I Flipped a Coin

I flipped a coin. Heads and I pumped my last hundred bucks into the tank. I take I-80 west, and the engine stalled up on me ten miles down the road. I packed a bag, put Sequoia, my red Siberian, on a leash, and stepped out onto the high plateau of northeastern Colorado as a semi roared by. There was nothing in either direction but an off-ramp a half-mile back. So, I started walking. As I got closer, I could see the ramps led nowhere, and the blacktop quickly turned to gravel and then dirt before disappearing into vast fields of some arid crop. I was in the middle of nowhere. It was a fact.

Nonetheless, I decided to walk down the ramp. A car sat just under the overpass, where a man leaned against it with a cigarette in his lips. I said hello, and our dogs sniffed each other’s asses. He said he was on his way back from Lincoln, Nebraska, and they’d stopped and taken a piss break, him and his lab. He was heading to Breckinridge. I told him I was heading to Ouray. He let me know that Ouray was about five hours past Breck, but he’d offered me a ride anyway. I thought it was petty generous, given that he had already been driving all day. He was tired, but he drove the mountain passes like a rockstar, as Sequoia puked all over his back seat and the other dog licked it up.

It was late when we pulled into Ouray. And as soon as Sequoia and I stepped out, he sped off. He’d been talking for hours about biological weapons, and I was glad to see him go. I saw a few retro gas pumps in a parking lot of vacation cabins—real-log sheds—and walked off the side of the highway that twisted and turned in the narrow valley. As red and blue lights rotated atop a half dozen squad cars, I passed by like a ghost in the night, Sequoia pulling me forth on his rope. My eyes were tired, and the colorful crime scene challenged my focus. A few policemen spoke of a missing woman inside the lobby, inside the only actual cabin in the lot that sat in the narrow valley between the highway and the Unconcombre River that ran north to South in southwestern Colorado. I rang the bell, and the police took a moment to acknowledge my presence with an unnerving curiosity. A middle-aged man with a grouchy face and grey shoulder-length hair, who I assumed was the owner, walked up behind the counter.

“Yeah?” He asked.

“I need a cabin,” I said. “But I got no money. I was hoping I could do some work trade for a couple nights.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, looking Sequoia and me up and down.

“My van broke down up in Sterling, and I’d just pump my last hundred into the tank. I caught a ride—”

“Sucker,” he said.

He then walked out from behind the counter and talked with the officers. I gathered a bald man, a man I suddenly noticed standing in the corner, who had to the police his wife disappeared when he was out—at the store getting snacks. And that when he came back, she and her dog were gone. She had Alzheimer’s, and the search party had been out all night. The cops were starting to get a little suspicious, and the bald man in the teal Pendleton jacket knew it as he rolled a coin over his knuckles. The owner said he’d take out his horse and keep searching in the night, that he knew every mountain trail and dump spot between here and Telluride. He grabbed his cowboy hat and tossed me a key.

“Cabin 16,” he said. “8am sharp—you can power spray the parking lot.”

“Appreciate it,” I said, and he shook his head in disgust.

I walked up to the small porch of the log shed, just a few feet from the highway. A thirty-foot RV bellowed by as a cop’s voice echoed in my mind, “Hell, he probably just got tired of dealing with her—he could have dumped her anywhere—she’ll be dead by morning if he didn’t kill her already.” I dropped my bag inside, and a climbing rope hanging from the ceiling grabbed my attention, but I sat down on the cot, and Sequoia sniffed around. A book about the local history was laid on the nightstand. A photo of Chief Ouray on its cover. I picked it up and read and could almost hear the sound of the river until the air brakes of a semitrailer rattled the bones of the night.