Twenty miles west of town, where 87 branched off into 89, there was a gas station, the New Atlas Bar, and the Blue Sky Motel. According to several signs, this spot was the last place to get gas, lodging, and a cold beer for the next seventy miles.
'This is it,' Orson said.
A little after nine, I turned into the motel driveway and parked by the front office, beside a large sign with 'Vacancy' and 'BLUE SKY MOTEL' above it in cursive, neon blue letters. We both got out of the car and stretched. Though cold and windy, it felt good to breathe fresh air again and walk the stiffness out of my legs.
The motel was hardly spectacular. There was no pool or restaurant, only a two-story complex with twelve rooms on each floor. Across the street, live country music poured out of the New Atlas Bar, accompanied by rowdy laughter and yelling. Occasionally, a couple would stumble out the front doors and either cross the empty highway towards the motel or wander into the bar's dark parking lot. Farther up the road, the gas station glowed against the black prairie.
We walked into a single-wide trailer which served as the front office. To the right, a smooth-faced old man wearing a leather cowboy hat sat behind a desk. His feet propped up on the tabletop, he watched a small black and white television sitting on a rickety stool in the corner of the room. To the left stood a naked wall with a closed door in the center. I wondered if the old man lived in the trailer, too.
We walked to the desk, and he looked up, smiling comfortably. 'How can I help you?'
'We need a room with two single beds,' I said.
He muted the television, put his feet on the floor, and thumbed through the guest registry. 'I've only got a double,' he said. 'Sign here please.' He slid the registry towards me. 'Write the names of anyone else staying in the room with you and your license plate number.'
I entered my name and Orson's along with the plate number of the Buick. Orson stared over my shoulder while I wrote, looking down at the registry with peculiar concentration. When I'd finished, I closed the book and slid it back across the desk to the man.
'$39.50,' he said, and I took out my wallet. While we waited for the charge to clear, I glanced at Orson. His eyes ran from the closed door on the opposite wall, to the old man, to the locked key cabinet behind the desk. He looked again at the registry and smiled strangely at me. The man handed my card back along with a receipt. Then he stood up, unlocked the key cabinet, and took out one key. He handed it to me.
'Check out's at eleven,' he said. 'Leave the key on the dresser.'
We walked out of the bright trailer into the night, and I parked in front of our room. 218 was in the middle, on the lower level of the complex, and lights glowed from every first floor rooms except ours. I grabbed my suitcase from the backseat, and we got out and locked the car.
'I'm going to get a drink at that bar,' I said to Orson as I forced the key into the lock.
'No. I want you to stay here,' he said, and I didn't argue.
The room was warm and cozy, in a fake, cheap sort of way. The wood-paneled walls made it seem even smaller and kept it dark like the interior of a cabin. A double bed with a table on each side, rested flush against the left wall, across from which sat a dresser with a television on top of it. A tiny bathroom and a closet were located at the far end of the room, and the walls were adorned with a quilt, a Charles M. Russell print of a cowboy riding a horse into a bar, and a photograph of two bighorn sheep butting heads.
I set my suitcase on the brown-carpeted floor beside the dresser and turned on one of the bedside table lamps. It produced only a weak, orange light, giving the room a jaundice-like glow. My stomach ached with hunger, but I didn't complain. Sitting down on the bed, I kicked off my shoes and tossed my leather jacket onto the dresser.
'I'm taking a shower,' Orson said. 'Why don't you go to bed.'
'I haven't eaten,' I said.
Orson sighed heavily. 'Can't you wait till morning?'
'What the fuck do you care whether I eat or not?'
'I don't want you to leave this room tonight,' he said.
'Got a particular reason?'
'Just drop it, all right?' he said. He slid off the white fleece pullover, tossed it onto the bed, and began unbuttoning his black shirt. With his chest exposed, it amazed me again how cut he was. He laid the shirt carefully on the bed so it wouldn't wrinkle.
'You wanna read something good?' he asked. 'Before you go to bed.'
'No.'
'Come on, Andy, it's a masterpiece. Open that bedside table,' he said, pointing to the one nearest the door. I opened it and extracted a black hardback copy of a King James Bible.
'Get out of here,' I said. 'You said the Bible was soma for the weak-minded.'
'One verse,' he said. 'It'll blow your fuckin' mind.' He waited for me to ask.
'Which one?'
'First Corinthians 13:12.'
I thumbed through the thin pages.
'Read it out loud,' he said.
'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.' I closed the book and returned it to the drawer. 'So?'
'Just think about it,' Orson said, unbuttoning his jeans and letting them fall to his ankles. Leaving them in a blue pile on the floor, he walked to the dark bathroom and stopped at the threshold. He turned around and stared. It scared me.
'I don't get that verse, Orson,' I said. 'Are you just fucking with me?'
'You will,' he said, turning on a ceiling light in the bathroom. Though the tub was hidden behind the wall, I could see Orson's bare shoulders in the streaked mirror and the sink and toilet to his right. Laughter and moaning came suddenly through the walls.
'Go to sleep, Andy,' he said lifelessly as he shut the door.
# # #
'Get your ass out of bed,' Orson whispered, and the dusky room came slowly into focus. The lamps on each bedside table shed their orange light upon the walls, and though the curtains were drawn, I had the feeling it was still night. I couldn't remember falling asleep.
'What time is it?' I asked, rubbing my eyes and sitting up against the headboard.
'Four-thirty,' Orson said. He stood at the foot of the bed, still wearing his clothes from yesterday, his face flushed, sprinkles of blood on his white fleece.
'What did you do?' I asked.
'Get dressed. We don't have much time. Move!' he shouted.
Climbing out of bed, I dug through my suitcase, lying open on the floor. I put on a pair of blue jeans, a close- fitting long-johns top, and a green sweater. Then I forced my slim, yet bulging suitcase to close and stepped into my hiking boots.
'You got the room key?' I asked, lifting my suitcase.
Orson smiled sickly. 'It doesn't matter now,' he said, laughing.
Though only an hour from daybreak, the clouded sky was dark as midnight. Snow flurries bumbled in the air, and a brisk wind blew out of the north, so the tiny feathers of ice stung my cheeks and eyes. As we moved towards the car, now lightly dusted with snow, Orson tossed me the keys. I walked to the trunk so I could pack my suitcase away, but he stopped me.
'Put it in the backseat,' he said.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked across the road to the New Atlas Bar. It was dark now, the drunken crowds gone, the parking lot empty save two pick-up trucks. I looked up the highway towards the gas station, and it still glowed, the snow flurries visible in its artificial light. The motel was enveloped in an eerie, lifeless silence now, and Orson's over-anxiousness to leave this place frightened me.
We headed west on highway 89, and in several moments, the small transit community was only a fading splotch of light on the immense prairie. In the rearview mirror, I saw the eastern horizon, tinged now with the faintest trace of purple. It will be light soon, I thought, but a foreboding sensation flooded me as I thought of the coming day.
