Twelve Stories

Megann Sept

It was the third day. The blizzard wasn’t letting up and Trent’s pickup was stuck—high-centered on a drift in the middle of I-25 somewhere between Buffalo and Sheridan—and the gas gauge was creeping up on empty. Last night, wearing every piece of clothing he had in the truck (including two pairs of white briefs on his head), turning on the pickup every couple of hours to run the heater for a few minutes, he had still been shivering for most of the night. On the first day, he’d gotten out and tried to dig the snow from under the front wheels, tried to dislodge the drift that kept the pickup stuck there, but the snow was blowing back as fast he could dig it out and his fingers were numb within minutes. It had to be nearing twenty below.

Back in Billings, while the kids had been fighting over which Nintendo game to play, his oldest at the kitchen table with her civics homework, and his wife in her red flowered apron drying the last dish from dinner, he’d mumbled—almost as an afterthought—that he’d be gone two nights instead of one. Two nights, she’d said. Two nights to a car auction in Denver. She tapped her wedding ring against the counter. Two nights. It was a one-night trip and anyone would know that.

Just before Buffalo he’d pulled a high school kid in a Toyota out of the ditch—hooked up the winch to the undercarriage of the Toyota and eased him out—then followed the kid to the exit ramp at Buffalo, watched him pull off, then switched the truck into 4-wheel drive, both hands on the wheel. It was only thirty miles to Sheridan and he was going to make it. Only after the first night stuck out on I-25 did he stop thinking about getting to Sheridan, about his girlfriend’s warm body and the 30-pack that would be waiting for him there. He had his cell phone—a dead battery and only a wall charger—but he’d tried to rig it to charge from the cigarette lighter, stripped the wires from the wall charger, but all he’d done was cause a little explosion that turned the back of his cell phone black. By now, everyone had to be worried. They would’ve heard about the blizzard on the news, would have registered his absence.

He tried to sleep on and off, but it was too damn cold and his stomach twisted into knots—the beef jerky bag was nearing empty and it was the last of the food he had. Rubbing his palms together helped, so he did this until his skin was red and burning, tender. When he turned on the truck to run the heat, he bent close the vents, soaking in the warm air, but then the empty light flashed on and he reluctantly turned the truck off, sat while the wind crept in through the seams of the doors. A picture of his wife and kids—something they’d had made up last year when the photo studio in the mall ran a special—was tucked into his wallet between two credit cards, and he took it out, studying his wife’s broad, slightly crooked smile, the way her hand rested on his forearm. She’d made them all wear red and black for the photo and though at the time Trent had protested—the only red shirt he owned was an old turtleneck that made him feel like he was choking—he had to admit that the colors made them appear as if they all belonged together, as if they were a unit. The picture made him feel like he wasn’t stuck between living and dying, even though that seemed to be the case more and more often as time went on. Smoothing the creases with his shivering fingers, he tucked the photo back in his wallet for safekeeping.

Outside as far as he could see was pure white—nothing else—and if he looked at it for too long, he’d start to see things, his mind making fantastic animals out of the shapes in the snow, large snow beasts lumbering towards the truck. He’d have to look away, focus his eyes on the fibers of the seat, the brown woven with the beige, the distinct shape of his duffle bag on the passenger’s side. He was glad he hadn’t brought the dog. It was 4:30 according to his watch, and the sky was getting darker, night setting in for the third time and the snow still blowing. That’s when he saw it: a dim glow coming from somewhere to the left, like the sun trying to burn through the haze on an overcast day. He looked away, back down at the seat, trying to get his eyes under control, sure that he was again imagining things. But when he looked back up, the glow was brighter, two points of light creeping towards him in the snow, the sound of a diesel engine.

He would tell the story first to his wife over the phone when he was safely back in Buffalo, waiting for the storm to pass, and then later, to his buddies around the bar in Billings. He would tell them how when the truck arrived to pick him up, to rescue him, he said, about damn time. You got any beer? He wouldn’t tell them that he, in fact, did not say these things, but instead started to cry. He wouldn’t tell them that he had forgotten to take the briefs off his head and that the guy driving the truck had laughed at him, and how laughable he must have looked: a middle-aged guy in a flannel jacket, underwear on his head, waving his arms in the air at the approaching headlights, tripping as he waded through the drifts.

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Megann Sept’s stories have appeared in Lost Magazine, Fringe, and Pindeldyboz, and her story, “Good Fisherman,” was selected as one of StorySouth’s Million Writers Award Notable Stories in 2008.  She lives in San Francisco and can be found at www.megannsept.com.