That was when they saw the couple at the side of the road. Folks dressed up like Eskimos: Everett thought for a second that he had conjured them up with his song. The two of them stood in the snow, under the branches of a big lodgepole pine. The man wore a blue parka and held up a broken cross-country ski. The woman wore red gaiters over wool trousers, a man’s peacoat, and a fur hat. They waved, and Everett slowed to a stop and rolled down the window.
“Nice day for a ski,” he said.
“It was,” the man said bitterly. He was about Everett’s height and age, not yet pushing forty, with a day or two of bristle on his chin.
“I broke a ski and we’re lost—” the woman began.
“We’re not lost,” the man said.
“We are completely lost,” the woman said.
She was younger than the man, with high, pink cheekbones in the cold. Everett felt friendly and warm from the tree and the singing.
“Your car must be close,” he said. “You’re on the road.”
“The car is on a different road,” the woman said.
“Well, we’ll find it,” Everett said.
In the rearview mirror, he saw Pam’s eyes widen at him from the back seat. She was slight and dark-haired, and accused him of favoring the kind of blonde who held sorority car washes. It was a joke, but it was partly true. With a bucket and sponge this girl would fit right in. But arguing over giving them a ride would make everyone uncomfortable, and Pam would agree in the end. Everett got out of the car and untied a nylon cord to open the back hatch. Pam had sleds and jackets in the back seat with her, and he thought she would want some separation of family and hitchhikers. She wouldn’t look at him now.
“You’ll have to sit with the juniper boughs,” he told the couple.
“Better than freezing in a snowbank,” the blonde said, climbing into the way back. Even in the wool pants, she had a sweet figure, of the car-soaping type.
“We really appreciate this,” the man said.
Everett shut them all in, lashed on the skis, and tied the tree down. It made no sense for Pam to be angry. This wasn’t country where you left people in the snow. The man looked strong but not too strong; Everett could take him, if he needed to. Back in the driver’s seat, Everett pulled onto the road, as snow fell in clumps off the big pine the couple had stood under.
His daughter turned around in her seat, as well as she could with her seatbelt on, and announced to the new passengers, “We have a CB radio.”
The warning tone in her voice came straight from Pam. It was identical in some technical, musical way to Pam’s We’re going to be late, and her I’m not going to tell you again.
“What’s your handle?” the man in the parka asked.
Anne Marie looked confused.
“Your name,” Everett explained. “On the radio.”
“Batgirl,” Anne Marie told the strangers, her cheeks flushing. Oh, he loved Anne Marie! Loved it when she blushed. There had been a rocky time when Pam was pregnant, when he had felt panicked and young and trapped, and slept with the wife of a friend. It had only been once, in 1974, after many beers at a co-ed softball game on the Fourth of July, but the girl had gone and told Pam. She said she needed to clear her conscience, which didn’t make any sense to Everett. He’d ended up driving Pam to the emergency room after a screaming fight, when she threw a shoe at him and started to have shooting pains in her abdomen. The doctors were worried: Pam was anemic, and if she lost the baby she might bleed to death. Everett spent the night in her hospital room, frozen with grief. The baby decided to stay put, and came along fine two months later, but the night in the hospital had scared him. He would never put his wife and child in danger again. He hadn’t put them in danger now, and he resented Pam’s eye-widened implication that he had.
“You got a handle?” he asked the hitchhikers in back.
“I’m Clyde,” the man said.
“Bonnie,” the woman said.
Everyone was silent for a moment.
“That’s really funny,” Everett finally said—though between his shoulder blades he felt a prick of worry. “You must have a CB, too.”
“No, those are our names,” the man said.
The CB crackled on. “What’s this ‘Continental Divide’?” a man’s voice asked.
Everett picked up the handset, still thinking about Bonnie and Clyde. “You mean, what is it?”
“Yeah,” the voice said.
So Everett said that the snow and rain on the west side of the mountains ran to the Pacific, and the water on the east side ran to the Gulf of Mexico.
“I never heard of such a thing,” the voice said.
“That’s what it is,” Everett said. He thought of something, the recruiting of a witness. “We just picked up some hitchhikers named Bonnie and Clyde,” he said. “How about that?”
A wheezing laugh came over the radio. “No kidding?” the voice asked. “You watch your back, then. So long.”
Everett hung up the handset. “So,” he said to his passengers, as if he hadn’t just acted out of fear of them. “Where’s your stolen jalopy?”
“We parked by Fire Creek.”
“You didn’t get far.”
“No,” Bonnie said.
“How’d you break the ski?”
Bonnie and Clyde both fell silent.
Everett drove. The windows were iced from everyone’s breathing, and he turned up the defrost. The fan seemed very loud. He took the road to Fire Creek, which was unpaved under the packed snow.
“This is it,” he said, stopping the Jimmy.
There was a place at the trailhead to park cars, but there were no cars. Just snow and trees, and the creek running under the ice. Everett didn’t look at his wife. He scanned the empty turnout and hoped this was not one of those times you look back on and wish you had done one thing different, though it had seemed perfectly natural to do what you did at the time.
“Where’s the car?” Bonnie asked.
“This is where we parked,” Clyde said.
They were genuinely surprised, and Everett almost laughed with relief. There was no con, no ambush. He untied the rope, and the couple climbed out and walked to where their car had been. The girl’s arm brushed against Everett’s when she passed, but he didn’t think she meant it. She was thinking about the missing car. He got in the Jimmy to let them discuss it. Pam reached into the way back to pull the saw and the ax from under the boughs Clyde and Bonnie had been sitting on, and she tucked the tools under her feet.
“What are we doing with these people in our car?” she asked.
“Can’t leave people in the snow.”
“We have a child, Everett.”
“And,” he said, with the confidence he had just now recovered, “we’re showing her that you don’t leave people in the snow. Right, Anne Marie?”
“Right,” Anne Marie said, but she watched them both.
Pam gave Everett a dark, unforgiving stare. He turned back in his seat and looked out the windshield at the arguing hitchhikers. The girl, Bonnie, stamped her foot on the ground, her bare hands in fists. He liked the peacoat and fur hat combination a lot. He guessed Pam knew that. But he didn’t like to be glowered at.
“I just worry,” he said, trying to adopt a musing tone, “that someday I could roll all your things into a ditch, or take up with your sister, and you wouldn’t have any looks left to give me. You’d have used them all up.”
Pam said nothing, but looked out the window.
Everett had once argued that his affair—if one drunken night could be called that—had saved their marriage. He had thought he wanted out, but he had seen that he was wrong, and had come back for good. Pam had not been convinced by that argument. The girl he’d slept with still gave him looks at parties, looks that suggested things might start up again. Even in her confessional fit, she hadn’t felt compelled to tell her husband what had happened, but Everett avoided him anyway, and the friendship had died.
Outsid
e in the snow, Bonnie and Clyde’s voices rose a notch.
“You said we could leave the keys in it!” Bonnie said. “You said this was Montana, and that’s what people do!”
“That is what they do,” Clyde said.
“Then who the fuck stole our car?”
Snow off the trees drifted around them, and the two stood staring at each other for a minute, then Bonnie started to laugh. She had a throaty, movie-star laugh that rose into a series of uncontrolled giggles. Her husband shook his head at her in exasperation. Everett felt the opposite; he liked her even more. A woman who could laugh at her own stolen car, and who looked like that when she did it. She was still laughing when they started back to the car.
“You ask for a ride,” she told her husband, her voice not lowered enough.
Everett looked to Pam in the back seat; Pam frowned, then nodded. He got out of the Jimmy, and this time the girl did brush his arm on purpose, he was sure of it. When she and Clyde were bundled in the way back again, with the tree tied down, Everett called in the theft of the car on the CB.
“Do you think we should wait for the cops?” Clyde asked.
“I’m not waiting in the cold anymore,” Bonnie said. “Jesus, who steals a car at Christmas?”
“People do all kinds of things at Christmas,” Clyde said. No one had any response to that.
The road was empty and the sky was clear. Barbed-wire fences ran evenly beside the road, and the wooden posts ticked past as they drove. In the snowy fields beyond, yellow winter grass showed through in patches. Everett peered up through the windshield at the tip of the tree, which seemed stable on the roof. He wondered if Pam could ever laugh off a stolen car. He wondered if he could. Years ago, when Pam was still in school and they were broke, they had been evicted from an attic apartment near the train yard, with nowhere to go. They had gone out for burgers to celebrate their escape from the noisy, smelly trains. He couldn’t see them doing that now.
“Let’s sing a song,” Anne Marie said.
“Dashing through the snow,” Everett began, and Bonnie joined in from the way back. But then Everett caught Pam’s look in the mirror and stopped singing, and Anne Marie trailed out in shyness. Bonnie gamely finished, “laughing all the way,” in a clear voice, and then she stopped, too. Everett looked for antelope in the snow. The fenceposts ticked past.
After a while, Bonnie asked, “What will you do with the boughs?”
“Make wreaths,” Pam said.
“I hope we’re not crushing them.”
“No.”
The two women settled back into a silence just hostile enough that Everett could feel it. There didn’t seem to be any antelope. There were hundreds in summer. The white-capped mountains in the east, beyond the low yellow hills, were lit up by the late sun through the clouds, and he was about to point them out to Anne Marie.
“I broke the ski,” Bonnie said, out of the blue.
Everett had forgotten he had asked.
“I was cold,” she said, “so we tried to take a shortcut through some fallen trees with snow on them. Clyde took his skis off, but the snow was deep and I tried to go over the logs. And the ski snapped right in half. Clyde, I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Bonnie, the kid,” he said.
“Sorry,” she said. “But Clyde, I am.”
“I know.”
The sunlight had faded on the mountains again, and Everett watched the road.
“He came up here to find himself,” Bonnie said. “From Arizona, where we live, and he met this woman. She reminds me of you, actually.”
Pam glanced at the woman in surprise.
“You’re totally his type,” Bonnie said.
“Bonnie,” Clyde said.
There was a long pause, and Everett wondered what Pam was thinking, if she was at all stirred by that.
“Anyway,” Bonnie went on, “she skis, and dives into glacial lakes, and canoes through rapids and what doesn’t she do. And he writes me and says the air is so high and clear up here that he understands everything, and he’s met his soul mate.”
“Bonnie, shut up,” Clyde said.
“But we’re married,” Bonnie said, like she was telling a funny joke. “And have a child. So I have this crazy feeling that I’m supposed to be his soul mate. So I leave our son with my parents and come up here, too. And we go to a party where people get naked in a hot tub and roll around in the snow. And I meet the woman, his perfect woman, and the first thing she does is proposition me.”
Everett glanced at his daughter, to see what she understood. He couldn’t tell. She was looking straight out the windshield. She’d seen people naked in hot tubs, so she’d understand that. He looked back at the road.
“So I told Clyde about it,” Bonnie said, “thinking he’d defend my honor. And he said it was a good idea. He thought we might just move into his soul mate’s cabin and get along.” She seemed to think about this for a second, about the right way to sum it up. “So we tried to go for a mind-clearing ski,” she said finally, “and the karmic gods stole our fucking car.” She started to laugh again, the throaty start and then the giggle.
No one answered her; the only sound was her trying to stop laughing. Everett pulled quickly to the center of the road to miss a strip of black rubber truck tire.
The CB crackled on. “Continental Divide?” a voice asked.
Everett answered that he was there.
“You been shot full of bullet holes?” the man asked.
“Nope,” Everett said.
“That you reporting a stolen car?”
“Have you seen it?”
“Yeah,” the voice said. “I just seen Baby Face Nelson drivin’ it down the road. Ha. No, I ain’t seen it. I’ll keep a eye out.”
Everett thanked him and replaced the receiver.
“Why did he say Baby Face?” Anne Marie asked.
“There was a Bonnie and Clyde,” Everett told her, “not these ones, who were bank robbers. And Baby Face Nelson was a bank robber. But he didn’t like to be called Baby Face.”
In the back, Bonnie said, “My first mistake was marrying someone named Clyde.”
“I don’t recall you being real reluctant,” Clyde said.
“Do you have to talk about this here?” Pam burst out, and Everett was surprised. It wasn’t like Pam to burst out, especially in front of strangers.
“We have to talk about it sometime,” the woman said. “We were supposed to be talking up here. Then we got lost and I broke the ski and Clyde goes apeshit—”
“I did not go apeshit.”
“You did,” Bonnie said. “Because I’m not good at things like that. And we’re ruining our son’s life. These are the years that matter, he’s three.”
“I’m four,” Anne Marie said.
Everett rumpled his daughter’s hair. His wife was glaring out the window, with her arms crossed over her chest. He turned back to the road. Pam wouldn’t speak again, he could tell. Whatever she was thinking would bubble and ferment and grow, but it wouldn’t come out. Or it would come out where he least expected it, where it least made sense.
They were nearing the outskirts of town, the first houses. A few had decorations out: Santas and snowmen. Windows were already lit with red and green outlines, in the dim afternoon.
“Should I take you to the police station?” Everett asked, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“That would be great,” Clyde said.
“I’m sorry,” Bonnie said. “This has been a hard time.”
There was a long silence.
“What’s the little girl’s name?” Bonnie asked.
His daughter turned in her seat belt. “Anne Marie.”
“Do you have ornaments for the tree?” Bonnie asked her.
“Yes,” Anne Marie said.
“What kind?”
“Angels, and two mice sleeping in a nutshell,” she said. “And some fish. And a baby Jesus in a crib.”
“Those sound nice,” Bo
nnie said, her voice wistful. “We’ve never had a tree. Clyde thinks you shouldn’t cut down trees to put in your house.”
“Bonnie,” Clyde said.
Anne Marie said, “Our tree was crowding up another tree. So we made the other tree have room.”
“Would that meet your standards, Clyde?” Bonnie asked.
Clyde said nothing.
Anne Marie looked out the windshield again, trained in the prevention of car sickness. “They could help decorate our tree,” she said.
“I think they want to find their car,” Everett said.
Anne Marie turned back in her seat. “Do you want to help decorate our tree?”
“Honey, they’re busy,” Pam said.
“I would love that more than anything in the world,” Bonnie said.
“No,” her husband said.
“Baby, please,” Bonnie said. “We’ve never had a tree.”
“Leave these people alone,” Clyde said.
Everett turned on Broadway and stopped at the police station. He untied the rope and opened the back of the Jimmy for his passengers. Clyde didn’t get out right away. He said, in a low voice, to Pam, “Look, I’m really sorry about this. Thank you for the ride.” Then he climbed out, past Everett, and walked with what seemed like dignity into the station.
Bonnie sat on the boughs with her legs straight out, and gave Everett a forlorn look. In her fur hat, she looked like a Russian doll. She didn’t say anything, as if she knew that silence was better, that it was what he was used to. Pam had leaned forward and was talking quietly to Anne Marie in the front seat.
“Why don’t you go make your report,” Everett told Bonnie. “See what they can do. I’ll go home and unload, and then come back and get you both.”
Two things happened at once, as in a movie, one close up and one in deep focus. Bonnie broke into a brilliant, tear-sparkled smile, and Pam’s leaning form stiffened, and she half turned her head. Then she looked away again, and occupied herself more fiercely with Anne Marie. Bonnie clambered out of the back and kissed the side of Everett’s mouth for a long second. “Thank you,” she said.
Embarrassed, Everett stepped back and unlashed the skis and poles from the roof. He gave them to Bonnie, and she stood with the spiky bundle in her arms as they pulled away.