Rules of the Road

by Lucian K. Truscott

  A light came on inside the car, and he could see a figure being pulled from the back seat. The figure stood next to the car, hands tied, head wrapped in a piece of cloth. He wondered … it couldn’t be. He lifted his hand, a warning to Johnny Gee and Moon to stay where they were, not to follow procedure.

  “Bring her over here, Jason,” said Harlan Greene, lighting another cigarette. The driver pulled the figure by the hands. The figure stumbled forward in the gravel, fell, was pulled up and stumbled forward again.

  “Come here, son,” said the fat man. “You’ve got something I want? I’ve got something you want.”

  He pulled the cloth from the figure’s head.

  It was Mrs. Butterfield. Another piece of cloth was tied around her eyes, and she was gagged with a sponge.

  Sam took a step forward.

  “Not so fast, son,” said the fat man. “Don’t touch.”

  He was standing about five feet from her. The driver stood beside her, a revolver in his right hand pointed at her rib cage.

  “I want to talk to her,” Sam said softly.

  “Talk all you want, son. She ain’t going nowhere. You ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Alone,” said Sam.

  “Whatever you say,” the fat man said derisively. He signaled the driver and the two men stepped away.

  Sam approached his mother and put his arm around her. “Can I take this thing out?” he asked, pointing to the sponge.

  “Don’t touch the blindfold,” said the fat man.

  Sam pulled the sponge from her mouth and dropped it on the ground. His mother was cursing faintly through clenched teeth.

  “What happened?” he whispered.

  She coughed. “They came and got me not ten minutes after you left the house. They must have been waiting down the road.”

  “I’m sorry, Ma.”

  “Don’t worry, Sam. In one way or another, I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life. Your father hated this man, and I hate him, and now we’re finally doing something about him. All of us. Your father is here. I can feel him.”

  Harlan Greene and the driver walked back to the center of the quarry. The driver took Mrs. Butterfield by the arm.

  “This is what we’re going to do, son,” said the fat man. The driver put the gag back in her mouth and led her a few feet away.

  “We’re going to play by my rules now. You got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I’ve got something you want, and you’ve got something I want. We’re going to make a trade. Is the tape here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  Sam lifted his jacket and pulled the videotape from his belt.

  “Hand it over.”

  “Let her go first,” Sam said, nodding toward his mother.

  Sam held the tape in front of him and walked toward the fat man. When he was almost to him, he started to open the tape box.

  “Here, Mr. Greene. Here’s the tape.” He reached into the tape box, pulled out a .32 caliber pistol, and pressed the muzzle against the fat man’s neck.

  “Take the blindfold off her,” he called to the driver. He poked the muzzle deeper into Harlan Greene’s neck.

  Harlan Greene nodded frantically. “Do as he says!” he yelled.

  The driver tore the blindfold off.

  “Get behind me,” Sam commanded his mother.

  She moved behind him.

  “Betsy?” called Sam over his shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “Listen to me. Walk up here and stand next to me.”

  Betsy walked over.

  “Mr. Greene, tell your driver to throw his gun on the ground.”

  “Do it,” said Harlan Greene. The driver tossed his pistol on the ground.

  “Tell him to kick it over,” Sam said.

  “Kick it. Do as he says.”

  The driver kicked the gun and it skittered to a halt behind Harlan Greene.

  “Pick up the gun, Betsy,” said Sam.

  Betsy walked around Harlan Greene and picked up the gun.

  “Now the keys to the handcuffs. Hand them to her,” said Sam.

  The driver handed the keys to Betsy.

  “We’re going in this direction,” he said. With the .32 stuck under Greene’s chin, Sam lifted his left hand and motioned to Moon and Johnny Gee. Between the sheds, the modified started, headlights came on, and the car rumbled to a halt next to them.

  “Get in the back, Ma,” he said. “Through the window.” Johnny Gee reached for Mrs. Butterfield, and helped her through the window. She sat behind Moon, bent forward under the modified’s roll cage.

  “Look in there, fat man,” Sam whispered.

  Harlan Greene gently lowered his chin into the barrel of the .32 until he could see inside the modified. The video monitor glowed brightly in the sheet metal driver’s compartment. As clearly as if it were day, the monitor showed his driver standing in the middle of the quarry, in close-up.

  “We’ve got the whole thing on tape, every word you said. What you said about killing Spicer? We’ve got that. Your kidnapping of my mother and bringing her here at gunpoint? We’ve got that. Now stand up.”

  Harlan Greene straightened up, the .32 still planted deeply in his chins.

  “Take her home, Moon,” said Sam.

  The modified leapt in a shower of gravel. Moon screeched it to a halt next to Harlan Greene’s car. Johnny Gee climbed out the window and stuck a knife in two of the car’s tires. With a loud hissss the tires went flat. Johnny Gee climbed back through the modified’s window, and the car disappeared through the entrance of the quarry.

  “Come with me, Harlan.”

  They passed along the side of the shed to where the Porsche was parked, and Sam opened the passenger door. Betsy crammed herself into the jump seat in the back. Sam backed into the Porsche, easing the fat man behind him with the .32.

  “Stand still.” He poked the .32 into the fat man’s belly, and backed into the driver’s seat, swinging his legs over the gear shift.

  “Get in.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Get the fuck in.”

  The fat man turned sideways and sat on the passenger seat, swinging his legs in afterward. Sam pressed the .32 against his neck and turned to Betsy.

  “You okay back there?”

  “I’m fine,” said Betsy.

  Sam hit the gas and the Porsche leapt. It careened around two corners and was heading for a third when he hit the breaks.

  The Porsche screeched to a halt.

  Sam reached for the handle, opened the door, and shoved Harlan Greene onto the shoulder of the road.

  “You’re a lucky man, Mr. Greene,” he called after the fat man.

  Harlan Greene looked up from the weeds uncomprehendingly.

  “My father always told me, never hit a man when he’s down. You’re down. I’m not going to hit you.”

  The Porsche spewed gravel, and they were gone.

  Sam watched the rightside mirror for cars following them. Nothing back there but the gloom of the night forest.

  “YOUR MOTHER JUST told me you have someone back at Fort Campbell,” said Betsy. She and Sam were standing in the farmhouse kitchen.

  Johnny Gee and Moon had taken a couple of beers and were walking around inside the barn, marveling at the farm equipment stored there—a couple of old Ford tractors, the shell of an early harvester, a couple of plows, and a hay bailer. “Looks like Star Wars, man, look at this. You could fight a damn war with this stuff.”

  Sam and Betsy could hear Johnny Gee and Moon across the barnyard. They laughed.

  Mrs. Butterfield was upstairs soaking in the tub. Betsy’s friend Charlie from IBI was on his way from Carbondale. Moon had dropped Frankie Stillman at the bus depot with a twenty-dollar bill and a gentle push out the door of the Mercedes. Harlan Greene and his driver, presumably, were walking along one of the gravel roads leading from the quarry, looking for a pay phone. And the .32 caliber pistol was back in
the kitchen drawer where Mrs. Butterfield always kept it.

  “I was seeing someone for a time,” said Sam, reaching for Betsy’s hand. “It didn’t work out.” She turned slightly and touched him. He drew her close.

  “It’s not very far away, Fort Campbell,” she said.

  “And I’ve got a really nice car,” he said.

  “A really fast car.”

  “Two really fast cars.”

  “That’s right. Two. I forgot that damn hot rod of yours.”

  “It’s not a hot rod. It’s a modified.”

  “You’re not thinking of racing that wreck again, are you? You’re not a kid anymore, Sam.”

  “Neither is the modified.”

  She laughed.

  “You know, for six months my mother has been working on me to call you.”

  “She’s been working on me, too. She finds some reason every week to call me. And every time we talk, she mentions you. I’ve got to tell you, though, on the phone she never mentioned your friend down at Fort Campbell.”

  “That’s my mother for you. Ever the one to maintain proper discretion.”

  “What about her, Sam? Were you serious?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You don’t sound very sure of yourself.”

  “It was one of those things. We knew each other years ago at Fort Benning, then we ran into each other at Campbell and tried to recapture something that wasn’t really there in the first place. It didn’t work. We saw a lot of each other there for a while, then we drifted apart. Two middle-aged divorced people groping for a past that never existed. I didn’t know what to tell her.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “She told me, that’s the funny thing. I thought she was falling in love with me, but she straightened me out on that.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “No. But I’ll tell you something. I loved you. God, how I loved you. It almost destroyed me when we broke up.”

  “I know. But we were so young. What did we know?”

  “Not much. I wanted the army. You wanted to stay here in Illinois. Neither of us could see past the end of our own noses.”

  Betsy rested her head on his shoulder. “It seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it, Sam?”

  “It was a long time ago. But I never forgot you. I never forgot the times we had together.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Is that why you agreed to help me so quickly? I mean, I just picked up the phone and called you, and you were here. You surprised me, Betsy. I thought you might tell me to get lost.”

  “Sam, when I talked to you on the phone that day, it was like you were coming home. After all these years, finally you were involved right here at home, in something I knew about. I remembered how you hated politics, how you could never understand your father’s love of the political game. And then, suddenly, there you were, right in the middle of everything you hated, everything you left home to get away from. And you were behaving exactly like your father would have behaved. You were standing up to them. You weren’t afraid. Your father would be so proud of you, Sam. I know he would. He hated Harlan Greene and everything he stood for, and he spent his life fighting men like him.”

  “Yeah, I know he did.”

  “You really are your father’s son, you know that, Sam?”

  “I guess so. But I still hate politics.”

  “That may be. But you seem to have inherited the ability to play the game pretty well.”

  “Politics can be a place to hide, Betsy. That’s what I always thought about my father. He hid behind southern Illinois politics.”

  “Maybe he did. What’s so wrong with that? He did a lot of good for this place in his time.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “The army can be a place to hide, too, Sam.”

  “You know, it’s taken me years to admit that. It’s like getting a haircut, the army is. They can shave your head, but under the burr haircut, you’re still you. The army is more political than I’ve liked to admit. Defense budgets, even where the posts are located. It’s just like Harlan Greene’s waste facility. It’s all jobs and money. It’s all politics.”

  “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  “I never thought we’d be standing in this kitchen with our arms around each other again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess I thought, after what happened between us when we broke up, that we were just too different to ever expect that getting together again would work. I mean, both of us were so headstrong. We wanted what we wanted, and we both got what we wanted, but it meant we were finished. I thought you’ve always resented that.”

  “Resented what?”

  “That I would never bend, that I thought you were a hometown girl, and that was it.”

  “I did resent your attitude, at one time. But people, change, Sam. I’ve changed. So have you. We’re older. We’ll be forty before the end of the century. Now isn’t the time to cling to old pains and resentments and angers.”

  “Well, Fort Campbell isn’t that far … maybe we could …”

  “Do you want to give us another chance, Sam?”

  “I do. I really do, Betsy. I’ve got to tell you, ever since I came back here last year on my way to Campbell, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t let me stop thinking about you.”

  He turned her in his arms and held her tightly and kissed her for a long time.

  “I’ve got to get back down to Fort Campbell tomorrow. I have to return the video equipment. Do you want to drive down with me and spend the weekend?”

  “That sounds interesting. I’ll have to think about it.”

  He kissed her again, longer, lifting her off her feet.

  “I’m thinking, I’m thinking …”

  He covered her mouth with his, tasting her, breathing of her, swirling, swirling, dizzy …

  She pulled back and took a breath.

  “I’ve thought about it,” she said.

  “So?” he said.

  “So I just have one question. What are you going to do with me between now and the time we leave?”

  “I’m going to take you to bed.”

  “In your mother’s house?”

  “In my mother’s house.”

  “The two of us?”

  “The two of us.”

  “Can I have the right hand side of the bed?”

  “You can have any side you want, as long as you don’t steal the covers.”

  “But I do steal the covers,” she said.

  “That’s okay, too,” he said. “Come on. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and tonight we’ve got some catching up to do, and not much time to do it.”

  “You’ve got all the time you want, Sam Butterfield. As long as you spend it with me.”

  “That’s a deal?”

  “That’s a deal.”

  Out the window, they could see Johnny Gee swinging from the hayloft pulley on the front of the barn. Moon was pushing him with one hand and drinking his beer with the other. Sam raised the window and yelled across the barnyard:

  “You guys better get some sleep. We’ve got to deal with that guy from the IBI first thing in the morning.”

  Johnny Gee dropped from the pulley and walked slowly across the barnyard, followed by Moon. They reached the bay window and Johnny Gee said, “Not us, man. We’re out of here by daybreak.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t think it’s the best thing for our health, to be talkin’ to the IBI. We’re ex-cons, the both of us. How much are we gonna count?”

  “Wait a minute …”

  “He’s right, Sam,” Betsy said, touching his arm. “The two of us and those videotapes are all the evidence anybody will need against Harlan Greene.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Sam said. He turned to the two men standing outside the window. “I can still get you at Moon’s pool h
all, can’t I? You know, in case I need to invite you to something.”

  “Sure, man,” Moon said.

  “You got any more beer, man?” called Johnny Gee.

  “In the fridge.”

  “We’ll be okay, man,” said Moon. “Don’t worry ’bout us.”

  Sam lowered the kitchen window and turned to Betsy.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand, heading for the stairs.

  “In the army, don’t they say ‘follow me’?” she teased.

  “Yeah, but in southern Illinois we say, come on. So come on.”

  “I’m right behind you, Major,” she said.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1990 by Lucian K. Truscott IV

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-6353-4

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

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