The man drove the old Ford away from the pumps, out of the station and onto the interstate. The little group of people in the car had been driving since early morning. Now, with the air conditioner busted and the windows down to compensate, they would drive till late in the evening, their bellies full of hamburgers, their heads full of hurt and their hearts as empty as their heads and stomachs were full. Each member of the little group was separated from the others by the noise of the air rushing by the open windows, by the thump, thump, thump of the car's tires on the ruts left by the eighteen wheelers, but most of all by the occult silence of the interstate.

The boy knew that if he asked at just the right moment, the man could be manipulated into stopping for an ice cream cone. His younger sister, Tess and he had developed a foolproof strategy. They would wait until they knew their father was hungry - usually around dusk - when the heat was dying with the day. If the interstate cooperated and a town was near, they would pretend hunger themselves. Almost always this had the desired effect, and the pleasure of licking a soft cone would keep boredom at bay for a good part of the evening. This worked especially well for Tess, as she almost always fell asleep after the cone and finished the night's drive with her eyes closed and her mouth half open as the car rocketed down the highway.

But everything was changed now, and getting the ice cream hardly seemed worthwhile. Tess was gone and the joy of a shared campaign had been half of the fun.

So, the boy's thoughts turned towards the highway rather than ice cream. He remembered how his dad had talked about it before they left for Los Angeles. It had sounded so wonderful and mysterious and grown up. They would get an oil change. They didn't want a breakdown on the Interstate. They would take county 23 to US 34. Then they'd turn south and follow it to I80. The way he said I80 made it seem almost human or maybe, more than human. He abbreviated the name of the highway like he would if he were talking about a famous person. He used it like he would use the last name of a past president. Like he might refer to the bad times under Nixon or the good times under Clinton or how Bush had waged the war. He abbreviated the name, and when he mentioned driving the highway, the reverence in his voice was what you'd expect if he were planning to meet a national figure. We'll turn west on I80...I'm going to have lunch with Forbes or Perot or Kennedy. What stood out most to the boy, though was the fact that his dad never mentioned getting to Los Angeles or for that matter getting back home to Illinois. He always wondered if his dad thought reaching a destination was a forgone conclusion on reaching the Interstate. Or, maybe, it was just that driving the Interstate was enough in itself. When they'd talked about the trip before leaving for Los Angeles 'The Interstate' had seemed heroic as it evoked images of the manhood towards which the boy was just beginning to stretch. But, now, 'The Interstate' seemed more monstrous than heroic. It seemed like he had known nothing, ever, except the endless stretch of road, the hot wind coming through the open windows and the rancid silence in the cab of the car.

-----

The man was hot and tired as well. He had chosen to drive the entire day rather than ask for relief from the woman. Twice, he had dozed at the wheel for a few seconds during the heat of the day. If things had been different, he would have been anxious to get home...or at least to get to a motel and to get out of the car. But, to end the day meant that they were one day closer to being home and that was the one place he didn't want to be. Every time he thought about home, he became more exhausted. Tess was gone and home would never be the same and he fervently believed that it was the woman's fault. How would he ever find the strength to continue to live with the woman? How could he pretend that things were OK between them? How could he talk to her about what had happened without losing control and hurting her? How could he leave her without destroying the boy? What reason was there to go on? How could he not go on?

As dusk approached the man almost smiled at how Bobby and Tess used to 'trick' him into stopping for ice cream. God, how he missed the way she would needle Bobby until he hit her. He remembered how angry it would make him. But it was an anger he could do something about. He wished that he could trade the old anger for the simmering rage that he had felt in the pit of his stomach since Tess had lost her battle at the medical center. How he wished he could feel an emotion he could get a hold of. One he could hold in front of him and examine and analyze and probe and if necessary repair. But the anger he felt now couldn't be repaired, and it dare not be examined. His anger was like a black hole. In it's light-less depths any possible future happiness would surely be mangled beyond recognition. He felt sure that if he examined this new anger, he would drown in the horrors that had pooled in the center of his gut.

-----

The Ford was the only reliable car the family had possessed. It was a '78, and the woman's husband had purchased it the year after Tess was born. It held so many memories for the woman. They had camped in the car. They had driven across country in the car to visit her folks. She had driven him to work in the car for countless mornings and then used it to shuttle the kids to school and music lessons and little league games, and to pick the man up at the end of the day. They had owned the car longer than they had owned their house. They had necked in the car, they had fought in the car, and they had sung and joked and screamed and yelled in the car. The car was a safe, comfortable place. The road held memories as well. Her father had been a construction worker and her mother had been a 'housewife' which was a respectable occupation in her mother's day. So, on more than one occasion, when she was a child, her father and mother had loaded she and her two brothers into a Rambler wagon and set off to see the country. Breakfast and supper cooked over a campfire. Lunch at a drive in. Visits to national parks. Ranger hikes. All these were warm, comfortable, happy memories and the road had been a part of them all. She had played highway alphabet and 'My grandmother has a trunk' and she had collected states from passing license plates and like, Tess, she had needled her brothers and slept with her mouth open in the hot wind which came in through the Rambler's windows. And she had loved it all.

But now, the road was an irritation. She had been riding in the same car on the same stretch of highway all of her life and it would surely go on forever. What was worse was that she knew she ought to mourn Tess's loss, but she couldn't. She wasn't sure she would ever feel again, for herself or for the man or for the boy. Much less for the daughter she had loved who was now gone.

-----

The family, for only weeks earlier what was now a man, a woman and a boy had been a father and a mother and a son and daughter, had been on the road for the better part of twelve hours. But to them the twelve hours seemed like twenty-four. They had left Illinois weeks earlier for UCLA Medical Center with the desperate hope that Tess's leukemia would respond to a bone-marrow transplant. They had driven eighty miles an hour with few stops on the beautiful, magical, healing, life-giving interstate. They had driven with a great deal of fear in their hearts, but with an equal amount of hope. In the last days of their stay in Los Angeles, Tess had lost her battle, and now the little group was driving back to Illinois, eighty miles an hour with few stops on a black, hot, relentless ribbon of desperation and hopelessness with it's peculiar blanket of isolating noise.

They were in that part of Kansas where the road stretches to the horizon without a turn, or a junction or even a billboard. It had been at least an hour since the last direction sign. And the sun, which had been just beginning to set, was now almost fully down, but the heat had not slackened. The man could barely see between the bugs in the cloudy windshield and the gas gauge was nearing the quarter tank. The man made it a rule to fill up when the needle crossed the quarter mark because a hike for gas in this country could be a long, hot and thirsty affair. The last sign they had seen had said that Omaha was 95 miles distant and the man didn't know if there was anything between. He dreaded the thought of the last 15 worried miles he'd drive if he didn't find a station soon. But for now, the worry was minor. Because it was minor, it barely distracted him from the train of thought he'd been riding.

He'd been remembering. That seemed to sum the last weeks of his life. Remembering. He'd been remembering how he'd lied to Tess the last day and told her she'd be getting well any day. He'd known better, but he hadn't been able to find a way to tell her the truth without sharing the terror he felt with her. Tess had fallen asleep under the influence of the final shot of morphine, thinking she'd wake up well the next day, or if not that day, certainly the day after.

He'd also been remembering the way his wife had procrastinated in getting care for Tess. He'd been sure she needed a specialist's care more than a year ago, but the woman had put off taking Tess to the specialist's for three months. He just couldn't understand it. The woman had changed so much that year. Before, he'd always thought Bobby and Tess defined her world. But just before he'd noticed Tess's illness, something had happened. The woman had become selfish. She'd begun to drink, and she'd neglected the kids. Had she had an affair? Had he done something to hurt her? Was she hiding something? As far as he was concerned, no real or imagined guilt could be as great as the responsibility she bore for neglecting Tess.

He remembered what the doctor had said the week before Tess's death. "If we'd gotten to her a month or two earlier, we might have been able to help her." The woman hadn't heard the doctor. After the conversation with the doctor, the man had driven for hours. He'd been afraid to return to their motel. He'd been afraid he'd throw the doctor's words in the woman's face. He'd been afraid he'd find her drunk. He'd been afraid he'd use his fists to try to even the score. He'd been afraid Bobby would see him hurt his mom. Oh, how he wished he could stop remembering.

-----

The boy woke from a short nap to hear the noisy silence of the road broken by the woman's voice. The air from the open window had turned cool, the sun had dropped below the horizon and the hot, sticky gloaming had turned into a chilly night. The woman said she was tired. The man replied that Omaha was less than an hour away. The woman said she'd seen a sign for a motel just ahead. The man ignored her for a moment, but the boy saw his head drop and jerk up suddenly and then heard the man say, "All right." He'd stop at the motel. The gage was now near an eighth of a tank and the man added, "Maybe there'll be a station near the motel. We could use a fill up."

The sign the woman had seen had said that the motel was ten miles from the interstate and the boy had fallen asleep again before he woke to hear the woman say, "This can't be right. We've been driving for twenty minutes since the turn off. We should have come to the motel by now."

The man reached down and twiddled the trip meter. "There", he said, "we'll go ten miles more and if we don't see it, we'll turn around. Maybe we passed a junction, but I sure didn't see one."

Good as his word, it was ten minutes later when the man pulled the car over to the side of the road. He looked at the big map book they'd brought with them from Illinois. As they sat there with the engine off and the dome lamp on, the boy noticed for the first time that all of the cars, which had whipped noisily along the interstate, were completely gone. They had been replaced by a dark silence. The dome lamp cast the only light the boy could see. The only sound he heard was the hesitant breathing of the three strangers in the car.

The man put the map book down in silence. He started the engine, turned the car so that it pointed in the opposite direction and pressed the accelerator.

The woman picked up the map book. After a few minutes she said, "This road's not even in the book."

The man said nothing. The air in the car was heavy with frustration as it sped back down the silent, lonely highway. All three were exhausted, and the interstate was more than a half-hour back. It would be midnight before they found a motel if there were none before Omaha.

-----

Now the woman was remembering, but the thoughts in her train had a different engine. Worry was what pushed her these days. Every since her own diagnosis, she'd been able to do nothing but worry. At first, it seemed unreal. She'd never even known anyone with breast cancer. She hadn't even been able to think about talking to the man about the 'problem'. What if she lost a breast?What if she lost both breasts? Would he still find her attractive? The ground hadn't moved under them in years as it was. Before she knew she was sick, she'd even thought of trying to talk him into seeing a marriage counselor.

After a week of agonizing, she realized she had to get help. And she realized that the man had to know if she was to do so. She had even prepared a little speech to tell the man what was going on and to ask for his support. It was the afternoon before the evening she'd planned to deliver her little speech that the doctor had told them about Tess's leukemia. When she looked in the man's eyes, she couldn't bring herself to add another brick to the load of worry he'd just shouldered. Instead of giving the little speech she planned, she quietly prepared dinner and took a sleeping pill.

She didn't remember much about the following days. She managed the terror of the nights with sleeping pills and the agony of the days by sneaking drinks on what shortly became an hourly basis. Somehow, she just lost control. She forgot to make appointments for her own care and she forgot to make appointments for Tess's. Sometimes, she showed up alone for Tess's appointments thinking they were for herself. And most of the time she forgot her own appointments. When the man asked her about Tess, she hid her confusion by pretending that she had been busy with something else. What she found absurd was that she began to think he didn't care about her since he never asked her about her own appointments. What she found less absurd was the anger she'd seen in his face the last few times he asked her about Tess's care.

Finally, she made and kept enough appointments for Tess to determine that the trip to Los Angeles was needed. She never did deal with her own problem. And now, as the car cut like a knife through the dark silence of the road, she wondered whether she would merely lose her breasts or perhaps her life as well, and she wondered whether she had killed her daughter by her neglect. The one thing she didn't wonder about was whether she could tell the man about her own cancer. She could see that their life together would never be the same and that she would never willingly share such an intimate detail with him again.

-----

After a short eternity, the woman said, "You must have missed a road. It's been forty-five minutes. We ought to be back to the interstate by now."

The man was silent for a moment and then said, "Can't be. This road is straight as a string. I didn't turn off it after I left the interstate, and I haven't turned off it since I turned around." The edge in his voice affected the boy like a paper cut.

The woman didn't say anything for another good ten minutes, then she said "You must have turned wrong without knowing it", to which the main replied, "I swear, it's straight as a string and I haven't turned except the U turn you saw after I looked at the map."

The woman was just about to reply when they saw the neon light in front of the 'Quiet Rest Motel'. The woman said, "Well never mind, let's just get a room. We can find the interstate again in the morning."

The man turned into the motel parking lot. At least, it was where the parking lot had once been, but the asphalt was so full of cracks and weeds it was hard to tell it had ever been used to park cars. "That's odd", the man said.

"Be careful", was the woman's only reply.

Except for the neon sign, the motel was completely dark. More out of curiosity than hope, the man used the headlights to search for the office. When the lights finally picked out a small 'office' sign, it was the kind they make out of stick on letters that you buy in a hardware store. He pulled up in front of the sign and started to open the door.

"Where are you going", the woman said. "This place hasn't been open in years."

"But the sign out front...they wouldn't pay to keep it lit if they weren't open..."

"Please get back in the car. This place gives me the creeps. I wouldn't stay here even if it were open."

The man and woman argued for some minutes while the boy realized that he was hearing the longest conversation he'd heard in days. It almost cheered him up.

The man closed the door, started the engine, pulled the car out of the lot and headed back the way he'd been going before he had turned into the parking lot.

The woman said, "Go back the other way. There's got to be a turn off for the interstate back there. We've driven more than an hour and we should have come back to it a half-hour ago." With a little more fear in her voice, she added, "And please drive slow so we don't pass it again."

The desolate silence fell again as the man turned the car around and drove back the way they'd just come. This time he drove at closer to 30 miles per hour than 60. It was nearly eleven o'clock as six frightened eyes searched both sides of the road. Every now and then, there was a break in the bushes and they came on what they hoped was the turn off they'd missed. Each time, it was nothing but a dirt road that led eternally on until it was lost in a dark emptiness where the horizon should have been.

-----

Now that the boy was fully awake, he was scared. He'd been scared since they'd left the interstate. At first, his fear had been a barely noticeable anxiety because his parents weren't talking. Then it had progressed to that strange scaredness, which comes on a child when he's out in the middle of nowhere and the sun, is setting. Now it was a bubbling terror beginning in the center of his belly and boiling out until it seeped from his skin as sweat.

The boy was remembering too. And with the remembering, came guilt. He was remembering stealing it from Johnny Rusco's backpack during homeroom. He was remembering sneaking it into his house and up the stairs to his bedroom under his shirt. He was remembering the strange way it made him feel as he looked at the women in the magazine. He was remembering how frightened he was the day he brought it home that Tess would find it. He had thought that night of burning it the next day, but it had been so much trouble to steel it and sneak it home and it had been early the next day when the man had taken him into his bedroom.

At first he had been sure that the man or the woman or Tess had found it and that he would be punished with some horrible punishment. The kind of punishment fit for the kind of person he'd become. But the man hadn't whipped him. He had merely said the word 'leukemia' and he had known for sure that God had found a punishment worse than the man, or the woman ever could have. That night, he decided he would burn the magazine the following day, but as soon as he woke up the next day, he was loaded into the Ford in search of the miracle which would surely be at the end of Interstate 80. And now, he knew there had been no miracle because of the magazine under the mattress of his bed at home.

-----

It must have been 1:00 in the morning when the woman spoke again. This time there was a tremor in her voice. "I'm frightened. We're lost and this road doesn't make any sense."

The man agreed with her. He had no idea where they were or where the interstate was. They only knew that they could not have turned off from any of the dozen or so dirt roads they'd seen as they crept along retracing their steps. The man said he didn't know anything to do but to keep going. The woman said that she didn't know anything else to do either. Then that man said "That's odd." And the woman replied, "What's odd?" And the man said that the gas gage hadn't budged since he'd left the interstate. "I sure hope it isn't broken. I thought we had an eighth of a tank when we left the interstate, but now I'm not sure. It still reads an eighth of a tank".

It was only a few moments later that the man and the woman saw the motel sign again in the distance. A chill ran up and down their backs as they realized that they had come full circle again on a perfectly straight road. The chill became icy as they heard the boy moan in his sleep. "I'm going to look for a phone", the man said, and though the woman made no reply, it was obvious from the way she held her breath that she was terribly frightened.

Once more, the man turned the front wheels of the Ford off of the road and into the abandoned parking lot. Once more he pointed the headlights at the 'office' sign. He saw no phone, but decided to try the door in hopes that he would find a working phone at the desk in the lobby. When he switched off the headlights, the night was darker than he had thought possible. There was no moon, and though the day and the evening had been crystal clear, there were no stars. When he heard the woman gasp at the darkness, he considered leaving her alone with the lights off. She deserved at least as much as the terror of a dark car. But, as he opened the driver's door, he thought again and turned the headlamps back on. As he stepped out of the car, he thought he heard the woman whisper "Be careful", but he wasn't sure. He didn't bother to reply.

The silence of the night was complete. It went way beyond the absence of sound. It hurt his ears as he walked towards the lobby. The strangest thing, though, was that even with the silence, he couldn't hear his own footsteps. As he neared the entrance he grew even more frightened as he realized that the silence of the night or the silence of the road or the silence of the motel was swallowing the small sounds he made as he walked.

As before, the motel was completely black. But as he approached the lobby, somehow, in the blackness he saw something that nearly sent him over the edge. Inside the lobby stood his mother and his father. His father had been dead for three years and his mother was back in Illinois. But there they stood. His father was slumped against the counter, his head was hung so low that his chin touched his chest. His mother was drawn up to her full five foot three inches. Her legs were set apart and her arms were folded as though she had been scolding a naughty child. A bead of sweat formed a moist mustache over her upper lip and her face was red with the exertion of shouting. He felt, rather than heard the word 'coward'. Again and again, she repeated the word. Every time he heard the word, his father flinched. Every time his father flinched, he could have sworn the ground shook. Coward! Worthless Coward! He watched the shame grow like a shadow on his father until it all but hid him. Was she screaming at the man in the lobby? Or the man with his hand on the outside door handle?

The man never even tried the door. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, turned around and staggered rather than walked back to the car. "No phone", was all he said as he closed the driver's door and pointed the Ford once again in the direction they'd been heading before he turned into the parking lot. As he drove from the abandoned motel, he longed to reach for the woman. She had once made him almost forget that word, but now, he was too angry to respond to her even if she'd been capable of caring.

-----

The car rocketed down the road faster now, and as it did, more memories flooded the woman's mind. Now she wasn't remembering her cancer or Tess's death or the good times with the man or the boy or her parents. She was remembering the illness that had taken her mother. She'd been only nine when her mother had become sick. She'd watched her mother slowly weaken with the illness. She had assumed more and more of the household chores during the few months that her mother had been sick. At first she'd just done the vacuuming, Then she'd had to begin keeping the kitchen clean and then there had been the laundry and finally the cooking as well. During all that time, she'd sensed that her mother's illness had been different than other illnesses she'd known during her short life. But it hadn't been until her mother had stopped getting out of bed in the morning that she'd first wondered if she might die. She'd asked her father about it at dinner one night, and when he didn't respond, she'd thought maybe he hadn't heard her. She repeated her question, but her father just stared at his plate as he continued to eat. Since her question had made her little brother cry and since her older brothers were staring at their plates like her father, she finally gave up.

As the car went faster, the memories came more rapidly as well. She remembered the last day and the visits by the nurse and the doctor. She remembered the moans coming from her parent's bedroom. She remembered how, when she went down the hall for a 'glass of water' she'd seen her father sitting in the recliner and staring blankly at the television. And then she remembered the crack of light as her father opened the door and said, "Your mother's dead". Followed by the dark silence, which fell as he closed the door.

-----

It was sometime later when the boy awoke from a dream. He thought he'd heard Tess wake up and say she was hungry, and he thought he'd heard his mother say "There's nothing we can do about that now, honey. There are no restaurants around here."

But when he woke, the man and the woman were silent and there wasn't a car on the road and the only lights he could see were the headlights of the car quietly creeping forward as the man and the woman vainly searched for a turn off.

The clock on the dash read 2:00 when the man saw the light in the distance. At first they thought with some relief that it was an oncoming car or an onramp sign. The woman had dozed, but woke with a start when she heard the man's sigh. He was relieved, for a moment, because he thought the fearful aloneness was about to end.

The woman was the first to realize it was not a car, but a roadside business. "Thank God" she said. "At least maybe we can find out where we are. And then, "Oh My God!" as she realized what time it was. "How much gas?"

"Still an eighth of a tank, which means, I have no idea. We'll fill it just in case, if this is a station and they take credit cards."

The light danced at the side of the road. It seemed like it was getting no closer, but it was white and big, so it couldn't be a taillight. Finally, the group made out the 'Q' and the 'R' and the man gasped and the woman moaned and the boy thought he was going to be sick. Instead of slowing, the man gunned the engine and the three flew by the motel faster than they had thought the car would go.

-----

Now, they were sure. This was the road to hell. It was paved with silence, and there wasn't a soul or a light or an exit on it.

The man drove his foot into the gas pedal as though he were crushing his daughter's sickness, his wife's indifference or the anger and fear that had replaced the little reason that had remained an hour ago.

And the woman's mind finally snapped as she saw Tess and the man and the boy running wildly away in a car in front and the headlights of a truck full of cancer filling the right hand mirror.

The boy reached into Johnny's backpack again and again. He pulled the magazine out a hundred times. He felt the glossy cover stick to his sweaty stomach as he carried it up a hundred flights of stairs to his room. He looked at a hundred undressed corpses, and tried a hundred times to put the magazine back or tear it up or burn it.

These were the nightmares, which filled their minds, as their bodies were flying down an empty, dark, lonely road past exits, which didn't exist because there was no one in the car to point them out.