What Price Gory?

by West, Terry M.

  Calvin’s home had suddenly become a public library; everything had to be done quietly these days, with an infant in the house. He watched late night television with the captioning on and it made him feel much older than he was. Still, he observed these rules for the kid’s sake.

  Three-month old Calvin Jr. was a beautiful baby. Calvin did not blame his son. No sir. The boy was looking to be Calvin’s only mark on this shitty planet. But, no, that didn’t necessarily have to be the case. Even with the responsibility of raising a child, he could still change the course of his destiny, if he needed.

  The real drag on him was Carol. A child could be shaped and dreams were things that were innately understood by them. A spouse, especially a strong-willed one like Carol, tried to redesign everything you had thought was non-negotiable in your structure. She had changed him so much already, and he had allowed it to happen; mostly because it was stupid shit to fight over. It was petty, really, and he didn’t know why it all irked him so much, sometimes.

  One example was his work briefcase. Where he put it when he came in had been an issue with Carol. So much so, that Carol had made a home for it; and he paid dearly if that briefcase ever missed its mark. There were other tiny lessons she had decided a fifty-year-old man had needed to be taught. How to fold laundry. Where the thermostat always needed to be set. Where the spatulas and big knives went. How to hang his own damn suit jacket, for Christ’s sake. Carol had hell to shell out for any violation of these demands. And that’s what they were. He had never been asked kindly to perform these jobs. Carol was in charge and he hadn’t even voted for the bitch. He wondered how a slow knuckle-dragger like himself had ever made it fifty years without someone like Carol to show him the glow of things.

  It was little shit, to be sure. But many fortunes had started with pennies. And the rules would not have gotten to him so much if there was still a shred of civility left in the house. They bickered constantly. Carol had no patience or sympathy for him anymore. The great friendship and romance between the two of them had evaporated. Maybe it was the compromises he had made. Maybe she thought he was less of a man, constantly being led around on a cock chain. Calvin wanted to just end the marriage, most days. But he knew Carol would not just go quietly into the night. She would take him for all he was worth and a bucket of chicken. He wouldn’t have a prayer of ever attracting someone worthwhile again with an alimony and child support payments sticking out of his ass. He would end up a lonely old man entertaining a child on weekends while Carol would be free to fuck anything that caught her eye.

  Nope. He wasn’t going to give her that. She was as stuck as he was and unless one of them fucked up on a monumental scale, they would continue their sad lives together. Calvin just hoped their son could grow up to be a productive member of society; because having two parents who had little to no love between them might mess with a child.

  Calvin remembered when there was still promise in his life. He was once a very brilliant writer. He had over twenty local writing awards, aged and brown, pressed in a memory book somewhere in the attic.

  The weight of responsibility began to steal the most precious thing a writer requires: time. The young genius who people were finally beginning to whisper about disappeared in an ongoing fit of writer's block. A middle-aged businessman, with nothing but regrets, surfaced in his place.

  One of the few things he gave Carol credit for; she understood that this part of Calvin’s soul still needed to be fed. He was allowed two hours on Sunday to write. He usually wasted this time on online poker and Internet porn. He wondered what he was going to show Carol when she eventually wanted to see that book he was writing. Calvin just wasn’t that inspired anymore. His home life had drained him of his precious creativity and his job nibbled hungrily at it, as well.

  Calvin had worked for the Polarfield Designer Company for ten years and he had earned the title of vice-president. In reality, he was just a glorified draftsman and the promotion meant more responsibility than money. He made a good living, even though the very late hours he put in were never acknowledged on his paycheck.

  Still, he just couldn't seem to cover everything with his salary. On paper, in theory, it worked out fine. But, between hypothesis and application, something was getting lost in the translation. He had a feeling Carol was squandering his money in some style. He would start looking at their joint checking account a little closer.

  There was a dead end sign detouring him to the right. Calvin was no longer on the 63. He had no idea where he was; he had been lost in so much reflection that he hadn’t been paying attention to his route. It was nothing to get pissed about. He liked being alone with his thoughts, which he seldom heard at home. He decided to simply go with the flow. Calvin didn't want to wager on what time he would get home. He would catch his bearings soon, and dig out his cell and GPS, if he needed them.

  A small overpass ahead was lit up by his headlights. He noticed the word infierno spray-painted on the concrete wall above his head. He was going to have to take this dark little street and turn around somewhere. Calvin cruised under the overpass.

  Suddenly, strange colored lights lit up in front of his windshield. They were so bright that he covered his eyes with his forearm. He shook his head and brought his eyes back out. He was traveling down a dark stretch of road. The landscape was level and looked darkly desolate and the sky, which had been liberally sprinkled with stars on the other side of the overpass, was pitch black now. Calvin slowed his car and slid to the shoulder of the road. He put the car in park and rubbed his eyes. Did he just have a stroke? He was a little young for that and he still had a good handle on his health.

  Calvin opened his car door and stepped outside. The air was humid as hell and he broke out in an immediate and heavy sweat. He looked at the dark road behind him. Oblivion stared back. He couldn’t see the overpass which should have been right there.

  Had he lost time after those strange lights, and driven a distance in some kind of trance? He jogged in place for a second and then shook his limbs, testing himself and looking for a sign of a medical woe. He felt fine, mentally and physically.

  He glanced in the other direction. He could see the faint red glow of civilization. Calvin was lost, so he brought out his cell. There was no signal, which didn’t surprise him. He had the shittiest plan you could buy. His GPS on the phone could not stick a pin in his location. Frustrated, he put the phone away and looked around.

  He heard animal sounds though there was no foliage for them to dwell in. The land was naked, devoid of brush, like a desert, from what Calvin could tell. He suddenly felt very lonely and vulnerable standing out there in the darkest of nights. He climbed back into his car and got moving again. He went toward the far-away lights.

  Calvin switched on his radio, deciding that a little noise would make him more comfortable. His favorite station was lost in static. He twisted the dial around, snippets of music popping through the speakers now and again. But he couldn’t get something concrete to play for more than a few seconds.

  He finally managed to dial in what must have been a religious program. The booming and measured male voice had the tone of an evangelist to it. Calvin listened, appreciating the company.

  “And he was cast out,” the voice proclaimed theatrically. “His sin had been vanity. But the Almighty had given him this beauty. And he was truly the most beautiful angel of them all. But the creator of things did not like the light that shone on this design of his. And so the angel was thrown to the pits. There, the ultimate punishment was handed out; for the most beautiful and favored of the angels was given to suffering. And, yea, that angel was called Lucifer and damnation was now his curse and his cause …”

  The reception collapsed. Calvin desperately tried to get a grip on it again, but it was lost. Maybe it was a tiny station somewhere close that he had passed in the darkness and the range was gone on it. It must have been a crackpot with a homemade transmitter of some sort who was preaching his dark and fevered gos
pel to the shadows. Calvin wasn’t a religious man, but he was a fan of the dramatic. And there wasn’t much else to occupy his thoughts, as he was done evaluating his mistakes and failures for the night.

  Calvin took his attention away from the radio and focused on the road once more. He screamed and stomped his brake pedal with both feet. An enormous and hulking shadow crossed the lanes in front of him. The beast looked like a silhouette of an animal; not the actual thing. Its eyes shimmered briefly in the headlights of Calvin’s car.

  His car jerked to a stop. Calvin didn’t know how, but he had missed the beast. It was gone, blinking into the darkness. He caught his breath and felt his heart pound. It had been a cow or buffalo. It was too big to have been anything else.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, and then he chuckled and started moving again. “Well, I could use a hamburger, but not that badly,” he recited in his Groucho voice while flicking an invisible cigar.

  He drove, looking for the resurrection of his cell signal or a place to ask for directions. Calvin was trying his best to laugh at it all, but there was a weird suspicion forming in his mind. Things weren’t quite right here. Reality felt slightly askew. Ever since he had gone under that overpass, things had gotten darker, and it wasn’t just the night sky which had thickened. First it was those strange lights that had gone off like fireworks in his brain. Then there was that evangelist on the radio; the night preacher’s words had seemed purposefully ambiguous. And that shadow animal on the road.

  Calvin whistled cheerfully, but this act was for show. He felt as if he were being watched and he didn’t want whatever was inspecting him to know that he was aware of the sudden shift in reality or that he felt threatened in the least by it. He would follow this road back into the safe boundaries of civilization and the events would be a strange tale to tell his son one day.

  Calvin was relieved when he saw a darkened vehicle pulled onto the shoulder and the figure of a man leaning against the quiet vehicle.

  “Thank Christ,” he muttered, betraying his happy masquerade.

  Calvin wasn’t alone out here anymore. He pulled behind the car and turned his hazards on. He left on his headlights and got out, boiling in the humidity once again. He ran a hand over his smooth, bald head, and felt perspiration there already.

  Calvin approached the man. He was Hispanic. Calvin put the man’s age in the late thirties. He had a thin mustache and a slick mop of black hair. He wore a sticky t-shirt and jeans cut at the knees. His car was an old brown Pinto. Calvin hadn’t seen one of these in years.

  “You okay?” Calvin asked.

  The man nodded, regarding Calvin with a drunken smile. “Yeah, battery died,” he reported, tapping the hood fondly. The man’s gaze had a gloomy air about it, despite the smile on his face. The booze must have been stirring up bad times in him. He had been brooding in the darkness for awhile, Calvin guessed, seeing a pile of cigarette butts near the man’s flip flops.

  “I’m Calvin,” he said, extending his hand.

  The man took it firmly, and shook Calvin’s arm vigorously. “My name is Inocente, but I am not very,” he joked, and Calvin could tell it was one Inocente told often.

  Inocente stared down the ominous road. “You’re the first person I’ve seen out here all night.”

  “Do you know where we are?” Calvin asked.

  Inocente shook his head softly. “No man. I’m lost as hell. Don’t even know how I ended up here. I was listening to my radio, and my head must have drifted away.”

  “Yeah, same thing happened to me. So tell me, does your cell work out here? Do you have a signal?” Calvin asked, thinking that maybe he could borrow it and let Carol know how late he was running.

  Inocente looked at him curiously and suspiciously. “What?”

  “Your phone,” Calvin explained. “Is it working?”

  “What the hell good is my phone going to do me out here?” he replied, eying Calvin like he was a crazy asshole.

  The man was drunker than Calvin thought. Calvin could see that more clearly, now. “Can I give you a lift? Where are you heading?”

  “Home,” Inocente said, rubbing his forehead. “I was at a great party with lots of girls and drinks. I didn’t do so well with the girls, but the drinks; they never say no.”

  “So do you want that ride?” Calvin offered again.

  Inocente shook his head. “No man. I can’t leave my car out here. You got cables? Can you give me a jump?”

  Calvin nodded, hesitantly. “But are you okay to drive?”

  “Oh yeah,” Inocente insisted. “I barely got a buzz left. I’m cool.”

  “Once I get you going, do you mind if I follow you out of here?” Calvin asked, not anxious to face the rest of the mysterious road on his own.

  Inocente shrugged. “Yeah, man, whatever. If I see a place to eat, though, I’m pulling over. I’m starving. No food at that fucking party. No food and stuck-up bitches.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m hungry, too,” Calvin admitted. This new route was keeping him from his dinner from hell. He didn't know whether to resent it or be eternally grateful.

  Calvin got in his car and pulled to the Pinto. Within minutes, they had Inocente’s car going.

  Inocente gave a brief wave to Calvin and then he took off, going as fast as four cylinders could take him. Calvin followed the Pinto. He felt safer now, but the Pinto navigated down the road at what felt like a snail’s pace to Calvin. He had to fight that primal urge to tear around Inocente and leave the slow bastard behind.

  He sighed heavily and brought out a tin box of aspirin from his shirt pocket. He popped one in his mouth and swallowed it. His stomach growled, loudly and for a long time. Has your throat been cut, my old friend? Calvin imagined his belly saying.

  Calvin glanced at his watch. It was a little after midnight. He felt like he had been on this road longer than that, but he was sure that moving along in the night with no stimulation had just made the distance seem greater.

  He stared at Inocente's car, and strained his eyes towards the license plate. The sticker read AUG 76. Calvin scrunched up his face curiously. Why would the registration sticker read 1976? He suddenly thought of how incredulously Inocente had stared at him when Calvin asked about a cell phone.

  Calvin laughed at the thought; it was a ridiculous one. Maybe the sticker was a special kind of tag that commemorated the Pinto being a classic car. Yeah, that had to be it.

  Calvin finally admitted that it was a banner night for weirdness. But there were explanations for all of it, even if he was too tired and hungry to slap them on right now. Still, if he had another opportunity to speak to Inocente, he would ask about the plate and clear it up, so at least one mystery would be solved.

  He saw the lighted sign, in the near distance. It had just popped in from nowhere.

  MIDNIGHT SNACK

  The letters fronted the image of a statuesque woman in a red bikini hoisting a hot dog toward her face. The giant blonde glowed in the flickering neon. She gave a smile and a wink to the darkness. Inocente turned on his right signal way too early. He then stuck his hand out of the window and pointed over the top of his car toward the sign.

  “Yeah, Inocente,” Calvin said, with a laugh. “I get it.”

  As they drew closer, Calvin got a better look at the red and black building. It was a pitiable spot for a business. And the shape, colors and cruel décor of it put him more in the mind of a tattoo parlor or strip club. There were a throng of classic muscle cars pulled into the small parking lot, which gave credence to the place being an eatery. Many food places, especially gimmicky ones, promoted classic car nights. Calvin wasn’t an expert on cars, but the sleek and dark vehicles huddled around the building definitely spoke to his masculinity. Now these were classics, Calvin thought, regarding the Pinto he was following. Inocente had brought a pig to the prom. One thing stuck out to Calvin, though. Weren’t car nights usually held on the weekends? He hadn’t frequented these types of gatherings often, and he had never atten
ded one on purpose. It just seemed like more of a weekend ritual to him.

  He dismissed any lingering suspicion or curiosity. Calvin had finally found an oasis. He would have food now. And he was sure someone in the establishment would know the way off of these dismal lanes.

  Calvin followed Inocente through the pocked driveway. The lot was packed, and peering into the windows of the establishment, he could see people occupying every table. It was quite a crowd for such a lonely stretch. There must have been pockets of civilization around them somewhere.

  Inocente pulled along the drive thru lane and Calvin followed. There were a couple of vehicles in front of Inocente, so Calvin slipped the car into park and killed the engine. He anticipated a wait and saw no reason to waste gas. He glanced back into the dining room. A motionless crowd of people hunkered over the tables and booths. They glowed without color beneath fluorescent lights. It looked like a group of young people to Calvin; maybe high school attendees. They all looked bored and lifeless.