In Between

It was a hellish road.

That’s all I remembered, looking back on it. I hadn’t driven more than two hours from San Francisco when the scenery shifted from rolling hills and nestled cities into dry, flat desert land.

California was a strange place. It felt like home immediately when I was in the city—the sun warm and gentle upon my face, the winds trickling past in a soft breeze—not the cold, fierce, biting gusts that blasted through the threads of one’s winter coat in Alaska. It was comforting to walk amongst people that didn’t know me, that could look at me and smile and not know what I’d done or the mistakes I’d made.

It was too strong a word. Mistake. It meant that it was something I’d regretted doing. The night it happened, when I was with her on Vera’s couch, the smoke curling into the room, there was no part of me that felt like something was wrong. But after—it all came apart the morning after.

It hadn’t been a mistake. To leave her. To leave the town, the state. But now, driving along the desert road in the gaping space between California and Colorado, doing hairpin turns that jerked me left and right along the winding highway, I felt the crushing isolation hit me hard.

I knew it would be dangerous to go further. My eyelids were already heavy, and I could swerve off the road if I tried to push it an hour more. But there weren’t hotels in this sixty-mile range.

I guess I’d have to pull over and sleep here.

There was one other lone car by the wide of the road when I pulled over. There was a man standing, looking up at the sky, his clothes worn. When I pulled up closer, he glanced at me, circles deep under his eyes.

He looked at me suspiciously. “They turned you away, too?”

I didn’t understand. “Turned me away from what?”

“Those motels,” he said, insistently. “They turned you down too?”

“I…I’m not staying at a motel,” I said, finally.

“’Course they wouldn’t,” he muttered. “You’re white.”

  

I paused. “What does that mean?”

“Aw, don’t pretend you don’t know. I hate when people pretend.”

“Pretend what?”

He raised his voice, a little. “That it doesn’t matter. Being white or black. I thought I escaped that all when I came from the South, but it’s still here. Even in these places, when there isn’t a lick of civilization except for a few gas stations and a motel, it’s still here.”

I knew what he was getting at, but I wanted him to clarify. “What’s still here?”

He looked at me. “The discrimination. The look in peoples’ eyes when see a black man. I’m a doctor from out East. All I wanted was a new start in California. Escape the pressures on my life for once. And then I come out here and I get turned down from three motels because the owners don’t want to be seen hosting someone like me.”

He spat at the ground. “How does one travel like this? When I can’t even find a place for the night?”

I was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He softened his tone. “Nothing you could do about it, Miss. What’s your name?”

“Raven,” I said. “You?”

“Robert. Robert Pershing Foster. They called me Pershing out there, but I want to reinvent myself.”

We stared at the ground for a moment, the both of us.

I heard rustling. Robert rolled up his sleeves, and let a deep sigh through his nose. “Well, Raven. I’d best be headed to bed. Have a good night.

“You, too,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to go through what you did.”

“Me, too,” he said.

I heard the revving of his engine the next morning, the wheels peeling through the dust, but before I had time to sit up and look out the window, he was already gone.