72. 1980s
He didn’t have a plan.
He never had a plan, but this was different.
Jason had ridden with bloodstained hands and a bloody shirt east across the desert until his eyes burned.
He couldn’t remember the last time he slept, only that it was the night before he found Linda in the desert.
Before he chased her ambulance and sat with the tall, lanky man named Saul in the hospital hallway.
Before he saved a life.
Unsure of the state or the time—still in the desert and still dark outside—he pulled over at a roadside motel and fell face-first on the bed.
He woke up in a dusty, bloody ditch praying she was alive, only the mangled body in his arms wasn’t Linda’s.
He scrambled to the phone on the bedside table to call Theresa and it hit him: he didn’t know her number.
How did he not have a napkin square with Theresa, Springfield, Ohio, 1 shoved in one of his pockets?
Panic settled in his chest, a dread so potent he wasn’t sure she wasn’t really dying in some ditch, and he couldn’t even say he was sorry and that he was wrong.
One number he did have was the Springfield Sip’s, where she probably didn’t work anymore. He tried plugging it into the motel phone anyway, and the line beeped in his ear. A note taped to the table read, No long-distance calls, asshole.
He hung up. He was the asshole, and he was far enough from Ohio to keep the call he was desperate to make from going through.
Jason sat back on the faded flowered bedspread and shrugged out of his jacket. His knuckles were crusted red and brown, his hands trembling as if he needed a drink, but he didn’t think alcohol was the reason he had the shakes.
He stripped, showered, redressed, and climbed back on his bike. It was three in the afternoon.