The smell of gasoline.

Cicada, whip-poor-will, and the sweet symphony of late August.

Summer came to in the passenger seat of their shitty Honda, on the far side of a gas station parking lot. Maybe three, four in the morning. Roadside, but not another soul to be found. No one in the driver’s seat.

Alone.

No Jack.

No keys in the ignition. If he’d finally up and abandoned her, he would have left her the keys. A little bit of money. Perhaps even…

In a bluster, she thrust her hand beneath the passenger’s seat. Rifled through empty go-sacks and plastic soda bottles.

Not there.

Summer dove into the backseat and cast aside one trash bag full of her clothes, then a knapsack. Kicked errant books and CD jewel cases to the floorboard.

Still nothing.

In a fit of desperate inspiration, she reached beneath the driver’s seat and didn’t realize until finally her fingers found it, that she had forgotten to breathe.

There it is.

She exhaled.

Jack would never leave without it.

Summer leaned her head against the backseat window glass. There were lights on in the gas station. Streetlights, florescent and throttled with flies and moths and gnats swarming in angry spasms.

She wiped sleep from her eyes.

Summer had been dreaming of farming. Of raising carrots and beets and cabbages and wandering fields of produce. Rows upon rows, sprouting from good, honest dirt collecting between the toes of her bare feet, then sprinkling back to the earth to birth more plants. She had been dreaming of the barn, of the farmhouse, of the chickens and cows and even a rooster, which she named Gordon. In the end, it was Gordon who woke her. Gordon’s crowing, telling her and the rest of the world to wake up, lest they sleep through End Times.

Jack…

Maybe he’d gone into the gas station to shake a leak. Maybe he’d gone inside for another bottle of those trucker pills he often thought he could hide from her.

Maybe he’d only be a minute.

Summer housed no doubt that Jack Jordan would one day make a run for it. She also assumed there’d be no ceremony when finally it happened. She could very well find herself ditched roadside far, far from home. Cold, alone, and in some state of disarray. But she also knew he’d come running at the first sign of trouble. He’d fall in with another girl, one who couldn’t keep up with his shit—they never could—then realize what he and that girl had wasn’t love at all, not anything like what he shared with Summer. He’d get around the corner and finally believe all the hype he’d been spoon-feeding himself didn’t mean a hill of beans, because he was nothing without Summer. Nothing at all. Then along he’d come, tail tucked.

Not even Jack Jordan could convince himself he could move a kilo without her.

If she’d done anything, it was prove she could make it on her own. She could live on the street, if push came to shove. One night, a year or so back, she’d taken off for a couple days with some guy and, just to see if they could, they camped beneath a bridge. They’d lit fires and ate hot dogs and stood out on the off-ramps, holding signs and asking for money. They’d spanged eighty-six bucks in three hours. That’s $25.50 per hour, and they weren’t even trying. On the third night, it got cold, so they went back to his apartment and tried black tar heroin.

Best she knew, Jack had never noticed her gone.

Summer leaned forward, between the driver and passenger seat. She thought more than once about wandering into the gas station to see what he’d gotten himself into, but didn’t so much as pop open the door to the backseat. Instead, she sat still, staring at the dashboard and trying like mad not to get lost in her thoughts but losing, losing desperately until she noticed a commotion yonder and found Jack, shuffle-stepping across the parking lot, holding his britches bunched at the front. Behind him, a fat older man chased him to a spot shy of the gas pumps. A man holding a baseball bat.

Jack threw open the driver’s door and slammed the key into the ignition, started the car, then got them on the road. He never once looked at her through the rearview, never once asked why she’d climbed into the backseat. He was a mess of sweats and shakes and kept both hands firm on the wheel, lest he vibrate out the door. All that cacophony, yet how still were his eyes. How still and even. Summer watched him a long moment to make sure he was okay, but soon bored of it and returned her dead stare to the dashboard.

“Slow down, Jack,” she said. “Speed limit is fifty through here.”

He did, a little. Summer couldn’t see past the high beams, the twin yellow lights stretching into yonder night.

“Where are we?”

“Texas,” said Jack.

She blinked. “How long have we been in Texas?”

“Too long, it feels like.”

Summer squeezed into the front seat. Craned her neck until it nearly touched the windshield, then turned her head upward to the heavens. Or what she could see of the them.

“How much further we got to drive, you reckon?”

“Another hour, at most,” he said. “We’ll get another motel and hole up for the morning. Tomorrow, we’ll grab some lunch, then go check out a place I found on the internet.”

She sighed. “Another place. You know, I really liked the last place we had. The one in Columbia.”

“The duplex?”

“Yeah, that was real nice. Washer, dryer…dishwashing machine. I think of all the places we’ve stayed, the duplex was the nicest.”

“You were hardly there at the end.”

She drew a half breath and held it. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t think it was nice.”

The air soured and Summer could tell he was sorry to have brought it up. He knew it’d get her thinking about Scovak. She’d thought plenty on him since leaving South Carolina, and very little on anything else. Mostly, she thought about the last time she saw him, how his eyes narrowed to slits when she told him she was only going to be gone an hour, that she’d be back as soon as she could. How he’d squinted and gently stroked his beard, pointed at the chin, and said nothing as he looked away and returned his attention to his brand new tattoo. The one with her name on it. Like he knew she was lying to him, like he knew she could never lie to him. He allowed it. If for no reason other than he was certain she’d change her mind, he allowed her to leave, and no sooner had she driven over the Savannah river had—

“Hey, you in there?” Jack snapped his fingers, inches from her nose. “Stay with me. It’s late and I’ve been driving, what, nine hours now? I’ve been going nuts and you’ve had enough time in that little head of yours. Come on, wake up. Talk to me.”

“I miss him,” she said.

She could hear his eyes roll in his head. He said, “Summer…don’t—”

“I’m not, Jack.” She turned in her seat. Her breath fogged the passenger window glass. She reached out a finger to mark it, but stopped short. She had no idea what to write. “All I’m saying is I miss him.”

He sighed. For the first time, he took his eyes off the road, hands off the wheel. Summer didn’t know if his trembling hand reached to stroke her hair or pat her shoulder or possibly even strangle her neck, but instead, reached inside the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and wrestled free a wrinkled pack of smokes. He tapped one out and offered it to her, but she refused. The driver’s side strobed furious orange as Jack fussed with the lighter, finally sparking it. He drew and blew deliberately on his cigarette. Drew and blew.

“You know,” she said, “I’d prefer not to say his name again either. In fact, as of this moment right here and now, I will never again utter his name. You hear me?”

“I’d be more than fine with that, if it were true.”

“It’s true and you’ll see.” She sat still, as long as she could. She watched the road a good while, the names of the towns on signs popping up alongside the road. Names like San Augustine and Macune. Chireno and Etoile. Towns that could only be gas stations at highway intersections, open or closed, but mostly closed, and billboards that should have long ago been painted over. Pine trees sentinel and stretching well into the night like crooked fingers, blocking out moons and stars and letting through no light, nor any out. Summer watched it all and wished there were more, but there wasn’t, so she spoke.

“But one thing the man whose name I won’t say used to tell me was there weren’t no use in being sad when there were so many other things on the planet to be.”

“Weren’t he just a poet, then.”

“It may sound simple to someone like you,” she said, “but it’s actually very wise if you break it down.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“I know you never did like him,” she grumped, “but you didn’t know him. Not like I did. He said I was the only person he’d ever met who wasn’t afraid of him.”

“I wasn’t afraid of him.”

“You can’t even say it without cracking your voice.”

“I’m telling you, I wasn’t scared of him.” Outside Jack’s window, the world whipped past in a blur of starlight and streetlamps. “Part of my act was pretending he intimidated me.”

“You did a mighty fine job.” Her voice could have been draped with tinsel. “Especially the parts where he came in the front door and you slipped out the back.”

“Half the things they said about him weren’t true, I’d bet.”

“How much?”

“How much what?”

“How much would you bet?”

Jack licked his lips. “I’d bet that entire kilo under the seat that he never did time for killing nobody. I’d bet that’s all something he dreamed up so folks would take him serious. That one tattoo he had above his elbow… You remember it?”

“I remember his every inch.”

“He said it was how they mark someone in the Aryan nation after they’d killed somebody for the cause. And by somebody, what they mean is—”

“I know what they mean.”

“I’ll have you know I googled it and that weren’t no Aryan tattoo,” said Jack. “It’s some bullshit he and a couple drunk peckerwoods carved into his arm with a safety pin and some India ink and now he’s trying to play it off like he’s hard, and all you kids lapped it up. People can be full of shit sometimes.”

She crossed her arms. “He didn’t let a whole lot of people close, not like he did with me. That’s why a lot of people… Hey, Jack, will you please slow down?”

“Will you please not tell me how to drive?”

She said, “There’s a kilo of cocaine under your seat and you’re going twenty over the speed limit.”

Jack did. He pushed his sweat-mottled hair out of his face with a twitchy hand. Summer noticed for the first time he had yet to buckle his belt and zip his fly. She studied him through eyes squinted.

“You were having one of your fits back there, weren’t you?” she asked. “Back in that gas station bathroom?”

“Summer, please…”

“You act like it don’t affect you none, that I’m the odd one for getting sore about things. That all the sneaking out in the middle of the night and changing names and the lies and looking over our shoulders, all that rolls off you like water off a duck, but these fits you get say something quite different.”

“If it’s all the same,” he said, voice cracking, “I’d rather think about something else. Anything else, to be honest.”

Summer nodded. “Fine. Not talking about it don’t make it go away, but suit yourself.”

“You ain’t the only one who lost someone,” muttered Jack.

“Oh ho!” It was Summer’s turn to roll her eyes. “I bet if you tried, you couldn’t remember her name.”

“Her name was Michelle and I miss the ever-loving shit out of her. I had something awful special with her and I’m afraid I might have broke her heart. You never know how something like that could affect a person.”

“She’s young, she’ll get over it.” Summer twiddled her thumbs. Through the windshield, the sky colored purple and resplendent. Up came the sun. “Besides,” she said, “if what you two had was so special, you wouldn’t have lit out with her student loan money, would you?”

Jack took the last drag from his smoke and tossed it through the window. He didn’t bother to roll it up, instead let the wind roar through the opening.

“Summer,” he said, when finally he spoke, “all that mess is in the rearview, and that’s where it should stay. We have a unique opportunity lying before us. We each can start anew, a clean slate. How many people get a chance like this? When we cross into Lufkin, I suggest we drop all our troubles and burdens at the border, leave all those hard times behind us. Because from here on out, it’s going to be roses and sunshine.”

“You think so?” Summer asked with a whisper.

“I know so.”

Jack leaned back in his seat and slipped an arm around her shoulders. She tucked herself into him, suddenly warmed. But at the door there beckoned yet a chill. One that nobody, not even Jack Jordan, could ward away. So she sat silent and filled herself with his smells: the cigarette, his sweat, the fresh stench of panic. She matched, best she could, the rhythms of his unsteady breathing. For even if she couldn’t say it out loud, even if she wouldn’t allow it past her tongue, she’d still say it over and over in her head.

Say it so loud in there that sometimes, she could hear nothing else.

Just his name.

Over and over.

Scovak.

Scovak.

Scovak…