Part 9 (1/2)

”That sounds promising.”

Tropic is tiny, the size of the village where I grew up. Five hundred souls and counting. But it has a bakery, so we stop.

”Just sold my last loaf,” the man behind the counter says.

We buy a Danish of indeterminate age and two small packets of hot, fresh-roasted cashews, which are neither. ”The light bulb in the machine burned out,” the man explains.

We ask if there are motels further down the road.

”Yep,” he says, ”but you'll have to stop in Escalante. You'll never get over the mountain in the snow, not with the storm coming.”

”How much snow are they predicting?” we ask, thinking smugly, Come on, we're Canadians!

”About two feet.”

We exchange surprised glances. That's real snow, no matter where it falls.

But as we leave Tropic, the sky clears, the desert resumes, and we congratulate ourselves for our decision to carry on. We are brilliant. We are making one excellent decision after another. From our blessed hands, even the cashews taste warm and freshly toasted.

WE drive between red canyon walls that loom above us, looking almost sculpted in the way their crenellated tops resemble chimneys and battlements, their crowns and lower talus approaches fringed with evergreens. There's St. Petersburg's Winter Palace! There's the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City! There's Vienna! There's the Royal Bank of Canada on Sparks Street in Ottawa! Everywhere is somewhere else. Despite the snowflakes swirling like shrapnel in the gyrating air around us, the sun is still s.h.i.+ning and the mini-greenhouse of the car interior is warmed by it. We forget that we are absurdly underdressed. Our Echo is invincible. We can see the black specks of birds floating on thermals above the cliffs, but they are too far up for us to identify, even when we get out of the car and look with our binoculars. Not condors: either eagles or red-tailed hawks, we agree, diving back into the car.

It's not that cold, we tell each other as we both reach to crank up the heat.

Even in the thickening snow, there is no mistaking the string of mountain bluebirds perched on telephone wires as we travel along Route 12. We slow down and count them: twenty-three on one loop, fifteen on the next. They have snow on their backs.

”Bluebirds of happiness,” Merilyn says. At home we see only eastern bluebirds, and never more than one or two at a time.

She turns to me. ”I am very, very happy,” she says. ”How about you?”

”Delirious,” I tell her, hardly daring to take my eyes off the road to smile into hers. ”Happy as a lark.”

8 / ESCALANTE, UTAH.

WE press on, a tinge of urgency now in our pace. It is decidedly dusk, and I calculate that without incident we can be in Escalante by ten after six. There's a museum there that looks interesting, Merilyn says. The snow is falling heavily, a curtain drawn across the valley to our left.

”Funny to think that we came this far south to avoid driving through snow,” Merilyn muses, her tone not as light as she'd clearly like it to be.

”Yes,” I say, ”but we're in Utah. It's the best snow in the world.”

Back in Page, we watched a televised weather report that told us there is still no snow at all in the northern part of the continent; snowmobile dealers and ski resort owners are jumping out of windows. Here, meanwhile, it's a fair bet that those two snowplow drivers are revving their engines and checking each other's flas.h.i.+ng blue lights. We are gradually but a.s.suredly climbing, the weather becoming increasingly wintery. I weave the car back and forth on the highway to test the traction of the tires.

”Wayne, stop that,” Merilyn says.

”I'm just checking to see if the road is slippery.”

”Of course it's slippery,” she says. ”There are two inches of snow on it.”

”It's not bad,” I say. ”We have snow tires.”

”No, we don't. We have all-season radials.”

”What are those lights down there?” I ask, changing the subject. Downslope to our left are the lights of what looks to be a small town.

”Probably cars that have spun out of control and gone off the road,” Merilyn says, then relents. ”Maybe Escalante.”

A dark shape appears at my side window. Before my mind can say ”Deer!” it veers toward the car. A sickening thump, and the road in front of us disappears as a pelt of coa.r.s.e, grey-brown hair presses against the winds.h.i.+eld. The road reappears, there's a breath, and another thump as the deer comes down on the trunk. It takes me another fifty feet to rein the car to a stop. We are marooned in the middle of the highway. I keep my foot on the brake and look at Merilyn. She is staring at me.

”Thank G.o.d it didn't come through the winds.h.i.+eld,” she says, her voice shaky.

”I didn't see it until it was too late,” I say, idiotically.

”You didn't have a chance,” Merilyn says, staring straight ahead out the window. We are both in shock.

The engine is still running, the headlights glaring c.o.c.keyed into the snow. Even more idiotically, I say, ”I don't think there's any damage to the car.”

”That's not possible,” Merilyn says.

”I know.”

In the rear-view mirror I can see the deer on the side of the road, struggling to its feet, falling, getting up again, Bambi trying to get his footing on ice. I move the gears.h.i.+ft into reverse, absurdly thinking I can help. When I look again, the deer is gone. I get out of the car-the door opens, thank goodness-and walk to the back to look for the deer. We are on a deserted stretch of snow-covered road, high wooded hills to our right, low sloping valley to our left, a fringe of trees along the roadside where the deer must have been lurking before we came along. But where is it now? Surely the impact has at least broken its legs? But there is no sign of it, no blood on the road, no tracks leading up into the darkness. Nor are there any marks on the car's trunk. This is one of those freak accidents, I tell myself with relief, in which the car is not damaged and the deer is not hurt. But my heart is still racing, and I have a sick feeling in my stomach.

I walk around to the front of the car. The entire hood is crumpled in on itself, as if the Fremont troll had sat down on it. The driver's-side fender is crushed, the grille broken. The right winds.h.i.+eld wiper pokes awkwardly into the night sky. The left headlight is smashed, but the bulb, dangling in its socket at the end of its cord, still s.h.i.+nes valiantly. The car looks mutilated, but the engine is running. I think the tires will turn without rubbing against the wheel wells. We can drive; we even have lights, of a sort.

”What do we do now?” I ask when I'm back in the car and have given Merilyn an account of the wreckage.

”We have to report it,” she says.

I've never hit a deer. I once hit a racc.o.o.n. It staggered in its humpbacked fas.h.i.+on out of some tall gra.s.s beside the road, not far from our house, and it was its hump that I hit. You think you have time to stop, you think you have reflexes and instincts and peripheral vision and hand-eye coordination. You actually have none of these: you see the racc.o.o.n, you tell yourself it isn't going to run out onto the road, it does, and you say, ”Hey, get out of the-,” and there is that sickening clunk as undercarriage hits bone.

There is a story by Barry Lopez in which he describes driving across the northern United States. Every time he sees a road-killed animal, which is often, he stops to drag its carca.s.s off the highway into the verge. Animals should die with dignity, he says, or at least have some posthumous dignity after an ignominious death by transport truck or family sedan. I suppose I have something of the sort in mind when I go back to check on our mule deer. But it isn't there. There aren't even any tracks. I look again up into the swirl of snow that closes in like a shroud between us and the trees, and see nothing.

I put the car in gear and inch forward, watching for smoke, listening for shrieks.

”Let's hope we can make it to Escalante.”

WELCOME, SAYS the sign on the first motel we come to. Open Year Round. The motel is a ranch-style row of modern units along an unroofed, pressure-treated deck set at a right angle to the highway. There is something that looks like a convention hotel across the road but this isn't the time for comparison shopping. No cars are hitched to the boardwalk, no tracks mar the snow in front of the units. The place looks quiet. This time we both go into the motel office, a low affair attached to a bungalow near the entrance to the parking lot, Merilyn to negotiate the room and me to call the local sheriff.

A large, middle-aged woman comes into the office through a Dutch door behind the desk, bringing with her the smell of pizza and the sound of a television game show. She seems distracted, as though mulling over a tricky Double Jeopardy! question, until we tell her about the deer; then she perks up and calls another woman, who comes in from the back. ”This is my sister,” the first woman says. The sister is younger. She has dark hair and is wearing a yellow-and-white floral-patterned housedress. I wonder if they are Mormons, if ”sister” is code.

”I know someone who'll take care of that deer for you,” says the sister. ”Was it a doe?”

”No idea,” I say. ”We need to call the sheriff.”

The first woman looks at me with a blend of surprise, concern, and mild disdain.

”We have to report the accident so our insurance will pay for the repairs,” Merilyn explains.