the rest

it is important to start by saying we arrived on time. this is important because by the end you won't think it was possible. but it was. at least, as far as i can tell. we left early tuesday morning. the road was clear and the pennsylvania part of the trip and most of the ohio part flew by, just tunnels and bridges blurring into one another. kittatinny. tuscarora. allegheny. muskingum. mountains shrouded in fog. rest stops with tall trees. and then we got to dayton. dayton is an ohio town maybe 25 or so miles from the border with indiana. dayton evidently has no police force, no support from highway patrol, no foul weather plan and no sense at all, collectively speaking. dayton also has ice. or at least on 23rd december there was ice to be had all over the dayton sections of highway 70. our trip through dayton took about three hours. here's what we think may have happened.

a. a semi spun out of control on the treacherous ice, flipped over, skidded across all three lanes, burst into flames and also spilled its entire contents (probably lima beans or kale) all over the highway.

b. traffic was slowed by a flock of crossing ducks. the unmoving tires slowly froze to the accumulating ice on the highway. everyone ended up frozen in place.

c. every semi ever made was on the road attempting to deliver whatever wherever before the holiday. tired drivers simply pulled over on the side of the road to sleep. the process of pulling a vehicle that large to the side of the road and parking can seriously delay traffic. multiply the single truck by hundreds and you have a two lane parking lot stretching about a hundred miles.

in the end, we're pretty sure it was c.

we continued unimpeded until we hit the the western outskirts of indianapolis where the rain/sleet/ice began to get serious. it started gentle and stayed gentle, but ice is ice and even a tiny little whisper of it can send a whole bunch of people spinning and skidding through the late afternoon, so think drama. think off in a ditch the day before christmas eve. i get nervous in this sort of weather, which means i abandon my navigating duties for the great responsibility of pointing out in the most unhelpful way any small motion i think might cause us harm. it turns out i am wrong about most of them but the sweetie takes them all as seriously as he can, considering he's already driving very slowly among very large vehicles on a smooth sheet of ice.

only a few minutes into the drama of the western indiana ice debacle, just south of plainfield, i panic about a giant milk tanker in our lane, two cars ahead of us. it is swerving. no, it is trying to get from the left to the middle of three lanes. the cab does exactly what the driver wants. traffic crawls along at about fifteen and the driver edges over into a space just larger than his truck. but the tanker part keeps going. it swings out like a pendulum into the miraculously empty right lane and as quickly as it does this, it swings neatly back into place behind the cab in the middle lane. it is so impressive i have to stop worrying and work on being awed. we now know exactly how slick the roads are, but i am not thinking about this. i am thinking about the driver of the milk truck and how it must have felt to see that tanker slip neatly into place in his rearview mirror.

several hours later we are about four or five miles from the site of the milk truck show and it is dark. i know i exaggerate from time to time, but this time i'm not. we left indianapolis around five and at nine, we were about twenty five miles down the road near a tiny place called joppa. the ice continued. trucks began pulling over. people got out of cars and stood on the icy road. others shut off engines and lights, conserving fuel. at around 12:30 or one, we managed to creep up to the cloverdale exit and highway 231. we convince ourselves there must be an accident of some sort and if we could just take a local road around it, we could get as far as terre haute. this is a small town nowhere near our st. louis destination, but large enough to have a hotel or two. so we drove slowly up the few miles of icy local road to the intersection with 40, a road that parallels the highway for quite some time. we stopped at the gas station where the sweetie bought a moldy breakfast burrito and we found out our beloved only hope was closed. shut down. iced up. so we drove back down to the cloverleaf and headed toward the cluster of hotels and motels on the other side. we couldn't get up to two of them because semis were parked in the entrance several deep, blocking everything. logjam. we decided to stop at mcdonald's for coffee and it took us some time to realize that mcdonald's was closed. all the cars and trucks in the lot were full of people sleeping, blanketless, shivering. we drove to the other hotels. there was a woman in a santa hat outside one hotel waving people on. no room at the inn. she cheerfully promised that terre haute, only 40 miles away, would be brimming with sleeping opportunities.

back to the cloverleaf and then toward the highway and this is when we saw them. the trucks. parked all along the on and off ramps, all along both sides of the westbound highway. sleeping. stopped. none of this looked very safe, especially those on the slick and curving ramps, and my worrying kicked in. they were mostly trucks, but people in cars, too, sat perched on the edges of embankments. we kept driving. we couldn't have pulled over if we'd wanted. there wasn't any room so we drove down a corridor of darkened hulks. fedex. midwest express. j.b. hunt. england. knight. but as we continued west the traffic thinned. all trucks seemed to be off the road. the ice turned to something slushy and the sweetie pushed the car up to 30mph, then 40. we'd set ourselves on the road sometime around 5am and as we saw our first signs for terre haute, i looked at the clock. nearing 2am.

we pulled into terre haute just before three and found a hotel in the parking lot of the local mall. that's right. my first sight later that morning as i drew back the curtain was sears, then toys r us. i sat in the car with the dogs while the sweetie negotiated with the night clerk. only a few rooms left. smoking. fine. we hauled shivering dogs and a bag or two through cold rainish stuff up to a room that was not just inhabited by a smoker, but a chainsmoker with cheap taste in cigarettes and a shaky hand. there was something black splashed in the sink and smeared, fingerprinty, on the white bathroom door. there were burn holes in everything. the blankets were the texture of old shower curtains. still, we slept. from three to just about dawn, which is in the neighborhood of seven am. we did not shower because there were no towels and because we didn't want to be barefoot anywhere in the room. the dogs weren't allowed off the bed. on the way out i recognized the black goo in the sink. hair dye. curious. unsettling. mysterious. the room of a criminal.

but we were back out on the road with the sun which we promptly lost in a very aggressive fog. because ice by itself isn't enough. as we continued west through illinois shapes materialized in the mist. broken cars scattered all along the roadside and median. a truck or two folded in, hordes of tiny cars with huge trailers, one or the other upturned but never both. soggy clothes and torn luggage whizzed past us on the ground. people's holidays smeared all over the half-frozen filth on the roadside. the further we went, the more there were of all these. farm after farm passed us. barns and silos and blond fields behind barbed wire.

the fog softened enough that we could see the top of the arch long before st. louis rolled into view. we crossed the biggest river in the whole country and followed a highway that snaked past old brick factories and stout brick houses, out into the hills of missouri. christmas eve. nearly lunchtime. billboards promising fireworks, adult books, the wrath of god.