The Scrimshaw Man

by Darrel Bird

  Part three

  Paul walked down the highway for about three miles until he cleared Amarillo, licked his magic thumb and stuck it in the air facing traffic. He waited about thirty minutes until a black Buick LeSabre stopped about twenty-five feet ahead of him with screeching tires.

  He ran to catch up, then stopped, and looked in the window at the three teenagers inside the car, a boy driving and two girls in the front seat.

  “Hop in honey.” Said the girl nearest him on the passenger side, she pulled the seat of the two door up, motioning for him to crawl in the back seat.

  He awkwardly shoved his bag into the back seat, “Scoot over.” said the girl as she let the seat down then raised it again and crawled in beside him.

  He held the bag in his lap as the car spun its wheels back onto the snowy road.

  “Where ya going?” The girl smiled at him as she smacked her gum and blew a small bubble. She hiked her skirt up higher than she needed, and he could see her white panties beneath her skirt.

  He blushed furiously, and she laughed.

  “I’m ga..ga…going to California. “ He stuttered.

  “This ain’t the way to California silly; this road goes to Dallas, you a dummy or something?”

  “No…I…I ain’t no dummy; I must have got off the right road by accident.”

  The scrimshaw man sat on the back of the seat, “She’s fixing to wet yer whistle boy.”

  Paul looked over and said, “No she’s not.”

  “Who are you talking too?” Asked the girl. The girl in the front seat turned her attention away from the driver at the question.

  “Uh, oh nothing.”

  “We are going to a motel a ways up the road. I’ll take the dummy Sue.” She looked at the girl in the front seat.

  “You sure Brenda?”

  “Yeah, it might be interesting.” She laughed as she took some lipstick, smeared her lips heavily with the makeup, and when she turned to Paul, her lips were blood red.

  The LeSabre skidded as it pulled off the road in the courtyard of a seedy looking motel, and the boy killed the engine in front of the office.

  “I’ll be back quick.” He said as he slammed the door of the car, and raced to the office.

  The bearded man at the desk sat drinking his coffee, smoking and reading the Dallas news as the boy walked in.

  The boy slammed his hand down on the bell twice, the sound ringing loudly through his hangover.

  “Quit that boy, or you’re gonna regret ever coming through that door!”

  “Gimmie two rooms old man.”

  “That’ll be forty dollars. Why don’t you kids just go in tha bushes fer five minutes steada paying good money?”

  “It cold outside, if you haven’t noticed dumb head, just gimme the keys.”

  The man took two keys off the keyboard, and handed them to him, “Someday somebody’s going to catch me helping you kids, and then I’m in a world of hurt.” The man whined, as he handed the boy the keys.

  “Ah, no sweat green bean, we know how to keep our mouth shut.” The boy replied as he slammed the office door behind him.

  “Sure, sure, I’ll bet.” He mumbled as he went back to his coffee, cigarette and morning paper which didn’t arrive until the middle of the afternoon.

  Paul followed the three teenagers to the motel door as the boy stuck the key into the lock.

  “It’s a little early to sleep ain’t it? I want to turn back, and get on the 66 before dark.”

  “Ok, hit the road dummy, it’s only fifty miles…go ahead.” The boy leered.

  Paul stood there hesitantly, not being quite sure what to do. The kids were his age, but they seemed years ahead of him.

  Paul stood beside the car holding his bag up to his chest as if he were getting ready to ward something off.

  “Well, you gonna come in or not?” The boy glared at him out of his black eyes.

  “He’s gonna come in Gerald, come on dummy.” The girl in the blood red slip stick jerked him toward the other door.

  She shoved the keys into the lock and opened the garishly green painted door, and pulled him inside.

  The room was warm, and he hesitated inside the door, his mind slowed to a crawl as it tried to tell him to get out of that room.

  “It’s ok sport!” The scrimshaw man said as he perched on the head board of the old and slightly sunken bed. “She’s just gonna jiggle yer jug a little.” The Scrimshaw man howled with laughter at his own humor.

  The girl hopped on the bed, her skirt up to her waist. “Come on buckaroo, climb right up here beside me.” She patted the bed next to her thigh. “Come on dummy, mama won’t hurt you.”

  Paul hesitantly climbed on the bed beside the girl, and when he did, her hand snaked for his crotch, and her mouth landed on his.

  He remembered his aunt in living color as he drove the knife into her stomach and twisted the blade. The girl tried to scream, but the knife had cut the nerves that controlled her voice and legs, paralyzing her completely.

  He withdrew the blade and watched as her blood red lips twitched, her eyes rolled back and fourth as she realized she was going to die for her sins.

  Her lips made an O then her hands began twitching, then her fingers, and she lay still.

  Paul laid there whimpering like the caged animal he had become. The scrimshaw man screamed with laughter. He danced a jig across the floor, and his eyes turned into holes in a blank skull; the skull grinned its deaths head grin at Paul as he curled up into a fetal position, and moaned, his arms clenched tightly together.

  The blood spread quickly on the stained white sheet until it reached where he lay. He jerked away, then crawled over to the corner, and sat with his knees hugging his chest, and he couldn’t tell the difference between the girl's lips and the blood on the sheets.

  After some time the door opened, and Gerald walked into the room. His eyes went wide at the scene in front of him. Paul was still sitting in the corner of the room, his eyes wide as he looked at the boy.

  “Man dude, you did her? Why did you do that?”

  He walked over and looked down into the face of the girl; the girl stared back at him out of unseeing eyes.

  “Dude, we gotta get out of here, come on, lets get go!”

  He pulled Paul up off the floor and dragged him to the car, opened the door and shoved him in.

  The other girl walked outside, “We goin’ already Gerald?”

  “Shut up, and get in the car Sue, the dummy did her.”

  “Did who?”

  “Brenda, you idiot! Get in the car or I’m leaving you!”

  “Did she give you a good time dummy?” Sue laughed at Paul.

  ”No stupid, I mean he stuck her, as in killed, gored! Get in the freaking car!”

  “He what?” She asked as she dove into the passenger seat.

  “Did her, stuck her, pigged her out.”

  Sue turned and began slapping Paul on the face, “You stupid assed dummy, I’ll kill you!” Paul warded off the blows as best he could from the enraged girl.

  “Stop it!” Gerald yelled, “It ain’t gonna do no good now! We gotta get out of here!”

  The car spun on the snow as it left the courtyard of the motels with its broken missing letters which read “O-hen, stop her-.”

  Gerald didn’t notice as the LeSabre gained more speed on the snowy road to Dallas, until the car spun out of control and hit a concrete bridge abutment at ninety miles an hour.

  It flipped over end on end, landed on it’s top and lay still, the wipers making a whopping sound on the windshield keeping the windshield clear of the blinding snow, the dead boy and girl in the front seat staring at eternity through the cracked windshield.

  Paul moaned as he tried to straighten up in the back seat of the Buick, just as a patrol car pulled up beside the wrecked car.

  Officer Jim Crockett of the Texas Rangers looked at the bodies of the boy and girl and shook his head sadly, and then he hunkered down to look in the back
seat of the Buick under the bent down top, and saw Paul.

  Another patrol car pulled up, and the officer turned on his lights in addition, and the lights played and danced an other worldly dance in the blowing snow.

  “What have you got Davy?”

  “Frank, if you call me Davy one more time I’m going to horse whip you with my pistol barrel, you hear me?”

  “Aw, I didn’t mean nothin’ by it Jim, you know that.”

  ”Well, it don’t sound respectful, and you know it…you got any coffee?”

  “Thermos in the front seat, help yourself buddy, while I take a look.”

  “Ok, get the boy in the backseat out of there Frank. Dang kids, driving like maniacs in this kind of weather. The other two are dead.”

  Frank walked over to look into the Buick, he glanced at the side of the car at the writing which said, Le abre, the S had been sliced off cleanly.

  He looked with sadness at the two dead teenagers, and he was no longer in the mood for ribbing his brother officer.

  “You hurt kid?”

  “ No, I ain’t hurt, but I can’t get out.” Paul said from the back of the car.

  “Well, just try to take it easy kid, the fire department will be here in a few minutes, and they can jack you out of there. I’ll stay here with you, can you do that for me?”

  “Yes. “

  “Jim, did you call the fire department?”

  “Yeah, I called em’ frank, what do you think I’ve been doing?”

  “Well you don’t have to be cranky Jim; I just wanted to be sure.”

  “Bonehead!” Jim mumbled as he raised the cup of steaming coffee to his lips.

  He knew the divorce was making havoc with his fellow officers, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “Lord help me to be a better person in all this mess.” He prayed fervently. It seemed that life had just dealt him one blow after the other. He thought about all the other police officers that had gone through the same thing; he thought about God, and life and death as he drank the coffee. Tears came into his eyes as he drank the last of the coffee. He heard the sirens of the fire department vehicle as it wailed its way through the blinding, blowing snow.

  He wiped his eyes quickly with the back of his gloved hand as the vehicle pulled across the median to the wreck.

  “Whatchagot Jim?” Said George Henley as he opened the door.

  “Two dead kids, and a live one in the back seat, you’ll need the jack to get him out. I don’t think he’s hurt much, just stuck under the top.”

  George pulled the heavy jacking device from the truck, and walked over to the car with it.”

  “Bad day today Jim?” Mike Johnson asked as he stood beside the officer.

  “I could use a better one Mike, how you doing yourself?”

  “Oh, just so, so, the whole family has got the flu.”

  “Least you got a family Mike.”

  “Yeah, I heard about your divorce, I’m so sorry, anything I can do to help?”

  “Nah, I just have to put one foot down in front of the other.”

  “Well, know that I’m praying for you buddy.” He laid his hand on the sad officer’s shoulder.

  “You know your welcome to attend church with us anytime.”

  “Yeah, you know I just might take you up on that this Sunday.”

  “Got’im.” George called out from the other side of the Buick. The fire department people had done this a thousand times, and Mike knew it only took one person to operate the jack enough to pull the boy out of the wreck.

  The fireman brought the boy over to where the others were standing. “You hurt at all son?” Jim asked.

  “No sir, I an’t hurt atall.” Paul said with conviction.

  “Ok, you boys stay here until the tow truck clears the wreckage, I’ll take the boy into town, get his story, and fill out the reports.”

  The men nodded at the officer, and then turned to begin cleaning up the wreckage.

  “Get in where it’s warm son.” The officer turned toward his cruiser, and wished for better days.

  Jim pulled into the parking lot of the station, and then backed the patrol car into the line of patrol cars.

  He went into the station with Paul in tow. “Whatcha got Jim?” The desk officer asked as he came through the door.

  “Just a car accident with two stiffs and the boy here, I need a desk with a computer and some reports.”

  “Use Jackson’s desk, he’s out on patrol.”

  “Ok, thanks, come on son, and we’ll get this done so you can get back on the road to… where was it?”

  “California.”

  “Yes, well its almighty bad weather to be on the road son.”

  He sat down at the desk, and pulled up a chair for Paul to sit facing him, “First name, last and middle intial?”

  “Paul Jean Cramer. That’s a J.”

  “Hell I can spell son.”

  Jim began feeding the information into the computer, wishing he could talk to his wife instead of her attorney. I don’t reckon she needs no high class Dallas attorney to communicate with me, am I that hard to get along with?

  He jerked his attention back to what he was doing.

  All of a sudden he straightened upright in his seat as he stared at the monitor. He turned and looked at Paul a full thirty seconds.

  “Boy, it says here you are wanted for murder in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and now Texas. You been busy ain’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “You seem like such a nice boy.” As he removed the handcuffs from his belt. “Stand up and put your hands behind your back son.”

  Jim spun the boy around, and had him cuffed before he knew what was going on.

  “What did you do that for Mr.?”

  “Son, you ain’t going to California, nor anywheres else but the state pen. Texas got first dib’s on you, then Oklahoma, and Arkasas. Most times when criminals are caught in Texas, they stay in Texas.”

  “I don’t want to go there; I want to go to California!”

  “Boy don’t you know what it is you’ve done?”

  “I didn’t do nothing, let me loose!”

  “Can’t do that son.” The officer said sadly.