by Sam Cade
The kid knew. You can only crank the jack-in-the-box so far...then it blows.
DUDE HADN’T BEEN AROUND IN FOUR DAYS. Playing games again. Crap like this happened in the past. Always meeting some new pussy at the Rusty Anchor then lying his ass off about it. Ella thought, probably putting some skeezer up in the Holiday Inn Express right now, spending fifteen hours a day there with his pecker hanging out, eating a free continental breakfast, thinking he’s Brad Pitt.
Four days ago, Ella woke Dude with a tantrum screaming about the unpaid bills. Utilities and phone were weeks overdue. They had to be paid today. It was Friday.
“I got it, Ella. I’ll pay it before work today. Now let me sleep.” His head dropped to the pillow. He pulled the covers over his face.
After ten years Ella could see it all, what everybody told her. Bobby Carl Codger was a shifty, dishonest, smooth-talking, good-looking sack of garbage.
Forget the movie star looks. Forget the big, high-energy johnson.
Dude had this coming.
22
ELLA SPRINTED TOWARD the aging Gemini school bus while she dodged coffee-brown mud puddles. She punched the door open with a gloved hand. Muscular thighs launched her three steps up to the driver’s seat. The seat cover, cold as the night, ice-picked her ass right through her jeans. “Mother!” She caught her breath.
Ella saw herself in the sun visor mirror. Dark circles under puffy eyes left her looking droll and much older than twenty-nine.
Rain splattered across the windshield. Ella watched limbs on old live oaks bending. If anything, the bleak weather had intensified.
She pulled her cheap phone from her hoodie. 6:40 a.m. Running late. She dialed again. Five rings. Voicemail.
“It’s Dude. You know the drill.”
You just wait, motherfucker.
She checked under the driver’s seat before leaving. The lightly oiled navy-blue terrycloth hand towel was right where she left it two days ago. The towel held her inheritance. Every dime’s worth.
It was a parting gift from her daddy before he died. The old man had it at his bedside at Black Point Infirmary the week he passed ten years ago. She could still smell the rank hospital room in her head.
IT WAS THE PIPE WRENCH HER OLD MAN USED FOR 45 YEARS at the shipyards in Mobile, Alabama. It was twenty-three inches long with a dinged red paint coating. Weighed close to four pounds. The look was eighteenth century industrial. Rudimentary. Powerful. Brutal.
“That’s a tool for a man’s work, baby girl.”
“Daddy, I’m a girl. What can I do with this big old wrench? I almost can’t lift it.”
“Aw, I know you can tote it, baby girl. You always were strong, all that basketball, softball, and whatnot.”
Ella was five-eight, a sturdy boned brunette, with a short-bobbed ponytail, friendly brown eyes and an appealing crooked smile. A cute, deep south tomboy. She had natural-born coordination and meaty forearms that exploded into an aluminum bat on a good cut.
“Okay, ain’t no heirloom, but I got one use.” John smiled again, gaunt and toothless, looking like some funny drugstore greeting card. “Say you accidentally marry an old sumbitch like me, right? You can right nice jack him up with this little fellow if you need to. Yessirree, jack him right up.”
ELLA’S PLAN WAS SIMPLE. By 8:00 a.m., the kids would be dumped in school. She’d park in the shopping center parking lot, saunter into Hardees, enjoy the warmth, say howdy to a few folks, order a smoked sausage breakfast biscuit, hash browns, and a Coke.
Then she’d go about it.
A heavy steel family heirloom was about to crush the teeth and eyes out of a man’s skull.
It’s Ella. You know the drill.
23
Longview, Texas
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
DUDE WAS RUNNING EIGHTY WITH EVERYBODY ELSE. I-20 was wide open flowing east after passing the southern edge of Dallas. He knew he wouldn’t make Shreveport without more gas, but he wasn’t parting with a nickel until he got some shoes.
His skull felt like he had five train horns blowing through it. His headache was unbearable. The open wounds felt like somebody running a blowtorch across his body.
Needed gas, Motrin, and shoes. Then a telephone.
Dude exited I-20 at Estes Blvd. in Longview and the damn store was sitting right there bigger than the moon. The Walmart Super Store.
He parked as close as he could to the front door, walked into the building and saw a blue vested old lady wearing enough red lipstick to repaint a firetruck. “Please tell me where to find shoes and aspirin ma’am.”
She glanced at his feet, gave him a look, and pointed.
He grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen first, opened it and dry swallowed four tablets. Next, he found the shoes. Picked some black ones marked down on close-out. Ugly as hell, no wonder only $8.99. Grabbed a two-pack of cushioned white socks. He put on a pair of socks, then the shoes, wore them to check-out, put the sock bag on the conveyor with the tag for the shoes and the ibuprofen bottle.
“Where’re the shoes?” asked the woman cashier. Late-forties, rattlesnake skinny, teased blond hair, smoker’s skin, and enough mascara to make any sane person think of a raccoon.
“On my feet.” He lifted a leg. No hurry, nobody in line.
She looked at the foot, then his face, thinking. Dude could smell the cinnamon gum she smacked. The cashier pulled a smartphone out of her hip pocket, swiped the screen, tapped an app, pointed it at Dude’s face and snapped a pic.
“Why’d you do that?” said Dude.
“Cause I know shit when I see it. And right now, I’m looking at some shit.” Her eyebrows shot up. “My husband’s a cop. He likes it when I report shit.”
“Ma’am, I was in a hit and run accident.” Dude’s ass clinched tight with fear.
She rolled her eyes. “Know what that was, what you said?”
Dude shook his head, too scared to say the wrong thing.
“That was some lying shit, the worst kind of shit in my opinion.”
Dude wanted to pay, walk fast out the door and haul ass in the truck. He knew if he laid a twenty down and walked, she’d likely hit buttons for security, maybe start screaming.
“Lemme show you something, Romeo.” She picked up her phone, popped up his picture, pointed the screen at Dude. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that looked like a goddamned booking shot. All we need is a number for you to hold.”
Dude let out a quiet, nervous laugh. Still didn’t say anything.
“Lemme show you one other thing.” She looked at the phone a moment, found what she was looking for. “See that? That trash can whatchamacallit? I accidentally bump my finger right there and that booking shot disappears. Gone. I mean you have to be some kind of Leonardo By-God Da Vinci to come up with this phone stuff.”
Dude nodded.
“Here’s the thing.” She calmed her tone. “I bet if some man walked down my checkout aisle today and said something like, ‘Darlene, you look so friggin’ hot and sexy this morning I wanna buy you a fresh pack of smokes.’ Well, course I’d smile, and I’d say, ‘Thank ya, darlin’, Marlboro Reds would be just fine.’ And I bet my little old pointer finger would accidentally scrape over that trashcan thingy and lose all this awful shit I seen today. Start the rest of the day with a fresh slate.”
“Ma’am. When you’re ringing up my shoes and socks would you mind adding in a pack of Marlboro Reds? No, make that two packs.”
“Well, sure thing, I can do that for you, baby.”
24
A SHORT POWER NAP CALMED DUDE’S NERVES, helped get that cop’s wife out of his mind. He was parked two miles from Walmart behind a cheap highway hotel. He stepped into the cold with five bucks in quarters in his left pocket and walked into the rear entrance of the hotel. He spotted a cove with vending machines. There were two payphones.
He pulled all five dollars of coins out of his pocket, scattered them on the narrow counter.
6:59 a.m. Time fo
r brutal honesty. He knew he was gonna catch hell.
Popped three dollars in quarters in the coin slit. Ka-ching...ka-ching...ka-ching...
Fingers punched in the digits on the touchpad.
The phone rang one time. Dude had no clue about Black Point weather today. He didn’t think this may be the time Ella was driving the bus to school. He forgot he was supposed to pay some bills. Not a thought that Ella might not answer the strange number. The call was accepted.
“Yes,” said Ella.
Dude exhaled. “Oh, God, baby, I just escaped. Those fuckin’ Mexicans kidnapped me. You gotta call...”
He heard a faint click. Then nothing. No dial tone, only dead air. He knew she’d be pissed, but...
“Ella?...Ella?”
He loaded the last two dollars in quarters into the phone. Dialed quickly.
Boop boop boop. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”
The pay phone refunded his quarters. Loaded the phone, tried again.
Boop boop boop. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”
Went to the truck, cranked it, bathed in the heat and stared through the windshield. The morning woke gray with a light mist, cold, with a feeling of ice in the breeze. The sky looked like Dude felt.
Had to get back to Black Point.
The Mexicans would kill Ella trying to find him.
25
Black Point, Alabama
February 14, 2017
6:51 A.M. ELLA CODGER INCHED THE WINDBLOWN BUS down the trailer park’s asphalt drive to the highway. Her cell phone, tucked between her legs, had nine minutes of life.
Her thoughts were not on hazardous driving conditions. She thought more about a proper cemetery for a bloody pipe wrench. A long ball toss off the Fish River bridge seemed appropriate.
“Help me, kids, look both ways, anything coming?”
Raindrops rolled down the side windows. Both windshield wipers were doing their job.
“Anybody see anything?”
“Noooo.”
The bus rocked side to side as the wheels bumped up on to the blacktop with a left turn, headed towards Black Point. The kid’s heads wobbled in sync with the bus. Bobby Carl, Jr. tore into his juice and Pop Tart. Carly and Abigail hadn’t started their breakfast.
Ella glanced at her watch. She was late, late, late.
She pushed the bus up to sixty, thought she felt a floaty, dizzy sensation through the steering wheel on the wet road. She wrote that off as the Xanax soaping up her brain.
The bus ran fast by a cowboy themed bar, Doc Rankin’s vet office, a Dollar General outpost, and a block-wall bait shop with two ice coolers standing against the outside front wall flanking a vintage Pabst sign.
The rest of the real estate was squared off open farmland with an occasional farmhouse that had twisty white smoke blowing out of a brick chimney, rare for the semi tropical gulf coast.
Ella smashed her boot down hard on the brake as she came into the business U.S. 98 intersection with too much speed, readying for the yielding right turn. The brakes grabbed, the tires stopped rolling, launching the bus into a hydroplane slide. The tail end skated outward three feet into the other lane, Ella turned into the skid, let off the brake, and corrected.
“Whoa, Mom, cool”, said Bobby Carl.
It scared the girls. “Slow down, Mama.”
It didn’t phase Ella. Her mind simmered on the blissful payback coming soon. She knew where to unearth her cockroach husband. Big game butterflies floated in her belly. Coach always said if you weren’t nervous, you weren’t ready. She bumped the heavy wrench with her heel. Reassurance. Oh, hell yeah. She was ready.
Making the turn at the Shell station, Ella faced a runway-straight open road for seven miles. She got on it. Growing ice chips spit across the windshield. Limited visibility, but few cars. No concern. She could drive this section in her sleep.
6:59 A.M. Somewhere in America a computer was set to disable her phone in one minute.
A HALF MILE NORTH OF THE CURVE on the same side of the road as Ella, a man had just closed the driver’s door on a showroom new thirty-eight-ton long-haul truck with a trailer bowed down carrying an additional 22,000 pounds of steel aircraft engine parts.
The flatbed rested five feet off the road.
Crede Hendrickson had just stowed the last of the safety cones that he’d placed the night before. Safety blinkers still on. He sat in the toasty warm cab, cell phone in hand, Lycoming plant number on the screen. KSJ Country radio was broadcasting storm reports every ten minutes.
He could already taste the buttered waffle with a bacon side he’d eat at the Black Point Waffle House in forty-five minutes.
The plant was only a half mile away and even in daylight the ice, now the size of rough-edged marbles smacking his windshield, concerned him. He knew he could limp to the plant, but his goal was to make it eight hours east to Fernandina Beach, Florida.
That damn Wanda, he thought. Always pushing for money. She got him in this jam.
Crede used his right index finger to punch the saved number to the Lycoming plant.
Two rings and a pleasant playful female voice answered, “It’s a cold morning at Lycoming, how may I help you.”
Crede pictured a spunky twenty-seven-year old blond who hadn’t had to deal with kids this morning and probably just had morning sex with her live-in boyfriend, well, because it’s cold, and, mostly, because it was a new day and she was only twenty-seven.
EIGHTEEN SECONDS UNTIL 7 A.M. Ella was carrying too much speed, hitting sixty-three, faster than her normal fifty-five. She blitzed past the produce stand.
Sleet smacked the windshield like buckshot.
The flip phone nestled against Ella’s crotch, right up against the cold zipper of her jeans. She felt the vibration as she heard the ring. She snatched it with her left hand like a gunman pulling a pistol and flipped it open. Looking down, she saw Unknown.
“Hello.”
“Oh, God, baby, I just escaped. Those fucking Mexicans kidnapped me. You gotta call...”
Silence.
“Dude?”
7:00 A.M. The phone went dead. Nonpayment of an overdue bill.
“Dude?”
The bus ran hard, sixty-five on the speedometer now. Ella squinted at the phone then took her right hand off the wheel. She lifted her left knee to steady the wheel while her right index finger frantically punched redial. Her right foot never let off the gas.
The bus drifted right, not much, but enough. Right side tires popped off the five-inch ledge of black top. The ground was soggy from twenty-four hours of rain. The steep ditch slope was only eighteen inches from the blacktop but was as full as a swimming pool. The front and rear right-side tires lost traction and began a slide down into the water.
Screams from the twins pierced Ella’s ears.
The bus was canted thirty degrees to the right.
“TRUCK, MAMA!” It was Bobby Carl.
Ella glanced up to a bright reflective strip running horizontal across the heavy solid steel rear tractor trailer bumper. She dropped the phone, both hands grabbed the wheel, her right foot crushed the brake.
It seemed to be slow motion, something from a movie. It was anything but.
Ella jerked the wheel to the left, but the right front tire was too deep in the ditch to respond. She had no control. The right front tire slammed the edge of the concrete culvert pipe causing the bus to pop out of the ditch.
Wooden crates of steel grew gigantic in the approach. The steel bumper looked like it was ten feet tall.
There was ninety-eight thousand pounds of truck and cargo parked stone still in the bus’s path. Two orange lights blinked as a duet on each end of the trailer bumper.
Impact came at sixty miles per hour.
Steel on steel. It was heard a mile away.
The bus stopped dead.
Crede was in mid-sentence to the perky woman, “Thank God you’re open, I’m from...”
&n
bsp; His head slammed back, wrenching his neck muscles. The phone blasted from his hand onto the floorboard.
He didn’t hear the happy voice asking, “Hello, you still there? Hello...”
The trailer bumper forced one-third of the Gemini’s diesel engine through the firewall into the bus cabin.
Four bodies, zero seatbelts. High speed.
Ella’s spleen burst as her abdomen shot upward into the steering wheel, unleashing a blood gush internally. The force carried her over the wheel to headfirst the windshield, crushing her skull as she penetrated the glass. The high speed launch shattered Ella’s neck, shifting bone fragments into the base of her brain.
The short metal panel separating the twins from the bus stairwell caught them at the waist. The girls somersaulted like gymnasts. They impacted upside down, back first, into the steel frame holding the windshield. Their mid-back spinal vertebrae fractured, ripping their spinal cords. Solid steel plate was the backstop for their skulls.
Bobby Carl, Jr. jumped up into the aisle as he hollered “TRUCK.” On impact, the boy launched seven feet headfirst, like he was shot out of a circus cannon, into the windshield. He didn’t have the weight to force penetration. The boy’s head exploded like a bloody watermelon slung off ten stories.
It was over in an instant. Steam spewed from the bus. The Kenworth idled.
Ella Codger’s mutilated body was half outside the bus, jammed tight at her waist by the craggy windshield. The jagged glass sheared her Black Point hoodie and flannel shirt down to her belly button. It also ripped skin from her face to her breasts. Her bloody upper torso was battered by ice balls and freezing rain.
BC’s obliterated brain pulp was scattered over the twins. Blood leaked out of his neck, coating the shoulders of his jacket.
Abigail and Carly, lying on the floor, faced the back of the bus. They didn’t move. They looked to be sleeping. Blood trickled from their ears.