The car choked as they drove the last fifty miles to Fishs Eddy. After her outbreak at the last rest stop, Penelope slept in the back seat for the final part of the journey. Charles was less jovial than usual. He sat in the front seat next to Simon and watched the scenery pass, not commenting as he usual did on the passing scenery. He did not start talking about random stories or break the silence during the last hour of the trip.

As they crossed into New York State, Simon could not take the silence anymore. He started to talk in a quiet voice, trying not to wake Penelope who slept in the back seat. He broke the silence by chatting with Charles about small things. Nothing too big or loud. Before a few miles had passed, Penelope was stretching in the back seat, joining in on the conversation. They did not discuss the witch lady they had run across at the rest stop or what they would find in Fishs Eddy. The last of the day passed quickly as they continued to ride closer to Fishs Eddy. They passed the last exit before Fishs Eddy and were met by a hugely pink and orange sky. The sunset was beautiful, the sky looking like it was on fire. The sun set rapidly after that, and by the time Simon pointed to the border that delineated where Fishs Eddy began, the sky was a dull gray color, all of the colors had slowly bled away leaving the last of the light to fade away slowly.

“Welcome to beautiful Fishs Eddy,” Simon said, breaking the conversation where they had been discussing the value of pancakes for breakfast. “I have not been here in so long. They changed the welcome sign. We’re still a good fifteen minutes away from where the town really starts. They never built on the area around here. They liked having this buffer zone where they could send the undesirables.”

“What do you mean by undesirables?” Charles asked, sounding worried that he might fall within that category and find a gang of shotgun toting townspeople waiting for him at the entrance of town.

“At least when I was here,” Simon began explaining. “There were a few people that did not fit in with the rest of the town. They were sent over to this side to escape it all. They built houses off in the distance, and the town provided dirt roads. Most people who lived there did not last long. They eventually moved off to other parts of the country. They were mostly drifters and freeloaders. At least that’s what my parents called them. They would build wooden houses with the help of the townspeople off the main highway outside of town. They were given large pacts of land, but would always build small houses. They were not all poor. In fact, most had money and wanted to be near the town because they own businesses. It was more that they did not provide the right edge to the town.”

“You’re not make much sense,” Charles said. “What does this have to do with anything. And, damn! Watch where you’re driving. You almost ran over that cardboard box.”

“Sorry about the box,” Simon said.

“What box?” Penelope asked, waking up from her nap and stretching in the backseat. Simon watched her in the rearview mirror. She looked most beautiful in the morning, before the sternness took over her face. Not that she always looked angry, but she looked most natural and beautiful when she first woke up. Simon could watch her for hours early in the morning.

“The one your boyfriend almost ran over while staring at you,” Charles said with an exasperated sigh. “I can already see the headline: famous newspaper columnist, killed by cardboard box. Yes, that will be my epitaph, and I’ll have you to thank for it.”

Simon turned back to the road. The sign for the only Fishs Eddy exit on the highway appeared. “Five more miles and we’ll be near town,” Simon said. “Off the highway, we’ll find a few gas stations, but the town proper does not start for a good fifteen minutes away from the highway.”

“That is strange,” Penelope said. “Most towns live and die by the entrance to the highway.”

“There are many strange things about Fishs Eddy,” Simon agreed. “At least as I remember it. It has been a long time, please remember. This is the first time back.”

“You did not visit your mother or sister while they were here,” Charles asked. It raised a difficult question. He would not consider his relationship estranged from his family, but it was strained. He had not been as successful as he had hoped, and growing up with them, they looked to him to escape the family. When the sisters and then their husbands grew more successful, Simon, who sold space property that nobody would ever claim, at least in his lifetime, was looked on as a black sheep of the family. He knew this and yet he did not know how to explain it succinctly to his friends in the car.

“I have not visited them here,” Simon said simply. “It’s complicated. We have a good relationship, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a difficult one at times, and this trip, as you can tell by this drive, is not fun. They closest airport is four hours away, and, well, my family only moved back here three years ago. Before then, I visited them more often. I think it has something to do with this town. I cannot explain it, but it feels cursed to me, like my dreams were dashed when I lived here. I am not excited to return. But I need to know what has been going on and what trouble my family is in.”

The car grew quiet as Simon drove off the exit. A large turn led away from the highway and ended at a blinked red stop light. He stopped and made a right, driving past two gas stations that appeared dark and deserted.

“That’s strange,” Penelope said. There were no lights on in the gas station, and it was still early, only eight o’clock at night. “Don’t gas stations off highways stay on most of the night?”

“They certainly don’t close this early,” Charles agreed.

They continued to drive along the road and toward the town. The road had two lanes going in each direction, but they did not see any cars for the first few miles going in either direction. Streetlights lit the road until they reached a sharp turn, where the road led perpendicular to the receding highway behind them. The lights ended at that point, and Simon turned onto the road. A wooden sign for Fishs Eddy was at the entrance of the road, not providing a direction, but more a general feeling for the way to go. The double-laned paved road continued in the other direction away from Fishs Eddy.

“If you follow that road far enough,” Simon said. “You’ll run into Road 641, which eventually makes it back to the interstate by way of side roads. It’s a longer but probably nicer road than the one we took. But of course we are not on a touristy trip here. I was trying to get us here as fast as possible, and this is clearly the fastest way.”

With no lights along the side of the road, Simon turned on his bright lights, which lit the road ahead of them. The road dipped and climbed, and Simon kept his foot on the accelerator through the hills, trying unsuccessfully to maintain his speed going up the hill. Simon stayed at highway speeds along the side road.

“Aren’t you driving a bit fast?” Penelope asked.

“Compared to who?”Simon said. “You are the fastest driver I know. You scare me when you drive. Even compared to the rest of the Texas drivers, you are a monster, Penelope. And I mean that in the nicest sense.”

“He is right,” Charles said. “You are a bit scary to drive with. A good driver,” Charles quickly added. “But at times a bit scary.”

Penelope made a small noise and when Simon looked in the mirror, he saw her smile. She was proud of strange things in her life, and this seemed one of those strange things.

“The funny thing is,” Penelope said. “When I first learned to drive, I was a terrible and very slow driver. It took me years to drive the speed limit on highways. Then one day, out of the blue, I just went for it. I accelerated the car up to and beyond the speed limit and I found that it was easier than I thought. It was not my skill that was lacking, I found. It was my confidence. And once I found that confidence, the road became just another barrier to break through.”

“I am sure you tell that story to the state troopers who always pull you over,” Simon said.

“It is more difficult than you know to get pulled over in Texas,” Penelope said. “The two of you probably would not know, but you have to go over a hundred miles an hour to get the interest of police. I do that occasionally, but I am smart about it. I know where the troopers like to hide out, and I will slow to a more reasonable eight miles an hour when I reach those areas.”

“How many tickets have you talked your way out of?” Simon asked, already knowing the answer.

“Sixteen,” Penelope said for Charles’s benefit.

“Don’t the cops keep a record of the warning and the number of times you get pulled over,” Charles asked. “What if it is a female copy?”

“That’s a myth,” Penelope said. “The female cops are as impressed with my more impressive features than the male cops. It has to do with how you play it.”

“Clearly she plays it very well,” Simon said, his voice trailing off as they saw a car pulled off to the side, the nose of the car dipped over the edge. He drove a bit further and found a few more cars in the same predicament.

“That is very strange,” Charles said. “Some of them have their doors open.” The three of them looked at the surrounding cars, and sure enough they saw what Charles was talking about. Simon had pulled off to the side, and the bright lights lit up the scene. It looked like a movie scene. Nobody made a move to open the door or to look outside.

“I have to try to call them again,” Simon said. The cars sitting on the side of the road increased his worries about what was happening. He dialed his mother, and then his two sisters but he could not get through. The phones all went to voicemail. “This is strange.”

Simon put the car back into drive and passed the cars. The sides of the road soon became cramped with cars. A deep drainage ditch ran parallel to the small country road, and every few feet, another car was pulled off. The cars were not perfectly parallel, but they all must have been driving away from town before turning into the ditch. Some had doors partially opened, but most had the doors still closed.

“Should we get out and look?” Charles asked. Simon certainly did not want to get out. He was afraid of what he would find. Penelope was silent about the option.

“No,” Simon said simply. “We push on to town and see what is going on there. There’s probably a very reasonable explanation for these cars being pulled off into the ditch. Perhaps this is where the town stores their old cars. It is expensive to crush them.” Even before Simon finished, he realized how silly his explanation sounded. No town left cars in ditches as a way of ridding themselves of the junk metal. He did believe they would learn more about what was going on once they reached town. He just was not sure he really wanted to understand it.

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Another day, another dollar.