by Greg Walker
And he needed to feel the rush again.
Nothing else in his life had compared to it, and he didn’t see many thrills heading his way as he looked down the pipeline to eventual old age and then death.
He looked at his watch. Two in the afternoon on Friday. Another daylight raid, this time out of necessity, since the little store closed at five. He didn’t want to break a window and scramble to grab what he could in the darkness before the police arrived. Will wanted to hold the gun in his hand and point it at the clerk, wanted to own the power of life and death compacted into that small, cold object that he could stuff in his pocket. He didn’t intend to harm him any more than the convenience store guy; less so since he knew the gun could kill this time.
Will went outside, all of his items in a duffel bag to bury or burn later when finished, except for the gun, and got into this car. He put a compilation CD he had created of favorite 80’s hair bands into the player and hit play. Cinderella sang Nobody’s Fool and he smiled. Perfect. He, Will Roup, was nobody’s fool. Not anymore. He put the car in drive and drove away towards Loudenville, nervous, sure but even more excited than the evening in college when he had lost his virginity.
Will had driven by twice on the two lane road that passed for a highway in these parts, and knew he needed to go in or go home before somebody marked him. The first time a car had been parked in front, and on the second pass the small lot had been vacant but he had balked and kept going. Thinking and planning it was easier than doing it. He hadn't known beforehand what Brody had expected from them, and so lacked the awareness to obsess over everything that could go wrong. He now had the time to consider everything that was wrong about this, his conscience offering a spirited rebuttal to this idea.
Will had shoplifted a candy bar in the eighth grade as his sole instance of breaking the law before the previous weekend, had never considered crossing any ethical line during his stint of selling kitchen remodels to bored housewives, convincing them that contentment lay just a new countertop and cabinet away. Except for the one night stand with the girl at the conference. He had always believed, as they told him in the sales meetings and especially at the yearly conference, that if he worked hard enough- spilled more blood, sweated a few more gallons, kept a smile in place - someday he would make it. And he had believed it when he had sold software packages, medical equipment, and frozen food from a truck. Hell, he had been the top seller of garden seeds and greeting cards and wallpaper in his neighborhood as a kid, earning enough to stir envy in his peers with the reward of a new bike. But no matter how hard he tried, the good life remained just a sale away: the top seller award went to someone younger and better looking, and his dreams remained just out of reach. And like the housewife with her new kitchen that temporarily outshines her lazy husband, her ungrateful and disappointingly average children and her lucky friends who have so much more but don't deserve it, the novelty had worn off and the reality of a failed life loomed large. And the longer his life lasted under these circumstances, the worse it felt, bitterness even now worming its way into a permanent place in his heart. He had to do something.
Will finally stopped driving and parked in the lot of a closed bar about a mile down the road. It looked like it ought to be condemned, but the tire tracks connecting the water-filled potholes like a drunken effort at connect-the-dots suggested a popular drinking spot here in Hickville. He got out and walked beyond his car to the edge of the woods and relieved himself, then sat back in the driver’s seat and thought again about his plans and the alternative. He could go home, go back to work (assuming he still had a job), go through with his divorce and try to be a part-time father to his son, get old and die. But there was the thing with Brody, the wild card, that could end in his death or imprisonment and make it all irrelevant. And what if the police failed to catch them, but Brody didn't let them walk away?
And to some degree, he liked how things were going, these new horizons to explore. It had felt so good refusing to accept the slight from the bartender. This would just be an extension of that; holding that absolute power in his hands one more time. He closed his eyes and tried to bring back the certainty he had experienced in his apartment while planning this, relived the robbery with Jon, remembered Michelle hurrying to the window so she could pull down the shade and screw another man in his bed. Will reached into the duffel bag and pulled out the ski-mask and tugged it down over his face. With his nose flattened, and pushing lint off of his dry lips with his tongue, he drove back down the road to the store.
It had gone well, better than he could have hoped, and so Will shouldn't have been surprised when two farmers, a father and son by their appearance, walked through the door despite the sign he had flipped to “Closed” on entering.
Will had parked as far as he could from the door, so that his car wouldn't be visible without stepping outside to inspect it. The store had no other customers. The swing set at the house next door was vacant. No one outside hanging laundry or chatting with a neighbor. He waited until a car passed and got out, pausing for a moment to listen. A lawnmower droned from somewhere on the other side of the store, and a hammer pounded out a steady rhythm before ceasing, but all too far away to matter.
He carried the gun in his hand, raced up the wooden steps and went inside. Nobody waited at the counter, set halfway towards the back and parallel to the relatively narrow space. Will felt the eyes of a hundred dead animals on him and looked up, saw deer heads mounted all the way around about twelve off the floor with some black bear and a stuffed wild turkey thrown in, the effect unsettling. As he walked to the counter, passing bins of nuts and bolts, he breathed in the musty scent of the place. Not exactly musty, but earthy, like freshly tilled soil with a hint of manure and lumber, a scent that should be unpleasant but wasn’t.
“Be right with you,” he heard from the back of the store, down long aisles displaying hand and power tools. Will stopped by the counter, as he would at any store as a typical customer, faltering in his plan through his lifetime of conditioning as a law abiding citizen. He looked at a picture of an old man and woman hanging on the wall behind the register, the woman’s eyes beady and sharp and staring right through to his soul and condemning him and he shivered. He peered back into the gloom, searching for the man, trying to gain control of his mounting uncertainty. Some compound bows hung on the back wall, and Will envisioned him stepping into the aisle with an arrow fitted and drawn, loosing with the same accuracy that had brought down the trophies above.
Fast and aggressive.
Don’t give him the chance to react.
He had to get going, or risk blowing this and inviting a host of consequences, or at the least adding another notch of failure to his belt.
Will forced himself to move down the aisle. He found his quarry crouched down with his back turned, straightening some swatch books resting on a shelf supporting cans of paint. He took a deep breath and put the gun to the back of his head.
“What the…”
“I want whatever money you have in the register. I’m going to back up. You stand up slow and keep your hands where I can see them and walk out there ahead of me.”
“There isn’t much in there. I barely get by on what I sell.”
“I don’t care. Get up.” Will spoke in a gruff voice to mask the true sound of it. “I will kill you,” he added, in what he hoped was a convincing tone that covered the lie.
The man stood up and walked behind the counter to the register. He was taller than Will, thin and supple, his movements fluid with no wasted energy. He opened it up, and put maybe a few hundred dollars in a plastic grocery bag. “That’s all I have. Now please just leave.”
The store owner remained calm, nothing like the pants-wetting clerk at the convenience store. This irritated Will. He wanted something more for his efforts, stood balanced between issuing further threats and waving the pistol to provoke a reaction and the prudence of getting away clean while he could.
A rap on the door st
artled him, and he swung around to stare at the storefront. He could see two bulky man-shapes standing outside. He froze, licked his lips to force some moisture onto them. The knock came again. The store owner watched him impassively and Will tried to think of what he should do. He had it. He would force Steve to the door under threat of the gun, to explain that he had a family emergency, had closed early…
The door handle turned, and the two men stepped hesitantly into the store. They wore rubber boots up to their knees coated with a fresh application of the substance that created the scent that hung in this place. Each wore a pair of stained blue jeans and battered ball caps perched over wide faces and flat noses. They had huge hands. Will had never seen hands so large, so strong; weathered and calloused hands that he imagined could effortlessly snap bones, and he felt the first shiver of real fear. He didn’t know if these men would wait for the cops to subdue him, might prefer to notify the coroner instead. They bore a strong resemblance to one another, the older betrayed only by gray hair peeking from beneath the cap and deep lines on his face. But he didn’t think age would prevent the man from hurting him. They had advanced about ten feet down the aisle, their eyes still adjusting to the dim light inside.
“Steve? You still open? Tractor broke down and we need a wrench…”
The younger man had spoken, and now saw Will with the gun, and put out an arm to stop the other from going any further. The old man looked him up and down, and with a sneer of contempt said, “What the hell’s going on here. Who are you?”
“Shut up. I want you two to go back to the front of the store, into the next aisle, and then walk all the way down to the back. You try to run outside and I’ll shoot him.”
“Let me tell you something young man…”
“Dad, let’s just do what he says. Don’t want Steve to get hurt.”
Reluctantly, they backed up, eyes on Will. He looked for fear but detected only a sullen acceptance. He didn’t believe the gun necessarily kept them from rushing him, only concern for their friend. He had made a mistake coming here. No police, maybe, but a tougher breed of man, one used to hard labor, fixing his own problems, and taking care of a neighbor. Not the sort of people to back down and wait for the cavalry. The accusation in their eyes, as they rounded the corner and began tramping up the other side, made Will feel ashamed. But out of that shame came the anger, of always being on the wrong side. The weak side. Damn them. They hadn’t been bullied in school. If anything , they had probably been the bullies, or at least large enough that no one, not even Brody Stape, would have picked on them.
He waited until the sound of their heavy steps reached the back wall, listened for movement that signaled an attack, wanted only to flee now and go home and rethink all of this.
“You guys stay there…for ten minutes. Steve won’t get hurt if you do that.”
Will moved towards the door, walking backwards with the gun pointed at Steve, who stared back with a wry smile of amusement. He lifted up the gun, pointed it at the head of a large buck on the wall and fired, satisfied when a hole erupted in its side and hair and stuffing fluttered down on top of the shopkeeper. Steve flinched and put his hands over his head, and Will had his trophy at last.
“Sonofabitch. He shot Steve!”
Like a pair of rhinos, they charged from the back towards the counter, knocking hammers and screwdrivers into the aisle.
“Get back!” Will shouted, the door only a step away. The two men, on reaching Steve and finding him unharmed, slowed but glowered at him, stopped but held their ground, expressing clearly in their stances that they had no intention of retreating. Steve picked up the phone and began to dial. Time to go. He no longer controlled the situation. If he ever had.
Will pushed open the door and sprinted to his car, stumbling on the steps and nearly falling down. The grocery bag flapped as he ran, a flimsy and pathetic prize for stepping into this wolves’ den. He made it to his car and started the engine, backed out fast as the younger man erupted from the store and ran to a pickup truck. A man that big shouldn’t move so fast, he thought as he put the car in drive and tore onto the road, heading west according to the plan now shot to hell.
The pickup roared out of the lot in a cloud of gravel and dust and followed. Will cursed. Sweat filled the ski-mask and pasted it to his head. His heart beat wildly both at the pursuit and in response to the speed of the car. Sixty, now eighty, edging eighty-five and the farmer continued his chase, the speed matching Will’s and then exceeding it. He wondered if he should poke the gun out and fire, but this wasn’t a movie and he suspected that the distraction would just cause him to wreck the car. Instead, he kept both hands on the wheel and drove, slowing slightly for bends in the road but feeling a near lift onto two wheels several times. The race continued, the truck only thirty or so feet back now.
He approached the road he had marked to turn onto, to angle north, and passed it, not daring to slow enough to risk capture or being rammed. He did not know where this road went. Screw the wild card. Seemed he had been dealt a whole deck of them.
Will checked the rearview mirror, watching helplessly as the truck gained on him and so missed a sharp bend. The car bounced up and down and his head smacked into the roof, hadn’t had time to fasten his seatbelt. He yelped in pain as he wrestled with the wheel. A fine brown dust surrounded him, filling the air and reducing visibility and he realized he had driven onto a dirt road. His speedometer read forty-five, much too fast for this terrain, but he kept his foot on the gas, knew he couldn’t let up, the truck now holding an advantage. He flipped on his wipers but it only smeared the dirt onto the glass.
Will saw the curve just in time to turn, skidding over the surface, riding up on a bank of weeds on the opposite side that ascended to a cow pasture, praying and cursing in the same breath. He got the car back on the dirt and glanced behind. Through the haze of dust he witnessed the truck continue straight through the bend and with a heart-stopping bang, a sound horribly clear through his rolled up windows, strike a massive oak tree.
Will slowed down, watching the truck for signs of life while a wave of nausea washed over him. The front end of the pick-up was half as long as it should have been: the hood buckled and pushed into the windshield, steam pouring out from the twisted mess of metal. He came to a complete stop and put the car in reverse, backing up slowly and ready to drive away if the man should leap out after him. But the closer he got, as the fine details of the havoc wreaked on the truck came into focus, he doubted anyone could emerge under their own power. He drove past the wreckage, torn between stopping to check on the man and getting away. He stopped, put the car in park, and got out on shaky legs and closed his eyes, listening for sirens, heard nothing but the lowing of cows and the sound of water rushing through a stream down below where the truck had come to its sudden and violent end.
He looked for movement but saw none while relief and guilt washed over him in alternating waves; hoping that the man would be okay, glad he now had a chance at escape.
"Why'd you have to chase me?" he said out loud, his voice cracking, his mouth dry, lips coated with dust beginning to settle. "A couple of bucks. Was it worth it?" He felt strangely triumphant; sick with the tragedy, but proud to be the last man standing.
He again considered going to the truck, checking on the man, wondered how long it would take for someone to find him, if anything could be done for him at all. Perhaps he could find a pay phone and call an ambulance once he had gotten further down the road. Then realization and its hard truth came to him and Will felt the blood drain from his face.
The farmer had been riding close to his bumper. Close enough to see and memorize his license plate and tell the police.
If he survived.
Will stood frozen in the roadway. He glanced at the gun sitting on the front seat, and then at the truck. He felt eyes on him and turned towards the pasture. Four cows had come close to the electric fence, standing shoulder to shoulder and watching him with unblinking eyes, a mute
crowd of witnesses. Witnesses to murder. He wanted to run at them, shouting so they would scatter. Instead, he tried to swallow, his throat clicking with the complete lack of saliva in his mouth, and bent down to retrieve the gun.
Will couldn't waste any more time, hated what he had to do if it needed done. He walked slowly towards the truck, praying the impact had killed his pursuer.
He smelled burning rubber, gasoline, and the sweet tang of anti-freeze in a heady mix as he approached. All of the windows except the back had blown out, and that cracked beyond repair. He eased up along the side to the cab, and then quickly peeked in, gaining only an impression of blood and grave injury, not enough to determine dead or alive.
He drew up and raised the pistol in a shaky hand. His tears, unable to escape into the tight fabric stretched over his face, pooled and blurred his vision, and an involuntary sob escaped from somewhere inside.
An explosion rocked him. He felt the heat of something passing close to his head, a wasp shot out of a cannon. A bullet. Will almost ran away, but anger seized him, an uncontrollable fury he gave its head. He had fired the pistol through the shattered window before he understood he had fired; four shots before he gained control of his finger and forced it back from the trigger. He had unconsciously moved forward while unleashing the barrage of bullets, and now stared in on a bloody mess that had once been a man, a hunting rifle angled across his body.