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By the time Rusty Hammer found himself rolling into Hayward, Wisconsin, he had stopped pretending he knew exactly where he was going.

That wasn’t to say he’d become irresponsible. Rusty had never been irresponsible a day in his life. Men who spent forty years running hardware stores, paying mortgages, raising children, and attending church committee meetings generally didn’t wake up one morning and decide to become irresponsible. What happened instead was subtler. Somewhere north of Wyoming and west of Minnesota, he had discovered that a person could be moving without necessarily having a destination. The Ford pointed north because north happened to be in front of it. The Airstream followed because that was its job. Rusty followed because he hadn’t yet figured out what came next.

The strange part was that he wasn’t particularly unhappy.

Confused, certainly.

A little lonely, occasionally.

Sore almost continuously.

But not unhappy.

The trouble was that solitude, like fishing, was most enjoyable in carefully measured amounts. After several weeks on the road, Rusty’s lower back had begun issuing formal complaints. His knees crackled every time he climbed out of the truck. His hemorrhoids had become active participants in family decision-making. The romance of wandering America in a vintage pickup towing a polished aluminum travel trailer had proven remarkably authentic in photographs and considerably less authentic around two o’clock every morning when nature called.

So when the giant muskie appeared above the trees outside Hayward, Rusty took it as permission to stop.

The fish looked ridiculous.

It rose above the landscape like something that had escaped from a B-movie and achieved municipal funding. Rusty slowed the Ford and stared at it through the windshield.

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“Well,” he said aloud, “I reckon every town needs a Pisano Pete.”

The giant fish didn’t respond.

Neither did the truck.

Both appeared content with the comparison.

An hour later Rusty was checked into the Riverside Motel, a tidy little establishment that advertised hot showers, clean sheets, and free ice. At that moment in his journey, those three amenities placed it firmly in the luxury category.

The shower lasted nearly forty minutes.

The bed nearly ended the trip.

He stretched out across the mattress and seriously considered spending the remainder of his Wisconsin adventure unconscious. Eventually hunger won the argument. It usually did.

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That was how he found himself seated at the Husky Muskie Bar & Grill shortly after sunset.

The place reminded him of hundreds of establishments scattered across small towns throughout America. Different accents. Different weather. Different sports loyalties. Otherwise identical.

The bar was constructed of heavy wood that had absorbed fifty years of spilled beer and exaggerated fishing stories. The walls were crowded with mounted muskies, northern pike, deer antlers, photographs of smiling men holding increasingly improbable fish, and enough Green Bay Packers memorabilia to suggest religious significance.

Three televisions hung from opposite corners.

Nobody appeared to be watching any of them.

The bartender placed a basket of fried cheese curds in front of Rusty.

He looked down suspiciously.

The bartender waited.

Rusty picked one up.

Examined it.

Took a bite.

Then another.

Five minutes later he ordered a second basket.

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The menu described them as the finest cheese curds in the tri-state area.

Rusty wasn’t entirely sure what the other two states were. He suspected Minnesota was one of them. Beyond that he was operating on limited information.

He didn’t ask.

A man approaching retirement should not have to reveal every gap in his education.

The fellow sitting beside him had the appearance of a man who had spent most of his life outdoors and all of it doing exactly as he pleased. His beard looked as though it had been trimmed with lawn equipment. His camouflage bib overalls appeared older than several nations. Underneath them he wore a bright Hawaiian shirt featuring flamingos engaged in activities flamingos probably shouldn’t have been engaged in.

The combination was impressive.

The man glanced over.

“Texas.”

Rusty smiled.

“That obvious?”

The man pointed toward Rusty’s cap.

The boots.

The belt buckle.

The accent.

The fact that he was drinking beer while sitting upright.

“Name’s Dell.”

“Rusty.”

“Dell Larson.”

They shook hands.

The handshake felt authentic.

Some men shook hands as a formality.

Others used it as a declaration.

Dell belonged firmly in the second category.

The conversation started with weather and immediately wandered away from it.

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Rusty learned that Dell had spent thirty years repairing snowmobiles, twelve years driving school buses, four years unsuccessfully attempting to become a muskie fishing guide, and an unspecified period running a bait shop that had apparently failed because he kept giving merchandise away to customers he liked.

“That sounds like a poor business model.”

“It was a terrible business model.”

“You lose money?”

“Like a politician at a casino.”

The beers arrived.

Then more beers.

Neither man was counting.

The conversation drifted toward children, which was the natural destination for men their age.

Dell had three daughters.

Rusty had Trey, Cinnamon, and the twins.

The details differed.

The concerns did not.

Both men had spent years worrying about people who no longer needed worrying about and continuing to worry anyway.

Dell stirred his beer thoughtfully.

“The thing nobody tells you about raising kids is eventually they leave.”

Rusty nodded.

“That’s supposed to be the goal.”

“I know.”

“Still doesn’t feel right.”

Dell laughed.

“Nope.”

For several minutes they exchanged stories. Some were funny. Some were not. Most fell somewhere in between, which was where parenthood usually lived.

Rusty told him about Trey returning to Fort Stockton.

About Grace Louise.

About the strange process of watching your children become adults while still remembering them as teenagers.  He tried to explain his only daughter, but quickly became lost in details he didn’t entirely understand himself.  Dell listened carefully.

Then shrugged.

“I figure raising kids is like building boats.”

Rusty looked over.

“Building boats?”

“You spend twenty years trying to make one seaworthy.”

“Okay.”

“Then eventually you shove it into the water and hope it doesn’t sink.”

The comparison was ridiculous.

It was also accurate.

That seemed to happen frequently among older men.

The older they became, the more likely they were to discover wisdom disguised as nonsense.

The discussion eventually turned toward marriage.

Dell had been married forty-two years.

Rusty nearly as long.

Both men possessed enough experience to know that newlyweds often asked the wrong questions.

Young couples wanted secrets.

Veterans understood maintenance.

“What’s your advice?” Rusty asked.

Dell didn’t hesitate.

“Marry somebody you don’t mind sitting beside in silence.”

Rusty considered that.

“That’s better than most.”

“People think marriage is romance.”

“It isn’t?”

“Mostly it’s deciding where to eat.”

Rusty laughed.

Dell continued.

“And occasionally helping each other find reading glasses.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Everything sounds familiar after forty years.”

By the time darkness settled across Hayward, they had somehow wandered into philosophy.

Not academic philosophy.

Neither man would have survived five minutes in a college philosophy department.

Practical philosophy.

The kind developed through mortgages, funerals, children, layoffs, anniversaries, and unexpected repairs.

The kind ordinary people carried around without ever giving it a name.

Dell believed Wisconsin and Texas viewed life differently.

Rusty challenged him to explain.

“You people think life is a rodeo.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means when something throws you off, you climb back on.”

Rusty couldn’t entirely disagree.

Dell took another drink.

“People up here think life is ice fishing.”

Rusty stared at him.

“That makes even less sense.”

Dell pointed.

“No. Think about it. Texans assume things ought to improve if they work hard enough. Wisconsinites drill holes in frozen lakes and sit there freezing because maybe a fish will show up.”

Rusty laughed so hard beer nearly came out his nose.

The comparison was absurd.

The comparison was perfect.

Eventually Dell slapped the bar and stood.

“C’mon.”

“Where?”

“Gotta show you something.”

The parking lot behind the Husky Muskie sat beneath a clear northern sky. The evening carried the faint smell of pine trees and distant water. Dell led him toward a low blue coupe parked beneath a streetlamp.

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Rusty stopped.

The car was gorgeous.

Even before he knew what it was.

The proportions looked right.

The stance looked right.

Everything about it suggested speed.

“Porsche.”

Dell grinned.

“1978 911SC.”

The Minerva Blue paint glowed beneath the lights.

Rusty walked around it slowly.

Years of selling tools and hardware had taught him to appreciate machinery. Good machines possessed a certain honesty. They revealed their purpose immediately.

This Porsche was honest.

Its purpose was going fast.

Dell leaned against the fender.

“Burned up once.”

Rusty stopped.

“What?”

The story took nearly twenty minutes.

The Porsche had started life at Brumos Porsche/Audi. Eventually it found its way to Colombia. Years later it suffered fire damage severe enough that most people would have considered it finished.

Not Dell.

Or the previous owner.

The chassis had been straightened.

The body refinished.

The engine rebuilt and modified.

Individual throttle bodies.

Coil-on-plug ignition.

Modern engine management.

The original five-speed still in place.

Everything restored.

Everything renewed.

Rusty studied the car.

Then looked at Dell.

Then looked back at the car.

The metaphor was standing directly in front of him.

Both had survived things.

Both had been rebuilt.

Both carried evidence of fires that no longer burned.

Neither man mentioned it.

Neither needed to.

Eventually they shook hands.

Promised to meet again someday.

The sort of promise men make without expecting fulfillment but with complete sincerity nonetheless.

Rusty returned to the motel.

Collapsed onto the mattress.

And found himself thinking about Dell.

The strange thing wasn’t how different they were.

The strange thing was how similar.

One grew up among pine forests.

The other among mesquite.

One repaired snowmobiles.

The other sold hardware.

One measured winter in feet of snow.

The other measured summer in degrees of suffering.

Yet they worried about the same people.

Loved the same things.

Carried the same regrets.

Feared the same losses.

The realization followed him into sleep.

The next morning arrived cool and bright.

Rusty loaded himself into the Ford.

The truck started immediately.

Airstream attached.

Coffee secured.

Destination selected.

He planned to visit the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame before beginning the next leg of his journey.

Five miles later traffic stopped.

Police vehicles blocked the road.

Emergency lights flashed ahead.

Cars crept forward.

Rusty assumed deer.

Or tourists.

Or some ordinary inconvenience.

Eventually an officer directed traffic around the scene.

Rusty eased forward.

Then froze.

The Porsche sat beside the highway.

Or what remained of it.

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The blue paint was gone.

The glass was gone.

The roof had partially collapsed.

The elegant machine he had admired twelve hours earlier now resembled a burned skeleton.

Smoke still drifted upward.

For a moment Rusty couldn’t understand what he was seeing.

Then he recognized the wheels.

The shape.

The remains of the body.

His stomach tightened.

Emergency personnel moved quietly nearby.

A gurney stood beside an ambulance.

A covered form rested upon it.

Traffic continued moving.

Rusty continued moving.

Everything continued moving.

That was perhaps the worst part.

The world didn’t stop.

The trees remained green.

The sky remained blue.

People still needed coffee.

The giant muskie still towered above Hayward.

Meanwhile a man he’d shared beers with the previous evening no longer existed.

The unfairness of it settled over him like a heavy blanket.

At a convenience store parking lot several miles later, Rusty shut off the truck and sat quietly.

Life hangs by a thread.

Everybody knows that.

But most people treat the thread as though it’s made of steel cable.

They assume tomorrow exists.

They assume next month exists.

They assume next year exists.

Most of the time they’re right.

Until suddenly they aren’t.

Rusty thought about Debra Lynn.

Thought about Trey.

Thought about Cinnamon.

Thought about the twins.

Thought about ordinary mornings at Rusty Hammer Hardware.

Coffee at Grounds for Divorce.

The familiar rhythm of a life he’d spent weeks examining from a distance.

For the first time since leaving Fort Stockton, home stopped feeling like something he’d departed and started feeling like something he needed.

Not eventually.

Now.

His back still hurt.

His hemorrhoids still objected.

The trip home would require stops.

But the purpose had changed.

The wandering was finished.

By afternoon, recovery crews were loading the remains of the Porsche onto a flatbed. The wreck still smoldered faintly as Rusty passed.

For a brief moment he thought about Parker McHale.

About fiery crashes.

About people presumed dead who somehow weren’t.

The thought lingered exactly long enough for common sense to arrive.

Lightning occasionally struck twice.

Stories occasionally repeated themselves.

Reality usually didn’t.

No.

Dell Larson was gone.

That was the truth.

The Mileage Maker Six settled into its familiar hum.

The highway stretched south.

Pine forests gradually surrendered to farmland.

Farmland would eventually become prairie.

Prairie would eventually become Texas.

Texas would eventually become Fort Stockton.

Rusty rested one hand on the steering wheel and watched the miles unwind beneath the tires.

A day earlier he had been searching for something.

Some insight.

Some answer.

Some understanding.

Now he realized he’d found it.

Not in a museum.

Not beneath the world’s largest fish.

Not in solitude.

Not on the road.

He found it sitting beside a stranger in a Wisconsin bar.

Life was shorter than he thought.

Home was more important than he remembered.

And the people waiting for him in Fort Stockton deserved whatever time remained.

The Ford gathered speed.

The Airstream followed faithfully behind.

The sun drifted westward.

And somewhere on a Wisconsin highway, with a dead man’s Porsche disappearing in his mirrors, Rusty Hammer finally understood that the most important thing he could do next was go home.

He couldn’t get there soon enough. The road had finally stopped being an invitation and become a route home.

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