White Out

Dear Carl

Carl Higgins stared wonder struck at his latest text message from Ruthie, as though he were a scientist eyeing a lab experiment which gave a stunningly unexpected result. He squinted out through his lopsided windshield at the swirling whiteout. The Buick was half off the right shoulder of the road, and mired in a heavy drift. Could have been worse. Carl had panicked when that semi blasted by, reducing visibility to absolute zero. He hit the breaks, did a 360 and ended up here. In a drift somewhere on a secondary highway southeast of Des Moines, where a brokerage seminar was going to have to start without him.

Ruthie had flown in from St. Paul's three days earlier for the Agribition. Her Daddy had gotten her a first class ticket. Nothing but the best for his Ruthie. It was just her third time flying solo, representing her father's farm equipment business on her own. Carl had heard about the seminar at work, and floated the possibility of going along at supper two weeks earlier at the in-laws place. Really he'd just been hoping to share a first class flight and a few days at a posh hotel. Ruthie's stunned look at the suggestion, followed by dear Daddy's comment ("Carl I think you need to give the woman a little breathing room from time to time.") only served to galvanize Carl Higgins. The broker decided to drive there out of spite. In January no less.

The wind whipped up. What had been a distant moan on the Prairie grew deeper, louder, (closer) as the LeSabre was buffeted by the strongest gust yet. Carl looked at the clock, 4:42 pm, then to the gas gauge, which stood just below a quarter of a tank. Drawing in a long slow breath he steeled himself and looked back to his wife's text on the iPhone.

HUBBIE'S CAUGHT IN A DRIFT. GET BACK HERE NOW AND DRILL ME AGAIN.

Carl probed inwardly for an emotional response. Hell. An intellectual one would do. He was still in shock he supposed. The accident had happened in super slow motion as he watched it all from inside himself. Which, granted, is our perspective for most things. But there was an odd detachment to it all. As though he were dreaming. And that sense only deepened after getting this evidence of his wife's infidelity.

He wondered if she knew yet. Maybe not. Maybe she just dropped the phone on the bed (where she had been fucking another man) and went off to have a shower.

Or maybe she was sitting on the edge of the bed in that bowlegged way of hers, chewing on her lower lip amid a furious torrent of reasoning. How in hell was she going to wiggle her way out of this one?

There had been other times. Times that were now ablaze with the sobering light of hindsight in the mind of Carl Higgins. The time he got home a day early from that business trip to Duluth. He decided to surprise Ruthie with roses and a box of chocolates. She wasn't home when he got in. After setting up the flowers in a nice vase and leaving the chocolates before them on the dining room table Carl went off to the John, where he gagged on the stench of men's cologne. It had hit him like a sledgehammer. In the wastebasket by the sink he saw why. There were the shattered remains from a bottle of Perre Ellis. A cologne Carl had smelled before. Hugh wore it all the time. The forty and fit foreman on the shop floor of Daddy-in-law's business.

That had been a Christmas gift for Carl see. Even though it was a week shy of Thanksgiving and Ruthie had always been a last minute Christmas shopper. ("I'm like a man that way," she often said.) She had rushed into the bathroom with her shopping bags because she really had to go. Had to go so badly that she had dropped those bags on the bathroom floor. And the rest of her excuse just wrote itself.

The other times raced through Carl's mind as he looked out and through the fine and driving snow. The sky was darkening. A chill that had nothing to do with the external temperature of twelve degrees Fahrenheit (the car's interior was a toasty 82) ran through him. It would be dark soon. And he had been warned by the terse, no nonsense woman at the towing company that it might be some time.

"Batten down and hang tight," she had said. "You're in line behind a dozen others."

Now Carl's mind ran on two tracks. On one his thoughts raced through the litany of suspicious behaviour Ruthie had exhibited for at least the last half of their twelve year marriage. The routine clearing of their browser history. The odd texts that would appear on her phone from time to time when it was charging on the counter, from blocked numbers, and at odd hours. 'Now a good time to call?' Or 'I could use that delivery tomorrow morning.' Texts that were always business related. "Just a glitch," being the standard reason for the number being blocked. And, always and forever, her oh so chipper ways in the wake of her business trips. She came back with all the energy in the world. For everything but sex.

That other track took him to places equally grim and foreboding. And more immediately menacing. It was darkening fast now. The gas was dropping with it. Probably not as quickly as it felt to Carl, as he eyed the gauge warily. Soon he'd have to start rationing engine time. Maybe he should be already. Turning it off until the icy tendrils crept in. Which would take what? A minute in these temperatures?

"Or less."

He gave a little start at the sound of his own voice. He hadn't decide to use it. His mouth just opened, unbidden, and his vocal chords had worked their magic in a nervous, cracked whisper.

Carl looked to the passenger seat. There was the crumpled wrapper from a Kit Kat bar, a small pack of honey roasted peanuts and about half a pint of bottled water. Evian.

That was the extent of his rations.

He gave another start as his phone buzzed. So much so that the cell slipped from his hands. His gloveless with no gloves in sight hands. There was a black stocking cap stuffed into a pocket of his black trench coat, over his rumpled and off the rack navy suit. That was all. Not even a blasted scarf.

The phone hit the floor between his feet. Carl leaned over to fish for it, and hit his forehead on the steering wheel in the process. He opened his mouth to curse but shut it again, out of a desire to exert his will over his body. He didn't like the way his voice had betrayed him by speaking out like that, without first checking in with his brain. The result was that he added injury to injury as he bit his tongue, hard.

"Damn it!"

Carl shook his head. His voice had won the battle of wills after all. He groped for the phone for what felt like an absurd amount of time, maybe fifteen seconds. As he did a series of gusts, the most violent yet, whipped into the car from every direction at once. Or so it felt.

Pay dirt. Carl straightened and threw his reflection in the rear view a glance. His eyes were wide and anxious and the bags beneath them heavy. And his sparse brown hair was a mess. Running his hands through it was a chronic nervous habit. Hell it may have caused his baldness.

He stared at the back of the phone for long seconds as he worked up his courage. With a heavy sigh he flipped it over and read the latest from his wife, in the maddening caps she always insisted on using.

IT'S GOOD THAT HAPPENED I GUESS. AT LEAST IT MEANS I CAN STOP LIVING A LIE. IT'S OVER CARL. WHEN THEY PULL YOU OUT PLEASE TURN THE CAR AROUND AND HEAD HOME. I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU. REALLY I HAVEN'T FOR YEARS.

Carl read the message three times. The last line three times more. Then his body betrayed him again, as the storm worked itself up into a banshee wail outside.

Carl Higgins slumped over his steering wheel and began to cry, harsh racking sobs that wouldn't completely subside until he and his Buick were surrounded by a loud and raging night.