So Long, Chester Wheeler(33)

I sat down in the driver’s seat and buckled my seat belt, vaguely satisfied in the knowledge that everything I had just told him was technically true. Carefully selected to create a false impression, yes. But true.

I started up the engine and we sat a minute, allowing it to warm up.

“See?” Chester said. “People like those bumper stickers. They’re funny.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I just want to get closer to Arizona.”

“You and me both,” he said.

So we headed out.

We drove slowly through the little town where we’d camped, because the speed limit was weirdly low. Fifteen miles per hour. I’d always figured a ridiculously low limit was probably a speed trap, so I obeyed it.

I had my phone propped up in the cupholder, open to the map app. And, according to Maps, we had driven completely through the Cherokee Nation. As I think I mentioned already. But maybe there was another sovereign nation right on the other side of it. In any case, it seemed as though every person we passed on the streets of that little town was Native American.

I was hoping Chester wouldn’t say anything.

I did not get my wish.

“Injun country,” he said.

I opened my mouth to tell him he was being offensive, but he never let me get that far.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “You’re offended.”

“Yeah. But then I usually am around you. Are you saying that’s some kind of problem to you?”

“I guess not. I mean, we licked ’em the first time.”

“Are you suggesting they shouldn’t be here?”

“Just saying it’s our country.”

“Actually this part of it is theirs,” I said, acting more sure about the location of Native nations than I actually felt. “And the whole country was theirs before we beat them up and took it away.”

“So? You just made my point for me. It’s ours.”

“So if some other country like Russia or China came over here and defeated our army, they’d own this country fair and square and we wouldn’t belong here?”

“Nobody defeats the US Army,” Chester said. “We’ve got the strongest, best-equipped army in the world.”

“I think it would be better if we didn’t talk,” I said.

He fell silent, and within fifteen or twenty minutes he was fast asleep again, head lolling.

But that wasn’t literally the last thing he said.

About an hour west of Oklahoma City, not too far from the Texas Panhandle, Chester spoke a very clear sentence in his sleep.

He said, “Of all the guys in the world, why did it have to be Mike?”

I waited, and listened, but he said nothing more.



Chester slept all day while I drove, which was a blessing.

In fact, it seemed to be a day full of blessings.

The main blessing was the pleasant surprise of the Southwest. I had never seen red rock scenery before, and I was captivated by it. I wish I could explain it better than that, but it’s a tricky thing to put into words. New Mexico found a place deep in my gut and satisfied it in a way that’s easier to feel than it is to describe.

I was tired of all the driving—tired in general—but I couldn’t get enough of that red rock scenery. And cactus! Or . . . cacti, I guess I should say. And the deeply folded mountain ranges at the horizon. I kept wanting to see what was around the next bend, so I drove straight through Albuquerque and just kept going. And Chester just kept sleeping. Which was helpful, because this newly discovered landscape was so much better experienced without him.

But soon it got too dark to see much anyway, and I worried about road safety, so I pulled off the highway and parked for the night in a . . . wait for it . . . Walmart parking lot.

Even in that least scenic of locations, I could see the faint outline of a dramatic mesa over the insult of the big-box-store strip mall. It was comforting somehow.

I consulted the map app on my phone, which told me we were only about four hours outside of Phoenix. I briefly thought of driving it through, but I knew I wasn’t safe on the road in my exhausted state.

Chester never woke up, so I just powered his seat down until he was lying more or less flat. I didn’t want him to wake up with his back hurting from sleeping too long in a sitting-up position.

I pulled all the curtains and locked the doors, ready to climb into the bed in the back and lose consciousness.

Then it hit me that Chester had been sleeping for an awfully long time, and more deeply than usual. And not snoring, either.

With a roiling feeling in my poor tired belly, I walked up front and held a couple of fingers underneath his nose. The air of his breath hit them immediately, and I sighed out my tension and put myself to bed.



I woke in what felt like the middle of the night with a bright light shining through my window curtain.

I sat up in bed and thought, Right. This is why you stop for the night in an RV park, not a parking lot.

I pulled the curtain up slightly to see what was causing the offending light.

It was the moon.

The minute I saw that it was the moon, it was no longer offending. Suddenly the light was beautiful. Another blessing.

It was hanging over that silhouette of the mesa, looking bigger than I could ever remember seeing it before. Full, or at least very close to it. The air was so clear that I could see its individual valleys, or craters, or seas, or whatever you call them. I’m not a moon expert. I just enjoy it as a layperson.