He smiled and nodded his head when steam and water came rushing out the overflow tube onto the ground. “Well, looks like you know what you’re doing so I’ll get out of your hair. Let me know if you need anything else,” he said before heading back to his service bay.
“We could use some directions to Mosquito Pass,” Bonnie said. She had returned with Fred when my head was under the hood.
The attendant stopped in his tracks, and turned around. “If I could get a dollar for everyone who’s asked that question, ma’am, I’d be a millionaire,” he said as he walked back toward us.
“I should print me a map and start selling them. It’d be a great way to advertise my towing business. You wouldn’t believe how many people try to make it over that pass without four-wheel drive. But you shouldn’t have any problem with this old baby. You got one of the true four-wheel drives with that old Quadra-Trac. You could climb Mount Everest with that thing.”
“Maybe Pike’s Peak, once I get this radiator fixed,” I said, pointing to a small leak, spitting more steam than water. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find anyone who repairs the old copper cores anymore.”
He took a card from his pocket and handed it to me. “My name’s Rick, I’d be happy to order you a new plastic core, but I don’t suppose you’d want to wait for it.”
“No, it’s not that bad. Not yet.”
“Well, call me from your cell if you run out of water up there. I’m the local tow service for Triple A and several others.”
Bonnie saw her chance to cut in. “Cell phones work up there? Maybe you can get directions from that fancy phone of yours, Jake, seeing as you’re too busy jawing to get directions.”
Rick flashed several rotten teeth when he smiled at Bonnie’s remark. “Yes, ma’am. We got several towers on the top of the mountain. Covers most of Leadville and even reaches Breckenridge. I expect to get a call from some kids who were here this morning anytime now. Darn fools were driving a Datsun pickup.”
“Did they have tattoos and weird hair?” I asked, watching him take a pinch of tobacco from a can that seemed to appear from nowhere.
“How’d you know?”
“I saw one of those trucks just last week, driven by some kids who were at a book signing, and they didn’t strike me as kids who read much. I remember it because my dad gave me a truck just like it on my sixteenth birthday,” I said, removing the radiator cap and reaching for the water hose.
Rick turned his head and spit before wiping a greasy hand on his coveralls. “Ah, was afraid they was friends of yours.” Then he turned toward Bonnie. “As for those directions, ma’am, just keep going north on nine and you’ll see a road on the left, just before Alma, called Mosquito Gulch Road. If you get to Alma, you missed it, and gone too far.”
He took another pinch of tobacco and put it under his tongue. “I gotta get back to the oil change I was working on, but look out for those fools. Don’t like to see nobody get hurt up there.”
“Sure, and thanks for your help,” I said as I got into my Jeep. “That old Datsun won’t be hard to miss.”
Bonnie paused before letting Fred into the Jeep so she could wave bye to Rick. Then, almost immediately, she covered her mouth instead. Rick had chosen that particular moment to spit tobacco juice on the ground.
***
Rick’s comment about the punk kids kept nagging at me on our ascent up Mosquito Gulch Road. Had they found a way to decipher the code, too? My thoughts were interrupted when we came to a fork in the road. “Did Rick say which way to turn?” I asked my new navigator. I’d turned Lucy off shortly after leaving the gas station.
Bonnie had recovered from the spitting incident, and was studying a road map she found in my glove box. “No, and this map is worthless. I can’t even find the road we’re on.”
I pointed to a handmade sign for Leadville pointing to the right. “No problem, Ms. Yossarian. I asked too soon.”
Bonnie looked up from the map she was trying to fold back together. “Don’t think I don’t know who you meant, Mr. Smarty Pants. I was teaching literature before you were born. Catch 22 was one of my favorites.”
My mind had already gone on to the road ahead and so I didn’t answer her. What little research I had done on the trail before leaving home said not to attempt the road into Leadville. It was narrow, with switchbacks that clung to the side of the mountain. One slip and it was two thousand feet straight down. I had no plans on going that far, or Bonnie would indeed wet her pants if she should look out the window. But we were safe for now. The path was rocky and getting steeper, with mountains on both sides and no sign of any precipitous drop-offs, so I didn’t mention the danger ahead.
After another two miles, the road forked left with another sign saying we had reached 11,500 feet, and from this point on it was four-wheel drive only. My old Jeep must not have liked the altitude, because it began to overheat again, letting out a cloud of steam from under the hood.
“My God, Jake, are we on fire!” Bonnie had her hand on the door latch and was ready to make a quick exit.
“Just a little steam, Bon.”
Fred barked his two cents from the back seat, so I stopped the Jeep before I had a mutiny.
“Okay, everyone out. Let’s look around while old Betsy cools off.”
Unlike when we stopped earlier, this time the engine was really hot. I knew better than to pour what little water I carried into a boiling radiator; not only would it be a waste of water, but the possibility of cracking an engine block or head was too great.
Bonnie must have been confident the Jeep wasn’t on fire, and poked her head under the open hood. “We won’t get stuck up here, I hope.”
“No, but we should turn back after it cools down. It gets really cold once the sun goes down at this altitude.”
“But we just got here, Jake. Can’t you do something to get it going sooner?”
Fred had been sitting, watching, and listening to us talk. Then, for no apparent reason, he barked, and ran to a nearby snowdrift. Summer snow storms and drifts were not uncommon at this elevation. It made me check the sky. The last thing I needed was to be caught in a thunderstorm. Lightning kills more people in the high country than avalanches do in the winter.
“I don’t have to, Bon. Fred just found a way to cool off the radiator for us.”
She gave me her blank look again.
“The snow, Bon. We can use it to cool the radiator.”
“Won’t that crack the block or something?”
“I won’t put it on the engine, just the radiator. If we cool the radiator off, it should help cool off the engine faster.”
Fred was already rolling in the snow before I got there, and came running back to me with a mouth full of it when he saw me. I don’t think he had read my mind about putting snow on the radiator, so I guessed he wanted to play. I reached down to thank him with a pat on the head and realized the snow was red.
“Did Fred cut himself?” Bonnie asked when she caught up with us.
I knew it wasn’t blood from its oily feel. “No, someone has a transmission leak.”
“And how could you possibly know that, Sherlock?”
“Engine oil would be black; this came from an automatic. It looks like they were parked here for a while before turning back.”
Bonnie went over to where Fred had been, reached down to check for herself, then looked up at me like I’d just answered a million dollar question on a quiz show. “How do you know that stuff? And what makes you think they didn’t go on to Leadville?”
“Look at the trail of transmission fluid going back toward Fairplay. The spots get smaller and further apart before disappearing altogether.”
She held her hand flat across her brow. It must have been more out of habit than necessity for the sun was already behind her. “So, what does that prove?”