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THE SIXTH CHAPTER IN A SEVEN PART STORY

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We left Gallup before the sun had the decency to announce itself.

That kind of departure doesn’t feel like travel. It feels like retreat. Like you’ve overstayed somewhere you were never meant to understand in the first place, and you’re hoping the road forgets your name if you leave early enough.

The Chrysler didn’t complain. It never did. That big straight-eight hummed like it had somewhere to be, even if it didn’t know where that was yet.

Or maybe it did. Maybe it always did.

The sky was still carrying night in its back pocket when we rolled out. A faint blue trying to convince itself it belonged there. The kind of light that doesn’t illuminate so much as it suggests.

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Hairless sat quiet beside me, which was unusual in the same way a stopped clock is unusual. Not wrong, just… unsettling.

“You thinking about him?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away.

“Everybody’s always thinking about somebody,” he said finally. “Question is whether they’re still around to return the favor.”

That told me everything and nothing at the same time.

The road west out of Gallup wasn’t a road the way we’d come to understand roads. It wasn’t engineered. It wasn’t polite. It didn’t smooth over its intentions with paint and reflectors.

It was dirt and rock and memory.

More suggestion than infrastructure.

The Chrysler handled it like a man in a suit walking through a bar fight, out of place but too composed to admit it. The wood panels along the sides caught the early light and gave off a warmth that didn’t belong to anything mechanical.

We drove in silence for a while, the kind that builds instead of settles.

Then the first car came toward us.

Army green.

Canvas stretched tight over its back like it had secrets to keep.

Another followed. Then two more. For a stretch of maybe an hour, every vehicle heading east looked like it had just been dismissed from something official. Something heavy.

War doesn’t leave. It just changes clothes.

Hairless watched them pass, one after another.

“See that?” he said.

“I see it.”

“They’re heading home.”

“Or trying to.”

He nodded once.

“Same thing.”

And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

The trucks disappeared.

The next wave of cars came dressed differently. Streamlined. Confident. Lincoln Zephyrs that looked like they’d been shaped by wind and ambition. Fords that carried themselves like they had something to prove to the future.

The road didn’t change.

But time did.

By the time we were an hour out from Flagstaff, the world had peeled itself back even further.

The cars got older.

Rounder.

Simpler.

Less interested in impressing and more interested in surviving.

Hairless leaned back, looked at the Chrysler’s long hood, the polished wood, the quiet arrogance of it.

“The Chrysler Town & Country now sticks out like a turd in the punch bowl,” he said.

“That’s one way to put it.”

“We’re going to have to ditch it.”

I didn’t argue.

I eased the car over to the side of the road and popped the hood like I knew what I was doing. Which I didn’t. Not in any meaningful sense. But sometimes performance matters more than competence.

We waited.

Cars passed.

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They slowed, curious. The Chrysler drew eyes like a preacher in a poker room. But then they’d catch sight of Hairless, his bald head catching the morning light like a warning sign, and whatever curiosity they had turned into something closer to caution.

Children stared too long and then looked away.

Women clutched their pearls, then their purses.

Men pressed the accelerator.

“Friendly bunch,” I said.

Hairless didn’t smile.

“They know something’s off,” he said. “They just don’t know what.”

He crouched down, disappearing behind the open hood like a man waiting on a cue.

We waited longer.

Then we heard it.

Not a car.

A machine with intention.

The sound of a V-twin engine coming up the road like it had a personality problem.

It slowed.

Stopped.

And there he was.

Chad.

Not our Chad.

But Chad nonetheless.

You could tell by the way he took off his goggles like the world owed him an explanation.

He looked at the Chrysler.

Then at me.

Then back at the Chrysler again.

“What in the holy hell is this thing you’re drivin’?”

Before I could even begin to lie convincingly, Hairless rose up from nowhere like bad judgment in a good story.

The crowbar caught Chad square across the back of the head.

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Clean.

Efficient.

Personal.

Chad folded like a bad lawn chair and hit the dirt without so much as a protest.

Hairless stood there a second, breathing a little heavier than he should have.

“I’ve wanted to do that,” he said, “since the first time he ever said Impalas didn’t come out till 1965.”

I stared at him.

“That’s your reasoning?”

“It’s a start. Now help me get him in the car.”

We hauled Chad into the back seat of the Chrysler, his limbs doing that loose, uncooperative thing unconscious bodies tend to do.

Hairless slid behind the wheel and turned us off the road down a dirt path that looked like it had been abandoned on purpose.

We drove until the road forgot about us.

Then we found a tree.

A good one.

Old enough to keep secrets.

We parked the Chrysler beneath it, the wood panels blending into the surroundings like it had always belonged there.

Hairless killed the engine, sat for a moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys.

“Let’s see if it finds us again,” he said.

We stood there a moment longer than necessary.

Not because we were sentimental.

Because it didn’t feel finished.

The Chrysler sat under that tree like it had been parked there on purpose. Like we hadn’t abandoned it so much as delivered it to a place it had been trying to get back to all along.

The wood panels caught the light differently now. Less polished. More… honest. Like the years had finally caught up with it in the span of a few minutes.

“You ever notice,” I said, “how things start looking right the second you stop needing them?”

Hairless didn’t look back at the car.

“That thing ain’t done,” he said.

“With us?”

“With anything.”

We walked away anyway.

Didn’t lock it.

Didn’t say goodbye.

Because something about that felt like it would’ve been rude.

Chad didn’t move.

Didn’t stir.

Didn’t argue.

Hairless looked back at him once.

Then shut the door.

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I rolled up on the Excelsior Super X a few minutes later, the red paint catching what little morning had decided to show itself.

Hairless climbed on behind me, awkwardly.

“This is humiliating,” he muttered, settling onto the luggage rack like a man who’d made a series of poor life choices.

“You wanted to travel light.”

“I meant metaphorically.”

We took off toward Flagstaff, the motorcycle rattling and growling like it had opinions about the road.

The Excelsior didn’t glide.

It negotiated.

Every rut in the road came up through the frame, through the saddle, straight into whatever part of a man he valued most. Which, based on the sounds Hairless started making about ten minutes in, was under direct assault.

“This ain’t transportation,” he barked over the engine. “This is revenge.”

I leaned into the handlebars, feeling the timing advance twitch under my left hand like it had its own opinions.

“You wanted authentic.”

“I wanted a seat!”

The wind carried pine before we saw the trees. Sharp and clean, cutting through the dust like a reminder that not everything out here was trying to kill you.

We climbed.

Gradually at first.

Then with purpose.

The temperature dropped just enough to make you aware of it, like someone had opened a window on the world.

Hairless shifted behind me again.

“Next time,” he said, “I’m the one with the handlebars.”

“You had your chance.”

“I was preoccupied.”

“That’s on you.”

We passed Louie the Lumberjack just outside town.

He didn’t question anything.

Didn’t even slow down.

Just lifted a hand in acknowledgment like he’d seen stranger things that morning already.

Flagstaff rose up out of the pines like it had been waiting for us.

Higher.

Cooler.

Different.

The air had weight to it. Not heavy, just… present. Like it expected you to notice.

We pulled into town and found the Hotel Monte Vista without trying. Places like that don’t hide.

They announce themselves.

We checked in without much conversation. The clerk didn’t ask questions. Didn’t need to.

People in towns like that understood that answers were often optional.

As we climbed the stairs, Hairless slowed.

Adjusted.

Walked like a man negotiating with gravity.

“My balls haven’t taken a beating like that,” he said, “since the time the Magic Fingers in Room #7 at the Naughty Pine malfunctioned while Parker McHale had me tied to the headboard.”

I stopped.

Looked at him.

Considered asking.

Decided against it.

Some stories don’t need expanding.

Some men don’t need explaining.

And some truths are better left as rumors.

I suddenly realized just how little I knew about Hairless B29, and how grateful I should have been for that. I felt too much like Chad must have right as the crowbar struck his cranium.

We slept.

Hard.

The kind of sleep that doesn’t ask permission.

When we woke, the sun had already claimed the day.

Hairless grabbed two pillows and gave me a look that suggested he had learned something from yesterday’s experience.

We mounted the Excelsior again.

He settled in carefully this time.

Strategically.

“Fifty-fifty,” he said. “We should split the driving fifty-fifty.”

I shook my head.

“The pen’s mightier than the crowbar.”

“That don’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. I’m writing the story.”

He muttered something that sounded like regret.

We rode north.

Toward something bigger than the road.

The Grand Canyon doesn’t announce itself.

It reveals itself.

One minute you’re riding through trees, thinking you’ve got a handle on things, and the next….

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The world drops away.

And with it, any illusion that you ever understood time.

We stood there a long while.

Didn’t talk.

Didn’t need to.

You don’t measure a place like that in years. You measure it in silence.

In layers.

In the realization that everything you’ve ever worried about would fit neatly into one of its cracks and never be heard from again.

A man can stand there and try to make sense of it.

Count the layers.

Name the colors.

Pretend that if he stares long enough, the thing will introduce itself properly.

But the canyon doesn’t do introductions.

It doesn’t care what year you’re from, what you rode in on, or what kind of questions you brought with you.

It just sits there and lets you feel small in a way that doesn’t insult you.

Just… corrects you.

I thought about Fort Stockton.

About the square.

About the regulars.

About how big everything felt sitting at that table.

Then I looked back out at that cut in the earth that had been taking its time long before we ever started measuring anything at all.

“We don’t measure time,” I said. “We just argue about it.”

Hairless nodded.

“And we’re usually wrong.”

“Millions of years,” I said.

Hairless nodded again.

“And we argue over lunch.”

We stayed until the sun started leaning west.

Then we rode back.

Back through town.

Back to the idea of something smaller.

Something manageable.

Hairless dismounted in front of the train depot like a man stepping off a horse after a long ride through something he didn’t fully trust.

The station stood there with purpose.

Brick and stone and history stacked neatly into something that understood movement.

Trains came through in a steady rhythm.

Freight.

Passengers.

Possibility.

Every one of them headed somewhere.

Every one of them leaving something behind.

“Eighty to a hundred a day,” I said.

Hairless watched one pass.

Long.

Loud.

Unapologetic.

“That’s a lot of decisions,” he said.

We stood there, watching, thinking about destinations we didn’t understand and timelines we couldn’t quite hold onto.

Route 66 cut through it all like a thread trying to keep things together.

New technology would come.

It always did.

And when it did, it would make this look like something quaint.

Something temporary.

We made our way back to the Monte Vista as the evening settled in.

The bar was alive in that quiet way that only small-town bars know how to be.

We took our seats.

Ordered drinks.

Let the day catch up with us.

The bar had that low hum to it.

Not loud.

Not quiet.

Just enough conversation to make you feel like you were part of something without having to contribute.

A piano sat in the corner, not being played, but not ignored either. Like it was waiting on the right person or the wrong decision.

The bartender didn’t ask where we were from.

Didn’t ask where we were headed.

Just poured the drinks like he’d done it a thousand times for men who didn’t belong to the room they were sitting in.

A couple at the far end laughed too loud.

A man near the window stared into his glass like it had just told him something disappointing.

The whole place felt like a pause.

Not the end of something.

Not the beginning.

Just… the space in between where a man decides what kind of story he’s in.

Hairless took a sip, winced slightly.

“You ever get the feeling,” he said, “that we’re not the only ones out of place?”

I didn’t answer.

Because right about then—

Through the wavy glass of the window, Aspen and San Francisco streets blurred just enough to make everything feel like it was already a memory.

It came around the corner.

Slow.

Intentional.

Unmistakable.

A 1931 Cadillac V-16 Madame X Five-Passenger Imperial Cabriolet-Landaulet.

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It didn’t just arrive.

It announced itself.

Long hood stretching out like it had something to say.

Chrome catching the light like it had something to prove.

It moved through the street like time had stepped aside to let it pass.

It didn’t stop right away.

Just rolled slowly enough to let the street notice.

Heads turned.

Conversations paused.

Even the neon seemed to hesitate, like it wasn’t sure whether to reflect off something that polished.

The driver didn’t look at anyone.

Didn’t need to.

That kind of car does the talking for you.

Hairless leaned forward.

“That,” he said quietly, “is trouble.”

“Good trouble?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t have to.

Some men travel through time.

Others?

Time travels around them.

And that Cadillac?

It wasn’t just passing through.

It was looking.

For something.

Or someone.

And for the first time since we’d left Fort Stockton—

I got the feeling the road might not be done with us just yet.

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