West is Tricky This Time of Year

When Soloman Falls quit his job, sold off his things, and loaded his dented Honda Civic with everything he had left, he knew one thing for sure- he was going west.

The plan was simple. California. Beaches. Maybe find work on a fishing boat or in some sleepy surf town. Find new people who didn’t know him, didn’t care about who he’d been before. The GPS said two and a half days, but Soloman wasn’t racing a clock. He pointed the car to the sunset and started driving.

The first day felt right. Podcasts kept him company. The flat Midwestern fields blurred into the window. He passed towns with names he forgot the second he left their city limits. At a truck stop outside Kansas City, he bought a plastic-wrapped sandwich and a coffee that tasted like burnt rubber. He slept that night curled up in the back seat, lulled by the metallic tick of the engine cooling.

By the second day, the car started making a sound. A thin, high-pitched whine that rose when he accelerated. He ignored it, turned the music up. West, he reminded himself. Always west.

Somewhere near the Colorado border, he missed a turn. At first, he didn’t realize it. The landscape grew rougher, steeper. Towns thinned out until it was just him and the mountains. His phone lost service. The GPS froze, endlessly recalculating.

He found a gas station, half-collapsed, with one ancient pump. An old man sat out front in a folding chair, wearing a denim jacket and a smile that looked stapled to his face.

“You’re off the main drag,” the man said, squinting up at Soloman.

“I’m headed west,” Soloman said, as if that explained everything.

The man chuckled. “Well, west is a tricky thing out here.”

Soloman filled up and kept driving.

The mountains swallowed him. Roads twisted like knotted rope. He passed a weather-beaten sign that said "Silverpine - 24 miles." He didn't remember seeing Silverpine on any map. He thought about turning back but didn’t. He told himself it would loop around. Everything eventually curved back west.

Night fell. Cold crept in. His headlights barely cut through the dark. After another hour, the car’s engine coughed, shuddered, and died. Soloman coasted to the shoulder and sat there, his breath clouding in the frigid air. No cell service. No cars. Just black mountains towering over him.

He started walking.

A mile later, he saw lights. A small town, hidden in a valley. It didn’t look real. More like a diorama, frozen in time. He followed the road down.

The town had one main street, strung with dusty Christmas lights even though it was April. Storefronts with names like "Miller's General Store" and "Barbara's Diner." No chain stores. No fast food. It looked like a place that had been forgotten, left to weather and memory.

At the diner, a woman about his age, wearing a faded flannel shirt, poured coffee behind the counter. She looked up and smiled without surprise, as if she'd been waiting for him.

"Bad luck on the mountain?" she asked.

Soloman nodded, too tired to explain.

She slid a mug across the counter. "First one's on the house."

He sat down. The coffee was strong and scalding. It felt like life returning to his fingers.

"You passing through?" she asked.

"I’m heading west," Soloman said, out of habit.

She smiled like the old man had. "West is tricky around here."

Soloman stayed the night in a room above the diner. Just for the night, he told himself.

Morning came gray and silent. He walked the town. Dogs roamed loose. Kids played in the cracked parking lot of the school. Everyone he met greeted him by name, though he never introduced himself.

At the garage, a man in coveralls looked under the hood of his Civic and shook his head.

"Engine's shot. You’d be better off selling it for parts."

Soloman didn't have the money for a new car. He didn’t have any plan beyond "west."

"We could use another pair of hands at the diner," the woman — Barbara, he learned — said when he told her.

Just until he could figure something out, he told himself. A week, maybe.

The week stretched into two. Then a month. Soloman got used to the slow rhythm. Early mornings, serving pancakes and eggs to the old men who sat in the same booths every day. Afternoons fixing up the leaky roof of the diner. Nights sitting by the river with Barbara, drinking cheap beer and talking about nothing.

He stopped checking the maps. He stopped thinking about California. About the job he hated. About the apartment he’d left behind. About the person he’d been.

One night, watching the stars scatter across the ink-black sky, Barbara nudged him.

"You found it," she said.

"Found what?"

"The place you were going."

Soloman thought about it. He’d set off looking for the ocean. For freedom. For something new.

He hadn’t known it would look like this. A crumbling town hidden in the mountains, where west didn’t mean anything, and nobody cared about where you came from.

He smiled. He leaned back against the cool earth.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess I did."

The river hummed in the dark. Somewhere, a dog barked. Above him, the stars spun in slow, steady arcs — not west, not east, just on and on.

Soloman stayed.

Years later, Soloman's hair went gray at the temples. Barbara's laugh got deeper, warmer. The town shifted and changed, but not much. A new roof on the diner. Fresh paint on the schoolhouse. A few new faces, a few lost.

Some nights, strangers still rolled into town with broken cars and confused eyes, clutching their phones, asking for directions.

"West," Soloman would say, smiling, pouring them coffee. "West is tricky around here."

And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — they stayed, too.

But not everyone who stayed adjusted. Some grew restless. They wandered into the mountains, chasing a way out. Chasing the "west" they thought they’d lost.

They never came back.

After a while, the town stopped looking for them. Silverpine had a way of choosing who it kept. Soloman had stopped questioning it long ago.

On the clearest nights, standing on the diner’s back porch, Soloman sometimes heard faint voices on the wind — half-warning, half-lament — and he’d smile sadly, sip his coffee, and whisper back-

"West is tricky around here.”