by Andrew Post
She made herself check her phone. Nothing from Dani. Nothing from anybody. Again, she couldn’t be sure if she would’ve been happier seeing a text from her ex had come in or seeing the absence of one.
Deciding to have a second cigarette (that much she could be sure of), she people-watched the other travelers who could make whatever journey they were on by their own choices, in their own vehicles, stopping when they wanted to stop and not just when the bus driver had to take a shit. A family packed into a minivan. A young couple who, after they filled the U-Haul’s tank, switched drivers for the next leg, and kissed before they set off.
Then her eyes adjusted and she saw past the bright lights of the gas station to the road beyond where, out in the dark, no fewer than fifty people were marching by on foot. Clothes raggedy and hanging off their now desperation-trim bodies. Carrying everything they owned on their backs. The young couple in the moving truck blared the horn for the migrating homeless to break their line to allow the U-Haul through. The minivan packed with kids nudged an old man with its bumper and sent him toppling to the ground. Mel could see through the minivan’s tinted windows. The kids in the back with their eyes glued to their respective screens, if they heard the thump of an old man’s bones hitting sheet metal, didn’t pause their entertainment to ask what happened.
Mel thought about not getting back on the bus, say fuck that to Minneapolis, and joining the migration party, just go wherever they were going, Mexico, New Orleans, Texas, doesn’t matter. Hell, maybe make some friends along the way. Take me with you, to that magic someplace where the struggle might still be real but at least I won’t be alone. A secret place that the bite of desperation may be softened by having a community around me, a hardscrabble oasis that Felix could never find on any map, and place where—
“Excuse me, miss? Do you happen to know the time?”
Mel had no idea someone had walked up to her until she saw him towering over her. Well over six feet, a big round face, enormous build, a dusting of snow on his neatly parted hair and a few flakes catching in his mustache. The giant white boy had on jeans, a windbreaker the color of oatmeal over a shirt that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
She glanced at her phone, thumbed the button to wake up the screen. “Eleven fifty-five,” she said, noticing his trail of footsteps behind him – all that distance he had to clear to walk up to her and she hadn’t even noticed. Wake up. Pay attention.
He didn’t go away.
“The clock in my car doesn’t work,” he said. He turned to indicate a powder-purple Dodge Neon at pump nine. One of the early models, ’95 or ’96. She was kind of surprised it wasn’t a windowless van with free candy spray-painted on the side.
He had a voice that sounded like it needed tuned and it was incongruously high for a man of his daunting size. “I accidentally forgot my watch at home.” A smile. “Safely right there on the nightstand.”
“I see,” Mel said. “Maybe they have some for sale inside,” she added, hoping this would make him leave her alone.
“I left in a big hurry,” he said, “so my watch may not be the only thing I forgot, but I guess I’ll find out when I get where I’m going.” His laugh was a hitching, nasal sound, something like what she imagined a cartoon beaver might let out. Coming from a human being, especially a white boy as large as the one standing before her, it had a sinister feeling to it. An imitation of a laugh, a lazy one at that, mind elsewhere, still looking at her like if he blinked she’d disappear – which, right then, she kind of wished she could.
“Well, drive safe,” Mel said, having reached the terminus of her discomfort level, flicked her cigarette away, and picked up her bag.
“Sorry,” the man said, moving with her, “but I’m not really sure how this usually goes. Do I just come out and ask what your rates are or do you prefer to play it subtle with your prospective clients? This would be my first time. With someone in your line of work, I mean.”
She stopped, gave him a look, and in case its meaning wasn’t obvious, said, “And what line of work would that be? I’m not a fucking hooker.”
“I didn’t know there was any other kind,” he said and laughed that weird-ass off-putting laugh of his again. “You know, a fucking hooker? As opposed to a birdwatching hooker or candle-making hooker.”
“Uh-huh.”
His smile fell away. “I said I was sorry.” There was a silent bitch on the end of that, she could hear it, see it written in angry red behind his beady little eyes.
“Don’t follow me.” Mel continued toward the door.
Again, he moved with her.
“The fuck did I just say to you? Just now, I said don’t follow me.”
“I’m not following you. Jeez. I have to go inside to pay for my gas.”
As intended, this made her feel like the jerk in this situation, but Mel said nothing and gave him another example of her best don’t fuck with me look.
He tried to get the door for her but she was quicker. “It was just a misunderstanding,” he said.
In no way interested in continuing this conversation with this man, she pushed her way inside and ducked into the gift shop, her wet shoes squeaking. She feigned like she was looking at the keychains, finding Melody but not Melanie, though they did have a Dani spelled with an I. Little of this registered. She could play tough – she’d learned how living in Erie and Chicago – but underneath, despite, she was still scared. She kept glancing toward the hallway the truck stop used to connect its various stores. She heard his heavy footsteps before he came into view. He stopped and, using the hallway’s probably too convenient panopticon, looked through the glass of the combination Taco Bell-Pizza Hut and the diner, the tobacco shop, the convenience store. His smile was gone. He didn’t seem to move more than he had to, every adjustment on purpose, disciplined. And though she had no real reason to believe this, it felt like a performance he was giving her now, the same as the one he’d been giving her outside, but just wildly different characters. The one now was pretending like he didn’t know right where she was, that he couldn’t feel her looking at him.
After what felt like an hour condensed inside maybe a few seconds, Mel watched him move off toward the Taco Bell. She got one step toward the gift shop’s exit, not realizing she had the keychain in her hand until she heard: “I do hope you plan on playing for that.”
Mel turned to look at the white lady behind the counter who’d set aside her Sudoku to keep an eye on her one and only customer.
“I changed my mind,” Mel said, putting back the keychain bearing her ex-girlfriend’s name. She exited the gift shop and started back toward the exit.
The white lady manning the register apparently felt the need to inform Mel’s retreating back, “I know the sheriff.”
“Congratulations.”
The bus was parked out at the far edge of the lot, its sidelights on, a cloud of exhaust growing around it. Mel stood at the doors looking out at it, considering how it’d be warm in there, but she’d be alone. Everyone, including the driver, was inside the building. The passengers had been told they were only going to be here for twenty minutes and they were going to leave after that twenty minutes regardless of whether you were aboard or not. Before, she felt twenty minutes was too little time. Now, it felt like far too long.
The weirdo’s Neon stood at pump nine, unoccupied, its owner’s footprints slowly filling in. She could see behind herself in the reflection of the door’s glass panels. Every glimpse of a person crossing from one of the restaurants to the convenience store, she’d blanch. She had to pee, but she decided she didn’t want to use the restrooms here. With the bus to herself, she’d do it there. She went back outside, the cold wind tearing at her face.
She crossed the lot, aware of the fresh footprints she was leaving behind but which she couldn’t help. She got back on the bus. It was like being at sch
ool when no one was there, the emptiness feeling wrong. She passed her seat, and went to the bathroom at the back, entered, and locked the door.
It took a moment for her bladder to co-operate. She held her phone open in front of her, not sure what kind of message she was wanting – something from Dani that said she loved her still, maybe an email from her mom – but none came. She’d been drifting out of everyone’s life far too long and, probably assuming she just wanted the space, they were giving it to her. She could’ve just as easily messaged them, any one of them, and said something as simple as, I’m scared right now, and/or, I’m in a heap of trouble and I want you, if you can, to just look past all the bullshit I’ve put you through and just say something nice to comfort me, to let me know I’m not alone on this fucking planet where it seems like the ratio of awful people to good ones have at some point I wasn’t paying attention grown grossly out of whack.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
After burning through so much patience and good will, what if they had nothing left to give her? Hoping there’d be a possibility and just floating by on that was better than facing the truth that there was a total absence of any.
She sat in the bathroom of an empty bus parked in the middle of a snowy nowhere, never feeling more far from home, positive that a man who wanted to do terrible things to her was looking for her – and there was no way, without committing a felony by jumping in the bus’s driver seat, to leave any sooner.
One footstep. Then a second. The bus rocked, resettled. Someone large had just climbed on.
Mel held her breath.
The bathroom door was flimsy, paper-thin, and would not put up much resistance against a kick. She listened, and waited, her thumb poised over call on her phone, nine and one and one already punched in, ready.
Two steps again, the bus rocked again, resettled.
A count to ten. Mel peeked out before stepping from the bathroom. She leaned to look out the window. A line of footprints moving away from the bus but not going toward the truck stop like the rest. These moved toward pump nine and ended there, where there was only a blank spot in the snow where a car had been, now gone.
Chapter Nine
Merritt did not care for how that exchange at the truck stop had gone, but he’d certainly experienced worse encounters with women. He reviewed the conversation and tried to figure out where he went wrong as he got back on I-94 west, using his blinker like a good driver would, and decided it was her fault and he, after review, had done everything right.
He brought his phone to his ear, waited. The answering machine picked up. “Hi, Mom, just calling to let you know I’m okay. I’ll try not to wake you when I get back, but I don’t know how long this whole thing is going to take. Sometimes the union meetings are quick, other times they tend to drag out a bit, so I may be gone a few days but I also might be back home by the end of the—”
His mother picked up. “Merritt. Do you know what time it is?”
He glanced down at the car’s console clock. Ten to midnight. “Jeez, I’m so sorry, Mom, I had no—”
“I was asleep. You know how hard it is for me to fall asleep and how hard it is for me to get back up out of bed? It hurts me, Merritt. I don’t need you to call me every ten goddamn minutes. I really don’t give two shits where you are or when you come home – or if you ever come home at all, to be honest.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Maybe look for a place to rent while you’re out there,” she said and hung up.
It seemed like everyone was trying to spoil this thing that he’d been looking forward to for so long. He was on his way to go end Brenda Stockton’s life. This was special.
Now far enough from home that he’d lost his usual classic rock station to static, he turned the radio to scan and left it that way, enjoying the sporadic nature of only catching a few seconds of a song before it’d change to something entirely contrasting. A pastor condemning extremists to the fiery pit who subscribed to a faith that was, on paper, only slightly different from his own. A few bars of some pop-country song that didn’t stray from covering the tried and true material of pickup trucks and broken hearts. What he mistook for polka at first until they had to start singing in Spanish. He stopped the scan when he recognized the sound of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Sundown’.
Name a better song for hitting the road.
The oaks and sycamores flanking the interstate gave way in a slow gradient to balsam firs, eastern hemlocks, the occasional birch standing canted, ghostly, and monochrome.
The sky was silk-black, moonless, starless, with just a faint orange thumbprint on the horizon, perhaps the Twin Cities or a forest fire, or the Russians finally decided to up and bomb us after all. Merritt couldn’t say. His phone wasn’t the fancy kind of gizmo that could give directions and he actively avoided listening to the news. Maybe this was the end and what he was driving toward was a nuclear winter. It’d be better to be surprised, if that was the case. Not have it spoiled by the mainstream media that’d probably only lie anyway.
The traffic was thin so he let his tired old Neon rip a bit but locked the cruise control upon achieving seventy, recalling the old traveling man’s adage his father used to say every time they went up north for a camping trip, “Five you’re fine, ten you’re mine.”
And earlier than usual, perhaps because he hadn’t hit the road in a while, his mind started to drift. Never forward, never in a helpful direction, but back. Years back. A specific camping trip in particular. He got dropped back home in a police car, having left the house with his father, but only one of them returned to Merritt’s mother alive.
The minute the cop was up the road his mother closed the curtains and turned to her son. “Merritt, what did you do?”
He stuck to his story, even with her. But unlike the cops, she could see through it. He could see she knew – and see that she knew he knew. Oh, that look in her eyes. That disgust and worry about what he might do next. It had yet to lift, this far on. They never spoke about it, but they didn’t need to. They both knew what happened. His father and brother. Her husband and son. Now, it was just them. Sharing this.
And here he’d been so looking forward to getting a work order, a reason to be out on the open road, and not an hour into it his mind was already turning on him. He blamed the girl at the gas station. For souring things for him, for laying this negative atmosphere over everything. Merritt thought about pulling over to let the Greyhound catch up and then following it to its destination, find that girl again, not come off like he was angling for some time with a hooker like before but instead take her somewhere and, well, what a waste of time that’d be. Felix told him where to be and when to be there and Merritt couldn’t fuck that up. Plus, who Merritt was being sent to go see, he was looking forward to that – and had been for quite some time.
Brenda Stockton.
Brenda Susannah Stockton.
Brenda Susannah Stockton, nee Forrester, of Boston, Massachusetts.
Three girls. Rebecca. Maureen. Judy.
Husband, Stephen Edwin Stockton. Goes by Steve.
They might have to go too, just on the principle of the thing. Salt the earth as it were, dust the whole bloodline out. Boston’s a bit of a haul, but maybe he’d use some PTO he had saved up, go do the Stocktons and then check out the bar they based Cheers on, maybe catch a Bruins game, see if their clam chowder was all it was cracked up to be. Make a weekend of it.
Sure, he’d thought about ending Brenda numerous times. Let the daydreams build the same way he would with his mother, construct every miniscule detail until he felt he’d actually lived the event, done those things, maybe let them further incubate in his dreams and wake up with sore hands the deeds were so real, lived. But with Brenda being what seemed to be Felix’s favorite – apparently not, evidently – Merritt never thought he’d get the chance. Because if something did happen t
o Brenda and Felix hadn’t ordered it, Felix would know who did it at once. Because Brenda was in the trade, so to speak. Knew the tricks. Had honed those senses, same as Merritt. What happened in Houston had proved they were evenly matched, skill-wise. He was sure not to come out of this without a scratch, but he still looked forward to it, this showdown of the century. Felix said to make it slow, to take his time about it. I wouldn’t dream of having it any other way.
But even if he was on the road to go live out a fantasy – and get paid for it, no less – he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was already a bit tainted by the faux pas back at the truck stop. No, not a faux pas. A misunderstanding that did not need to be blown so out of proportion. You did nothing wrong. Remember that.
Merritt adjusted the mirror so the driver behind him would stop blinding him and saw the man in the back seat with most of his head missing. Flannel shirt bloodstained to the waist, suspenders, a ruptured bottom jaw shivered, one eye left partly intact loosely swiveled around hanging half out of its cracked socket. But once it’d locked onto Merritt in the mirror, seeing him see him, it remained fixed. Unblinking and bloodless.
Merritt knew he wasn’t real but still took the car off cruise control, killed the radio, and held the wheel with both hands. He wished he could close his eyes but he was driving and he had somewhere to be, he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t look away, he just had to endure the stare of his unreal passenger.
This will pass. Do like they say to do with bears. Play dead, let them smell you, and they’ll move on. A fight is what they want. They don’t want an easy meal. They get excited by all the screaming and thrashing. Don’t give them what they want. This will pass.
“What is all this back here?” the dead man said.
Merritt did not dignify what he knew was a hallucination by giving it a response.
“Looks like tubes for a fish tank. Certainly hope nobody’d entrusted you to take care of a living creature,” the dead man said. “All them cats. Lord Almighty. I’d go dig a hole to bury another one you killed and end up hitting the bones of one we’d already put there. But your mother, she kept on bringing them home, telling me maybe you’d be nice to this one. Nope.” The dead man laughed. “Nope.”
