Page 6 of Goode Vibrations
I sighed a laugh. “Fuck me, what a mare.” I wiped my face. “I just came from Atlanta, been on a two-and-a-half-hour layover here, and Oslo before that. Now back to Atlanta?”
“Man, that’s a lot of flying. Only other option I see is find a room tonight and fly direct tomorrow. That’s all the options I’ve got, Mr. Sylvain, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “Yeah nah. I’ll take the long route. Back to Atlanta, eh?”
She tapped a while longer, and then printed out a new boarding pass, handed it to me with a flirty smile. “Remember, the second that plane parks, you better be moving. Your connection to Atlanta is wheels up in fifteen from when this one lands. I hope you’re fast, honey.”
“Piece of piss,” I said again.
She just laughed and waved me toward the jetway. “Go on, get your seat. You miss this flight, you’re outta luck till tomorrow.”
I boarded, found my seat, which fortunately wasn’t in the very,veryback, just most of the way back and the middle seat. I’m not a small guy, so sitting middle was the worst, but the woman in the window seat was already nodding off, and the man in the aisle seat gave me a glare that said I’d better not even ask about switching, so I stuffed my baggage overhead, took my seat, and tried to will my shoulders to be narrower and my legs shorter.
Swear to God, when I finally land in New York, I’m not stepping foot on another airplane for at least six months.
Longer, if I could talk Len into extending my sabbatical.
Despite my exhaustion, there was no way I was gonna be able to sleep wedged in the middle like this, so I slid my iPad out of my backpack and searched the internet for a suitable automobile to live in for the next six months.
By the timewheels squealed the touchdown on the La Guardia runway, I was nearly delirious, but I had a reliable line on a van I could buy…if I could find a way from the airport to upstate New York.
The trip included a horrendously expensive taxi ride to a bus station, and then a one-way ticket upstate, and then a four-hour hike on foot from the bus station along a rural highway to a dirt road, and from that dirt road to a two-track into the woods…and I’d been awake over twenty-four hours. Hadn’t had a real meal in as long. If I didn’t wind up with a decent, running, reliable caravan out of this, I’d pack a sad right in the dirt.
The two-track wound through towering, swaying pines, which were arrayed in neat, precise lines, which meant it, was planted forest. The deeper and deeper I walked into the forest, the more the wind soughed, the late evening sunlight dappling the sky orange-red.
Way out in the wops, this was.
Finally, the two-track twisted almost back on itself, and then the forest abruptly opened into a clearing a good full kilometer across. In the clearing was a small ramshackle house with dirty white siding, an old, leaning red barn with an attached, roofless silo, and a maze of electric wire fencing keeping forty or so head of cattle and sheep and horses separated. The moment I popped out of the tree line, a chorus of barks announced my presence, and I saw three or four large white dogs running along the fence lines, back and forth, fixated on me. At an angle to the house opposite the barn was a long low blue pole barn, the front doors opened, showing a messy jumble of farming equipment and tool chests and junked old cars; when the dogs started barking, a tall older man emerged from the jumble, spotting me.
The two-track became a narrow, rutted gravel drive leading between fenced paddocks to the house and barn, rusted gates leaning this way and that, ready to be swung across the path as needed. I followed the driveway toward the house, only to stop short of the pole barn when a fifth dog trotted out from behind the waiting man—the dog was enormous, with long dirty white fur and a deep, ripping bark. The dog stayed within six feet of the man, waiting for a command as it stood growling and barking at me.
“I’m Errol Sylvain,” I said, offering a friendly smile. “I emailed you about the van.”
The man, pushing sixty-five or seventy, was lean and hard with a gray buzz cut and a shaggy salt-and-pepper beard. He wore dirty jeans, a white tank top, and had a big silver spanner in one hand and a greasy rag in the other.
He made a flicking gesture at the barking dog. “Colby—hush.”
The dog immediately went silent, glancing at his master. The man stabbed a finger at the ground. “Colby, heel.”
The dog trotted to his master’s right leg and sat down, panting.
“Good boy, Colby.” He extended a hand to me. “Dillon Hendrick.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Dillon. I’m Errol.”
He eyed the sky. “Gettin’ on to evening. Took your time getting here.”
I shrugged. “Well, I had to get a bus from the city and then walk here from the bus station.”
Dillon blinked at me. “Damn, son, that’s a hike. If you’d’a emailed me, I’d have picked you up.”
“Now you say,” I laughed. “No worries, though. Have you got the van?”
“Yeah, it’s in here.” He aimed the spanner at the pole barn. “Been giving her a once-over, makin’ sure it’s all here and in working order.”
“All good, then?”
“Oh yeah. I put a new belt on, the old one was squeaking. Could use an oil change and a new set of tires if you’re planning on going anywhere far.”