming in the gloom of the truck like a rare night flower. Neither his hand nor his arm appeared infected. There was discharge, sure, clear and watery. But no pus. Nor was there any of the rank, wild smell that she associated with meat going bad. At some point she had slathered the wounds in fresh petroleum jelly and wrapped them up again, but she couldnât remember when she had done that either. Truth be told, she couldnât remember the âwhenâ of a lot of things. Her only signpost to mark the time was the nausea that visited her during what would have been the morning. The rest was background. Scenery. Things came. Things passed. But mostly they stayed the same.
Before Mariah found the road, she pried a splinter of plane from the truckâs back tire. It was tiny but sturdy; it had slipped in between the treads and punctured the rubber as easily as a rose thorn punctures skin. She set it on the dashboard as a memento, something to show John if he ever woke up, then she went back out to change the flat. In the flatbed was a hidden compartment, and in the compartment was everything she needed to get the job done. It helped, of course, if you knew what the job was. Which Mariah did not. Sure, she had a general idea of what to do. The wrench was for the lug nuts (why they were called lug nuts was a mystery to her) and the jack was for the heavy lifting. But beyond that she didnât have the foggiest clue. She was winging it, as the expression went, and would she ever be able to hear that expression again without thinking of an airliner full of sleeping people gliding down and down through a darkened sky? No, probably not. Assuming she was still around to hear anything. Assuming she got out of the desert at all. She loosened the nuts, took off the hubcap, and wedged the jack in place. Then she crossed her heart and started pumping. What happened next was almost funny, it seemed so obvious in hindsight. Instead of the truck going up, the jack went down. Into the dirt. Mariah gave a wild round of applause. Bravo, bravo! She freed the jack and put the hubcap and bolts back on. Then (going much more slowly than before) she drove off on the flat in search of firmer ground. But when the sea of cracked sand finally ended, however many miles later, she discovered that the jack had been left behind and gave herself another standing ovation, screaming as she did.
Before Mariah found the road, she began to sleep a great deal. No matter how long she stayed under, though, she always came up worse for the wear. Maybe it was the nightmares. She had all manner of nightmares. In one, the worst, she was giving birth to the sun. She pushed and groaned in pain and darkness until light splashed from between her legsâwarm red light, like that which comes before the dawnâand revealed the space around her. She was in the Trotter, lying on the rubber mat behind the bar while Rick Lot looked down at her over a shot glass full of blood. His nose gushed. The heel of a champagne flute stuck out of his ear. âItâs okay, Mariah,â he said. âAccidents happen. Youâve got nothing to feel bad about.â The pain grew. She could smell herself cooking, and the smell was sweet, the smell was her motherâs Pierogi served on tiny folded napkins to soak up the grease. The flesh of her thighs began to bubble and spit. Then they began to blacken. Sunlight washed out of her in a blinding flood, filling the liquor bottles on the shelves with white fire, and she sat up in the passenger seat to find John looking at her. Staring at her. By the time she gathered up the pieces of her voice and opened her mouth to ask how he was feeling, his eyes were closed and his head had laid itself back against the seat.
Before Mariah found the road, she learned how to feed John from a can of cold pinto beans. First she chewed a bean, then she pushed it into his mouth on the tip of her finger, then she washed it down with water. One small bite, one small sip. On occasion, something wet would drool out his other end, and she would go around to the flatbed to fetch the cloth she kept tucked behind the wheel well. The cloth had been a shirt once, and the more she used it the fouler it got, until there were no clean places left to hold. First, she would unzip Johnâs pants and shove them down, a process that always left her panting. Once she got her breath back, she would give him a nice long wipe and go through the steps again in reverse. It was the kind of job that changed the way you saw someone. No matter what happened between them in the future, thereâd always be a part of her that would look at him and think, I scooped up your balls and wiped away your shit. His shit wasnât the only thing, either. He pissed sometimes, and he farted too, oily hot farts that thickened and gave texture to the air. But on the last account, at least they were even. She was on the pinto bean diet herself, and if the driver side window wasnât broken, the thing would have stayed rolled down. Permanently.
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Before Mariah found the road, she alternated between fits of chattiness and passages of head-hung silence. She told John about her father and Musty and Mr. Poulterâs date with her aluminum baseball bat. She told him about her mother and her motherâs Catholicism, and how she once backwashed into the blood of Christ when she was little and became convinced she was going to Hell. âYouâre going to think Iâm stupid when I tell you this, John, but there were all these news reports on at the time about HIV running wild. Hysterical stuff, you know. I overheard just enough to know AIDs was the worst thing you could ever give to somebody, and that it happened when it got in their blood. After I spit up into the communion wine goblet, I cried myself to sleep for three nights in a row because I was positive Iâd given Jesus AIDs. I canât even look at a church now without thinking of AIDs. I see a cross and think AIDs! I see a priest and think AIDs! Hell, sometimes I see a robeânot necessarily even a religious-looking robe; it could be a graduation robe or a bathrobeâand in my head all I can hear is, AIDs, AIDs, Jesus is dying because you gave him AIDs!â Mariah paused to lick a sore on the inside of her lip. âI never told anyone that before. I probably could have confessed it to my dad, but I was scared heâd let it slip to my momâif he didnât die from laughing first. He went to church with us, but it was different for him than it was for her. For him, God was somebody you shook hands with at the end of service and said goodbye to at the door. Donât get me wrong, he wasnât some charlatan six days of the week. He just didnât carry the Lord around on his shoulders from Sunday to Sunday, either. Hey, are we having that night? You know, when two people stay up for hours and hours talking, learning everything there is to know about one other . . . is that us right now? Is this our special moment?â She started to laugh and then the truck plowed into a thick bush and her laughter cut off abruptly. From that point on she didnât talk, just drove, her voice buried deep down inside her where nothing short of a six-man digging crew could have reached it.
Before Mariah found the road, the engine came down with a cough and the truck rolled to a slow, miserable stop. She got out to fetch the second fuel jug that John had filled in the Mojave Riverbed. It was heavier than it looked, and it looked heavy. She yanked it out of the flatbed and it fell into the dirt still attached to her hands, bending her over at the waist. She dragged it past the flat tire, which was tearing into rugged flaps that reminded her all too much of Johnâs knuckles. When she got to the gas tank, she took a break. Had to. Her legs were loosey-goosey, her shoulders ready to pop out of their sockets. Then there was her spine, which was stiffer than a nun in a strip club (could she please get an amen?). But worst of all wasnât the way her body felt; it was the way she felt in her body. Mariah didnât fit her own skin anymore. She was like her feet in her shoes: just a little too small. Eventually, after it became clear she was never going to be more ready for this task than she was right now, she unscrewed the cap on the tank and got down on one knee with her left hamstring flat against her calf. She hoisted the fuel jug onto her thigh, balanced it there, and used her thigh as an elevator to liiiiiiift the jug as she stood.
That was when she realized.
Sheâd taken the cap off the tank, but sheâd left the cap on the jug. Pinning its bulk to the truck, she twisted the top off. Next came the easy part, or so she prayed. With the jug under her arm, she tipped it forward gently, gently, gently, until the gasoline started to flow. The fumes brought tears to her eyes. Shakes set in. She spilled. The jug seemed to be filling up, getting heavier instead of lighter. Just when she was about to drop it, the stream thinned to a dribble. Done. She let go and collapsed into the dirt. She could not say how long she sat there staring into the dark, listening to the soft rustlings of things outside her vision. But she could say why she got up.
She got up because of the howl.
Before Mariah found the road, she began to hear them. They were a chatty bunch, always yakking away in the distance. Their yips didnât bother her much, especially when she was driving, but every so often, one unleashed a shivery tenor wail that pushed an icicle of fear into her heart. Then they no longer sounded quite so far off. Then she began to see them. A flit of white just past the headlights, a pinprick flash of yellow that might have been eyes. Coyotes. The night was their time, and that meant it was always their time. She started carrying the lug wrench with her whenever she stepped outside, and soon she stopped going outside altogether. If she needed to pee, she did her business in a bottle between Johnâs legs. If she needed something from the flatbedâfood, fresh water, Johnâs shit clothâshe crawled through the truckâs back window. In the end, she stopped with that, too. None of it seemed worth the trouble. Not anymore.
Before Mariah found the road, she gave up on eating. Gave up on drinking. What talking she did, she did inside her head, in a voice that was becoming softer and fuzzier and harder to hear. When she wasnât asleep (and she was asleep more than she wasnât), she was driving, and when she was driving she wasnât watching for a way forward. She was watching the needle on the fuel gauge. Watching it creep down and down.
Before Mariah found the road, she stopped wondering if she would die in Death Valley.
Before Mariah found the road, she started wondering if she was already dead.