Ridge Road, Chapter 12 · Four More Days

By Thursday morning Lorraine had wiped the whiteboard and started over.

I-80 WB CLOSED LARAMIE TO RAWLINS. WYDOT SAYS MONDAY 6AM. I SAY WE’LL SEE. COFFEE STILL FREE. ROOM 112 OWES ME A CHAIR.

Sam read it twice standing in the office doorway with snow coming off his shoulders. Lorraine was behind the desk in a purple fleece, doing a word search with a pen.

“That’s us,” Sam said. “One-twelve.”

“I know who it is, hon.” She didn’t look up. “Housekeeping found the arm off it on the floor. Maria says it looked like somebody’d been using it for chin-ups.”

“It was old.”

“It was nineteen ninety-four.” Lorraine circled a word. “There’s a new one coming from the Walmart this afternoon. Forty-nine ninety-nine. It’ll be on his bill.”

“It’ll be on his bill,” Sam agreed, and took two coffees, and went out before his face could do anything else.

---

Hank had kept his word on breakfast. The Village Inn was emptier than Wednesday. The church choir had found a bus driver willing to try I-25 south, and the booths along the window were mostly truckers in Carhartt nursing refills. Teddy Marsh was in the same booth as yesterday, red beard combed, ring hand around his mug.

Hank slid in across from him and didn’t pick up the menu.

“I’m buying,” Hank said.

“You bought yesterday.”

“Yesterday I bought pancakes because I felt sick about it. Today I’m buying because I owe it.” Hank waved the waitress over. “He’ll have the Rise and Shine. And the Country Fried Steak. Both.”

Teddy stared at him. “Doyle, I can’t eat two breakfasts.”

“Then take one home to Dale.” Hank put both hands flat on the table. Sam watched him do it, watched him make himself look straight across. “I need to say a thing, Teddy, and Sam’s going to hold me to it, so I’m saying it with him sitting here. You were a decent man to me. You still are. You sat in my truck for a month and asked me a fair question and I gave you nothing back, and none of that was on you. I’m sorry.”

The waitress came back with the coffee pot and saw their faces and went away again.

Teddy looked down at the table for a while. When he looked up he laughed, short, the way he had yesterday, and rubbed his beard with the back of his ring hand.

“Well, hell,” he said. “Four years I wanted to hear that. Now I got it and I don’t know where to put it. Thank you. I mean it. Dale’s going to make me tell it six times.”

“Tell it as many times as he wants.”

Teddy turned to Sam. “You make him do that?”

“I asked him to.”

“Same thing, looks like.” Teddy picked up his coffee and set it down without drinking. “All right. My turn. I said I’d ask sober and I’m sober.”

He told it plain. He’d bought his own truck in August, a used Freightliner with too many miles on it, and Monday would be his first winter run over Elk Mountain alone. Dale had made him promise not to do it alone if there was any way out of it. “He’s got it in his head the wind’s going to pick me up and set me down in Nebraska.” So would they run with him, Monday, Laramie to Rock Springs, him on their tail where he could see their markers. That was the first part.

“What’s the second part?” Hank said.

“The second part is Dale wants you to come to supper.” Teddy turned his mug. “Springfield, next time you’re running I-44. Both of you. He said, ‘I want to meet the man you quit, and I want to meet the one who didn’t.’ He’s a tax man. He likes things to balance.”

Sam felt Hank go still beside him.

“That’s it?” Hank said.

“That’s it. Convoy and supper.” Teddy shrugged. “I figured if I asked with a beer in me you’d think I was being sentimental.”

Hank looked at Sam. Sam said, “We’ll run with you,” before Hank could, and then, “And yes to supper. Tell Dale we’ll bring something.”

“Don’t bring a casserole,” Teddy said. “He’ll judge it.”

The food came. Teddy ate half the Rise and Shine and all of the steak and boxed the eggs for later, and in the parking lot he made Hank shake his hand again, long and hard, with the wind blowing ice off the cars.

---

The truck stop sat across the interstate on the other side of the overpass, a Petro with an Iron Skillet and a row of reefers idling in the lot with their units growling. They walked it after lunch because Hank said his legs were going to fuse if he sat another hour. The wind had dropped enough to stand up in. Sam bought a second tube of water-based lube off the shelf between the wiper fluid and the phone chargers and put it in his coat pocket and didn’t make a thing of it.

Hank bought a bag of oranges and a paper map of Wyoming he didn’t need.

On the walk back, halfway across the overpass with the closed interstate empty and white below them, Sam said, “Can I ask you something about the letters?”

“You can ask me anything about the letters.”

“You told Teddy you wrote Walt about him the fall after. Four years ago.” Sam watched the gate arm down across the westbound ramp, red and white and drifted over. “But in Tulsa you said it was letter nine. Last fall. That’s three years off.”

Hank stopped walking. “You’re still a claims man,” he said, and leaned his forearms on the overpass rail. Below them a WYDOT plow sat parked on the shoulder with nobody in it. “Both’s true, the way it happened. The fall after Teddy, I sat down at the kitchen table and started one. I got as far as ‘The third one quit’ and I couldn’t go on, because the next line was going to be about why, and I didn’t want to write why. So I put it in the drawer, half a page.”

“And last fall?”

“Last fall I found it in the drawer looking for a fuse. Three years in there. I sat down and finished it. That’s where the line comes from, the old man who tests people. That’s the ninth one.” He rubbed his beard. “I said ‘the fall after’ to Teddy because that’s when I started it.”

“In the bedroom you told me one a year. The week the bus left, every year.”

“I did.” He straightened up and looked at the plow instead of at Sam. “That’s what I meant it to be, and it’s what I told myself, so it’s what came out. It isn’t what happened. Nine letters in nine years, but not one a year. Some years none. One year two, because the first was no good and I couldn’t throw it out. The year after Teddy, half of one. Last fall, the rest of it. I’m sorry I rounded it off for you.”

Sam looked at him. Hank’s nose was red with cold and his eyes were steady.

“Okay,” Sam said. “That balances.”

“Dale would be proud of you.”

They walked on. At the motel a Walmart van was backing up to the office, and a man in a blue vest was wheeling out a boxed armchair on a hand truck.

“That’s for you,” Sam said.

“Forty-nine ninety-nine,” Hank said. “I heard.”

---

Friday it snowed again, fine and steady, and nobody went anywhere. Lorraine’s board said I-80 WB STILL CLOSED. DON’T ASK. Hank changed the fuel filter on the Pete’s bunk heater with the door open and his breath smoking. Teddy knocked at four with the leftover eggs heated up in the office microwave and said Dale was over the moon, he was already planning a menu, they’d regret saying yes. The new chair sat in the corner in its plastic wrap. Neither of them unwrapped it.

They ate oranges in bed Friday night and watched a weather channel with the sound off, the red blob sitting over the Snowy Range like it had paid for the room.

“Four days,” Sam said, “and we haven’t fought.”

“We fought Wednesday.”

“Call that a fight? I was jealous and you were right.”

“I was sorry, is what I was.” Hank peeled the last orange in one long spiral and gave Sam the bigger half. He’d taken his reading glasses off and the creases at the corners of his eyes were soft. “You know what Teddy said to me in the lot? While you were scraping the windshield.”

“What?”

“He said, ‘He looks at you like you’re the road report.'” Hank ate a segment. “I didn’t know what it meant. I think it means you check on me.”

“I do check on you.”

“I know you do.” Hank wiped his fingers on the sheet, which Lorraine would also hold against him. “Nobody’s checked on me since the yard.”

Sam put the orange down on the nightstand. He rolled onto his side to face him. The bed was a king and they had been sleeping in the middle third of it for four nights, and now there was nothing between them but the hot smell of oranges and Hank’s breathing.

“Come here,” Sam said.

Hank came. He rolled onto his side too, and they lay face to face on the pillows, close enough that Sam could see the grey in his beard one hair at a time. Hank put a hand on his hip. Sam kissed him.

It started slow. The snow had made the whole week slow, and Sam kissed him with his mouth open, his hand spread on Hank’s chest in the grey hair. Hank kissed back the same way, unhurried, and drew him in by the hip, slow, until Sam’s cock was pressed into the soft fur under Hank’s navel and he could feel Hank thickening against his thigh, heavy, and not in any hurry either.

“Clothes,” Sam said against his mouth.

“In a minute.”

“Now.”

Hank laughed and let go long enough to get his undershirt off over his head. Sam shoved his boxers down and kicked them somewhere under the covers, and then Hank’s were gone too, and there was nothing left but skin, the whole furred heat of him from chest to knees. Sam pressed against it and groaned out loud.

“Christ, you’re warm.”

“I’m fifty-one. I run hot.”

“Run hotter.”

Hank got a hand between them and wrapped it around both of them together, his big palm and their two cocks, and stroked once, slow, the whole length. Sam’s breath went. He pushed into it.

“Watch me while I do that,” Hank said, low, and Sam did, and Hank did it again, and kept doing it, watching Sam’s face the whole time like there was going to be a test. Sam groaned. He could feel Hank throbbing against him in that fist.

“You’re leaking all over my hand,” Hank said. “Four days in a motel and you’re still this easy.”

“You’re the one who’s hard as a tire iron.”

“I’ve been hard since you peeled that orange with your teeth.”

“I didn’t peel it with my teeth.”

“You did a little.”

“Then I’ll use my mouth on something better.” Sam pushed him onto his back and slid down under the sheet before Hank could argue, down the slope of that big belly, through the hair, and took him in his mouth.

Hank’s whole body lifted off the mattress. “Sam. Jesus.”

It was hot and close under the covers and smelled like oranges and Hank. Sam went slow because he wanted to, sucking the head, then taking more, his hand wrapped around the thick base where his mouth wouldn’t reach. Hank’s thighs shook on either side of him. One big hand came down on top of the sheet over Sam’s head and just rested there, not pushing.

“That’s… yeah. Like that. Make it sloppy.”

Sam made it sloppy. He let it slide out and licked it from the balls up, slow, tasting salt and four days of motel, and sucked one of Hank’s balls into his mouth and rolled it there until Hank’s heels dug into the mattress. Then he took the cock back in, deeper this time, the head pressing at the back of his throat, and held it there and swallowed around it, and Hank groaned so loud that somebody’s dog started barking two doors down.

“Okay,” Hank said, breathing hard. “Okay, up. Come up here. I’m not wasting it in your mouth.”

Sam came up out of the covers with his hair standing on end and his mouth red, and Hank looked at him and swore softly and pulled him in and kissed him, tasting himself.

“Lie back on your side,” Hank said. “Face me.” He let go and reached over Sam for the nightstand, his chest dragging across Sam’s face on the way, and Sam licked a nipple through the hair just to hear him swear. Hank came back with the new tube from the Petro and the Walmart box, and Sam heard the foil go.

“Say the word for me,” Hank said.

“Wait.”

“And if you say it?”

“You stop dead.”

“I stop dead.” Hank pushed everything else off the side of the bed. “Lift your leg. Put it over me.”

Sam lifted his top leg and laid it across Hank’s hip, heel resting on the back of Hank’s thigh. Lying that way on his side, facing him, he was open and couldn’t hide anything, and Hank’s slick fingers found him right away. Hank circled and pressed in with one, then after a while two, and crooked them, and Sam panted against Hank’s cheek. Hank worked him slow and talked low into his ear while he did it, telling him how hot he was in there, how he opened up now like he’d been waiting all day, how Hank was going to make him feel it on the drive to Rock Springs. Sam rocked onto the fingers and back against nothing and onto them again.

“Three,” Sam said.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. I want to be loose for you.”

Hank gave him three, slow, and held still while Sam breathed through the stretch, and then twisted them, and Sam made a sound into the pillow that made Hank laugh low in his chest.

“Lorraine’s going to bill me for the sheets too,” Hank said.

“Let her.”

“You want me in you like this? Right here, looking at you?”

“Yes. Like this. Hank, I want to see it.”

Hank shifted down a little on the mattress and lined up, and Sam felt him there, the blunt fat head of him, and Hank held his eyes and pushed. It went slow, the angle tight, Sam’s leg pulling him in over the hip. Sam gasped and grabbed Hank’s shoulder.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. God. Keep going.”

Hank kept going. Slow, with Sam’s breath shaking out of him and Hank’s breath shaking out of Hank, until Hank’s belly pressed soft against Sam’s and his balls rested on Sam’s ass and there was nowhere further to go, and they lay there joined on their sides with nothing moving but their chests.

“There,” Hank whispered. “You took me sideways. The whole thing.”

“Don’t sound so proud.”

“I’m real proud.” He rocked once, barely. Sam moaned straight into his mouth. “That’s it. Make that noise. Teddy’s three doors down and I don’t care. Christ, you’re squeezing the life out of me.”

He started moving, small at first, because there wasn’t room for anything else, short deep pushes with his hand flat on the small of Sam’s back pulling him onto each one. Sam’s leg tightened over his hip. Every push dragged Sam’s cock against the hair on Hank’s belly. It was close and hot and wet under the sheet, and Sam could see everything, Hank’s eyes going heavy, his mouth falling open, the sweat starting at his hairline.

“That’s good,” Sam said. “That’s so good. Don’t hold back.”

“Like this?”

“More than that.”

Hank grunted and got an arm under Sam’s shoulders, hauling him in tighter, and the pushes got longer and rougher, the mattress creaking under them in a steady beat. Sam’s top foot dug into the back of Hank’s thigh. He was talking and he couldn’t stop, telling Hank to fuck him, telling him how full he felt, telling him not to slow down, and Hank answered every one of them low and filthy into his mouth.

“You’re so wet inside. God, the sound of you.”

“I hear it.”

“Sounds like you want it.”

“I do want it. I want it all the time. I wanted it on the overpass. I want your cock in me every day this road stays shut.”

Then he stopped. Just stopped, deep inside, and held Sam there on his side with that arm and didn’t move a muscle.

“Hank.”

“Hold still.”

“I can’t hold still. Move.”

“In a minute.” Hank pulled his hips back slow, slow, until Sam could feel just the head of him left, stretching the rim, and he stayed there, rocking it in and out that last little bit and nothing more. Sam’s leg locked over his hip trying to pull him back in and Hank didn’t let it.

“Hank Doyle, I swear to God.”

“Say please.”

“Please. Hank. Please put it back.”

“All of it?”

“All of it. Give me all of it. I want to feel you deep up in me.”

Hank slid back in, one long push, deep, and Sam’s head went back and a sound came out of him he’d never heard himself make. Hank kissed it off his mouth.

“That’s what I wanted,” Hank said. “That noise. I’ve been thinking about that noise for four days.”

“You’ve had it every night.”

“Not like that. Do it again.” He pulled out slow and pushed back in, and Sam did it again, louder, because there was no point pretending he could stop.

Hank laughed and it shook through his whole body into Sam, and Sam moaned at that too. Then Hank shifted his knee up under Sam’s thigh, lifting his leg higher, and the angle changed and the next push hit him dead on the spot and Sam’s whole body jerked.

“There?”

“There. There. Don’t move off it.”

“I won’t.”

Hank didn’t. He held that angle and fucked him on it, slow and hard, rolling his hips in, staying deep, and Sam held onto his shoulder with both hands and fell apart a little at a time. His cock was trapped between their bellies, sliding in the sweat and the hair with every push. He hadn’t touched it once. He didn’t need to. Every roll of Hank’s hips pressed the fur of that belly along the underside of it, wet now, slick with what was leaking out of him, and every time Hank pulled back the drag went the other way, and Sam could feel his balls drawing up tight.

“Talk to me,” Hank said. “Tell me what it’s doing.”

“It’s… you’re right on it. Every time. It’s like you’re pushing it out of me.”

“Good. That’s what I want. I want it pushed out of you, all over my belly.” Hank held the angle and ground in deep and slow, and Sam’s thigh trembled on top of his hip. “Squeeze me. Yeah. Like that. God, you hold on to me so hard.”

“Hank, I’m close.”

“Already?”

“You keep hitting it, what do you expect.”

“I expect you to make a mess of me.” Hank pressed his forehead to Sam’s for a second, then pulled back so he could see him. “Right here where I can watch. Go on, Sam. Let me watch.”

Sam came looking straight at him. It pulled up out of him from somewhere low and wouldn’t stop, and he heard himself crying out Hank’s name, felt himself clench down hard on him, felt his cock jerk and spill hot between their bellies without a hand on it. It hit Hank’s belly and Sam’s own and smeared between them as Hank kept moving. Hank swore and held him through it, kept pushing into the clench until Sam was shaking and gasping and it was over.

“Okay?” Hank said against his mouth. His voice was barely there.

“Yeah. Don’t stop. I want you to.”

“Nearly there.”

“Then go. Go, Hank.”

Hank went. He hooked his knee higher under Sam’s thigh and held him by the back with that big arm, and Sam, still shaking, tightened on him on purpose and said into his mouth, “Let me have it, Hank. All of it, right now.” Hank made a broken sound. He drove into him short and hard, the bed knocking the wall, Sam’s oversensitive body jolting with each one and Sam not letting go of him, and then he pushed deep and stayed there and came with his face in Sam’s neck and a long groan that Sam felt in his own chest. Sam held his head and felt him pulse inside him and thought, clear as anything, that there wasn’t a single other place he wanted to be in the whole snowed-in state.

They lay there with Sam’s leg still over him and Hank still inside, softening slow, his beard wet against Sam’s neck. Sam could feel his heart going hard through both their chests. Every so often Hank’s hips gave a small twitch on their own and Sam clenched back, lazy, and Hank groaned and said “Quit that” and didn’t mean it. Neither of them moved for a long time. The weather channel went to commercial. Down the walk a door shut.

“Sweetheart,” Hank said finally, into his neck. “I think I broke the bed.”

“You didn’t break the bed.”

“Something cracked.”

“That was your knee.”

“That was my knee,” Hank admitted, and laughed, and slid out of him slow, and lay back on the pillows with one hand on his belly in the mess Sam had made. “Lord. Leave it. I’ll get up in a minute.”

He didn’t get up for twenty.

---

Saturday they walked to the Petro again because there was nothing else to do. Saturday Lorraine’s board said PLOWS ARE OUT. DON’T GET EXCITED. Saturday they finally unwrapped the new chair and Hank sat in it with his feet up on the bed and pronounced it soft as a church pew, and Sam sat in his lap in it for exactly ten seconds before Hank said “No” and pushed him off.

“Not again,” Hank said. “Lorraine’ll ban us from Wyoming.”

Saturday afternoon Dale called Teddy’s phone, and Teddy knocked on 112 and held it out at arm’s length on speaker so they could all hear. Dale had a high dry voice and a Missouri drawl a little lighter than Teddy’s.

“Is this the famous Doyle?”

“It’s Hank.”

“Hank. Okay. I’ve heard about you for four years, Hank, and I’ve got to say you’re shorter in my head than Teddy says.” A pause. “And Sam? Is Sam there?”

“I’m here.”

“Sam, I’m told you made him apologize.”

“I asked him to.”

“That’s how it works in my house too,” Dale said. “Okay. Supper. Do either of you have anything you won’t eat? Teddy says Hank eats chili and nothing else.”

“He eats vegetables now,” Sam said. “Walt makes him.”

Hank made a noise. Teddy laughed so hard he had to sit down on the bed, and Dale said, “Who’s Walt?” and Teddy said, “Long story, babe. Monday night, from Rock Springs.”

When the call ended Teddy said, “Now you see what I married.”

“I like him,” Hank said.

“Everybody does. It’s real annoying.”

Saturday night Teddy came by with the beer, finally, the Coors six-pack that had been in his truck since Wednesday freezing into slush. They sat on the walkway outside 112 on two of Lorraine’s patio chairs with their coats zipped up, and drank it watching the plows go by on the frontage road with their yellow lights turning.

“For after,” Teddy said, and touched his can to Hank’s, and then to Sam’s.

“After what?” Sam said.

“After all of it.” Teddy drank. “After I quit, after I got mad, after I quit being mad. After you two.” He looked out at the lot. “Dale says I don’t have to keep score anymore. I think he’s right.”

---

Sunday was quiet. Sunday Lorraine wrote on the board, in red marker, SIX AM MONDAY. I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE TAILLIGHTS. Hank went out at noon and fueled the Pete and checked the chains and walked around it twice, kicking the tires, which was what he did instead of praying.

At five Sam’s phone buzzed. He was lying on the bed with the map of Wyoming open on his chest, not reading it.

It was Walt.

Should be your chili night. It’s in the freezer. You’ll be through Tulsa Wednesday if the road holds, I’ll be at the yard, and I’m not letting either of you go straight home. Supper at mine, Wednesday. Just the three of us. No Eunice, no letters. I’ve got a thing to say to the both of you and I’ve been chewing on it since the cedar box, so don’t make me say it on the phone.

Sam read it twice. Then he held the phone up over his head so Hank could see from the chair.

Hank read it with his glasses on. He didn’t say anything for a while.

“What do you think he’s going to say?” Sam asked.

Hank took his glasses off and folded them and put them in his shirt pocket. Out the window the plows were still running along the frontage road, one behind the other, and the light was going blue over the Snowy Range.

“I think,” Hank said slowly, “you’d better text him back before I do.”

Sam typed it with his thumb. Wednesday. We’ll be there. Both of us.