52stories

(8 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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The day is getting on and we are lost. I am driving. My wife, Jane, is navigator. She has been mugging at the mirror on the back of the sun visor, applying lipstick. “Are we on the right road,” I ask. “I think so.” “Don’t you know?” Maps are a mystery to Jane. “All those squiggly little blue and red lines. They don’t make sense.” We are in Hammond, Indiana, that much I know. It’s a grimy industrial town across the state line from Chicago. We are on our way home to Michigan after a weekend of fun in the Big Town.

“Well it’s not an interstate. It’s not U.S. 12 or the Indiana Toll Road. Maybe we had better stop and ask somebody,” I say. Jane gives me that are-you-out-of-your-mind look; “Didn’t you notice the neighborhood?” She’s right. It’s one small step from skid row. We haven’t seen a car or even a person along the road for miles now, just a vacant rundown house here and there. I pull onto a patch of gravel and check the map. No help. We have to find a main road, either one, right away. Michigan is still a long way off and nightfall is near.

“See that place up ahead on the left. We can stop and inquire. It looks like a kinda roadhouse.” A bulky 1950s style sign says The MexiCasa Restaurant and under that, Cocktails. OK, so it is a roadhouse, so what? There is a big, boxy building abutting, maybe an apartment building, though an ugly one. “Mexicasa Restaurant? What’s a Mexican style business doing in Northern Indiana,” I wonder. “Oh, Latinos are everywhere now, they’re taking over the country. Wake up,” Jane says.

We pull up in front. There is this broad, sloping roof with a wide eave across the front, giving the place a dark, sinister air. “You go in, I’m locking the car,” Jane says. Couple cars parked in front. Look like they have been there a while. Inside there is a long bar running the width of the room with a barkeep at each end. A mirror stretches clear across the backbar with lighted shelves of booze underneath. A pretty-much typical working man’s bar. A big Wurlitzer with multi-colored lights and bubbly tubes stands with its back to the wall behind me. There are a dozen or so guys talking and watching a baseball game in black and white on the box. I order a Miller draft. The bartender is sixtyish, with gray hair cut close. He’s got a belly pushing out his apron and a nose that looks like a huge strawberry. “I guess we got off our route, I say, we’re headed to South Bend and on to Michigan. What’s the best way to catch the toll road?” “Can’t catch a toll road from here,” the guy on the next stool says. “Toll road?” another guy says quizzically. “Northern Indiana Toll Road,” I say. “I heard some talk about a toll road being planned, but that’s all,” the bartender adds. I’m confused. What are they saying? I know the toll road was built in the 1950s.

A buzz rises from the men watching the game. “Mantle did it again,” one of them calls down the bar and I see a runner rounding third and jogging toward home. “What’s he mean Mantle,” I say. :”You never heard of Mickey Mantle?” my neighbor says. I’m getting a creepy feeling. Mantle has been dead for years. What’s going on? I’ve gotta get out of here. One more try. “How about U.S. 12, where’s that from here?” Two guys on my right look at each other and one turns to me. Well you must have been on Indiana 60 coming out of Chicago and that runs into the five-way intersection back in town.” I remembered the confusing intersection. I had stayed on 60. It was heading north, the right direction, I thought.

“Here’s what you didn’t know,” he said. Route 60 ends at that intersection but the sign don’t tell ya. You been on Erehwon Road. Now here’s the thing: It’s 6:15 right now. The Michigan Central’s Twilight Limited crossed Erehwon just ten minutes ago. It’s always on the minute.” I know about The Twilight Limited. It’s a flyer on the Michigan Central Railroad and runs between Detroit and Chicago. A super fast train with only a couple of stops on the 300-mile run.

I vaguely recall a rail crossing back a way, but no train. “There wasn’t any train, come on,” I said. “I would have seen it. You can’t miss seeing a train coming.” The guys looked at each other again in a knowing way. “That’s what we thought. That’s what everybody here thought.”

(8 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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