Loss Of Reason by Miles A. Maxwell (best books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

Sal Torentino kept an eye on his wife in the craziness through the Chevy’s windshield.

Both their cellphones were still NO SIGNAL at the Utica, New York exit. There was power here, and in the long lines at the three scarce pay phones that seemed to be working, Margarete was still near the back. She had insisted they stop and try to call her mother.

Like many of their neighbors, Sal’s family of four had evacuated Westchester north of the city with the blare of the first siren. Sal was Italian, but he had screamed at his wife and kids for the first time in, well — ever. Trying to hurry them into the car as the Emergency Alert Station played on the car radio. Screeching out of the driveway, down the street, out of their neighborhood to the highway and going — nowhere fast.

What should have taken two hours had taken an exhausting twelve.

People were being turned away at the door of the Denny’s. They were obviously out of food. So were the Torentinos. The sodas and beer, the sandwiches Margarete made for them on the road were long gone. Sal had found some rock-hard candy bars in a vending machine.

Six hours ago.

When he couldn’t function anymore, Margarete had driven. If you could call it that. Jammed between a thousand other cars. Five and ten miles an hour.

A tremendous sense of relief poured into Sal Torentino as the sun came out from under an overcast blanket of gray-white. Thankfully the kids were so tired they were silent, curled up across the back seat, the tops of their heads touching. He smiled. We’re all so beat, he thought. He’d checked every half hour or so to make sure they weren’t dead or something back there. In a minute the sun was gone. Another winter storm coming in.

Across the freeway, people were driving the wrong way — against no traffic — moving a lot faster than Sal had been.

Somebody up ahead laid on their horn.

“Whoa! Looks like they smashed into each other halfway up the ramp,” he said softly.

Then the sound hit him, a series of screams two drivers were throwing at each other. “Clear the goddamned road you two motherfuckingsonsabitches!” another voice yelled.

The accident drivers looked up, turned their heads back to each other.

The door of a black Mercedes immediately behind them flew open. The driver ran toward the two crashers. In seconds, name-calling accelerated into a three-way fistfight. The smaller of the original two dove sideways. The Mercedes driver and the bigger man wrestled each other to the ground. The smaller guy watched while the other two rolled down the snowy slope along the ramp.

“Look, Daddy!” Sal’s kids screamed with excitement.

Dammit! Now the kids are awake!

Sal’s left elbow flinched. A horse walked almost touching the left side of the car, right along the windows. What looked to Sal — the harness blinkers, the odd saddle, he was no expert — like a shiny-red thoroughbred racehorse.

The black tail swished into view. When the beast was farther along Sal could see the rider’s legs. The big man was no jockey, a broad back in an expensive black leather jacket, urging his animal past the brawlers, out onto the freeway.

“Where we going, Daddy?” Sal Torentino’s five-year old boy asked from the back seat.

“Shhhhh,” Sal answered. “Go back to sleep.”

But they didn’t want to go back to sleep. “Where are we going, Daddy?” Sal’s six-year-old daughter cooed.

Sal didn’t answer right away. He didn’t know what to answer. And he didn’t want to scare them. He checked the phones. Margarete was almost to the front.

“Where we going? Where we going?” his son joined in.

They’re not going to stop, are they? Sal realized, pushing his back teeth against each other. Some kind of answer. Quiet them down maybe. “We’re going for a drive.” The words were out of his mouth before he knew what he’d done.

“We’re going for a drive, we’re going for a drive . . .”

For the next ten minutes the kids chanted like idiot monks.

“Going for a drive, going for a drive!”

Sal finally exploded. “Shut up back there!” He rarely lost his temper. Almost never with the kids. But they shut up.

“Feathee!” Sal’s daughter held up a long feather painted with streaks of dark tan.

“Where — !”

She was cramming her dolls into that yellow tool box he’d rescued from the restaurant.

“Gimme!” said Sal’s son.

“Mine!” his daughter whisked the feather an inch out of his son’s reach. She put it back in with her dolls. The lid slammed.

The toolbox took up the whole of the floor on the side behind Sal’s seat. His daughter’s legs were short enough that resting her feet on its lid probably made sitting more comfortable for her. He’d forgotten all about it. The feather must have been inside.

He recalled the small boat pulling up to tie at the restaurant’s dock. The Middle Eastern man opening the toolbox, releasing that bird — an owl, it looked like — into the air beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. The man leaving the box after he ate lunch.

Margarete came back looking more frazzled than ever. “I couldn’t get through to Momma in Rochester, Saly!” She closed her door — “I couldn’t reach Momma! Oh I’m so worried about her.” She frowned at the kids. “Anything happen? Kids okay?”

“Not much,” Sal swallowed. “They’re fine. I’m sure she’s okay. We’ll try again in a little while.”

“She’s probably worried sick.” She turned. “Want to go see Momma Conti, kids?”

They perked right up. “Momma Conti! Momma Conti!”

Rita looked at him, a line down her pretty forehead. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to have us — so happy to see the kids, Saly —”

Sal sighed. “Okay. Daniella’s it is.”

But the freeway entrance was blocked.

Sal carefully snuck his tires up over the rounded curb of the left berm, easing the Chevy partway up the angled concrete. The space on the left was just enough to squeeze their right fender around one fighter as he bumped the other into the bushes.

“Saly!”

“I only nudged him —”

Sal’s big shoulders sagged. He let out a big breath as the Torentinos slid into traffic. Again.