Blacktop Wasteland

by S. A. Cosby

  Kelvin had been dead for three hours. His cousin, his best friend, had been dead for three hours.

  Ronnie Fucking Sessions. He should have seen that coming. He should have been prepared. He’d seen Ronnie’s face when Lazy had spilled that money across his desk. That lean and hungry look that said Ronnie did not want to give up his hard-earned loot. Beauregard had seen that look and dismissed it. Foolishly he had assumed Ronnie’s desire to live would outweigh his greed. What he hadn’t counted on was that for Ronnie, a life without money was no life at all. Now because of his avarice and Beauregard’s hubris, Kelvin was dead.

  Beauregard closed his eyes. He had to get up and he had to get moving. Kia and the boys were in the crosshairs of a movie-loving hillbilly psycho. A hillbilly who expected a van full of precious metal to be delivered to him no later than Sunday night. His inside man would tell him that the van never made it. Lazy would then sit and wait for a phone call that was never going to come. Lazy would surmise they had double-crossed him. He’d send shit-kicking Freddy Krueger after him. Ariel was safe because they didn’t know about her. But Kia and the boys had to get out of town. Beauregard reached in his pocket. He pulled out the burner phone. It was broken. Probably crushed in the fall.

  “Shit,” he croaked.

  He’d have to climb back up the hill. The van would be long gone. He’d left the keys in the ignition. Another mistake. The pickup and the box truck would still be there though. Ronnie probably had the keys to the box truck. That was okay. He could hot-wire the truck. Or he could get the keys out of Kelvin’s pocket and drive the pickup truck.

  Grief as strong as an earthquake hit him, sending tremors throughout his whole body. He felt his esophagus spasm but his stomach had nothing left to give so he just dry-heaved. Groaning, Beauregard smacked himself. Hard. After a few seconds he did it again. The tremors began to subside. He rotated onto his hands and knees. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself to his feet. The world around him shimmered like he was walking through a wall of water. Beauregard closed his eyes and steadied himself. One more deep breath and he began climbing up the embankment. Each step was like walking through molasses. He stumbled, caught himself and kept going. The closer he got to the top the slower he climbed. He knew what was waiting for him up there. He knew what he would see once he scaled this nondescript North Carolina hill. But he had to see it. Not just because he needed a set of keys.

  He deserved it. Deserved to be confronted with the blank emptiness that would be etched on what was left of Kelvin’s face. So, he climbed. He pulled at saplings and clawed the moist earth and climbed. He marched toward his penance with a grim determination.

  Kelvin’s dead eyes greeted him as he reached the top of the hill. His head lolled to one side and his mouth was agape. The wound in his cheek was a raw red crater. Beauregard could see jagged remains of Kelvin’s teeth through the hole.

  Beauregard dropped to the ground next to Kelvin’s body. Ants were crawling across his face. Some trundled in and out of his open mouth. Beauregard grabbed his hand. It was like touching a piece of hard cold wax. Kelvin’s fingers were rigid as stone. Beauregard tried to brush the ants off his face but his hands started to shake. He shook his head and steadied himself. The ants he cleaned off climbed back on Kelvin’s face with the pitiless proficiency of a hive mind. Beauregard tried to close his remaining good eye but the lid refused to stay down. He lowered his head until it was lying on Kelvin’s chest. The fetid aroma of fresh death was so potent he could taste it. He swallowed it down and dared his stomach to rebel.

  “Once I take care of all this I’m gonna come back and bury you right. I promise you that. You should’ve never been here. You never owed me a damn thing,” Beauregard mumbled into Kelvin’s chest. A few moments passed. Beauregard’s mind played him scenes from the past like a home movie spliced together from old 8-millimeter reels. Kelvin and him as kids souping up their bicycles with playing cards stuck in the spokes to replicate the sound of a motorcycle. Kelvin daring him to drive without lights through Callis Road knowing damn well Bug would do it. Kelvin in a tuxedo handing him a ring. Those moments and a thousand more like them slit his soul like razors and flayed it open.

  Finally, Beauregard raised his head. He touched his face. The blood, Kelvin’s blood, the driver’s blood, was still dry in the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t cried. He hated himself a little for that but there would be time for tears later. He reached into Kelvin’s front pocket for the keys. He moved over the ground on his hands and knees turning over the soil searching for his gun. He found it a foot from where he and the driver had tumbled to the ground. He put it back in his waistband and slid down the other side of the embankment. As soon as he reached the meadow he saw how the box truck and the pickup were both listing to one side. Both sets of tires on the driver’s side had been slashed.

  “You think you slick, don’t you, Ronnie?” Beauregard said.

  When they had scoped out the rendezvous spot Beauregard had noticed a few houses up the road a piece. A few trailers and some single-story ranchers. Most of the homes had cars sitting in the driveway. A few of them even had garages.

  Red Hill was six hours away. Depending on what kind of vehicle he boosted and how much fuel was in it, he could make it and only have to stop once for gas. He had a little over $200 in cash on him. That had him hitting Red Hill around eight, give or take an hour. He could have Kia and the boys out of town by nine. Boonie could patch up his wounds. Then he could deal with Mr. Ronnie Sessions and Mr. Lazy Mothersbaugh.

  Beauregard walked across the meadow. He slipped among the pines like a wraith and headed north.

  * * *

  There was a paucity of cars on the road as Ronnie crossed the state line into Virginia. Reggie had reclined the seat and drifted off to sleep. He hadn’t spoken a word since they had come down off the hill.

  “Hey, you hungry?” he asked Reggie.

  “No,” Reggie said.

  “You gonna be like this all day?”

  “Like what?”

  “Sitting there like the goddamn Sphinx.”

  “I just keep thinking about that day we went by Bug’s house when he pulled a gun on you. Put the barrel right up against your guts. He was willing to kill you in front of his wife and kids for coming by his house without calling. I keep wondering what he gonna do to us for killing his homeboy,” Reggie said.

  “First, if I had known you was gonna keep talking that shit, I wouldn’t have said nothing to you. Second, Beauregard is dead,” Ronnie said.

  “You sure he dead? Did you go down that hill and make sure his neck was broke? Oh, wait, I know the answer to that,” Reggie said.

  “You know what? Shut up. Go back to sleep,” Ronnie said.

  Reggie shifted in the seat and turned his head to the door. Ronnie pushed a button on the radio, but nothing happened. He stared straight ahead trying to ignore what Reggie had said.

  “I got him. I know I got him.”

  Reggie started laughing.

  “Oh, you know you got him? Do you? I’ll tell you what I know. I know that you double-crossing Bug and that Lazy guy done killed us. You know that, right? You’ve fucking killed us. Bug is gonna come for us. He’ll come for us and he’ll kill us like cockroaches. And if he don’t, then Lazy and his boys will. We are so fucking fucked,” Reggie said. He crossed his arms and stared out the window.

  “Reggie, that’s not going to happen. Trust me.”

  “Trust you? Quan trusted you. Kelvin trusted you. Bug trusted you. Shit, Jenny trusted you. How’d that turn out for them?” Reggie said. Ronnie put his hand on Reggie’s knee.

  “They weren’t my brother. Look, even if I didn’t get him he probably broke his neck rolling down that hill.”

  “You always say trust you but you always just making shit up as you go along,” Reggie said in a voice as placid as a frozen lake.

  “Did you want to go back to being poor white trash? Huh? This van is carrying twenty-eight rolls of plati
num. Bug said every roll is ten pounds. Even if we get fifty cents on the dollar that’s enough money to get us out of Virginia and set up somewhere where every road ends up at the beach,” Ronnie said. Reggie didn’t respond.

  “He was going to give it all away, Reggie. All of it. Three million dollars’ worth of second chances just gone,” Ronnie said. Reggie moved Ronnie’s hand off his knee.

  “We always gonna be trash, Ronnie. Money ain’t gonna change that,” Reggie said. Ronnie opened his mouth to offer a rebuttal to Reggie’s assertion but none was forthcoming. The truth had a strange way of ending an argument.

  * * *

  They drove in silence for a few miles. Ronnie opened his mouth to say something to get Reggie’s mind off their current situation when the burner phone started vibrating in his pocket. Ronnie almost ran off the side of the road. Why were they calling so soon? He checked his watch. It was a little after five in the morning.

  “That’s them, ain’t it?” Reggie asked.

  “Nah, it’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” Ronnie said. Sweat spilled across his forehead like an oil slick.

  “You better answer it.”

  “Shut up, just let me think, okay?” Ronnie said. The phone continued to vibrate. Ronnie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The phone stopped vibrating. Then almost immediately it started again. Finally, Ronnie reached in his pocket and answered it.

  “Hey.”

  “Rock and Roll. I thought you was ignoring me. You almost hurt my feelings. Where’s the van? My man say Shade is pretty pissed it didn’t make it to Winston-Salem. He asking the boys that was guarding it what happened but he don’t much like they answers. He pulling they teeth out until he gets some answers he do like.” Lazy chuckled. “Now I’ve gotta say, you boys keep impressing me, but weren’t you supposed to call me when the deal was done? I thought we had an understanding,” Lazy said. Ronnie let that last sentence hang in the air for a beat before he answered.

  “Here’s the thing. That fella Beauregard? He stole the van.”

  “I know that. That’s what I told y’all to do,” Lazy said.

  “No, you don’t understand. We had the van and then him and some fella he had with him turned on me and my brother. He shot at us and took off with the van,” Ronnie said. There was a heavy quietness that carried a weight through the cellular network. It seemed to make the phone cumbersome.

  “Where you at, boy?” Lazy said. He spoke with a deep deliberate articulation.

  “Me? I’m about forty-five minutes from my place. He left one of the vehicles we used behind. I guess that was lucky for us,” Ronnie said. A line of cars passed him like he was standing still. He checked the speedometer. He was doing 70. The van was rattling like a washing machine full of bricks.

  “Alright. You get to your place, you stay put. We gonna come out there. See if we can figure out where this old boy done run off to,” Lazy said.

  The line went dead.

  “Why’d you tell them we were going home?” Reggie said.

  “To buy us some time.”

  “We gotta go home eventually.”

  “No, we don’t. We going to see your girlfriend out at Wonderland. I got a guy who can sell this shit, I just can’t run up on him without calling first. We just need a few more hours,” Ronnie said.

  “She don’t particularly care for you,” Reggie said.

  “I don’t give a fuck. As long as she don’t eat me, we be alright,” Ronnie said.

  * * *

  Lazy put the phone down on his desk. Billy finished with a customer in the front of the store, then walked into the back office.

  “Rock and Roll says that boy Beauregard took off with the truck,” Lazy said.

  “How you want to handle this?” Billy asked.

  Lazy pulled out a pipe and filled it with a pungent wad of apple-flavored tobacco. “Call the boys you got watching they places. When Ronnie and his brother show up, bring ’em back here. Get Beauregard’s people too. If he did run off with the van, he gonna try to warn his wife. We get her back here, he’ll bring us the van. If he got it,” Lazy said.

  “If he got it? “Billy said.

  Lazy lit his pipe and took a deep drag. “He might done run off with it. But he struck me as smarter than that. He also might be lying face down in a ditch and that Sessions boy might have it. Either way, we gonna figure it out. We might have to roast a few marshmallows over them, but we’ll figure it out,” Lazy said as he exhaled a bluish plume of smoke.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Beauregard pulled into the rest stop with the Jeep hidden inside a cloud.

  Steam was pouring from under the hood and enveloping the entire vehicle. He had just crossed the state line back into Virginia. The clock on the radio said it was nine in the morning. The needle on the temperature gauge was so far in the red, it needed to file for bankruptcy. Beauregard parked the Jeep and killed the engine. He checked the rearview mirror before he got out of the car. The cramped single-wide he’d broken into had a surprisingly well-stocked medicine cabinet. Large and small bandages, peroxide, rubbing alcohol and some aspirin. The long-sleeve black shirt he had taken was too big for him and the pants were too long, but they would do for now. The Jeep had been a gamble from the start. A rust-covered relic with a severe oil leak and two bald tires in the front. It looked like a leftover prop from some apocalyptic movie.

  Still, it had made it all the way to Sussex before it started giving up the ghost. Beauregard got out and popped the hood. More steam swirled around his head. The sickeningly sweet smell of antifreeze filled his nose. Beauregard waved away the steam. On the side of the radiator, he saw a plume of steam coming from a pin-sized hole. Beauregard looked around the rest stop. It was one of the larger ones on the interstate. A line of picnic benches sat under some huge oak trees. A brick building housed the bathrooms, snack machines and an information desk. Beauregard headed for the picnic tables.

  The first three were bare. Nothing on the tables and nothing on the ground under them. It was just his luck to pull up to a rest stop with a fastidious cleaning crew. The fourth table was occupied by an Asian family eating their breakfast. Beauregard tried to put on a smile when he approached them.

  “Excuse me.”

  The father appraised him with a wary stare.

  “I hate to bother you, but do you folks happen to have some pepper?”

  The father conferred with the mother silently. The looks they exchanged seemed to acknowledge that pepper was not a deadly weapon that could be used against them. The two children, a boy and a girl, both under ten, reached into their fast food bags and pulled out several pepper packets. The mother gathered them up and handed them to Beauregard.

  “Are you eating breakfast too?” the little girl asked.

  Beauregard smiled. “No, my car is running hot because the radiator is leaking. Some pepper will fix the hole for a little while,” he said. She nodded her head as if she discussed emergency car repair every day.

  “What happened to your face?” the boy asked. His mother shushed him.

  “An accident,” Beauregard said. He stuffed the pepper packets in his pocket.

  “Thank you,” he said. He headed back to the Jeep. Halfway there he stopped and turned around. “Say, you folks don’t have a phone, do you?”

  * * *

  Kia was pouring milk for Darren’s cereal when she heard the knocking at the door. Javon was still in bed. He’d been up all night drawing while she and Darren had watched a marathon of animated movies. She finished pouring the milk and slid Darren his bowl.

  “Eat your breakfast,” she said. She got up and started for the door. As she went to answer the door, her cell phone started chirping. Kia stopped and turned toward the bedroom. Then she looked back toward the door. The cell phone stopped chirping. She continued to the door.

  “Mama, you forgot the cereal,” Darren said. She barely heard him. She peeked through the diamond-shaped window in the center of the door. There was a whit
e man standing on the porch. Two more white men were standing next to a late model LTD. The one on the porch was as big as her refrigerator. The other two were considerably smaller. The man on the porch was wearing a white button-down shirt and jeans. The two by the car were both wearing T-shirts and jeans. One had on a faded CAT baseball hat.

  She opened the door a crack.

  “Can I help you?”

  The big man wrenched the door from her grasp. She stood in the doorway wearing one of Beauregard’s T-shirts and sweat shorts. She was painfully aware of how they clung to her ass.

  “You married to a boy named Beauregard?” the big man asked.

  “Why? What’s going on?” she asked.

  The big man gave her the once-over. “Get your boys, y’all gotta come with us,” he said.

  “I ain’t going nowhere with you and neither are my boys. Now tell me what the hell is going on,” Kia said.

  The big man turned to the two leaning against the car and beckoned them. Without warning, he grabbed Kia’s arm and started dragging her out of the house. He moved with such astonishing speed, she was on the first step before she started fighting back. She scratched at his eyes and kicked at his balls. She got one grunt for her trouble. The white boy in the CAT hat brushed by them. Her heart shattered when she heard Darren start to scream.