Found Money - James Grippando [46]
“Ryan, I said I’d stay.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“When you coming home?”
“Possibly Monday night. Tuesday at the latest.”
The airport speakers crackled with another announcement. Ryan’s flight would begin boarding in five minutes. “I gotta go, Sarah. You’re sure everything is okay?”
“Yes,” she said, almost groaning. “Just a typical dull day in Piedmont Springs.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing, Ryan. Nothing at all. I assure you, everything is perfectly A-okay.”
21
Her truck was dying at the Sand Creek Massacre.
Just north of the town of Chivington, to be exact, near the small stone monument that marked the spot where in 1864 Col. John Chivington and his citizens militia annihilated an entire reservation of peaceable Indians, including unarmed children running from the scene. Amy recalled that disgraceful tale from grade school history. At the moment, however, she could think only of her own disaster.
Steam was spewing from beneath the hood, growing thicker with each tick on the odometer. The engine sputtered. The truck was losing speed. Amy cranked on the heater inside the cab. Through experience she’d learned that turning on the heat could help cool down an overheated engine—at the driver’s expense, of course. The midafternoon’s flirt with a hundred degrees had thankfully passed, but the temperature was still unbearable. The heater was blasting on high. The plains stretched for miles in all directions, not a building or car in sight. Just acres of soybeans on either side. For miles ahead, mirages danced on a sun-baked road as straight as string. Amy felt like she might pass out. She stuck her head out the window for some cooler air. The truck limped along at twenty miles an hour. She had to make it to the next town. A deserted highway was no place to spend the night.
“Come on, baby. You can do it.” Talking to her truck had always seemed to help. It sure couldn’t hurt.
Somehow she managed to make it a few more miles, all the way to a town called Kit Carson. She didn’t know precisely where she was, but it was hard to feel lost in a town named after Colorado’s most famous scout. Luckily there were a few service stations, particularly where Highway 40 intersected with 287. Her truck rolled into the station with just barely enough momentum to make it to the garage door. Unfortunately, it was Sunday. No mechanic would be on duty until Monday morning. One way or another, Amy was stuck on the plains for the night. She left a note under the windshield telling the mechanic she’d be back at 6:00
A.M., when the garage opened. Down the road she noticed a small motel. The sign proclaimed “vacancy.” From the looks of the place, it always had a vacancy. She locked the truck and headed up the gravel shoulder along the highway.
The Kit Carson Motor Lodge was a simple one-story motel designed for one-night stays. Each room had its own outside entrance. Rooms in front faced the highway. Rooms in the back faced the gravel parking lot. Only the back rooms had air conditioning, rusty old wall units that stuck out beneath the windows. Amy took the one room with a unit that actually worked.
Amy showered and washed her clothes in the sink. She was able to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste at the front desk. She wrapped herself in the flimsy bath towel and hung her clothes on the shower rod to dry. The television didn’t work, which was just as well. She lay on the bed, exhausted, but she couldn’t let herself sleep until she called home.
She sat up and dialed, thinking with the phone to her ear as she counted the lonely-sounding rings on the other end of line. Gram was totally up to speed. This morning, Amy had decided that if she was going to make contact with the Duffys in Piedmont Springs, Gram should know about it. One thing had led to another, as it always did with Gram, and before Amy hit the road Gram knew