I wake to the shaking claustrophobia of the trunk of a car. Not my first time. Hector is in his kennel at my feet. He sniffs casually at my toes and settles back into a snooze. Not his first time either. Come to think of it, he spends much of his time in a shaking cage at the back of the motorcycle where the air is fresh, at least.
I probably should have re-homed him before something like this happened.
A low, sustainable worry persists in the back of my mind as I check the usual means of escape and find them unlikely to work. The trunk is secured closed. My hands are tied behind my back. My pockets have been emptied of everything that might prove useful. Nothing to do but wait and worry just enough.
The worry spikes a bit when the car stops. Spikes a little harder when I hear the sound of a woman crying near the car. Someone, the Stranger, exchanges words with another man. They come to some agreement, change their tones to gratitude, and the car begins to move again. The voices, the man and the crying woman, fade.
Over the next fifteen minutes there are more. Two men scream at each other. Something shatters against the side of the car and someone shouts an apology. There is a lot more crying before we seem to pull away from people altogether. I think about how thirsty I am- quite. I gauge my hunger- peckish. Without being able to see my watch I’d say I’ve been in the car a few hours at most and I put together where the Stranger has taken me. It was where I’d been heading anyway.
‘Going by many names as a necessity, ‘The Break-Up Arches’ describes a recurring series of sandstone formations, large enough to permit two or three people but small enough that, when a given arch invariably collapses, unlucky visitors are more likely to receive serious injuries rather than, say, die.
Why stand there at all? For the pictures, obviously, or for the promise of pictures that do not come since few will stoop to bringing a photographer to document one of the most raw, if common, romantic experiences.
‘The Break-Up Arches’ is a place for ending relationships, made famous by a very early attempt at a wedding, this one forever preserved in black and white film. The picture captures the chaotic moment when the bride-to-be experiences her the last straw as it pertains to the slovenly-looking man beside her. He reels from something she has spit in his face. She turns, preparing to walk off. The arch above them is cracked through, is coming down on top of them both.
Circulation of the picture, newly digitized, in the early 2000s sparked a tradition for taking a ‘loved one’ to ‘The Break-Up Arches’ to call it quits, the reasoning being that the blow will be softened by the amount of thought and care it takes to orchestrate such an end or that the sandstone holds calming properties or that it just makes it easier to start the conversation, given that there will be a half dozen other howling couples around to get the point across.
Nobody said the reasoning was good, but the state of Utah seems to support it. They change the name of ‘The Break-up Arches’ on all roadside signage at the start of each season, giving it the name of a forlorn poet so as not to raise suspicion about whatever spontaneous road trip one unhappy lover has arranged for the other.’
It’s not a bad place to kill a person, really. People will be seeking privacy. People will be screaming and crying. Arches will fall and, despite what the guide says, it’s only a matter of time before they bury a person alive. The Stranger can torture me, kill me, and bring an arch down over my body. He’ll be across the country before they even consider it might be foul play.
The car rolls to a stop and I prepare myself for whatever’s about to happen. I hear footsteps outside and then a knock on the trunk. The Stranger speaks:
“I know you’re waiting to hit me in there,” he says. “You’ve probably wormed your way out of the ropes and are ready to jump me with a knife you had up your ass.” A flicker of embarrassment. This guy thinks I’m way more capable than I am. “I just want to talk, so I’m going to let you out with this fancy key-fob and you’re going to come slow.”
The trunk pops and I strain quietly against the ropes that bind my wrists and ankles.
The Stranger interrupts after a few moments: “If you’re going to play hard to get I’m going to play hard too. Come on out, now, before I have to do something drastic.”
My mouth isn’t gagged but I can’t quite bring myself to explain the situation to the Stranger. Hector hisses loudly somewhere in the darkness of the trunk.
“All right,” he sighs, voice weary all of the sudden. “I guess that’s the way it is.”
There are two loud blasts- a shotgun, I think- and then absolute silence as I try not to feel where I’ve been shot. After a moment, I decide I must be dead or entirely unharmed.
Then, the first rock hits the car.
I renew my struggle against the rope as the arch comes down over the vehicle, dust trickling in through cracks in the car, old and new. When I conclude that frantic strength under immediate threat of death is no better than the frantic strength I had used on the drive over (and under a more long-term threat of death), I notice that the arch has stopped falling and I’ve survived that as well.
It takes a few hours, but eventually I pry my shoe off and unlock Hector’s cage with my toes and slowly undo weeks of don’t-chew-rope training by convincing Hector that the rope around by wrists is actually fair game. Another hour of scrabbling in dust and stone and we surface under a starry sky and to the sound of some broken-hearted man whimpering nearby. He helps us the rest of the way out and we pay back the favor by listening to the sad story of how he emotionally neglected some poor woman for a year before she drove him to the arches to break it off.
Once I convince him there will be other woman to neglect in the future, I go about digging Hector’s kennel out of the trunk and my bag from the passenger seat of the crushed rental. My bike is, unsurprisingly, nowhere in sight. I pull up an app on my phone and see it, or at least the small knock-off GPS locator I stuck under the seat, is heading west.
It’s midnight by the time I slump back in the rubble and scratch Hector’s head. Then, it hits me.
Maybe he did just want to talk.
-traveler
