Detour
“Did you bring the baby’s bottle?”
“Of course I did. Did you put the diapers in the trunk?”
“We can always buy diapers.”
“You mean to say we have no diapers in the car? Jesus, Frank.”
The desert was running outside the car window, from one side to the other, wide open space, no malls, no rest stops, no gas stations, no motels, for miles and miles, hours and hours. Natalie turned to the back seat to make sure the baby was still asleep. She was splayed out on the quilt Natalie’s mother had made them, her little arms like a rubber doll’s, thrown out to her sides, her mouth, perfect and pink, open and drooling, her new teeth glistening inside.
“For god’s sake, Natalie, I’m not stupid enough to go on a long trip with a baby and not pack diapers. But you’re her mother, didn’t you double-check the trunk before we left?”
“I can’t do everything, Frank. It was all I could do to get her to sleep in the first place.”
Frank relaxed a little behind the wheel. Natalie always thought she could catch an emergency before it happened, but he knew better. He knew emergencies were the things you could never plan for. They just happened and you never knew when one would come up. All you could do was prepare as good as possible, go the speed limit, map out your destination and make sure to take the car to the shop before going on a long trip.
“Oh crap.”
“What, Frank? What’s wrong?” Natalie grabbed onto the arm rest with her right hand and the back of her seat with her left, bracing for impact.
Frank attempted to soothe her nerves. “Oh, it’s nothing, not a big deal, everything’s fine, I just forgot to check the oil.”
“But you took the car to the shop before the trip, right?” She glanced back at the sleeping baby, a slight frown passed over her face, her mouth closed, her hands became fists, then let go. Her mouth opened.
“Of course I took it to the shop. Just didn’t check the oil before we got on the freeway, that’s all. I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Well, maybe we should check it now?”
“Can’t check it now, we’re in the middle of nowhere. I can’t just pull off into the desert.”
“Frank. If we’re out of oil and we don’t pull over, what can happen?”
Frank knew that Natalie had a tendency to ask worst case scenario type questions. She always was an imaginative girl. That was one of the things he loved about her. Certainly didn’t hurt them in the bedroom. But on I-10, mid-august, nothing but sand dunes and cholla cactus outside the cool safety of the car windows, he really didn’t want to indulge her.
“I think,” he started out slowly, increasing his speed imperceptibly. “I think we’ll be fine. I’m keeping it at a steady sixty-five miles an hour and in just a little while I’m sure we’ll come to a town or a filling station.”
“Pull the car over, Frank.”
“I think that’s a bad idea, Natalie.”
“Pull the car over, I think I smell something burning.”
“Natalie, you need to remain calm and know that I have our best interests in mind when I tell you that pulling the car off the road just now, in the high heat of the day, just wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Frank, I said pull it over.” Natalie grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and gave it a good hard yank.
The wheel flipped out of Frank’s control and in his confusion and disbelief that Natalie would do something so intensely impulsive, he slammed his foot down on the gas, thinking he was slamming on the brakes. As a result, the car accelerated to eighty miles an hour, eighty-five and then ninety, as it headed off the pavement onto the shoulder and then directly out into the desert.
The sound of a million little arms of cholla cactus being crushed by the oil pan of their nice big American car sounded just like other worldly screaming until the baby woke up with the car bump-bumping and let out a real human scream that woke up her father who came to his senses, found the brake and wrestling with the steering wheel, managing to pull the car to a hesitant stop.
The car rocked forward a little bit on the edge of an arroyo and then finally came to rest, a curtain of dust and loose cactus thorns swirling around them.
Relieved that the baby was OK, Frank leaned over and shook Natalie’s shoulder. “We’re OK. Don’t worry, we’re OK. Just a little bump in the road.” He called her name over and over, not noticing the heat coming up through the vents, or the sour smell of the broken gas tank, or the sudden quiet from the back seat.
The car wasn’t visible from the road. It would be another four hours before the heat gave way to the slightest of evening breezes. Another six hours after that when the first of the big motor homes drove by, doing seventy easily, the family of four napping in the security of their bunk beds, the father, downing his third cup of coffee, singing at the top of his lungs:
“Here in my car
I feel safest of all….”
