by Robert Bloch
His car jumps the abutment and wraps its grille around a boulder. The storm has caused rockfalls and washouts. He is still trussed up in his seat belt as we hit. I get a few scratches from his flailing around.
One sharp rap to his upper row of teeth, one more to the bridge of his nose, and he’s done. I rifle his junk while blood purples his eye sockets. By the time I find his gun, he looks kind of like the Lone Ranger. Then he stops twitching like a spazz.
The revolver is not my favorite firearm. I prefer automatics, remember? But it was a Smith and Wesson. Now, say that name a few times: Smith and Wesson. Sounds like power, doesn’t it? Power. Right there in your hand.
He has some credit cards and a hundred bucks in cash. I strip the car of documents the way I strip him of his very identity. In seconds he is nothing more than a lump of protein. Nobody. He no longer has an identity. I’ve taken it.
I ditch the corpse and burn the registration. Mr. Gun takes a siesta in my pack, which is waterproof. I don’t find a box of shells. Six rounds only, snug and dry.
Since I’ve won the piece I decide to bag a Stop ’N Go that turns up. It takes two shots: one for the camera and one for the surveillance mirror, to make sure there isn’t a rent-a-cop snoozing back there. Sometimes they give rent-a-cops rubber guns. Or real guns with no bullets.
Bang, bang, and Mister Counterman damn near pops his spine making me wealthier. Half the time those floor safes sit open anyway. The rest of the time, the employee knows the combination, and no one faults him for spilling it under the sort of duress a Smith and Wesson in the ear can provide.
Say it: Smith and Wesson.
And remember that always: The safes are there for you to empty.
I take the cash and coin rolls and ignore the money-order blanks. Into a small bag goes a six of imported beer and some of those thick-sliced potato chips with the skins still on. Beef jerky and chocolate-chip cookies and a quart of low-fat milk. A flashlight and some fresh batteries. They’re dated now so you can tell how new they are. A locked counter spinner holds pocket knives, imitation Swiss army issue. I take the one that does the most things.
Never would I have killed the counterman. He is just logging his hours and understands, as I do, that insurance companies conquer all. On the road I would have taken him, his Camaro, everything. But there in his workplace he is safe from the likes of me and will probably never appreciate this or even realize it.
I pay cash for the motel cabin. I take a very hot shower. There are sex movies on the cable TV. I sleep like a babe until past noon the next day.
Tiresome. Folks in general can be so tiresome.
My favorite part of acceleration is the shifting: 1-2-3-4, watch that needle climb. The game is to make it not stutter, like not jiggling the bottle when you’re decanting some fine wine, which I’ve heard you ought not to do. I learned that from a guy I picked up.
Not this guy today. This guy was a talker. Talked from beat one, like he was trying too hard to form some kind of bond with me. The fellowship of the road. Bum pals for life. I killed him and sort of made the second part true right away. My eyes were the last thing he ever saw with his.
He had rattled on, very academician, about what he called the psychology of hitchhiking. How in the sixties there had been so much trust, and how an entire generation of happy rebels had Yupped out to the point where they wouldn’t even give each other rides home because car pools were a status dip. He talked too fast, trying to reassure himself that I was okay in terms of his manifesto. Dumb shit. Dumb overeducated shit. What he never found time to understand is that hitching a ride is a gamble. A risk consciously taken. Life is a risk. And I am the law of averages. Nothing personal. He died well.
I used this hank of piano wire with wooden grips. I made it myself and hadn’t used it in a while. Variety’s the spice.
Then I hit the road, 1-2-3-4, no further interrupts, and it was good.
His chatter, though, got me to thinking about small towns. You know, those desert suburbs full of retirees. And trust. Living there, you always saw folks like him in the crosswalks. Usually while you were warming a booth in some sleepy coffee shop. And you thought to yourself transient. Cops should come sweep him up. Hustle that sucker along smartly to the next town. Don’t let him linger and keep him on the move.
Like school. Like the military. Keep moving. I keep moving, but on my own terms. Nobody tells me when to sit or git.
Long as the transients keep moving, the flabasses denting their recliners don’t have to bleat about some dude coming through their doggie door to liberate the flatware. If transients were organized, if they communicated, why hell, they could wipe Suburbia USA clean. Dumb people already have too much leisure time. Give a dude nothing to do and pretty soon he invents alcoholism and lynching. And before you know it he’s sniping from a freeway overpass or wrapping gerbils in duct tape to jam up his butt-hole.
I’m passionate about self-sufficiency and using my time wisely. Had to sit jury duty once. One of the questions they ask you, in criminal cases, is, “Have you ever been the victim of a crime?” And my answer was, “Yeah, every April fifteenth the U.S. government rapes me.”
Bye-bye jury duty, and my time is mine once again.
The rain let up enough to make mud everywhere. Bad for my Truck’s finish. Can you believe it, even mud is corrosive now? I pull to the shoulder in that kind of mud, it’d better be worth it.
I actually passed one of two hitchers up. Boring. Too much like the one I just did. Variety, right?
I was in the mood for love. I could’ve made a whole day of a woman.
Jesus, I hope I’m not getting a cold.
The good old boys piloting pickups always want to talk classic Man Stuff. Forged iron, true grit, honest labor in the heartland. Conquering the weaker sex. All in the crudest detail. They wear baseball caps with stupid patches. They have no taste in cologne.
Not this guy.
Ever notice jeeps? Real ones, not those bogus tin-can rice rockets. If a woman is driving one, she’s always attractive. If it’s a man, nine times out of ten it’s the sort who should be driving a pickup truck instead. Rattling loudly on about bar fights and beer and pussy and which team kicked butt. They’re ugly and hostile. They slap dumb bumper stickers over good clean chrome.
ASS GRASS OR GAS—NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE
THIS VEHICLE PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON
IF YOU’RE RICH I’M SINGLE
Proof that in America there’s too much spare time available to people who haven’t the dimmest notion of how to utilize it. No potential Magrittes or Nietzsches there.
I can spare them some of their pain.
So I spot the outline in the rain and think, damn, another truck, because of my experience of longbed rednecks. The kind that still joke are-you-a-boy-or-a-girl if you sport anything lengthier than a jarhead buzzcut with pink sidewalls.
Noise and light from behind the oncoming truck, sudden and jolting. A speeding ambulance cuts a wide berth around the truck and blazes past me. I get splashed in the name of their mission of mercy. On their way to some accident.
The truck is still poking up the hill long after the ambulance fades. It is kept up well. No bumper stickers.
I decide to put out my thumb as it nears. I feel that killing power once again.
Spotted flashbars and for a sec thought it was them hypos from the Stop ’N Go last night. Instead it was a van-type ambulance. The paramedics rode level with me. I blinked them around in plenty of time, hi-lo with the lights, and nuzzled the shoulder as best I could in the rain.
They cut their siren, out of respect or courtesy it don’t matter. Good of ’em. They blew past close enough to rake water acrost my windows. I felt my Truck sway. What a joke: Their mission to save lives costs me mine as I tumble ass over teapot down the cliff. Next story.
There’s sure something hypnotic, though, about them red and blue flashing lights as they cut the storm. The colors of civilization.
&n
bsp; Those boys were on their way to an accident. A real one. I haven’t seen any action tonight, and what I do can’t rightly be called accidental.
Road’s snaky. Makes the flashbar prettier as it loops and dwindles and finally hits the top of the hump and drops out of sight. Still no siren.
Even in this piss-poor visibility I can see the dude they just passed. Up ahead, two hundred yards, give or take. Dunked and drenched, thumb out and dripping. Hitchhiking in the rain and thinking to himself: Just my rat luck, an ambulance. Where’re they going that they can’t give me a quick lift at 90 per? Wherever they’re going, it’s closer to civilization. No riders. Damn my rat luck.
Selfish for folks to think that way. Dudes who think that way never needed first aid before. Till now.
I’m still not going too fast because of the ambulance and it’s pretty much already decided that I’m gonna pull over.
“Hey, thanks for stopping,” the rider said, shucking loose water like a hound dog.
“Climb on in afore you have to swim in,” said the driver.
“Sorry about your seat.”
“Don’t mind that. I waterproofed it.”
“Had it waterproofed, huh?”
“No. Did the job myself with that trichloroethane spray stuff.” He pronounced the word carefully. He would not be expected to know such big words. “Saturated it.”
“You did it up right, then. I don’t feel so bad.” The rider patted himself down and tried to scare up a dry cigarette.
“No smokin’ in my truck,” said the driver. “If you don’t mind.”
“Bad habit anyway.” The rider shrugged and chuckled. “Like smoking will make you dry on the inside when you’re soaked on the outside, or something.”
“What’s that?”
The driver didn’t get it. The rider let it die. As they hit the grade he watched the driver shift gears. He was pretty good at it.
“Where you bound?”
“What’s that?” Now the rider felt foolish. When the driver had said bound, he’d thought he’d meant tied up. There was water in his left ear.
The driver enunciated. “Where do you need to get to?”
“Oh. Well, where are you going?”
It was another game of the road. Don’t say where you’re headed and swat the question back. Then feign delighted surprise when the answer turns out to be right near the destination you’d intended all along!
“Up toward Lansdale. Got a friend I haul loads for, back and forth.”
“That’ll cut a chunk off my travel time,” said the rider. “Mind if I stick with you that far?”
“Long as you talk and help keep me awake. Radio reception sucks out here.”
“It’s the ozone. The storm.”
“That’s what I said.”
The rider sneezed explosively, once, twice. Then came that third hanger-on sneeze you can never quite coax out in rhythm.
“You need a Kleenex?”
The rider nodded and automatically pushed the glove-box button. It was locked.
The driver reached behind his head and produced a tissue from the dark clutter rearward, seemingly out of nowhere. The rider watched the driver’s hands with interest. Then he blew his nose.
“Not gonna see town lights for twenty minutes even at dry-road speed,” said the driver. “Nobody out here but us. Animals are all hiding. I heard there’s this one kind of snake that waits till it rains to hunt. Knows all the other animals are in their burrows hiding from the rain. Doesn’t have to forage.”
“Wow.” It wasn’t yet time to ask the driver what time he thought it was.
They passed another mile in silence.
“How ’bout that ambulance?”
“Hope they made it okay,” said the rider. “That must be a crap detail and a half. Rescue in the rain. Think you could spot me another Kleenex?”
“Sure.”
When the rider sneezed again the driver grabbed a fistful of the kid’s hair and rammed his forehead into the glovebox button, which did not budge.
Except that the rider really hadn’t sneezed. It was a fake that neatly covered the lateral chop aimed at the driver’s windpipe.
Which the driver inadvertently deflected with his hair grab.
The truck slowed and wandered into the oncoming lane. It lurched as its accelerator got pinned, then picked up speed like it had a purpose.
The two men inside were all over each other. The pilot window starred to a crushed-ice pattern. The rearview mirror snapped off. The truck executed a question mark trajectory up the far side of the road, then crossed to drop over the edge. It rolled, picked up speed and began to throw off broken and twisted parts.
It was a long time falling.
Take this one down by hand. Something about the hitchhiker’s eyes made me want this kill to be from the gut. Immediate. Knuckle-skinning.
Problem is, I’m a touch too cocky and sometimes I get what I ask for. Shoulda just jammed my buck knife into his gobblebox and clicked him off, first thing. What do I think I am, some artist, like a fag chef on TV?
Dammit.
I knew he was going to hit me. Knew it the second he did it, which made me half a second too slow. Figured I’d turn his head cold to my advantage and nail him while he was busy sneezing. You get in the first two hits, you can generally call yourself the winner. But he faked me out and the next thing I saw clearly was headlights acrost dirt and I thought, we’re bailing.
Thought I was dreaming about rocking in a bed. Earthquake. Woke up and saw hoses and canvas straps and aluminum tubework. I saw a dude flicking his fingernail against a hypodermic needle, and even though I could see his orange hazard jersey it took me a long while to figure out that I was in the ambulance, horizontal and hurting good. Like having a word right on the tip of your tongue that drives you nuts until you can pin it.
The siren was off. Maybe that helped confuse me.
Felt like my shoulder was dislocated. Could feel it grind and pulse even though I was strapped in firm. I knew that when the paramedic saw my eyes open he’d say there he is and ask how do you feel, captain and tell me now don’t try to move. He did all that while I was wondering where the blood on his shirtfront came from.
Then he spoke mystic words like concussion and green-stick fracture and compound broken this or that and I finally swooned. Fainted dead out, wondering how much damage was prevented by my seat belt versus how much had been caused by it.
The rider had never buckled his. Hitchers almost never do. They don’t want their getaway hindered in case their ride turns out to be a psycho or a groper.
When I opened up my eyes again the paramedic said take it easy and mentioned how lucky I was.
I knew I got in a lick or two. Good solid ones. Wasn’t as if I never took one down while driving. I know the risks. But like I said, something about this particular rider made me want to cancel him out even before we hit my planned excuse to stop.
Maybe it was the sense that with this dude, I’d never get the opportunity to pull over, stop, and do it neat. Not have to mop his brains off the tuck and roll.
Maybe it was because I’d seen his eyes, plenty of times, already looking back at me from my own rearview mirror. Thought that in a flash as I was using the mirror to knock his teeth through his brain pan.
Part of me died with the realization that my Truck was probably a goner from the moment that guy put his hand on the door handle.
Then another part of me tried to die. I felt something snap slack inside, like a water balloon busting and making my lungs all hot.
When the paramedic moved I saw the rider. He was laying in the rack acrost from me and there was blood all over his face and he had been watching me the whole time.
And while that paramedic’s back was turned, the rider’s eyes said to me:
There’s a helluva lot two guys like us could do with an ambulance.
A miscalculation, that’s what it was. For this man, driving this pickup, I should have save
d the Smith and Wesson. On the other hand, it is probably good that the paramedics have not caught me packing. Questions. After that sort of questioning always comes cell time.
I swear the son of a bitch knew I was going to snag him while we were still moving. Damn, but he reacted fast. I’m right-handed. The advantage was his.
No, not Mister Country Pud in his pickup, not at all.
Funny: Only two vehicles on this road all night, and I get to ride in both of them.
I recall thinking the driver is no problem because I can see his class ring hanging on a thong from the rearview. As though he has peaked out in high school, given up on making anything of himself, and so stops wearing the ring because it reminds him of that failure, yet doesn’t have the heart to toss it, so it winds up on the mirror.
My teeth are folded back and my whole mouth is numb. I recall meeting the dashboard head-on before falling base over apex down the hillside. I don’t think I sustained any broken bones. Score one for no seat belts.
When the driver regains consciousness I catch him looking at me and think, okay. Now the masks are off. He’d handled me like he’s used to it. My gag with the tissue didn’t detour him nearly enough.
Call me the Kleenex Killer, I think. Hah. What shall we call you, my truck-driving comrade?
He spasms. Some kind of convulsion, subtle. As the paramedic turns I spot a hemostat on the van’s rubberized floor. I reach down to retrieve it, feeling my muscles work. Some kind of painkiller is amping me.
The ambulance driver says something and the paramedic steps forward. That’s when I catch the pickup driver’s eye again. His expression tells me that, if I want him to, he can arrange another little seizure as a perfect distraction.
I can put out the paramedic’s eye with the hemostat. Jam it into his brain. A hard enough swing will bury it in his carotid. It doesn’t have to be sharp. 1-2-3-4.
The paramedic comes back to check on me. Taps up a vein to give me an injection. More jungle juice. It’ll help me and the pickup driver get our thing done.