Authors: Astrid Lee Donovan
“Do it again,” she hissed. He complied with a slap that stung her just slightly.
“Harder,
fucker!
” He slapped her with his palm on the other side, a slap that seemed to coincide with the burgeoning rays of dawn.
She tilted her head down and fixed her teeth into his bottom lip, so hard it felt as if she was going to bite through. He forced her ass down and felt the sticky pangs of sweat merge their bodies together. His hips crashed into hers to emphasize their union, solidifying it with a smacking thud that grew more rapid, more violent with each thrust. Samantha’s heart was practically leaping out of her skin, and she felt herself dissolve into a liquid gel as she came.
She tumbled back onto Dez’s chest, blissful and exhausted. She slipped her t-shirt back on as they shared a cigarette and peered outside at the soft grey dawn peeking in through Charlie’s half-broken vertical blinds. Soon, the early morning bakery trucks would be clomping down the wide streets, warily commandeered by wizened but blearily hungover drivers.
Saturday had come, and neither Dez nor Samantha had any idea what Sunday would bring.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dez and Samantha had only been staying at Charlie’s for less than a week when they realized that there was a little more than seventy dollars in total between them. At the rate they were burning through the meager savings Dez had brought with him, they knew it would be only a week—or two, if they could stretch it—before they’d be flat broke.
They each wondered how they burned through more than $100 in five days. It didn’t take long to figure out. First was Samantha’s new wardrobe. True, she didn’t require anything too glamorous. But since she came here with only the clothes on her back, Dez felt indebted to purchase her a new ensemble—even if it was fresh off the racks of Woolworth’s. Then there were the late night juke joints and fish fries they insisted on taking Charlie to, out of both gratitude and necessity since he only owned a hot plate and a two-burner stove which barely functioned. But mostly, they drove -downtown, uptown. Late night drives out to Hermann, where they could watch the sun rise up over the Missouri River. It was a luminescence so serene, it almost felt threatening. They’d park the car and fuck along the banks, exploring the strange security they felt entangled in one another, their limbs locked and their eyes scattering to a million different fields of vision without ever looking away from each other. But as soon as they were back on I-44, they’d feel that same alien hostility and dread beaming through their open windows, as if nature itself was inherently uncertain.
They knew they couldn’t stay in St. Louis much longer. There was a foreboding and unspoken sense they both felt each time they returned to the city, and suffered it in a silent, mutual anxiety. It certainly wasn’t Charlie, who was congenial as always even if there still remained the ramparts of sadness and regret he shut himself in. It was the city itself. It rejected them like a body rejects toxins. But they sure as hell couldn’t go back to Tulsa. And at this point, they sure as hell didn’t want to.
It was on one of those late night treks that Dez had an idea. They had stopped in a town called Villa Ridge, consisting mainly of ramshackle old houses and the odd silo or two. It boasted the only gas station for the next twenty miles, and upon pulling up Dez couldn’t help but notice the attendant fast asleep inside. Even after honking his horn several times, it took the rail-thin and slow gaited clerk several minutes to lumber to the car. As he did, his blubbery lips good-naturedly drawling out a cheerful “What can I get ya for?” Dez couldn’t help but recognize his eerie resemblance to one of the inbred hillbillies in
Deliverance
—a film he saw only once when it came out, and still disturbed him to this day. He vowed never to go back to the South, no matter what. But this wasn’t the South. This was, after all, the gateway to the East.
Jesus, they must breed like viruses
, he thought.
“Five dollars, regular.”
“Pay inside.”
Dez followed him in and handed a twenty at the register, while the wraithlike clerk seemed to fumble for a good minute returning his change to him. “Uh, three fives if you don’t mind.” He peered in while the clerk left the register wide open. He couldn’t believe how stuffed to the brim it was with every denomination imaginable. Dez estimated that there had to be at least four hundred dollars in that register alone; and in all likelihood, much more. “Aren’t you concerned about having all that money on you so late at night?” he asked, pretending to make small talk.
“What you mean?”
“Well, I’m from the city. Typically, most stations won’t carry more than fifty on them late at night. Security risks - y’know? Not that I’m trying to frighten you, mind you.
“Never had no trouble before, and I reckon I been workin’ here for twenty years now. ‘Sides, my daddy says he can only bring it to the banks on Monday morning. Don’t trust me to.”
Dez couldn’t believe his luck. Out in the middle of nowhere, and this dim-witted sack of missing chromosomes and a first grade education was practically inviting him to come back and rob the place. He didn’t even seem smart enough to carry bright on him; still, he’d have to pick up a few more rounds of bullets just in case. It seemed like taking candy from the proverbial baby.
“Kid, I think I found the solution to our problems,” he beamed ecstatically to Samantha when he got back to the car. He kissed her deeply and drove through the edge of night on I-44 with a silent smile on his face, refusing to elaborate. The moon seemed to dip down through the cottonwood trees as Samantha felt a tinge of worry for the first time in over a week.
*****
It wasn’t until Charlie returned home from work that Friday afternoon that Dez finally revealed his plan. He could barely even sleep that morning. He simply paced around the apartment like an impatient child, puzzling Samantha. Every time she tried to pry out whatever was on his mind, he’d change the subject. He’d crack bad jokes, launch into bizarre tangential monologues and make awkward attempts at flirtation with her that left her neither aroused nor amused, but concerned. She had only seen behavior like this when she was living with Randy, and his friend John would come over after spending three nights on speed. But Samantha had been with Dez the whole night. Even throughout the morning. She knew he wasn’t using again; and her speed freak instincts told her that outside of the rapidly increasing liquor bottles, Charlie’s house was as clean as clean can be.
When Charlie finally walked through the door, Dez gave him a bear hug and a kiss on the cheek. “The man of the hour! Just the man we’ve been waiting to see!”
“You been drinking already, Dez?”
“No, but I got a great idea that can net us all some money. Not a whole lot, but enough to help get Samantha and me on the road for a little bit. And out of your hair.”
“Aw, you know you guys ain’t been no trouble.”
“Yeah, well… never mind. Sit down, man. Sit down.”
Charlie’s face turned almost ashen when Dez revealed his big plan. And he wasn’t the only one. Even though she had only known Dez for a little over two weeks, she knew he had a tendency to fuck things up. He may rebound perfectly, but bad timing and bad luck seemed to follow Dez around like a neglected puppy. And she could tell from Charlie’s furrowed brow, that he registered that sentiment perfectly without even having to say a word.
“Y’all can go on ahead. But leave me out, man. Leave me out.”
“Naw, it’s not like that! This is fool proof. I’m telling you when I was in there last night and there was at
least
four hundred dollars. Probably more. By tomorrow late, there’ll probably be at least another hundred. All I need to do is put a little fear in the dude and I can walk straight out. Easy peasy.”
“What you need me for then?”
“Distraction. You’ll ask for directions, I’ll barge in and demand the money and Samantha can be our getaway driver.”
“I don’t drive,” Samantha reminded him.
“Even better! He’ll be too distracted by a pretty girl that he’ll be even more likely to just hand everything over. Charlie, you’ll be our designated getaway driver.”
“And what if this redneck motherfucker happens to be carrying a piece on him as well? Have you considered that?”
“I’m telling you, the dude probably doesn’t even have opposable digits! Come on, man… It’ll be the easiest two hundred you’ll ever make. We can even go 50/50 if you’d like.”
Charlie took another pull on his Benson & Hedges. “Y’know man… Ever since you stepped foot in this house I got a bad vibe off you. Something just don’t seem right. And it’s not something I can put my finger on. You always been crazy, Dez… but this time I think you crossed over the line into batshit insanity. Batshit in-san-i-ty,” he emphasized. “And I don’t even want to
get
into the fundamental moral quandaries of what you—”
“
Moral quandaries?
” Dez shrieked. “Moral quandaries? May I remind you that while we were in the rice paddies and the rat fields—against our respective wills, I might add—this perfectly capable redneck was sitting on his ass selling Hershey bars and Ne-hi sodas. May I remind you that when we got back, that pension we were promised just magically slipped out of our hands? And the only thing we had to look forward to was the fucking methadone clinic? May I also remind you that when we got back, you now have the privilege of serving some sixteen year-old kid mashed peas and Jell-o while wearing a sanitary cap? If you’re going to speak of moral quandaries, you might want to consider fair exchange.”
“It seems like a fair enough exchange that can be handled by two people, not three.”
“Consider it payback for your hospitality. Besides, $200… $250… That’s what, enough to cover a couple months rent for you, right?”
“Dez, if I decide to go along with this—and at this point let’s just say hypothetically—it ain’t for the money.”
“You’re speaking hypothetically, and not in terms of absolutes. That must mean, deep down, that there’s some part of you who recognizes opportunity when he sees it. So, let me ask. Hypothetically speaking, if it’s not for the money, then what would be in it for you?”
Charlie pressed his palms to his temple. “At this point Dez, I want you to get out. And I don’t mean out of my house. Or out of my life. I want you to get out of St. Louis, or Tulsa, or Kansas or wherever the fuck you’ll find yourself in this, as you once put it, ‘pitiless void of the heartland.’ I want you to start over - a new life. Leave the country, if you gotta. Begin all over again. One of us has to. I don’t have that luxury no more.”
There was a pause. The smell of burnt black coffee seemed to seep through Charlie’s ceiling from the upstairs neighbor. Outside, two houses down, an engine stalled and indecipherable drunken laughter could be heard through the flimsy plywood front door. The neighborhood outside swelled in through the vertical blinds. The city itself seemed like desire bruised and impractical, concentrated for one single moment in the sounds of an old man singing a lonely blues song off-key to himself.
Charlie and Dez poured themselves a tumbler full of bourbon each and sat sitting in stony silence. Time seemed to pass by with nothing to account for. The absence of words never needed to justify itself.
Samantha kissed Dez on the back of the head. They had to forget they weren’t normal people, because they still had something to forget.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was 2:30 early Sunday morning when the bronze Trans Am pulled into the parking lot of the Bluebell Fuel and Convenience Stop. The plan was deceptively simple. Dez was to bolt out of the car and loiter around the side for a few minutes. Charlie would wait in the car while Samantha made her way to the front door, looking distraught and lost. She wore a short, midriff revealing t-shirt on top of skin-tight jeans, and made certain that her hair was just ruffled enough, that she resembled a woman who had just gotten in a fight with her boyfriend and needed directions out of town and a sympathetic ear. With her mascara running and wet and her chapped lips trembling, she looked more like an insecure child actress lost in her own lies.
They took their time getting there. The tension was apparent and thick as cement, punctuated by Samantha’s frantic toe tapping and Dez’s chain smoking. Only Charlie seemed calm as they meandered down I-44, his thoughts seemingly collected and assured of a horizon far beyond the two-lane interstate explicable only to him. They drove in silence. Only the radio, tuned into a religious station—the only thing they could find on the air at that time—kept them companionship.
“For it is only in the bounty of life, brothers and sisters, not in poverty or ruination that we see his sacrifices bear fruit. HIS sacrifices! For does it not say in the Gospel of John, verse 10: ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly?’”
Everyone in the car chuckled at the irony.
As Dez predicted, the clerk was inside, deep asleep. He took his cue. He didn’t simply stroll out of the car; he oozed, with fluid stealth to the side of the station, one hand on the pistol beneath his jacket as he fumbled with the sheer black stocking around his face. He crouched by the icebox left unlocked outside and raised up his right thumb—the sign that the time was right for Samantha to make her approach. She took a deep breath, messed around with her hair some more and sidled meekly up to the door of the station. To her surprise, it was locked. She had to rap several times on the glass before the clerk, glaring with surprise, feebly unlocked the door.
“Help ya, ma’am?” he stood in the doorway, blocking her entrance
“Er, yeah… if I could buy a map and some soda. It’s been a hell of a night. Maybe you can help me out?” He gave a curt shrug and let her inside.
“I’m sorry to bug you so late, it’s just… my nerves are shot. I just broke up with my boyfriend—”
“Ain’t my problem.”
“Well, could you at least give me directions? I’m trying to get home… back to Tulsa.”
“Directions, huh?”
“Yes, sir. Just directions.”
“Well… you just go back… the different direction… from how you got—”
Dez barged in, his pistol waved high in the air and holding a plastic bag. “OK, everybody shut up,” he snarled. “The money. Open up the register and give me the money!”
“The… the money?”
“You heard me, slowpoke. The money. All of it… right now!” Dez shot at a refrigerator full of sodas to emphasize his point, the recoil almost sending him stumbling over himself into Samantha’s arms. The clerk fumbled trying to get the register open, his entire body shaking frantically while Dez paced back and forth. “Come on… come on, come on, come on!” he shrieked, his voice now strained in its pitch. The clerk finally got the drawer open while Dez leaned over the counter and began scooping up the bills violently. He shoved them into the bag, never once keeping his gun trained off the trembling jaw of the attendant. Satisfied he finally scooped up every last dime, he clenched the sack and took Samantha by the arm, dragging her to the door. They were almost outside to the curb when she turned behind her.
“Dez, look out!”
They ducked just in time. The sound of a buckshot echoed through the store before carelessly cracking one pane of glass and depositing in a metal trash barrel outside. It may have been a lame shot, but they heard the click to reload. In that fragile second, time and matter seemed suspended like a stalactite. Twenty-nine years of rage and disgust sprang up from the marrow of Dez Cawley’s bones. He saw a vivid riot of red flood his eyes and heard a ringing in his ears that descended from another world; a primordial world, bubbling over with vitriol and instinct, seething and burning in his bloodstream. In that frozen moment, he could taste the open throat of finite existence and knew he had no choice. He pivoted on his heels and leaped up, seeing himself born again in the torrid waters of a freedom he leapt into, jettisoning himself of both sensation and ego.
The shot hit the clerk square between the eyes. It was a clean shot, tantalizingly pure in its execution. Dez didn’t even hear himself cry out. He didn’t even hear the frantic honking of Charlie’s horn. He didn’t even see the headlights of the Chevy Impala which had just pulled into the parking lot some five seconds earlier until he got to the front door, leaving behind a stunned Samantha.
Dez raised his pistol and fired three rounds of the pistol into the windshield of the Impala, neither knowing nor caring if he hit his target. He clutched his bag and marched stone-lipped into the passenger street of his Trans Am, heedless of Charlie’s scowl.
Samantha limped quickly after him, her entire body shaking in horror—and fascination.
*****
The Trans Am headed west on I-44 for three miles before Charlie got his nerve up to speak. “You… stupid…
FUCK
,” he snarled. He repeated the epithet, and leaned on the horn. The highway was deserted at that hour. Not even the moon hung in the sky. “I should’ve known better than to open the door for you that morning. I always get a bad, bad feeling around you, Dez. A bad, bad feeling.”
“Had no choice,” Dez replied detachedly. “Self defense. A matter of saving all of our asses.”
“Self defense? Self defense?? That motherfucker couldn’t shoot straight to save his own life—a life that’s now been wasted thanks to a fuck up like you. Speak nothing of the other car you shot out. I’ve got a good mind to leave you motherfuckers by the side of the highway and head straight back to St. Louis. Last thing I need in my life is this shit!”
“Too late. You’re already an accomplice. The last thing you need is the cops back in St. Louis looking for a bronze Trans Am headed east. Drive.”
“And how you know they ain’t looking for a bronze Trans Am heading west?”
“Don’t. That’s why we’re taking our chances. Drive.”
“Fuck you!”
“Drive.”
“You tell me to drive one more time—”
Dez raised the pistol towards Charlie. “I’m telling you now. For both of our sake. For all of our sake. One. Last. Time. DRIVE.”
Charlie’s face turned pale. His brain seemed to be fueled by pure adrenalin at this point. It was the same chemical wavelength all three of them tuned into mutually; a wavelength that felt like the numbing kiss of ice in their brains. Charlie knew that Dez would never consider shooting him.
Or would he?
He had seen a side of Dez that was so far removed from the frightened, shivering kid from Lawrence he huddled with in the fields of Khe Sanh that he could barely recognize him. He saw a man who seemed possessed of an inner velocity and orbit that was solely his own, without regards to any other person, place or thing. A man who was so attuned to his target that he seemed to become the bullet itself.
At the same time, Charlie knew that he was stuck with him—with the both of them, for that matter - for better and worse; in sickness and in health.
Until a twenty-year bit in Leavenworth do they part.
A-fuckin’-men
, he thought.
“OK, cool it. Dez, man… it’s me. Charlie. We’re brothers, OK? I love you. I’ll drive, OK? Just… keep cool. Let’s see if we can finally get some music on. Help us to calm down.” Charlie flipped on the radio.
“But there are seasons, brothers and sisters. All in due time. There’s a correct time and a correct place in the eyes of the lord. All in due time. You know, brothers and sisters… just the other day, I heard a popular song on the radio, and would you believe it quoted Ecclesiastes? ‘A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up’…”
Charlie flipped the radio back off. “Maybe we’ll just wait a little while until something comes on. Man, but what I wouldn’t do for a drink right now.”
Dez lit a cigarette for him and then for himself. “All in due time, Charlie. All in due time…”
“I think it’s safe to say tonight hasn’t worked out quite as smooth as you promised.”
“Matter of circumstances, that’s all. We’re alive, aren’t we? And we have the money.”
“Yeah, but at what cost?”
“No different than shooting at the Cong. Only difference is we’re civilians now. And we’re acting on our own behalf. Free will’s not always the safest option.”
“Actually, there’s a pretty substantial difference, Dez. You shot an innocent man.”
“Hardly innocent. He shot at us first.”
“That justifies taking his life?”
“It’s a question of survival. What was the value of his life, anyways? Thirty years less of some hillbilly twiddling his thumbs and playing with himself? Tomorrow, there’ll be some other hillbilly to take his place - and another, and another - maybe even more ugly and even more ignorant. They’re the sort of people who will know peace only because time will forget them. No different than the same kids we grew up in high school with—the same ones who became bankers or car salesmen or politicians for that matter. Sensation and action rarely have any logic behind them until after the fact. Sometimes, simply surviving is its own justification… regardless of the aftermath. And that’s something that’s not going to be changed by last rites or a fucking box of Kleenex.”
“And if I ratted on you?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Hypothetically speaking—”
“There’s no hypotheticals. No absolutes, either. There’s only potential and adaptation. And most people don’t have any room for either.”
“So the end justifies the means?”
“Sometimes, justification isn’t necessary. Maybe meaning isn’t, either. There’s only action and reaction. Leave interpretation to wiser people than me and you. That’s what they get paid for, isn’t it?”
“So what’s to separate us from animals?”
“Honestly? Very little. Realizing that we’re going to die one day’s probably about all. Might feel different if I was a water buffalo or a houseplant. Might have to wait for reincarnation on that one. Ask me then,” Dez chuckled to himself.
“You realize that none of us here tonight can ever go back.”
“Go back where?”
“Home.”
“Charlie, you and I haven’t been able to go back home for a long time.”
“That’s what frightens me.”
“Probably only one thing you need to be frightened of. That’s yourself.”
“Jesus, that’s rich. You pull that off a greeting card?”
“You keeps assuming that there needs to be an answer for everything. Justification. Purpose. Sometimes, accidents happen. No way of explaining or rationalizing them. Same thing happens in biology. It’s called evolution. Don’t recognize it until after the fact. Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong. It simply is. Accepting it or denying it isn’t going to change the fact. That 12-gauge could’ve torn a hole straight through my back if he had been just a little quicker. Fact is, it’s an accident I’m here with you in this car right now. I’m grateful, even if you might not be. That doesn’t mean the sun wouldn’t rise in a few hours if the son of a bitch had better aim.”
“Dez, let me ask you something I’ve been meaning to know.”
“What’s that?”
“With all the money you was pulling in dealing, how come you never bothered to install an 8 track player?”
The Trans Am barreled forward down I-44 along the onyx edges of the night.