I opened the creaky door and stepped out of the truck and into the susurrating rhythm of insects, the country version of quiet. I thought about leaving the headlights on but the moon was full and high and the fire provided a focal point so I reached back into the truck and turned them off.
I again scanned the field, giving my eyes time to adjust.
Still no sign of him.
I could have called out for him but I wasn’t even the type of person who talked to myself when I was alone so it would have felt really weird surrounded by that insect hum.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Eventually technology would render talking, and probably even noise, obsolete, as it silently glided along in some spooky, unseen place of its own. It was the cold distance of space, reaching down to us through a glowing screen. We were all connected to satellites by the devices we carried in our pockets, that much closer to the heavens.
I half expected to find a text from him, something unfelt amidst the rough truck ride, saying “Don’t bother” or something to that effect.
I hadn’t received anything.
I thought about sending him a text asking where he was before stopping myself. I didn’t really want him to be here. I decided to send him something asking if he was okay. It was now so easy to edit ourselves it amazed me we weren’t all paralyzed with indecision.
Just as my thumb touched the screen I got a text from him.
“Dont wury bout me. Go on home. I dont even hav gun. Theres whisky by the fire.”
Travis wasn’t great at spelling and probably saw autocorrect as some form of mind control.
I felt immediately angry Travis had wasted my time, relieved only by the fact I didn’t have to deal with any of his whiney bullshit. Most of all, I felt stupid for coming, for buying into his bullshit. He got me every time and it was like I never learned. Then I started feeling like a piece of shit. Was I so inaccessible Travis had to stage these antics to get my attention?
I took in a deep breath of the perfumed summer air, looked up at the stars sprinkling the clear sky.
Whiskey by the fire . . . It was like Travis was mocking my attempt at sobriety. I walked over to the fire, through the knee-high grass, and looked down at the bottle of Jack. I picked it up. It was a little less than a quarter full. I uncapped it, held it up to my nose, and took a deep breath of its familiar and comforting scent. It was tempting. It was a gorgeous night. It would be nice to sit down on one of the stumps by the fire and polish off the bottle. There wasn’t really much in there. I’d be able to make it home just fine. It had been long enough since I’d had a drink that I doubted it would throw me back into what I’d called Dawn Syndrome.
That was ultimately what stopped me.
I’d always drunk socially. When I did that, I’d go home and go to bed when the bar closed and that was it. Then I stopped going to bars because they got too expensive and started drinking with Travis. If we were drinking at my place, he’d get to a certain point, the sad point, and just go to sleep on my couch and I’d go to bed. I stopped drinking with him on a nightly basis because he became annoying. I liked being drunk and he ruined it. So I started drinking alone, staying up later and later, eventually not going to bed unless I’d seen the sun come up. It became as much of an addiction as the alcohol itself. I decided going to a bar would help curb this. That was what led to the girl and the photos and we ended up staying up all night and when she left I felt like I’d done a terrible thing, a dangerous thing, and decided to stop.
When Travis got me the job at the landscaping company, I was still staying up all night. Only, instead of going to bed when the sun came up, I went to work. I couldn’t go to work hammered so maybe that helped keep me off the booze. I’d come home around five or six in the evening and go to bed, exhausted, not waking up until midnight.
Over the past few weeks I’d managed to work into a slightly more normal schedule.
One sip of the bottle I held in my hand could undo all of that.
I poured it out in the grass and dropped the bottle into the fire.
I felt exhausted.
I had to work tomorrow and all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed.
I went back to the truck, climbed in, and started it up. I backed it up and turned toward the main road.
If I didn’t have to work tomorrow, I would have probably hung out by the fire for a little while. It really was a nice night.
I started down the gravel drive, wishing the sounds of the night could penetrate the sound of catastrophic mechanical failure coming from my truck.
Something greenish and illuminated flickered on the left side of the road. I glanced in that direction and didn’t see anything. I turned my attention to the road and caught a shadowy shape standing there. My first thought was that this was Travis and this was how he was going to trick me into ending his life. I jerked the wheel to the right but went too far off the road and into some shrubs.
The truck came to a stop.
Fuck.
My heart raced.
I turned back to the drive to see if whatever I’d swerved to avoid was still there.
It wasn’t.
My heart continued to hammer.
What had I seen?
It definitely wasn’t a deer.
It had looked like a person but not really. More like a shadow.
Christ.
Was I losing it?
If I had seen something, where was it now?
I checked the dirty rearview mirror and saw nothing. I looked out the passenger window and saw nothing but the blackness of the woods.
I took some deep breaths and calmed my racing heart. I was tired. I had probably just hallucinated something. I’d done that before when driving while tired.
Okay. I was now going to continue on my way home.
I threw the truck into reverse and . . . it didn’t budge.
Christ. Fuck this night. Fuck Travis. I was going to passive aggressively cold shoulder him for at least two fucking weeks.
I took another deep breath and stepped out of the truck.
The front tires were at least three inches off the ground. I couldn’t see up under the truck very well. I must have run up onto a stump or something.
I reached in and turned the ignition off, moved around to the front of the truck and tried to push. It went nowhere.
Fuck this.
I pulled my phone out, ready to text Travis, and thought better of it.
As much as he deserved to be pulled out of his comfy bed and subjected to possibly backbreaking manual labor, he would be in absolutely no condition to help me. And I didn’t think I wanted to deal with him right now.
I could call a tow truck or something but then I’d have to pay for it with money I didn’t have.
I popped back into the truck, rolled up the windows, and grabbed my keys.
If I started walking now, I could get to the apartment in an hour or so. I’d send Travis a text telling him he needed to pick me up for work tomorrow. Then, after work, the stupid fucker was going to help unleash my truck from this whoremongering stump.
Seemed like a plan.
I began walking down the narrow gravel lane.
A car’s lights illuminated the main road.
I paused, moving off the gravel path and into the murkiness of the woods. I didn’t want to be seen and I didn’t want to startle anyone.
The car passed very slowly.
And it was a cop car.
Shit.
If a cop noticed me, he was going to ask why I was out here. If I told him about the truck, I felt like he would be insistent about doing something about it, which would end up costing me money.
As the car passed, I had a quick feeling of regret. I should have flagged him down. If he was bored enough and in any kind of physical shape, maybe he would have even offered to help me. Just because I assumed everyone was a lazy asshole didn’t mean they actually were. But he’d inevitably ask why I was out here and I’d have to
make up something about Travis. It was much easier to hide in the woods, wait for him to pass, and hope I didn’t run into him the rest of the way back to town.
The cop car stopped and backed up.
I remained frozen. After seeing so many videos of cops shooting people, I stayed hidden because I thought surprising him in the middle of the night could be potentially lethal.
Suddenly there was a blinding white light coming from the cop car and the sirens emitted a brief bloop.
I’d been found.
I tried to think of what I would say to him.
Usually, cops out here were looking for people hunting deer off-season, teenage vandals, or entrepreneurs performing a late night harvest of some illegal crops.
I became immediately nervous. It didn’t help that I was still spooked by whatever I’d seen in the middle of the road. I took a deep breath and told myself I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t committed any sort of crime. Travis’s parents owned this property. Travis had invited me, so it wasn’t like I was trespassing. I’d just tell him I was hanging out with Travis and was on my way home. I didn’t see any reason to mention the truck. I glanced back toward the truck as covertly as I possibly could which, in the blinding glare of the searchlight, probably wasn’t covert at all.
The truck was plainly visible.
Why was my truck off the road?
I swerved to avoid a critter. Lost control. It wasn’t a deer but it was pretty fucking big. Nerves. I certainly hadn’t hallucinated some kind of apparition.
Why was I hiding in the woods?
Who was hiding? I wasn’t hiding. I love cops!
I raised my hands above my head and slowly moved toward the car.
I squinted dramatically so whoever was inside might realize how intense the light was and turn it off. I waited for a voice to come from some kind of loudspeaker. I thought that was usually what happened. My experience with law enforcement was, thankfully, pretty limited.
The light didn’t flick off until I was nearly close enough to touch the car.
The passenger window was down and a young pretty girl leaned across the seat.
“Get in, chubby,” she said.
In the course of my years on this planet, I’ve done a few things that go completely against my better judgment just to see what would happen. I often used that as an excuse as to why my station in life had never really improved. Anyway, this was one of those things.
I got in the car.
As soon as I pulled my door shut the girl pulled the car back onto the road and accelerated to a speed I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. No introductions. No questions. No inspections.
I glanced over at the girl and, seeing that her eyes were glued to the road, let my glance linger and turn into something more.
Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tan skin. Athletically built. Wearing a Tiffany blue tank top and very short white shorts. Nothing about her really screamed cop. I wasn’t great with ages but would have put her somewhere between fourteen and twenty-five. Although she was driving, so she had to be at least sixteen, right?
“So,” I said, “my name’s Brad.”
She glanced over at me, looking somewhat annoyed, almost like she’d already forgotten I was in the car.
“I’m Dawn,” she said. “Dawn Bando.”
“Are you, um, a cop, Dawn?”
“Fuck no. Do I look like a cop?”
“No.”
“My dad is, though. A cop. So I decided to borrow his car.”
Fuck. This girl was joyriding around in a cop car. This was probably not at all where I should be right now.
“Tell me about your situation, Brad.”
I thought about it for a second.
“I’m not really in a situation.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I mean, it’s not serious.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
“I don’t really see how you can help me.” I suddenly felt like we were talking about more than my truck being off the road.
“Well, we won’t know until you tell me, will we? Look, my dad’s a real cop. He’s the sheriff. I’ll be able to get you help if you need it. And if you’re in trouble for something you’ve done then don’t you think it would be better to tell me first anyway?”
I felt a glimmer of panic. Dawn made it sound like I’d committed a crime. Like I was in some kind of trouble. I thought about the photos I’d taken. I guess if the wrong people—specifically, the wrong guy—found out about those, I could probably be in some form of physical danger. But that wasn’t the kind of thing you went to the police about.
“Sometimes it feels good just to talk about things. No one’s perfect. I mean, look at me. I spiked my dad’s evening beer with Ambien, took three days’ worth of Adderall and stole his car so I can find someone old enough to buy me beer. You might ask yourself why I would need to go through all the trouble to buy beer when my dad probably has some in the fridge but that’s just the fuck of it. He’s a recovering alcoholic and I think he’s afraid of spiraling back down so he buys one tall boy can of Miller Lite on his way home from work, drinks it while he watches the evening news, and then goes to bed. He says the beer helps him sleep and is probably ultimately safer and more natural than prescription drugs. But tonight he’s sleeping a little harder than usual. He didn’t even make it to bed. Just conked out right there in his easy chair.
“By the way, you’re the guy.”
My brain was not the fastest moving machine and I was still trying to digest everything she’d just said.
“Huh?” I said.
“You’re the guy who’s going to buy me beer. You look old.”
“I’m . . . I don’t think anybody sells beer at this hour. And I’m not that old. I’m forty.” And now I knew she was under twenty-one.
“There’s a carryout on Route 4 at the edge of Dayton that does. But they card. I guess they don’t want to break too many laws at once. So that’s where we’re going. Leaves you plenty of time to tell me what’s going on.”
Dawn seemed like kind of a psycho and I really didn’t want to tell her what was going on. What kind of attractive teen girl goes out joyriding to look for a strange older man to buy her beer? Probably the same type of person who abuses Adderall and drugs her father. It was hard for me to have contempt for youth, but I felt like Dawn could get really irritating really quickly. Like, I didn’t think she was going to leave me alone until I told her something. Also, like an old pervert, and despite the fact she was kind of irritating and clearly deranged, I began wondering what the possibility of fucking her was.
“It’s no big deal, really,” I said. “I was just going to meet a friend and he wasn’t there and I, uh, ran my car off the road.”
“Why were you going to meet your friend so late? Are you a fag?”
Her use of that word was jarring. I thought the only people who ever used that were old rabid right wing types and jocks.
“No. I’m not gay. I was, uh, going to buy some weed from him.” Why did I even say that? Why say I was going to do something illegal when I was there for a completely respectable, possibly even noble, reason? Was I trying to sound cool? Were people in their forties who smoked weed cool or pathetic? I didn’t even smoke weed. Whatever. It was a neat and tidy answer and the truth wasn’t and it wasn’t something I really wanted to talk to a stranger about.
She breathed out a short, sarcastic laugh and said, “Weed’s so lame. I can get some for you, if you want.”
I hadn’t smoked it since high school and didn’t have a particular desire to start.
“I think I’m okay.”
“Pretty ridiculous that I have to drive all this way for beer when I have access to just about anything, huh?”
“I guess.”
“I appreciate you doing this for me. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
I glanced over at Dawn, ran my eyes up her fit legs, realized my gaze came to rest on her crotch, and looked
away. I wasn’t going to mention the myriad ways she could make it up to me. If she offered, I’d take her up on it in a heartbeat. As long as she was legal, I had absolutely no problem with it. But I wasn’t going to put it out there. I didn’t want her to see me as a sleazy older guy, which I probably was. Younger girls no longer looked at me as a potential hook up. It was a somewhat heartbreaking realization but was probably synonymous with maturity.
“Do you think you’d be able to take me home after this? That’s all I really need.”
“Sure,” she said. “Well, after we get beer I need to pick up a couple of people but, after that, yeah, we’ll be headed back to Get so I can drop you off. No problem.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the picking up a couple of other people part. It seemed to complicate things. Plus unfamiliar people made me nervous. I should have just called a tow truck after crashing my truck. Until getting in the car with Dawn, I hadn’t really done anything wrong. Now I was probably an accessory to stealing a cop car. Soon I would be guilty of buying alcohol for who knew how many underage people. I tried not to panic too much. If she was a sheriff’s daughter, I imagined she had some level of immunity.
“So what’s the youngest girl you’ve ever fucked?” Dawn asked.
I still felt a million miles away and couldn’t figure out if her question seemed completely bizarre or just out of place. I had to put things into perspective. She was a teen girl out for a night of summer hijinks. I was in the middle of a situation that had the potential of turning into an existential crisis. Maybe it would just be best to play along until I could get home. Besides, her question made me hard for some reason and whatever endorphins were released by that felt good. I tried to swallow down the probably one-way sexual tension.
“Probably . . . sixteen.”
“Really? You don’t sound so sure.”
I didn’t feel the need to go into great detail with this girl. She didn’t need my sexual history.
“Yeah. I guess. I hooked up with her at a friend’s party at his college. She was at least sixteen. Could have been older. All I know is what my friend told me.”
“Is this the same friend you were trying to buy weed from?”
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