george, washington

The town of George, Washington (population 528), just east of the gorge, is the first lunch stop on our seven-day itinerary. We are an hour and thirty-seven minutes behind schedule as we pull off on exit 149 in the blistering heat of midafternoon. Had we arrived in 1983, we might have been treated to a slice of the World’s Biggest Cherry Pie (subsequently dethroned in Traverse City, Michigan in 1987, and again in Oliver, British Columbia, in 1990). However, those golden days of seventeen-thousand-pound pies have flown. As it stands, visitors are forced to settle for a six-story water tower emblazoned with our founding father’s silhouette, which looks more like the silhouette of an infant with Paget’s disease and a cauliflower ear.

The chamber of commerce really dropped the ball in George. Talk about missed opportunities! No gift shop. No powdered wigs, no wooden dentures, no coin-fed lie detector, no nothing. Okay, there’s a bronzed bust of General Washington outside a filling station on the near edge of town. Otherwise, a tour of George, Washington, might include the sheriff substation, a squat green portable surrounded by scorched lawn and a couple of parched-looking trees. Fire District No. 3, an equally squat gray edifice of the sort of cinder block construction one might expect to see in an outbuilding at Stalag Luft. The George Community Hall, the very nerve center of public life in George, a blotchy and windowless structure possessing all the architectural allure of a two-car garage. And no tour would be complete without a drive past aluminum-sided city hall, which with a few more windows might make a nice retail outlet for ball bearings. I can only hope that the town of Joe, Montana, has more to offer.

After a brief stopover at the foot of the water tower, during which Trev and I scrutinize President Washington’s silhouette in the manner of a Rorschach test, we lunch at a dubious Mexican restaurant on the edge of town, a dicey proposition given the recent state of Trev’s digestive tract. But Trev is in high spirits at last and insists on a fiesta. The place is called La Paloma or La Palamino or Los Pintos, but the pretense ends there. The interior could just as well be any truck-stop diner from Cle Elum to Bismarck. They’re playing newfangled country over the sound system—Clint somebody or Toby what’s-his-name or maybe that Kenny guy. The waitress is rail thin in that chronic smoker kind of way. If she had a name tag it might say Lana Sue. She looks about thirty-five long years old.

Trev orders the fish tacos in spite of my nonverbal exhortations—a prominent two-handed yield gesture, accompanied by an emphatic shaking of the head. The scablands of eastern Washington are not generally noted for their seafood.

Trev winks at me as Lana Sue takes leave. “What can I say? I’m feeling reckless.”

Our food arrives much too quickly. My beef chimichanga is the size of a yule log, slathered in an improbable gray-brown gravylike substance.

“Yikes,” says Trev, inspecting his entrée. “Blue tacos? Uh, how did that happen?”

Maybe it’s just the afternoon light filtered through tinted windows, but the fish does seem be a bit on the blue side. “Looks like you got the Smurf tacos,” I say.

Trev smiles warily, picking around the edges of his blue tacos with a fork, wondering perhaps whether he should attempt to pick one up or abort the whole ungodly mess. In the end, he decides to abandon the tacos in favor of his side of beans and rice. Meanwhile, I begin poking my way tentatively around the edges of the yule log, which has begun to sag beneath its own weight and seems to be breathing. The more I poke at the behemoth, the more it lets off steam and slumps in its gravy wallow, until I’ve exhausted the thing and it lies breathless, flat on its belly. I keep waiting for it to groan.

“How’s the beans?” I inquire.

“Not bad. How’s your, uh . . . how’s that thing?”

“Dead, I think.”

Near the end of the meal, by which point in time I’ve devoured roughly 20 percent of my burrito, my cell phone rings. The caller ID is unknown, though I’m fully expecting a check-in call from Elsa anytime now.

“Okay, Ben. This is it, do you hear me? I’m dead serious this time.” It’s Janet. She’s trying to sound tough, but I know she’s exhausted; I can hear it in her voice.

“Relax. I’m coming down there to finalize everything,” I assure her. “I swear. Everything’s ready to go.”

She knows I’m lying. “Oh, cut the crap, Ben. I’m coming up there the minute I get off of work, and you’re going to sign those papers, and this time I’m not going to leave without them.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Watch me.”

“It won’t do any good—I’m not there.”

“Then where are you?”

“I’m on my way to Utah.”

She’s greets this news with a silence so cold and dense it has a vacuum effect.

“For work,” I say.

I can feel her gritting her teeth on the other end of the line. “What kind of stunt is this, Ben? Exactly where are you?”

“Look, I swear, this isn’t a stunt, I’m not running. I thought we agreed that—”

“Where are you right now?”

“On the road.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“East of the mountains.”

“Okay, Ben, fine. That was your last chance. I’m officially done.”

“No, wait, listen.”

“I’m done listening. This time I’m not letting you talk me out of anything.”

“Please, wait. Just—”

But before I can finish, she hangs up on me.

Trev looks uncomfortable as he watches the hope drain from my face; a forkful of beans is poised halfway between his plate and his open mouth. In an attempt at levity, he tacks a frozen half smile on his face.

“You want a Smurf taco?” he says.