Life Expectancy

engine began to cough.
        From that point on, I intended to pursue a switchback ascent, thereby demanding less of the vehicle. Proceeding due north or due south, crossing the slope at ninety degrees to the gradient, would be suicide; the way was too steep, and the Explorer would sooner or later roll. But tacking left and right at cautious angles, we might neither stall out nor roll, and wend our way up as if following the architecture of a staircase.
        This strategy required caution and intense concentration. Each time that we switch backed I had to calculate, by sheer instinct, the angle of ascent that would gain us the most ground while putting us at the least risk.
        The terrain proved wildly irregular. Frequently, if I pressed forward the slightest bit too hastily, the Explorer began to rock side to side on the corrugated land, bouncing us roughly in our seats, gathering lateral momentum that on this hillside might topple it. More than once in my mind's eye, we went crashing to the bottom of the ravine, caroming from tree to tree like a pinball bouncing off flippers and bumpers.
        Sometimes I slowed to let the vehicle stabilize. At other times I stopped altogether, frightened by the way the steering wheel pulled in my hands. Pausing, I studied the forbidding landscape revealed by the headlights, making small adjustments in our route.
        When we passed the midpoint of our journey, I dared to believe that we would make it.
        Lorrie's confidence must have improved, too, for she broke the tense silence in which we had thus far ascended: "There's something I would have regretted never having told you if we died here tonight."
        "That I'm a love god?"
        "Guys who think they're love gods are arrogant twits. You… you're a snuggle puppy, but if I'd died without telling you that, I wouldn't have had any regrets."
        "If I'd died without hearing it, I'd have been okay, too."
        "You know," she said, "parents and children and love come in some strange combinations. I mean, your parents can love you and you can know they love you, and you can love them, and still grow up so lonely that you feel… hollow."
        I hadn't expected a revelation this serious. I knew it was a genuine revelation because I understood what her next words inevitably must be.
        She said, "Love isn't enough. Your parents have to know how to relate to you, and to each other. They have to want to be with you more than with anyone else. They have to love being home more than anywhere in the world, and they have to be more interested in you than in…"
        "Snakes and tornadoes," I suggested.
        "God, I love them. They're nice, Jimmy, they really are, and they mean well. But they live inside themselves more than not, and they keep their doors closed. You see them mostly through windows."
        The tremor in her voice grew as she spoke, and when she paused, I said,
        "You are a treasure, Lorrie Lynn."
        "You grew up with everything I wanted so bad, everything that I dreamed of having. Your folks live for you and for each other, for family. So does Weena in her own way. It's bliss, Jimmy. And I'm so damned grateful that you all let me in."
        Under her admirable toughness, under the armor of her beauty and her wit, my wife is a tender spirit and might have been a shy wallflower if she had not chosen, instead, to make herself into a survivor, and a survivor with style.
        Under my less than tough exterior, I am mushy. Mucho mushy. I have been known to cry at the sight of roadkill.
        Her words rendered me incapable of speech. If I had tried to talk, I would have teared up. Piloting the Explorer toward the crest, I dared not risk blurred vision.
        Fortunately, she picked up her next thread of thought and, with firmer voice, continued to weave the conversation without me. "You can't know what a joy it's going to be for me, Jimmy, to raise our kids the way that you were raised, to give them the gift of Maddy and Rudy and Weena, to bring them up in a family so close that they can find in it the deepest meaning of their lives."
        We were two or three switchbacks from the summit.
        She said, "We've never discussed how many children we're going to have.
        Right now I'm thinking maybe five. What about you-are you thinking five?"
        I found my voice. "I always thought three, but after that little speech, I'm