A tropical storm had formed somewhere off the coast and was forecasted to turn into a hurricane, so we cut our vacation short and drove home in silence. My wife Kate caught me having eyes for other women at the beach. I had forgotten my sunglasses like an idiot and the beach is usually a bright place. So Kate didn’t want to talk to me, and when she did, she made comments like, “I’m sorry I ruined my body so you could be a dad.” I didn’t respond and just watched the road fall under us, listening to the man on the radio talk about forecasted wind speeds and storm surges, and I was glad we were heading inland, to safety. We had to stop halfway, at an old, long-ago shuttered service station with gas prices from the nineties and knee-high weeds so she could feed Jack. The clouds were soft pink hues and there was a gentle breeze and chirping birds. It was hard to imagine a storm was on the horizon.
But the storm made landfall the next day. The winds blew the rain sideways. A neighbor’s patio umbrella flew down the middle of the street. I was worried about leaks in the roof. Kate stayed in the nursery, protecting our son from the storm. When he cried, I heard her go “shhhh.” The lights flickered and I held my breath. Then the lights went out and I let out a sigh. It would soon be dark so I grabbed the candles and lantern and sat at the kitchen table, looking out the kitchen window, at the trees hanging on for dear life. I could hear wood splintering.
After Kate put Jack to sleep, we had cold canned ravioli for dinner while we listened to the winds howl. Kate went to bed and I fell asleep on the couch, holding a pillow, close to the edge.
Morning brought sunlight and calm winds and bird calls, but not the power. It was not even nine and already eighty degrees. I picked up broken branches in the yard and waved at neighbors who were surveying their homes. There was a dead squirrel in the driveway. By noon it was ninety and we were sweating. Jack was fussing. We tried to cool him with a bath but he only fussed more, screaming and kicking, his face red and wet. It was like we were trying to drown a cat.
“What do we do?” Kate asked. “We need to do something.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, thinking, sweat stinging my eyes. Then an idea hit me.
“How about we take a drive? We can turn on the AC.”
“Okay,” she said.
We got Jack into the car and cranked the AC as cold as it would go. I backed the car out of the gravel driveway and left the neighborhood, where our neighbors were still picking up their yards or sitting on their porches. I was glad to be where I was, where there was cold air.
Our house was in the country and the roads were long and straight, with farms cut into the woods, revealing the rolling land. The sky was bright blue and cloudless. The remnants of the storm littered the streets. We passed the power company inspecting a downed line. I slowed and rolled down my window.
“Howdy, any idea when the power might be back on?”
A man with a big, round face cleared some phlegm and spit.
“Not sure. Got a few lines down ‘round here.”
He took off his helmet and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a rag.
I nodded and rolled up the window and continued driving. We took roads I had never driven. We passed a farm where cows grazed in the sun. One of the cows lay on its side near a creek and it looked dead. Some large, dark birds were flying above. In the rearview mirror I saw my son sleeping. My wife wore dark glasses and I couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or shut.
“Kate?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Nothing,” I said.
I looked down at the gas gauge and saw the tank was low, so I decided to stop at the first gas station I saw. I looked back over at Kate and she was resting her head against the door. Just a few years ago I would’ve put my hand on her thigh, but I no longer felt the desire. If it wasn’t for our son, I doubt we would’ve still been together. A wave of anxiety rippled through my stomach and made my mouth dry.
Nothing definitively marked the point in our relationship that my feelings toward my wife began to change. It was almost as if it just happened overnight, but I know that isn’t true. It was months, maybe even longer. More and more things about her began to irritate me, things I had never noticed before all of a sudden became things that were impossible to ignore. It was how she breathed through her mouth and how she walked with her feet pointing outward like a duck. It was her clumps of hair in the shower drain which began to gross me out. It was as if the hair belonged to a stranger. Sex was happening less and less, and that made her pregnancy even more of a shock. She wanted to keep it and that was never a question. And I thought it would maybe bring us back together. Maybe.
The sun was harsh through the driver’s side window. It was blinding. Even though my wife was beside me and my son behind me, I felt alone and distant. I drove like there was somewhere I had to get to, the speedometer crept up and I took the turns tight and fast. Suddenly there was a sputtering then nothing and we were dead in the road, going nowhere and without cold air. When I looked at my phone, I saw I didn’t have service.
Kate sat up, confused.
“What’s going on?”
“I think I ran out of gas,” I said.
“Where are we?”
She lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head.
“I don’t know. Somewhere near Yanceyville, I think. I don’t have cell service.”
I looked in the side mirror and saw nothing behind us. There was nothing in front of us. My mouth was dry and my hands began to sweat.
“Jesus. We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said, looking around us, then back at our son who was still sleeping.
“I’m sure someone will come by soon and I can ask for a ride to a gas station,” I said.
She said nothing and leaned her seat back. It began to get hot so I rolled down the windows. There was a light breeze. It felt good on my damp skin. When the breeze died, the heat was suffocating. Our son woke up and began to cry, his face red and streaked with tears. Kate got him out of his car seat and tried to feed him but he wouldn’t eat. It must’ve been nearly 100 degrees and humid, the heat heavy like wet wool blankets.
“We have to do something,” Kate said. “We just can’t stay here.”
I stood in the middle of the road but saw nothing—no homes, no cars, no life. Everything was deathly still and quiet. Not even the birds sang.
“I’m going to walk,” I said. “Go sit under that tree in the shade and I’ll be back as soon as possible.”
So I began walking, sweat pouring out of me, looking back at my car in the road and my family beneath the tree, wavering in the heat which rose from the asphalt. Soon they were out of sight and it was just me. The heat was dizzying. I began to run.
~
SE Wilson lives in North Carolina. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Blotter Magazine, Chiron Review, and Streetlight Magazine.