photo by davemeistermoab

Two AM. Highway 50. Ely, Nevada. We laughed out loud at the Break-a-Heart Hotel in Silver Springs, flew past the Last Chance Saloon in Austin, then passed up the Parsonage House in Eureka. A coyote darted across both lanes a few minutes ago, and I've seen more road-kill in one night than in a lifetime of driving. We're low on gas. From here, the next decent stop is Delta, Utah, and that's one hundred and fifty three miles up the road. I've got a job in Denver to get to, but we won't make it tonight.

Ely it is.

The Prospector is full. So are the Park-Vue and the Copper Queen. Hotel Nevada is no different, so I ask where else we should look. Jessie stays in the car with the doors locked. The girl behind the desk looks to be in her late teens. Her name tag reads: Rose Ellen. She's wearing a red tank top with black bra straps showing and her breasts are so large, they move papers around on the countertop while she talks. This is her job.

"The Jailhouse Motel, I guess," she says. "They always have a room left."

"It ain't the best," I say.  "But anything would be fine. Can you call them for us?"

"Sure, baby."Rose shouts into a dark room over her shoulder where the blue light of a television blinks against an obese man's face. "Get up, Bull. What's the number for Lola at Jailhouse?"

Bull opens his eyes, scowls, and turns to Rose. "Look it up, bitch." Bull shakes his face, loose fat jiggling in his cheeks. "Jailhouse?" With considerable effort, Bull stands up. Dark wiry bangs stick to his forehead and a long jagged scar travels the length of his chin. He walks into the doorway, filling it, and looks me in the eye."You're not going to stay there, are you?"

"Everything is full," I say.

"You feeling lucky?"

"Not especially."

"I wouldn't go to Jailhouse without a bucket of Clorox and a body condom," Bull says. Then he laughs from somewhere deep in his throat.

Rose dials the number and twirls her hair. "Lola," she says. "You got more rooms open? I got a pretty little couple here needs a rest." She pauses and licks her finger. "All right then. I'll send them to you."

I walk back to Jessie, hoping the job in Denver will give us a better life. I jingle the change in my pocket and wonder how cold it will be tonight, sleeping in the car.

Murray Dunlap's work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, Night Train, Red Mountain Review, Silent Voices, The Bark, Fried Chicken and Coffee and many others. His stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as Best New American Voices, and his first book, "Alabama," was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. He is currently working on a novel-in-stories called "Bastard Blue." The extraordinary individuals Pam Houston, Laura Dave, Michael Knight, and Fred Ashe taught him the art of writing.

“Hey now, look at ole Sweets,” Wishbone shouts. “Goin’ again!”

Wishbone is lean and tall with hair cropped close.  He holds up his welding mask with one hand.  His black torso swells with muscle.

The other men look up. They clap and whistle at Sweets from a cracked oil tanker prop.  Wishbone drops his mask and relights the acetylene.  A cloud of sparks, soot, and steam rises from his torch, then vanishes into white hot sky.

Sweets resumes walking, eyes focused forward.  At the backdoor of the office, he tucks in his faded blue work shirt and mops his face with a rag.  Inside, unemployed men work the maze, trying their luck at each glass window.  Sweets rubs the foot of a rooster between finger and thumb in his pocket. He slows his breathing to even, controlled breaths, then opens the door.

Hours later, Sweets emerges from the building. He sits on the first step. His hips and knees burn.  He struggles to breath. Sweets enters and exits by the back door every Monday.  The other applicants sit out front.  Among them, a young man with smooth almond skin slaps his thigh. He says: No parades, no bond rallies, no jobs. Can’t even shuck oysters.  The others nod.  Some say amen.

At the back door, Sweets looks up to Wishbone, blackened with soot.  He sits down beside him. Both men drip with sweat.

“I’ll get over to Dauphin Street,” Sweets says.

“Kazoola’s might need you.”

“Sho might.”

“Ain’t no way to tell,” Wishbone says.

“Got damn,” Sweets says. “Maybe they’ll be havin another war.”

Benjamin Kale sits behind an ornate mahogany desk in suit and tie.  He swivels in his chair and watches Sweets and Wishbone through the third story window.  He watches Wishbone move, shirtless, and presses his palm against the glass.  Wishbone says something, gesturing with his hands, and Sweets nods.  Cold air blows through newly installed air vents.  From this distance, Wishbone could be any man.  He could be white.  He is young and strong and virile.  He might be a navy boy, home on leave.  Sweets might be his father.

Suddenly, the air feels over cold and Benjamin closes the vent.  He opens the window and leans out as far as he can.  He closes his eyes.  On the desk, a black and white photograph of his son lies face down against the wood.  In the picture, Ben Jr. sleeps on a riverboat bunk, his arms crossed behind his head.  In another picture, still upright, twin baby boys peek out from under blankets in a bassinet.  Ben Jr.’s wife will take them away.  She will take them to her family in New England.  They will be raised without a southern accent.  They will not know that Benjamin hired Sweets to drive his polished black car, despite the slide in revenue. They will not know that Wishbone will use Sweets to break into the Kale family home.

What they will know is this: A man known as Wishbone split Benjamin Kale’s skull with a fire iron and only got away with his gold watch on a chain. He was never found. My father will discover the watch in a pawn shop thirty years later. In thirty more years, he will die, and I will find it in his desk.  I’ve got it in my right hand, right now.  My name is Ben.  The watch does not keep time.

Murray Dunlap’s fiction has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, Night Train, New Delta Review, Red Mountain Review, Silent Voices and Smokelong Quarterly and others. His stories have been twice nominated to the Pushcart Prize and to Best New American Voices, and his first book, "Alabama", was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. After very nearly being killed in a terrible car wreck, the writer uses this site to vent: http://www.murraydunlap.com/.