We were celebrating. The holiday weekend was almost over, and the mechanic was due back in town the next morning. We’d finally be able to get back on the road. I sat on the rear bumper of the van and waited. Smoke from the fireworks still hung in the air. Biggest display in the Mojave, the posters had promised. Maybe it was, but we couldn’t tell. An hour before the show, the sky had curdled into a clump of fog. Fog, in the desert. First time in twenty years, someone said. I watched the smoke and fog mingle and roll in lazy waves in and out of the orange floodlight of the gas station. All around me were junked cars parked at crazy angles, cracked windshields and fallen bumpers shining in the greasy light. Buicks and Chevys and Pontiacs, all chrome and disappointment. The dirt was speckled with pieces of broken glass. Every breath tasted like gunpowder. We were still thousands of miles from Alaska. Trace was gone a long time, too long, and I wondered if he’d found a girl and gone off with her.
