Road to Paradise. Paullina Simons
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“Sloane!” Gina’s voice sounded alarmed.
I opened my eyes. Rolling up her window, Gina was shaking me awake, pointing to the black tar-truck in the parking lot, not twenty feet away. The driver, a fat man with tattoos on his neck and shoulders, was yelling something, gesturing to the backseat, and giving us, or something behind us, the finger. I almost wanted to turn around to make sure his girl wasn’t in the backseat.
“You got the witch in the back with you?” he yelled. At least I hope he yelled witch. “Tell her I’m not done with her! Not by a long shot!” He screeched away, rough-looking and sweaty, erratic on the exit; he nearly hit a sedan pulling into the lot as he was pulling out. After we’d watched him weaving through the service road onto the Interstate, Gina rolled down her window and yelled, “Screw you, mister! Go to hell where you belong!”
“Oh, very good, Gina. And brave.”
Gina turned to me. “Awake now?”
“You betcha,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Jeez, what was his problem?”
“Dunno. I guess he thought that girl was with us.”
I didn’t want to tell Gina I was glad I wasn’t alone. The man, big, angry, with a red bandana on his head, looked like the poster boy for public service announcements exhorting you never, but never to talk to strangers. I slowly got on the road, not wanting to catch up with him. But sure enough, in seven miles, doing eighty to his sixty, his “I DO ME, YOU DO YOU” coal contraption loomed ahead, and when he saw us smoking him on the left, he gave us the finger once more. Gina gave him two fingers of her own, and gesticulated wildly, pretending to be furious, silently mouthing things through the glass. She rolled down her window, and with the eighty mph wind whipping through her hair yelled for real: “Good luck trying to catch us, buddy!”
“You’re crazy; stop it! You’re going to get us into serious trouble.”
“What’s he gonna do? Race?” Gina rolled up her window. “I can’t believe that chick got into the truck with him.”
“She must be brave to hitchhike.” I said it wistfully, as in, I wish I were brave, not, I wish I could hitchhike.
“Brave? You mean stupid, dontcha?”
“Maybe.” I thought. “But she doesn’t have a car like us.” I patted my wheel as if she were a silky kitty.
“She could have taken a bus,” said Gina.
What, to be safe? I said nothing, but I was thinking that perhaps the girl who could get into a truck with a man who looked like that would probably not be the kind of girl who’d be afraid of taking a little bus.
Gina settled into her seat and closed her eyes. “I think that’s why you were upset before. At Subway.”
“Why?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you think we should’ve helped her out. Given her a ride.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I hope you know by that crazy guy, just how many kinds of wrong that would’ve been.”
I didn’t say anything.
After another 200 miles of turnpike speeding, I gave up any hope of getting to Toledo by nightfall. Scratch the last item on my list. It was ten at night and we were just nearing Cleveland. “Have you got anything to say about Cleveland?” I was exhausted.
“Yes!” said Gina, all sparkly. “Cleveland was the first city in the world to be lit by electricity. Back in 1879.”
“Hmm. Looks like they’re all out today.” It was dark in the distance and unlit. “How far to Toledo?” I asked the tollbooth operator.
“A hundred and twenty miles,” she replied.
Too many miles. We’d already traveled 454. Ten minutes later, we had ourselves a spare room in Motel 6, right off the Interstate. It was on the second floor, had two double beds, an old TV, and a broken air conditioner. It smelled only vaguely of other people. The sheets were white and starchy, not soft and pink like those Emma had bought me for my thirteenth birthday. It was our first motel room, well below budget at forty-five dollars, which pleased me. Gina was in the shower singing “By the Banks of the Ohio” and “Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal” as I was laying out my clothes for tomorrow and brushing my teeth. I had intended to turn on the TV, but I liked the sound of Gina’s happy soprano voice, I’ve got a mule and her name is Sal, and the din of the shower through the open door, fifteen miles on the Erie Canal … I lay down on the bed, the lights on, git up here, mule, here comes a lock. I was going to write a list for tomorrow and think about my mother … we’ll make Rome ’bout six o’clock … but all I could think about was that girl and why didn’t we stop. Oh, we couldn’t, no, we couldn’t, but if that were so, why did I have her young face, her short skirt and hitching hands in front of my eyes, her lilting voice in my head as the last things I saw and heard before I fell asleep? One more trip and back we’ll go, right back home to Buffalo …
Come on, help out a sister in need …
The next bright morning I drove like the tail winds were in my hair. At a hundred miles an hour I was the fastest horse on the road. I had trucks honking at me the entire way. There was no one faster on the road than me and my sweet yellow Mustang. We passed two cop cars, but I blew by so fast, they didn’t see me.
The music was loud, and Gina and I were singing. O Mary don’t you weep, don’t you mourn, O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn … We opened the windows for a sec, but I was going too fast, we couldn’t catch our breath. We had slept well, eaten McDonald’s for breakfast, the sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky, and all was good, better than yesterday, and the days before that. My heart was light.
We punctuated the 120 miles by screaming every song on the radio at the top of our lungs. Our rendition of REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Lovin’ You” would’ve brought down the house had there been a house to be brought down.
The Interstate through the northern part of Ohio is just a straight wide road amid a flat lot of nothing. Ohio didn’t impress. But going faster than a single engine plane did. Gina cheerfully compared and contrasted the Jersey Pike, the Penn Pike, and the Ohio Pike. We concluded that Penn Pike was best but only because of the unfair advantage of Pennsylvania’s mountains. Pennsylvania’s beauty was more dramatic than Maryland’s but it wasn’t more beautiful. For some reason I had really liked the sloping, cozy back roads of Maryland. Gina wasn’t crazy about either.
We got to Toledo around noon and hungry. I asked Gina for her aunt’s address. It took her a while to find it; she said we might have to stop for directions. I didn’t disagree. I’m not a guy, I have no problem asking, but stopping on an Interstate was a little problematic. It’s not like the information founts are working by the side of the road in little booths. When I asked to see the address, Gina demurred.
Turns out it was a good thing we didn’t push on straight till morning the night before, because Toledo’s being farther north and west than we had expected was the least of my concerns.
“Three Oaks, Michigan?” I gasped when I looked at the address Aunt Flo had written down. “Three Oaks, Michigan? Are you kidding me?”
“Well, that’s