A VACANCY sign glows hazy orange like glass fresh from a furnace. We’ve been driving for hours. Too cold to camp at elevation, so we dropped into the desert valley, striking out at each stop.

We stumble from the car, slipping in deep gravel.It takes a moment to understand what I’m seeing. Smoke clings to the glass front, swirling in slow motion. Not smoke. Wings. The motel office is buried under millions of gnats. The windows behind them seem to flex and pulse.

Terry pushes his trekking pole through the swarm to ring the night bell. Minutes later the interior lights wink on. An old woman in a 1940s bathrobe and nightcap opens the door.

“Come on in, we’ve got one room left. Sorry about the bugs.”

I slide past her. The air roars with insects. I hold my breath, but some make it into my nose and ears. Their shadows flicker on the walls. The woman says something I can’t make out. A metal can clatters. Then we’re coughing. She’s spraying us with DEET. The burn is better than the bugs. Her husband appears through my fog of tears, neck twisted so one ear almost touches his shoulder. He watches me without moving his head.

Terry, always curious, picks now to make small talk. “So, what’s notable about Goosenecks Park?”

“The geology, I guess,” the husband croaks, staring at me.

Key in hand, we enter our room with low expectations. I shower, scrub raw, and climb into bed. Terry is already snoring on the other bed, still in boots. I stare at the popcorn ceiling, drained but kept awake by invisible insects crawling over my skin.

Terry died in December.

Got the text from an old girlfriend of his. What do you even say? Not “I’m really sorry. I know you guys were close.”

We overhear a ranger telling a couple, “Please don’t climb on the things that have names.” I glance at the park brochure—same ranger in a photo, scrubbing graffiti off a rock. Terry thanks the ranger for her service.

At the trailhead: WARNING: EXTREME HEAT. CARRY MINIMUM 1 GALLON WATER PER PERSON. MULTIPLE HEAT-RELATED DEATHS OCCUR ANNUALLY.

We refill bottles and start climbing. Sand becomes rock. Heat radiates through my shoes. Within minutes I stop sweating. Then I’m lightheaded. I gulp water, walk, stop again. I crouch beside a scrub bush big enough to shade my shoes.

“Go on, see the rock thing. I’m good.” Terry hesitates. I say it over again and watch until his outline melts into the air.

A woman dragging two older women stops to check on me. Czech. Only the younger speaks English. I share shade and water—they brought only small Styrofoam cups. As they leave, the younger one says, “I didn’t like the Grand Canyon but my husband did. I spread his ashes there.”

Time collapses. The sun crawls over my neck. Suddenly it’s dark. Terry is back, a shade tree standing over me.

“Started running out of water. Seemed far to the arch.” He hauls me up and we return to the car. It’s hours before I realize he felt bad for leaving me.

We hadn’t seen each other in years. Our last text was a dumb actuary joke. He replied “ha.”

I deleted him from my phone. His name was my hand hovering over a garbage disposal.

I almost hit a railing when he shouts, “Goats!”

“What the fuck, man?!”

“Goats!”

They stand on a rock face, staggered like an album cover. We pull over. Terry’s camera lens could catch moon rocks. He nearly smacks me swinging it around, then charges into razor grass in his dorky knee socks.

I follow. Minutes later my calves are slick with blood.

We climb into cooler air—desert scrub to pines, red rock to black. LAVA POINT — ELEVATION 7,890 FT. Five of six sites are taken. A thunderstorm rolls across the mesas.

We cook bratwursts. I eat from an enamel cup with my pocket knife. Terry eats with his hands, licking grease from his fingers.

I always had campfires before him. He insists it’s better without.

He’s right, and I hate him for it a little. Dead quiet. Stars through splotched clouds. Lightning flickers at the edge of vision. Rain overwhelms the scent of rendered fat.

I wake. He’s still alive.

After dark, we wedge our tent between sleeping fifth-wheels. A family grills hotdogs over burning plastic. A man backs his rented RV into a stone bathroom until the roof peels off. His family shouts “Almost there!”

Quiet, just crickets, the occasional door slam, and air slowly leaking from Terry’s mattress.

In the morning, half the mattress is flat, the other half juts up and slaps me when he moves. I growl. He apologizes.

I don’t know what killed him. I didn’t go to the funeral. Didn’t send flowers. Didn’t call his wife. Didn’t cry. Hundreds of others did.

I wasn’t busy.

Terry organizes a meetup with some friends he made back east at their new home in Salt Lake. They offer a place to sleep and shower.

He leads the conversation at dinner. In group settings he speaks with a rapidity and word volume that makes my head hurt. East Coast vs whatever kind of Southerner I am. He’s always been like this–loud, relentless, charming.

It takes me most of the dinner to calibrate and find my rhythm.

I have a hard time remembering his face.

Realize I can’t really remember anyone’s face.

There are no other cars on the road. No moon. Only black void outside the beams of our headlights. The desert has swallowed us.

A sign leaps out of the black: GOOSENECKS STATE PARK — FIVE MILES. The road pulls us there.

No park office. No speed bumps. Just a parking lot and a proto-pavilion—four rusted poles stabbing the sky. Two other cars: a station wagon missing a wheel, camping here for a while; a white ’70s panel van with bubble windows. The suspension sagging under the weight of all the dismembered bodies inside.

We loop the lot, wincing each time the tires hit a sharp rock. I keep expecting him to say “It’s not so bad,” but it never comes. We drive back up the throat of the desert.

We’re both exhausted, but neither of us wants to be eaten by cannibals.

“That wasn’t my best pick.”

What’s wrong with you if you don’t feel anything?

What the fuck kind of person are you?

We lay under the stars. The air is filled with sulfur from nearby pools and geysers.

Terry points and does his best Foghorn Leghorn impression. “That there constellation we call Cinderblock. And that one over there is Tree Stump.”

We spend the next hour fleshing out the Southern Northern sky together. Months later I get a framed version of it in the mail.

I text him to say thank you. He asks when he can come visit.

I think about putting my hand in the flames on the stove top, just to make sure I have a working nervous system.

Little shacks dot the road through Monument Valley, each advertising: REAL INDIAN JEWELRY. They are a wonder of carpentry, built with the exact minimum of 2x4s to stay upright.

We stop at one so Terry can buy a ceramic turtle and some “buffalo” jerky.

Further on, a wall of black rain fills the valley to the Kaibab Plateau.

“Is it weird that my brain really doesn’t want me to drive into this?”

“Nah, seems reasonable.”

We cross into the wall and pea-sized hail blasts the car. I consider pulling over, but don’t want to get washed away in a flash flood, so white-knuckle us through the storm. It seems to take hours. The clock says it was twenty minutes.

Terry’s turtle is on the dash above the clock, a tiny smile on its face. I pick it up. The exposed glue of its “Made in China” sticker clings to my thumb.

Terry says, “Good job.”

Think about reaching out to mutual friends. Not sure what the point would be.

‘Mutual’ is overstated. They’re Terry’s friends that I happen to have met.

We lay on top of our sleeping bags, too humid to sleep. Eventually I drift off. A loud gurgling wakes me. I stare at nothing, resigned to misery. Terry is faster on the uptake.

“We put the tent on top of a sprinkler.”

We climb out and pull the tent off the sprinkler head. It sprays the tent wall, cooling the air a few degrees, drawing mosquitoes that fill the tent.

Terry wrestles out of the tent door and sits at the picnic table staring into the night.

I follow to check on him.

“You OK?”

His mouth opens, but no words come out. He huffs, shrugs, eyes on the dark.

I say, “Sorry.” We listen to water hit the tent long after it stops.

My wife says, “You should go to the funeral. He was one of your best friends.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Snapped shut like a bear trap. Immediately feel bad for growling at her.

“Can you pull over?”

“What? Why?”

“Because corn.”

Terry disappears into the green stalks.

He’s gone too long.

He returns with a single, industrial-grade ear of corn that he holds out like a proud parent.

It’s not nothing. Jealousy, maybe? Not numbness. 

Buffer overflow?

At the airport we shake hands.

He says, “You’re very kind to the people you don’t hate.”

He was wrong.