Rest Stop

By Christopher Tarbi

Christopher Tarbi is this month’s winner of $590.00 for a story on patience and learning.

Bio: Christopher Tarbi is 39 and lives outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had a short story published in his college literary journal in 2008. This is his first published work since. He has others, if anyone, anywhere is interested.

Without further ado, “Rest Stop” by Christopher Tarbi.

Mom’s eyes weren’t good for driving, especially at night. And she didn’t want Dad driving the whole way up to Erie on his own. He might get upset and make his blood pressure spike. I didn’t have anything else going on, so I volunteered. About a mile outside of Allegheny County, I was really starting to regret my decision.

“Have you heard from Kate, lately?” Mom asked from the back seat.

Even though she had positioned herself in the rearview mirror, I kept my eyes on the road.

“No,” I said. Left it at that. But Mom wasn’t finished.

“I don’t know why you two broke up…Did you want kids, and she didn’t?”

“Nope.”

“Was it the other way around?”

It was inconceivable to my mother that two childless people in their mid-thirties wouldn’t have kids on their minds. I wanted to tell her that Kate and I were teachers. That we had kids on our minds every day. But the drive would go smoother if I just let her talk herself onto some other topic.

“Your father and I had you and your sister before we were thirty.”

I was aware of this fact, having been there. But she’d said what she wanted to say. Let it pass, I thought. Meanwhile, Dad, not having to get upset about how other people drove, dozed off.

Because I wasn’t using my mirrors like I should’ve been, I didn’t see the two vans appear out of my blind spot, racing ahead of us in the left lane. I swerved out of instinct, thinking the lead van was going to sideswipe us. That jolted Dad awake.

“The hell?” he said. Dad had been mid-snore. He followed the vehicles, white anonymous worker vans, until they disappeared around a bend in the highway. “State troopers are gonna pounce all over those jackasses, going that fast. Probably a speed trap right up ahead. There’s always cops around here.”

“People don’t know how to drive, anymore,” Mom said. She shook her head, then looked at something on her phone, the glow reflected in the thick glasses she was still getting used to.

It was an overcast day in October, a chill just coming into the air. No rain in the forecast, just bright blue skies, which made the forests along the highway vibrate with color. I wasn’t sure if the leaves had changed overnight or if I just hadn’t noticed. Still, I mused that it would’ve been a fine day for a drive in the country, under different circumstances. That made me think of Kate.

When we rounded the bend, blue lights were flashing about a mile ahead.

“I could’ve told you that was gonna happen,” Dad said. “Dumbass people.”

Cars in front of us were slowing down.

“I hope it’s not an accident,” Mom said.

“Naw,” Dad said. “Just the cops nailing those idiots. People like rubbernecking.”

Two more state police cars passed us on the beam of the highway with their lights on.

Dad nodded, approving of the swift justice.

We crawled along with the traffic and the situation fleshed itself out for us the closer we got to the lights. One of the white vans seemed to have skidded off the highway. Its front wheels were caught in a ditch, at least one headlight out, from what I could see. The other van was stopped ten feet behind with a cop car keeping it from backing up. The other two cruisers had reached the scene and were moving in front to block the right-hand lane, as if to cut off any escape.

“I should call Clare and tell her we’ll be late,” Mom said.

Really, I didn’t see how this would delay us more than ten minutes, but figured I’d let Mom occupy herself with something that didn’t involve interrogating me.

We rolled closer as all the cars began merging into one lane. In a minute or so, we were level with the first van. Two troopers had the cab covered, one on each side. Their hands rested on their guns, which made me more than a little nervous. I was glad when we passed them. What I didn’t see was the driver’s side door of the other van open. A heavyset man with a beard stepped onto the road. He was yelling something I couldn’t hear with my windows up. His eyes were brilliantly blue. I remember because they scared the hell out of me. I noticed the blood running down his face last.

“No way,” I said.

The troopers facing him drew their guns, started shouting. The car in front of us stopped. I had just enough composure not to slam into its rear-end. Now parked, we had a front-row seat for what came next. The man was waving his hands at something that might have been floating above him, like he was pleading for some divine intervention, a good old-fashioned smiting. Really working himself into a frenzy.

Then the guy collapsed and landed on his back. As he rolled around on the asphalt, the troopers swarmed him. They dragged another man from the van’s passenger side. He gave up without a struggle. Both of the men sported calico shirts straight out of Little House on the Prairie, beards, the only difference between them being the one with the bloody nose was heavier. The troopers had them cuffed in less than a minute. Then the rear door of the van opened. I saw a woman in a teal ankle-length dress, her hair in a bun. Behind her, two more women, and several children. They were all similarly dressed. The women and girls wore long brightly colored yet simple dresses with their hair in buns. The boys had on pants with suspenders and calico shirts, same as the men, their hair cut in ways I didn’t think possible, a kind of bowl cut done with dull scissors and a shaking hand.

“Are they Amish or something?” Dad said.

The children immediately began crowding around the women, like sheep to a shepherd. Except for a boy, sandy-haired, bucktoothed, who seemed to be confused, standing next to the woman in the teal dress. Confused by the flickering blue lights on the cars all around, the men in grey uniforms with guns. The kid was confused but not scared. He had a tote bag hanging from his shoulder. I pictured some of my own students waiting for the bus outside the school, minus clothing from an old General Store.

Mom looked through our rear window. “There’s more of them in that other van.”

Sure enough, the police had two more men cuffed next to their vehicle, women and children gathered nearby.

“No shit,” Dad said. “Where’d these freaks come from?”

More cops appeared, more state, plus a few local. A state police sergeant walked up to our car, motioned for me to roll down my window.
“Sorry, sir,” he said. “We’re gonna have to get statements from you and your party.”

“What’s all this about, officer?” Dad said.

“I can’t really talk about that right now. But we’re setting up a secure place for you all at the shopping center ahead. If you’ll follow that car, please?”

After he’d walked on to the next car, I closed my window.

Dad grumbled, “They’re just covering their asses. That guy probably wasn’t wearing his seatbelt or something. Making sure they didn’t violate his civil rights or whatever when they ran them him off the road.”

Mom began scrolling through her phone again, adjusting her glasses. “I knew this was going to happen.”

#

We were part of a small caravan of cars escorted by the police. The shopping center was half a mile ahead, just off the next exit. There was a grocery store and a gas station, along with a couple fast-food places. More cops were waiting there, directing us to the Starbucks tucked into a corner at the front of the grocery store. We sat talking with people from the other cars. The two teenage girls behind the counter stared at us with a mixture of confusion and annoyance, their arms crossed.

Then they brought in the women and children from the vans. Parked them around a couple tables away from the rest of us. Some of the women were crying, one or two mumbling to themselves.

Mom looked at her phone. “I think I saw an article about these people,” she said. “From down in West Virginia.”

A woman at the next table leaned over. “I heard the FBI had a man on the inside of this cult, but he got found out. They beat it out of him that the Feds were raiding their compound.”

“My cousin lives near there,” said a man. “Religious nuts. Said they’re well-known wackos, even for down there.”

“Isn’t that a shame,” Mom said. “Those poor children.” She continued poking at her phone, searching for that article.

I had lately been trying to ignore most of what was going on in the news, so this story was new to me. Not that I cared. Instead of adding to the conversation, I looked out the window. The cops were guarding the entrance to the store, armed to the teeth, bulky black vests, sunglasses shading their eyes. People were pushing past with their shopping carts full of groceries, guardedly eyeing the whole scene. There were only two officers standing guard in the café. Municipal cops – both rather young, seemingly just as unsure of their mission as the rest of us.

The women in the ankle-length dresses huddled together, forming some kind of prayer circle. Their rumbling and mumbling words wafted across the café, loud enough for everyone to get the gist of, if not hear – deliver us, oh Lord, from this evil...so forth and so on.

The children were gathered around a table, playing with the sugar packets or whatever else they could find. A couple of them were scratching at coloring books with crayons.

The bucktoothed boy I’d seen back on the side of the road stood out. He sat next to a window by himself, at a table along the imaginary border between our two factions, observing the parking lot. He had a small book open on the table that he looked at from time to time. He reminded me of a painting I’d seen of a boy from Holland in the 1600’s, a Rembrandt or one of his contemporaries. The same kind of serene dignity. Then he noticed me. We were within speaking distance. The two cops didn’t seem to notice, too engrossed in the women’s prayer circle.

“Hello,” he said. He smiled at me as if we were two people enjoying the weather along with our coffee and pastries.

“What are you reading?” I said, not realizing I’d said it, at first.

He looked down at the pocket-sized book, then back up at me. “It’s a guide to the lives of the saints,” he said. His voice didn’t have the tinge of West Virginia. Somehow, it made me think of Harvard. Not a Boston accent, but the type of person who you knew would someday end up there.

“You’re into that,” I said. “Saints…”

“I have to read it. Part of my training.”

I looked around. Everyone else seemed preoccupied. Mom was telling the woman at the next table about Aunt Clare’s hip surgery, the reason we were going up to Erie. The cops had turned to the counter to order coffee, thoroughly annoying the baristas.

“Training for what?” I said.

“I’m taking over my father’s ministry when he retires.”

The kid pointed at the book. He appeared to have found a valuable object on the ground and wanted to show it off. “It’s really interesting. Did you know Saint Patrick wasn’t even Irish?”

“I heard about that, yeah,” I said.

“I’ve read this book about ten times already, though. Wish I had more to read. Father was supposed to order us some new ones, but he never got around to it.”

“Was your father one of those men they arrested?”

“No. He’s on his way to Canada. We’re going to meet him there. We’re founding a new settlement. He says we’ll be freer up there.”

Some kind of silent alarm went off in my brain. “I, uh…is that so?” I asked.

“It’s the government,” the boy said. “They’re out to suppress all freedom of religion.”

So I’d heard from certain of my students’ parents. Freedom of all kinds under attack nowadays, dangerous ideas and people all over the place. I would tell myself, when I felt like being optimistic, that this was nothing new. My parents had freaked out about me going to a Metallica concert when I was fifteen. Same shit, different packaging. Yet lately I’d had a few conferences with parents who eyed me suspiciously, like I was trying to brainwash their children and take them to Mars. They were just waiting for me to tip my hand, slip up, then they’d have me.

I said, “What’s your name?” Hoping to change the subject.

“David,” he said, holding out his hand. He had a surprisingly firm handshake, this kid out of the past.

“Nice to meet you, David. I’m Alex.” I joined the boy at his table.

“Are those your parents over there?” David said.

“How did you know?”

“That man looks like you,” he said. “You move like him, too.”

As frustrating as that could be for me sometimes, I knew he was right. Still, his perceptiveness caught me.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m a…” I hesitated before telling him, something that had happened more than once lately. “I teach Eighth Grade Science.”

David’s eyes narrowed. “What topics?”

“Oh…a bit of everything. Environmental science…fossils…”

“Evolution?”

“Yes. Yes, I cover that.”

David smiled, as if I’d made a joke. I could feel beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead.

“That is a fascinating topic,” he said. “My father showed me this video lecture about the flaws in Darwin’s theory. It didn’t…well, I guess his work never did sit right with me.”

This was familiar territory for me. At my latest parent-teacher night, I’d had a dad recommend some online courses he’d come across about the same topic, wanting to know if I could include them in my syllabus. “Another point of view,” he said. He was a big, burly guy in a camo baseball hat. I told him, civilly as I could, that the district set the curriculum, gave him a shrug. Even though he could’ve snapped me in half, I wanted to spit in his face.

“I’ve never…thought of it that way.” Keep it polite, I thought.

David nodded. “My father has me learning Latin, history, and he showed me how to kill a deer and clean it.”

I blinked at him. What could I add to that?

“My dad showed me how to do that, too,” I said. It had thoroughly disgusted me, even though I still ate a good bit of the meat that winter. I said, “Your parents must really be proud of you.” Even if they’re teaching you garbage science, I thought.

“Well…” David looked back at the prayer circle. “One time, I found a few copies of a magazine. They were in a box in the basement of the house where we lived. The former owners must’ve left them. One had an article about evolution. My father burned them in the back yard when he caught me reading them, then made me watch me the lecture.”

I pictured Inherit the Wind for the Internet Age. David’s eyes clouded over. Only for a moment, but I saw it.

“If you have any scientific questions, I’d be glad to answer them,” I said.

David smiled, back again from wherever he’d been. “I can’t think of anything right now. But thank you, Alex.”

Despite what he was saying, I couldn’t help but smile back. There was something in this kid. Maybe he suspected he was being fed a line of bullshit by his exalted father but didn’t have the wherewithal to counter it. And he was curious. Christ, I wished I had ten kids like David in my class. I wouldn’t have been thinking of quitting teaching. I’d been feeling out private sector jobs with some of my college friends. Also, there had been a science fiction novel living in my head for years now. Tackling either of those challenges seemed more rewarding.

Kate acted like I was thinking of joining the French Foreign Legion. She taught music at our district’s elementary schools and loved it. I told her she should try dealing with Eighth Graders and all their garbage – the phones, the hormones, the seeming unwillingness to even look interested in what I had to teach them. I was finding that it bugged me more than it had when I started teaching. Every day was like having a gift thrown back in your face. Their grades were nothing to write home about, either, for the most part. Sure, there were always a few try-hards, anxious about their performance, looking for extra credit that they didn’t really need. But they were just out to keep their report cards spotless. None of them really seemed to care about the things that had made me want to teach science when I was their age. My class was only a waystation, a rest stop on their journey to bigger and better things.

“Your quitting won’t be helping those kids,” Kate had said. “Or…if I’m being honest…maybe you would be doing them a favor.”

Kate was a fundamentalist about the job. Preaching to me that students were secretly craving all I had to offer, and I just had to cause a spark inside of them. But the part about me doing them a favor by quitting. I was surprised how much that had stung. Yet, I still imagined the day I would hand in my resignation, the district replacing me with a twenty-something fresh out of college. Hopefully, they were still hearing the call. Whoever they were, maybe they’d have a better idea of how to connect with those kids. Me happy, the kids happy. It seemed so logical. Kate and I had broken up shortly after that fight.

Suddenly, I felt my stomach rumble. Remembered missing lunch while rushing to pick up my parents. I looked around and saw a refrigerated case near the front of the store with sandwiches, salads, drinks – “To-Go” food.

“I’m hungry,” I said. “Can I get you anything?”

David looked around and my eyes followed his. The women remained in their prayer circle. Still trying to will some sort of deliverance into the Starbucks. The one in the teal dress appeared to be leading the prayers. All of their faces had the look of distrust, of pious travelers in a fallen world. They were willing into existence, with the help of the Lord, some kind of holy forcefield around themselves. I kept expecting one of them to leave the circle and yank David away, but no one did. Didn’t even look in our direction. The kids were happily playing among themselves.

“You know,” David said. “I just realized I haven’t eaten since early this morning. I would love a sandwich.”

I nodded and got up and walked towards the “To-Go” section. One of the cops turned and stopped me as I walked past them.

“Sir,” he said. “I’m going to need you to stay here.”

I pointed over at the food. “I’m just grabbing a sandwich, if that’s alright. I won’t leave. I promise.”

He looked at me, then at his partner. The partner shrugged.

“Just be quick,” he said.

He watched me the whole time as I selected two turkey sandwiches on whole wheat, stored in plastic triangular containers purporting to be freshly-made, an iced tea, and a bottled water. There were small bags of chips on a stand at the nearest checkout aisle. I got one plain, one barbecue. Then, purely on impulse, I bought several candy bars – Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey Bars, an assortment.

Back at the table by the window, I unloaded the food and let David pick what he wanted.

“Thank you,” he said after biting off a corner of his sandwich. “You’re being very kind.”

“No problem. Maybe share some of that chocolate with your friends.”

David smiled and regarded the peanut butter cup next to his bottle of water. “Maybe.” He smiled.

As we ate, he asked me about my favorite scientist and I told him, Galileo. Didn’t even have to think. It tied into my favorite hobby, astronomy.

“You have a telescope?” he said.

“I sure do.”

I hadn’t taken it out in a while. Kate and I would go on weekend trips during the summer, when the Perseid meteor shower would hit. Just the two of us pitching a tent in the Allegheny National Forest, under a clear sky, as we waited for the streaking pen strokes of light to rip across the sky.

“I wish I knew more about that,” David said. He wiped his crumbs up from the table with a paper napkin. “I saw some photos of Mars in one of those magazines. It looked so…deserted. And we’re trying to send people up there? What an adventure. I dreamed about getting in a rocket and flying there.”

“In high school I was president of the Astronomy Club,” I said. “And a paper I wrote on the Asteroid Belt won an award from the state.”

David seemed suitably impressed, a rare occurrence for my mentioning the Astronomy Club – there had only been four of us, no girls, as nerdy as it gets.

An idea roared into my head.

I’d seen a fair-sized book section near the checkout lane, next to the greeting cards – mostly paperback mysteries and romance novels, but a few children’s books as well. A sign advertised educational books for kids of all ages.

I went up to the police officers. They were sipping coffee, in casual conversation with each other while the two baristas looked at their phones.

“I’d like to go get something else from the store,” I said. “If you want, one of you can come and supervise me. It’s just over there.” I pointed at the bookshelves. “I swear I won’t run away.”

They looked as if I’d asked them to take me to the men’s room.

“Listen, sir,” one said.

“I know. It’s a weird request…just…I have to get something. It’s for that kid over there. I’m a teacher, you see. I think he’d really benefit from it.” I pointed at David. “It’ll keep him quiet,” I added.

I had a vision of them cuffing me, shoving me into the back of their cruiser. A grown man showing so much interest in a young boy. This had to be sending up some red flags.

“Fine,” one of them said. “But no more than five minutes. Let’s go.”

As we walked out of the café together, my mother finally noticed what I was doing. She looked perplexed, seeing me being escorted by a cop.

In the book section on the lower shelf, I found something called A Child’s Guide to the Solar System. It seemed informative, good pictures, illustrations. It passed my muster in the limited time I had.

“You hear about those weirdos?” the cop said, idly looking up and down the aisle for some unseen threat.

“Here and there,” I said, thumbing through the book.

“Religious nuts, a cult, I guess. The Feds raided their compound down in West Virginia yesterday. Found a whole stash of guns, ammo, explosives. Their leader’s still on the run. Some FBI guys are on their way up here to take the women and children into custody.”

“Are you allowed to tell me this?” I said.

He stared at me. If I wasn’t going to be impressed, then, whatever, get on with your shopping trip, guy.

I bought the book, and we went back to the café. In the five minutes we had been gone, two people in suits – a man and a woman – had arrived. The woman seemed to be in charge.

“Are you one of the witnesses, sir?” she said to me.

I shook my head yes.

“Please have a seat. We’ll be around to get statements from you all in a few minutes, here. Then you can be on your way.” She turned to her partner and pointed to two black vans that had just parked outside. “Let’s get them moving.”

“Where are you taking them?” I said.

“A secure location,” she said. “Other than that, I can’t say anything else, sir. Please have a seat.”

David was still at his table, eating a peanut butter cup. The male agent had his phone to his ear, talking to someone and then asking his partner a question. I walked past the FBI agents while they conversed with each other. After I’d put the book on the table in front of David, the woman FBI agent finally noticed where I was.

“Sir, rejoin your group or I’ll have to put you under restraint.”

I held up my hand. “Please. Just a moment.”

David was smiling, cheerful as ever.

“This chocolate is amazing,” he said.

I pointed at the book. “I hope this answers all your questions. But, if you ever get a chance, look up these other books.”

I took a pen out of my jacket and wrote down several titles on the inside flap of the book as fast as I could think of them.

David took the book and leafed through the pages.

“Bless you,” he said. “I’ll say a prayer for you tonight.”

Then the two local cops started breaking up the prayer circle. Herding the wackos out the door to the waiting vans. David joined one of the women, the tall one in the teal – his mother, I realized. He quickly shoved the book into his tote bag, along with a Hershey bar and some more peanut butter cups. The mother looked at me, and I immediately registered the suspicion in her eyes. Before getting into one of the vans, David stopped and waved at me through the window. I saw his front teeth protruding through his smile. I waved back, trying to look casual about it, knowing the FBI agents, along with other witnesses, were watching. Less than a minute later, the black vans had left the parking lot.

“What in the world were you and that boy talking about?” Mom asked when I sat down next to her.

“Those cops probably thought you were a pedophile,” Dad said.

The people at the other table looked at us and then began talking among themselves. I’d be hearing from Mom about this when we were on the road again.

Nevertheless, I pictured Kate sitting across from me at that table and smiling, beaming with pride. I wanted to call her and tell her. But she’d say something to make my eyes roll – “There goes a future astronomer. You did that.” And although I’d never agree with her, brush it off, remind her that a lot of other things would have to happen to David to make that so, starting with him getting the hell away from his parents. Still, while the world kept spinning and people kept lurching around on it, with all the forces ranging against me, I could sense that spark Kate talked about flickering to life. Again, I’d probably never agree with her, even though I would want to, which told me a lot.