If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Backseat

     I am fifteen.  My eyes open as Mom walks into my room.  The sun is still making the voyage through my window, telling me it’s early. It’s much too early. Mom tells me it’s time to get ready for our vacation to Wyoming.  “Vacation. Hah!” I think as I roll over and shut my eyes for another hour and a half.  I wake up at last and pack a few socks and a tooth brush.  Water bottles filled, car packed, bathroom used, I now wait and wait and wait.  I clean my room, watch reruns of I Love Lucy, go out for a walk around the yard, pet my cat, get some lunch, and just sit down to play a few tunes on my trumpet when the sounds of Dad’s footsteps come up the stairs.  He wasn’t supposed to have to work today, but he always does.  The light is always on in his office, electrical drawings rustling.  Mom’s antsy and I’m agitated.  He announces he is done with work for the day.  Thirty minutes later, I’m in the backseat and the wheels crunch on the gravel as the sun falls further toward the Rocky Mountains.  I ask Dad how long of a drive he figures we have.  He sighs and responds, “five hours or so.” 

     The trip wears on and on.  Hours pass--more than five. It’s the middle of the night and still the car moves on.  The shadows sink in deep until all that is left is a blanket of shadow and still the night gets darker.  I lose track of time as I slip in and out of consciousness until the car comes to a slow stop.  I sit up and look around.  We’re at Walmart.  We’re one of those families that camps out in the parking lot of Walmart because they don’t want to pay for a hotel.  How embarrassing! But we only stay for one hour until Dad sighs and clicks the key in the ignition.

     We keep driving as the sun slowly wakes up, melting away the night sky.  We drive and drive. I know not to bring up that it’s been over ten hours of driving.  We keep driving.  Just when I give into the impending doom that I will never be leaving this backseat, we pull off on a dirt road in the middle of a dirt patch.  Looking out the window, a campground comes nearer and we stop.  The second we stop, great aunts, second cousins, and a million family members I don’t know run up to the car all wearing pioneer clothing and pulling hand carts. “Well look who finally showed up!” shouts an exasperated Grandpa from across the parking lot.  He walks toward us saying, “You look like the walking dead!”  We grimace in response.  We are about to go on a pioneer trek in hot Wyoming summer after one hour of sleep.  Kids are running in circles around the handcarts, their bonnets and straw hats hanging from their necks by the strings, while their parents hustle them onto the trail.  We have five minutes to prepare ourselves for the further ensuing torture. 

     Miraculously, the trek hike does not produce any casualties, but the hard times are far from being over. There is no running water in this campground.  There is one outhouse. It gets tundra cold at night and stifling hot during the day.  One night there is a storm. Hail, thunder, rain, and wind pound down and rock the trailer back and forth, adding to the dark circles under our eyes and the yawns in our throats. Whitney is sick.  She is so sick she has to stay in the trailer all day.  She feels sick, and I am sick of this vacation.  There is nothing here but the wind and the swaying grasses.  Even the wild animals are bored.  I wonder when this vacation will be over.

     I am seventeen.  Back I find myself in the family car.  Good old car, I must spend about a third of my life riding in this backseat, always on the passenger side.  Another late start for us today.  I have heard people refer to tardiness now as “pulling-a-Stevens.”  But there is nothing much to do about it, and getting upset doesn’t make for changing anything.  Into more mountain passes and long winding roads we go before opening onto wide, empty fields filled only with wind turbines.  The usual darkness fills the backseat and I sit, headphones in, a glazed expression over my eyes.  The wheels come to a stop and minutes later we crash into the hotel bedroom, forcing ourselves to brush our teeth and take off our shoes before face-planting onto our pillows. 

    My eyes barely shut when the alarm beep, beep, beeps its way into my dreams.  Now we are here, we relax.  Relaxing means we run around all day, driving from Latino store to Latino store looking for pan dulce.  We buy bags and bags of the sweet bread.  We are such an oddity that when we come, all the workers come up front to watch the silly gringos.  Mom and Dad have a small obsession for the Mexican bakeries and using their Spanish on the people.  Somehow we always find ourselves in the Latin communities in other states.  There are no Mexican shops in Montana.  After we spend the morning sticking out like a sore thumb in a sea of Latinos, we drive from family member to family member.  We see Auntie and Uncle, Suzie and JimmyBob, Fido, Freckles, Daisy, Todo: everyone and their dog and their dog’s best friend.  There is no rest, there is no funny business. Enjoying a vacation is for the weak. 

     I am nineteen. I’m sitting in my apartment, crouching over calculus formulas, hand scribbling and erasing back and forth in the golden light of my lamp.  The clock ticks 8:00 and night falls faster and faster. I jump at the buzz of my phone.  Whitney’s out of her test and ready to go.  I grab my bags and run out the door, shoes pounding down the cement steps.  Whitney apologizes for how late it is, but that’s quickly shrugged off as we jump into the car and speed away.  We drive for hours, talking, laughing, and singing to the radio until it is deep into the morning. 

     The car eventually becomes quiet in thought, the beat of the music rushing into our heads and leaking out of our tapping fingers.  The darkness outside is plain and sleepy.  Something huge and furry creeps into our path.  It’s so big I think it must be a baby deer, until I smell the awful stench and register the fur is black and white. A sickening crunch, and I know the car will never smell the same again.  A moment of shocked silence and wide eyes, and then the laughter starts.  Shaking and gasping for breath (skunk breath that is), the silence is shattered and that’s the way we like it best.

     We stop to get gas at an abandoned gas station in a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere.  We get the gas and jump back into the car, eager to get the heat on high and the wheels back on the highway.  But we don’t get back on the highway.  The road curves up an abandoned hill and becomes creepy.  This winding road is not the “cute Charlie Brown Halloween” kind of creepy; it’s the “Frankenstein’s monster is going to come out of his hiding place and jump on your car and attack you and nobody will hear because you are in the middle of nowhere” kind of creepy.  Whitney looks over at me out of the corner of her eye and we are both thinking the same thing.  At the same split second, the skunky air inside of the car is filled with a sudden piercing, “Aaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!” as our voices blend into one.  The screaming doesn’t stop until we are back on the highway. 

     We’re both tired and ready to collapse but the smiles don’t leave our faces and every word is jumpy and giggly.  With every misfortune everything is more and more hilarious.  We fall into bed for a couple hours at a friend’s house en transit, but we’re up again with the first crack of daylight. When the sun begins its journey again, we begin ours.  We drive quickly and soon pull into wonderful Montana.  We run to Mom and Dad and Lindsey at the hotel and hugs go all around.  Here the real fun will begin.  We are the crazy Stevens, all ready for mayhem again.