Salmonella Summer

“It’s going to be great seeing everyone. We haven’t been all together since the divorce. We can go fishing everyday, if they still have the rowboat.”

“I didn’t know you liked to fish.” He seemed to enjoy riding motorcycles, fast cars and attending hard rock concerts when he wasn’t taking college classes that he’d drop before the final exam or quitting a job after two months and looking for a new one. We’d filed an amended return two years in a row because of W-2 forms from forgotten jobs arriving late.

“It’s what we do in Port Orchard. Plus we can take the foot ferry to Bremerton and see the shipyards, go into Seattle and eat dinner in the Space Needle. And my mom will cook all her specialties. It’ll be great.”

We’d stop every four hours, day and night to change drivers or buses. They made everyone get off, so no one got to skip a meal for a nap. We’d file into the truck stops like prisoners on furlough to eat and use the facilities. All the restaurants specialized in fast, fried, heavy food that lingered in my stomach like regret for hours.

On the dawn stop, we’d hover by the bus’s bay doors waiting for our bags, so we could grab clean clothes and our dopp kits. Then we’d line up at the Ladies or Gents for a spit bath under yellow fluorescents decorated with fried moths and dead flies. I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet outside North Platte.

A few summers before, when a dozen of our friends announced their upcoming weddings, he asked me to marry him, like he was hoping for a slow dance at a seventh grade mixer. I said yes because I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no and I didn’t have any other immediate plans. After college comes marriage, right? He was looking for a savior after his restricted childhood and I was looking for someone to save, having spent my youth in catholic school collecting funds for pagan babies.

We watched endless amber waves of wheat and passed through hundreds of one Dairy Queen towns during the interminable days as we slowly crossed our huge country until Denver, where we lucked out and had a rest stop during lunchtime. We perched on the curb in the sunny parking lot for twenty minutes and ate liverwurst sandwiches on rye. The soaring mountains speckled with snow were gorgeous; the air was as brittle as dried leaves with a little icy kick. I could’ve stayed forever.

“Not telling is the same as lying, you know.” I gathered our wrappers for the trashcan.

“Who knows the future, Annie?” He shook out a cigarette and lit it.