Killing Time
Page 10
and as she started back to her table, turned and said, "Thanks for the dance and the beer, Gaston. I need to go get my shower and head to the confines of my sleeper cab."
When she had finished speaking, he waved her back and put his arm around her shoulder, pulled her close and said, "You sounded as if you're tired of the showers in truck stops and sleeper cabs. Are you?"
"Gaston, I've been on the road now for nine days. I abhor truck stop showers. My sleeper isn't bad, but here in the south it gets damned hot inside, even at night."
"I see. And I understand. I work in the Gulf on a rig and we have the same problem at times although luckily our quarters are air-conditioned. What would you say if I offered you a full bathroom, a queen-sized bed, and a full breakfast in the morning?"
"I'd say you were a man looking for a horny girl for the night. I'd also say, I think you've found one."
"My truck is the white Dodge Ram parked nearest to Pump Ten. Get your clothes and essentials and meet me there in ten minutes. Just throw your stuff in the bed. It's clean. How about your friend? What will she do?"
"No problem with Mazie. She's leaving. She had her rest period starting at noon today, so she can drive again at eleven. She's heading to Jacksonville where I just came from." He left her walking toward Mazie when he went to tell Eloi he was leaving. Eloi was ready to go home anyway and he told Gaston goodbye and wished him luck.
One the way to Jeanerette, she told him she was from Hardin, Montana, east of Billings on Interstate 90. The company she drove for was in Billings and she had been a driver for six years. She had been married once, he ran off with the neighbor's wife her first year on the job and she had no time for romance with the job she had as a long-haul driver. She bragged that her company was noted for the numbers of women drivers it had on the road. She let him know that the southern route was the most profitable and that as the economy improved, more of the women drivers would be stopping in Breaux Bridge. He asked, why Breaux Bridge and she said the company had a national contract with the truck stop for servicing its trucks
He told her that the house wasn't much to crow about but was clean, comfortable, and paid for which made it Paradise for him. He parked behind the house, they entered through the kitchen and as he had said, it was clean, neat and with older farm houses, extremely large. He led her upstairs to the guest room on the left, flipped on the light and she sighed longingly, saying, "That bed is the most inviting thing I've seen in a month, Gaston. You're a jewel for offering it to me." He shyly grinned, kissed her cheek and showed her the bathroom with both a tub and shower. Another long sigh from down deep in her gut. He left her in the doorway, saying, "I'll get you another beer while you get ready for a bath or a shower, your option."
He came running back up the stairs, handed her a beer and a glass, turned and said, "I'll be in the kitchen. Call when you're finished."
Andy took her sweet time. She was enjoying the luxury of soaking in a tub instead of being crammed in a small fiberglass shower stall in a truck stop. When the water became so cool she was shivering, she took one of the extra large towels from the rack, wrapped it around her and went to the top of the stairs. She yelled, "Come on up, Gaston. Time to show me your stuff." When he entered the bedroom, she had dropped the towel on the floor and was in the center of the bed naked. He stopped in his tracks. He eyed her from the doorway and was stunned by her nice, round firm body with matching breasts. She waved him over, teasing, "Don't be bashful, come on over and sample the merchandise."
The time for him to be fully stripped of his clothes was a new record for him. He jumped in the bed with her, sidled up close and kissed her. That was the signal for her and she made the most of it for the next thirty minutes or so. When both were sated, she whispered in his ear, "How about another beer, Gaston?" He nodded; still naked; he ran to the kitchen, took another beer from the fridge, popped the lid and hustled back to the stairs. She had wrapped another dry towel back around her for the warmth and was at the top of the stairs smiling when he hit the top step. He handed her the beer, she thanked him and took a sip. She touched his face and said, "You're such a nice, gentle man, Gaston. A good lover and very generous. It's such a shame that.you're so damned ugly. Ugly enough to turn ones stomach if they didn't grit their teeth like I had to do."
He was taken aback by her words. When he caught the breath she had knocked out of him with her words, he spit harshly at her, "But, Andy.You said I was handsome and I told you that you were the first to ever say that."
"Gaston, Gaston! That was a come on from a horny old truck driver. It turned out great, much better than I expected and I do appreciate all you've done. But go look in the mirror. God, you're so damned ugly it's almost a sin God created you."
Gaston turned, his face an inflamed red when he said, "You god damned whore. You took advantage of me by lying! I hate that and you'll pay dearly!" She became frightened by his outburst. She stepped back two steps away from his anger but to no avail. He swung his huge fist, drove it into her nose, knocking her backwards down the stairs. The beer bottle flew over her head, hit a picture of his mother on the stairwell wall, it fell braking the glass. Her towel fell on the steps as she went feet over head backwards down the stairs, the glass cutting her back and arms. When her head hit the third step down, her neck snapped loudly. So loudly it broke the eerie silence in the quiet house jarring him to move down the stairs toward her. When she hit the bottom landing, her arms splayed over her head, her legs covering the last two steps, blood slightly oozing from the cuts, she was already dead from the broken neck. Gaston bent over her, loudly yelling, "Andy! Andy! I didn't mean to do knock you down the stairs. Please wake up." He had tears flowing from his cheek and dropping on her face as he held it in his huge palms.
Realizing she was dead, he stood to pick her up and move her to the dining room table, but when he stood, a glass shard from the picture frame glass went farther into the arch of his right foot causing him to fall to the floor in excruciatiating pain. He held the foot in the air and could see the end of the shard tilting toward his left. He took hold with two fingers, began to pull but it cracked and the broken end was all he could remove. He stood on his left foot, pulled himself up the stairs by using the banister and then used the wall to reach the bedroom. He sat on the bed and began to dress, leaving his foot without socks or shoes. Using the same technique on the return trip down the stairs, he made his way to the kitchen, opened the pantry door and took his mother's old wooden rubber-tipped cane, using it to get to the truck.
At the emergency room, the doctor on duty told him that he would call for help because the glass was embedded so deep that he needed a surgeon to remove it. He gave Gaston a shot near the glass entry to ease the pain. Two hours later, Gaston left the hospital on crutches with a pocket full of pain killers. The surgeon told him after the glass was removed and the wound stitched that he had one of the deepest embedment's he had ever seen and then asked how it had happened. Gaston told him he was running down the steps and didn't know a picture had broken when he put his full weight on the foot where the shard stood waiting. The surgeon shook his head, patted his knee and said, "Keep the wound clean, Gaston. You don't want an infection to flare up."
He sat quietly in his truck thinking. He knew from what the doctor told him that within two hours, even with the pain pills, he would be having intense localized pain again. He had to act before it put him down for the day. He started the engine, looked at the blood covered floorboard and pedals before he pulled out and awkwardly, slowly, drove home with his left foot. He stood on his crutches looking at the body of Andy. He was hit the fact that he knew her first name, but not her last name. He looked at the blood route on the stairs and his lips parted in a small grin when he began the implementation of his plan. The foot cut was the perfect cover for her blood. He would have no fear of any questions about the blood. He was holding the reason in the air under him. He turned and saw the trail of his dripped blood leading to the kitchen, the pantry, and ou
t the door. It would also be on the porch and in the truck. The bonus to the blood was the large amount of fresh blood, now clotting, that was on the floor leading to the bedroom where he put on his clothes. He leaned against the banister baluster and listed what he needed to do to erase Andy from his association after the cafe incident with her. He would have to change the bed, he would need to move the body, he needed to destroy her clothing, he had to get rid of the beer bottles and wash the glass she had used. The towels needed washing to remove any DNA evidence. A large order for a lone one-footed individual to handle, but time was on his side. None of those were an immediate need and he could easily handle the washing, making the bed, washing dishes and burning the clothes with his regular burning barrel trash.
He pushed away from the baluster and struggled his way up the stairs, avoiding the glass and clotted blood. With the bathroom cleansed, an easy job, he made the bed, gathered the towels and threw them over the banister to the floor below to be washed. He put the empty beer bottles in his pockets, washed the glass in his bathroom and left it on the sink stand. He found it testy going