The title refers to the town in southwest Wyoming. The narrator, his girlfriend, his young daughter (who is not the girlfriend's daughter), and a pet dog are on their way to Florida from Kalispell, Montana, when their stolen car breaks down just outside of Rock Springs. The main incidents of the story occur at a trailer park on the edge of town and then later at the Ramada Inn of Rock Springs. The trailer park adjoins a gold mine and was built by the mining company for the temporary workers who have come to Rock Springs for the high wages. Besides the trailer park, the mine and its wandering workers are responsible for a bustling prostitution trade in town--on the cab ride from the trailer park to the Ramada Inn the cab driver complains about it and mentions that he almost had ignored the narrator's phone call, so sure was he that it was more prostitution-related business. The story, only 26 pages of pretty big print long, is "about" a lot of things, one being the American West circa 1985.
Here is the first paragraph:
Edna and I had started down from Kalispell, heading for Tampa-St. Pete where I still had some friends from the old glory days who wouldn't turn me in to the police. I had managed to scrape with the law in Kalispell over several bad checks--which is a prison crime in Montana. And I knew Edna was already looking at her cards and thinking about a move, since it wasn't the first time I'd been in law scrapes in my life. She herself had already had her own troubles, losing her kids and keeping her ex-husband, Danny, from breaking in her house and stealing her things while she was at work, which was really why I had moved in in the first place, that and needing to give my little daughter, Cheryl, a better shake in things.
The very smooth first-person narration is one of Ford's calling cards and is employed to great effect also in his most famous works, the series of novels about Frank Bascombe--The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land, and Let Me Be Frank with You. Here, notice how much information is passed, effortlessly, about certain kinds of people living a certain kind of life in a certain place. Later, on their way to Florida by way of Rock Springs, Edna will prepare cocktails in paper cups on the ledge made by the open door of the glovebox, eliciting from the narrator the casual observation that, while writing bad checks will land you in jail in Montana, consuming liquor on the front seat of your moving automobile is perfectly legal. The West!
But does the narrator's easy flow of words reveal more than he intends? (More than the narrator intends, not more than Richard Ford intends!) For example, the "which" in the last sentence refers to the reason he moved in with Edna, but, regarding the specifics: is the idea that his presence is protection against the marauding ex while she's away at work? or is the attraction that she is away at work--that is, has a job--something he currently lacks (therefore, perhaps, the bad checks)? or might it be both, one explaining the advantage on her side and the other, his? There's a lot going on, I think. The ex, Danny, is no prize, that's clear, but it appears that a court might have determined that he is a more fit parent than Edna--a lot fitter, since she has "lost" the children. Yet the narrator advances, as a reason for moving in with her, giving his daughter "a better shake in things." It doesn't seem wise. The narrator has at least a vague sense of this, for the story's second paragraph commences:
I don't know what was between Edna and me, just beached by the same tides when you got down to it.
The themes of the American West, constricted lives, life decisions that seem poor but almost necessary, indifferent or neglectful parenting, children made vulnerable by their stumbling parents--all adumbrated in the deceptively casual opening. I think you could also say that the story is about what is often called The American Dream. Does the phrase ever refer to anything beyond baubles, luxury possessions, financial ease? In "Rock Springs," it seems a fraud. The car the narrator steals, off an ophthalmologist's parking lot in Whitefish, Montana, is a cranberry-colored Mercedes, but his considerable troubles deepen when the luxury vehicle breaks down next to a literal gold mine that has spawned a huge trailer park and thriving local prostitution industry.
It's dusk. The narrator pushes the stolen Mercedes into the trees as Edna steers. When he can't push the car farther, he leaves it to sink on its tires in the soft sand and heads into the trailer park to call for a cab to bring them into Rock Springs. The interview he has with the trailer park resident amounts to an interlude, ambiguous and affecting.
He climbs the portable wooden steps leading up to the door of the first lighted trailer home. His knock is answered by an attractive, 60ish African American woman--the narrator calls her a Negro. Though her husband is at work at the mine, she invites him in to make his call. She is very polite, and, not wanting to arouse suspicion, he lies politely about the details of his predicament. Though he of course has no intention of calling a tow truck, he looks up towing companies in the phone book--it's the 1980s!--she gives him so that he can remember a name and tell the cab driver a plausible lie that might also allay suspicion. It's more pleasant than he expected in the trailer home. It looks comfortable, lived in, there is the smell of a nice dinner cooking on the stove, kid toys on the floor--the narrator compares it favorably in his mind to other trailer homes he's known, another detail: he has known trailer homes. When he expresses admiration, she observes that the home is owned by the company. Not everything is well here, either. The toys are for a young boy who lurks behind the woman, not speaking, because, it develops, he can't: "special needs," we say. His father, the lady's son, is deceased, and his mother abandoned him, so grandma and grandpa have stepped into the breach, at least temporarily. They are from Rockford, Illinois, and are going to be in Rock Springs for three months, making good money at the mine before moving back to Illinois. You piece this all together from the conversation they have, and the effect is like a variation on a theme in a musical work. It's all there: struggle, trouble, vulnerable children, instability, rootlessness, everyone from somewhere else, a meeting in Rock Springs between the small-time crook from Kalispell and the dignified woman from Rockford, she looking forward to a return home and him on his way to Florida, trying to stay a step ahead of the law and the prospect of doing so dimming. The stolen cranberry Mercedes sunk in sandy soil among trees off the roadway will be discovered in the morning.
When the narrator gets back to the road, the cab is already there and Edna and his daughter and their little dog are waiting. The cab driver's complaint about local social conditions includes that motel rooms in the boom town are exorbitant and he offers to take them some place reasonable. The narrator, however, opts for the Ramada Inn, on the theory that the police always check the dives first and, anyway, it's been a hard day and he wants to be comfortable. Once in their room, the story moves quickly to its conclusion. The exhausted little girl falls asleep even though she hasn't eaten all day. Tired of motels and stolen broken cars, Edna announces her intention to buy a Greyhound ticket back to Kalispell in the morning. The narrator gently remonstrates with her--it seems he's crushed, or would be, if he weren't so accustomed to disappointment. But he has to go on. He'll need a car tomorrow, so a new crime has to be committed. When it's very late, and Edna has fallen asleep on the last night of their life together, he leaves the room to scout out the cars parked in the lot, and the story ends with another--hard to describe, but evocative, modulated expression of yearning, similar to what happened at the trailer home, the details mirroring his own but suggesting circumstances less unhappy:
I walked over to a car, a Pontiac with Ohio tags, one of the ones with bundles and suitcases strapped to the top and a lot more in the trunk, by the way it was riding. I looked inside the driver's window. There were maps and paperback books and sunglasses and the little plastic holders for cans that hang on the window wells. And in the back there were kids' toys and some pillows and a cat box with a cat sitting in it staring up at me like I was the face of the moon. It all looked familiar to me, the very same things I would have in my car if I had a car. Nothing seemed surprising, nothing different. Though I had a funny sensation at that moment and turned and looked up at the windows along the back of the motel. All were dark except two. Mine and another one. And I wondered, because it seemed funny, what would you think a man was doing if you saw him in the middle of the night looking in the windows of cars in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn? Would you think he was trying to get his head cleared? Would you think he was trying to get ready for a day when trouble would come down on him? Would you think his girlfriend was leaving him? Would you think he had a daughter? Would you think he was anybody like you?
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