The Shadow Over Vinland sample: “The Crossroads Motor Inn”

How I heard the story was this: Some guy out on the long stretch of Route 57 hadn’t gassed up in town, and late at night he ran out of gas right where 57 makes a Y with 116 and Gussner Road, where there wasn’t nothing for miles. He slept in his truck and started walking back to town in the morning until he got a ride, and by the time he got back to town he had this great idea to build a gas station and a mo­tel right there for all the other people he was sure would run dry at the same place. He was awful excited, and that made other people excited enough not to think it through, so soon he’s got all his family and friends to invest and he built that gas station and motel.

Of course, no two vehicles have to run low on gas at the same spot, and even if they do, who’s gonna decide to stay over at a motel instead of fill up and get where they’re go­ing? Like I said, it probably sounded great when they was excited. I don’t know if that story’s true—I heard it from the real estate agent who I think was trying to steer me away all gentle, and that would have put it at least two owners be­fore me. But it sounds true-ish, even if it isn’t exactly fact. As good an explanation as any for why there’s a eight-unit motel no one needs right across from a gas station no one needs where 57 and 116 and Gussner come together.

I first saw the place in gray daylight after driving for hours just to drive. After Emily passed, that was the only thing I felt like doing. And there, on the cockeyed crossroads be­tween nowhere and nowhere, was the motel with dark win­dows and a faded “for sale” banner on the office. The old sign, high on its pole, said “Crossroads Motor Inn.” On the other side of the two-lane road was the peeling gas station with a flock of rusted heaps behind it, and the third side of the Y was a soggy field halfway to becoming a swamp.

I stopped, I got out, I smelled the muggy air and listened to the lazy flies and looked at the unlit motel sign against a sky the color of lead.

The next day I called the number from the “for sale” ban­ner, and within a week, against the better judgment of sev­eral real estate professionals, the Crossroads Motor Inn had its first new owner in years. I sold my old home and almost everything in it—I did keep all my power tools—and moved out to the manager apartment at the motel.

It was in surprisingly good shape, considering how long it had been derelict. The bed clothes and mattress in Room 3 had been shredded by something, and the tub in Room 7 was crusted with muddy slime. But no one had vandalized the place, it was so far out of town; none of the windows had been broken, and no one had tagged it. So I started each day with a to-do list: I steam-cleaned the carpets and painted the wood trim and scrubbed the windows and oiled the locks. I got all the air conditioners working so guests would have cold humid air instead of warm humid air.

Eight rooms in a row, adjoining doors between every pair. All were pretty much identical: A double bed, an old boxy TV bolted to the wall, an AM clock-radio on the nightstand, industrial-strength carpet the color of rust and the texture of burlap, a tiled bathroom with a shower above a tub that only a midget could lie down in. None of the TVs pulled in any signal, since all the local stations had switched to digi­tal that these old cathode ray tubes couldn’t handle, but at least I didn’t have to change the embossed sign in the office window advertising “COLOR TV.”

All of the old clock-radios worked, though, as well as they could. I tuned each to the best station it could pull in, which was different depending on the room. One got a sports talk station, and a couple pulled in what sounded like 24-hour news in a language I don’t speak, but most of them were tuned to a twangy country station, the kind that comes as a preset when you buy a pickup.

Finally, one night, I decided that it was ready. Not “done,” because nothing’s ever done, not in a world where rot and dust and death eventually take over everything… but ready enough. I went into the office and peered out the front win­dow, where the dark sign on its pole stood black against the soggy moonlight, and I flipped the switch. The sign blazed to life, scarlet and navy blue and yellowing white, telling the empty world around that the Crossroads Motor Inn was in business. There was a dark spot in the sign; one of the bulbs was out. But I didn’t even put it on my to-do list. I figured it just added to the shabby charm.

I turned off the lights inside and I watched the sign just shine and keep on shining. The window was foggy with the dew that was already settling, and it made a halo around the lit-up sign. I watched that for a good long while. Then I walked out, letting the soggy air roll over me, with mosquit­oes whining all over. I stood right under the sign, where you couldn’t read it anymore, you just saw the glow making the stars disappear behind it. Then I walked to the far end of the gravel parking lot. From that distance, you couldn’t even see the pole holding the sign up. It just looked like a glowing message suspended in the sky, looking down on the empty crossroads where Route 57 makes a Y.

Honest to God, I didn’t even care if I never had any cus­tomers, which is the dumbassest attitude for fixing up a mo­tel, but it’s the truth. This was a place for me, here alone with the glowing light coming down on the motel and the aban­doned gas station. This was my little corner of the world.

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