“It was in November, she—”
I threw the phone in the canal. The number was on her caller ID, though. She could give it to the cops. That’s what I’m most ashamed of: worrying about her caller ID when I’d just learned about my ma.
I never went back in. I walked around to the garage for my truck. Twelve hours later a sign said Welcome to Tennessee. Below those words it said the state was home to Vice President Al Gore. Except that had been years ago, before anything went wrong. I sort of broke down, right there on the shoulder. A cop asked what was the matter and I pointed to the sign. He said get on up the road, so that’s what I did. For several more months I got on up the road to wherever I could. I figured I’d keep smoking till I died, which would happen when my mind ran out of dreams. All I had to do, I realized, was quit dreaming. I would drive through the night, and when I started dreaming, I slapped myself. One morning I rounded a curve and saw the moon over Mount Cammerer. It had never risen so late before. I decided to start keeping a list of the things it does. I wrote down a whole book of them, which could have broken some ground, but there was no use, so I ripped it up and kept driving. Some preacher on the radio who’d been shouting about patience asked, What will you miss when you’re dead?
I was overtaking a car. It was the stretch where Dolly Parton Parkway loses that name and goes down to two lanes. There was a sign for Forbidden Caverns. I know how it works in those caves, you go through them together in a group. The group gets to know each other and makes friends. What will you miss, said the man, and I looked at the hills and thought, Nothing. Not Lisa, since I can’t stand what I did, and not my ma because she’s gone. As for Ray, my head sent a signal to my foot just as a semi rounded the bend.
I sped up, hoping to crash into it. The driver would live because his truck was so big, but if he didn’t, I’d already hurt plenty of folks anyway. I wondered if my ma would be there when I died, shaking her head along with the Lord. I started to cry. My vision blurred and I figured it would keep on blurring from there into oblivion, but at the last minute the trucker ruined it by steering onto the dirt.
That’s when I drove back up the Pigeon River gorge to the I-40 rest area. Once again I sat there touching myself as families pulled in and their dogs peed and finally a Hummer parked beside me. “You party?” said a fellow in a Braves cap.
His windows had a full tint, so we put down the seats and messed around, nothing special till he pulled a phone out and said, “Know about this?”
“About your phone?”
He swiped the screen and I looked down to see a grid of thumbnail pictures labeled with names. “It’s in order of how close they are.”
I touched one, and the screen filled up with a guy named Josh. 10 Miles Away, it said in the corner. “So it knows where I am?”
“No, it knows where I am.”
“Moon’s about to rise.”
I pointed through the sickly tint of the Braves fan’s rear window. Ten seconds later it began to peek above the mountain.
“Here’s a dude looking. See the green dot?”
I took the phone and stared down at Ray, at his inimitable fish eyes.
To appear calm, I stopped breathing. Ray’s skin was pale as ever. I guessed he hadn’t found his wife.
“Hit ‘chat,’” the guy said.
It occurred to me to type, “hey,” which floated up the screen in a yellow bubble. Seconds later came the response: “Sup?”
“Say ‘looking.’”
“Not much,” I wrote instead, and then “Horned up” chirped onscreen.
The guy grabbed the phone from me and typed with both hands. I watched the moon rise and shrink while my gut did the opposite. “Dude says come over,” he exclaimed.
I had always thought people were idiots when they talked about natural highs, but I’d just never gotten jealous enough to feel one until then. “I’ll tail you,” I said. He was too fucked up to notice me pocket his phone. I followed him as far as the Newport exit, where I fell back. As soon as he’d passed it, I got off. I figured I had till morning before the account froze. Several miles from Ray’s house, I pulled into Hardee’s. Five guys had green dots: Clay, James, Anchovi, Just Lookin, and Kid.
Kid was Ray, twelve miles off. I checked my own profile: I wasn’t the Hummer fellow, but a mixed-race guy called Tyrone, twenty-one, headline reading, “Don’t fall in love with everyone you see.”
I ordered a hamburger. A journey faced me with infinite directions that led out twelve miles apiece. To confront Ray, I had to try each one, on roads that twisted in on themselves so many times — but suddenly Kid was ten miles off.
I hit the button again and it said nine. He was coming home.
I thought of that AT&T phone tower, disguised as a jack pine, and how readily Ray had agreed to it. He must have already been Kid, even back then.
When they handed me my burger, I thought I might puke, but something in me reached out and devoured it and it revved me up with gas for the first time in days. I channeled that power into the engine and took off toward Ray’s. It felt good not being a pussy. Five miles, said the phone. The radio preacher was saying we’re made of dust and it won’t take much air for the Lord to blow us away. One lung of the Lord, said the preacher, is bigger than the world. I pulled up to Ray’s. The phone said seven again, as if he’d rigged up some decoy. I had one too: I looked like Tyrone, unless Ray had put a green dot in my head.
That’s how it will be in a few more years, I was thinking as I felt my way to the basement: we’ll drive all night looking for folks, but in our head.
I plugged in the bulb. It swung on a cord in front of a mirror reflecting a St. Andrew’s cross and a workhorse. I walked to the closet and swung the plank, and there was the bowie knife, its handle wood and its blade curved and I’d forgotten what war it came from.
I was climbing the stairs again when my phone rang.
“Where are you?” said somebody called Damien Warman. “You two think you can treat me like this?”
I decided to practice not being a pussy. “Where are you?”
“Oh, come on, screw you.”
“No, I asked you a question. If you want to live — if you want to survive another minute of your worthless life, answer it.”
There was a gulp. “Where’s Tyrone?”
“Dead. You’re next.”
“Where is he?”
“No, tell me where you are.”
“Downtown Hilton.”
“Well, you best get yourself out of that downtown Hilton.”
What a thrill it gave me, saying those things. I hung up, and then the screen showed the earth in space, the clouds moving in real time. Mountains inching toward dawn. I guess the camera was on the moon. In anticipation of sunrise, my blood heated up. Just as I was about to catch fire, Damien Warman’s name flashed across outer space again. To be a pussy was to answer, “Just kidding,” so I hit “ignore,” found a jug of bourbon, took a swig, and realized the dog should be barking.
I went upstairs to his cage, in which he lay dead. That bothered me. “Sup?” said a new message from Kid, four miles away.
I went out into the night and ran the knife blade along my finger. “Not much,” I wrote, bleeding as I typed. It felt strange, so I pricked another finger, rubbed the blood on my pants.
The cuts stung. I’d gotten so sober that I could feel pain.
As time slowed, I looked up at the moon bisected by the pine. If it was broadcasting my thoughts to Ray, I didn’t care; I was ready for him. I checked the distance. Two miles away: curvy miles, so I figured I had about four minutes.
I typed, “Zeela Tipton 1950–2009,” and read about my ma’s journey to meet the Lord. She was survived by two brothers and a daughter-in-law, said the obituary, and no one else. There wasn’t time to fret about that. I might be meeting the Lord soon myself, and I wanted to show him there was some good in me, so I typed Lisa’s number in and wrote to Lisa, “Ask Dr. Lighter for a blood test.”