“Uh, yeah, yeah. That’s the little woman—with the big mouth.”
Whitman laughed causing Hart to smile, but right away he felt self-conscious—given the circumstances.
Hart put up his hand. “Just kidding, of course. She’s a doll. Wouldn’t trade her for anything.”
“Now wait a minute. You haven’t heard my offer yet,” said Whitman, exploding in laughter.
Hart threw him a courtesy laugh and waved his finger at the man. “Good one, good one,” he said as he backed out of the little store as quickly as he could without appearing to be rude.
Hart’s perfunctory smile faded as he turned on his heels and headed back to the car, grabbed the nozzle and went through the usual pump routine. Then he opened the driver’s side door. “I’m going to hit the bathroom. Frickin’ Aunt Jemima.”
Summer chuckled. “Have fun.”
Hart put his hand on his stomach. He winced, slammed the car door and headed for the men’s room, which according to the sign was around back. The door, however, wasn’t the only thud he heard. The jarring of the car caused the old sleeveless nozzle to disengage and hit the ground. Hart stopped and turned.
“Shit,” he said, bending down and replacing the nozzle, his eyes locked on the slight scratch on the side of his rear panel caused, undoubtedly, by the falling gas nozzle. He sighed and gritted his teeth at the new blemish on his otherwise unmarred car as he walked away, once again to answer nature’s call.
Hart could feel his stomach gurgling now as he walked, double-time, to the men’s room. Nature’s call was becoming a scream. Turning the corner, he oriented himself in a hurry. Ladies’ room. Men’s room—bingo. He quickly pounded the door open with his balled up hand, his way of knocking and opening the door at the same time.
He spun to lock the door but found that the old-fashioned thumb screw turned and turned but was obviously broken and would not engage. Forget it.
A quick mental survey of the quarters and its prewar fixtures was made as Hart got down to business. After a few minutes he glanced at the lock which at this point was nothing more than decoration. Not his favorite situation, but, oh well, no one seemed to be around anyway.
The Smithsonian Institute should be informed of this place immediately. Those were his last thoughts when he heard the explosion.
SEVENTEEN
NOT NEARLY DONE, Hart scrambled to pull his pants up, the sensation of shaking competing only with the booming noise that was ringing in his ears. His mind groped for answers as vivid, yet purely speculatory, images filled his head. What the hell?
He bolted out the door of the restroom, moving with a restrained and guarded quickness; as fast as he could without running headlong into a danger he knew was there but whose details were completely undefined from his current and blind position.
Peering around the corner, the images in his head morphed into the images that were in fact objective reality. His beautiful car—and everything in it—had been torn apart, burning wreckage scattered everywhere.
His car seemed to be the nucleus of the explosion— at least to Hart, who couldn’t take his eyes off of it—but its fiery tentacles reached far and wide, flinging flaming auto parts against the walls of Huncke’s, into trees, and into the gas pumps which were moments away from becoming tag team tinderboxes ready to finish the job.
Something told him to get the hell out of there, and that’s just what he did.
_______________
Hart decided to stay off the beaten path. He’d cut through the forest, needing time to think. Maybe there was some advantage to not being seen. He didn’t know what that might be right then, but once the genie was out of the bottle, there’d be no recorking it. So better that he work things out on his own without the possibility of anyone being able to contradict whatever scheme he may have to conjure up.
Summer was dead. That much he figured. And now that his original plan was no longer necessary, he’d be a very rich man a little sooner than he thought. Serendipity had smiled on him and whatever he did, he didn’t want to be responsible for messing it up.
If nothing else, he needed a story. Why was he so lucky as to not be at the car during the explosion? The bathroom was a certainly plausible, not to mention true, alibi, to be sure. He just wished now that he had asked Whitman where the bathroom was. Get it on record. But it probably didn’t matter. It wasn’t like some incendiary device would be found at the scene. At least he didn’t think one would be. It seemed unlikely that someone blew up the joint on purpose. Of course, if anything fishy was found, he was sure he’d be a prime suspect.
Reaching for a tree branch, he almost slipped as he heard another explosion echoing minutes behind him. This was soon followed by two more. That should be the rest of the pumps, he thought. What a mess. He paused to look at the sky which was now filled with black clouds. They seemed to obstruct the ambient light, making things seem even darker.
_______________
Using the location of the sun as a guide, Hart thought himself the true boy scout as he attempted to make his way back to the cabin. Of course the fact that the road was within a hundred yards of him helped tremendously as well.
His goal was a simple one: get back to the cabin before dark. The problem was he wasn’t quite sure why that was his goal. When his plan regarding Summer’s demise had first been hatched, if nothing else, he had felt in control. It may not have been the perfect plan— perhaps unnecessarily elaborate even—but it was his plan. The details were his. They were workable. But now, things were different. What had happened to Summer was out of his grasp. He didn’t know the whole story and it scared the hell out of him.
But maybe his bewilderment was a good thing. If questioned, he could truthfully, and therefore convincingly, plead ignorance. Why then did he leave? If he was so innocent, why flee the scene, so to speak? Why not stay and help his wife? He wondered if he should go back to Huncke’s.
EIGHTEEN
HART STARED AT THE giant pine that loomed over him. He felt a buzzing in his head. He was no longer moving. He had to come up with something. He needed a story, but he felt blocked.
He let his head drop forward, his brow grazing the sturdy tree. And then in one quick motion he spiraled down, twisting his body so that his back landed at the base of the tree. And there he sat, picking at the grass, staring straight ahead, blinking only when necessary. Finally, his forehead crinkled and he let a little smile creep onto the lower part of his face.
He realized that he was acting like a criminal. A guilty criminal. He hadn’t done anything. Not one thing. Who cared that he had wanted to kill his wife? He hadn’t killed her—that was the point.
He had to start thinking like an innocent man. After all, he was an innocent man. And innocent men don’t think this much. They simply tell the truth. I went to the bathroom, goddammit. So what? You think I killed her? Good for you! Prove it.
Obviously, they’d have nothing on him because there was nothing on him. The idea emboldened him. But still he felt that buzzing in his head. It was getting louder and he finally focused enough to recognize it. They were sirens. They were fire trucks, of course, but all Hart could see were the cops.
Why did you flee the scene, Mr. Smith? He was back to square one. Why, Mr. Smith? Why? Because something told me to get the hell out of there, officer. He couldn’t say that.
Hart took a deep breath. Why? Answer the question, Hart. Answer it right now. If it comes out shitty, so what? No one’s here to hear it. You’ll fix it.
And so he blurted out the first thing that came into his head. “The explosion knocked me down, Officer. Down that hill behind the bathroom. I had tears in my eyes and I couldn’t see where I was going. I knew my wife, Summer, she had to be dead and I didn’t know what to do. No one could survive an explosion like that and I didn’t want to see her burning body.
“I screamed and then I ran. I wanted to die myself. And that’s when I slipped and I-I banged my head and everything went black. Whe
n I woke up I was disoriented and I just ran. I ran as fast I could. I just wanted to get out of there. I was in the middle of the forest and I kept running, hoping I wasn’t getting deeper into nowhere. Finally I found the road and I made it to the cabin. Is she dead? Is she? Oh, my God.”
Hart had said it out loud and he had said it fast. He was sweating. He wondered if it sounded melodramatic. Maybe most people would have stayed nearby, waited for the fire to die down. Maybe. But had he done anything illegal? No. Was there any way they could pin a thing on him? He didn’t see how.
Hart felt better. His story made sense. Things are crazy during explosions. People run everywhere. It’s pandemonium. Everyone knows that. He didn’t do anything bad. He just loved his wife so much and was so traumatized, he couldn’t bear to see her charred and mangled remains.
_______________
So right or wrong, Hart committed to it all. And he headed back in the direction of the cabin.
Having the basic plot in his mind, he refused to “practice” the story again, wanting it to sound fresh should he be forced to tell it. Instead he decided to focus on other things. For the first time he noticed his complete envelopment in the trees. Together they made for a magnificent quilt of browns and greens. Individually, their detail, their texture, had a certain poignancy that transcended far beyond just one’s sense of sight.
Hart was surrounded by nature but was also acutely aware of the manmade road that followed him and acted in a peripheral way as his guide. It was his one link to the only world he really knew—civilization.
This clear mental picture, as well as the joy that bubbled up in him at the prospect of the new life that lay ahead, served as a catalyst in his motivation to move forward. It would not, however, be an easy road. His stomachache was back, having taken a temporary respite during the time the weight of the world had been settling on his shoulders.
If only I could find a tree around here somewhere where I could finish my business, he joked to himself, holding his stomach. But his stab at humor only staved off the inevitable for a few moments. Far from ideal, Hart sucked it up and redecorated the base of the first pine tree on his left.
When he was done, he felt surprised that he didn’t feel that much better, concluding that he might be getting hungry. He looked back. Huncke’s was far behind and way out of sight. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t see much of anything other than trees. An endless sea of trees whose only border seemed to be an amorphous road which was seen rather clearly at times and almost “sensed” at others, its visibility highly dependent upon the density of the trees at any given point and the rise and fall of Hart’s chosen pathway.
When the road seemed to be hiding, Hart would become more aware of the glint of the sun, whose brightness advanced and retreated in waves, depending on the lay of the trees.
The sun had shifted a fair amount since he had begun his trek, having passed over his head quite awhile ago. And soon, thought Hart, it’ll be gone.
He yearned for civilization, feeling both anxious and a little melodramatic. After all, he was far from lost and it hadn’t been that long. But still, he kept feeling like any moment now he’d see something, a marker, a bend in the road, anything that would announce to him that the cabin was just around the corner.
He looked at his cell phone. Why did I pick this time, of all times, to forget to charge my phone, he thought, seeming to have forgotten about the seven-thousand un-forest-related times he had done the same thing.
Oh, well. One more hour should do it. But he had stopped believing himself, having figured that one more hour should have done it, several times before.
NINETEEN
DESPITE HIS ANXIOUSNESS to get back to the cabin, Hart decided to sit down and take a rest. He was worried that he might fall asleep and that when he woke up, it would be dark. But his worries were unfounded as he had too much on his mind to sleep.
He was right about it getting dark, though. The sun was dropping out of sight, the tall trees seeming to hasten its descent.
He decided to speed up a little, his body running on fumes. God was he thirsty.
And then he stopped. He heard rumblings off in the distance. He strained his ears. It sounded like the crackling footfalls of some animal as its paws hit the forest’s needle strewn foundation. And then the muffled sounds of speech. Someone was coming.
Hart slowly moved himself sideways to small group of thick and closely-growing trees until he was thoroughly out of sight.
“The Lakers suck this year.” It was a man. He was about twenty years old and looked like a college student. He was talking to another man about the same age. They were walking at a brisk pace and didn’t even come close to seeing Hart who was peering around the trees.
Their voices got louder as they moved closer and closer to Hart, their conversation carefree without the slightest hint that someone might be listening.
“They need another superstar, dude. Kobe can’t do it all by himself,” said the other man.
Hart could feel himself breathing hard. Why do I feel like a fugitive? He didn’t know. But he did know that his gut told him not to be seen. That his story would somehow be his own if no one knew where he was.
_______________
Hart put the key in the lock and turned the knob. There was no reason it shouldn’t open but for some reason he had his doubts.
When he got inside the cabin, he made a beeline for the kitchen sink and filled a large glass of water. He downed it, filled it back up and downed it again. Then he stumbled to the couch and collapsed, his chest rising and falling.
It had been almost two hours since he had seen the two hikers in the forest, and the sun was firmly tucked in for the night. It was good to be home—or in the cabin, at least.
After a moment of lying down, Hart began to nod off. A second later, his head snapped forward and shook. He made a gasping sound and sat up straight. He had to know what was happening. He turned on the T.V., shocked by what he heard next.
TWENTY
AS HE EXPECTED, the explosion was all over the local stations. The thing that surprised Hart was that apparently he, himself, was dead.
Two—not one—bodies were found among the burning wreckage, specifically at ground zero, a late model Acura.
Whitman, the current owner of Huncke’s convenience store and gas station, had recognized the couple from an earlier meeting a few days prior.
“They seemed like a nice couple. Spoke with them a couple days ago when they came in for some snacks and such,” Whitman said into a microphone held in front of him.
Then the mike was flicked back toward the reporter, a nicely dressed woman, mid-thirties with a flapper-style hat. “Do you have any idea, Mr. Whitman, who they are or where they were staying?”
“Well, as you can see, everything here was destroyed but I do remember their names from his credit card. A joint account, I guess. Hartence Smith, the Third and her name was, uh, Summer. Smith too, I think.”
The reporter turned toward the camera. “Well that should be helpful, as apparently the bodies were mangled beyond recognition. Even the teeth in both victims were just obliterated to dust, I’ve been told. Teeth being something forensic scientists often use to identify victims in such situations. Horrible, horrible tragedy.”
Angling toward Whitman, she placed her hand on his shoulder and inquired again, in a confirming manner, if he had any information about where the couple might be staying. Hart perked up. Whitman said he had no idea about anything else and that he had already told the police everything he knew.
As the reporter began to talk again, Whitman stuck his face toward the microphone. “They should check his credit card records. Maybe they—the sheriff can see which motel they were staying in.”
Hart couldn’t believe it. Who the hell was that other guy in the car with Summer?
“I gotta call Brandy. Shit!” he said, remembering his dead phone. Then he ran into the bedroom to get a charger. After tearing apart his s
uitcase and his chest of drawers, he realized that he had forgotten his charger at home.
“Shit!”
He needed his phone. The cabin had no service. And then he remembered who he had gone on this trip with. Summer always remembered stuff like that. He checked her dresser and sure enough, Miss Organized had brought a charger along. He plugged his phone in and ran back to the T.V.
As expected, all the stations were reporting the same thing. Two bodies. A male and female.
Hart’s mind was working overtime. He couldn’t decide if this was a blessing or a curse. He didn’t have to worry about Summer anymore. He was now a millionaire. An ex-trucker. But who the hell was that other guy? There had to be an investigation. Before he went to the cops or the insurance company, he wanted some answers. His biggest fear was that he was somehow overlooking something and that if he did anything rash it might bite him in the ass later.
He had to talk to Brandy. She was the only one he could trust. But that would have to wait until his phone charged.
With nothing left to do for now, Hart made some food and planted himself in front of the television. He jogged around the dial until his “remote finger” was ready to fall off. It was the same news over and over but he couldn’t get enough. Finally, he fell asleep, Whitman’s interview burned into his brain.
_______________
For the second time in a few hours, Hart woke up with a start, gasping. He had been dreaming about explosions. His thoughts were unsettled, feeling like he had gotten drunk halfway through a movie and was completely unsure how things had turned out. The storyline was hazy and seemed to lack finality. Who the hell was that other man in the car? This was no movie. He had to play things right. If he did, he’d be a millionaire, if not, well, God only knew what would happen to him.
All at once, a feeling came over him. He didn’t want to be alone. His mouth was dry and he ambled over to the kitchen for a drink of water. Then he looked at his phone. Three bars. Plenty for now. He called Brandy, holding the phone tightly to his head. He began pacing.
Keep Calm and Kill Your Wife Page 7
