U.S. Route - 285

The speed limit showed fifty-five, forty-five, thirty-five miles per hour, bold and black against the white on a steel picket. The signs reflected more daylight than the eye could detect in the shallow overcast, causing one to squint in the moment taken to read the post. A pulsing red glow hanged over the cross-hairs of US Route 285 and County Road 112, we slowed, Margot, my eldest sister, behind the wheel. I was sitting shotgun, Margot’s chocolate lab, Lily, lain behind me on the black leather of our grandparents’ old Nissan Maxima, surrounded by an overflow of bags and skis, boots and poles, which had to be packed through the fold in the middle seat.

We came to a complete stop and I woke from an inner-monolog that sounded like an exchange and dispute of personal philosophies, concerning dreams and sacrifice and love and risk and woes and temptation, between men with liquor on their breath. Sitting up, I fanned myself with my shirt, listening to the heater fan clearly bustle, noisy and dignified. On our left was a gas station connected to an auto shop with high rising garage doors to accommodate the sort of agricultural machinery that modern farm techniques use today. I have never seen a tractor in use on any of the surrounding farmland, but it is not uncommon to see one in the shop when a door is lifted.

The building was brown and splintering on the other side of two green awnings, held upright over differently angled sets of gas pumps — at least, they used to be green; I know they were green at one point in time. I’ve gone in or past that road-word scene of yawning and stretching, coffee and tongue blisters, and flexed-back speed walking to the bathroom, probably thirty or forty, maybe fifty times in the last fifteen years, and at some point I suppose I stopped looking. But the mental image I have, clearly shows green awnings, upright over the gas pumps.

We turned left on to 285, going north.

The road is long and straight and narrow. Drainage ditches, barbed-wire fencing and pastures hug either shoulder in layers; and then more fences and dirt roads, cutting the land between properties. Two-story barns, mostly brown, stood separate from much smaller homes by comparison; American, and some Colorado, flags were raised in front of homes spaced near the highway; while others could be seen shivering near more desolated houses, each at the end of a long dirt drive, their back to 285. The number of flags at half-mass was evenly divided, but all wriggled against their mast with the same restlessness.

“So how come you didn’t do your writing this week?”

“I still wrote everyday,” I said, adjusting my focus to the return of conversation. “I just didn’t think any of it really fit the holiday spirit, ya know?”

“Like what? I wanna hear.”

I took that month’s Moleskin from my pocket and selected the least sentimental piece I could find, “Like,

There is a kind of low

that is best forgotten

As you excuse yourself for a smoke

And the sound of your own drunken sob makes you laugh.”

I read it without inviting sentiment or dispute, hoping she might laugh. She was sisterly in the way she did neither, but smiled, carrying the conversation into further goals and ambitions and means to achieve them — offering more advice than I can recollect.

We came on to the old lone tree, curator of his valley’s history, and a vault for travellers to conceal and preserve their child-like admiration for things which violate a common aesthetic. I held it in sight and anticipation, standing taller, wider and more bare without a shadow or background, waving us through with many jointed fingers as we approached. On further was the small blue sign with a white image of North and South Korea. Appropriate measures had to be taken to examine the underlying text and turn it into sense. But I’ve been told that if you go east or west long enough, eventually you’ll find yourself at their border.

Herds of brown and black cattle with white spots huddled together, emitting a single flow of steam from their nostrils. Few were isolated; such was one who stood peering at the road between barbed wires. I fixed my stare on to one of the black eyes for a moment of a second and saw the reflection of my sister’s silver Nissan pass through. Horses, too, were out in pairs and triplets with their necks pressed together, blinking through snow falling to their hoofs, as well as the windswept flakes orbiting around them.

Outside of Saguache, 285 begins to roll and the farms, cattle, horses and American flags skate from view. The hills were blasted when the road was built, but still you rise and fall through the missing wedges of earth at degrees which block oncoming traffic from view. Margot slowed into town, anticipating the appearance of a squad car behind the museum of old trucks, tractors and plows and that once colored the valley green; she was right, but we both followed the impulse to check our mirrors and make certain he stayed idle. The road forks at the center of town, giving the option of going left in the direction of Gunnison or Crested Butte, or to go right and stay on 285. There was a part of me wanting to go left.

“That’s where I lost grandma and grandpa,” I said, pointing to a yellow restaurant that came into view.

“You lost them?” the corners of her eyes wrinkled.

“When I was driving them so they could visit Ester when she was still at Craig. On our way back I stopped at that gas station,” I pointed, “to use the bathroom and when I came back they were gone.”

“They just left?”

“Yeah, I came out, the car was there where I left it running, but I could see no one was in it and they took the keys and locked the doors.”

“And they were in that café?”

“Yeah, I waited for them for a while, but it was hot so I went to look for ’em, and when I got close to the restaurant grandpa saw me and called me in.”

Margot laughed.

“Grandma tells me every goddamn time I talk to her now, how that was the best grilled cheese she’s ever had. Every time I talk to her, she loved it.”

“Oh grandma,” she said, taking on more of a Chicago accent, laughing and wrinkling the bridge of her nose, too, this time.

About a mile on the other side of Saguache we came into range of a decent radio station. Since we got on this side of Wolf Creek, our music options had been limited; the cassette player stopped working, rendering our only phone adapter useless. The C.D. player worked, but you couldn’t skip tracks or eject the C.D., and if you switch to the radio and back, the C.D. would start again from the beginning. It was a Cold Play album and a mystery as to whom it belonged. We gave it a try, and abandoned it by the middle of the third song; then flitted through Christian rock and mariachi on the FM for seconds at a time, before resorting to the low volume of the speaker on my phone — when service was available.

The good station rocked through the ages and we both sat a little more comfortably in our seats. The sky was getting thicker, holding in the same feel of early morning that we had when we started driving, while we pushed on with Journey, Kansas, Elton John, Beatles, Billy Joel, Zeppelin, Cramps, Sublime, Nirvana and more that I can’t cite with certainty. Heart Shaped Box played and I told Margot how Mom destroyed me when I was twelve when she casually told me Kurt Cobain was dead, and had been for a decade. I had no idea, I was crushed, I was obsessed with Nirvana, I said. She thought it was great. You should write that story, she said.

While my Guitar Gently Weeps came on and I asked Margot which Beatle was her favorite. Paul, she told me. His attitude and general professionalism was, and remains, graceful, she thought. He’s still jam with the best of ’em, too. The legend of John Lennon was very idealistic, seemed to take himself a bit too seriously, which she didn’t admire as much. George was mine. When she wanted to know why I said because he was the coolest of ’em, whether it was cocaine or yoga, he went all out, and he was a great songwriter and guitar player. I pointed to the tape deck and told her, on a hunch, that he wrote this. But being cool wasn’t a very good reason and I wished I could have explained myself better. Favorite song? I asked. A Day in the Life, she elaborated. Yours? Rocky Raccoon. Really? Why? I didn’t say.

The snow on the road did not look like the snow atop the frozen mud between the road and pastures, or anywhere in the distant nature. It wouldn’t stick to the pavement, nor settle nor camouflage with the black. The sugar dust contorted like smoke under a pane of glass, chasing after cars. It made for good entertainment, within the realm of entertainment at our disposal; especially, I imagine, for Margot. Being attentive to the slither and sway of the ice came under the same tax as minding our lane and distance from the car ahead, but with a purchase of grace to appreciate or feel a part of as she drove.

In Villa Grove, we were brought down to a subaquatic pace. It’s a town, of sorts, that seems under imminent threat of being blown away each time the wind picked up.

“This is where you were talking about before, with the coffee shop?”

“Yeah,” she pointed, “it’s really a bakery. That’s not the one we’re stopping at, but it was good the one time I was there.”

“Free Wi-Fi,” I said, noticing the sign. “And it’s got a motel next door.”

“Yup, it’s all part of the same building, actually. You place your order at the checkout counter, there’s a book store in there too, and they have a bar in the back.”

“Ooph, what a gem. What more could you want?”

“Nothing at all,” she said.

Lily poked her head over the center console and Margot scratched her jaw with her palm facing up, smiling and speeding up, away from the open, into a deep, thin valley. A silent imposition replaced the soap-bubble banter, and for a while I thought about why George was my favorite Beatle, and wondered what Margot was thinking and if she was wondering the same about me, and if Lily ever wondered.

Every rock, fossil and spec of dirt, was the same as it was under the rubber tramping of my own, and mostly others’, before. The road was long and straight and narrow; you see it like the path of ammunition before the bullet slaps; sure, only, that a force greater than, or equal to, dynamite and gunpowder lain beyond.

White fog was pouring from the mountains on the left and right, spun, swelled into its own shadow, and joined some distance ahead. Yellow and dead, half-buried prairie grass seeped into the scene of greys and lighter greys, giving the low fog and dirty snow an pallid imitation of color, flickering like an old cinema film between signposts and mile markers. I could see Kansas, unearthed from a landscape defined by jagged peaks and the bluest skies; it was 1807, East Prussia, and Napoleon was readying his troops for the Battle of Eylau; it was a tremor, a starving plea; it was murder and secrets and lies; a pale gold elegy, carved in the fog and ice.

I looked over and wondered what Margot was thinking and if she was wondering the same about me, and if Lily ever wondered.

Up and over the pass at the end of the valley, snow was falling wetter and thicker than before, but visibility had improved. We passed through Poncha Springs and turned right with the highway, going north, toward Buena Vista. Margot went by the turnoff that stays with 285.

“Coffee,” she said, answering my look.

“Oh, right.”

“It’s the only place I’ll treat my self to a fancy coffee.”

“Yeah? What’s the place called?”

“The Brown Dog Café,” she said, lifting her Nalgene and facing a sticker with a brown dog in my direction, then smiling at Lily in the rear view mirror, “They have good sandwiches and stuff too if you need some lunch.”

“Yeah, I’m not really hungry, but I know I should be,” I said.

“Try something, they’re good.”

We pulled into the parking lot of the Brown Dog Café, it was snowing and I could see Margot’s nose turn pink in the wind and I knew mine must look the same. She let Lily out to go to the bathroom while I hustled inside and stood behind a woman looking down, considering the assortment of sweets stored in an arching glass display. The barista was looking at her expectantly so I kept my place and waited.

“Donna, let’s order someth’ng,” said a man, whom I hadn’t noticed initially, waiting by the register.

Margot came in behind me, kicking her shoes on the floor, cross-armed and red nosed.

“Anything look good?” she asked.

I ordered the chicken pesto sandwich with a side of chips and the same coffee as Margot, a medium Venetian. The bathroom doors were situated along the wall of the sitting area and I had to excuse myself to several of the patrons as I weaved through tables, my back flexed. Margot had our orders in her hand when I returned. Leaving, I tried to hold the door open for Donna and her partner behind us, but she slowed her walk, gazing up at something on the wall; I saw Margot disappear around the corner to the car and gave it up, letting the door slam behind me.

“Fuckin’, Donna,” I said, answering the over-the-shoulder look Margot gave me while unlocking the Nissan.

Getting out of the lot, we had to come to a sharp stop when a Honda Pilot backed out in front of us. Laughing our annoyance, we were sure it was Donna.

“Some people,” I said, taking out a chip.

“She was so oblivious in there. When they called our order she was standing in the way at the counter; I was next to her, said, scuse me,” an octave lower, “Excuse me. Finally her husband was like, Donna! and she moved.”

“Fuckin’, Donna.”

“Fuckin’, A.”

“What’s in this?” I’d just tried the coffee. It was very good.

“Mmm, four shots of espresso, not sure what the flavors are.”

“I’m gonna say,” taking a small sip and moving my lips, “white chocolate,”

“I get cinnamon”

“I get that too. Yes, white chocolate, cinnamon mocha.”

“It’s damn good, whatever it is,” said Margot, raising her cup and the corners of her lips, taking a drink.

The good radio was gone and the roads were sloppy. Dirt and slush splattered against the windshield from the tires we followed. Every few minutes Margot would pull the little black toggle by the steering wheel to emit a stream of wiper-fluid and clear the glass. Any time a passing car sprayed us, we called them Donna and damned their existence. The only stations on the FM were bad pop-country and Christian-rock, and we invented a game we called, Country or Christian? Giving ourselves a moment of impulse to guess which was being played. But after two rounds it just sounded like Cold Play and quit being fun. A pop song came on that misappropriated the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Take, and we killed some time abusing the lyrics and discussing the Frost’s poem, skimming the surface of a rhetorical inquiry. I recited the lines the best I could and Margot corrected me when I misspoke. It has to do with making permanent decisions, she told me, using a greater range of vocabulary. I agreed and added with amateur distinction, you cannot know what might have been, he followed his gut and curiosity — for better or worse — and that was the only knowable difference.

From there, the conversation tiptoed around the sentiment of my return to Nashville the following day. When she asked if I was excited to get back, I told her yes, that it was good to be home but it will be good to get back. I told her how I was working really hard just to be okay, and she affirmed that that is where I should be right now. You’ll be all right, she told me; which is what people say when they don’t know what to say, or don’t think saying what you want to hear will help. I was glad to sidestep the prospect of getting all soppy.

The only traffic light in Fairplay turned green as we coasted up the hill toward its perch. We had no desire to come to a complete stop, not for a bathroom break or food or gas, not for anything. Scheduled stops had been made and the only way to get to where we were going was to keep moving. The authority of the only traffic light only threatened to undermine our intentions, causing the momentum we had going forward, to leave us behind.

The light was green and within all of a minute we had seen both ends of a town whose only contribution to us at that time was to indicate a timeframe of an hour and a half more of driving until we got to Denver. The road wound and degraded, rose sharply and bent around open fields following a current of power lines that travel in threes along high brown posts, with an occasional crow or larger bird of prey to see settled on the wire if one has the patience or good fortune to see it.

“This is where I hit that fog that I was telling you about. It was outside of anything I imagined, I could see better with my lights off, I couldn’t see two feet in front of the car with the lights on so I had to turn them off.”

“Yeah, that can blind you more than help. The light would just shine right back at you.”

“It was pretty scary when I had cars coming at me though, there was no depth perception and the road isn’t straight here, I could only see their lights a little to one side, follow the bit of my line that I could see and wait. Some people had their fucking brights on, I wanted to kill them! Because you’re blind, completely blind when that much light gets caught in the fog.”

“I had the same thing happen to me, with Anna, in Montana. Coming home from skiing, some asshole almost pushed us off the road. He did, actually, but it wasn’t bad because there was a big shoulder that we went in to.”

“Fucking people, man.”

“Fuckin’ A,” she concurred.

“It was like moving through a dream though. I couldn’t take my hands off the wheel and my phone was playing some crazy tunes, I don’t know what, but it was a trip.

“But when I got out of it, that S.O.B. song by Nathaniel Rateliff came on, and it was just perfect.”

She exclaimed, “Love that!” laughed and focused again on driving.

That fog came on a night I was going to see my girlfriend at the time, and catch a show at the Ogden; I remember imagining what I would do if I found the tour bus on the side of the road. I would stop to see everyone was all right and offer a ride to the band and help whomever I could help — the car I was driving that night was more spacious and impressive than my own. I would speak knowledgably about their genre of music and converse about the time I saw them in Grand Junction and how we spoke briefly in Aspen, and they would be impressed; and I would be modest and cordial and not ask too many questions and they would appreciate that.

It was my girlfriend’s parents who leant me their car. It was a very nice Jeep Grand Cherokee that I only avoided defacing by an unconscious, one degree turn of the wheel and by slamming by foot on the gas through a gap in a heard of deer that appeared too suddenly for the brake, a few miles outside of Buena Vista. My girlfriend lived with her sister in the sectioned ground floor of a white house with chipped green trim around the window, tucked along a one-way street crowded with trees and two and three-story homes, each a different color, and competitive parking; there was a piano that was never played in the foyer, ancient wooden floors that moaned, a furnace that clanked and pipes that leaked — it was warm and glimmered like gold foil wrapped around a chocolate truffle.

We walked a few blocks to where the sidewalks are more even and unbroken, ordered pizza in the shop, went across the street for more wine, picked up our slices and took it home with us. After the food and drink, was more drink and the cotton comfort of baggy sweatpants; we spoke in whispers and fell asleep watching Friends on her computer.

I situated the speaker my phone-speaker against the windshield so it might amplify the sound a bit better. It wasn’t great, but it helped a little.

The last stretch of road before climbing Kenosha Pass hugs the hills to the west and leaves the rest of the settled earth open for speculating minds to ponder what it might have looked like if their eyes had been the first to ever occupy those rocks and brush. There would have been much higher grass, and who knows what, hiding in the trees on the hill. A long rising bend turned the country we were leaving into view, then took us higher and away so, if one cared, it could be seen, flipped, in ones rear view mirror, appearing much further away.

The windshield wiper fluid was becoming pitiful to watch, dribbling to the lowest point of the glass and getting pushed from side-to-side without achieving any semblance of its desired effect. Margot handed me her Nalgene and told me to dump some of the water on to the windshield.

I flopped. More concerned with holding my grip when I stuck my hand out of the window and pushed it against the congealed air, I gave the Nalgene an ineffectual flick from the wrist, an eager thrust and a stubborn jab, wasting nearly every ounce of water on the passenger side of the windshield, or else, mostly (80–85%), over the roof. I pulled my arm back, rolling up the window and looked over at Margot, praying she would laugh. I wanted to laugh. Hell, I thought it damn funny. But she was focused on the shrinking angle of vision she had. She was kind not to scold me, though. I hoped for laughter and feared scolding, but she was sisterly in the way she did neither.

I could just see the taillights of the Donna ahead of us, Margot had a good break in the caked glass that she was pointing her nose down to see through; the sludge was getting thicker all the time, but we were fine. I knew well enough that there was no helpful way for me to worry. I surrendered to that fact, adhering to the nameless advice circulating in my head telling me to enjoy the thrill of dread. It’s a voice that only speaks when there is no real threat; it was familiar and I trusted it, grinning stupidly and toying with my sister’s anxious dog as her nose went to and fro between the top of my shoulder and her rolled-up window.

There was a rest stop at the top of the pass and we pulled into it. Margot hopped out and I did too, following her lead.

“Grab some snow,” she said, scooping a handful.

I agreed, and we used the snow to dilute and clear much of the rust colored ice from the windshield, ran the wipers and retreated into the Nissan with our fingers bright pink. Margot circled the far lot, believing an exit would present its self, then the middle lot, me silent, before leaving from where we entered with a slightly larger angle of vision.

We passed through Conifer without slowing down, and minutes later, under a walking bridge; on one side was a high school football field with two-dimensional field goals, a black track where the snow hadn’t stuck, bleachers on the far side with a white booth at the top, middle of the stand; the school on the other side, made of grey bricks and steel, hosted one of the first school shootings to get national recognition, and it never managed to wriggle from the grip of that history.

We climbed up and through Turkey Creek Park and dropped into the latent switchbacks preceding Morrison, the Red Rocks Amphitheater and the first sight of Denver. At the first turn, I knew the foreign tether of anxiety, tugging dully at my small intestine. Margot was composed looking as we eased out of a slow brace, angling toward the second turn, saddling in the right lane so others could pass if they wished, our windshield steadily collecting more snow and dirt, the concrete partition keeping the oncoming headlights out of view. There was time to breathe and think and wear down the effect of a few feelings stitched into this section of 285:

I had two friends from my dorm with me in my car, en route to Boulder. When we dropped into the switchbacks, I was nerveless and manic. I approached the first turn in the left lane, picking up headlights in my side mirror all the time. The second turn was the same and on the third, hit ice; black and placed with the methodology of an expert trapper. Without conscious decision, I took my foot off the brake and felt the car steer its self, my fingers holding the wheel like the head of a snake in each hand; and for a moment that contained every look my parents ever gave me, we glided, not knowing or feeling a thing.

The left front bumper went into the partition, thunder crashed and spun us right; the back-left hit and my heart broke — in the pause before the news of loss takes shape on a delicate tongue and you feel as though you have no lungs. Headlights spilled in through the passenger-side windows, and that was it. We came to a sudden, elastic stop and looked upstream into a procession of headlights, shaking, hovering in our seatbelts.

A vibrato sound-call proved all were whole. A sudden jab at the window broke the air, and for the first time I knew I felt fear, I remember it as if I were riding shotgun. Someone had pulled in behind us, he asked if we were all okay, we told him we were, he shook his head and left. My car was in a snow bank on an extended dirt shoulder between two guardrails, where a state trooper might watch for speeding. We got out and evaluated the damage. The front bumper came loose, but it was loose before and only needed popping into place, the corner of the back-left bumper got burned against the partition, but there was no serious damage. Those two pushed while I steered out of the snow bank and we arrived in Boulder an hour later.

Margot’s nose was pointed down, peering through the glass as we came down. The geology of Red Rocks was muffled by sideways sleet; then coming through the underpass of 470, we fell behind three lanes of blinking taillights that showered my sister’s Nissan Maxima in slush and dirt. Running the wipers only smeared mud across the glass and for a mile and half we felt our way down 285 until finding an exit I spotted on the map on my phone, going into the suburb, Littleton.

Taking it and rising toward an overpass, we steered right in the direction of a round about and pulled off, on to leveled earth that would have seemed peculiar if it hadn’t fit our needs so splendidly. Wordlessly, we got out of the car and started pulling snow toward us on the ground. It looked as though the snow had only reached the Front Range minutes before we did, and I had to drag it from a three-foot radius to get a handful. The slush and dirt froze into a layer of ice on the windshield and I let the snow fall out of my hand; Margot was rummaging in the loaded trunk for a scraper, damning its location and whoever buried it, and smiling at Lily with rosy cheeks through the window when she closed the lid.

“I can never remember which exit to take,” she said, looking up to the signs and Denver streetlights.

“I don’t know which is best, but I usually take Colorado; I mean Broadway,” I corrected myself, “I think any of these will get us there though, to Evans, I mean. Then, you know, that’ll take us there.”

The shapes of the buildings turned familiar. Margot lifted the blinker toggle with her left fingers pressed together, and we left Route 285 on to Santa Fe Drive. Feeling the road-wear in my back and legs, I sat up; reached for my spine, pulled the shirt I was wearing from my skin, and attempted a stretch. Gross and hungry, I stopped thinking as the snow-packed road milled under the tires of my sister’s old Nissan.