Rules of the Road

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Who’s ‘they,’ Spicer?” asked Johnny Gee.

  “The trades, that’s who. I get Variety and Hollywood Reporter every day in the mail. I’m always watchin’ the grosses. That way, you can get some idea what’s gonna sell on videotape, although tape sales don’t always follow box office that close.”

  Sam put the five surveillance tapes on Spicer’s console.

  “I think you ought to wrap them in brown paper and send them straight to the attorney general in Springfield. Type, don’t write, an address label, and don’t mail them from a post office. Just slap three bucks worth of stamps on the package and drop them in a mailbox. I don’t think it’s a good idea if anybody sees you sending a package to the state attorney general. It’s the kind of thing people would remember.”

  “I got you, Butter,” said Spicer.

  They were on their way out the door when Johnny Gee grabbed Sam by his collar.

  “I think you better take a look at yourself in the mirror, ’fore we go much further,” he said.

  Sam looked down at his pants, dirty and stained from changing the tire on the Caddy. He glanced at his hands. The same. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. He headed for the john. When he came out, he had changed his clothes and shaved.

  “Have a look at the major,” said Johnny Gee. “Looks like a page outa some magazine.”

  Sam was wearing a pair of khaki pants, a plaid shirt, and a heavy plaid overjacket.

  “I got this stuff from L. L. Bean. It’s cheaper than most stores.”

  “What the hell is L. L. Bean?” asked Spicer. “You come some distance from your days behind the wheel of a modified, Butter.”

  “Forget it,” said Sam.

  Spicer led the way as they tramped through the high grass surrounding the satellite dish. Behind the dish, tucked into the woodline, was an old gray Dodge pickup with a homemade camper over the bed.

  “C’mon,” said Spicer, leading the way to the pickup. It was a ’55 Dodge, no rust, primered, but covered with mud. The fenders were dented, the front bumper was missing, and a foot-long crack marred the windshield.

  “This thing gonna run?” asked Johnny Gee.

  “Don’t let the looks of the outside fool ya,” said Spicer. He opened the hood.

  “Christ. You’ve got a Chrysler hemi in this thing,” said Sam. “Two fours and a crossfire manifold, headers … what else has this thing got?”

  “Four-speed, quick-change rear end, three-quarter race cam, gas shocks, V-class radials. It’s a sleeper. Victor helped me set it up. We use it to move our videos. You don’t wanna get stopped with five or six thousand bootleg tapes, ya know? In this thing, you plain don’t get stopped.”

  “It looks like a refugee from a junkyard on the outside. Hasn’t had any body work in twenty years.”

  “Yeah, but we tore it down from the ground up underneath. Rebuilt the entire runnin’ gear, frame, everything. Thing corners like a fuckin’ Corvette, and loaded down full, it’s faster than any cop car in the state.”

  “I believe it,” Sam said.

  Spicer closed the hood, walked around back of the truck and opened the camper. Inside, the truck bed looked as if it were piled full of wooden crates. Spicer lifted a hidden handle and the entire back of the pile of crates lifted up on concealed hinges, revealing a hollow space where the crates should have been.

  “You guys get back here and I’ll close this thing up and throw a tarp over it.”

  “Looks like a setup I’ve seen used for cigarettes and shine,” said Johnny Gee.

  “Cigarettes, bootleg videos, don’t make no difference. It would work for anything.”

  “C’mon. Get a move on. We got to get you to Paducah ’fore the sun comes up. They’re lookin’ for your asses now, but by daylight this county is gonna look like a war zone, there’ll be so many cops.”

  Spicer grabbed a shotgun lying inside the hollow pile of crates and threw it into the front seat of the truck. He pulled his International Harvester cap down over his eyes and buttoned his plaid-lined jean jacket.

  “How do I look?” he asked. “Look like I’m gonna get me some rabbits come sunrise?”

  “You’re the genuine article, Spicer. If I was a rabbit, I’d be scared shitless lookin’ at you,” said Johnny Gee.

  “Go on and get in there,” said Spicer, indicating the truck bed hiding place. “You’ll find a coupla blankets and an old quilt you can wrap up in. I figure it’ll take me an hour or so to clear the county, then you all can ride up front.”

  Sam and Johnny Gee climbed in. Spicer closed the door on the hollow crates, then he buttoned up the camper. When he started the truck, the deep rumble from the big engine’s headers could be felt through the truck bed.

  “This thing sounds like a goddamned dragster,” Sam said.

  “Yeah? Well, it rides like a goddamned pickup truck,” said Johnny Gee. Spicer was bouncing the truck down the dirt road at a good clip, and the two men in the back were feeling every rut and hole in the road.

  He hit the paved road and took a left, the truck picking up speed, losing some of its deep exhaust note as he shifted into third and fourth gear. The truck stopped and turned right, stopped again and turned left, then got quickly up to speed.

  “He’s goin’ around that little town back there,” said Johnny Gee. “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  “He knows. Quit worrying.”

  The truck ran at speed for quite a while, then slowed. The two men in the back heard a knock on the back of the cab. “Road block,” called Spicer. “Don’t make any noise.”

  The truck stopped. The two men in the back heard Spicer’s voice first:

  “What’s the trouble, officer?” he asked.

  Then they heard another voice:

  “Where are you headed, sir?”

  “Goin’ huntin’ in the Shawnee National Forest,” said Spicer. “Figured I’d get me some rabbits, maybe a squirrel or two.”

  “You’re getting an early start,” said the voice.

  “I like to take my time.”

  “Have you seen anyone on the road tonight?”

  “You mean walkin’ along the road? Nah. Not a soul.”

  “What have you got in the back?”

  “Farm implements. It’s my business.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Sam and Johnny Gee heard Spicer open the driver’s door, step out, and walk around to the back of the truck. Then they heard him open the tailgate and the camper’s rear window.

  “What’s in the boxes?” asked the cop.

  “Farm implements. I sell tractor hitches and winches.”

  “Let’s have a look,” said the cop.

  The two men inside the hollowed-out space lay still, listening in the dark. They heard Spicer pry open the top of one of the crates. Light from a flashlight flickered through the cracks in the crates.

  “Jesus, how many hitches have you got back here?”

  They relaxed.

  “About four hundred. It’s a good business. Damn things are always breakin’. I come along and replace ’em. Cost about twenty-five dollars. You can make a good livin’ sellin’ hitches and winches.”

  “I guess you can. Okay. Close it up. Sorry for the trouble, sir.”

  “No problem,” said Spicer.

  They heard Spicer close the camper, then he got back into the truck’s cab.

  “You mind if I ask what you’re lookin’ for tonight, officer?” asked Spicer. He started the truck and let it idle.

  “Couple of guys wanted for a killing, one about thirty, thirty-five, and the other in his twenties. White males.”

  “No kiddin’. Well, good luck.”

  “We’ll get them. We’ve got them bottled up in the county. We’re watching every road in and out of here. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, officer. See ya,” said Spicer.

  The men in the back felt the truck shudder as Spicer eased off the clutch and onto the g
as. He drove for another hour, then pulled off on a side road. He stopped the truck, opened the camper, and lifted the hidden door to the compartment.

  “You all can get out now. I don’t think there’s gonna be any more road blocks. We’re clear of Harris County.”

  They climbed out the back of the truck and stood shivering in the dark.

  “What the hell did you do back there?” asked Johnny Gee. “I thought for sure that cop was going to find us.”

  “I put a false bottom on these two crates here,” said Spicer, tapping the crates closest to the back of the pickup bed. “And I filled them with tractor hitches I bought at the hardware store in town. No way you can tell it isn’t a whole crate full. That’s the second time I had to pry one open. I got stopped for speedin’ once and did the same thing. In daylight. They never suspected a thing.”

  Spicer closed the camper and the three men got in the cab. “Pour me some of that coffee there,” said Spicer, pointing to a thermos next to the floor shift. He turned the truck around and drove back to the road they’d been on before. Within a few seconds, the truck was doing seventy-five miles an hour toward Paducah.

  “Which way are we goin?” asked Johnny Gee.

  “We’re gonna stay right on this 640, then pick up 138 outside of Five Points and take it straight into Paducah. That way, we pass through only a couple little towns on the way. I figure we’ll be there about one-thirty, quarter to two.”

  The old gray pickup rocketed down the two-lane road into the night. A small town blinked by, its lone red light flashing yellow, storefronts darkened, gas station shuttered, drive-in movie marquee reading “closed for the winter.” Another town: a four-way stop, two churches, and a shut-down chicken processing factory. Miles of fresh-plowed farmland luminous in the darkness. Another farm town, its lone police car idling lights off, on a side street … Spicer cruising the truck down Main Street five miles an hour under the speed limit. Back on the gas outside of town, and soon in the distance the faint glow of Paducah on the horizon.

  THE BIG GREYHOUND bus rolled into Clarksville, Tennessee, on U.S. 31 from the north, through a satiny strip of cinderblock motels, beer joints, bowling alleys, used car lots, and auto parts stores lit up so brightly it seemed like day. The main drag was a neon evocation of the American dream, a four-lane playland where a beat-up jalopy and a tank of gas promised possibility, and a wallet full of hard-earned dollar bills sang satisfaction. Old 31 had changed over the years to accommodate the needs and desires of the modern age: fast food chains had uprooted mom-and-pop drive-ins and luncheonettes; gas stations had turned into bunkered computerized pay-first-and-pump-your-own service plazas selling everything from gas to beer, to bait, to ammo, to rubbers; drive-in movies had transmogrified into quad-plex-mini-cinemas. Still, the old highway gleamed and glistened, comfortable and somehow homey like a big outdoor living room, bright and warm and inviting, shouldering aside the loneliness of the night with neon and chrome and promises in the dark.

  Major Sam Butterfield, Jr., got off at the bus depot and retrieved his duffel from the baggage claim room. It had been there since the previous evening, having arrived on the bus he missed back at the diner. It was nearly six in the morning, and the sun was coming up, when he hailed a cab and headed for the post headquarters at Fort Campbell. He reported to the duty officer at six-thirty and handed over his orders.

  “Ranger, huh, Major?” asked the bleary-eyed duty officer, a captain who had been up all night and was looking forward to a day off before reporting back to his own unit.

  “This time out, anyway.”

  “You got one hardass commander in that colonel … what’s his name?”

  “Duchamp. Lieutenant Colonel Duchamp.”

  “I heard they run five miles every morning, and ten on Mondays. You ready for a five-mile run in fatigues and boots tomorrow morning, sir?”

  “I don’t think anyone, anywhere, anytime, is ready for five miles every morning, Captain.”

  “Well, you’ve got twenty-four hours to rest up, sir. I suggest you take a room over at the BOQ for the time being. You can’t clear through finance and personnel on Sunday. The duty vehicle will take you over. You’ll find the BOQ next to the Officers’ Club. It’s the two-story brick building that looks like a twenty-year-old Holiday Inn.” The captain chuckled, picked up the phone, and summoned his driver.

  Sam picked up his bags and followed the enlisted man.

  “Pretty fancy, huh, sir?” said the fatigue-clad enlisted man, indicating the staffcar idling at curbside.

  “I see it runs.”

  “Oh, it’ll get you there, sir.”

  Fort Campbell was a pleasant, if unremarkable, army post. Broad, tree-lined avenues led through the main post, through the section of huge Victorians with expansive lawns reserved for the post commandant and his colonels, past the hospital, the commissary, the day care center, the junior high, the grade school, but most of all, past one howitzer after another mounted on concrete blocks, barrels aimed forever skyward at some imaginary enemy just over that hillock, or through those trees over there. Fort Campbell was an infantry post, which trained and housed infantry soldiers, enlisted and officer alike. But an infantry Ranger battalion at Fort Campbell, despite its nominal status as “infantry,” was bound to be received by the non-Ranger boys like a burr under a saddle. Major Butterfield steeled himself for the sometimes not so good-natured ribbing that was bound to go on between the Airborne Infantry Rangers and the men of the infantry who were neither Ranger nor airborne.

  He threw his bags in the corner of a nondescript motel-like BOQ room and flopped on the bed. Within a minute, he was asleep.

  The next morning, he put on a set of fatigues, dug his boots out of his duffel and gave them a quick polish, donned his black beret, and headed downstairs.

  “How do you get to the Three-Sixty-one?” he asked the enlisted man at the BOQ desk.

  “Are you just reporting in, sir?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’ll call you a cab, sir. The Three-Sixty-one is way over on the other end of the post, in the old barracks. There hasn’t been anybody over there for years. It’s about thirty miles away.”

  “Thanks.”

  The cab passed through the main portion of the post, where huge motor pools loomed like deathstar parking lots, with row upon row of armored personnel carriers seeming to disappear into the distance. Over there, a company or two of massive M-1 main battle tanks, state of the art, its freshly hosed-down slant nose and slab sides glistening in the early morning sun.

  Motor pool after motor pool, endlessly olive drab, endlessly iron, endlessly, mournfully huge and threatening and expansive. Major Butterfield yearned to get out there where a pair of boots, a pack, a bayonet, and a rifle were all that were called for on a field of battle.

  The cab drove through a sandy pine forest, past a few firing ranges, through another pine forest, and into a clearing that contained the remains of an old World War II training encampment: a dozen rows of two-story wood frame buildings painted a bilious shade of puce green, set along a grid of gravel roads. A gate at the entrance to the encampment proclaimed: HOME OF THE THREE-SIXTY-ONE RANGER BATTALION, DRIVE ON IF YOU DARE. It was Lieutenant Colonel Duchamp’s outfit all right. In fact, there they were, the entire battalion, double-timing down one of the gravel roads, coming out of the woods at the end of their five-mile run, clad in boots, fatigue pants, and Tshirts with Ranger tabs on the chest. The colonel was out front. He called, “Baaaaattalion! Halt!” and every company, every last platoon, halted at once. The colonel dismissed them and walked over to Sam. It was a cool morning, and he hadn’t even worked up a sweat. He was a big man, over six feet two, with broad shoulders and a thick but not flabby waist. He had a steel gray crew cut, and a tanned, heavily lined face. If you glanced at him, you’d say he was from the Ozarks, or perhaps the Kentucky hill country. In truth, he was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, son of wealthy southern textile manufacturers. He disappoi
nted the family by taking a pass on Harvard and instead went to West Point, graduating in 1969. This was his second battalion command. He’d been offered a cushy, prestigious job in the Pentagon, in the office of the chief of staff of the army, but his tan said he liked life best when his battalion was in the field. He was only forty-two, but the wrinkles came with the military command. There was little doubt, looking at the big man with his hands on his hips and the Ranger tab heaving on his Tshirted chest, that he just loved it.

  “Major Butterfield reporting as ordered, sir.” Sam saluted smartly.

  The colonel returned his salute and shook his hand.

  “Good to have you back in a battalion with me, Sam,” he said, smiling with genuine affection.

  “Well, sir, it’s a long way from Fort Lewis, but it’s sure good to be here.”

  “Are you ready to take over as executive officer?”

  “Yes, sir, I am. If I were really to tell you the truth, I’d rather have a company under you, but rank caught up with me, I guess.”

  “You already had a platoon under me, Sam.”

  “Yes, sir, and that was the best damn company in this man’s army.”

  “Well, Major, welcome to the best damn battalion in this man’s army.”

  The colonel led the way to one of the company mess halls, long, one-story buildings centered in each of the four company areas. When the colonel entered, one of the troops yelled “tenshut” and the place leapt to attention. The colonel waved his hand and said, “At ease.” The room relaxed.

  They went through the mess line, got their breakfasts, and sat at the first available table. There was no wooden barrier between the enlisted and officer areas of the mess hall, Sam noticed. It was a sign of Lieutenant Colonel Duchamp’s command. We fight together, we eat together, said the colonel.

  “No more of those goddamned battalion messes,” he said, digging into his chow. “It took some bargaining, but I demanded a battalion area where they still had company areas and company messes. This is what we got.”