Gun Sex

by Pearce Hansen

“Are you sure you’re all right young man?” she asked, the honest concern in her voice awing Speedy as much as the wealth this gift of footwear represented to him.

  “I’m fine ma’am.”

  Her smile beamed wide again, delight making the wrinkles on her tiny face disappear and giving Speedy a glimpse of the young woman she’d been long ago. Speedy figured she’d been a real beauty. He would’ve been horndogging on her if he’d been around back then, chest bumping all the competition away.

  He made sure the store’s front door latched firmly on his way out, to prevent the cold from coming in to bother this lady.

  The streets felt even wetter and chillier after the thrift store’s warmth – but at least his feet were warm now, and the rain had stopped for the moment. The sky was still a claustrophobic white dome overhead however, making the world appear drowned inside a sno-globe of milky water.

  Speedy humped down the highway toward the outskirts of town, not even bothering to thumb inside city limits. The town piggies would love to roust a newly released ex-con and he wasn’t about to give them a free crack at him.

  At the nearest freeway onramp Speedy looked inland appraisingly at a distant railway-switching yard – crossing bells were clanging over there and an engine’s whistle moaned as it dragged a long line of reefer cars to a halt.

  It would have been more convenient in some ways to hop a freight, but that wasn’t really an option for serious consideration. Speedy was shanked up with his pocket knife but he wasn’t in the mood to fight off a rat pack of Freight Train Riders of America on board a moving railroad car. He’d met a couple of those FTRA bos in prison – to prove in to that gang you had to off a railroad bull. Those boys were real carnivores.

  Besides which, Speedy’s knowledge of riding the rails was strictly theoretical; he’d never actually done it. All he knew about climbing on board a moving train was that if you couldn’t see the individual lug nuts on the rotating train wheel, if the nuts were no more than a circular blur, then your potential ride was going too fast to safely hop on board.

  Dying slow and alone with a broken back on a railroad track embankment staring at the sky sounded like a messed-up way to go. He’d stick with thumbing.

  Some off-the-map dreadlocked dude was lurking at the onramp entrance as Speedy shambled up. Dude had a ‘Will Work for Food’ sign in his hand and his black neoprene garbage bag bindle parked carefully at his feet, in physical contact with his toes.

  “Get much work that way?” Speedy asked him, jerking his chin at the sign. Dude only grinned, revealing a couple of missing front teeth.

  Speedy already knew the drill on this particular scam: the Citizens were so jazzed to see a panhandler willing to work, they’d just vomit forth the money. Any would-be task master that actually had a (*shudder*) job for Dude would be brushed off with the story that someone else had already hired him for the day, and that he was only waiting to be picked up to commence his honorable slave labor. It was seamless as such things went.

  Dude shook one long dreadlock out of his face and offered Speedy a bite off a pastrami sandwich. It tasted damn good after prison food. Speedy cadged a smoke off him too, a Pall Mall non-filter.

  Not wanting to cramp Dude’s style by hovering too close to his game, Speedy trudged further up the onramp before sticking out his thumb.

  Speedy channeled a portrayal of nonchalance, keeping anything approaching animosity or desperation from marring his carefully expressionless Doberman face. But still he waited because he had no choice, comfortable inside his own head as the Citizens’ cars climbed the onramp past him in an unending parade: tires hissing on the asphalt, vapid cattle faces staring out at him blankly or with contempt.

  Hours passed and his stomach growled in reminder of its existence. The bite of pastrami sandwich had long faded into digestive peristaltic history when Speedy’s dreadlocked panhandling acquaintance apparently decided to fold up shop: Dude pulled a brand new Walkman from his trash bag of worldly possessions, inserted a cassette and pressed play. He faded off with his neoprene bindle over his shoulder, bopping to his personal tunes as he ambled along to where ever.

  The sky was darkening and the podunk small town streetlights were flickering to feeble life, as if in an effort to illuminate the Citizens’ world, as if to convince them the clammy darkness could possibly be held at bay for more than a heartbeat at a time. The moon’s light was no more than a white blob futilely trying to rend its way through the overcast cloud cover.

  A brushed-steel DeLorean DMC-12 swooped out from the onramp parade and pulled up next to Speedy. He lowered his thumb as the driver leaned across the front seat to inspect him with seemingly benevolent interest. The driver was an older Citizen in a pinstripe suit and vest worn low under a narrow necktie, his eyes concealed behind Rayban Wayfarers.

  Speedy flicked his gaze to the miniscule backseat of this midlife-crisis car: no restraint gear he could see, no serial killer cohort waiting back there to yoke an unwary passenger. Speedy put his hand on the door handle and raised his brows interrogatively.

  “Hop in if you’re headed to San Francisco,” the driver said, smiling. Examining the lines on the man’s face Speedy figured the expression was one the driver used a lot.

  Speedy ducked under the DeLorean’s gull wing door to get in, and they gunned up the onramp to join the American Freeway Experience.

  Endless highway, the wheels of the DeLorean hissing across the asphalt through the night, the radio playing New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ way down low. Endless redwoods seeming to lean in from off-road, barely seen at the outer limits of the DeLorean’s obtrusive headlights.

  The driver wanted to talk. His name was Buck. He rattled on about his wife, and his kids, and his dog, and his house and job. Just as if Speedy cared, just as if he and Speedy had any point of reference in common.

  Speedy had given up wondering years before what it would be like to live the straight life, or own any property he couldn’t either carry on his person or stash in a motel room. Still, he made noncommittal sounds of agreement in response to all the appropriate verbal cues, honorably paying his conversational fare by pretending to belong to the same species as Buck.

  Speedy started nodding in and out despite himself. The emotional exhaustion of this first day of freedom was already creeping up behind him like a mickie finn; he felt sluggo as hell. He kept momentarily sagging down into dream infested unconsciousness only to slam back up and awake to the night and the road and the DeLorean’s overheated interior. But then Buck’s singsong recitation of his banal existence would pour into Speedy’s ears like drugged honey, and put him back to sleep again.

  Maybe in response to Speedy’s drowsy vulnerability, Buck’s litany had changed:

  “AIDS is in the blood,” Speedy heard Buck say during one of his nods. “AIDS is in the semen. As long as the two don’t meet there’s no danger at all, even between strangers.”

  Something touched Speedy’s knee, feather light, and his eyes opened wide. In the split second it took for Speedy to crash back into full wakefulness, his hand shot out of its own accord and grasped Buck’s jugular in reflex.

  ‘Shit,’ Speedy thought, his grip instinctively tightening around the vein as Buck tried to cringe away. ‘Not the same day I raise.’

  The car swerved and fishtailed and Speedy eased up on his grasp a bit. “Easy boy, easy. Eyes on the road Buck – eyes on the road.”

  Despite his terror Buck managed to slow the DeLorean and skid it to a shuddering halt on the shoulder.

  Speedy dipped his free hand into Buck’s breast pocket and deftly tugged the wallet out that had called the coat home til now. He flipped said wallet open. It was crammed with a delightful amount of cash, and even some plastic.

  He let go of Buck’s throat and climbed out the car. A wind was rising from the south.

  Speedy turned away from the wind’s increasing force and started to pull the gull wing door down and shut, but paused when he noted Buck’s franti
c gaze burning holes in him. He looked at Buck’s wedding ring on the hand squeezing the DeLorean’s steering wheel like Buck was trying to strangle it, and understanding came.

  Speedy gave Buck the same flat stare he always used working a mark. He needed to do some major damage control now and he couldn’t let Buck lose track of who owned who here: “I got a deal for you. You don’t dime to the cops about this little donation, I don’t tell your wife what you wanted from me tonight.”

  Speedy tugged the driver’s license out of the wallet. He flicked his thumb across the stiff edge of Buck’s license then held it up so Buck could see his own home address printed there. A buffet of wind hit the side of Speedy’s face hard enough to make him squint, and he raised his voice to be heard over it: “I figure she’s got to have her doubts already, right?”

  Speedy could even picture her face, listening to Buck’s lies when he came in from trolling the gay meat markets, the face of a beard too scared to leave but not so stupid as to completely buy into her ‘husband’s’ bullshit. The way Buck’s face sagged from frantic to sullen confirmed Speedy’s assessment.

  “I, I, but you don’t . . .” Buck started, defensiveness making him counter in reflex, the fish flopping on the hook.

  Speedy made a chopping motion with his hand to cut Buck’s words in half. Speedy had to speak louder now against the steadily increasing wind: “It doesn’t matter to me that you’re gay. I don’t care, really I don’t.”

  And that was true at least: Buck’s sexual preferences were none of Speedy’s business whatsoever.

  Speedy took all the money from the wallet though he felt almost guilty about it – Buck had given Speedy a ride after all, even if he’d now demonstrated ulterior motives. Speedy took the driver’s license and all the plastic too – not for use, but maybe to unload down in the Bay Area before customer service caught up.

  Speedy continued, almost shouting over what had now evolved into a full windstorm: “You don’t call the cops, and in exchange I promise I’ll mail your license back to you when I get where I’m going. I never tell a soul what happened here and your secret is safe.”

  Speedy made a zipping move across his lips with thumb and forefinger, pantomimed twisting an invisible key at the corner of his mouth and then throwing the ghost key away.

  But Buck’s gaze still roved warily across Speedy’s face as if searching for evidence of trustworthiness there. This man desperately needed to believe he could safely extricate himself from this current predicament.

  The fact that Speedy was presently clutching Buck’s wallet had to be complicating Buck’s decision. Speedy unbent further at that realization and tossed the empty billfold onto the passenger seat. He gave Buck a non-threatening non-judgmental smile to seal the deal and Buck finally seemed to relax inside his skin, silently buying into the offer.

  Speedy nodded in farewell, and tugged the gull wing door down and closed. Problem solved, he walked away down 101 with the DeLorean’s headlights illuminating his path.

  After a few moments he heard Buck rev the engine. The pools of illumination cast by the headlights wavered from side to side as the DeLorean shuddered across the shoulder’s gravel in acceleration.

  Speedy automatically stepped sideways off the shoulder in case Buck tried to run him over from behind. But the DeLorean only gunned past as Buck redlined it up the gears, screeching into the first curve in the road ahead and out of sight, trying to outrun his humiliation. Even over the howling wind, Speedy could hear the frustrated snarl of the sports car for a while after it was gone.

  He walked along the benighted highway as it twisted through the dark wilderness, leaning forward against the force of the windstorm, which blasted up the highway from the south as if channelized by it. The white sky overhead was shredding its way clear and Speedy could actually see now by the naked light of the full moon.

  For the moment he felt content. Although Speedy was on foot he hadn’t let Buck dominate him. He had comfortable boots on his feet, and even a pocket full of spending loot. He’d already come up in the world since raising and his possibilities seemed endless.

  Traffic was sporadic in both directions. But whenever the increasing glow of headlights announced a vehicle’s approach, Speedy faded to stand in the looming timber stands just off the highway’s shoulder. The tree branches above him creaked in the wind as he waited for each car to pass before returning to the road.

  Once CHP rolled past him as he watched invisible from up in the mold-smelling tree line amongst the wet ferns. As he waited for po-po to pass, the undergrowth seethed and the tree branches overhead creaked in the wind.

  The CHP roller didn’t have its trouble lights flashing red against the darkness and it wasn’t blurping its siren. It wasn’t driving slowly like it was on the hunt and the officer behind the wheel wasn’t scanning the sides of the road as he went past.

  Speedy figured that Buck hadn’t dimed him. Yet.

  It had been the smart move to leave Buck his car, Speedy told himself. If he’d just abandoned Buck on the side of the road, the Man would have automatically gotten involved – the first passing roller would have put out an APB on that oh-so-conspicuous De Lorean. Speedy clung to his belief that it was also the smart move for Buck not to say anything (unless his wife already knew, unless he was thinking of blowing her off anyway, the paranoid reptile part of Speedy’s brain insisted on whispering in the back of his head).

  In between hiding in the shrubbery just off the shoulder, Speedy scanned continually for any routes that might get him all the way off Highway 101, just in case Citizen Buck did give him up to the Man once the heat of the moment wore off. But all Speedy saw were steep slopes leading up to high ridges. The crests were thick with huge trees, whose skyscraper-tall crowns waved slowly even in the gale force wind. There was nowhere to run to.

  Even though these vertically wooded hills appeared impassable to him, Speedy figured he could still scuttle up into the redwoods as far as he needed to if the Man decided a crazed ex-con fugitive was on the loose along this stretch of road.

  But he was still a big city boy – a creature of the urban jungle, of concrete and asphalt, streetlights and neon. He was out of bounds, and this wilderness was new to his experience.

  Where others might have noted the cathedral-like grandeur of these redwoods, the whole nature thing left Speedy unmoved. He was no Jeremiah Johnson. He didn’t know the rules of survival here, and he was leery at the prospect of even trying to hide in such a non-human environment.

  After hiding from the umpteenth car he finally decided he had to speed up this cockroach leapfrogging and traffic-dodging down the road. He started to jog after hiding from each car that passed, and then he was scrambling along full bore between the cars, the moonlit gray highway guiding him between the yawning windswept woodland blackness to either side.

  But he started feeling more and more squirrelly as he ran through the storm. He still had leftover adrenaline from strong-arming on Buck. He was still basically imprisoned within the narrowly confined course of this tree-walled mountain interstate – he was trapped at the mercy of the Man and running like a contemptible rat in a maze. Speedy was getting spun up to the point of serious angst-iness.

  Even over the gale Speedy heard a rippling explosive gargantuan C*R*A*C*K uphill to his right, and he stopped cold, his heart stumbling once before recovering. As he watched, a giant redwood uphill to his left, the tallest one in sight, s-l-o-w-l-y wavered off from vertical with regal reluctance, its incredible football field length gaining speed faster and faster as it fell, toppling as inevitable as doomsday.

  It didn’t just hit, it SLAMMED into the ground amongst its fellow lesser giants with a seemingly endless rolling thunderclap sound of impact that was loud even over the wind. The butt end of the trunk, though almost 10 yards in diameter, bent like a bow with the force of the redwood’s fall; the snapped roots at the toppled tree’s base end kicked up into visibility, shuddered for a few seconds while explosiv
ely showering clumps of dirt as big as Speedy, and then fell back again.

  Speedy goggled at the gap in the tree line where the gale-murdered redwood king had reigned a few seconds before, and at the long scar it had torn into the forest when it fell. He was trembling in shock and awe at the sheer alien-ness of all this, and by actually having witnessed nature’s display of power.

  Clouds scudded across the moon as if fleeing the windstorm that poured through the black masses of redwood trees on either side of the road, savagely rustling through their foliage loud enough to sound like a deep fat fryer in action. The rising and falling wails of the wind screamed out a litany of incoherent threats.

  Unreasoning terror welled up within Speedy; some primal part of his brain almost expected armies of bogeymen to converge on him from the wind-tossed darkness about him. The branches of the closest trees thrashed in the heavy wind like the arms of blind giants groping for the human interloper, as if trying to snatch up and crush this shivering monkey afraid and friendless in their territory.

  “Boo,” Speedy screamed in rage at the roaring night wind, spreading his arms and fingers wide to make himself bigger against the claustrophobic dark and the threatening redwoods.

  Like magic it all became harmless again. His surroundings were just high wind and redwood trees, mountains and darkness and cloud swept sky – nothing more or less.

  Speedy took a deep breath to simmer down, then snickered in self-mockery and started jogging again, in a loping stride that ate up the miles despite the powerful headwind.

  He and Buck had parted company in the dense middle of the piney woods. After Speedy had run a while further, 101 began switch-backing down the foothills out of the old growth redwoods and into rolling chaparral: low hills covered with dry yellow grass, interspersed with occasional clumps of trees and shrubbery.

  The gale lessened as he wended back and forth down the switchbacks, finally nearing calmness. The scent of sage rose to hit Speedy’s nostrils in the stillness, not unpleasantly. It smelt pungent and menthol-y, a little like the Kools and Newports the brothers all smoked inside.