The Smell of Subway Bread on the Interstate

I-15 Northbound

 

Well, at least she’s feeling better, thought Becca, slightly perturbed by the manner in which her mom and Lee had ganged up on her. Becca couldn’t help but smile. For there she was, her mom, Rebecca, smoking a cigarette with her husband, Lee, while Becca sat in their beat-down Subaru with Analise at a gas station off I-15, next to a shitty black trash can in the hot asphalt, watching the cars, RVs, and semis cycling in and out of the parking lot. The sound of gas tanks opening. The smell of gasoline and trash and cigarette smoke and Subway bread wafting through the air. All parties narrowly missing death.

Becca thought about how unfortunate it was that in some way, they had survived while countless others succumbed to tragedy and destruction every day (the two injured in the shooting were still in critical condition, though likely to make it).

From Bangladesh to Utah. Suffering and death. And yet even with this survivor’s guilt, Becca couldn’t help but feel a tremendous sense of happiness for the situation they miraculously found themselves in, a situation that made Becca smile even as she was stunned slightly by her own sense of guilt and self-awareness. Lee and Rebecca finished their cigarettes, sharing an iced tea, tossed the butts in the black garbage can, and the four of them drove the rest of the way to Provo singing along to musicals, the smell of Subway still wafting through their car.

They wound north and the Wasatch Mountains came into view. The leaves were beginning to turn yellow and gold and they sparkled on the hillside like lava.