One Step Too Far(Frankie Elkin #2)(4)

The bus moves on and I stay behind, trying to get my bearings. It’s early afternoon. Above me, the sky is a shade of rich blue I associate with postcards and other people’s lives. This rural route is a dark gray strip rippling between the distant towering mountains behind me and the incredibly close towering mountains ahead of me.

I’ve never been to Wyoming, so far I love everything about it. The smell of warm earth and sun-dried grass. The sound of country music pouring out of the store’s speakers. The number of trucks and cattle haulers rumbling by.

I feel simultaneously excited by the vast unknown and terrified. Just because I don’t like to be tied down doesn’t mean I enjoy feeling untethered.

I wander into the small, dusty mini-mart. An older man with a faded red ball cap and bushy brown whiskers looks up from behind the register. He gives me a short nod followed by a hard stare, clearly recognizing a stranger when he sees one. I’m used to it by now. I’m never the local, always just an outsider, passing through.

I splurge on a candy bar and a bottle of water, then plant myself in front of a rack of brochures advertising local attractions. The man goes back to his magazine. Nothing to see here.

Normally, I plan my targets well in advance. Research the area while skimming the classifieds for local employment and potential housing options. But now my last-minute impulse has me flying blind. I can’t decide if this is incredibly daring or unbelievably stupid. Many of my decisions feel that way.

Most people would pull out their smartphones and Google away. Unfortunately, my job—obsessively locating missing people—doesn’t pay at all, while my side hustle—bartending part-time at the location of the moment—doesn’t pay well. The result is that my “smart” phone is an old flip phone with a limited data plan. On a good day, it might receive a text. Google would mostly reduce it to a lump of melted microchips.

Likewise, I don’t own a computer or even a tablet. I’d love the luxury, but I don’t just lead a nomadic lifestyle, I lead a high-risk one. As in, many of the places I frequent are known for their high crime rates and opposition to outsiders. I’ve had rental units broken into, property vandalized; I’ve had good-ol’-boy cops confront me with shotguns and grieving relatives attack me with broken beer bottles.

I originally walked away from material possessions because I felt the weight of them dragging me down. Now I don’t own anything I can’t afford to lose because I don’t want to die one day trying to protect something I never should’ve cared about in the first place.

If I were near a major town, I’d utilize an internet café or public library to do my homework. But given that I’m currently stranded at a gas station in the middle of Wyoming, travel brochures it is.

I see pictures of bighorn sheep, craggy mountains, and deep blue lakes. I can attempt horseback riding, scale rock formations, and take up hunting and fishing. There are warnings about bears—Be Bear Aware!—maps of local trails, and orders not to pick wildflowers. After the past ten months, which I spent in an inner-city neighborhood in Boston, followed by a sad housing project near Memphis, the photos of the great outdoors make me giddy.

Though once again, that faint fissure of alarm. I’ve done wildland searches, but never in any place as rugged as these mountains. I’ve walked the woods, but I don’t know anything about grizzly bears. While too many of my searches have led to sad discoveries, I’ve never set out explicitly to find a corpse.

I think of Patrice O’Day, who just wants to be buried next to her son.

“Why do everyone’s problems have to be your problem?” Paul had griped at me. “What will it take before you realize that you’re the one who matters. You, Frankie. I love you.”

I don’t talk to Paul anymore. But on occasion, I still call his widow.

I’ve just finished my deep dive into local intel when a beat-up Chevy truck pulls up to a gas pump. The back is piled high with straw bales, the lower sides sprayed liberally with mud. A woman in worn jeans, a sleeveless T-shirt, and a fawn-colored cowboy hat climbs out.

Perfect.

I give a parting nod to the silent store attendant, then step outside to negotiate my next mode of transportation.



* * *



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I grew up in a small town in Northern California. My father was the world’s most affable drunk, my mother the world’s angriest enabler. He drank, she worked. He drank more, she worked more.

Which is to say, neither of them spared much thought for me. I ran around wild in the days before we worried about stranger danger and what kind of lone men lingered at playgrounds. Like most kids, I owned a secondhand bike with a rusty frame and a duct-taped banana seat. I rode it anywhere and everywhere. Though of course, there’s only so far a girl on a bike can go. Which meant if I or the other kids wanted to make it to the five-and-dime to spend our spare change on two-cent Jolly Ranchers, we hitchhiked. Stood along the main thoroughfare and stuck out our thumbs.

Sometimes there might be six of us, piling on top of one another in the back of whichever vehicle took pity on us. Sometimes it might be me and my best friend, Sophie. Sometimes it was just me, because my dad was already passed out and my mom hours from getting home—and even back then, I had problems staying put.

I never worried about the safety of climbing into a random person’s vehicle; it’s just what we did.