Another Wrong Turn by Sis Byers

He took a long drag off his cigarette and turned the wheel of the car with stiff movement. His winter coat was bulky, and, while unzipped, the arms of the coat restricted how he moved. The snow-covered gravel road he turned onto looked just like the last one.

It was January. Cold. Gray. Visibility was mostly clear, except when the wind pulled off a dusting layer of snow and blew it around. Snow padded fields for miles. Broken by the tops of round rail fence posts. And occasionally a short expanse of trees planted like a wall to break up the wind.

The sun obscured itself into the grayness of the sky and, though you couldn’t see it, she was slowly sinking lower. Much like the needle on his gas gauge. A quarter tank. Slightly less.

He looked in his rear-view mirror and could see his three youngest children sleeping sitting up. Bundled in their winter gear. Hats on, coats zipped. Paused in subconsciousness.

His oldest of the children sat in the passenger seat, using her mitten to clear the fog from the window. He wasn’t sure if she caught on yet that he had lost his way back. After eight years of living here, he was surprised he'd managed to lose track of the main road. It just all looked so washed out. The same swatch of land over and over again.

“This road looks just like the last.” She said his thoughts out loud, while rubbing the back of her mitten on the window.

He didn’t respond. He threw the rest of his cigarette out the window and adjusted how he was sitting. The tires rolled over the packed snow. He was sure he’d stumble across something that helped him orient where they were. At least a gas station.

A farmhouse.

A silo.

A grain elevator.

Anything.

His feet were getting cold.

With the sun going down, the air temp continued to drop. Already slick roads would become even icier. And worse, harder to see.

His wife relished his weekend trips with the kids. It was her time to be alone. Doing god-knows-what she couldn’t do during the week when he was off at work and she was home with the kids. She wouldn’t be expecting them home anytime soon. She would even be grateful he was still gone. He worried she wouldn’t look for them if they didn’t make it back, not until many hours had passed at least.

He tried not to let this thought get the best of him. There was bound to be something that would indicate where they were, something that would get them back on the path home.

An embankment at the end of the road became visible. As if the road he was traveling on just ceased to exist. He slowed to a stop. With the depth of the snow ahead, to the right, and to the left of him, he wasn’t quite sure which way the road turned.

He threw the Suburban in park. His oldest watched him with curiosity, staying planted in the passenger seat, as he got out and walked in front of the idling car.

The cold was immediately biting. It made his mouth feel dry. He stood in the glow of the headlights and felt around with his foot to see if the road continued to the left. He slid slightly off the road and caught himself with his hand before falling. The left side slanted steeply into a ditch.

He righted himself and glanced towards the car, his oldest watching him carefully. He clenched his hand when it touched the icy snow, the cold immediately painful. He crossed in front of the headlights and examined whether the road went right. His foot sank through the snow as the embankment on this side also lowered harshly toward a ditch. His heart sank with it.

He had taken a service road. The kind that just end abruptly. Intended for tractor-trailer field access. He glanced back to see just how far he had taken this dead end. He surveyed the distance from right to left to vaguely measure the width of the road before it began to dip down on either side.

His daughter watched him stack one foot in front of the other and walk in a perfect line with his arms outstretched as though walking a plank.

Twelve feet across. Give or take.

He opened the car door and the whoosh of cold air woke up the three in the back. His daughter stared at him. He had momentarily wondered if she could turn the car around while he stood outside calling out directions, but as he looked at her, he remembered that she had only just turned 10 earlier that month.

“Do we have to go back?” she asked.

“The road ends.”

She let this information sink in.

“I’ll have to turn the car around. And will need you to watch to make sure we don’t slide into a ditch. Do you think you can do that?”

She considered this a moment, and then zipped up her coat and opened the door. He got out with her.

They stood in front of the beams of light. Dusk was falling quickly, and you could see the visibility of the day fall out of the world like a bulb dimming. He walked her to the edge where the road turned into a ditch on the right. He used the heel of his boot to draw a line.

“Do not let me drive past this.”

He walked her to the other side and again carved a line in the snow with his boot where the road descended.

“Do not let me drive past this.”

She nodded.

He pulled himself back into the car and nodded to her before he moved the car forward. It felt as though it went barely a foot before she was indicating that he had to stop.

He threw the car in reverse and cranked the wheel the other way, as she ran to the other side to watch where the back tire was heading.

“STOP,” she yelled loudly, her voice quickly pulled away by the wind.

He put the car back in drive and spun the wheel hard the other way, inching forward, the tires packing down the snow. He had to put a little gas into it in order for it to move at all. It lurched forward.

“STOP.”

He saw her face. His front tires had stopped on the line that his heel dug. She ran back over to the passenger side to monitor the other tire.

He again reversed at an angle. He could begin to see the progress of their movements, if only slight. His daughter stood while he began to ready for another forward movement and lifted her hand to stop him. She ran to his window. He unrolled it and looked down at her.

Her face was pink, and frost was already on her eyelashes.

“Dad, do you think the car is bigger than the road is wide?”

It felt like a child’s riddle the way she asked it. But as soon as she did, he already knew that she was right. There was no way this car could make the entire turn without going over one of the edges on one of the sides. And were they to slide, they’d be stuck. Or, at least he didn’t want to chance that they’d be stuck.

“We’ll have to reverse.” He said this out loud as if to her, but mostly to convince himself.

She ran around the car to the other side and hopped in, immediately rubbing her hands together and preparing for them to begin. The visibility out his back windows was minimal. They were dirty.

He grabbed a few napkins and some water and jumped out of the car to see if he could clear them a bit. He smeared what winter grime and off-gassing had built up enough to heighten visibility. The glow of the parking lights cast up at him and he could see his devilish red reflection in the glass.

What had he done to them?

He had pulled off the main road to get around a traffic accident, certain he knew these frontage roads. He assumed they were parallel to the main highway. Hadn’t he taken these before? How had this happened?

He threw the dirty napkins in the car and pulled himself back in. Despite the cold he was sweating. He pulled off his hat. Straightened out the car and began to reverse to the turn off.

The oldest was entirely turned in her seat to face the back window. And the younger ones were kneeling on the middle row, watching the dark road.

Wind was picking up, and it rocked the car back and forth, whistling hard at the cracked opened windows.

He felt like he was trying to reverse time. To go back to before they took this road and got off the highway. With every inch, his anger at himself grew. He tried to pick up the pace, but it was impossible to keep the car straight on such uneven packed snow. He had to accept the crawl.

Far off in the distance he saw the glow of another car passing by. He momentarily had hope that they would see their car and pull over. But if they did see, they didn’t show it by slowing. At least the headlights indicated the distance to the road. He’d get there, he cajoled himself. Just keep the pace.

He was grateful the kids were still of the age where they believed he could do anything. His teenage children stopped joining the weekend adventures in favor of spending time with other teenagers. The four youngest still enjoyed spending time with him, and he could tell by the way they all watched the road in silence that they believed he could get them home. Without question.

He regripped his hands on the steering wheel and kept at it. He had to be about 20 yards away now.

BEEEEP. 

He pushed on the brakes and spun his body around.

BEEEEEEP.

His gas light had blinked on. His hands started shaking.

His daughter glanced at the light over her shoulder, then glanced at him. His eyes were wide and seemed almost hollow. Her grip on the headrest tightened and her eyes flicked back to the rear window as if urging him to continue.

So he did.

They collectively sat in silence as if holding their breath until the perpendicular gravel road appeared.

Darkness laid itself upon the sky like a heavy blanket, brightening the glow of the red taillights that pulled them further and further into the unknown.

He could hear himself breathing. His sighs, the tempo of a scared man.

“I can see it!” one of his younger children shouted. “I can see the road.”

The excitement in that small voice paved his confidence, and, without slowing, he careened them onto the frontage road. He let out a gasp of air, and the kids faced forward in their seats. They could see the black road ahead and waited as their father meticulously shifted the car into drive. No other cars could be seen. Only their lights beaming into the openness ahead. They were alone. He began to drive.

While he had returned to a more certain road, it was still the road he was originally lost on. Without much choice, he continued down it. Wondering how big the reserves in the gas tank were. How much time would they buy him.

He tried to imagine the shape of the gas tank, pictured a few inches of gasoline sloshing around in there. But this gave him little comfort as he propelled them forward into the darkness.