pulled out onto Route 9. Me in front, the little Honda tucked right on my tail, a four-year-old boy wrapped in forty years of leather watching my red taillight like it was the last light left in the whole black world.
We rode forty minutes through that dark.
Twice, headlights came up fast behind us. Both times my whole body went to ice and my hand tightened on the throttle and I watched my mirror and got ready to do whatever I had to do. And both times it was just some trucker or some late traveler who blew past us and disappeared, and both times I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and felt my heart climb back down out of my throat.
The clubhouse windows were lit up gold when we finally pulled into the lot.
Bear was standing out front in the cold,
