38

It’s almost like a noir movie. There’s been an accident, and two miles from the Westboro plaza the cars are stopped dead in the water. Or maybe it’s road construction. Whatever it is, I crawl along the center lane like a wounded ant. My heart is pumping as if I’m running a half marathon, but the speedometer reads fifteen miles per hour/ten miles/five miles/fifteen miles per hour. I begin to worry that Adele’s car might overheat. God only knows the last time it was serviced.

I feel the panic rise in my throat in the same way a nightmare about being late or not finding a door or running away from something bad will choke you until you wake up and realize it’s only a dream. Except that this isn’t only a dream. Every inch I crawl along the MassPike is one inch closer to Artie. But it’s only an inch and time is going by. I’m already at least a half hour later than I hoped to be. I had hoped to be standing in front of Artie this very minute. How long before his truck is fixed and he’s back on the road? How late is A-1 Truck Service open? It’s already past four. I should be there. I could be mere miles away from getting Mack back and still miss him because of this mess.

This is torture. I am running in molasses; every step of the way is barricaded or delayed, thwarted. I feel like God is laughing at me. Or maybe mad at me. Is this some kind of divine retribution for loving a dog more than almost any human? For running out on Adele and Paul; for leaving an hour after my father has died?

I’m going slowly enough that I consider hitting that call button. The number for A-1 is still on the screen. One push and I can reach them and ask if Artie is still there, beg them not to tell him I’m coming. Appeal to the stranger on the other end of the line, saying that they need to keep Artie where he is. Strangers have been helping me all along—Mitch, Tyler the car-rental kid, Troy. I just need one more savior. Then, for no apparent reason, the traffic picks up and I’m back up to seventy-five.

*   *   *

The one blessing is that the A-1 Truck Service center is easy to find. Detached rigs fill the parking lot, and the noise coming from the three monumental bays is deafening with the roar of diesel engines being gunned. I squeeze Adele’s car between two trucks like a slice of ham between bulky rolls. I leave everything in the car except the keys, which I pocket. I want my hands free. I take a quick look around the parking lot of waiting behemoths and don’t spot Artie’s truck. I don’t know whether this is good or bad, but it leaves me with one last hope that one of the rigs currently occupying the garage has to be his.

I walk slowly past the open doors. A sleek black truck is in the first bay. A dented red dump truck is in the second. The third bay contains a green rig with its hood yawning open. I have only to walk in to be able to read the lettering on the door. I can see the Washington State tag on the front. I walk in, ignoring the sign forbidding anyone but personnel to enter. Arthur B. Schmidt Trucking. I quickly jump up on the running board and haul the door open, squeezing my eyes shut in a frantic prayer.

The cab is empty. No Mack. I even call his name, but I know even before opening the door that he’s not in there. If he was anywhere around, I’d hear his joyful bark. He’d know instantly that I was here. That I’d finally found him.

I am suddenly very thirsty, parched. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Confrontation does this to me. I am going to kill Artie Schmidt.

“Can I help you?” The voice is clearly annoyed at finding an interloper in his secure manly space. I turn to face a barrel-chested guy in a smoke-gray uniform with the name Al stitched over the A-1 emblem. There is a line of grease on his face that makes me think of war paint.

“I’m looking for the owner of this truck.” I shut the door and place a hand on the fender, as if I think this guy won’t understand which truck I’m talking about.

“He’s in the lounge. Over there.” The mechanic jabs a finger toward a glass wall. I can see the backs of heads as the room’s three occupants sit in a line of chairs facing a big-screen TV that’s tuned to ESPN. There’s a baseball game on. I think it’s clever that A-1 faces its customers away from watching what’s happening with their trucks, mesmerizing them with the lure of big heads on bigger screens. Each one of the lounge sitters wears a cap. They sit apart, like strangers in an airport, one or two chairs between them. From behind, I can’t tell which one is Artie.

“Thank you.” I start toward the glass wall.

“You get in through the office.” Al nods at a metal door at the far end of the garage.

I feel his eyes on me as I walk to the door. I throw a little sashay into my walk. I might need this guy if Artie gets nasty.

I have imagined this moment for a week. I have pictured myself grabbing Artie by his filthy shirt and shaking him like Mack shakes a rag doll. I’ve pictured myself screaming at him, calling him foul names, even slugging him. I’ve imagined him defiant, aggressive. What I haven’t pictured is the sheer surprise on his pug face when I suddenly reappear in his life. The entrance to the lounge puts me exactly in his sight line. At first, he looks at me as men often do, with that “Well, well, what have we here?” look of a man who has no idea how unattractive he is. Then he recognizes me. Then his expression drains from recognition to realization. Here in the flesh is the woman he abandoned on an Ohio highway, the woman whose dog he stole. Artie looks right and left at the two guys in the room with him, as if looking for back up in a shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. They are also looking at me, but their interest fades as something important happens on the muted television. They cheer, throwing themselves out of the plastic chairs. Artie and I face each other.

“Hello, Artie.”

“Justine. Hi. How are you?” Artie sweeps off his gimme cap and squeezes it between his hands. I feel like I’m looking at an actor portraying an embarrassed man. But Artie’s color deepens, going from his normal gray pallor to the color of meat that’s gone bad.

“Where is my dog?” I have gone from sweating with anxiety to feeling ice-cold. The room, even on this September day, is air-conditioned. But it’s more than that; I am solid with the ice of fear, fear that he’s about to say something that will wreck me.

Behind me, the silent television no longer holds the interest of the other two men. Suddenly, Artie and I are of interest.

“How’d you find me?”

“Where is Mack? Just tell me.”

“Tell her, man. What’d you do?” These two strangers get off their chairs and flank Artie. I manage a grateful smile at both of them, a nod to their chivalry.

“I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. He, uh, ran away.” Artie keeps looking behind me, as if I might have a Hell’s Angel tagging along.

These two strangers, one a little older than a boy, the other a man old enough to be my father, step closer to Artie.

“That’s crap, Artie, and you know it. What have you done with my dog?”

“You’re the guy, the guy who ditched a woman and stole her dog.” The younger guy points a finger at Artie. He looks back at me, looking for confirmation. “Is he?”

I’m surprised beyond words to hear my story come out of the mouth of a stranger. Then I get it. “Yes, this is Rockin’ Roadie.” My story has been traveling from CB to CB all around the state.

“What’d you do with her dog?” The older trucker drops a meaty hand on Artie’s shoulder, clenches his fist, and Artie winces like the victim of a Vulcan pinch.

“Get off me; I’ll have you arrested for assault.” Artie squirms, but the big guy doesn’t let go.

“Where’s the dog?”

It seems like such a simple question. But Artie is clearly unwilling or incapable of answering it. If I wasn’t so angry, I could almost feel sorry for him as the guy continues to trap him between his fingers. When tears actually come to Artie’s eyes, I call him off. “Enough, please. It’s okay. Let him go.”

The older man drops his hand reluctantly, clearly not pleased to be stopped. He has the look of a dad whose daughter’s boyfriend has broken her heart. A man bent on exacting payment.

Artie grabs his shoulder and rubs it. “Look, I don’t know where he ended up, but I left him near Exit Eight—eastbound.”

“Oh my God, you left him on the side of the MassPike?” The ice unblocks from my veins and the heat of despair causes me to break out in a sweat. How would my dog survive that? A loose animal on that major highway is doomed. Driving here today, I have seen the carcasses littering the shoulder—raccoons, a fox, lost pets. I can’t breathe.

“You shit for brains. Why’d you do something like that?” The younger guy raises his fists but doesn’t step any closer to Artie.

Artie fixes his eyes on me, all indignant. “Your goon threatened me. If the dog wasn’t with me, they couldn’t prove anything.”

“They who?”

“You know.” Artie drops his voice to a whisper. “The Hell’s Angels.”

“If you’d answered your phone even once when I was trying to reach you, he wouldn’t have had to threaten you.” Clearly Mitch’s voice-mail message had an effect.

“I didn’t know I had the dog. Honest. When I finally saw him, we were already into Massachusetts. What was I going to do? Turn around? I had a delivery.” Artie slaps his cap back on his head. He looks at the other two truckers for understanding, for sympathy, or empathy, or whichever one it is that will make him feel like he didn’t do a stupid, cruel thing. He gets nothing.

“You fuckin’ left a woman alone at a rest stop and then think it’s okay to toss a dog out onto a highway?” Young Trucker is up in Artie’s face now and Old Trucker does nothing to back him off. I am so weak at the knees, I sink onto one of the orange plastic chairs. I put my head between my legs. I am either going to pass out or throw up.

“What are you going to say to this lady? Huh? What have you got to say, mister?” Young Trucker takes on the school bully persona that is at odds with a rather baby face. He’s probably had to kick ass more than once to prove his masculinity. He jabs Artie in the chest with a slim, clean finger. Old Trucker stands behind Artie so that he can’t back away.

I need to stop this. “Thanks, both of you. He’s told me enough. There’s nothing else he can say.” I really don’t care if this kid beats the crap out of Artie; I just need to think for a few minutes. Neither one of them backs down. I can nearly smell the testosterone emanating from two guys who see a chance to blow off some steam.

“What kind of asshole are you to ditch this woman and dump her dog?” Clearly, Artie hasn’t answered this question to the satisfaction of Young Trucker.

“She was making me late. You know what that’s like, keeping to schedule. And I didn’t know her goddamned dog was in the backseat—where he didn’t belong.” Artie raises his own finger now, waving it in the kid’s face.

“Arthur Schmidt? Your truck’s ready.” Al’s sudden appearance at the doorway to the lounge snaps all of us out of the drama.

Both of my knights step away from Artie, letting him take the invoice out of Al’s hand. Al looks at all of us, shrugs, and leaves the lounge. As long as Artie pays his bill, it’s nothing to Al if three strangers gang up on him.

Old Trucker is still behind Artie and now he leans in so that his mouth is next to Artie’s right ear. “What are you going to do to make this right?”

“What can I do? I don’t know where her frickin’ dog is. What am I supposed to do?”

Old Trucker smacks Artie against the back of his head, tipping his dirty cap forward. “Apologize, you shitwad.”

I could almost laugh. Almost. The look on Artie’s face is priceless, but it isn’t the price I want him to pay. For what he’s done to me, there is no price. Apologizing can’t bring Mack back to me. And I highly doubt that Artie has the capability of apologizing with any sincerity, or any true sense of being in the wrong.

Nonetheless, Artie pulls his cap off his head and nods. “Justine, I am truly sorry for leaving you behind. But you—” Another smack from Old Trucker stops his feeble attempt to pin the blame on me. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care that you left me behind. I do care that you were so cruel to my dog. An innocent animal. Why didn’t you—” This time I’m cut off.

“There weren’t a lot of choices out there. If I’d missed my deadline again, that would be the last time my agent was gonna get me work. It was my last chance.”

“Then why not just hang on to him? Take him to Boston with you. Make your deadline. Then call me to come get him.” I am suddenly gasping for breath, as if I have asthma. “Why didn’t you just answer the phone and we could have straightened this all out?”

Artie squeezes the bill of his cap and then replaces it on his head. “Didn’t think of it. I have to go. See you around.”

He almost gets away, but one look from me and my two new friends block his way. “Is there something you’d like us to do, ma’am?” The older guy meets my eye; then the pair of them take Artie by either arm. We all look through the glass to the garage to make sure we’re unobserved.

“I can do it myself.” I punch Artie in the gut with all the force of my anger and grief for my dog. The two let go and he drops to his knees.

“One thing’s for certain, Artie Schmidt. Don’t you ever show your face in Candy’s Place ever again.”

Artie leans on one of the plastic chairs to get to his feet. This time, Old Trucker and Young Trucker let Artie leave the room. They drift back to watching the ball game and I stand at the glass wall, watching as Artie makes it back to his truck. Then I remember something. I race back to the bay.

“Wait.” I run to the right side of the truck and swing open the door, climbing up on the running board to get inside. I find what I’m looking for easily. Mack’s collar is caught in my sleeping bag. I retrieve my last connection to Mack. The feel of his leather collar in my hand pushes a new surge of anger and despair through me. My dog was abandoned on the highway.

Artie has climbed into his seat and is staring at me, as if he half-expects I’m going to stay in the cab.

“You never fulfilled your promise. You took my money and dropped me. The way I see it, you got me only halfway to where I was going, so you should give me back half the money.”

“You know I don’t have it, or didn’t you just see me pay Al?”

I don’t have my knights with me, so I end negotiations. “You are a piece of work. Get out of my sight.”

I stand aside as Artie guns the big engine and laboriously emerges from the open bay. Cranking through the gears, he makes his way to the exit and pulls away.

I need to get back on the road. Paul and Adele will be gnashing their teeth at my absence. I’m sure they’ll want her car back sooner rather than later. But there is something else I need to do. Before I pull out from between the rigs, I call Tony. He’s never met this grandfather, but he needs to know that he’s lost one.

Typically, his phone goes to voice mail. Is this the kind of message you leave on voice mail? In this case, it is. “Tony, your grandfather died today. Peacefully, I think. I don’t know the plans yet, but I guess I’ll be heading home soon.”

I should point this car west. But I don’t have my duffel, and I don’t relish being accused of being a car thief. I find the eastbound Pike entrance and collect my ticket. Even before I reach sixty-five miles per hour, I have to pull over onto the shoulder. Cars whiz by me and Adele’s car is shaken by the backwash of a semi like a mini earthquake. How in God’s name could Mack have survived this?

I am awash in tears, snot runs down my nose, and I bury my head in my arms, hoping that no well-meaning Samaritan knocks on my window. What would I say? As a human being, I should say that I’m crying for my father, for his merciful death. But I’m not weeping for that. I am weeping for Mack, for his loss, for imaging the worst death right here on this road.

The car rocks violently with the rush of traffic. I have no tissue and I’m reduced to using my sleeve to wipe up the mess. I fumble in Adele’s glove compartment and find some Kleenex. I am choking on the fear that my dancing dog is dancing in heaven.