Impossible Places Read Online Free Page B

stop there. Too far north of Mammoth to be fashionable and too far south of Tahoe to be worth a sidetrip for the gamblers. A bunch of overinsulated mobile homes not much bigger than the woodpiles stacked outside ’em. Some log homes, some rock. Six gas stations, five restaurants, and one little mountain grocery. Imagine: a market with a porch and chairs. Lee Vining just kind of clings to the east slope of the Sierra Nevada. Wouldn’t surprise anyone if the whole shebang up and slid into Mono Lake some hard winter. The whole town. The market sells more salmon eggs than salmon. Damn fine trout country, though, and a great place to take kids hiking.
    Friendly, too. Small-town mountain people always are, no matter what part of the country you’re haulin’ through. They live nearer nature than the rest of us, and it keeps ’em respectful of their humanity. The bigger the country, the bigger the hearts. Smarter than you’d think, too.
    Like I was saying, I don’t usually stop there. Bridgeport’s cheaper for diesel. But I’d just driven nonstop up from L.A. with a quick load of lettuce, tomatoes, and other produce for the casinos at Reno, and I was running on empty. Not Slewfoot: she was near full. I topped off her tanks in Bishop. Slewfoot’s my rig, lest you think I was cheatin’ on Elaine. I don’t go in for that, no matter what you see in those cheap Hollywood films. Most truckers ain’t that good-lookin’, and neither are the gals you meet along the highway. Most of them are married, anyway.
    Since diesel got so expensive I’m pretty careful about where I fill up. Slewfoot’s a big Peterbilt, black with yellow-and-red striping, and she can get mighty thirsty.
    So I was the one running on empty, and with all those crosses floating around in my gut, not to mention my head, I needed about fourteen cups of coffee and something to eat. It was starting to get evening and I like to push the light, but after thirty years plus on the road I know when to stop. Eat now, let the crosses settle some, drive later. Live longer.
    It was just after Thanksgiving. The tourists were long gone from the mountains. So were the fishermen, since the high-country lakes were already frozen. Ten feet of snow on the ground (yeah, feet), but I’d left nearly all the ski traffic back down near Mammoth. U.S. 395’s easier when you don’t have to dodge the idiots from L.A. who never see snow except when it comes time for ’em to drive through it.
    The Department of Transportation had the road pretty clear and it hadn’t snowed much in a couple of days, which is why I picked that day to make the fast run north. After Smokeys, weather’s a trucker’s major devilment. It was plenty cold outside; cold enough to freeze your BVDs to your crotch, but nothing like what it would be in another month or so. It was still early, and the real Sierra winter was just handing out its first calling cards.
    Thanks to the crosses I kind of floated onto the front porch of a little place called the Prospector’s Roost (almost as much gold left in these mountains as trout), 20 percent of the town’s restaurant industry, and slumped gratefully into a booth lined with scored Naugahyde. The window behind me gave me something besides blacktop to focus on, and the sun’s last rays were just sliding off old Mono Lake. Frigid pretty. The waitress gave me a big smile, which was nice. Soon she brought me a steak, hash browns, green beans, warm rolls with butter, and more coffee, which was better. I started to mellow as my stomach filled up, let my eyes wander as I ate.
    It’s tough to make a living at any one thing in a town the size of Lee Vining. If it don’t take up too much floor space, some folks can generate an extra couple of bucks by operating a second business in the same building. So the north quarter of the Prospector’s Roost had been given over to a little gift shop. The market carried trinkets and so did the gas stations, so it didn’t surprise me