Dolly

A sticky-sweet aroma from a new air freshener made the car’s interior seem like a low-rent nail salon, both acrid and artificial—the way an eleven-year-old girl would smell if she were given fifteen dollars and free rein at a fragrance kiosk in the mall. It did its job, though, masking odd and somewhat hidden odors from bygone days. This particular air freshener had been the first within reach at the gas station checkout, and the promise on the cellophane wrapper of morning rain was a total misnomer. Instead, it came across as tarnished and its bitterness filled the sedan’s small cabin, blanketing a man and his daughter cruising along the highway.

They had been on the road for about three hours before passing a familiar green sign that read Sisters 8 miles, when the small child in the backseat let out a melodic falsetto question.

“Are we there yet, Daddy?” she asked, never looking at the driver, but continuing instead to stroke the hair of her toy doll.

This was the third time she had asked since starting the journey, and Colin had tried to distract his daughter from the tedium with travel games and reminders that Dolly — with its dark strands of plastic hair, knotted and sprawled about like caramelized spun sugar — could use some extra attention.

“Not much longer now, Esther,” he told her. “The turnoff is about two miles away, and then it’s a few more minutes beyond that.”

Colin glanced repeatedly in the rearview mirror but found it devoid of any other vehicles. This stretch of highway, absent of early morning travelers most days, was also a notorious speed trap, and he could not risk getting stopped.

“Who are you looking for?” Esther asked. The girl’s reflection stared back at him in the mirror through squinted, weary eyes.

“Nobody really. I’m making sure the road's safe for us to be on,” Colin said.

“My teacher says that her father was a limousine driver and that he had to be extra careful when he would drive the great big limo car.” She continued to work at the Gordian Knot of kinked strands atop Dolly’s head. "She said he drove people around until the day he died." Thinking about that for a moment, she added, "Does that mean that he died in his limo, Daddy?”

"What? No, I think what she meant was that he worked as long as he could, before he passed away. I think your teacher meant that he never retired," Colin said.

There was a sudden and uncomfortable silence. Esther’s smiling face had been replaced by a stern glare.

“You're not supposed to say that word, Daddy.”

“What word is that?”

“Retired.” Esther squeezed the doll to her own cheek. “Mrs. Daniels gave two boys timeout for calling Nicholas retired. Mrs. Daniels says that Nicholas is special, and we aren't supposed to use that other word."

"I think you mean…" he paused, thinking the better of it for a moment. "No, you're right, Sweetie. Sorry. I won't use that word anymore." He nodded at Esther and then set his eyes back on the road.

A few minutes later, he slowed for their unmarked turnoff on the near side of a moderate s-curve. Despite having made several trips to this spot during the last year, the turn always seemed to surprise him. He slowed as best he could as they exited the asphalt, but the car still took to a light skid as it moved from the reddened lava rock shoulder through a handful of pitted dirt voids before finding the well-defined ruts of the unnamed service road.

"It's going to be a little bumpy for a while. Better tell Dolly to hold on," he told her.

The girl took the doll and tucked it beneath the lap belt on the inside edge, near the buckle. She gave the doll's small hand a gentle squeeze.

"It's okay Esther. We've been up here before. It's only like this for a little bit."

The pitted road punctuated the cadence of their speech and jostled them from side to side.

“Remember the first...time we came...up...here? We were...with your mother. She loved...it here,” he said.

"I...miss...her. Dolly...misses…her too," Esther said.

This was followed by a wild-eyed giggle that only young children, perched on the thin edge between glee and fear, can deliver. They cleared the last of the ruts as the road smoothed into worn, packed dirt.

"I know you do sweetie. No one can ever replace her. We both know that. I thought your mother and me would be together forever. I've tried to find someone who would be good. Good for the both of us, but it's hard to meet the right person these days. I thought I was close once or twice," Colin said.

"What about Marie?" Esther asked.

"It could have been that way with Marie. She was pretty and fun and made the best French toast you, or I have ever tasted, but there was something missing. It’s hard to describe, but your mother and I had…a spark, and I’m looking for that feeling again with someone new."

"And Marie didn't sparkle?"

"No, Marie did not sparkle."

"Why not? I liked her laugh, and she read stories and braided my hair."

"It takes a lot to fall in love, especially after having loved someone like your mother. You know who also agrees with me that Marie wasn’t the one?”

“Who?”

“Dolly. She’s quite picky, you know.”

They both laughed at the idea of her doll having an opinion on the matter as the car slowed to a stop in front of a makeshift barricade on the side of the road. Colin got out and cleared two crisscrossed logs concealing a long-forgotten Bureau of Land Management fork road. He hopped back in and pulled the car over the lip and onto the forked road, with a crinkle of pine needles beneath the wheels. He stopped again after several feet, got out, and replaced the logs. When he got back to the car, he noticed that Esther was in the front seat with her window down.

“About two minutes away,” he said as he got back behind the wheel.

Short, tufted grass littered the dry ground beneath the mature ponderosa pines which shot upward along this final leg of their journey. The grass was a byproduct of a blaze that ripped through this section of forest about a year ago. The fire started, as most of them do, from a lightning strike during a summer storm. The remote location slowed both the discovery of the fire and the local response to extinguish it. During the fire, the scaly, orange-brown bark of the giant ponderosas fell to the forest floor to protect the tree trunks and lessen the fire’s spread. It was Mother Nature’s method of self-preservation.

Colin rolled down his window to take in the forest air. Esther stuck her head out of the passenger window and howled like a wolf.

"We’re here," Esther squealed.

An opening in the forest was littered with sunlight that poked through the trees and splayed shadows across the ground. As far as Colin knew, he and Esther were the only ones that still visited this spot.

The vehicle came to a stop, and he shut off the engine. Before he got out of the car, he took a deep breath and told her to stay in her seat, shut the door behind him with a quiet click before walking to the middle of the clearing, and looked around and listened for a minute, assuring himself there would be no hikers or fishermen bumbling through the area. He walked back to the passenger side of the car.