by Hines
He smiled, instantly feeling a cathartic clarity in his thoughts for the first time that morning. He started to walk toward the doors, and she followed.
“How about you? Where you going?”
“No clue,” she said. “Just trying to outrun my past.”
“It’s a vicious circle,” he agreed.
She stopped walking suddenly, and he turned to see what had stopped her. For a moment, he thought she’d been shocked, or maybe she’d bitten her lip.
“What did you say?” she whispered.
“A vicious circle,” he repeated.
She stared off into the horizon, a smile creasing her face. “Yes, it is,” she said, almost dreamily.
Her next question was even more of a surprise.
“Do they . . . ah, have a computer I could use in here?”
Odd question. But then, he’d hit the jackpot on odd this morning, hadn’t he?
“Truckers’ lounge upstairs. Wireless Internet, a computer workstation you can use. Nothing special.”
“I don’t need anything special.”
“I think . . .” he started, then shook his head. “I need to get going.”
They were standing at the glass doors, looking at the parking lot. He wasn’t the person who ever offered to shake hands, who ever offered to touch anyone else at all, but for some reason, it seemed right this time. He extended his hand, waiting for her to shake it. He wished he was still wearing gloves, but that was one habit Todd had managed to help him break several years before. He didn’t have to wear gloves anymore, but he secretly yearned for them. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic; once a glove addict, always a glove addict, he supposed.
She looked at his hand a moment before she stepped close, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. It felt awkward, but on a deeper level it also felt right. He was a bit disappointed when she stepped away again.
“You take care of yourself,” she said.
He nodded numbly and felt his body turning toward the doors, his legs carrying him to the clear air outside, leaving her behind the double-paned glass.
As he walked toward his rig, he turned to glance back, and she was still standing there, watching him walk. When he turned a second time, she was gone.
Kurt opened the door to the cab, climbed inside, fired up the diesel, sat, and listened to the clattering of the exhaust for a few moments. On the floor of the passenger side the dead man’s shoes seemed to glow with a dark, oily sheen, pushing the image of the catfish into his mind once more.
He waited for the static to break in again, but it didn’t. Only the catfish, implanted in his brain.
Instead of static, he heard the sound of hydraulics nearby. He turned and noticed a large garbage truck emptying giant bins of trash into its belly, compacting the trash into tight folds.
Kurt smiled.
He grabbed the shoes, crawled out of the cab of his truck, and walked over to the garbage truck. He hailed the driver, held up the shoes, and pointed to the rear of the truck. The driver gave him a thumbs-up, so Kurt walked to the rear of the truck to throw the shoes into the gaping maw.
The driver emptied another bin of trash before he hit the hydraulics again. Iron jaws clamped down on the garbage, and a large plate of metal pushed it to the front of the truck’s payload. Kurt caught a glimpse of one shoe, pinched against the side of the compartment for a moment before the iron compactor shredded it with the rest of humanity’s discarded past.
18.
“So, Kurt, tell me about yourself,” Todd said, sitting in his chair.
He hadn’t yet adjusted, folding one leg up in the chair and staring at him thoughtfully. But Kurt knew he would soon. Todd always did in these sessions.
“Like, what do you want to know?”
“What kind of person are you?”
Kurt shrugged. “Working on being a trucker, you know. That’s about it.”
“A trucker, yes. Why do you think that is? What is it about your past that makes you want to be a trucker?”
Kurt bit his tongue, literally and figuratively, as he thought about the only thing he knew of his past. Because when he’d awakened, in the fire, the only items he had were a driver’s license with his name, an acceptance letter from High Road Truck Driving School, and about ten thousand dollars in cash.
The cash thing had always troubled him, but he’d never told Todd about it. Or the fire. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“What I mean,” Todd continued, “is just this: you were going to become a trucker before your blank slate, right? You’d already applied to the school, been accepted. So that’s a link to your past. Something to explore. But more than that, I think it says a bit about you.”
“Like how?”
“What’s appealing about trucking?”
Kurt had to admit the whole thing did appeal to him; he’d done well in the school and felt perfectly matched to trucking. “Well . . . I suppose the open road.”
“And where does the open road lead to?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere, I suppose. Forward.”
“Forward. Interesting.”
“Why?”
Todd folded his left leg beneath him, shifted, and settled in the chair again. Kurt smiled; he knew it had to happen sometime. It was something solid, something that marked their time together.
“It’s not like I’ve done a personality inventory or anything, Kurt, but I’m guessing a lot of truckers like the lifestyle because it’s solitary. Not much contact with other people, lots of time on the road alone, being the captain of your own ship, as it were.”
“I suppose. I mean, that sounds good to me.”
“Being on the road means never staying in one place for long. In your case, it may mean you’re running from something in your past—running from something even before you lost your memory.”
Kurt hesitated, thinking of his recent conversation with Jenny Lewis, the detective. If she was right, he had a lot to run from. “Maybe.”
Todd leaned back in his chair. “But when I asked you why you wanted to be on the open road, you said because it meant you would always be moving forward.”
“Yeah.”
Todd unfolded his legs again and pushed his chair away from the desk, out onto the open floor so he was facing Kurt. “You know much about sharks, Kurt?”
Kurt shrugged.
“I guess I don’t either. But I heard a story once, and it’s always stuck with me. Sharks, you see, are one of the few animals that can’t move backward. Incapable. Other fish, other animals of just about any kind—even amoebas—can reverse their direction. But a shark always has to move forward to stay alive.”
“Okay.” Kurt wasn’t sure where this was going.
“So that says to me it’s sometimes healthy to move backward, to see your past. That’s something you’ve been unable to do, even after our several sessions together, but it’s something you have to do. We need something to help you move backward before you can really start to move forward again. You’re human, Kurt. You’re not a shark.”
Kurt thought about the fire, thought about the heavy stash of bills strapped to his midsection, thought about the pain in his body starting to fade as he walked away from the scene of destruction.
“Don’t be so sure,” he whispered to Todd.
64.
Ten miles down the road, Kurt was feeling better. Like the sky above, his head was clear. Sharp. Fresh. He could hold on to that sharpness, lose himself in the blur of miles streaking by, clear his life of everything that had happened in the last day.
After dropping this load in Chicago, he’d deadhead it back here—at this very moment, he was within an hour of the small town where he normally hid—and get to work on new projects for Macy. For the show she’d lined up for him.
There would be no catfish sculpture, of course. He’d have to abandon that. In some odd way, the catfish (shark?) was what had opened up the door between his world and the ghost world. He was sure of it. And now that the sho
es were gone—not just gone, but destroyed—he could return to the life he’d had before, such as it was. When he made it home, he was going to pull out that silk dress, start working on the hands reaching for a face. That was the kind of thing Macy would want, anyway.
But those thoughts were instantly pushed away by a terrifyingly familiar image. The catfish, bathed in orange, filled every corner of his mind with equal parts brilliance and violence.
Shocked, Kurt tried to push the image away, but it would not leave. Even more terrifying, he heard a burst of static, followed by the voice of the ghost inside the shoes.
“You can’t hide anymore, Kurt.”
The voice was loud, painful, felt as if it were inside his head.
“You have to see. To understand.”
“To see what?” He tried to concentrate on the voice. Was it Jonas again? It didn’t sound like that voice, but it was familiar nonetheless. Eerily familiar.
“To see everything. Look in your mirrors.”
Kurt did as instructed, and saw the headlights of another rig—another Peterbilt like the one he was driving—coming up fast. Terror raked his stomach with dull claws.
Jonas again? Had to be. Okay, so Jonas wasn’t in the truck with him this time. He was in a truck behind him, intent on . . . something. That was impossible.
Okay, so impossible was something of a relative term in the world of Kurt Marlowe, Amazing Amnesia Boy. After all, following his head injury, he’d been able to communicate with the ghosts trapped in the clothing of dead people. He’d even spoken to one sitting in his front seat not so very long ago this morning. But this was even breaking all the rules of that world. The shoes had been destroyed in the garbage truck several miles behind.
He bit his lip. Had he really thought that would work? Deep down he had known it wouldn’t. He’d thrown the shoes down a canyon just a few hours earlier, and Jonas, wearing the very same shoes, had reappeared inside the cab of his truck shortly after. Why would such shoes let a little thing like shredding keep them away? He knew they had to be in the truck directly behind him, waiting to be delivered by Jonas or whatever other ghost was driving his twin Peterbilt.
He pushed the pedal to the floor, knowing it would do him no good. All of Cross Trucking’s rigs had governors installed, preventing them from traveling above seventy-five miles per hour. He was maxed out.
Kurt glanced in the rearview mirrors again. The truck behind him was gaining; evidently, it had no such governor slowing it down.
Ahead, on the right, a highway sign announced a turnout for a chain-up area. He smiled. Yes, of course. He was about to go over Lookout Pass on the Montana/Idaho border. It would slow him to a crawl, but it would also slow the truck behind him. That would give him time to think of something.
He hit the beginning of the pass as fast as he could, using the inertia of the moving load to propel him, keeping the accelerator floored until he had to downshift once, then twice.
He glanced at his rearview mirrors and was unsurprised to see the form of the other truck behind him, hovering in the waves of heat radiating off the highway’s surface. He still had a few minutes of lead time; if he could get over this pass, maybe even somehow get rid of the trailer . . . well, no, that wasn’t an option. He’d need a few minutes to pull the kingpin and unhook the pig’s tail that held the trailer, then jack it up off the fifth wheel.
Kurt downshifted again, slowing to a crawl. Behind him the other diesel slowed as it began to climb the pass, and Kurt felt a sense of relief. A sense of hope. He’d half expected the other truck to keep accelerating, to keep gaining on him as he tried to outrun it.
Maybe he could just cut the trailer loose. Really, all he needed to do was pull the release lever to unlatch it. Something inside told him he needed to avoid whoever—or whatever—waited in the truck behind him. If he could get to the top of this pass, cut his load loose, he could get down the opposite side, get away somehow. The other truck would still be climbing while he freewheeled it. And the other truck would still be hauling its own load, slowing it down.
After one more corner he was at the top of the pass; the road flattened for a quarter mile or so, offering a pullout. Without thinking, Kurt wheeled into the pullout and brought the Peterbilt to a halt with a hiss of air brakes. The entire rig shuddered as he hit the parking brakes and spilled out onto the pavement. He stumbled on the concrete surface, turning to look for the diesel he knew was behind him. He couldn’t see it, but he heard it, and he saw the chug of black exhaust a couple turns behind him. He had a few minutes, at most.
Kurt scrambled to the front of the trailer, unlatched the safety chain from the pintle hook, and pulled the release lever; inside, he heard the safety jaws holding the trailer’s kingpin retract, and the trailer shifted just a bit. For a moment, Kurt thought the trailer might start to roll away, but it stayed put.
He heard the other diesel, so very close now, even saw the twin smokestacks coming into view around the last corner approaching the top of the pass. He ran back to the cab and climbed inside once more.
He’d forgotten to release the electrical and air lines connecting the trailer, but that didn’t matter now. They would simply snap off. Nothing mattered now, except outrunning the demon, the phantom, the ghost that pursued him.
Kurt put the rig into gear; it chattered as he tried to move it too quickly. The tires began turning slowly, ever so slowly, and within a few seconds, he felt his truck moving. Sparks danced from the road’s surface as the trailer’s hitch snapped away from his truck and fell to the concrete. Now much lighter, he topped the rise at the top of the pass and began moving downhill; the big red Peterbilt—almost an exact double of his own, filled the rearview mirrors. His lead was now only a few hundred feet.
Odd; his pursuer wasn’t pulling a load. Kurt could have sworn, when he’d watched the truck in the rearview mirrors before, that the truck was hauling a shipping container on a flatbed. But now, it was just the truck itself, like his own. If he hadn’t ditched his trailer at the top of the pass, he would have been doomed for sure.
He felt gravity beginning to work with him rather than against him. He gained speed, moving around one turn and then another. Behind him, the other truck kept pace. He wasn’t sure how the driver was managing, but he had a couple miles of downgrade on the Montana side of the pass to increase his lead.
Kurt peeled his eyes away from the rearviews and concentrated on the road ahead.
Forward, always forward. Like a shark. Todd had said that. Yes, like a shark. Not a catfish.
Kurt saw the next corner, felt the incline of the road becoming steeper, checked his speedometer. He was pushing fifty now, and he wasn’t going to make the corner. He spun the wheel into the turn, struggling against the big rig as the tires beneath him chattered.
His truck rocked, and for a moment Kurt was sure he was going to tip; he tilted at the precipice for a moment, and then the wheels on the left side slammed to the ground again, bottoming out the suspension. A deep, mechanical burning smell began to waft through the cab; maybe he’d snapped something in the suspension.
Immediately, another corner came, this one curving to the right, and Kurt turned into it.
Somehow, his rig righted itself once more. Then, a few yards ahead, Kurt spotted a runaway truck ramp, a giant turnout filled with deep gravel for trucks that had burned out their brakes on giant passes like this one.
Maybe he could hit that ramp at that last second, surprise the truck behind him. If he managed to catch the ramp, and if the other truck went by, it would most likely tumble off the steep cliffs beyond. Kurt was almost doing that right now.
He looked into his rearview mirror and felt a giant shudder; his neck snapped backward, and he realized the other truck had bumped him. Impossibly, it had kept pace, even caught him.
Now or never, he thought, and he wrenched the wheel to the right as hard as he could, guiding his Peterbilt onto the long surface of the runaway ramp. As he hit the gravel, his t
ruck sank immediately, and Kurt felt his whole body being thrown forward.
Even as this happened, another shudder pushed his whole truck forward, and Kurt knew the other Peterbilt had somehow, inexplicably, followed him onto the ramp and rammed him from behind.
A long, slow metallic shriek froze the world around him, but Kurt felt his body lifted out of the seat and through the windshield—through the windshield as if it were nothing more than paper—across the giant hood into the gravel beyond. He tumbled forever, spinning until he came to a stop facedown in the thick, heavy gravel. He smelled diesel, and that odd mechanical burning now stronger than ever, but beneath all that, the comforting smell he loved so much: pine trees. At least there was that. As he lay dying, he would be able to take with him the memories of fresh pine.
But his body wouldn’t cooperate with his mind’s wish to die. He felt it trying to stand, against his will, even though his legs wouldn’t work. Nothing in his body would work. Maybe a broken femur or two. This thought struck him as funny, and he opened his mouth to laugh; instead, he felt liquid coming from his mouth. Blood, he realized. That meant a punctured lung or another internal injury.
After a few moments, though, his breath came back, and Kurt felt his legs, almost as if working on their own, bunching beneath him and forcing him to stand.
He turned and looked at the giant heap of twisted metal behind him. A thick, twisted column of bitter smoke erupted from the wreckage as angry orange flames rose toward the sky.
Amazingly, another man emerged from the wreckage.
Kurt stepped back, felt his right leg give out, and he went down again. The man, now free of the burning heap, moved toward him with a pronounced limp. One of the man’s arms hung uselessly at his side.
Kurt struggled to his feet again. It wasn’t Jonas, as he’d expected. And yet it was someone he recognized, someone from long ago.
(Stan. Stan ________.)
Stan something. His mind wouldn’t give him the name of that kid . . .
(Stan Hawkins)
. . . from his childhood, that kid who had accidentally killed their gym teacher.