Lone Rock

by Duane Lindsay

  Awkwardly, she said goodbye. Adrian felt the emptiness in the apartment again, and was too tired to care. He stumbled to his bedroom, stripped down to casts and bandages and fell into a deep sleep, not waking up until late, when the phone calls started.

  Sheila returned the following evenings, lasagna and garlic bread one night and Mushu pork and dark fried rice in cardboard cartons the next.

  “So what was it like?” Sheila asked, slurping noodles from a white cup held against her chin. “Were you afraid?”

  There were no words to explain. Instead he said, “I keep seeing him, you know?”

  “Who?”

  “Jesus. He comes to visit me when I’m half asleep. He just sits and stares. I try to tell him I wish it hadn’t happened, but it doesn’t do any good. He just sits there.”

  Sheila sat cross legged on the floor, in sensible blue Levis and red deck shoes. “What about the calls?”

  “Nearly twenty today. I don’t know how they get my number.”

  “You should change it.”

  “Yeah, maybe tomorrow,” He clumsily dribbled rice from a fork with his left hand. “They all seem to be the ‘Baby Killer’ people. I haven’t had a single “hooray for the vigilante” call.”

  “Do they say anything new?”

  “No. They curse a lot. They tell me I’m going to hell, but I guess I knew that already. They tell me about God’s plans to punish me. After a while I stop listening.”

  “Jack says he’s sorry,” Sheila sat on the couch with her legs tucked under. In the dim light she looked sincerely concerned.

  “Does he? Sorry he fired me? Threw me out to this...?” Adrian pointed with his fork, taking in his beaten body, his broken life.

  “It’s not like that, Adrian; he cares about you. He just can’t...the business...he wants to help, but—”

  “I don’t believe that,” Adrian said. “But it’s all right, I’ll forgive him.”

  “You will?”

  “No.”

  She finished her noodles and he finished his rice and when she left the depression came back with a vengeance.

  She returned the next night. He hadn’t moved since another call, nearly an hour earlier. Slowly, without spirit, he got up.

  “Adrian!” she said. “We’ve got to talk.”

  “We do?”

  “She’s suing you.” Sheila said carefully, as if shielding him.

  “Who’s suing me?”

  “Christine Gengler, the woman on the bus. The one you saved.”

  Confused, Adrian asked. “What could she be suing me for?”

  “She says that you endangered her life on the bus. That if you hadn’t interfered, nothing would have happened.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Jack told me. Her lawyer came into the office looking for your address. He had papers to serve you.”

  Adrian stopped. He stopped moving, stopped breathing, slowed his thoughts to a crawl. He felt numb and empty, drained of all energy. He heard the cackling voices on the phone saying, “God hates you.” And for the moment he agreed; God probably did.

  “Adrian?” Sheila was watching him. “What are you going to do?”

  He sighed and closed his eyes and bent under the pressure. When he opened them again he saw a whole new life...somewhere else.

  “I’m going to run,” he said.

  5 – The Road to Nowhere

  The wind blew, harsh and biting across Lake Erie, slicing down unopposed from Canada, to batter a medium size U-Haul truck as it tried to gain entrance to Interstate Ninety.

  “God damn,” Adrian said aloud in the cabin of the truck. His face was lit from the orange glow of the dashboard lights, his body angled to the right on the broad vinyl seat to allow him to steer and manipulate both pedals with his left foot. He hadn’t been driving for more than thirty minutes before his back ached and his bruised body screamed in protest. The large truck style steering wheel was difficult to maneuver with one arm, making all turns dangerous and unforgiving.

  At 11:43 at night there was little traffic and eventually, despite several mistakes, he found a ramp, turned, and drove the ungainly vehicle up to a flyover, headed west. The wind battered the truck’s wide flat sides, and Adrian clutched the wheel tightly to maintain control.

  “This is a bad idea,” he muttered as he changed lanes—once, twice...three times—to reach a turn-off. At least now the highway was well lit. Later, when he was out of the city, the road would get worse.

  “Go and rent me something. Make it an automatic, I can’t drive a stick the way I am,” he told Sheila, handing her his credit card. “Make it something big so I can stretch out my leg. And gel it filled with gas, please.”

  When Sheila left. Adrian ricocheted around the apartment, packing a few things, mostly clothes. He left behind almost everything else he owned. He was in flight and the idea of baggage never occurred to him. He was lucky to remember a coat, even though he couldn’t wear it over his casts. The furniture, he decided, would stay. He could buy new things wherever he ended up. The pictures, the books, the dishware, all the detritus of a solitary life would be jettisoned. He paused at a photo of Jack at a company picnic and looked at it solemnly. Everything would be jettisoned.

  Sheila returned to find him sitting on the sofa.

  “A check,” he explained. “To the landlord to cover any damages. I’ll pay anything else later.”

  “Where do you think you’re going? You can’t just run off with no plan, no destination. Adrian; look at yourself! You can hardly walk.” She looked to be almost in tears.

  “I have to leave. I can’t bear this anymore. The calls, the guilt, the pain. I know I can’t get around well, but I have to do something. I don’t have a job, I have nothing to do except listen to those callers...and get sued.”

  “Running away isn’t going to change that,” she said.

  It stopped him for a moment. “It’ll stop the phone calls.”

  She picked up his cell and waved it at him. “You don’t have to answer them. You could change the number. You don’t have to run away.”

  Adrian closed his eyes and breathed for a long time. “Yes; I do,” he said, thinking, I won’t take the damn thing with me.

  Sheila carried his suitcase and two small boxes down the stairs, waiting for him at each landing as he sat and slid. She held the door in the lobby as he hobbled through.

  “Careful, it’s icy,” she said as a gust of wind nearly blasted him off his foot. She walked forward, head bent to the wind, and opened the door to an enormous step van.

  Adrian stopped “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a truck Adrian. It’s all the truck they had, Okay?”

  “Sorry.” He managed, with difficulty, to pull himself into the cab, grimacing at the size of the beast. He shut the door and rolled down the window. Sheila stood below him, looking small and forlorn huddled in the snow.

  “I’ll call you,” Adrian promised, though he had no idea if he would. “Or write. Or something,” It sounded lame, empty words said at farewells. His shoulder slumped wearily. “Goodbye”

  He was about to roll up the window when she yelled, “Wait!”

  “What?”

  “I almost forgot. Jack said to give this to you. “She pulled a brown mailing envelope from her huge purse and held it up to the window. “He said you’d want to have it.”

  “Thanks,” Adrian said without interest. He rolled up the window and put the huge van in gear.

  And got frozen, fried and lost. The heater lived a life of its own. After twenty minutes of driving, the cab became pleasantly warm, then hot, then damn hot and Adrian had to awkwardly hammer at the controls to turn it off. The cab cooled down and down and down until ice formed on the window and he banged on the controls again, repeating the cycle.

  So where was he going? He had no idea. The initial burst of inspiration had carried him through the ill-advised truck rental, the sporadic packing and the actual driving. An h
our’s travel had slowed the impetus just enough to let in rational thought. He glanced at a red and blue shield as it passed in the darkness, like a ghostly illuminated fish. Interstate 90, headed west.

  Adrian had never been further than Detroit. Had he found himself on highway 71 south he wouldn’t have been any better off – he’d never gone that way either.

  West was fine. He had a brief thought of driving until he reached the ocean. The image was powerful and allowed him to not think for quite a while. Not thinking was good.

  The lights of the city ended around Bay Village and the highway plunged into darkness. The headlights lit up a small patch of road, snow flurried in the beams and Adrian drove on, hypnotized and numb, his mind locked on autopilot. He drilled onto Interstate 80 without conscious thought and read a sign ‘Toledo 76 miles.’ Another sign said ‘James W. Shocknessy Ohio Turnpike”. Neither registered or meant anything He pushed at the controls with his broken right hand and shivered, waiting for heat to return.

  Adrian drove on, exhausted. The night was eternal. He imagined it from above, in an airplane or from space, tiny pinpricks of light against a black velvet background, his little van just another dot in the vast emptiness. Boredom made him turn on the radio and he paused for too long on a religious channel. The sound was tinny and far off. The static made it seem as if the station originated in another time and place, broadcast through the ether to reach this radio only. A deeply southern voice of alternate honey and vinegar filled the air.

  “Though you are a sinner, God still loves you.” Adrian experienced a sudden longing.

  He remembered the voice on the phone yelling at him about God’s eternal punishment God hates you, that one had said. God loves you, said this one. Though it made constant disclaimers about that love and specific conditions and requirements that had to be made, Adrian wanted desperately to believe. He wanted to believe more than he’d ever wanted anything in all his life.

  Adrian longed for a shot of redemption as he drove the icy black road. With emotions scraped raw and bleeding, broken in body and soul, he yearned for salvation, ready for anything that would bring relief.

  His eyes blurred as tears welled up and he swiped at them with his right arm. The cast ripped his skin as it rasped on his face. The pain felt like penance.

  For a time, listening to the syrupy drawl pouring from the speakers, Adrian felt himself compress, letting himself be seduced by the idea of free salvation, a clean slate. A life of peace and harmony.

  And yet...

  A small scrap of ego still unbowed by the whims of fate, stiffened in resistance. Each time the preacher extolled selflessness, with every plea to “deliver yourself to the almighty savior,” Adrian recoiled.

  “The Lord demands selflessness,” The preacher hissed like a serpent.

  “I was selfless,” Adrian said.

  “The Lord wants you to lay down in peace,” said the preacher.

  “Then why—?”

  “The Lord will save you.”

  “Please—”

  “If you just surrender your will to him.”

  “No,” said Adrian. His heart ached with longing. But, “No.”

  By eight he exited somewhere near Elkhart, and found a McDonald’s with a drive through window. Parked on a side street with the engine running, he ate an egg and ham sandwich and drank coffee.

  By noon he passed South Bend and Gary and the far south suburbs of Chicago and paid his final toll. The weather and the roads were clear. The van rumbled along like a bored Mastodon.

  He drove through Moline, Davenport, Bettendorf and Rock Island—the quad cities—and found himself in Iowa. The road rolled through snow flattened fields of corn stubble as he listened to the radio. Stations swirled by in scan mode, a jumble of country western, hard rock, farm reports and news. He paused on a talk show, briefly allowing a sort of muted consciousness to takeover.

  Mile after mile Adrian drifted in a haze, far from his immediate concerns. There was no past on the Interstate and no future, only a present that stayed the same hour after hour, broken by infrequent stops for gas and bathrooms.

  He passed Adair, Brayton and Shelbeyville. Omaha with its scary highways and baffling exits and too much traffic for early Saturday afternoon. He didn’t slow down for Lincoln, or York or Aurora or Grand Island. In a tiny side of the road-town called Cozad, he stayed in a forties type motor lodge next to a towering white grain silo. Though it was only four thirty in the afternoon, the sun had already begun setting and Adrian had only a few glimpses of little wood houses, a single main street, and railroad tracks.

  “Christine Gengler,” he said aloud, his voice flat in the quiet room. For the first time he thought about the girl he’d helped on the bus. He recalled his first impressions: a shop girl or a first chair cellist. He’d been wrong. According to Sheila. Christine Gengler was a married woman who worked in an insurance office. Did her husband put her up to the lawsuit? Adrian hoped so. He hated to think that someone he’d risked his life for had betrayed him so thoroughly.

  “Maybe it was a lawyer. Maybe she didn’t want to but gave in to pressure.” That could be it, he thought, but he didn’t believe it. He sat in the chair for another hour and went to bed wishing for coffee, wishing he could walk to the store, wishing he wasn’t in Cozad, Nebraska in the first place.

  Walking to the cold truck at seven he noticed the sun seemed brighter here. The sky was a different shade of blue – a friendlier shade. It invigorated him, as if his body was a solar cell, and he stretched, getting into the cab with less effort than before. He looked at the houses on the short drive to the highway, seeing indications of harmony in the well painted fronts, the neat fenced yards, the shoveled walks and cleared driveways.

  The road was dry and clear, the snow piled in huge clumps along the side, and Adrian drove easily. He began to notice the passing scenery. Pines and tall shivering, bare-limbed Cottonwoods in a line along the Platte River to the south. Everywhere was undisturbed white snow, all on rolling hills that floated up and down forever, broken only by large grain silos, one after another, miles apart, stretching to the horizon.

  He began feeling a faint nagging sensation, a suggestion that this road trip wasn’t the answer, that it couldn’t go on much longer. The feeling was supported by a constant ache in his left hip.

  Just west of Ogallala he faced a choice: west to Kimball and Cheyenne, Wyoming or south to Denver, Colorado. Both filled his mind with images of the cowboys and tumbleweeds. At the last moment his arm turned the wheel and swerved into a long southward curve.

  A green road marker said “Denver - 172 miles” and he calculated. “I’ll be there by four.” He watched farmland turn brown and trees disappear. The little towns became smaller and more scattered. Even Sterling was hardly more than a side of the road village by eastern standards.

  Wiggins, Keenesburg, Hudson, then Brighton and the traffic got thicker and billboards grew plentiful and a sign at Interstate 270 said, “Exit east for Denver International Airport.” He came over a rise saw the towers of the city in the distance.

  Denver seemed bigger than he’d expected. He’d pictured a larger version of Cozad. A cow town with taller buildings, not the skyscraper filled downtown spread out in the valley below.

  He exited at Broadway when the lane abruptly ended and a semi-trailer loaded with cows refused to move over. He bumped down a badly maintained exit and turned right.

  Bemused, he thought. “Cows.”

  6 – The Man Calling Himself...

  “Sir?”

  The man calling himself Kevin Lawrence turned around.

  “Your change?”

  “Oh.” He turned back from the door to where the cashier held out a handful of singles and some silver. “Thanks.” He pulled his thick tan wool coat tighter as he pushed open the doors. Wind and a puff of snow flurried in. Hunching his neck down like a turtle he hurried to a grey Tercel in the dark lot.

  A neon sign—Luigi’s—cast a reddish
hue on the dashboard. Kevin liked Italian. He liked dining out; it was his main entertainment during these endless field trips. The heat blower poofed little flakes of ice into the air. He waited a few minutes for the car to warm up.

  “Next trip is going to be Orlando,” he thought. He pulled out onto Ashland Avenue and headed north to Addison, turned left at Comisky Park, where the Cubs lost the pennant race every year since 1922.

  He liked Chicago, but not in winter. He tried to time his trips for better weather. Nobody in their right mind came to Chicago in the winter. The wind here wasn’t called The Hawk for nothing, coming in across Lake Michigan like it was the revenge of the Pottawatomie. Saint Louis wasn’t any better, which reminded him he was overdue for a visit there as well. He sighed deeply and fished for a tiny recorder in the pocket of his coat.

  He fumbled for the button and held it close. “Note. Close up the office in Albany. Get caught up on paperwork and call Donna Viteli at Fischer Electric.” He clicked the button, satisfied.

  A left turn took him into an office/warehouse complex on the near west side. Kevin parked in front of one of a hundred identical units. A wooden sign, hand painted by the landlords as part of the lease, said “Crawford Industries” in blue against a cream background. Kevin had chosen the name, as he picked all the names, as good solid sounding and essentially meaningless. One that suggested a company that actually did something.

  He rushed to the door and unlocked it, stepping into a narrow entryway with a desk where a receptionist would sit if he had one. There was a single door in the rear wall that led to his office, if he did any office work. Still, it had the regulation desk, chairs, lamps and a file cabinet, bought used locally four months ago, if anyone should happen to visit. The concrete floor was covered with cheap carpet.

  Behind that was his own room. In what should have been the warehouse, Kevin had placed a single bed and lamp on an end table. He had a digital clock and a wardrobe for his clothes. The bathroom was equipped with a shower and a sink, a microwave and a small refrigerator.