Wyoming
by
Jeffrey Anderson
Copyright 2013 by Jeffrey Anderson
Chapter 1
Thirty-two hours on the road with only five short stops for gas, take-out food, and bladder relief didn’t keep Zachary Sandstrom from bolting upright in the motel bed just two hours into a sound sleep that should’ve lasted at least ten. All his senses instantly on edge, he struggled to figure out where he was and what had waked him. Pale light leaked in around curtains and gradually revealed a room perhaps twelve feet square with a door to his right beside the curtains and another to his left. Straight ahead, a dark hole in the slightly lighter wall resolved itself into a T.V. screen atop a dresser. This slow unmasking of his surroundings did little to assuage Zach’s fear, as everything he saw in the dim light seemed charged with threat, or at least a possible hiding place for it.
Then he noticed the pale white shape resting at the foot of the bed and instantly knew it was Gina, his five-year-old Brittany spaniel in her normal nocturnal spot even if this wasn’t their normal bed or room. Then he saw the dark silhouette of a body beside him and realized with sudden calm, as if this knowledge were the single most important piece of information he’d ever gained or ever would know, that this was his wife of just over two days—Allison Mayes, now (he reminded himself) Allison Sandstrom. He leaned over and inhaled the herbal fragrance of her freshly washed hair and the earthier scent of her skin. He knew both scents well, felt like he’d known them all his life. In fact, he’d known Allison almost four years, since they’d begun dating when he was a junior in high school and she a freshman. But he’d never awakened in bed beside her. Last night, they’d been on the road in Pennsylvania and Ohio; two nights ago, their first as a married couple, they’d slept apart in their old beds in their old rooms, separated by five miles of country roads he’d nearly worn out with his frequent trips back and forth in courtship and betrothal.
But he’d never known her as wife, never waked beside her free to extend a hand unimpeded by the old sexual mores (however much they’d ignored them over the years) and claim her skin as his own, make for themselves one flesh in a manner practiced but now suddenly and strangely new. Yet Zach did not extend that hand, did not claim that chance now offered for the first time—he did not know why. If asked, he would’ve replied casually—let her sleep; she’s earned her rest. But that wasn’t the reason at all. The real reason lay far, far away and buried deep—farther away than Zach had ever been, buried deeper than he could or would dig: a treasure waiting a map.
So instead he reached out and touched his dog, found unerring the soft spot behind her floppy ears. Gina, perhaps every bit as deserving of her rest as Allison, still managed to rouse in the old familiar way, returning the press of his hand with a slow tilt of her head and a quiver of her stub tail he could feel from beneath the sheets.
He rose from the bed and in the dim light pulled on his jeans and T-shirt from where they lay across the chair’s arm. He hooked Gina’s leash to her collar and gently lifted her off the bed so she wouldn’t have to jump into the unfamiliar dark. Then he silently opened the door and led her outside. She’d have to pee sometime during the night—might as well be now, since he was awake anyway.
He stood on the walk and looked across the well-lit parking lot. Their beat-up Chevy carryall van was parked directly in front of their room. A few other cars anchored slots in front of other doors. On the far side of the lot, a couple tractor trailer rigs consumed whole rows of spaces with their length and girth. It hardly mattered, though; empty parking spaces abounded despite those sacrificed to the rigs. Beyond the broad parking lot, the Omaha skyline lurked in mostly shadow. The rare lit window in one of the office buildings ringing the horizon only accentuated the prevailing darkness. Clearly Omaha slept after dusk, its residents still governed by the diurnal cycles that prevailed in the surrounding plains. Zach felt a brief shiver start at his bare feet and move up and over his calves and thighs and torso and neck and head. The shiver arose not from cool air, for it was a warm and humid night, but from a combination of the foreboding he’d felt on waking and the loneliness he felt now in this dark and dormant city. Yet, on the flip side of this foreboding and loneliness, perhaps as much a cause of the shiver as these, he felt a sudden and unprecedented excitement. The world within this ring of darkened buildings and, most emphatically, the world beyond was now finally and fully his to explore, to engage, to know.
Gina strained against the leash and led him down the walkway to the right. He trailed her lead past empty rooms with curtains opened, occupied rooms with curtains drawn. He couldn’t help but wonder who lay in the beds beyond those closed curtains, not five feet from his striding. Were they young or old, handsome or homely, thrilled as he by new environs or jaded by frequent travel? What would they tell you if you asked? What could you see if you looked? But in all the rooms with curtains drawn, only darkness framed the edges—no answers offered, no tales shared.
Gina found a patch of wilted weeds between the parking lot and a boarded-up gas station, and squatted to do her business. Zach looked around, then unzipped his pants and left his mark, thinking, “The adventure starts here.” He finished, took one more look at the broad dark horizon, and turned to the motel. By then, Gina was tugging back toward the room and sleep.