by Rawlin Cash
“Yes, sir,” Hunter said and didn’t waste another second.
He went straight to his bed and got the blanket. He put it in the back of the truck and drove to the bar and when he got there he ordered coffee instead of beer and waited. It was earlier than the time Sally Jane usually showed and he had to sit there two hours before she came in.
She was wearing a red dress cut above the knee and had a flower in her hair.
“Sally Jane,” Hunter said, getting up and meeting her at the door.
“Oh,” she said, as if she was surprised to see him.
“Come on. I’m sorry.”
She looked at him and around the bar. Her friends weren’t there. Hunter’s weren’t either.
“Let’s sit,” she said.
She had a beer instead of a spritz. Hunter had a beer too.
“So?” she said. “Have you given it any thought?”
“I got a truck.”
“You got a truck?”
“Yeah.”
“From work?”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you propose we do with a truck?”
He knew he had to be careful. She wanted what he wanted, and she wanted it as badly as he did, but she also didn’t want to be cheap. He had to make it seem proper.
“I thought we could go for a drive.”
“A drive?”
“Yes.”
“And the first country road we come to, you’re going to pull over and make a move.”
“No I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
“Unless we both feel good about it.”
“And why on earth would I feel good about being treated that way?”
“You wouldn’t.”
She nodded. “You’re damn right, I wouldn’t.”
They lit cigarettes and when they were done their beers were empty.
“You want another?” he said.
“I thought we were going for a drive.”
Hunter put ten dollars on the table. “All right,” he said.
He drove a few miles before turning onto a country road. The sun was setting and he pulled over in front of a pond. She put her arms around his neck and they kissed. She put his hand inside his pants and he wanted to go all the way but once he was fired up, she got coy again.
“This is no place for a girl to be going all the way.”
“Of course not,” Hunter said.
He let a touch of sarcasm enter his voice but she didn’t pick up on it.
“You’re going to have to take me somewhere,” she said.
“Like a hotel?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Hunter sighed. He’d never been in a hotel in his life. He didn’t even know what they cost.
“Only hotel I know of in this town is the Grand.”
“We can’t go there.”
“No kidding.”
“They know me there.”
“I know.”
She said nothing. He tried kissing her again but she stopped him.
“You’re going to have to figure this out, Rawlin.”
He sighed.
“I think there’s a blanket in the back,” he said.
She sighed. “A blanket?”
“Lets sit on it and watch the sunset.”
She nodded and he got a lot further in the back of the truck than he had in the cab. It was like their first night but before he sealed the deal she pulled back again. He knew she was as ready as he was. He could feel it on his fingers.
“What about we go back to my place?” she said.
“Your place?”
“You scared?”
“I don’t know. Does your daddy own a gun?”
Sally Jane grinned. “My daddy owns a whole case of guns.”
Hunter let out a weak laugh.
“Come on, I’m kidding.”
“Your parents going to be there?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
He shrugged. He didn’t ask why she hadn’t told him her house was empty earlier. “Let’s go,” he said.
He drove a little fast. He could already tell he was going to have the truck back late but he didn’t think the old man would give him too hard a time. When they got to Sally Jane’s house, Hunter looked right at her.
“What’s this?”
“My house.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s not that big.”
“What does your father do?”
“He’s a business man.”
“What business?”
“I don’t know. Finance.”
“Finance?”
“Yeah.”
“In Alliance, Nebraska?”
“You got a problem with me living in a big house?”
“I thought he owned Cadillac dealerships.”
“Who told you that?”
“No one, I guess.”
Hunter let out a low whistle. Three matching black Escalades were lined up in the driveway. The garage had four doors. The driveway had room for a car to turn at the end. The house looked like somewhere a president might live.
“You sure no one’s home?”
“There’s a fundraiser in Hemingford.”
“What kind of fundraiser?”
“Politics.”
“Is your daddy a politician.”
“He’s thinking of getting into it.”
Hunter sighed.
“What?”
“You’re going to get me in trouble.”
“Don’t be a chicken.”
“Your daddy’s going to run me out of town when he catches us.”
“He’s not going to catch us.”
“We do this in your house, sooner or later he is.”
Sally Jane shrugged and like a lamb to slaughter, Hunter followed her in.
The house was fancy. There were photos and portraits of Sally Jane’s family members. Lots of men in fancy suits at official events. It looked like there’d been a lot of politicians in her family. They always seemed to be cutting ribbons in front of crowds.
Hunter knew better but when Sally put her hand on his pants he would have followed her anywhere. As it happened, he followed her up the stairs and into the bedroom her father painted pink when she was six months old.
And that was where he found them.
Hunter never heard him coming. The car crunched down the gravel driveway. The man, all 320 pounds of him, lurched up the stairs. He wheezed his way into the bedroom, and when he opened the door, Hunter was on his back and Sally Jane was on top of him in what can only really be described as the sixty-nine position. She was the one facing the door, Hunter’s cock in front of her mouth like a microphone. Hunter was looking up at her pussy and had just smacked her ass when he heard her gasp.
He looked around her ass to see who was there but he already knew who it was. And when he saw the man’s face, he knew he was fucked. Well and truly fucked.
In trouble for his life fucked.
The man looked like an old, fat Rocky Marciano on steroids. He lunged for Hunter and got two hands on his neck while Sally Jane screamed hysterically. She leapt from the bed and disappeared and Hunter was stuck, naked, looking up at the face of a man who was so filled with rage that he would either kill Hunter right there on the spot or die himself of a heart attack while trying.
Hunter couldn’t breathe. He grabbed the man’s wrists and tried to pull them free. He tried to reach up to the man’s face.
He hit the man in the face and the grip loosened.
Hunter rolled free and leapt through the closed window of the bedroom, glass shattering everywhere. It cut him but not badly.
He was on the roof of the porch and he rolled off it and hit the ground with a thud that took the wind right out of him.
Sally Jane’s father yelled, “I’m going to kill you, you filthy little motherfucking piece of filth.”
Hunter was stark naked. He’d left his clothes in the bedroom but the keys to the tr
uck were on the dashboard.
He got to the truck as a scatter of buckshot hit the ground behind him. He pulled out of the driveway and was back at Sonny’s ranch in less than ten minutes.
It was two minutes before ten o’clock.
Eight
Hunter knew he had to get the hell out of town. You didn’t put your cock in the mouth of a man like that’s daughter and stick around to tell the story. The man had a look to him. It was a look Hunter had seen before. The guy who owned all the land around his grandfather’s farm had the look. The guy who’d come after Sherman had the look. It wasn’t the psychopathic look of a man who pulled the trigger. It was the cold, calculating look of the man who ordered the hit.
Sally Jane’s daddy was going to come after him and put him in the ground. No one would care. The man had money. He had power. He’d get away with a disappeared ranch hand who’d rolled into town less than two weeks earlier.
Hunter left the truck running. He went into the bunkhouse and the other guys weren’t there. Hunter knew where they were. They were at the bar, looking to get in the kind of trouble he was in now.
He didn’t have extra clothes so he stole some of Mercy’s. Wrangler jeans and a red and blue checked shirt. They were a good fit. He took a pair of cowboy boots, his father’s coat, and the Winchester.
He had some money in his pillow case and he took that.
Then he heard it. The sound of company.
He looked out the window of the bunkhouse and saw three trucks coming down the driveway. The lights crested the last rise like heralds of death rising above the horizon.
He didn’t waste any more time. He ran out to the truck, got in the driver’s seat, and gunned it straight into the fields. There was a road that led clear across the ranch and he burst through the wire fence he’d been hired to repair to get onto it. Then he picked up speed. The road surface wasn’t bad but there were some potholes. As his speed got up toward sixty, hitting them felt like they’d tear off an axle.
It was dark and the lights on the truck weren’t the best. A few times Hunter almost skidded off the road. He kept up speed and had a decent distance between him and the other trucks when he hit a pothole real hard.
He knew straight away he’d damaged a wheel.
There was no use denying it. Every second he kept driving was bringing the others closer. He jammed on the brake, slammed the truck into neutral, grabbed his rifle, and leapt out the door. The truck kept rolling as he got to his feet and made straight for the hills. He had about thirty seconds before the other trucks got to his truck.
Some guys got out and searched it.
Then flashlights came out and they started panning over the grass.
Hunter had about a hundred yards between him and them and he kept low. There was a stand of trees up on the high ground and he was tempted to make for them but he knew that’s where the men would be drawn too.
There was a moon.
He lay down in the grass and watched them.
“Get on out here, you dumb piece of shit,” Sally Jane’s father said.
He had five other men with him and Hunter could see the green glow of a cell phone at his ear.
More men would be there soon.
Hunter looked around. Apart from the trees, he didn’t see any other cover. And he doubted he’d make it to those. The men had fanned out around the trucks and they were well equipped. Some had shotguns, some had rifles. They all had high-powered flashlights that they panned over the grass in wide sweeps.
And then the beam of one of the flashlights passed right over him.
He held his breath.
The beam moved over him but stopped. Hunter took aim at it. It moved back onto him and the man holding it cried out.
“Hey.”
Hunter pulled the trigger of the Winchester and the flashlight shattered.
He scrambled away from the spot he’d been at but he was screwed. They were all coming in his direction, the beams of their lights all over him.
He had to make a decision.
Kill these men or take whatever they were going to give him.
And all this for a piece of tail.
His grandfather would have laughed. There was one constant piece of advice his grandfather had always given him. One thing that never changed, no matter his mood or the weather. He must have told it to Hunter ten thousand times. “Don’t let a kiss fool you. Never marry for love.”
Hunter was in a little dip in the ground that was giving him the cover of the shadow it cast. The lights missed him. But they wouldn’t for long. The men couldn’t see him but they’d see that there was a dip in the ground and they’d come looking. Hunter lay there very still and took up position with the rifle.
The men couldn’t have made simpler targets if they tried. They held lights, they were backlit by the high beams from the trucks. It was like they were tempting him to shoot them.
And he thought about doing it.
And then two more trucks crested the rise on the dirt.
Hunter thought it might be Sonny and Jim, or Mercy, Chet, and Joel, but it wasn’t. It was more of Sally Jane’s father’s men.
“Get out here you little shit and come get what’s coming to you,” Sally Jane’s father yelled.
Hunter had him in his sights. He had his finger on the trigger.
And then something happened he never saw coming.
Sally Jane got out of one of the trucks that had just arrived.
“Rawlin,” she cried. “Rawlin.”
He still had the taste of her on his lips. He still had the smell of her.
He couldn’t kill her father in front of her.
“Come out and they won’t hurt you,” she said.
Hunter knew it wasn’t true. You didn’t bring that many guys into the Nebraskan fields at night not to fuck someone up. But maybe they wouldn’t kill him. Not in front of her.
“Come out like a man, you piece of shit,” her father yelled.
Sally Jane wasn’t crying. She was braver than she seemed. The men were getting closer and it was only a matter of time before they found him. He either had to pull the trigger or give himself up. Those were the choices.
He got the father in his sights. He was the leader. Without him they might scatter. One bullet.
“Rawlin,” Sally Jane called out again.
“Here,” he called back. “Don’t shoot. I’m right here.”
He stood up and held out the rifle.
The men all light him up with their flashlights. Sally Jane’s father came up to him. He was carrying a rifle. He smacked Hunter on the mouth with the butt of it.
Hunter fell to his knees.
“This the boy?” he said to his daughter.
She walked up behind him and stayed a few steps back.
“Yeah that’s him,” she said.
Her voice was clear. Smooth as silk.”
“He forced you to do it?”
“Yes he did, daddy. He hurt me and I never saw it coming.”
The man looked down at Hunter.
“Boy, you know what the penalty is in this state for rape of a minor?”
“A minor?” Hunter stammered.
The rifle butt came back down on his face. Hunter’s vision blurred.
“Tell him what he did?” the man said to Sally Jane.
She looked at her father and then at the men. Then she looked at Hunter.
“You stole my childhood,” she said.
“Childhood?” Hunter said.
“Yes.”
“I met you in a bar,” he said.
“And you raped me.”
Hunter looked into her eyes. She knew what she was doing but she didn’t care.
“I never raped you,” he said.
She looked at her father and he nodded. Then she spat in Hunter’s face.
Hunter let out a quiet laugh.
“You laughing?” the father said.
Hunter looked up at him and said nothing.
> “You dare to laugh at a time like this?”
“Your daughter,” he said, “her tight ass was worth it.”
The man made to smack him again with the rifle butt. Hunter leaned back and dodged the blow. He rolled on the ground, turned away from the men, and got up, ready to make a run for it. A gunshot in the air stopped him.
“Don’t move another muscle,” the father said.
“Daddy,” Sally Jane said.
Hunter was standing still, his back to the men.
“Turn around,” the man said.
Hunter didn’t move. He was looking at the stand of trees in the distance. Cottonwoods. There was no way he’d make it.
“Turn around or I’ll shoot you in the back.”
“Go ahead,” Hunter said.
“Turn around,” the man said again, through gritted teeth.
“You want to shoot me in the back, go right ahead,” Hunter said.
“I will.”
“Coward.”
“Hunter,” Sally Jane said. “Look at me.”
Hunter knew it was a mistake but he turned around anyway. He didn’t care. If he was going to die he wanted to hear what she said.
When he turned, she didn’t say anything. She just looked at him and tears were falling down her cheeks. Then she looked at her father and nodded and the old man pulled the trigger.
The shot hit Hunter in the gut like a mule kick and he fell on the ground.
Sally Jane ran over to him.
“Leave him to the wolves,” her father said.
“Daddy,” she said.
And then the men dragged her back to the trucks.
Hunter watched them go, he watched the trucks’ lights recede across the fields, and then, seemingly all of a sudden, everyone was gone and he was all alone on the grass, bleeding out. He looked up at the moon. He realized it was full at the same time he heard a wolf howl in the distance.
He touched the gunshot wound. His shirt was sticky with blood. He rubbed the blood between his fingers for a second and thought he was going to black out.
“Never marry for love,” he said to himself.
It was his seventeenth birthday.
Nine
The army recruiter had a hard time locating Hunter on her system.
“You sure you were born in El Paso, Texas?” she said.
“Sure as I can be.”
“I don’t have it.”
