There was fright but I’d daydreamed how I’d be.

– Morvern Callar, by Alan Warner

Behind, a relay switched on and off, on and off, a gray sheet of fuzz six inches above. I rolled groggily in the bag, dragging it up to jiggle the headlight switch. The noise stopped.

Stomach between the seats, I managed the zipper down to a burst of cold air. The keys were in a denim pocket on the wrong side and took a bit more managing. As expected, they turned silently.

I checked my phone, just for the time as I’d no data, and the doors’d purportedly not open for two hours. I shuffled back and re-zipped. An inch of inflatable pad and plywood lay between my back and belongings. The pedal of a half disassembled bike pressed at my side.

The night before I’d pushed the lock without keys. Should’ve been a spare in the Broncos wallet I’d found on a run in Colorado, but the bugger’d fallen down the center console. I tried for the bathroom at Walmart then stood a bit and shivered in my jeans and sweatshirt.

I’d popped a text for the parents to consult the hivemind. A post said cab companies could do car locks, though the man on the line was confused; he suggested maybe the RCMP. They scoffed, rightfully.

The cell rang and Mom’d read the number for a tow company. They’d get me in the hour, they said, third call being the charm I supposed. The desk attendant didn’t object, but kept eyes on me all the while I took refuge in the hotel lobby. Out $75, I was safe in the bag.

Alone among white aisles, my object was displayed on a cardboard stand. I tried not to resent the purchase. Big stores had my eyes fuzzy.

I plugged in the jump battery at the pole beside my space. The lot outlets were on, thanks to the cold. Then, it was the cold that’d caused the predicament.

My father and I’d built the makeshift camper in the back five months prior for an opposite journey. I barely lasted three when he’d flown off, one if you’d wanted a brain, and that was in the mountains. At the doctorate I was to teach 40 freshman limits, kind of stealing it occurred. I’d gone back to say my intention and sit the conversations, then to hand over keys.

An hour on the indicator had switched green. Attaching leads, the vehicle hummed up without a fuss. The jump-starter sat passenger side and hooked with an inverter to the lighter. I had a McGriddle from the drive-through before the AlCan. A voice read Let The Right One In.

The empty sky reflected off snow in Fort Nelson, illuminating signage green, white in blinding contrast. Lunch was footlong chicken breast, my usual, infamously plant substitute. After cold-cuts’ affair with cancer I liked to think maybe that I’d dodged a bullet. Probably the long term effects of ORCB aren’t studied, though.

It showed 1191 miles left, the route: Fort Collins to Fairbanks, a stop in Yellowstone. Whitehorse looked at least half that, so no hope tonight. If not for the course I’d rather have made it three days instead of two. She’d written a letter for the PhD so must’ve been surprised, but didn’t ask.

I stared at the map a little more, but no particular stood out. I’d get over the Rockies, I figured, and camp first chance afterwards.

A shiny crack in the dark needles wound up and down between sections of flat straight. The sides cut 50 feet back, it was imposing in spite of the single lanes. The speakers said that the poor lady in hospital’d burned up.

After sundown I’d often seen naught but long hauls, each a dot on the horizon that’d split in two. As paint lines’d start to drown we’d swap off the brights. Not one had failed me, nor I them. On the road past Fort Nelson, even in the day I was solely among friends.

There was a lodge thing with two pumps out front. The gas contraption was worn looking metal shaped like a grandfather clock, with numbers displayed in the way of an old alarm one for a bedside. Apparently no mechanism for card payment had fit the aesthetic.

Two pickups sat parallel of the logs, but beyond the window was pitch black and my courage bled out on the welcome mat. It was yet to use half the tank, just the staring at the map had worried me.

I don’t recall the way the mountain part looked in the light, except that flakes began to fall before the sun did. Surely that was a sight.

My modus operandi of roaring down straights, each limit taken as a hint for the next corner, started to be put to serious question. I’d overtaken a clump of bison ten yards off the right door, their eyes reflected off the cone’s edge. Back at the apartment I’d have found the thought appealing.

It’d been hours since a structure or rest-stop. Stepping onto a flat windblown crust, all around were ridges outlined by the moon against the stars. To my left, the infinite darkness of pavement curved sharply from the last hill. I’d raised my arms and twirled until a beam of whitish yellow cut across the night.

My companion hurtled at a speed caution forbade me in the best of conditions. I’d fallen in line, knuckles white from catching up. A few thousand pounds of hair and muscle would hardly worry such a creation.

The labeled dot was still many miles away when the orange image between F and E lit on the dash. There would be a station there, I’d tried to believe, as the three red squares ahead careened ’round another steep bank. Each mile was an age and a long day became longer.

The look of the dirt road did little to corroborate my silent affirmations, but I’d been full of happiness nonetheless. I nodded a silent salute to the lights as they left me to the blackness.

Down a ways was a rectangular gazebo next to what looked like a gift shop. This pump was a less cohesive piece than the last, but the plastic slit atop the keypad was the most beautiful I’d ever seen. That was until I’d worked out the interface was vestigial and my joke too close to home.

I’d crawled into the bag when the crunch of tires came alongside and a spotlight scanned the shambles that surrounded me. Faces and uniforms had come into focus and vanished before I’d lowered my hand.

I’d awoken drenched as if I’d wet myself. It seemed all might become solid any minute and I’d end up a statue like from an episode of Scooby Doo. I’d scrambled the key to the slot and begged the fuel to be enough and the cold not to have got the electronics again. The engine rumbled.

I shed my soaked clothes; not urine, sweat? Then struggled into long underwear and pulled on coat and snow pants.

No heat’d come off the engine yet so I drove a couple circles and parked near the woods. I’d moved too fast when I hopped out to pee and a trickle ran down my leg. That I’d been four nights without a shower became all too apparent as I slithered back inside.

The gas held out ’til a beater brown Ford drove up to the shop building. When I entered, her look showed no winter gear could contain the grime. That day I felt no shame for being alive.