So Long, Chester Wheeler(24)

“Absolutely not!” Chester shouted. “I won’t let you scrape them off!”

We were driving off Marshall’s lot in the direction of town.

“That’s nonnegotiable,” I said. “I’ll be driving. People will think those are my bumper stickers. They’ll see it as a reflection of me.”

“They’re a reflection of me, and you can’t scrape them off.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then we don’t go. I was looking for an out anyway.”

We drove in silence for several miles.

I could feel the air around his ears changing. The shift in his mood, the taming of his anger, was palpable. It felt disturbing to be so completely in tune with the likes of Chester Wheeler.

“Okay,” he said too loudly, startling me. “Okay, fine. Scrape ’em. But the minute we get back you have to buy two more just like it and stick them on again.”

“Not a chance in hell, Chester. No way. I’m not putting money in the pockets of people who make crap like that.”

“I’ll buy them, you stick them on.”

“Nope. I’m not going to be any part of the system.”

“Will you at least wheel me out there so I can stick them on?”

“I don’t know, Chester. Maybe. Can we just focus on the task ahead for now? We have to get that boat all the way to Arizona and back. Can we worry about your horrible bumper stickers when we get home?”

“They’re not horrible,” he said. “You’re horrible.”

“Chester, how old are you? You sound five.”

He grumbled. Mumbled something under his breath. But then he said not one single word the rest of the way home.

It was a tremendous relief.



Anna drove me out to pick up the horrible beast.

It was two days later, after Marshall had called and said he’d gone over every system of the Winnebago and would trust it on the road himself, even with his wife and baby in the passenger seat.

“Here’s what impresses me,” she said, her fingers tapping on the steering wheel. “You just decided. You didn’t go back and forth, back and forth like you always do. Usually you—”

“Got it,” I said, purposely cutting her off. “You made it painfully clear what I do.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hurt your feelings with that?”

I opened my mouth to say, “No, not at all.” But then I realized she was an actual friend, and I should tell her the actual truth.

“It stung a little, yeah.”

“Seems like it helped, though.”

“No, it was something a little different that helped.” Then I watched the streets flash by for a few beats, in silence, wondering if this was a story I wanted to tell. “Remember when you said I tend to wait and try to find out where each decision will take me? But we don’t get to know that in advance? Well . . . turns out that’s not entirely true. I had this really vivid, realistic dream that Chester was dead and I hadn’t taken him. And in the dream I knew I’d made the wrong decision.”

She didn’t exactly answer. Just nodded for a long time. As though she was thinking about what I’d said and approving of everything she was thinking.

“Here’s a question,” she began.

I expected it to be on weighty topics like knowing which road to take in a difficult world.

“Why are you carrying a paint scraper?”

I looked down at it, where it rested against the leg of my jeans.

“I guess I forgot to tell you about the bumper stickers,” I said.



I scraped. And I scraped. And I scraped. And all I managed to do was scratch the damn things and break up their corners. The adhesive behind them was set like cement, and I didn’t want to go too deep or press too hard because Chester would be furious—and more or less rightly so—if I gouged his bumper.

Both Marshall and Anna hovered over my shoulders like a cheering section.

“Damn, those are really on there, huh?” Anna said.

I said, “They’re as stubborn as their owner.”

Marshall jumped in with a potentially good idea. He said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to put two other bumper stickers over them? You could find something both of you could live with.”

I stopped scraping and stood up. The sun was hot on the back of my neck, even on a cool fall day. My back hurt from the squatting, and I stretched it out with both hands on it, accidentally poking myself with the scraper.

I said, “Something Chester and I could agree on? I’m not sure such a thing exists.”

“He wants you to drive him,” Anna said, “so maybe it’s your call. Maybe he doesn’t get a choice.”

“But when Chester doesn’t get a choice, I have to hear about it. Besides, I don’t even want to drive it back to his house with these things on it.”

“Oh, come on,” Anna said. “Isn’t that overdoing it a little?”

“I refuse to go through any portion of my life, no matter how long or short, being confused with Chester Wheeler.”

“I got some duct tape,” Marshall said. “I could slap some of that on just to get you home.”

And he wandered off, presumably to do that.