“I know,” she said. She smiled in an attempt to ease Scott’s mind but the tears in her eyes showed her true feeling.
“Listen,” Scott said. “Hitching is not safe for anyone but especially a pretty young girl like you. In that envelope is an open-ended train ticket to LA. My card is in there, too. Call me at the office and let me know when you’re getting in and I’ll make sure you have a ride. If you don’t have a place to stay you can stay in my guest room until you get on your feet.”
Ashley was overcome by his gesture and began to cry in big sobs.
“Hey, don’t go thinking I’m doing you some big favor. If you stay in my guest room, you will be working it off. I hope you can cook, and you better not be afraid of dogs because Max needs to be walked twice a day.”
She laughed through the sobs and he gave her a hug then left the room without another word.
Scott returned to the hotel, had a quick bite, and then went to his room for a shower. With a fresh change of clothes he was ready to get back on the road. He took little notice of the clerk while checking out. He took care of business, carried his bags to the car and drove off. The hotel was close to the highway and he was speeding west, on I-80 less than ten minutes later, the morning sun above the horizon, burned bright in his rearview mirror. The trees, pathetic as they were, cast long ghostly shadows on the ground along the highway’s edge. He turned the radio on but wasn’t listening; if he had been he would surely have changed the channel. Ashley had been listening to top-forty, Scott’s least favorite form of dribble. Well, next to rap that is. The perky drive time hostess played a song, took calls from the listeners, and did the news, the weather, and traffic. Hearing the traffic report put Scott in a cheerful mood. He actually chuckled. Traffic in Salina, Kansas at this time of morning was Old MacDonald’s tractor, Farmer Brown’s combine and a scattering of eighteen-wheelers out on the highway.
It was eight-thirty when the next traffic report came on, then a Britney Spears song began and that was all he could take. He shut it off and relaxed, listening to the wind rushing in the open window. The air was dry and considerably cooler than it had been. It felt fresh, and his left arm was chilled to gooseflesh resting out of the open window, but he didn’t bring it in. After the oppressive heat of the last few days, this was invigorating.
“She’ll be just fine,” he told himself, thinking of Ashley.
“I have absolutely no doubt of that,” said a voice from the backseat.
“Huh,” Scott uttered at the suddenness of the words coming from behind him. He looked in his mirror and there it was, the Nightcrawler, seated on the passenger side of the rear seat, smiling his yellow smile.
“Jesus,” Scott cried.
He spun around as if maybe it was a trick mirror, the seat was empty, had to be empty.
“Mornin’, Scott,” the bum said. He pointed to the front. “You’d better watch where you’re going, you’ll kill yourself.”
Scott turned his eyes back to the road, just in time to prevent the car from entering the median, and possibly the eastbound lanes. He jerked the wheel to the right correcting his position then looked back at the figure behind him.
“You really need to watch the road, Scott, or you will seriously end up dead.”
“If I die in here so do you, asshole,” Scott said with contempt. “How the fuck did you get in my car?” Scott was shaken, but was doing a good job of keeping his voice steady. “Never let them see fear, Scottie”, his dad would always say.
A slight laugh came from the backseat, “Scott, think about that for a minute. I am a homeless man from Detroit. How can I be in the backseat of this car? Now, if I can’t be here, then I can’t die here.” He was very calm, soft spoken and articulate.
“Of course you can be here. I can see you, and I can hear you. In fact, I’ve seen you all over the country. In Michigan, Indiana, Kansas. Hell, you might just as well stay in the backseat, at least there won’t be any surprises that way,” Scott retorted, trying desperately now to sound like he was in control.
“I can see that you’re getting upset. You have no reason to fear me, Scott.”
“How the fuck do you know my name?” Scott was getting more agitated by the minute, his efforts to stay calm failing, his voice getting noticeably higher in tone and volume. “And since you seem to know who I am, who the hell are you?”
“Who I am isn’t important, is it, Scott?” He paused briefly then continued. “If it were up to you, me and everyone like me would be exterminated, isn’t that right?” He was still calm but his dark eyes had become cold. “But if you must have a name to call me, why not Matt? Yes, I think Matt will do fine. After all I’m no more than a doormat for you to wipe your shoes on, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I sure as hell don’t know why you’re in this car, but I’m going to pull over to the side of the road and when the car stops you’d better get the fuck out.” There was an air of confidence in his tone, and he guided the Charger to the shoulder. “Now get the f…” The backseat was empty when Scott turned to banish his unwanted guest. He sat for a moment, took three deep breaths like he was practicing yoga relaxation. He began to guide the car back onto the highway when the thunderous roar of a truck horn brought him back to reality. Had he been a little quicker he would have become one with the bugs on the grill of that truck. His heart beat quickened and he checked for traffic, and then returned to the road. His breathing was hurried and shallow. The air was still cool and the nervous sweat on his skin made him cold.
Safely back on the road, Scott quickly accelerated. When he noticed Matt, the bum, the Nightcrawler, not in the backseat this time, but in the front next to him, dressed in the same filth he wore in Detroit, Scott flinched as though some unseen object struck him in the face. Of course, he would be dressed the same, Scott thought. It isn’t like he could just go to his closet and pull out a change of clothes for his field trip through Scott’s sanity.
Matt sat quietly looking through the windshield, his hands crossed in his lap, his dirt encrusted lap. He turned to Scott, smiling his yellow smile. At least the teeth remaining were yellow. There was something different about him though, it had taken Scott a while to realize it, but it was quite obvious now. The rancid smell that repulsed him in Detroit was not in the car.
“You don’t like me much do you, Scott?”
Scott’s jaw dropped, but no words came out. He had always been confident in his verbal skills, always able to meld into any type of conversation. Without a doubt, he could for sure handle an unfriendly attack, with jibes that would usually send his adversaries away with their tails between their legs. So why was it, that in the presence of this low life, he found himself at a loss for words.
“Well, no matter,” Matt continued. “I’m sure there are dozens of people, in every city across this great land that you find as revolting as me.” He paused to survey the scenery, and resumed not waiting for Scott to respond. “Yes, it is a beautiful country, isn’t it? I bet there are millions in this country who don’t deserve to ride in the same car as you. Don’t you agree, Scott?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? And why are you here?”
“Come now, Scott, it’s not just vagrants who don’t measure up next to you, is it? What about the welfare recipients, now there’s a group of people the world can do without, wouldn’t you say? They’ll for sure drag this nation down to a level it can’t afford to be at, am I right?” Matt spoke with clarity and intelligence. His tone and demeanor were more apt to be in any boardroom of any big company. Yet he was far from the CEO type. As far from it as anyone could be. “What about the mailman, the garbage man, store clerks, all useful people, but still not worthy to sit beside you, are they, Scott?”
“Would you just shut up?” Scott yelled. “Just shut the fuck up.”
“Such language and you being so upper crust, I would have thought more from you. Of course you didn’t mind spending a little, shall we say, quality time with that nice young lady in the parking garage, did you?”
“Listen, you prick, you leave Sarah out of this, and get the fuck out of this car.”
“A bit of a sore spot there, I see. Oh, by the way, Scott, you really should slow down There’s a state trooper just over this rise.”
Scott looked at the speedometer. It was at eighty-nine and climbing. He slowed to sixty-five, and just as the Charger crested the hill he saw a radar gun pointing out of the window of white four-door sedan. On the side of the car in black, KANSAS STATE TROOPERS.
“Well, it looks like you owe me the price of a ticket, don’t you, Scott?” Matt said, in a pleased with himself tone. “I was sure you were going to stop and ask the nice officer to take me away. Have you figured it out already, Scott?”
“Figured what out?”
“If you’re asking then the answer is no. So we continue. Where is it we’re going, anyway?”
“Where are we going?” Scott looked at him and laughed. “Where are we going? That’s rich. You invite yourself into my life, stow away in my mind and you don’t know where we’re going.”
“Oh, you can be so sensitive,” the bum interjected. “Why didn’t you wait for the pretty girl at the hospital before you left town? I’m guessing she’s sitting in that room crying her poor self to sleep. Of course, you don’t have time for her. She’s just a wanna-be-actress. Sure, she was handy to have driving the car so you could work, all the while ignoring her stories. She poured her heart out to you. What did you do? You tuned her out so you could take care of important business. You were dealing with serious issues like your dog, or this car, emails, and quarter-million dollar cars for the rich and famous. No time for Ashley’s life, is there? She would just be an unnecessary delay now, wouldn’t she?”
“What do you know about it?” Scott yelled. “What do you know about anything?” Calming his voice down a bit, trying to regain some control of himself, he continued, “You don’t know shit, you don’t appear to know how to use soap and water, and you sure as hell don’t know how to get a job.” A slight grin crept to the edges of Scott’s lips, feeling he had just scored a blow for the taxpayers of the world.
“And there you have it in a nutshell, I don’t have a job,” Matt said, his voice never wavering. He continued to speak like he was giving directions to a passing motorist. “Anyone in this world who does not get up and go to work every morning must be worthless.”
Scott sat quietly, his grin still in place, his demeanor now smug. The anxiety that had been building from the time Matt (or the Nightcrawler, or Stink Man, or whatever his name really was) had entered the car waned. Scott stared through the windshield, his head angled toward the left. He was determined not to look to his right. If he couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t hear him, then maybe, there was no him at all. He glanced at his watch; it was almost eleven. He checked the speedometer, just shy of eighty. He had no idea where he was, he had been preoccupied with the bum, but if he had been maintaining this speed all morning, he must be nearing Colorado.
A long silence had given him a sense that his encounter with Matt had ended. He started to take in the surroundings that he had missed from the time his company arrived. The landscape had become greener and the sky bluer. He wondered with skepticism, whether the air felt thinner. The oppressive heat of the prairies replaced by a comfortable, dry, seventy-something. He felt a relaxed calm settle in, making everything seem more beautiful, even poetic. The way the trees along the border of the fields swayed in the breeze, each leaf like a little hand waving at him, as if he were the Grand Marshal in the Independence Day parade. The long blades of grass swaying along the edge of the road reminded him of a wave making its way around a football stadium. The air even smelled cleaner than it did back in Salina.
Scott felt like himself again. He was young and strong and arrogant, yes even he considered himself arrogant. He attributed part of his success to that arrogance. It came in handy when dealing with the rich and famous who about cornered the market on arrogance. Scott inhaled deeply and with all the confidence he could muster, glanced at the passenger seat.
It was empty.
He chuckled aloud, of course it was empty, that bum was back in Detroit, probably standing on a sidewalk panhandling the whole time Scott imagined him sitting in the car with him.
The sight of the empty seat gave Scott the feeling of refreshing coziness that filled him with glee. It was a feeling that to Scott Randall compared only to a Labor Day weekend long gone. It was the last Labor Day before Gramps had the stroke. They had gotten up early that Saturday to go fishing. Gramps had an old rowboat behind the cottage. They paddled out to the middle of the lake. Scott had asked Gramps at least a hundred times why he didn’t get a motor boat. Gramps would just scoff, “Noisy contraptions scare all the fish away.”
They had been out on the lake before dawn. Scott sipped coco from his thermos while Gramps slowly rowed that old boat out across the golden water. The only motion on the surface came from the boat and the oars. The chill air hovering over the water, still tepid from the hot summer, brought a layer of mist that reluctantly parted, then closed up behind them as the boat glided serenely toward the sunrise.
The cool damp air sent shivers down the back of his neck. He remembered Gramps smiling at him after a shiver ran down his spine and with that smile a warm breeze blew across the lake, taking with it the goosebumps and the shivers. He smiled back at his Gramps, feeling safe and protected.