Blackbirds

by Chuck Wendig

  Dear Diary:

  I did it again.

  TWO

  Of Scavengers and Predators

  I-40. Quarter past one in the morning.

  It's just finished raining. The highway glistens.

  The air smells of wet asphalt, which is an odor Miriam associates with fat nightcrawlers stretched across moist macadam.

  Car tires shoosh and hiss by. Everything is a smear of headlights in one direction and brake lights in the other.

  Miriam's been out here now for twenty minutes, and she wonders why this isn't easier. Here she is, tight white T-shirt – a tight, white, wet t-shirt with no bra in sight – and her thumb out for a ride. Prime, Grade-A Road Trash, she thinks. And yet, nobody stops.

  A Lexus speeds past.

  "You're a dick," she says.

  A white SUV rumbles by.

  "You're a super-dick."

  A rust-fucked pickup approaches, and she thinks, this is it. Whoever's driving this junk-bucket is sure to think he can score with this thin slip of road pussy. The truck slows; the driver wants a looky-loo. But then it speeds up again. The trunk's horn honks. An empty Chick-Fil-A cup pirouettes through open air and narrowly misses her head. Hillbilly guffaws Doppler past.

  Miriam turns her hitchhiker's thumb into a middle finger, and she yells out, "Eat a dick and die, fuckpie!"

  She expects them to keep going.

  But: red flash. Brake lights. The truck stops hard, then reverses onto the shoulder.

  "Shit," Miriam says. Just what she needs. She half-expects the identical twin of the dearly departed Del Amico to step out of the truck, scratching his gut through his wife-beater. What she gets instead is a pair of frat boys.

  They're grinning.

  One's got that fireman's build and a pair of clear, mean eyes beneath a mop of blond. The other's shorter – squat, really. Fat, freckled cheeks. Tarheels cap overlooking a pair of puckered butthole eyes. Clean suburban white-boy clothes.

  Miriam nods. "Nice truck. The Tetanus Express."

  "It's my dad's," Blondie says, coming right up on her as cars continue to pass. Squats – that's how she thinks of the other one – trundles up behind her.

  "It's a real nice ride," she says.

  "You need a ride?" Squats asks from behind her. His tone isn't friendly.

  "Nah," she says. "I'm just out here flippin' the bird to pass the time."

  "You're a Yankee," Blondie says. Ironic, because he doesn't have much of the Southern pluck to his voice. Those icy eyes roam all over her. "A cute Yankee."

  Miriam massages her temples. She thinks for a moment about indulging these two frat-tards in some clever roadside banter, but the truth is, she's damp, she's tired, and the blacked eye is really starting to pound.

  "Listen. I know how this goes. You two boys think you're going to 'get some.' Maybe tag me at both ends, maybe just push me around, maybe see if I have any money. I get it. Like any good scavenger, I know predators when I see them. You know what, though? I just don't have the time. I'm fucking tired, for real. So. Get back in your lockjaw jalopy, and head back to the highway from whence you came."

  Blondie steps up on her. He doesn't touch her, but he's noseto-nose.

  "I like the way you use your mouth," he leers.

  "Last warning," she says. "You see the black eye, and you think I'm good to go, but sometimes a girl lets herself get hit for all kinds of complicated reasons. I won't let that happen again tonight. You picking up what I'm putting down?"

  Apparently not, because Squats puts his sausage fingers on her hips.

  Miriam reacts.

  Her head snaps back, pops Squats's nose –

  Squats is in his fifties now, fatter than ever, his nose one big gin blossom, and he's yelling at some woman in a yellow dress, and sweat is beading on his brow, and flecks of spit are flying out of his mouth, and suddenly he plants his fat hand on the kitchen counter as the heart attack tightens the left half of his body and turns his every nerve ending into a roadmap of pain.

  – and he howls, and Miriam thinks to turn up the volume by reaching back and gripping his crotch in a crushing claw. Blondie's taken aback, but she knows she doesn't have long. She spits in his eye, which buys her another second, so she uses her free hand to punch him once, then twice in the throat –

  The cancer is eating him up, juicing his bowels into a tumor-squeezed mess, but he's old, at least in his late seventies, and he lies there surrounded by the boops and beeps and blips of hospital equipment, and he's got his family there. A young boy grips his hand. An old woman bends down to kiss his forehead. A woman in her forties with her blonde hair pulled tight and a peaceful look on her face pats him on the chest once, then twice, and that's it – the old man cries out, shits blood, and dies.

  Squats tries to slap at her, a clumsy grizzly bear move, but she steps out of the way and his meaty palm swishes through air. Miriam's elbow catches him hard in his already-busted, alreadybleeding nose, and Squats goes down.

  Blondie, face red, still choking, rushes at her with all the finesse of a tumbling boulder. She pulls her upper torso back to dodge him, but lets her knee hang out there and catch him right in the bread basket. Blondie grunts, a hard oof of air, and slips on some gravel. He goes down.

  "You think I come out here and I don't know how to protect myself?" she screams at them. She picks up a handful of gravel and pitches it at Blondie, who moans and protects his head. Miriam hawks up another lugey and spits it in his hair. For good measure, she grabs the Tarheel hat off Squats and pitches it onto the highway. "Assholes."

  Then: harsh white. Headlights. Big shadow grumbling.

  The hiss of hydraulic brakes.

  A bobtail – the truck-part of an eighteen-wheeler, this one without its trailer – pulls up onto the shoulder, gravel popping underneath its massive tires.

  Miriam shields her eyes, sees the driver's silhouette. Jesus, she thinks, it's a goddamn Frankenstein. Where are the torches and pitchforks when you need them?

  The Frankenstein is holding a crowbar.

  "Everything okay here?" Frankenstein asks. The voice booms, even over the rumble of the idling truck.

  "We're just having a little friendly tussle," Miriam yells over the truck's engine.

  She can't see his face, but she sees that Frankenstein pivots his cinder-block head, getting a good luck at Squats and Blondie. He shrugs. "You need a ride?"

  "Me, or the two moaning assholes?"

  "You."

  "What the hell," she mumbles, then heads over to the cab to get in.

  INTERLUDE

  The Interview

  Miriam takes a drink from her water bottle. Nope, still not vodka, she thinks.

  Above her head, sparrows rustle their wings in the eaves of the warehouse – dark shapes, stirring.

  She lights another Marlboro. Bats the ashtray back and forth the way a cat might play with a mouse. Blows smoke rings. Drums her fingers so her nails – some chewed to the cuticle, some left long – click on the top of the card table.

  Finally, the door opens.

  The kid comes in, a notebook and pages tucked under his arm, a laptop bag hanging at his side, a digital recorder dangling from a cord around his neck. His hair is a mess.

  He pulls up a chair.

  "Sorry," he says.

  Miriam shrugs. "Whatever. Paul, right?"

  "Paul. Yeah." He offers to shake her hand. She stares at the hand like it has a dick and balls attached to it. He doesn't get it at first, but then it dawns on him. "Oh. Ah. Right."

  "Do you really want to know?" she asks.

  Paul pulls his hand back and gently shakes his head no. He sits down without saying another word. He gets out the notebook, a couple copies of his 'zine (headlines like ransom notes, printed on pages of fluorescent fuchsia, eye-punching lemon, nuclear lime), and delicately places the digital recorder in the center of the table.

  "Thanks for the interview," he says. The kid sounds nervous.

  "Sure
thing." She sucks on the cigarette. After an exhale of smoke in his direction, she adds, "I don't mind talking about it. It's not a secret. It's just that nobody listens."

  "I'm listening."

  "I know. You bring me what I asked?"

  He pulls a crumpled brown bag, sets it down in front of her with a thunk.

  She snaps her fingers. "It isn't gonna unwrap itself, is it?"

  Paul hurries to pull the bottle of scotch – Johnny Walker red label – from the bag.

  "For me?" she asks, waving him off. "You shouldn't have."

  She unscrews the cap and takes a swig.

  "Our 'zine – it's called Rebel Base – gets, like, a hundred readers or something. And soon we're going to be on the internet."

  "Welcome to the future, right?" She fingers the moist rim of the scotch bottle. "I don't really care, by the way. I'm just happy to talk. I like to talk."

  "Okay."

  They sit there, staring at each other.

  "You're not a very good interviewer," she says.

  "I'm sorry. You're just not who I expected."

  "And who did you expect?"

  He pauses. Looks her over. At first, Miriam wonders if maybe he's hot for her, wants to jump her bones maybe. But that isn't it. On his face is the same look one might have while marveling at a two-headed lamb or a picture of the Virgin Mary burned into a slice of toast.

  "My Uncle Joe said you're the real deal," he explains.

  "Your Uncle Joe. I would ask how he's doing, but…"

  "It happened like you said."

  Miriam isn't surprised.

  "I haven't been wrong yet. For the record, I liked Joe. I met him in a bar. I was drunk. He bumped me. I saw the stroke that'd kill him. Fuck it, I thought, and I told him. Every detail – that's where the devil lives, you know, right there in the goddamn details. I said, Joe, you're going to be out fishing. It's going to be a year from now – well, technically, 377 days, and it took me some noodling around on a napkin to get the number and the date. I said, you'll be out there in your hip-waders. You're gonna catch a big one. Not the biggest, not the best, but a big one. I didn't know what kind of fish, because, fuck, I'm not a fishologist–"

  "I think it's an ichthyologist."

  "I'm also not an English major, nor do I care to become one. He said it would probably be a trout. A rainbow. Or a largemouth bass. He asked me what kind of bait he had on the line, and I said it looked like a shiny penny, one flatted by a train so it makes a smooshed oval. He called it a spinner, said that's what he used to catch trout. Again, I'm not an ick, uhhh, ithky, a fishologist."

  She taps the cigarette into the ashtray, crushing it.

  "I said, Joe, you'll be standing there with this fish in your hand, and you'll be smiling and whistling even though nobody's around, holding it up for God and all the other fish to see, and that's when it'll hit you. A blood clot will loosen and fire through your arteries like a bullet down a rifled barrel. Boom! Right into the brain. You'll lose cognitive function, I said. You'll drop into the water. Nobody'll be there for you. You'll die, and the fish swims on."

  Paul is quiet. He worries at his lip with the too-white teeth of a teenager.

  "That's how they found him," Paul says. "Pole in hand."

  Miriam chuckles. "Pole in hand."

  Paul blinks.

  "Get it? Pole? In hand? You know, like, his dick?" She waves him off, and pulls out another Marlboro. "Well, screw you, then. Joe would've liked it. Joe appreciated the finer points of a double entendre."

  "Did you sleep with him?" Paul asks.

  Miriam feigns shock. She fans herself like a wounded Southern debutante.

  "Why, Paul, what do you think of me? I am the very model of chastity." He isn't buying it. She lights the cigarette and waves him off. "Dude, I discarded the key to my virginity belt long ago – just up and tossed it into a river, I did. That being said – no, Paul, I did not bang your uncle. We just drank together. Closed out the bar. And then he went on his way and I went mine. I wasn't sure he really believed me until you found me."

  "He told me about it a month or so before he died," Paul says, running his fingers through his unkempt hair. Paul stares off at a distant point, remembering. "He totally believed it. I said, just don't go fishing that day. And he shrugged and just said, but he really wanted to go fishing, and if that's how he was going to die, then so be it. He got a thrill out of it, I think."

  Paul reaches over and turns on the digital recorder. He watches her carefully. Is he looking for her approval? Does he think she'll reach over and bite him?

  "So," he asks. "How does it work?"

  Miriam takes a deep breath. "This thing that I have?"

  "Yes. Yeah. That."

  "Well, Paul, this thing? It's got rules."

  THREE

  Louis

  Long highway. Everything else is black, pulled away into shadow. All that exists is what the headlights reveal – the glowing middle line, the center divider, a pine tree or exit sign as it emerges from darkness and passes back to darkness.

  The big trucker is as his shadow suggested: canned-ham hands, shoulders like hunks of granite, a chest like a bunch of barrels strung up together. But he's clean-shaven, with a soft face and kind eyes, hair the color of beach sand.

  Probably a rapist, Miriam thinks.

  The cab of the truck is clean, too. Almost too clean, not a speck of dust or road grime. A control freak, clean freak, rapist serial killer wear-the-skins-of-women freak, Miriam thinks. The radio and CB sit mounted on a chrome plate. The seats are brown leather. (Probably human leather.) A pair of dice – hollow aluminum, with the dots punched out – hang from the rearview, lazily spinning.

  "All of life is a roll of the dice," she says.

  Frankenstein looks at Miriam as if he's confused by her.

  "Where you headed?" he asks, studying her.

  "Nowhere," she answers. "Anywhere."

  "You don't care?"

  "Not so much. Just get me away from that motel and those two douchebags."

  "What if I'm going to another motel?"

  "Long as it's not that motel, we're square."

  Frankenstein looks pensive. His big hands pull tight around the wheel. His brow furrows. She wonders if maybe he's thinking about the things he's going to do to her. Or maybe what use he might get out of her bleached skull. A candy dish would be nice, she imagines. Or a lamp. She was in Mexico, what, two years ago? During the Day of the Dead celebrations? All those colorful ofrendas – the bananas, the pan de muerto bread, the marigolds, the mangos, the red and yellow ribbons. But what really stays with her are the sugar skulls: hardened meringue memento mori dotted with colored confections, each wide-eyed and grinning, blissful in its delicious demise. Maybe this guy will be cool enough to do something like that with her skull. Lacquer it with sugar. Tasty.

  "I'm Louis," Frankenstein says, interrupting her fantasies.

  "Dude," she says, "I don't want to be friends. I just want to get away."

  That'll shut him up, she thinks. And it does. But he only grows more preoccupied. Frankenstein – Louis – gnaws on a lip. He taps on the wheel. Is he mad? Sad? Ready to rape her early? She can't tell.

  "Fine," she blurts. "You want to talk, great. Sure. Yes. Let's talk."

  He's surprised. He says nothing.

  Miriam decides she's going to have to do all the heavy lifting.

  "You want to know about the shiner?" she says.

  "The what?"

  "The bruise. The black eye. You saw it as soon as I stepped into this truck, don't lie." She clears her throat. "Which is a very nice truck, by the way. So shiny." She thinks, You probably polish it with the hair you scalp from pretty girls like me. Miriam takes a moment to commend herself. Normally, she'd say that sort of thing out loud, which would probably get her kicked out onto the rain-slick highway.

  "No," he says. "I mean, yes, I saw it. But you don't need to tell me–"

  Miriam opens her bag and starts ro
oting through it. "You look flummoxed."

  "Flummoxed."

  "Yes. Flummoxed. That's a good word, isn't it? It sounds like a made-up word, like maybe a word a three-year-old would use in place of another word. You know, like, Mommy, my flummoxed hurts, I think I ated too much pasghetti."

  "I… never thought of it like that."