Fallout (Crank 3)

Nevada trump Texas prairie?

Will I come running back to Grandfather

or find solace in rediscovered family?

IT IS LATE AFTERNOON

By the time we actually hit the highway.

First, long, straight stretches of Interstate 10.

Through Arizona, New Mexico, into California.

North on I-15, to 395, north to Carson City.

More than seventeen hundred miles. Alone with

a stranger. Straight through, more than twenty-

four hours. The longest ride of my life, through

mostly unremarkable country. Flat grassland.

Dry desert as yet unkissed by winter’s

soft wet lips. At least it’s not ungodly hot

in December. When we get out to stretch,

it’s rather comfortably warm. At least it will be for

the first part of the trip. We hear there’s

a blizzard warning from Bishop, north.

Blizzard? I’ve never even seen snow, not

that I can remember at least. I’m excited.

Scared. Chilled through to the bone, and

we’re only two hundred miles toward cold.

IT TAKES THAT TWO HUNDRED MILES

And more of tedious small talk—school,

extracurricular crap or lack of it, friends

or lack of them—interwoven with long bouts

of silence, before I finally get up the nerve

to redirect the conversation away from me.

“What’s she like?” I ask, then add, “My mother.”

Trey thinks for a minute, reaches over,