He thought, helplessly, of Orajel Plus. In his fragile state, the very thought made his eyes tear. He imagined himself a baby crying out in pain, a beautiful young mother soothing him. Gentle fingers in his mouth as she rubbed the cream into his gums.
He got off at the next exit and spotted, in the distance, a CVS drugstore. He parked and went inside. The store was mostly empty. He walked up and down the aisles until he spotted what he needed. Orajel Extra Strength. For relief of teething pain. The package featured a photo of a round-faced infant, grinning broadly to reveal a single tooth.
At the cash register, a lady clerk was flipping through a magazine—a big round-faced gal, well past her prime, with meaty shoulders and a firm shelf of breast jutting forward like the prow of a ship. An ordinary female, nothing special. She would never have qualified for the Hall of Shame.
“You find everything all right?” she asked, barely looking up from her magazine. The hand turning the page looked plump and soft, the nails painted a pearly pink.
“Yes, ma’am.” Look at me, he thought. Please look at me. Why this mattered so much, he could not possibly have said.
“Have a good one,” the clerk said as she handed back his change.
Back in the truck, he studied his gums in the rearview mirror, the monstrous crater where his tooth had been. The crater was painful to look at, never mind touch.
He thought of the clerk’s plump, white hands. He could go back into the store and ask her to apply it for him. Common sense stopped him. He was still sane enough to understand that it would end badly, that she would probably call the cops.
DRIVING SOOTHED HIM. AS HE CROSSED THE BORDER INTO Massachusetts, the road climbed higher and higher, which surprised him. The northeast quadrant of the country was unfamiliar territory. For thirty years he’d avoided the eastern runs, the unending traffic this side of the Mississippi, a trucker’s prejudice. He had pictured a different landscape entirely—flat and congested, an endless expanse of strip malls and big-box stores, the bleak, unending American sprawl.
Western Massachusetts looked nothing like that. Western Massachusetts, to his astonishment, was beautiful country. On a weekday afternoon there was no traffic to speak of. He passed a slow truck in the right lane, a snowplow with its yellow lights flashing.
Good Christ, it’s April, Victor thought.
At that very moment, the snow started. Grit on the windshield, fine as sugar. The sky and the horizon were the same color, grainy and particulated. The road itself looked whitewashed, coated with a scrim of salt.
The road climbed and climbed. MT. GREYLOCK, HIGHEST POINT IN MASS. A stiff gust of wind took a swipe at his truck.
He passed signs for ski areas, for scenic overlooks. Snow swirled along the icy pavement, hovered mysteriously like steam or spirits. He thought wistfully of the tire chains he hadn’t thought to bring, still hanging from sturdy hooks in Randy’s barn.
The pain was making him perspire. A lick of sweat ran down his back. He wished he’d gotten himself an ice pack, something cold to hold to his jaw.
A skinny deer raced across the highway. Victor hit the brakes and regretted it immediately. His tires skidded crazily.
The road was glazed with invisible ice.
The truck slipped and slid; it could not get purchase. On April first, he’d swapped out his snow tires, as any sane person would do.
Pumping the brakes, he righted himself. The ache had spread to his left ear. Its fingers tightened around his throat. Mercy, he thought. When he reached the destination, Columbia would help him. The thought was nearly too much for him: her hands on his face, her fingers in his mouth.
His jaw pulsed like a second heart.
He thought again of the Orajel package. The baby’s smile was sweet and trusting, as though all his pain had been relieved.
He wished the collapse would come already. He was tired of waiting. If shit was going to hit the fan, he wished it would hit soon. For fifteen years he’d planned and plotted. He hadn’t counted on being old when it happened. An old man alone in the world—wifeless, childless, toothless, and possibly blind.