Small Animals Caught in Traps by C. B. Bernard

Author:C. B. Bernard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2023-03-10T00:33:43+00:00

IV

THIS IS WHAT WE DO

26

Gray naps for the first few hours, waking only when a bump in the road bounces her head against the window. She swallows the pool of spit that’s formed in her lower lip and sneaks a glance at her father. He’s restless, drumming his hands on the wheel and shaking his leg like he’s working a floor loom. “Your engine’s running,” her mother would say. Gray almost says it herself, but she doesn’t want to play that role with him and doesn’t want him to know she’s awake yet. His nervous energy fills the cab. She can’t remember ever feeling it from him before. Maybe it’s her—maybe he’s nervous that she’s come along on a trip he usually makes alone. Maybe it’s more than that. Ever since they went into the woods with Johnson, he’s been annoyed with her and edgy as hell. She knows she disappointed him by not being as strong as he wanted her to. Even though she tried, she still cried. Like a baby.

Like a girl.

She couldn’t help it. He has to know that, doesn’t he?

“He loved that dog too,” her mother said, trying to reassure her.

“So why didn’t he cry?”

“Everybody deals with things differently. That’s just not your father’s way.”

“I don’t want it to be my way, either.”

“Don’t be ashamed of crying, Gray. There’s no shame in that, and there’s no shame in being sad when you lose someone you love.”

Maybe it’s something else entirely that’s bugging him. Who knows? As long as she can remember, he’s had moods, but they’re not usually this bad and they don’t always last this long. She sneaks another glance at him and he catches her looking and smiles, but the smile looks forced. She says nothing. She doesn’t mean for it to be a choice, but it feels like one.

After a few minutes, the silence starts to feel uncomfortable. A few minutes after that, it becomes unbearable. Her father opens his window. Oregon rushes in at seventy miles an hour, whipping a whirlwind of heat and noise and highway dust around the cab with a noise far worse than the silence. He closes the window again almost immediately.

Gray watches the Wallowas loom on the horizon, beautiful ridges of rock and shadow, patches of snow high against the sun. They’re beautiful, but they never seem to grow any closer, and she wonders how much longer the drive is going to take.

When a time-worn gas station appears, her father pulls into the lot alongside rusty hand pumps and an antique bottled-Coke machine filled with spiderwebs.

“I’ll get coffee while you hit the bathroom,” he says.

“I’m good.”

“Go while we’re stopped so we don’t have to stop to go.” It’s what he tells clients on the boat, trying to get them to consolidate bathroom breaks and limit their time without hooks in the water. She’s annoyed but gets out of the truck anyway.

The bathroom is around back, and suitably gross. She’s peed in worse places. Splotches of mold grow on chipped tiles discolored and stained with God knows what.

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