Vantage

Vantage is a roadside town on the Columbia River where Ben Givens’s hunting expedition is interrupted by his accident. First a practical stopping point on the drive, it becomes a place of enforced pause: its quiet landscape and deserted-looking streets sharpen Ben’s isolation as he abandons the journey and tries to find a way home.

Setting and River Landscape

As Kevin Lamont drives toward town, the road emerges from the shadows of talus buttes and the river appears held behind Wanapum Dam as a still, flat green lake. Mallards bob together in the bridge’s lee, while a magpie perches on a stop sign. The changed river is more than scenery for Ben: pointing upriver, he says he was born about thirty miles away, before there were dams. The view thus joins his personal history to a landscape transformed by impoundment.

Vantage itself sits behind venerable Lombardy poplars that serve as windbreaks. Its modest roadside amenities include Shell and Texaco stations, an RV campground, a general store, and the Golden Harvest restaurant. From the open, barren slopes crossed on the way in, the town offers a compact shelter of trees and services; it is a place where a traveler might stop, refuel, or arrange onward transport.

A Stop on Ben’s Journey

At the general store, Kevin pulls up beside a phone booth and gets out of the van. He tells Rex to stay, then points Ben toward the campground office as a place to rent a car. Ben accepts the offer with thanks. The exchange makes Vantage a temporary point of assistance: Kevin can help Ben reach a possible next step, but the responsibility for continuing the journey soon falls back on Ben.

After the accident, the town looks entirely different. With his forehead wound throbbing, Ben sees no one in Vantage; below him are a silent highway and river, while the immense eastern sky is cloudless. Nearby stones and grass appear vivid and sharply defined, but the distance dissolves into mirages and shadows. The contrast between immediate clarity and uncertain distance gives the setting the quality of Ben’s predicament: he can see the ground around him, but not an easy route forward.

The Expedition’s Interruption

Ben rests with Tristan at his feet and his hand on the dog’s muzzle, then leashes Tristan and Rex with Manila cord. He tries to keep moving against his growing lassitude, eventually carrying his rucksack and duffel uphill toward the campground. The effort to press onward gives way to a more consequential decision outside: with the dogs beside him and the autumn sun stippling the river, he recognizes that the accident has thwarted his expedition. Rather than spend time in a motel, he decides to get home, recuperate, and reconsider how to meet his end.

Vantage is therefore not the destination Ben intended, but the place where his original plan becomes untenable. He walks back to the highway with his bags and the dogs straining against their leashes, then tries hitchhiking—a practice he has not attempted in fifty-five years. Cars pass without stopping. He interprets the passing drivers as belonging to the world he once inhabited as a Seattle physician, a world now distant from his exposed position on the shoulder. The town’s apparent emptiness and the highway’s steady traffic converge in the final image of Ben stranded outside Vantage: surrounded by signs of movement, yet unable to secure a ride.