They weren’t kidding about being quick. I talked to Letty White last night, out in the sandhills where the sputters of phone reception just barely allowed us to discuss without Jay’s ear-splitting cry of “BETTY WHITE?” He overheard me mention her name to Lily, and there was no hope of a conversation in the house after that.
And now I’m back in Albuquerque, listening to Ms. White more or less recapitulate what was in the documents. I’ll be living here, but they won’t show me my room until after I get back from the trip. That’s right, I’m leaving in half an hour, in a car I haven’t seen yet.
“And this is Wyatt, our bursar… he knows your routes and how much things cost along them, so he’ll give you travel expenses any time you’re here.” A man whose reflective glasses, shaggy hair and ZZ Top beard more or less obscure his entire head nods to me. “We’ll set it up through the expense account.”
“Company card,” Wyatt adds in an unexpectedly deep voice, offering me a little plastic rectangle. “Sign whatever th’ell you want, I enjoy getting e-mail from the bank saying someone signed my name as Godzilla. They never really learn.”
Letty White purses her lips in clear disapproval, but does not contradict him. “Yes. You’ll get to meet Wyatt and the rest of our team once you’re back. This is quite urgent, though…” She whisks me away toward another door. As we pass the president’s office, a shadow moves behind a frosted-glass window, briefly catching my attention. I’m kinda curious to meet him, but I don’t really know how big the company is or if I ever will.
The door opens to what is clearly a stockroom, boxes neatly stacked on shelves in some areas and spilling over one another elsewhere. Letty pulls me through too quickly for me to do much more than catch the glances of two very similar-looking men leaning against the wall. They don’t seem to be paying us much attention.
We’ve suddenly left the air conditioning. Beyond the stockroom is a loading dock, shaded from the near-midsummer sun by an overhanging part of the building. Two trailers are attached to ports in the wall to the right, forming a wall for this little enclosure. A few cars are parked against the opposite face of the building.
Letty leads me down a short metal staircase to the blacktop. “This one’s yours.” She points out the second car. “Jeep Cherokee, 2008, just in case anything happens to it. Twelve thousand one hundred miles on it, automatic, registered to the company… there’s the gas tank… any questions?”
The car, like all the others, is a polished white, but the mirror housings are scarlet. I’d guess those are the company colors, so I’m not going to waste questions on that. “What am I delivering, and how soon do I need to get there?”
“Right.” Letty’s hand moves behind her body, and when it emerges again, a full-size padded manila envelope is in it, bulged out at the center. I have no idea how she was carrying that without me noticing. “This is the delivery. There’s nothing illegal in it, but I wouldn’t recommend opening that package… If you do, we’ll have to ask you to exercise the second security clause in your contract.”
I can’t really remember what that is. Letty doesn’t look like she’s going to tell me, either. When I don’t respond for a few seconds, she seems to remember the second part of my question. “Flagstaff... The address is on the package. The GPS is in the console. It needs to be there by seven o’clock.”
Most of the way across Arizona in nine hours. That sounds like it’s going to be close- no wonder she was so insistent on getting me out to the car. “Well, it sounds like I need to leave, then.”
“Yes,” Letty nods. “You should get something in return to bring back here. That isn’t urgent… but try to have it sometime tomorrow.”
I’m not going to ask what it is- I’d guess it’s punctuality, not inquisitiveness, that Letty White appreciates. “All right.” I take the package from her and open the car door. A wave of generic air freshener scent washes over me. “Anything else I should know?”
“Tell us if anything strange happens. It’s your first trip.” Well, that was a given. I thank her and slip behind the wheel. By the time I’m done adjusting the mirrors, she’s gone.
A turn of the key and the engine comes to life- but its vibrations seem to settle into every nerve in my body and amplify themselves until I’m nearly twitching with energy. This car, though it’s nothing special, is company property and I haven’t driven regularly at any point in my life. I got this job on luck and bluster, and hadn’t really thought about how I would actually do it. I inch the car backward cautiously, mind trying to calculate how to avoid scraping against the cars on either side of me. Only once I’m out from between them does the chill begin to recede from my veins. Actually, it’s pretty hot in here despite the shade. I find the air conditioning pretty quickly and flip it to medium.
The Jeep seems like a lumbering beast as it pulls past the parked trailers, and I worry that I’m going to clip one even though I’m probably six feet away. It’s getting better, though. I stop, still in the lot, at the sudden transition to the blinding New Mexico sun at the edge of the overhang, give myself a few blinks to acclimate. There’s no traffic on the street, so I pull out before I’m forced to judge distances.
The next street is terrifying. After about two dozen cars pass, I floor it to the right and barely miss a parked car, a stop sign, and a van passing to my left. Or I can guess I barely miss them. I will readily admit I’m terrified at this point. This isn’t Mom’s rust bucket, and I’m not cruising through the empty streets of Laguna at thirty miles an hour. Well, I’m still going thirty. It just feels a lot worse. Once I can get to the interstate it’ll at least be familiar.
The GPS finally locates the address on the package. It thinks it’s less than five hours away, too, which is a bit of a surprise to me. I have almost four extra hours in case I screw up. That helps a bit, until the light changes and a trucker behind me blasts the horn.
By the interstate I’m fine, though. It’ll still take me a few days to get fully used to the Jeep, I expect, but at least I’m not actively steering away from objects two lanes away any more. This is the same route home I drove yesterday. It’ll be a different matter to see whether I don’t develop a whole new case of nerves once I’m west of Laguna Pueblo.
It’s quite the effort not to pull off at the exit for Old Route 66. I’m practically within sight of where Jose should be mid-shift now, tinkering with one of his family’s craft projects until the next customer arrives. It would only be a few minutes out of the way to stop by home and show off the new car to… Grant, Dylan, and Jay, I suppose. I can show them on the return trip. Mom and Lily might be there by then.
The good thing about my lack of driving experience is that I make it past the county line without even noticing. I’m probably fifteen minutes farther west than I’ve ever driven before when the panic sets in, and somehow this realization does nothing to blunt my fears. It’s fine, I tell myself. I have a cell phone. The road is practically empty.
That much is true. I’ve passed a truck every few minutes, the occasional car scattered in, but the road is really empty. Other than a bit of lunchtime traffic around Grants, which was mostly on side roads and what I can see of Old Route 66 while I’m not white-knuckling the wheel to keep myself in the absolute center of my lane, it’s been a fairly solitary trip. I’m making good time, and the Jeep isn’t even rattling when I go over the interstate speed limit like Mom’s car does.
Which is a bit of a relief, because when I’m nervous I need to go to the bathroom. And eat something. What I didn’t consider about the trip time is that I can’t exactly drive that far non-stop. I’ve been going for about an hour and a half, and I don’t think I’ve ever driven this much at one time before. My butt feels strange.
I pull in at a McDonald’s in the first thing that looks like a town after the MCKINLEY COUNTY sign. I’d go through the drive-thru to try to get there faster, but I’m terrified of getting into an accident because I don’t know if I can eat and drive at the same time. And I’m kinda expecting that Letty White will go over the interior of the car with a magnifying glass.
Four men are lounging around the counter, talking to each other in some Native American language. They clam up at my approach; the two behind the counter watch me with expressions of mild resentment, while the two on this side slouch off to one of the tables. I awkwardly order a chicken sandwich and fries, swipe the company card, and sign my name as Scarlett O’Hara in hopes of getting on Wyatt’s good side. The guy behind the counter gives me a weird look when I pause a moment before signing, but he gives me my receipt and resumes talking to his friends as soon as I’m sitting.
A fifth man, one I hadn’t noticed earlier, turns to face me from a window seat. “Your car?” He looks like he stepped right out of the Old West, and his voice sounds ancient enough to match. I stammer an affirmative. “You work for Nissan?”
I’m confused, and the other four men are watching me now. This is getting weird. “No, it’s a Jeep.” Evidently that’s the wrong answer; the old man continues staring with an expression so stern it seems he somehow disapproves of me. “I work for Gillan’s Mortuary Services.”
This seems to satisfy him. “Peace go with you, then. We don’t want Nissan here.” He turns back to the window, the conversation resumes, and I’m left wondering what just happened. I’m in unfamiliar country, though, and I’m not going to poke around for answers.
When the food comes I wolf it down, use the (surprisingly clean) bathroom, and head back out to the car. From out here it’s clear that the old man’s eyes are following me. I accidentally make the tires squeal on the way out of the lot, wincing at the sound, but at least I feel a little safer once I’m off the property.
You’ll get used to it, I tell myself. People are weird on the road. You’ll learn to not be bothered by them. I’m not entirely sure I believe it, but it’s a bit too late to back out now. I’m almost to Arizona, after all.
What I am getting used to is the driving. The car’s running smoothly, and I can take the opportunity to watch the mountains pass. Which is breathtaking for the first few minutes, still pretty cool through the next few towns, and less interesting by the time I reach the Arizona border. I can see the sign far enough away to tense with excitement. It’s my first time driving to another state, after all, and that doesn’t happen every day. But at this pace, it just whizzes by and I’m in a desert that looks exactly the same as the one in New Mexico.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
