part0017

MARCY WAS SPRAWLED ACROSS THE backseat, sucking on a melting chocolate bar as Aaron screamed, “My side! My side! Stay off my side!” He shoved her thick leg with his sticky hands.

The car was hot. The a/c was dead. The parched wind pummeling the car’s occupants smelled like mud. Bub, the family’s unfixed golden retriever, hopped from the front seat to the backseat, drool flying off his red tongue, and barking his head off. The dog’s huge tail whacked Lenora Parker, sitting in the front seat, right in the face. Dog hair stuck to her lip-gloss.

“Aaron, stop it,” said the kids’ mother. “You’re making the dog crazy.”

“I’m not doing anything,” said Marcy innocently, smearing her Mars bar around her mouth to lick off later. “I’m not even touching him.” She pressed her toe harder on the clip of Aaron’s seatbelt, clamping him tighter. Aaron shrieked.

“Would you kids shut up?” their father growled, hunched over the steering wheel, glasses slipping perilously to the tip of his nose.

“I’m just cooling off.”

“Shut up! Shut up or I’ll stop this car!” bellowed their father, Mike Parker. A vein in his temple throbbed. “Lifted Jesus on a stick, I will stop this car!”

But they knew he never would. They were making good time.

Every July, the family went to visit Mike’s parents in Moose Jaw. The trip from Prince Albert never seemed long, in theory. Three hours and forty minutes, the internet would have you believe. With their iPad charged, the little monsters could even stay occupied for an hour or two. The rest of the time they whined, but even that could be broken up with a quick pit stop at a Burger King or, better still, a McDonald’s. Usually the hardest part of the drive was just keeping awake; even in the daytime, the flat, unbending prairie landscape had a way of sucking you in.

It must have been a kind of madness to leave the electronics at home this time, Mike figured, as his twelve-year-old daughter kicked the back of his seat for the hundredth time. The other day he had looked at his kids (his youngest already eight) and realized he could not distinguish one single summer vacation from the other. It was all the same and mostly a blur, just like the yellow canola fields and big blue sky they passed but never really looked at every summer. Didn’t they want to do something special? Marcy was already looking at boys and kissing her poster of Harry Styles before bed every night. Next year she’d be a teenager. She might get a job busing tables; she might not even want to go on family vacation anymore and would have the excuse of work to lay on him.

Then it struck him. They’d never been to the Badlands. A natural wonder practically in their backyard, and in all these years they’d never been. He warmed to the idea, already basking in the nostalgia his kids would one day pour on him like a sweet balm in his old age: stories about the great time they had that one year, that last year before the real world came flooding in and swept them away into the lifelong routines of work and responsibility.

He decided they would leave extra early, see the sights at Big Muddy, and then spend a night in a motel. Len had protested; if they were going to stay somewhere, it should be a hotel. But he wasn’t made of money and he was already burning the extra gas to make this trip special.

He told the kids not to pack their electronics, they were going to have good, old-fashioned fun.

The protests had been swift and severe.

“Nothing old-fashioned is good,” insisted Marcy. “If it were good, it would be the now-fashioned.”

“We’re going to see the sights, Marce,” said Mike. “Take it in. No filters.”

“That’s not fair! Lots of grass, old rocks, and road. Big whoop.”

“If you paid attention, you might find it’s a very nice whoop,” said Mike. “You’ll look back on these trips one day. Best days of your life.”

“Kill me now,” said Marcy, flopping back onto her bed.

Aaron took it a little better, but his eyes teared up when he was told he couldn’t bring the family laptop to watch movies, either.

“I’ll be so bored,” he said, turning on the waterworks. Silent tears slipped down his ruddy cheeks. “And so will Marcy.”

“Are you crying?” said Mike, not sure if it was good parenting to laugh at his kid. But he was so tired, had been for twelve years. Confused laughter was forever on a knife’s edge with a parent.

“I don’t want to go to the Bad Man’s, I just want to go to grandma’s.”

Aaron tipped his head back like Charlie Brown and started to howl, revving up to a good bawl. Mike backed out of the room and shut the door.

They were nearing Moose Jaw. Soon they would be in unfamiliar territory. Mike leaned across the gearshift, one eye peeking over the grimy dashboard, and slapped the glove compartment until it flopped open.

“Hey, honey. Dig out the map and get me some directions, will ya?”

“I can’t. We left our phones,” moaned Len, head back and eyes closed as she fanned her face with an expired Subway coupon book.

“Paper maps, honey, we have paper maps.”

With one eye over the dash and one hand steady on the wheel, Mike shuffled through old take-out napkins, a waterlogged car manual, and a lifetime worth of dead air fresheners. His hand landed on a crusty sheaf of pages torn from an atlas found at a yard sale years ago. He tossed the papers to Len’s lap and sat back up. The blood rushing to his head made him see silver spots.

Len sipped from the jumbo Gatorade bottle she’d had safely nestled between her knees. It wasn’t Gatorade. Without opening her eyes, she held the pages backwards over the console. Bub, lying on the middle seat, tried to lick her wrist.

“Marce, read the maps for Daddy.”

“Can I have a dollar?”

“You can have a dollar.”

“Marce, read the maps,” said Mike, “or we give Aaron the dollar.”

“I want a dollar,” whined Aaron.

“You got to work for money,” said Marcy, snatching the pages. “And I wouldn’t hire you for a million bucks.” Aaron started to cry.

“Marce,” said Len. “Hire your brother.”

“Five, if you hire your brother and pay him.”

Marcy shoved the papers at Aaron.

“One dollar. No benefits,” said Marcy, and Aaron started to read the maps out loud, happy to be making a wage. Marcy lounged back again and licked her lips; there wasn’t anything good you could get with four dollars.

“We were making good time,” he muttered as the kids bolted from the car, heading straight to the last unoccupied picnic table beside the gas station restaurant. They clambered on top and took turns leaping as far off as they could.

Len slipped on her sunglasses and broad hat as she cradled her bottle under one thin arm. Bub barked at them from the back seat. Len cringed at the light.

“God it’s so hot. How can a place that gets so cold get so hot?” She was from Victoria. She missed the unsurprising climate.

Mike began digging through the trunk. “Place this flat, it’s like a clean slate; the weather can be as extreme as it wants.”

“I don’t think that’s right.”

He found the cooler at the very back, after taking out their assorted luggage and the plastic bags for extra shoes. He handed out sandwiches at the table: peanut butter and banana for Aaron, cheese for Marcy, cucumber and ham for Len and him. They leashed Bub to the leg of the table and filled his water dish from the gallon jug they’d packed.

Mike smiled around at his family as they quietly ate their sandwiches and watched the other travelers. His heart swelled with pride. This was it. This was the stuff of memory, of Norman Rockwell, of Americana. Wrong country, but same idea: The Great Family Car Trip. He’d brought his old digital camera and now was the perfect time for a picture. He’d even print this one out, display it somewhere they would always look at it and remember the good times. He got up wordlessly (he didn’t want to spook the moment) and headed back to the car.

A huge SUV had pulled up beside their car. It was dark blue and, despite the dusty summer roads, was so clean Mike could see himself in its doors like a warped mirror. Two little girls in matching unicorn t-shirts hopped out of the back doors. A young woman in cute yoga pants followed suit from the passenger seat. The girls stretched as their father opened his door. It banged into Mike’s passenger-side door. The young father saw Mike, and then carefully stepped out of his car. He straightened his polo shirt as Mike stood by.

“Hey, this your car? Don’t think it left a mark.” He noticed there were scratches all down the doors, from mirror to taillight.

“No, I’m over . . . over there.” Mike pointed vaguely off across the lot. The two girls and their mother were heading to the restaurant. “Family trip?”

“We just got back from Castle Butte,” said the young man, not moving from his car. He hit the key fob and his doors chirped locked.

“We’re on our way there, too,” said Mike proudly. But the SUV man shook his head. He slipped on a pair of Ray-Bans and dropped his keys into the pocket of his shorts.

“Weather’s supposed to change. This might be a bad time to be getting there.”

“We got turned around coming down here,” said Mike, as though this might help things. “Son couldn’t read a map.”

“From here it’s a straight shot, more or less. But there’s a shortcut,” he added. “If you go back about five kilometers–it seems counterintuitive, I know—but in the end it’ll cut off about thirty minutes of drive time.”

“We know where we’re going.” Mike had not liked the defensive tone that had crept into his voice. Neither did the young man. He turned his back to Mike and began to walk around his vehicle.

“Just saying, the window of opportunity might be closing for today.”

“We’re just heading out. ”

“Okay.” And the young father strolled off to meet his girls who were quietly waiting under the restaurant portico. Mike stood looking after him, the sun beating on his balding head.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” he told his family, back at the picnic table. “Time’s wasting.”

“We just sat down,” said Len.

“You can sit in the car.”

The kids were chasing each other. Aaron had Bub running with him. The dog spotted a ground squirrel and bolted, jerking the boy to the ground and dragging him over the dusty grass. Aaron dropped the leash. Bub got the squirrel and bit it in half, happily flinging half away as he chomped up the butt-end and ran to Mike to show off his prize. Aaron got to his feet. He was covered from neck to knees in big, ugly grass stains. He began to scream. Marcy tackled the dog, shouting, “I got the sonovabitch!”

“Marce!” said Len.

“Let’s go!” shouted Mike. Half of the picnickers were watching the show now. He grabbed Bub by the collar and, hunched over, began to drag him away before he remembered the leash. “In the car, now.”

Aaron cried that he hadn’t eaten his apple yet.

Mike tied the dog to the table and threw half-eaten sandwiches and bent paper plates into the cooler. He dumped the rest of the water on Bub’s snout to wash the squirrel off. At the car, he somehow managed to get the dog in the back and everything in the trunk in less than five minutes. The kids took another ten. Len sat in the passenger seat, her head back and eyes closed. Aaron refused to get in the car if Bub was still there, on account of him ruining his favorite Batman t-shirt.

“For Christ’s sake, he’s a dog! He didn’t know,” said Mike. “You were the one running him.”

“It’s completely your fault,” agreed Marce.

“Marcy, get inside.”

“Bub’s all wet.”

“Kids, get in the car. Mommy’s melting!” moaned Len.

Mike saw the SUV man coming out of the restaurant. His daughters stood at his side like obedient shadows. Mike flung open the door and picked his wailing boy up by collar and waistband and tossed him inside. Marcy, with Aaron between her and the dog, jumped in after. The stench of hot rubber lay in their wake as Mike put the pedal to the metal and they fishtailed on the dusty asphalt back onto the highway.

The car was hotter than ever. The unrolled windows were no help. Aaron wouldn’t stop crying. He had worked himself up and was hiccupping uncontrollably, maintaining a whine like a pierced balloon. Every time he began to calm down, Marcy would gnash her teeth at him, re-enacting Bub’s exuberant kill, and get him started again. Len, unable to cope with the heat and noise, pounded back the rest of her bottle in three open-neck chugs and passed out, cheek stuck to her seatbelt, only rousing long enough to groan, “Too hot.”

Mike could see thunderheads in the distance. The park would be closed off if it started to rain, and then what? Without taking his eyes off the road, he bunched the atlas pages together in his fist and thrust them at Aaron like a trash bouquet.

“Find a shortcut, Aer.”

“He’ll just mess it up,” said Marcy.

“Daddy needs a shortcut!”

“I’ll stop this car, I swear to god!”

Marcy grabbed the pages and Mike, eyes dead ahead, was never sure if she did it on purpose. But the second she had them, Marcy let out a big, cartoonish, “Oh, no!”

The map pages fluttered around the cab like panicked birds. Before Mike could shout at her to get them back together, they were sucked out the back windows and sent tumbling in the tailwind of the car. Even Marcy looked shocked at how fast it’d happened.

Mike’s stream of obscenities was incoherent. All he’d wanted was a good time, to give his kids a trip to remember. Was that too much to ask? He was sure he’d remember this trip; only a river of vodka could wash this one away. He took a breath. A species of laugh that was not entirely healthy escaped his lips. The kids quieted at once. In the stillness, he heard a flapping. A single page had gotten stuck to the sticky console between the seat and the cupholders. He grabbed it, his head nodding down and then up as he tried to read the topographical features and keep his eyes on the road. A horn blared as he crossed the median and he swerved out of the way.

A grin pressed his lips back. The page was more worn than the others had been, like it had come from a different atlas. But the map was just what he needed. Up ahead, there’d be a turnoff; it’d take them right to where they wanted to go. They’d make up for their pit stop and then some. Why hadn’t he just looked at the maps himself from the start? Old-fashioned maps, they never let you down!

No sooner had he read the directions than did the turnoff appear. A crusty wooden signpost no higher than a mailbox with faded, white letters spelling out BAD LANDS materialized so fast he almost asked if the others saw it, too. Mike hit the brakes and cut hard to the right. The skidding car kicked up a plume of dust and rocks. The kids were thrown into one another; Bub hit the floor and yelped; Len jolted awake and grabbed her door handle, skinning her knuckles.

The new road was not as well-maintained as the main road, but it was empty. Mike could see some hills in the distance, and he laughed again. This road probably gave some of the best views. Locals probably knew all about this road but kept it to themselves.

The smile had become plastered on Mike’s face. Not a single car behind them or in front; it was clear driving. Even the clouds didn’t look so dark; everything was a little bit brighter. He pressed harder on the gas. Things were going to be fine.

“This doesn’t look right,” said Marcy after half an hour. The landscape was changing. The grass was greener and longer. The bare patches were hard and sharp, with huge juts of rock stabbing out of the ground at odd angles like stone knives. “We should turn back.”

“No, Marcy,” said Mike, grin fixed on his face. “We’re making great time.”

More rocks joined the sharp outcrops. Aaron thought they looked like the giant termite hills he’d seen on a nature show. Vines twisted up some of the rocks; flowers with huge, waxy leaves and enormous purple and yellow heads swayed between others.

“Michael,” said Len softly. The sky had taken on an interesting shade of pink. Small green clouds roiled above them, rubbing across the sky like enormous snail trails. The plant life on the sides of the road began to stretch and writhe.

Aaron began to cry, “Daddy, go back!” as Marcy put on a high, mocking voice, “Go back! Whine, whine, whine. That’s you. You just whine, whine, whine, whine!” she laughed, and Len began to fan herself again, “It’s too hot. Kids, please. I can’t take it.”

A huge, dark shadow passed over the car. Marcy began to giggle, a weird and guttural chortling. Aaron shrieked louder, “Go back!”

The air shimmered like warped glass. A smell like burning hair began to fill the car. Aaron rolled up his window, but the others stayed open. The overgrowth in the ditches whipped lightly at the car doors and created a syncopated, metal drumming.

Something darted in front of the car. Mike hit it dead on, thumping over the body, but they’d all seen it: a ground squirrel the size of a pit bull with teeth like knitting needles jutting out of its fleshy, pink mouth. The abomination got caught up under the car, bouncing the vehicle as it pounded along. Mike swerved to shake it loose, leaving a bloody trail for fifty meters before it was dislodged. Marcy laughed and beat on the back window. Aaron’s crying shrieks reached an almost soundless high.

“I can’t take it,” muttered Len, as the kids giggled and screamed, sinking deeper into her chair. “I can’t.”

The huge shadow passed by again. The whole car jolted. Mike glanced up. Massive claws punctured the roof with a crinkling grind of metal. The windshield exploded as the roof peeled back like a sardine can. The huge creature lifted upwards with two powerful beats of its leathery wings, dropping the scrap roof on the road behind them. The creature swooped low and shot past. Mike saw it had no face—just one huge, black eye.

“How does it eat!” shouted Marcy, laughing more steadily. She threw her arms around Mike’s seat and chest. Her forearms appeared greenish in the light, mottled with tiny, yellow warts.

“Daddy’s trying to drive,” he told her. There was a great ripping sound and half his headrest was bitten off.

The giant bat reeled around, coming back.

“Make dad turn around!” Aaron screamed, beating on his mother’s seat.

“I can’t,” Len muttered, over and over. “I can’t, I can’t . . .”

“We’re almost there, Aer-bear!” Mike cheered. The wind rushed through his hair, tossed his glasses aside and out of the car. He didn’t need them; he could see just fine. “Just a little further!”

The bat sailed over and, without losing a beat, grabbed Aaron. Within seconds, his screams were too distant to be heard.

“Wow!” said Mike. “Can that thing move!”

Marcy whirled around, jumped on her seat, and gibbered excitedly. She was no longer making words. Knots bulged up her spine and she dug at the seat with her clawed feet. Bub barked, scrambling to get into the front. Marcy caught the dog’s tail with her teeth. Blood slashed across the seat. With a frantic, almost human yelp, the dog leapt from the moving car and bolted into the ever-growing underbrush. Marcy screeched, vaulted from the car, and gave delighted chase.

“Don’t worry about the dog, honey,” Mike assured Len, his grin reaching all the way to his ears. “Marce’ll get him.”

“I can’t,” Len repeated. The words were flabby and sluggish. Her lips had become an upside-down U; the skin of her face stuck to her chin and her chest, as she slowly puddled into the seat. She melted to the floor in glossy, reeking tendrils.

“That’s okay, honey!” But when he looked over, she had already slipped out the crack at the bottom of her door. That was okay, too. Less weight in the car, faster on the road! Mike pressed down on the gas. The tailpipe dragged and sparked; licks of flame shot out the exhaust.

His eyes grew huge and excited as the wind whipped his hair around. Nothing like a good, old-fashioned road trip. He could see something ahead. The end of the road, maybe, or perhaps something bigger. He couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.