The Nightcrawler

by Mick Ridgewell

  Safely back on the road, Scott quickly accelerated. When he noticed Matt, the bum, the Nightcrawler, not in the backseat this time, but in the front next to him, dressed in the same filth he wore in Detroit, Scott flinched as though some unseen object struck him in the face. Of course, he would be dressed the same, Scott thought. It isn’t like he could just go to his closet and pull out a change of clothes for his field trip through Scott’s sanity.

  Matt sat quietly looking through the windshield, his hands crossed in his lap, his dirt encrusted lap. He turned to Scott, smiling his yellow smile. At least the teeth remaining were yellow. There was something different about him though, it had taken Scott a while to realize it, but it was quite obvious now. The rancid smell that repulsed him in Detroit was not in the car.

  “You don’t like me much do you, Scott?”

  Scott’s jaw dropped, but no words came out. He had always been confident in his verbal skills, always able to meld into any type of conversation. Without a doubt, he could for sure handle an unfriendly attack, with jibes that would usually send his adversaries away with their tails between their legs. So why was it, that in the presence of this low life, he found himself at a loss for words.

  “Well, no matter,” Matt continued. “I’m sure there are dozens of people, in every city across this great land that you find as revolting as me.” He paused to survey the scenery, and resumed not waiting for Scott to respond. “Yes, it is a beautiful country, isn’t it? I bet there are millions in this country who don’t deserve to ride in the same car as you. Don’t you agree, Scott?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? And why are you here?”

  “Come now, Scott, it’s not just vagrants who don’t measure up next to you, is it? What about the welfare recipients, now there’s a group of people the world can do without, wouldn’t you say? They’ll for sure drag this nation down to a level it can’t afford to be at, am I right?” Matt spoke with clarity and intelligence. His tone and demeanor were more apt to be in any boardroom of any big company. Yet he was far from the CEO type. As far from it as anyone could be. “What about the mailman, the garbage man, store clerks, all useful people, but still not worthy to sit beside you, are they, Scott?”

  “Would you just shut up?” Scott yelled. “Just shut the fuck up.”

  “Such language and you being so upper crust, I would have thought more from you. Of course you didn’t mind spending a little, shall we say, quality time with that nice young lady in the parking garage, did you?”

  “Listen, you prick, you leave Sarah out of this, and get the fuck out of this car.”

  “A bit of a sore spot there, I see. Oh, by the way, Scott, you really should slow down There’s a state trooper just over this rise.”

  Scott looked at the speedometer. It was at eighty-nine and climbing. He slowed to sixty-five, and just as the Charger crested the hill he saw a radar gun pointing out of the window of white four-door sedan. On the side of the car in black, KANSAS STATE TROOPERS.

  “Well, it looks like you owe me the price of a ticket, don’t you, Scott?” Matt said, in a pleased with himself tone. “I was sure you were going to stop and ask the nice officer to take me away. Have you figured it out already, Scott?”

  “Figured what out?”

  “If you’re asking then the answer is no. So we continue. Where is it we’re going, anyway?”

  “Where are we going?” Scott looked at him and laughed. “Where are we going? That’s rich. You invite yourself into my life, stow away in my mind and you don’t know where we’re going.”

  “Oh, you can be so sensitive,” the bum interjected. “Why didn’t you wait for the pretty girl at the hospital before you left town? I’m guessing she’s sitting in that room crying her poor self to sleep. Of course, you don’t have time for her. She’s just a wanna-be-actress. Sure, she was handy to have driving the car so you could work, all the while ignoring her stories. She poured her heart out to you. What did you do? You tuned her out so you could take care of important business. You were dealing with serious issues like your dog, or this car, emails, and quarter-million dollar cars for the rich and famous. No time for Ashley’s life, is there? She would just be an unnecessary delay now, wouldn’t she?”

  “What do you know about it?” Scott yelled. “What do you know about anything?” Calming his voice down a bit, trying to regain some control of himself, he continued, “You don’t know shit, you don’t appear to know how to use soap and water, and you sure as hell don’t know how to get a job.” A slight grin crept to the edges of Scott’s lips, feeling he had just scored a blow for the taxpayers of the world.

  “And there you have it in a nutshell, I don’t have a job,” Matt said, his voice never wavering. He continued to speak like he was giving directions to a passing motorist. “Anyone in this world who does not get up and go to work every morning must be worthless.”

  Scott sat quietly, his grin still in place, his demeanor now smug. The anxiety that had been building from the time Matt (or the Nightcrawler, or Stink Man, or whatever his name really was) had entered the car waned. Scott stared through the windshield, his head angled toward the left. He was determined not to look to his right. If he couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t hear him, then maybe, there was no him at all. He glanced at his watch; it was almost eleven. He checked the speedometer, just shy of eighty. He had no idea where he was, he had been preoccupied with the bum, but if he had been maintaining this speed all morning, he must be nearing Colorado.

  A long silence had given him a sense that his encounter with Matt had ended. He started to take in the surroundings that he had missed from the time his company arrived. The landscape had become greener and the sky bluer. He wondered with skepticism, whether the air felt thinner. The oppressive heat of the prairies replaced by a comfortable, dry, seventy-something. He felt a relaxed calm settle in, making everything seem more beautiful, even poetic. The way the trees along the border of the fields swayed in the breeze, each leaf like a little hand waving at him, as if he were the Grand Marshal in the Independence Day parade. The long blades of grass swaying along the edge of the road reminded him of a wave making its way around a football stadium. The air even smelled cleaner than it did back in Salina.

  Scott felt like himself again. He was young and strong and arrogant, yes even he considered himself arrogant. He attributed part of his success to that arrogance. It came in handy when dealing with the rich and famous who about cornered the market on arrogance. Scott inhaled deeply and with all the confidence he could muster, glanced at the passenger seat.

  It was empty.

  He chuckled aloud, of course it was empty, that bum was back in Detroit, probably standing on a sidewalk panhandling the whole time Scott imagined him sitting in the car with him.

  The sight of the empty seat gave Scott the feeling of refreshing coziness that filled him with glee. It was a feeling that to Scott Randall compared only to a Labor Day weekend long gone. It was the last Labor Day before Gramps had the stroke. They had gotten up early that Saturday to go fishing. Gramps had an old rowboat behind the cottage. They paddled out to the middle of the lake. Scott had asked Gramps at least a hundred times why he didn’t get a motor boat. Gramps would just scoff, “Noisy contraptions scare all the fish away.”

  They had been out on the lake before dawn. Scott sipped coco from his thermos while Gramps slowly rowed that old boat out across the golden water. The only motion on the surface came from the boat and the oars. The chill air hovering over the water, still tepid from the hot summer, brought a layer of mist that reluctantly parted, then closed up behind them as the boat glided serenely toward the sunrise.

  The cool damp air sent shivers down the back of his neck. He remembered Gramps smiling at him after a shiver ran down his spine and with that smile a warm breeze blew across the lake, taking with it the goosebumps and the shivers. He smiled back at his Gramps, feeling safe and protected.

  Now Scott was feeling a disturbingly similar
feeling in the Charger, looking over at the empty seat. He was barely aware of himself guiding the car west on I-70. The loud sound of a horn startled him back to the present. A green Mustang convertible passed. There were four teenage boys in the car, the two in the backseat stood and mooned Scott, howling and laughing all the while, their white asses seeming brilliant in the late morning sun. Scott laughed aloud, honked his horn and waved as they sped off.

  Just then, he had noticed the gas gauge was nearly bottomed out. If he didn’t stop soon he was going to do some walking. He drove in silence for another ten minutes, and then the boys in the Mustang offered him another chuckle. They were parked on the side of the road, a white state trooper sedan, lights flashing parked directly behind them. Scott gave the horn another toot and waved as he passed, but this time the boys were not laughing.

  A short while later he took the exit leading into Staples, Kansas, population 753. He pulled into a Texaco station at the edge of town. It was like he had driven back in time. The pumps had the old spinning cylinders numbered zero to nine. The big red Texaco star was mounted high on a post out near the road. It even had an air hose across the ground that rang a bell inside the one bay garage when a car ran over it. A man in a grey Texaco uniform came meandering out wiping grease from his hands with a rag that was so dirty he may well have been wiping the grease on his hands as much as off. He looked to be in his forties, but too much hard work and way too much time in the sun gave his features a creased, older look.

  His shirt had the Texaco star on one pocket and his name, Stew, embroidered on the other. Scott was always reminded of his dad’s advice when he saw this type of uniform. “Scottie,” he’d say, “Get a good education; you don’t want to find yourself sluggin’ it out in some grunt job, sportin’ your name on your shirt.” Of course his dad would always qualify his statement with, “Nothing wrong with hard work, but it pays better to work smart, not hard.”

  “Well, Dad,” he thought as he watched Stew approach, “I’m working smart not hard.”

  “Fill it,” Scott instructed as Stew stepped to the pump. Stew just nodded and began to squeeze the nozzle, the wheels in the pump display started spinning and clicking, one set counting off the gallons the other tallied the dollars and cents.

  Scott surveyed his surroundings and turned to Stew, poised to speak; Stew just pointed at the garage and said, “Restroom’s around the corner. Light’s broke in there so just leave the door open a crack.”

  Scott walked around to the side of the building, a narrow gravel drive lead to an auto graveyard out back. Looks like Stew had his own supply of spare parts for dozens of cars. The trouble was, these cars most likely had very few brothers still on the road. The weeds grew tall between the old wrecks. A thick layer of dust blanketed the steel carcasses giving them a ghostly dull look.

  Scott opened the only door in sight and a smell so foul he nearly gagged, bombarded his senses. He thought better of going in and walked over to a rusted K-car. He urinated on the front wheel of the old Reliant, resisting the temptation to write his name in piss on the car door.

  “That’s quite a collection you’ve got out back,” Scott said, approaching Stew, who was returning the nozzle to the pump.

  “Well, folks who got no money try drivin’ cars that got no business bein’ on the road, from who knows where to Californ-I-A. Everybody thinking they could be a movie star.” Stew chuckled, more like a grunt than a laugh, but Scott thought it was as much of a laugh as Stew had in him. “Them shitty cars break down and I tow ’em here. When they find out how much it costs to fix, they go out to the highway and stick out their thumb.” With the same grunt-laugh he said, “That’ll be thirty-two even.”

  “Would you check all the fluids, Stew?” Scott asked.

  “Did I scare ya, mister?”

  “Scare me?” Scott asked, confused.

  “About the cars breaking down, ’cuz I don’t think you need worry about this car.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Scott answered. “I drove this car from Michigan. Better safe than sorry, you know what I mean?”

  “Sure thing,” Stew said. “I could change yer oil for ya, if ya like. Be done in a half hour, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “That might be a good idea if there’s any place nearby to get a bite.”

  “Mollie’s, ’bout a mile up the road. You can take my old truck over there. Key’s in it.”

  “Sounds like a good deal,” Scott said. He didn’t realize how big a grin he was sporting until he saw himself in the mirror in the truck. Did people actually live like this? Here take my truck, and go get yourself something to eat. Scott was sure Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife would be at Mollie’s having a cup of coffee when he got there.

  He drove alongside the Charger and told Stew to top up the tranny and rad if they needed it, then drove away from the Texaco station, a cloud of gravel dust following him half way into town.

  From the outside, Mollie’s was reminiscent of Charlie’s, where Grace had shown him more than ordinary hospitality. The whole room inside was done in knotty pine. The walls were tongue and groove pine straps. The floor was covered with long slabs of ten inch pine. The window and door frames were made of split pine logs. The wood glistened in the sunlight streaming in the windows. All the windows and doors were flanked by carriage lights that gave off a yellow glow.

  The circular tables, and matching chairs, were a perfect match to the window and doorframes. The inside could not have been more different from Charlie’s and Mollie could not have been more different from Grace. Mollie was a heavy woman, with silver hair and rosy cheeks. She wore a loose fitting tank top and a knee-length skirt. Covering the top and skirt was a white apron with Mollie’s embroidered over her left breast.

  “Sit where ever you like sonny,” she called from across the room.

  Scott sat at the table nearest the kitchen, and Mollie walked over with a pitcher of water and a large glass. After filling the glass, setting it in front of him, she said, “Car trouble, sonny?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I see you drove up in Stew’s truck. So, either you have car trouble, or you stole that truck. And you don’t look like a car thief.”

  “I stopped for gas and lunch. Stew mentioned an oil change and I thought it might be a good idea.”

  “I bet Stew put that good idea in your head.”

  “As a matter of fact he did, but it was a good idea. I drove the car from Michigan.”

  “That Stew,” Mollie, said shaking her head. “You need a menu, sonny?”

  “What’s good here, Mollie?”

  “Everything’s good, sonny, but I make the best burger in the country and the fries are fresh cut, none of that frozen stuff.”

  “Then a burger and fries it is, Mollie. I’d also love some lemonade if you’ve got some, a Coke if you don’t.”

  “Burger, fries and some of my fresh squeezed lemonade comin’ up.”

  Scott was back on the road, feeling better than he had in days. The warm feeling that flooded over him earlier had remained through lunch. Mollie was true to her word, the burger was great, the fries fresh. When he got back to Stew’s Texaco the Charger was gassed up, the oil had been changed and Stew was toweling off the water drops left by the wash he had just finished. Scott left Staples with the feeling that if he were ever to settle in a small town, he would want it to be like Staples, Kansas.

  By two that afternoon, he had crossed into Colorado with no more visits from Matt the bum, and all was right in Scott’s world.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The air in the tent was cold and damp. Rain that started to fall during the night had slowed to a drizzle. Roger woke with Beth wrapped around him inside the doublewide sleeping bag like a hungry boa constrictor. The mountain air must have agreed with them both he thought, having slept more soundly than he had since leaving Vermont and Beth was still sleeping soundly. He moved her arm off his chest and she rolled away from him. Squirming like a snake, he m
anaged to get out of the sleeping bag without waking her. He wrapped his arms tightly around his chest to battle the cool air. His T-shirt and briefs along with his skin were damp with sweat from the warmth he had just left, adding to his chilled condition. The sun already risen, its light weakened from the overcast sky gave everything inside the tent a greenish hue. He crawled to the tent door opened the zipper and stuck his head out into the drizzle.

  “Great,” he said to himself as he made a dash to the nearest tree to relieve himself.

  “Mornin’, son.”

  Roger spun around with a start to see a woman, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, holding a large red and white umbrella over her head. Her straw cowboy hat covered her dark hair that flowed down over her shoulders. She grinned at Roger with a bit of flush in her cheeks.

  “Gotta tell ya son, that’s the first time in a while I’ve been greeted like that.”

  Roger then realized he was still holding his penis and spun back around to put himself together. He no longer felt the chill in the air, in fact he felt flushed and hot. Fear and embarrassment engulfed his emotions. He turned back to face the woman, his T-shirt stretched down as far as he could, trying to hide his Fruit of the Looms.

  “Sorry about that, Mrs. Miller.”

  Beth had left the highway while Roger was sleeping, she said she wanted to see the country, not speed through it seeing nothing but a four-lane highway. Tiring and sure they weren’t going to find a campsite, Beth pulled into Mrs. Miller’s driveway. She stopped the Jeep right in front of the house, boldly walked up the front steps, and knocked on the door.

  “Hello, my name is Beth and that’s Roger.” By this time, Roger was out of the Jeep and standing behind her. “We’re on our way to the Grand Canyon and we need a place to camp for the night.”