The Question Authority by Rachel Cline

Author:Rachel Cline
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2019-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

21

Bob

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date sent: Feb 19 2009 5:28PM MST

Subject: On the Road

So yesterday I picked up a hitchhiker. She told me a story I know you’ll get a kick out of. I won’t deny that when I saw her standing alone on the highway I thought she might be a runaway, but I wasn’t going to do anything, you know that. Anyway, once she’s in my car I see that she’s a grownup, nineteen or twenty, at least. Running away from a man is my guess. She has no real destination. “I’ll let you know when we get there,” she says. She shuts the door and puts her hands in her lap so I can see the pale streak on her left ring finger. Rasmussen, right as usual!

“Do you mind if I smoke?” the hitchhiker asks me.

“Yeah, I do, and so do your lungs,” I say, looking at her again, because she’s given me an excuse to. “I used to smoke,” I add, not wanting to be too much of a daddy. “It makes me crazy to smell it. Especially when I’m driving or . . . you know, other times.” She nods, noncommittal, and we roll on into Monument Valley. The afternoon light on the mesas makes their surfaces look like those microscope pictures of internal organs or some special kind of velvet—but really it’s like nothing else because what it does is make my brain shut the fuck up.

“If I’m not gonna smoke, we better talk,” she says.

“Okay, you first.”

“Shit,” she says under her breath, caught in her own trap. Then finally, “Where are you from?” So she’s smart, too.

“Nice maneuver,” I say, “but it’s not that easy. I said you start, so start. Why don’t you answer my first question. Where are you going?”

“Someplace far enough my ex can’t find me and country enough they won’t call any references.”

It’s a tough speech but it comes out shy. She’s forcing herself to keep going just because I said to. “So you’ve been through here a million times, I guess.” She nods. “It’s my first time through in twenty years,” I tell her.

Ten miles later, we come up to my favorite stretch. “I was planning to stop up here by the white mesa, hike in, and take some pictures. I can understand if that’s not what you had in mind.”

“I’m not going to have sex with you,” she says.

“That’s okay, I’m married,” I tell her. It turns out to be the right thing to have said, because she agrees to come with me. Well, the wrong right thing in your eyes, I bet. But you know she wasn’t my type.

Her name turns out to be Rose. She tells me she was named for a character in a book she hasn’t read. When I pull over, we’re at a place where a small, climbable-looking mesa is near enough the road to approach on foot, and the light is turning yellow on its western face. “There.” I point. “Are you game?”

“There may be snakes,” she says.

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