Blacktop Wasteland

by S. A. Cosby

  “Hello, ladies,” Ronnie said. He snapped the lid back down and shoved the box in his bag. “Come on, you gotta lay down beside Indigo Girl out there.” He grabbed Jenny by the arm and headed back out to the sales floor. His heart was a hornet in his chest. He tried to will it to calm down, but it was futile. That was alright, the job was almost done. He had done it. He had seen the opportunity and he had grabbed it. Like the King said, ambition was just a dream with a V8 engine. He was gonna ride that V8 all the way to a place with sand by the ton and water so clear you could see a mermaid coming up to give you a kiss.

  * * *

  Ronnie knew something was wrong as soon as he opened the door, but he didn’t know what it was until he saw the dyke’s reflection in the polarized glass in the door of the shop. She had a handheld howitzer pointed at Quan from the other side of the office door.

  Ronnie reached into his right pocket and gripped his gun. He fired through his pocket into the door. Lou Ellen fired her gun as she lost her balance. As she fell she let out a jagged wail. While she was falling she continued to pull the trigger on her gun.

  Glass rained down on Quan. One of the shots from the woman behind the counter had whizzed by his head and punched a hole in the picture window in the front of the store. Ronnie saw the brother on the floor pop up and run toward the door. Quan’s hand raised reflexively.

  The young brother’s head snapped back like it was tied to an invisible rope that had been pulled taut. A red mist filled the space between him and Quan. The brother dropped like a wet sheet falling off a clothesline. Quan was blinking frantically. There was something in his eyes.

  Ronnie stepped over the brother with half his head missing and grabbed Quan by the arm. He shoved him toward the door. He could hear Jenny screaming. Her sugar mama was howling like a banshee. The old woman on the floor was crying. Ronnie pushed Quan through the door. They hit the sidewalk in a dead sprint. The picture window in the front of the shop exploded. Ronnie didn’t look back but he knew the dyke was still shooting at them. He ran toward the Buick with Quan in tow. It wasn’t until he got to the car that he realized he was screaming too.

  * * *

  Beauregard opened the passenger door when he saw them run out of the jewelry store. Quan climbed into the back seat and Ronnie jumped into the front. Ronnie had barely closed the door all the way when Beauregard took off, tires squealing and leaving a cloud of gray smoke in his wake. The Buick sailed out of the parking lot doing 40. Beauregard slammed on the brakes and the gas as he twisted the steering wheel to the right. There were only a few cars on the street this time of morning. Beauregard careened around them going up on the sidewalk then back to the street. He ran a red light and Ronnie screamed as he threaded the needle between a jacked-up good ol’ boy truck and a short-body delivery van.

  Beauregard gripped the steering wheel like it was a life preserver. He could feel the vibrations of the engine radiating through the wheel and up his arms. His heart wasn’t pounding. He guessed it wasn’t doing more than 70 beats per minute. This was where he belonged. Where he excelled. Some people were meant to pound the keys on a piano or strum the strings of a guitar. A car was his instrument and he was performing a symphony. A coldness filled him. It started in his stomach and spread to his extremities. He knew no matter what happened he would never feel more alive, more present than he felt at this moment. There was truth in that idea and sadness too.

  Quan pulled his mask off and tossed it to the floor of the car. He wiped at his eyes while simultaneously spitting repeatedly. There was a hot coppery taste in his mouth. Sirens erupted behind them. He turned and looked out the back window. Two blue and white police cruisers had materialized out of nowhere. The lights were nearly lost in the glare from the sun. Quan wiped his eyes with his sleeve again. He looked at it and noticed the grease paint had a pinkish hue. Blood. It was blood. The guy’s blood. He had killed the guy. He had killed someone. Quan dropped his gun to the floor like it was on fire. The vomit was coming out of his mouth before he even realized he was nauseous.

  Beauregard cut his eyes to the left and appraised the cruisers rapidly approaching in his side mirror. During his second recon trip he had driven by the police station once again. It had been near dark and he had counted four cruisers sitting in the parking lot next to the station. Counting the one he had seen parked near the exit made five. A place the size of Cutter County didn’t need more than five police cruisers. The two that were chasing them and the one that was likely on patrol were Dodge Charger Pursuit Special Editions. A 340 hp Hemi engine under the hood meant the car could accelerate from 0 to 60 in six seconds. They came equipped with advanced steering and suspension options. A powerful rear suspension camber linkage and wider-than-normal disk brakes gave the car near supernatural handling capabilities.

  As his Daddy would have said, them dogs could hunt.

  Beauregard had calculated they would have at least two minutes before the cops even knew the store had been robbed once they had left if everything went smooth. Conversely, he had figured they would only have thirty seconds if shit went south. He had heard gunshots as he sat in the Buick. That was a good indicator things had gone pretty far south. The cops showing up in his rearview mirror was not a shock.

  A sign near the on-ramp indicated sensible drivers should slow down to 35 mph to access the ramp and merge into traffic.

  Beauregard took it doing 60. He held the gas down with his right foot and the brakes with his left. The car drifted in a semicircle before emerging onto the interstate.

  “Shit shit shit!” Ronnie howled.

  Beauregard let up off the brake and held the gas pedal down to the floor. The Buick leaped forward as the five-speed transmission he had installed engaged. Beauregard merged and cut off a tractor trailer as he slid into the second of the interstate’s three lanes. The trucker laid on his horn, but Beauregard only heard it as a faint trumpeting in the distance. The sirens soon overwhelmed the horn. Beauregard glanced in the rearview mirror without moving his head. Drivers were pulling over for the cruisers as they closed in on him. They would be close enough to ram him with their bullbars before he knew it. Beauregard cranked up the radio. “WHAM!” by Stevie Ray Vaughan was on the radio. He must have hit the PBS station. Regular radio didn’t play instrumental tunes anymore.

  A blue toggle switch was just below the radio. Beauregard pushed it and the engine roared like a cave bear. Nitrous oxide. N2O. He had installed a plate delivery system on the engine. He’d also adjusted the piston rings so that when the engine heated up from the introduction of the nitro the rings wouldn’t fuse shut and crack the pistons.

  A lot of work but it would be worth it. The needle on the speedometer was lying all the way to the right. It trembled just above 135. An SUV with a plethora of stickers on the rear window that told the story of a stick figure family and several honor roll students loomed in front of him. Beauregard slammed the steering wheel to the right again and drove on the wide shoulder of the interstate to get around the SUV.

  “OH JESUS!” Ronnie screamed.

  Orange triangle-shaped road signs warned of construction ahead. Beauregard hazarded a look in the rearview again. The cruisers were still back there but he had at least six car lengths between the Buick and their Chargers. The overpass that carried the interstate over a two-lane intersection rose up in front of him like a pale white whale’s back breaching out of the ocean depths. The interstate had narrowed from three lanes to two. When the construction was completed the lanes would widen to four. Two additional lanes were being added to the overpass. The new construction stopped well short of its older cousin. A gap sixty feet wide stretched beyond the end of the concrete and the exposed rebars. Twenty-five feet below this chasm, a mound of reddish clay-infused soil rose ten feet into the air. Orange traffic barrels and neatly stacked steel struts and angle iron occupied the space to the right of the pile of dirt. To its left was the intersection and a single-lane highway that had been closed off by traffic cone
s.

  “Shit, tell me you ain’t trying to jump this motherfucker!” Ronnie said over the last notes of Stevie Ray’s Stratocaster.

  “Put on your neck pillows,” Beauregard said. He grabbed his own from his lap with one hand and slipped it around his neck.

  Ronnie grabbed the pillows from the floor. He put one on then tossed one to Quan.

  “Why we gotta wear these, Bug?” Ronnie asked. Instead of putting on his pillow Quan fell over and lay down in the fetal position.

  Beauregard ignored Ronnie’s question. He slammed on the brakes and yanked the steering wheel to the left. The Buick did a 180 as a gray cloud of smoke engulfed them. Without a second of hesitation he slammed the car in reverse and stomped on the gas. The wooden pickets that had surrounded the median had been replaced with orange snow fencing.

  Ronnie was screaming in his ear. No words, just one long nonsensical wail. They were doing 60, hurtling toward an unfinished section of road.

  Backwards.

  The police were closing in like wolves chasing a deer.

  Then the deer sprouted wings.

  Beauregard didn’t say hold on. He didn’t say watch out. But in his mind, he heard his father’s voice.

  “She flying now, Bug!”

  The Buick sailed off the overpass. It plummeted twenty-five feet like a stone. The trunk slammed into the pile of dirt, but the dirt helped to cushion their fall. The edge of the overpass rapidly receded from Beauregard’s vision as they fell. He braced himself by gripping the steering wheel and leaning back in his seat as hard as he could. The rear bumper took some of the force. The load-leveling shocks he had installed took the rest. He could feel every inch of the steel plating he welded to the chassis stretch to its tensile limit.

  The cop car that had been closest to them had slammed on the brakes. The cop car behind hadn’t. It crashed into the first one and sent it careening off the edge. It landed nose first into the asphalt. Steam and engine coolant burst from the crumpled hood even as the car fell forward on its roof. Beauregard jerked on the gearshift, dropped the car into drive and extricated himself from the dry dirt pile. Red clay flew fifty feet into the air as the rear tires strained for purchase. Finally, after what seemed like ten years Beauregard felt the rubber meet the road. He slipped by the upside-down cop car and crashed through the traffic cones. He took the road back to Route 314 and turned right.

  “I think I done shit my pants,” Ronnie mumbled.

  The Buick streaked down the single-lane blacktop road. They passed one decrepit work van and then the road was empty. Two miles later Beauregard turned off the blacktop onto an old dirt lane with mud holes deep enough for spelunking. He did his best to navigate the Buick around the holes. The trees lining the lane cast awkward shadows as the sun seemed to rise higher in the sky.

  The road ended twenty feet from a wide body of standing water. Beauregard had found the place on his second recon trip. The lane was overgrown now but once it had led to a quarry. Over the years, rainwater had filled it and created a man-made lake. There were no fish in the water but sometimes the local kids would ride down the road to go swimming. Sometimes young lovers would come down the road to engage in awkward couplings as they fumbled their way to ecstasy. Boonie’s wrecker sat near the edge of the lake.

  Beauregard stopped the Buick. Ronnie and Quan got out and stripped out of their coveralls. Ronnie was wearing his usual attire and Quan had on sweat pants and a baggy blue T-shirt. They tossed the coveralls in the car but not before using them to wipe the grease paint off their faces. Ronnie and Quan ran over to the truck. Beauregard got out and retrieved a short two-by-four from the back seat. One end was covered in what appeared to be ground beef and tomato sauce. He put that end against the gas pedal and wedged the other end into the steering wheel. Beauregard wound down the window and closed the door. Then he reached through the open window and shifted the car into drive. Beauregard jumped back as the car began to rocket forward.

  The Buick hit the edge of the lake and for a moment it took flight again. Gravity reached out and snatched it out of the air and pulled it into the water. A spray of stagnant water rained down on Beauregard, but he didn’t move. He watched the car sink until it was fully submerged. How long would the engine run underwater? The question popped into his head and he made a mental note to research it later.

  “Come on, man, let’s go!” Ronnie said.

  Beauregard got into the truck and eased it back to the main road. He had borrowed it from Boonie. One of Boonie’s guys had followed him to Cutter County last night. The guy had parked at the convenience store two miles down the road. Beauregard had hidden the truck then hoofed it back to the store.

  They turned left onto Route 314 and headed for Route 249. Beauregard wanted to avoid the interstate. The old state roads would get them back to Red Hill. It would just take a while.

  A state police cruiser shot past them doing at least 100 headed back toward Cutter County. Ronnie put his hand in his pocket as if reaching for the gun that he’d thrown in the lake.

  “They’re looking for a primer blue Buick. Not a tow truck,” Beauregard said.

  It took them nearly three hours to get back to Red Hill. Beauregard drove Ronnie and Quan back to Reggie’s trailer. He stopped the truck and put it in park. The three of them climbed out of the truck. Ronnie had the box tucked under his arm like a high school textbook. He walked around the front of the truck to the driver side and playfully punched Beauregard in the shoulder.

  “Now that was what I call some driving! That’s why I needed the Bug! Goddamn, I thought I saw Jesus trying to take the wheel, but you were like nah, Hoss, I got this!” he said. He held up his hand for a high five. Beauregard put his hands in his pockets. Ronnie held his hand up for a few more moments then put it down by his side. Beauregard looked at Ronnie.

  “I heard shots. Other people heard them too. That’s why the cops got called. What happened in there?” Beauregard asked.

  Ronnie shrugged. “That dyke pulled a gun.”

  “You kill her?”

  “Well, I didn’t stop and take her pulse.”

  “What about him? He kill anybody?”

  “Man, it got crazy in there. Couldn’t be helped.”

  “How she get the drop on you? I thought he was supposed to be crowd control while you went in the back,” Beauregard said. Ronnie had been wondering the same thing but now that they were out and back home he wasn’t that concerned about it.

  Beauregard walked around him and went over to Quan. He stood well inside the other man’s personal space.

  “How about it, gangster? What happened in there?”

  “Man, what difference it make. We made it,” he said. He slurred the words “made it.”

  “What you say?” Beauregard asked.

  “I said—”

  Beauregard slapped him so hard it sounded like a rifle shot. Quan did a 180 and slid against the hood of the wrecker. His blue T-shirt got caught on the wire cage over the headlight. Beauregard squatted beside him.

  “You fucked-up, ain’t ya? I can see it in your eyes. Let me tell you what difference it makes. It’s the difference between an armed robbery that they might chase for a few months and first-degree murder that they won’t never let go. I told you not to get fucked-up. But you did it anyway. Let me guess. That lady got the drop on you when you zoned out while Ronnie was in the back. You stupid ass.” Beauregard stood.

  “Don’t come back to Red Hill. You’re persona non grata now. I don’t ever wanna see you again. And you,” he said as he turned to face Ronnie.

  “I don’t wanna see you until you got my money. Then we meet somewhere outside of town. Toss your phones,” he said. He squatted down again. He grabbed Quan by his braids.

  “I don’t think I gotta tell you, don’t say nothing to nobody about today. I heard you vomit in the back of the car. I know this gonna be hard for you to live with. But you gonna learn to live with it or you gonna die because of it. You hear me?” he
said. Quan nodded. Beauregard got to his feet.

  “Last time, Ronnie. After you pay me, don’t ever come around me or mines again.” Beauregard climbed in the truck and fired it up. Quan extricated himself from the grill and got to his feet. Beauregard backed all the way out of Reggie’s driveway.

  “I hate that motherfucker,” Quan said.

  “I don’t think he too fond of your ass either. Come on, let’s get a beer. In a week, you gonna be eighty grand richer. Then you can hire a boxing trainer,” Ronnie said.

  “Fuck you, Ronnie,” Quan said. He rubbed his face.

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get that beer before Bug come back and give you a matching set,” Ronnie said. He headed for the trailer. A few seconds later, Quan followed him.

  “I hate that motherfucker,” Quan murmured under his breath.

  * * *

  Beauregard drove out to Boonie’s, traded the wrecker for his truck and headed to the shop. The sign on the door had been turned to CLOSED. Kelvin must have been at lunch. He unlocked the door, went inside and turned on the lights. The Duster sat in the corner mute as the Sphinx, yet it still spoke to him inside his head.

  “We are who we were meant to be.”

  The voice in his head sounded like his Daddy. That rough, whiskey-soaked melodic voice that haunted his daydreams. But the words belonged to someone far more eloquent that he couldn’t recall. He ran his finger over the hood of the Duster. People had been shot. They might even be dead. There was going to be major heat coming down after such a brazen robbery in broad daylight. He had a feeling Ronnie was going to try and fuck him over for his cut. Quan was a fucking train wreck.

  But they had gotten away. He still had it. Whatever “it” was.

  “We are who we were meant to be,” he said.

  His words echoed through the garage.