West of Wendover

She was somewhere west of Wendover when she decided to go back for him.

Wendover, the only population center on a lonesome stretch of Interstate 80, was in fact two towns in one. West Wendover, Nevada and Wendover, Utah spilled into one another across the state line, but their separate identities only mattered to the few thousand people who lived there. When visitors from the Salt Lake Valley said, “let’s go to Wendover for the weekend,” they did not mean Wendover, Utah. They were drawn to the power of the border, the nexus of a state that reveled in sin and another that celebrated its saintliness. Utahns who needed an escape from holy orders made their pilgrimage across the desert. There they could escape for a day or two into a good time or the vices of their choosing: cheaper liquor, stronger liquor, legal marijuana, gambling, or all of the above. 

McKell’s marriage had capsized with this usual call to action.

“Let’s go to Wendover for the weekend,” her husband Ransom said, just a few days before. “It will give us the chance to reconnect.”

She appreciated his acknowledgement of the growing gulf between them and agreed to the now unusual spontaneity. They found a good deal at the Silver Shooter, one of five colossal, second-rate casinos that lined West Wendover’s main and only drag. Each had a splashy theme, and each seemed too large for their just-passing-through clientele. The Silver Shooter, fashioned after an Old West bordello, sat on the saddest and loneliest patch of what could be called the strip. Overlooking the emptiness of the Nevada desert, the casino was the last building in town and, by extension, the last real building for some 60 miles. 

The Silver Shooter herself was a 25-foot-tall cowgirl, a buxom blonde with a leg kicked back behind her and a pistol in her hand. She was, presumably, a woman with Annie Oakley skills and Dolly Parton curves. Every inch of her was illuminated in blazing white neon, and she called out to passing gamblers on I-80 like moths to her 24-hours flame. 

Her megawatt smile overlooked Ransom and McKell’s good deal hotel room. She continued grinning as they opened a bottle of champagne, and as they later collapsed into the mother of all fights. Carried out in coarse and livid whispers, they hurled accusations at one another until Ransom gave up and went to bed. Well after midnight, McKell could not bear to hear him snoring in the bed she refused to share with him. She grabbed their keys and her uncharged phone to flee into the crisp Nevada night. She had no real destination in mind, except to drive west. Away from her marriage, away from their home in Salt Lake City, and away from any semblance of the life they had built together. 

But, while ripping a little too fast through the darkness, McKell examined the detritus of her life. She was not old but certainly not young. She had no children despite wanting them, a job that paid too little, something too close to estrangement from her loyal Latter-day Saint parents, and now a failed marriage. Or was it simply failing, something in the present tense rather than the finality of the past? 

The glow of the giant cowgirl had shrunk to a pinpoint in the rearview mirror. McKell’s eyes lingered on the eastern neon star, summoning her across the distance. She had thought Ransom was her soulmate, bonded by the curse of their born-and-bred Utah names, a love of adventure, and the spiritual ties of ex-Mormon trauma. For six years, where he went, McKell followed.

The Silver Shooter smiled in welcome when she arrived back in the parking lot.

“Come on in,” she seemed to say. “Right where you belong.”   

McKell walked through the sliding doors and into the sumptuous but shabby lobby. The room was bathed in scarlet, an appropriate shade of bordello red. A velvet canopy hung from an ornate and oversized chandelier. The stale stink of tobacco smoke had seeped into the fibers of the damask carpet and mingled with the stronger scent of cigarettes just discarded. A Frank Sinatra song, the one about luck being a lady, echoed from some unseen speakers.

The room was empty, and the concierge desk was unattended. She checked her phone. It was just past 3 a.m., or perhaps it wasn’t. The Wendovers, in addition to straddling a border, marked the nexus of two time zones. Knowing the exact hour was an uncertain science. Her phone, confused as she was, had flipped an hour back and forward as she crossed in and out of the desert. McKell was not sure what to do with herself. She had come back for her husband, but she was not yet ready for an uncomfortable reunion. She was still not sure she wanted to see him at all.

Through an open set of double doors, McKell spied the bright cavern that was the gambling hall. What did he see in it, she thought to herself. As if to find out, she meandered through the labyrinth of slots and blackjack tables. The large, flashing slot machine screens screamed for her attention. Games with names like Buffalo Bills and Bonanza! spat out an overlapping soundtrack of eagle cries and military marches from John Ford films. Others trilled with the sound of cha-chings or cascading coins. The uneasy chorus of electronic siren songs rang throughout the room. McKell realized that, unlike her husband, she had no interest in answering. 

The hall, like the lobby, was devoid of people. No late night revelers, no blurry-eyed truckers in need of a break from the road. McKell was totally alone. She wandered back to the row where she had first entered through the double doors. A blinking path of slot machines, like flashing runway lights, formed a straight path back to the lobby and the exit. Overwhelmed by the cacophony, she started to leave. But something prickled at the back of her neck, some kind of sixth sense she did not believe in, and turned her back around.

Standing in the aisle, much to her surprise, was a woman. 

She was dressed all in white, from her flamboyant cowboy hat to her spangled cowboy boots. Fringe hung from the long-sleeved arms of her bedazzled leather jacket and the hem of her knee-length skirt. The hair, carefully coiffed beneath the hat, was big, blonde, and bouffant. 

She was the Silver Shooter in the flesh.

Yet she was not the buxom neon cowgirl who loomed large outside. This woman was very small and also very old. Not much bigger than a child, really, even with the added inches of her boots. Her piled-high hair was clearly a wig, one that she had taken so much care to style that it seemed rude to notice. McKell was pleased to see, at least at first glance, that this Silver Shooter did not have her trusty pistol. The flashing neon caught the light of her myriad sequins, and she sparkled like a bullfighter in the ring. 

The Silver Shooter stared McKell down. Somewhere nearby, a Bonanza! or Buffalo Bills slot machine blared the trumpets of a western overture. The small woman may have been a resident eccentric, a madwoman, or a ghost. Perhaps she was the spirit of the casino itself. Whatever she was, she beckoned to McKell with her bony fingers. She turned on a rhinestone-studded heel and walked, ever so slowly, toward the back hallway. She did not look to see if McKell would follow. The younger woman noticed the Silver Shooter walked like an old woman would walk, which McKell took as evidence of her humanity.

Sleep-deprived and unhappy, McKell did as she was told. She trailed the Silver Shooter at what she thought was a mindful distance. They entered the dim back hallway, where a cafe was hidden in a quiet corner. As they approached the glowing quadrant of the restaurant, the jingle jangle of the slot machines faded like a dimmer switch. McKell’s ears, accustomed to the noise, continued ringing.

The restaurant was a wood-paneled ode to Americana kitsch, decorated with movie memorabilia and chandeliers made from old wagon wheels. The Silver Shooter pointed to a booth at the very back of the cafe, and McKell settled into the red banquette. Two cups of coffee were already waiting on the table, delivered by an unknown source. The restaurant, as far as she could tell, was also unoccupied. McKell sat with her back against the wall with a clear view of the dingy hallway. From her vantage point, she hoped to catch sight of any other living person. Anyone at all who could assure her that she was not in a dream.

The Silver Shooter slid into the booth across from her. She was so small that she sat comically low on the seat.

“Drink,” the old woman said, pointing at the cup.

McKell again obeyed, too tired to protest. The coffee was stale and lukewarm. She placed the cup back on its saucer with the softest clink, grateful still for the shot of caffeine. The silence between them thickened, and the Silver Shooter resumed her staring. The woman’s eyes were bright and blue, accentuated by a thick layer of silver eyeshadow. Her skin was so thin that it was almost translucent, and McKell could follow the map of the woman’s veins.

McKell, allergic to silence, interrupted their soundless standoff. 

“So, what’s with the outfit? Are you hired by the casino?”

The Silver Shooter did not respond, nor did she seem offended.

“My name is McKell,” she tried again. “I know it’s weird, but it’s a Utah thing. What’s yours?”

“Why are you here?” the woman asked, ignoring McKell’s question. Her voice was as thin as her skin.

McKell sifted through a dozen answers in her mind, all of them polite and all of them filled with sprinkles of the truth. Oh, I couldn’t sleep. Oh, my phone is dead. Oh, I was looking for something. She rejected these, perhaps out of desperation, and instead told the truth.

“My husband’s got a problem,” she told the older woman. “With gambling. I just found out.”

“Sorry about that,” the Silver Shooter said.

She apologized in such a way that could mean that she was sorry, in general, or sorry for being personally responsible. Either way, her tone did not suggest that she was very sorry at all.

In their hotel room a few hours before, under the glow of the neon Silver Shooter, Ransom and McKell had popped a bottle of champagne.

“What are we celebrating?” she asked him.

“Us, being here together. Of course,” Ransom said, and he kissed her forehead.

 As they emptied the bottle, he started pacing around the room. Let’s go downstairs and have some fun, he had said. But we can have fun here, she countered, in an embarrassing effort to be seductive. He had a good feeling about this one. A really good feeling. McKell just needed to let him try. Try what? To win. To win big. The alcohol and the guilt loosened his tongue further, and the truth spilled out in a rush. How he had started with small bets with his friends, then moved on to online poker. He’d always been good at poker. He had some very big wins, then some even bigger losses. Losses that led to the decimation of their finances. 

McKell had never paid attention to their bank accounts. When he said, we should save, she saved. When he said, we can splurge, she splurged. Ransom paid the bills. Ransom made more money than she did. She loved him. She trusted him. She could not help but blame herself because she had chosen him. She had chosen poorly. Perhaps in gambling, or in marriage, people lose just by choosing to take part at all. 

“Was I stupid to love him?” she said out loud, more to herself than to the Silver Shooter. “Or am I just unlucky? What do I do now?"

The Silver Shooter, of course, did not answer. She reached for McKell’s hands across the table, more gently than McKell would have expected, and turned them upward. She traced the lines on one palm then the next. McKell shuddered at the coldness of her touch.

“Do you like Wheel of Fortune?” the Silver Shooter asked, staring at McKell’s hands.

“No,” McKell said, thrown off by the non sequitur. “But my Grandma does.”

The Silver Shooter let go of McKell’s hands. She reached into her pocket and placed a gun on the table, a revolver with a mother of pearl handle. McKell had not been around many guns. This one, she could not help but note, was pointed in her direction. They say fight or flight are the natural responses to danger, but McKell found she could not move at all. She stared at the revolver, stunned by the sudden introduction of death. 

The woman picked up the gun and pointed it more squarely at McKell’s heart. She placed her elbows on the table to support the weight of the revolver in her timeworn hands. McKell stared at the woman’s knobby knuckles, almost twice as wide as her delicate fingers. The Silver Shooter opened the chamber. There was a single bullet inside.  

“Do you want to play?” the Silver Shooter asked. “To play Wheel of Fortune?”

McKell’s body twitched, like a fawn caught in an open meadow. She did not want to play. She knew she did not, and yet the axons of her nervous system did not fire. She thought instead of Ransom and the sudden devastation he had wreaked upon her life. The loss of their money. Her choice to come back for him. His conviction that one good weekend in Wendover could turn their fortunes around. He had gotten down on his knees and begged for her forgiveness. She wept, silently, to shield the hotel neighbors from their dysfunction.

“I don’t know how to live without you,” she whispered.

“You don’t have to,” he responded. “We can fix this. We can fix this. We can.”

His parents could loan them the money, he said. She rolled her eyes. Back and forth, they peppered one another with their frustrations. You can’t always rely on your parents to fix your problems. You’ve always hated my parents. You’ve always hated me. If you loved me you wouldn’t leave me. If you had loved me you wouldn’t have lied to me. I should never have married you. I should never have married you. Just give me 100 bucks, that’s all I need. You’re lying to yourself. You’re lying to me. He wanted to go downstairs to the gambling hall, she could feel it. And she yelled at him, in harsh whispers, to distract him, until he fell asleep with the help of the champagne that had uncorked the truth. 

The Silver Shooter closed her eyes and spun the chamber of the revolver with more strength than McKell would have expected. McKell heard the click-click-clicking of the wheel. She could walk away, but the rhythm of her argument with her husband thundered in her head. You should support me. You can save me. I don’t want to save you. I don’t want the burden of saving us. I don’t want to save us. I don’t want to save myself. 

This final revelation—not one that she had shared with Ransom, but felt only by herself in this moment, this terrifying moment—made her heart stop. McKell squeezed her eyes shut, and she heard the chamber lock into place.

The Silver Shooter pulled the trigger.

McKell didn’t hear a bang. She felt no pain. She opened her eyes to see that the Silver Shooter’s were still closed. McKell’s body began to tremble, an escalation of her fawn’s twitch. She felt like prey that had escaped the grip of a cosmic predator.

“Oh my God,” she sputtered. She struggled to breathe, shocked by the old woman’s homicidal turn and her own unwillingness to live.

“What the hell? What the hell are you doing?”

The Silver Shooter, eyes now open, was impervious to her screaming. She put the gun away and waved an ancient hand.

“It’s time for you to go,” she told McKell. “Good luck out there.”

Fight or flight finally kicked in, and McKell sprinted from the restaurant. Back through the gambling hall, still devoid of people, except for one recognizable redhead. Ransom, having slept off his champagne haze, was playing for big wins on Buffalo Bills. Too engrossed in himself, he did not see his wife rushing past, eager to find a life she would be willing to save.

No one was at the front desk, or perhaps she would have stopped to warn someone about the old woman with a gun. She didn’t call 9-1-1. She didn’t scream for help. Amped on adrenaline, she ran to the car and drove off into the Nevada darkness for the second time that evening. She thought she could see the palest blue line of dawn on the horizon—a good omen for a fresh start.

McKell felt lighter, somehow, despite the surreal encounter. Fortune had smiled upon her when the gun did not go off, and this was her chance to seize the day. McKell could live without her husband. She could start again. She thought of her parents and how much she needed them. With one hand on the steering wheel, she sent her dad a quick text. 

I miss you. I will call you in the morning. Nothing to worry about.

McKell took her eyes off the road as she hit send. She didn’t see the red brake lights of the semi truck in front of her. The driver turned on the right turn signal, but he didn’t know the light was out. He slowed down. She did not. 

She was somewhere west of Wendover when her luck ran out.