Roger felt no need to recount his experience at the campsite and when Beth asked why he didn’t sleep in the tent, he just told her he was watching the campfire and fell asleep. Since he woke on the ground next to the smoldering embers of a small fire next to their own tent, he wasn’t sure it all wasn’t a dream. It’s not like he hadn’t had his share of those on this trip. He couldn’t explain the fire, since he didn’t remember building it. Behind the wheel, the top off and the wind blowing through at fifty-five, all the weird shit that happened since they left Nebraska was best forgotten.
Beth had picked up a few supplies at the souvenir shop where she got the hats and they were stopped beside a small river for a picnic. The sky was the lightest, brightest blue. The desert was so different from the green hills of Vermont. Roger was awestruck. A slight breeze did little to cool the one hundred degree air. The sparse trees and sundried scrubs were reluctant to rustle in the weak wind. Water gurgled over stones rounded by a millennia of erosion at a nearby river. The only sound to break the serenity was the crunching of their footsteps on the parched surface and the occasional caw of a large black bird perched atop a sole saguaro cactus, towering twenty feet over the desert.
Immediately after eating, Beth stripped down nude, grabbed a small package from the Jeep, and waded into the water. It was only waist deep, cold enough to keep a six-pack chilled if they had one and the current was more than enough to sweep away a small child. She waded in undeterred by the cold water or the uneven surface beneath her feet. She let out a slight squeak when the water reached her tummy but didn’t slow her progress.
Roger watched with pleasure and just a bit of anxious tension, thinking that any minute someone might come along. No passersby were near however and Beth took soap and shampoo out of the small pack. Roger joined her just as she dunked her head in the icy water. He wasn’t quite so brave as she. He timidly undressed then tip-toed across the same path to the edge, wincing and grimacing with every step on the hot rough ground.
“Don’t be a baby Vermont,” she called enthusiastically splashing him with both hands.
In a futile effort to shield himself from the frigid onslaught, he held his hands out in front of his chest. Then surrendered, realizing the futility of his efforts. He turned his back to her, arms held out, his back and neck arching back toward the water and splash. By the time he was able to scramble to his feet the current had taken him twenty feet downstream. Beth had washed and rinsed before he made his way against the force of the rushing water back to where she stood. She tossed him the pack with the soap and shampoo and left him standing in the water shivering. He hurriedly washed himself and scurried out of the water, where Beth tossed him a towel from the back of the car.
It was at least two hours before they got back on the road. The heat felt good after the cold bath, and for a while, lying in the sun just seemed right. Eventually they made love and then it was back in the water to cool off. They didn’t speak much during this time; he was still trying to make sense of the fireside chat with Storm Cloud. She was just happy to have Roger back. No demons, no nightmares, just sun and laughs and nothing but good times ahead.
As the afternoon passed, Beth began an endless monologue regarding Bobbie’s many skinny-dipping episodes. Surely, she had been trying to get Jack’s attention. Beth never understood why she felt the need to use shocking activities to get his attention. He was a busy man but he always made time for his kids. Of course Bobbie brushed her off with, “Sure Bethy, easy for you to say being Daddy’s little girl.”
Her stories about Bobbie were interrupted by the sight of a car on the shoulder of the road. It was big and red, the make of which neither recognized at first. When they got closer Roger said, “That’s the car from that Dukes of Hazzard movie.”
“Should we stop?” Beth asked.
“Sure, it’s not like we’re in a hurry.”
She stopped alongside the General Lee. On the opposite side a disheveled looking man with dark hair was holding the passenger side door open, screaming at nobody to, “Get the fuck out of the fucking car.”
Roger and Beth both craned their necks but could not see anyone else in the car.
“He’s crazier than you are, Vermont.”
Just then the crazy man noticed the Jeep and began yelling at them, “Hey, you two.”
Beth was not about to wait for the worst to happen and she sped away leaving the crazy man to grow smaller and disappear from her rearview mirror.
Scott Randall, looking into the car saw the bum, as filthy as ever. He was smiling up at Scott with a casualness that infuriated and repulsed him. It was a smile that was dotted with blanks and the teeth that were there were gray, or yellow, in fact they were about any color but white.
Scott grew angrier; he leaned in with the intention of hauling this prick out of the car and kicking the living shit of him. Yes, he was going to show this creep what he was made of.
Before he could get close enough to grab the filthy coat, his mind began to reason.
The coat. It’s mid-summer in Arizona and this prick is wearing a coat.
Immediately after that thought passed, a breeze wafted through the car, sending the rancid stench into Scott’s face. Scott recoiled, stepped back and tripped over some scorched vegetation, falling to the ground scraping both elbows on the hard pan that covered the landscape as far as the eye could see.
“Damn Scott, that looked like it hurt.” The grin had not faded, if anything it grew slightly broader.
“Listen,” Scott said looking up into the car. “I don’t know what it is you want from me, but whatever it is, I don’t have it.”
“If you don’t know what it is, how do you know if you have it or not?”
“I’m not in the mood for riddles, and I’m not in the mood for you, so get the fuck out of the car, and fuck off.”
“I used to be a lot like you, Scott. The last full year I worked, I pulled in two-fifty. I was better than everyone, if you had asked me I would have told you exactly that.” Then he took a golf ball of all things out of his coat pocket. He tossed the ball up, caught it, tossed it up, caught it again, and then tossed it at Scott who nonchalantly caught it in the palm of his right hand.
“Yep, two-fifty. That was when it happened. Do you remember, Scottie?”
“Remember what? What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was about nine years ago. I was visiting my little brother in Vermont. I went to try to convince him to come and work with me in Detroit. He was too good to be living, at best, a mediocre life. The only thing he had going for him was Millie and the kids. However, he said he was happy in Vermont. You ever been to Vermont Scott?”
Scott didn’t answer. He just sat in the dirt staring up at the man seated in his car.
“Anyway, it was winter and I’d taken my niece and nephew tobogganing at the park. While I was helping my nephew up the hill, I lost track of his sister Lisa. She had been coaxed up the wrong side of the hill by some teenage boys and sent whooshing down the snow covered slope and didn’t stop until she was right out on the middle of the pond. Then the ice gave way and she disappeared.”
He stopped talking and wiped a tear from his cheek. Scott looked on in horror at the hobo. His head shook slowly from side to side as though the mere gesture could shield him from anymore of the man’s tale.
“Those cowards ran right passed me when they fled. I grabbed the smallest one. He looked into my eyes. He was crying, just like you are now, Scottie.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Scott said, his voice pleading to be left alone.
“Scott, Scott. That was you I grabbed by the coat running from the park that day. You punks didn’t even have the guts to try and help the little girl.”
“Nobody could have helped,” Scott screamed back. “I told them to leave her alone, but they wouldn’t listen. Then when the ice broke, it was too late. There was nothing we could do. Nothing I could do.” His voice had trailed off to a whisper.
“I got a neighbor to take Roger home. I never left that park until they brought that poor little girl up. She was blue and her eyes were still open. I see that face every night in my dreams. Can you imagine that, Scottie?”
Scott buried his face in his hands, his shoulders jerking between sobs. “Would you just leave me alone. Just fuck off.”
“It got so I was afraid to sleep and tired men make mistakes. At work I made a decision, you don’t need the details, but three men died as a result of that decision. They were good men, with families and friends.”
He sat quiet for a moment picking at his coat as though he were removing pet hair. He probed in the pockets then examined his empty hands when they emerged. Scott continued to sob into his hands until the man continued. His voice had changed, not the sound of his voice but the tone he used.
“It wasn’t really my fault, at least people tried to tell me that. I knew better though,” the bum said. “You see, Scott, I didn’t think those men were as important as getting the job done and I was too damn exhausted to see the error I was making.”
Scott had finally regained his feet and stood on the spot where moments ago his ass had been. “What the hell does any of this bullshit have to do with me? The girl was an accident and you killing a few men is not my fault.”
“And that in a nutshell my friend is why I am here,” the bum said.
He went silent. Staring off across the horizon, extreme melancholy filled his expression. After a few moments, he blinked and returned his attention to Scott.
“Sorry about that, Scottie. Now where was I? Yes, yes, people, all people have something to contribute.”
“Anything you have or may have had is in the past means shit to me, now fuck off and leave the world to those of us who can still do something with it,” Scott shouted. He did seem remorseful while he listened to the story of Lisa’s drowning but had to get this prick out of his car and out of his life.
Scott had begun to step forward and lowered his eyes to make sure he didn’t trip over the same thing that caused him to fall backward. When he looked up again the car was empty. He was startled by the bum’s absence, almost as much as his presence had spooked him not long before.
“You are one loony fucker, Scott,” he told himself as he slammed the door shut. He could not bring himself to consider regarding him by a name. The Nightcrawler was no name for a man. Matt is a name, but was it his? Was there even a ”him” to give a name to? The biggest reason not to regard him with a name was the importance of not validating his existence. Better to be crazy than admit that creatures like that were part of his species.
Back on the road, windows down, the hot wind blowing through the car, Scott was still repulsed by the stink left behind by the bum. If he was not real, then how could he leave a smell behind? The flipside of that, if he was real, then how could he disappear into thin air? How could he have made it from Detroit to Arizona without a car? There is no way he could hitch, who would pick him up? Even if he got someone to stop, they would leave him standing at the side of the road as soon as they got a whiff of him.
Scott’s mind started to do laps around these questions. The speedometer slowed slightly, seventy, sixty-eight, sixty-three. He was completely unaware of his speed until a couple of kids in a rusted out pickup rumbled by, the engine thundering along unrestrained by any exhaust system. The noise from the V8 brought Scott back from his thoughts; the speedometer was now dipping below fifty.
Ahead, the sides of the truck bed wobbled violently, the rust-weakened steel barely able to hold them in place. Scott’s foot slowly depressed on the accelerator, and the Charger blew by the rust bucket like it was tied to a fence. He looked over at the driver on the way by and almost drove off the road. It was him again, the bum, driving the pickup. He stuck his tongue out at Scott, but it wasn’t a tongue at all. It was a nightcrawler, long, shiny and brown.
Scott’s foot hammered the gas pedal and in seconds the old truck was barely a spec in his rearview mirror. He replayed it over in his mind, the truck, the driver, the tongue. He was unable to resist and his skin crawled. The speedometer was steady at one hundred.
When the truck was completely gone from view his cell phone rang. He slowed to sixty, and rummaged for his phone in his pants pocket. He was anxious to hear a friendly voice, someone from the office, hell even Thomas would be an improvement over the bum. He found the phone, flipped it open and held it to his ear, “Hello.”
“Driving a bit fast Scottie, you’ll get yourself killed like that.” Scott’s face went ashen and he tossed the phone out the window. It was ‘his’ voice, how could he call him on the phone? Scott looked at the seat where the bum had been. If someone, anyone, had sat there why wasn’t that bag of chips crushed? But, if nobody sat there then why did this car stink like the street vermin from Detroit. His thoughts began to spiral in his mind like the twister. His fingers gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles went white, the muscles in his forearms burned and the veins in his wrists bulged. An involuntary scream welled up in his chest and exploded from his throat.