Page 11 of The Perfect Hosts

Nightjar.

Nightjar, Wyoming, population 1200. He hasn’t stepped foot in the town—if you can call it that—in twenty-seven years. But isn’t this why he took the job in Wyoming? Because he knew that one day he would be called back to the town that tore apart his family? To the town that took his sister.

Driving across Wyoming at night is a lonely trek. On moonless, starless, and misty nights such as this, and on certain stretches of highway, the mountains retreat into the blackness, and the earth and sky become one. With only his headlights to lead the way, Jamie feels as if he could drive off the end of the world. To pass the time, he listens to a podcast and takes swigs of Mountain Dew, cracks sunflower seeds between his teeth, and presses his foot down on the accelerator. The drive would normally take five hours, but he’ll make it in four.

His headlights bring a sign into focus, and Jamie pulls over.Welcome to Nightjar. Nearly three decades earlier, when Jamie’s mother first told them they were moving from San Antonio to some godforsaken town named Nightjar, a town name that brought to mind a mason jar filled with swirling black air, Jamie and Juneau both balked vehemently. Their mother was insistent, though. They had to go where the jobs were, and the opportunity to be the night manager and head of housekeeping at a motel in the mountains was too good to pass up. Especially when it came with free lodging.

Later, Jamie would learn that the nightjar is a rangy, speckled bird the size of a crow, and after a few months in the town, he became inured to the harried calls of the bird when the sun began to settle behind the mountains. He also learned that people used to believe that nightjars were the souls of unbaptized children fated to fly the night sky. After his sister disappeared, Jamie would search for her along dusty gravel roads and in weedy ditches, and the nightjars would followalong with him in graceful loops, their hollow knocklike calls chasing Jamie’s own.Juneau,Juneau,Juneau.

Jamie gets back in his car and drives for about ten minutes when he passes an abandoned filling station. The Sip and Fuel. Jamie makes a wide U-turn, his tires squealing on the asphalt, pulls into the gas station, and gets out. It’s shut down now, the gas pumps removed, and a large For Lease sign hangs from the eaves. Suddenly his mind goes back to that awful night.

He and Juneau had pooled their money to buy a half-gallon of milk, a box of cereal, and a bag of chips at the Sip and Fuel before heading back to the motel room where they were living with their mom. They had driven about half a mile when Juneau said something about wishing they had gone to the high school football game that night. Jamie remembered being surprised by this. He thought Juneau felt the way he did—that their new school was stupid, football was stupid, and they were biding their time here until they could go back home to San Antonio.

“I thought you already screwed your way through the football team,” Jamie said, jokingly. “Who’s left, the water boy?”

Juneau slammed on the brakes of the Lynx station wagon, and they came to a skidding stop in the middle of the gravel road. “What the hell?” Jamie said, the seat belt catching and punching the air from his chest.

“You are an ass,” Juneau said. “Get out.”

“Yeah, right,” Jamie said. “Just drive.”

“No, I mean it,” Juneau said. “Get out of the car. You can walk home.”

“I was kidding,” Jamie said and laughed.

“You don’t joke about those kinds of things, Jamie,” Juneau said angrily. “It’s hard enough being new without having your brother starting rumors about you.”

“I didn’t!” Jamie protested, but Juneau was having none of it.

“Get out!” she yelled, grabbing the black knit cap from his head and throwing it out the open window.

“Hey,” Jamie cried, scuttling from the car to retrieve it, and watched as Juneau drove away, the taillights getting smaller and smaller until the car took a left onto the gravel road that led to home. Jamie never saw his sister again.

Get in your car and go, Juneau’s voice whispers.Don’t think about it anymore. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault. Get back in your car, and call your wife.

Now Jamie trudges to his car and opens the driver’s-side door. But instead of getting in, he reaches inside and grabs his jacket. A dusty pickup truck roars by and hangs a right onto the gravel road. In it are two teens, music blaring from the open windows. Jamie starts walking, following the fading taillights, slips on his jacket, and zips it up to his chin. It gets cold in the mountains at night.

He trudges along the gravel road, a cold mountain breeze pushing at his back. Nights in Wyoming are different than anywhere else. The sky is bigger, the air is cleaner, and the dark swallows you whole. It’s muscle memory that pulls Jamie forward. As a kid he walked this route dozens of times. He liked the remoteness, liked turning up his secondhand iPod full blast while listening to Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. He knew what the other kids in Nightjar thought of him, of Juneau, of his mother. They were just another loser family, down on their luck, looking for whatever work could be thrown their way. Most of his classmates were from families who were landowners or land developers or business owners. Sure, there were some kids whose parents catered to the wealthy ranchers, but they weren’t interested in Jamie. Why would they invest any time getting to know someone who probably wouldn’t last the winter?

Night sounds in the mountains are different too. The wind, the animals, the echoes all have an unearthly quality. Jamiepeers intently into the dark, glancing left and right into the ditches that line the road. After walking for about twenty minutes he begins to think he may have made a mistake. He should be coming upon a bow in the road, a sharp turn that will take him toward Nightjar and the motel they once called home. It’s also the spot where his sister disappeared. No, he tells himself. He’s not mistaken. As wild as it sounds, the ground beneath his feet feels familiar.

He continues forward, the road curves again, gently at first and then sharply. Jamie stops and pulls his phone from his pocket, turns on the Flashlight function, and sweeps the light in a wide arc in front of him. Small animals, with blinking, glowing eyes, scurry into the brush. Off to the left is a forest of ponderosa pine hidden in the shadows, but he can smell the woodsy resin. This is the spot. He’s sure of it. This is where the glare of the car’s headlights blinded him. At first, Jamie thought Juneau had come back to pick him up. The night was cold, much colder than tonight, and even in her anger she wouldn’t leave him outside in late-September temperatures that tended to tumble quickly.

Juneau hadn’t driven toward him. She simply sat in the car, engine idling, high beams like lasers blinding him. Okay, Jamie thought at the time, she’s still going to make him pay, make him come to her and beg to be let back into the car. What he had said to his sister had been mean, cruel, but he hated how Juneau was trying so hard to fit in here after they promised each other they wouldn’t bother.

But something had shifted after only eight weeks in Nightjar. School started, and the snide comments they volleyed back and forth about their classmates, the disdain and the disgust, became one-sided. Juneau started coming home later and later in the evening, smelling of beer and weed. She seemed more secretive. Juneau was seeing someone—Jamie was sure of it. When he asked her about it, Juneau laughed and told himnot to be stupid—she was doing school stuff, and it wouldn’t hurt him one bit to try to get involved too. Maybe join the cross-country team or Future Farmers of America. At that, Jamie had told her to fuck off. Juneau would once again learn it did no good to try to make friends and fit in, because in a matter of months their mother would up and move them somewhere new anyway.

Blinded by the headlights, Jamie walked toward the car. He’d apologize. Juneau would let him in the car, they would go back home, make microwave popcorn, and drink sodas from the machine they’d figured out how to jimmy. Everything would be okay.

When he was about thirty yards away from the car, he heard the engine rev and then watched as it backed up a few yards before coming to a stop. He took a few more steps and raised his arm against the glare of the headlights as the car reversed again. So, Juneau was going to playthisgame with him. “Come on, I’m sorry,” he called out. The car’s engine gunned again, and Jamie shook his head. Fine, he thought. He would walk home. He was cold and tired and hungry. Let Juneau be mad. She’d get over it eventually.

He continued on, but this time, instead of the car moving in reverse, it gunned forward, tires spinning on the gravel. “Very funny,” Jamie called out, but his words were drowned out by the scream of the engine. The car barreled toward him, and Jamie stood there frozen in disbelief. What was Juneau doing? The roar of the engine grew louder, and Jamie turned and started to run. His tennis shoes slipped on the slick gravel, and he nearly fell before righting himself. This wasn’t funny anymore. He veered to the side of the road and, if he had to, would jump into the ditch, which he knew was filled with cheatgrass and thistle and probably poison oak, but all that was better than getting crushed.

Jamie dared a look over his shoulder. The car was gettingcloser, and that was when he noticed the figure sitting behind the wheel. Juneau was small. She looked like a little old lady hunched over the steering wheel when she drove. This person was tall, big, and broad-shouldered. The person driving could not be his sister.

Jamie closed his eyes and began his leap when the car’s bumper struck his right hip. A flash of pain exploded through his body, and he could feel himself taking flight. It felt as if he was airborne for minutes, though it could have only been a second or two. It was like riding the Super Shot at the fair when you are flung into the atmosphere, and you leave your stomach behind for a moment, and you feel sick and excited and terrified all at the same time.

He landed hard in the ditch and was swallowed up the weeds. The pain in his hip was unbearable, making it impossible to exhale or inhale, his breath lodged in his chest hard and heavy. Somehow, he was drowning in a dry ditch. Was this what it was like to die? Jamie wondered. If I close my eyes, he thought, I won’t wake up. Panic spasmed through his body as he tried to sit up, but his body wasn’t working.