a far-off point

As she grew older, Eleanor became more difficult to know. She was not stand-offish or rude or abrasive, but she fell into a very slim category of women whose eyes are trained determinedly on some distant point, and everything in her foreground became a blurry mess. She recognized this about herself in college; she tried for a time to be what she was expected to be: a young and reckless girl, one who would pitch aside her studies for another long night in another dark room that stank of beer and pheromones. She would stand with girls her age, and she would drink until her chest hurt, and somehow even drunk she felt clearheaded and analytical. She would go home with boys -- they were always boys, never men -- and she would let them fuck her, and she would wonder why. She learned in college all the things she did not want, and before the first round of midterms, she left, carrying with her an ache for something of weight, and the disappointment of discovering what her body was capable of when her mind was elsewhere.

She returned to Anchor Bend after leaving UNLV, riding a Greyhound across Nevada and into California and as far as Redding, where she traded the bus for a train, almost completely alone in a passenger car. The Amtrak took her to Oregon, as far as Roseburg, and there she caught the silver dog again. The station was six blocks from her parents' neighborhood; she walked there in the dark and watched it grow closer, a gated suburb with a granite headstone, the name Stone Mountain etched deep into the rock in a fine, swirling script. She couldn't remember the access code, and so Eleanor stood beside the entrance for a time, watching lights flicker on in the big homes, illuminating large rooms and high ceilings and the dusty fragments of people and their shadows moving about. She could see her parents' home from here; there were no lights on, but the strobe of a television lit up the windows of their bedroom.

The gates buzzed and clicked and swung smoothly and slowly open, and Eleanor turned to see a Buick Roadmaster approaching. She stepped out of the wash of headlights and let it pass, and when it did, she surprised herself by watching as the gates closed again. She followed the car's tail lights for a moment, until they cut away and winked out, and then she bent over and swung her bag up onto her shoulder.

She bought a cup of coffee at the truck stop near the bus station, and sat at the bar and watched the woman behind the counter wipe down the same small circle of Formica for minutes on end, and followed the woman's stare to a young man who sat near the window, a paperback open in one hand, a forkful of eggs in the other. He was quiet, oblivious to the trucks that rumbled outside the window, occasionally firing up their nuclear headlamps, turning the whole diner white, and when this happened the man's silhouette appeared, splitting the brief brilliance in half, and he looked like Jack, and she knew why she hadn't gone home.

A dollar in a truck stop will buy you a hundred thousand refills of a cup of coffee as long as things are slow and you're not taking up valuable space that can be filled by a trucker who just pulled ten hours through the tangle of redwood on the 36 or the 44, and followed the HOT CAKE'S ALL YOU CAN EAT ALL DAY ALL NIGHT AT RHONDA'S TRUCKERS PARADISE signs for a hundred miles, passing up plenty of other diners between Yreka and Roseburg, fighting off sleep and leg cramps for the promise of just that: paradise. But that night was a slow one, and Eleanor stopped counting after eight cups, and several more after that was when the pickup rolled up outside, and Jack stepped out, and before he closed the door she was in the open air and then his arms and surprised herself by crying, just a little. In the pickup she stretched across the bench seat and rested her head on his thigh, and slept while he drove. She smiled to herself at the sight of her pale arms lit up by thin green dashboard light, and at the sound of his familiar low voice, humming and sometimes singing old songs. Four years without a word, and she fell right back into him.

She closed her eyes, and remembered lying with him on the cliff years ago where he'd found her. Jack was always finding her, even if once in awhile she had to give him a little help, and now that he had, she didn't care where he took her. Away, back, to, from -- as long as she could stay right here for a little while longer, every arch of his foot against the gas lifting and dropping her head ever so gently, she really couldn't care less.

Eleanor slept, and the heavy rattle of the engine was adopted into the rhythm of her breathing, and when it stopped, she woke, and closed her eyes immediately against the hard bite of daylight. She heard Jack yawn in the abrupt quiet. The engine ticked, quickly and then slowing as it cooled. She sat up without opening her eyes, and her head connected with Jack's elbow, still suspended mid-yawn. "Shit," he said. "You okay?"

She nodded, finally cracked her eyes and braved the white day. "Where are we?"

Jack shrugged. "Rest stop."

The brightness settled, and Eleanor studied their surroundings. The rest stop was largely abandoned, a hundred yards of gravel and scattered RVs and a solitary station wagon with a flat tire. There was the familiar shape of roadside constructs: a building with restrooms, and small cutaways that housed vending machines, and stand-alone half-walls covered with Plexiglas-protected maps and local interest flyers. Rising up around the road and the rest area were great blue mountains stippled with trees, the snow caps glowing sharply in the sunlight. The few clouds in sight were pulled thin like taffy, and dissipating even as she noticed them.

"Still in Oregon," she said.

"Where'd you think we'd go?"

She looked past him at the highway. There wasn't a moving vehicle to be found. She said, "I don't know. I didn't really think about it."

"I've gotta pee," he said, and she agreed, and he opened the door and they jumped out. The sunlight was deceptive, the way she'd forgotten it could be this time of year. It was achingly cold outside. They ran for the bathrooms, and when he emerged a few minutes later, Eleanor was standing at the vending machines. "It's either trail mix or Milk Duds," she said. "What's your pleasure? You'll have to buy, though. The phone call broke me."

"There were signs," he said. "Before we stopped. You ever been to Grants Pass? It's the next town up, just a few miles. Get somethin to eat, then turn around?"

She looked at him. "Turn around?"

He returned the look. "You thought something, I knew it. What?"

She shook her head. "I don't know."

"That we'd just drive and drive? Never come back?"

She wanted to cry. "I don't know."

"Alright, let's not worry about it yet," he said. "Let's go get some pancakes or something, and we can talk about things. Like what made you call me. Like what made you come home."

They got back into the truck, and she sat on the far side of the bench this time, resting her forehead against the cold window, while he drove. Twenty minutes rolled by, and they passed a highway sign and Jack read it aloud -- "Grants Pass, six miles" -- and she glared at him, but he ignored her. A few minutes after that, they crested a large hill that dropped off long and steep into a bowl of valley, and Jack saw the ring of mountains and the ferocious green and the small buildings and shops peeking through the trees and his eyes widened and his heart skipped and he said, "Hello, home," and Eleanor thought that maybe she didn't know what she'd had in her mind when she called Jack, but maybe it was something that started a little bit like this.