Lockout

When I arrived at Sideling Hill Rest Area the only vehicle in the lot was the one I had come for. Two months earlier the place would have been half full. But tonight the welcome center sat dark behind its glass, and a sheet of paper was taped outside the doors.

CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

The tape had let go at one corner, so the page lifted and dropped with every gust off the ridge. The vending machines glowed with a hum, and were the only human-made noise that could be heard. Interstate 68 ran empty below the cut, and the wind came through the gap in the mountain with nothing to slow it down.

The motorhome I had come for sat at the far end of the lot, as far from the building as anyone could park and still be on pavement. A Winnebago the color of faded ivory with a cracked, brown swoosh down its flank. I parked my truck two spots away, and climbed down slowly. Because I am six foot four and about two-fifty, I have learned to come at strangers from an angle.

"Bittinger's Towing. You called in a lockout?"

"Show me your ID."

I held up the clipboard.

"Not that. Something with your face on it."

I got my license out and held it at arm's length. He came a few steps, stopped, and read it from there, moving his lips behind a black cloth mask.

"Cal Bittinger? Out of Hancock?"

"That's me."

"Who told you I was here?"

"You did when you called it in."

"I called 9-1-1. I didn't call you."

"You got the state police emergency line. They called my dispatcher. I have the rotation for this stretch of 68."

"And dispatch called you?"

"Precisely. That's the whole chain."

He looked at my license again from six feet away, though he could not have read a word of it from there.

"Okay," he said.

"You want to tell me your name?"

"Not yet."

"All right."

"It isn't personal..."

"Nothing is personal since the Pandemic started." I got the bag off my shoulder. "Are the keys inside?"

"Yes. So is my phone. I stepped out to put air in my tires, and the wind slammed the door shut behind me. The side door is deadbolted, so I can't get back in."

"Sure."

"I may be standing on a mountain in a sweatshirt, but I'm normally more careful." He was so careful that he kept a good distance between us.

"How long has that been shut?" I nodded at the welcome center.

"Oh, I don't know. It's been closed since I got here." He watched my hands. "What's that?"

"It's a wedge. It pulls the seal away from your window so that I can fit this slim jim down there."

“So it’s a burglary kit.”

“No, it’s a lockout kit.” I set the wedge into the seam along the outter edge of the door, down near the latch, and I worked it in. "The wedge doesn't open anything. All it does is spread the edge enough to get the jim past the weatherstrip. Then the jim goes down inside the door."

           "Down inside the door."

           "There's a rod in there running from the handle to the bolt. I hook the rod and pull, and the bolt comes back."

           "How do you find it if you can't see it?"

           "You don't see it. You feel it come up against the notch and then you know where you are." I fed the jim down along the skin. "Some of them you get first pass. Some of them take a while."

"You've done this before?"

"Two or three times a month. Maybe more in the winter."

"On this model?"

"On everything. Cars, trucks, vans, work rigs…" I turned and looked at him. “Motorhomes…”

"So you could open anybody's...?"

"I can open yours,” I smiled, “which is what you called about."

That got half a laugh out of him, and it seemed to surprise us both.

"Micah," he said. “My name is Micah.”

"Nice name. I like it."

"Don't make anything of it."

"I won't," I said. "So, where were you headed?"

"West. Utah first, then wherever. I bought this a couple of weeks ago off a widow in Hagerstown. I have the whole route on the dinette table in highlighter." He put his hands in his sweatshirt pocket. "But now, every campground in the country has closed. So for now, it's rest areas and Walmart parking lots."

"That's gotta be rough."

"It's fine. I go into a grocery store in a mask, I come back out, I don't say a word to anybody. Two weeks like that." He tipped his chin at me. "You're the first person I've been within six feet of since March."

"You're not within six feet of me."

"I'm aware."

I felt sorry for him. But I also felt more than that. A man as watchful as Micah is someone who gives you his whole attention the entire time he is with you, and I had not had anybody's whole attention in a long while. Not even my wife's.

"Can I ask you a work question," he said.

"Ask away."

"Does your dispatcher write down where you go?"

"She writes down whatever I call in."

"What'd you call in?"

"Rest area on 68."

He was quiet long enough that I looked up.

"Could you not call it in when you leave?"

"Why?"

"There are some people who don’t need to know where I am or where I am going. That's all. I'm not asking you to do anything illegal."

"It's a work ticket."

"I know what it is. I just don't want anyone to know where I am."

I kept my hands on the jim and said nothing. The lever gave and the door swung open. "There. All yours."

"That was fast!"

"Indeed. It doesn't take much time to unlock a door."

I swung the door wide and stepped off to the side to give it room. Micah came up and put a foot on the metal step and his sneaker skated off. He grabbed for the door frame and missed, causing him to twist sideways and half around, but I had him before he finished falling. One of my arms grabbing him around his waist, and with my other hand, I caught his arm, bringing the weight of him against my chest. 

Every muscle in him seized at once, his hands came up flat between us, and he held himself there with his elbows braced.

"I've got you." I smiled as our eyes met.

He did not answer. I could feel his heart going against my forearm.

"Micah, I'm going to set you on the pavement."

"Wait. You could have let me fall…"

"I could have. But I didn’t."

"Why didn't you?"

"That's a strange question."

"I ask strange questions."

I set him down on the pavement, but Micah did not step back. He did not put those six feet of distance back between us.

"Cal... would you like to see the route I have planned?"

I grinned and nodded. Why, I don't know. I just knew I wasn't ready to leave yet.

The door shut behind us and the wind weakened. I stood bent under a ceiling that had not been built for me. The inside smelled of citrus. I had caught a hint of it off of Micah when I caught him. There was a dinette on the left and a galley the size of a closet. Over the cab, a bed with its blankets thrown back from the morning. A pothos was dying in a mason jar on the sill, but the water in it was fresh, so he had been trying.

He went straight to the window over the dinette and put two fingers into the blind.

"Anybody out there?" I asked.

"No." He did not let go of the blind. "There is never anybody. I have counted a whopping eleven cars going by below, and not one of them came into the rest area."

"That's the strangest part of this Spring. I'll run a hundred miles in a shift and never pass a soul."

"Do you look?"

"I look. It's most of the job. You learn to read a lot off an empty road."

"What do you read off this one?"

"That you picked about the last place in Maryland where someone could stand outside all day and have nobody see him."

He let the blind fall and walked across to the window over the sink, then looked out of that one too. Then he came back down the aisle. There was nowhere in the rig to stand that was not close to him.

"It isn't much," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"It's better than my house."

"You live in a motorhome?"

"Nah. I live in a house in Hancock. Three bedrooms. Just me and the missus."

"That’s more house than this thing."

"No. It isn't." I grunted. “Not really.”

He looked at me a while, then motioned to my face mask. "You can take that off in here. If you want."

"You sure?"

"I've been alone for two weeks. I'm the safest man in Maryland. And I'd rather enjoy the company, if you'd like to stay for a bit."

I unhooked the loop from one ear and then the other. I had not thought of it as undressing until I was doing it.

"Your turn," I said.

"Give me a second."

"Take all the time you need."

"I'm not being dramatic. I haven't shown anybody my face since March ninth."

"You know the date?"

"I remember dates of important events," he said as he pulled his own mask down.

I had built a face out of the eyes alone, but had it wrong. His mouth was wider than the eyes had promised, with a thin pale scar through the upper lip, and he had shaved that morning.

"There you are," I said, smiling.

"And here I am,” he smiled, coyly.

"You have a kind face,” I said softly.

“I was afraid… earlier, when you first pulled up."

"You were afraid?"

"I've had a lot of time to be afraid of small stuff lately." He didn’t move. "Say something else."

"Why?" I leaned in.

"Because you have a voice like dark molasses, and I'd like to hear more of it before you go."

"I'm not going." Our eyes locked, and I put my hand on the side of his neck and felt his pulse. Rather than seize up, he closed his eyes and drifted to another place. In that moment, I felt him decide.

I decided, too.

*****

Light was peaking through the little window next to the bed in the back of the motorhome. Morning was upon us. The wind from the night before had settled into a steady press against the flank of the rig. He lay with his head on my chest and one hand spread flat on my stomach.

"Did you tell anybody where you were going?" he asked.

"My dispatcher. Just her."

"Did you give her my name?"

"It goes on the work ticket, Micah."

He sat up and pulled the blanket around himself. "I'd like to see you again," he said.

"Micah... my wife's at home. She’s waiting for me."

His hand did not move. That was the worst of it. If the hand had pulled away I could have called it what it was and left. But he left it where it was, warm and open.

"Okay," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. You already told me about her."

"That was a low bar, really."

"But it's a bar all the same." He lifted his head, and his eyes had gone careful again, as they had been out on the pavement when we first met.

I got up. “I still have to write the work ticket.”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying it to put space between us, Micah.”

“I know that too,” he said as he slid out across the mattress with the blanket still wrapped around him, and stepped out into the narrow aisle.

There was no place where I couldn’t get dressed in front of him, and nowhere he could look that wasn’t at me.

We dressed without touching or saying another word. I put my mask on before I opened the door, and then he put his own on, too. From ten feet away we would have passed for strangers.

I wrote the ticket on the hood of the truck.

LOCKOUT. NO TOW. Where it said location I put I-68 EB MM 74, SHOULDER, and I tore off his copy and handed it to him. He read every line of it before he folded it.

"Thank you," he said.

In the mirror he stood by the open door of the Winnebago with his arms wrapped around himself, and he was still standing that way when the road bent and he was gone from my view.

At the light by the Sheetz I took my wedding ring out of the cup holder, where it rides every working day. I worked it back over the knuckle. It always goes on harder after a cold day. I had never before caught myself noticing.

Our house is at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, where the sidewalk gives out. Jenna's Corolla was in the drive. She had left the porch light on for me. I shut the truck off and sat a while with my hands on the wheel. I felt guilty. I felt like I smelled of Micah. I wondered if Jenna would notice.And if she did, I wasn’t ashamed. I was, for once, happy.

I got out of the truck and went up the three steps onto the porch. I stood under the light with the ticket book under my arm and the mask still hanging off one ear. I had the keys in my hand, ready to open the door. But what waited on the other side was not what I wanted. No more. I realized I was done. That I’d been done for a while. It just took Micah to help me realize it.

There was no number to call. His phone had been locked in that rig, and he never offered me a number. I hadn’t asked for one. There was one place on this earth where I could find him, and I had written down a different one on the ticket.

I went back down the three steps and got back in the truck. As I rolled back out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and drove away, I saw Jenna in the rearview mirror opening the front door and coming out onto the porch in her robe. I did not slow down and I did not raise my hand. She would think it was another call. There was no reason for her to think anything else.

Route 40 climbs the ridge in the same long curves it comes down. Eleven miles. The lot at Sideling Hill was empty except for the Winnebago. The paper on the welcome center door was still lifting and dropping. I pulled into the same space I had used earlier and shut the engine off.

There was a light on behind the blind over the dinette, and two fingers in it, and I could not say how long they had been there.

I climbed down. Before I got halfway across the pavement, the door of the rig swung open on the wind. There stood Micah, like the thing I had never known I needed.