by Lane Pierce
“Huh?”
“Thanks anyway.”
Edwina stared. “I’ll bet you was blonde and pretty from the day you were born.”
Danielle was on a thin line that separated animal alertness from nervous frenzy. A woman the size of Edwina wasn’t likely to be intimidated, any more than Godzilla confronted by little Japanese soldiers.
“Pardon me. Hope I’m not interrupting?”
Edwina turned toward the voice. Her eyes widened as did Danielle’s. A miracle in blue jeans. Motorcycle man.
“Hey,” Danielle finally managed to blurt out.
“Thanks for calling me, honey, and letting me know where you were,” her superhero said. “I was worried about you.”
“Yeah,” said a befuddled Danielle. “Lucky I was able to get through to you.”
He looked at Edwina. “Hey, the name’s Luke. Thanks for checking on Danielle for me. Makes me feel like she’s safe here.”
Edwina puffed up a little, her shirt buttons straining to contain its cargo. She gave Luke a look that fell somewhere between subtle distrust and overt dislike. “Sure,” she finally said glumly and walked away holding her six-pack.
“Takes all kinds,” Luke said to Danielle.
“How did you know I was here?” she responded, forgetting that a “thank you” might be in order.
Was Luke something worse than Edwina—a stalker?
“Took the back roads to town. Saw your car at the station and knew you were stuck.” Luke put his hands in his pockets and sighed. “You want the whole confession?”
“Yes.”
“I saw your car and asked the crypt-keeper in the office if you’d checked in. Told him we had a rendezvous, but I’m not sure he was familiar with the word. I hung around a bit to see if you came out for a bite and planned to introduce myself. Then I saw your friend. At first, I thought you might have made plans with her until I saw your body language and decided to intervene. That’s it. Basically, I saw a chance to meet someone I very much wanted to meet. Fate had given me two chances already, and I didn’t want to pass up number three.” Luke waited, looking a bit sheepish.
“Edwina said everything was closed,” Danielle responded. “Do you know somewhere we can get something?”
****
Danielle had never ridden on a motorcycle before. She held tightly to Luke’s midsection with her breasts firmly nestled against his back as they hurtled through the night on a dark, narrow rope of asphalt. They had gotten as far as finding out they were both headed for Los Angeles. Luke had lived there for a while, and Danielle was going to make that new start, although she didn’t reveal that fact to this virtual stranger.
“The open road with nothing to stop us, not even the darkness. That’s the way I like it,” Luke called back over his shoulder. “No boring interstates,” he added. “Ahead, the unwritten pages of the future.”
He told her he’d passed a place before he hit Crosshairs, prior to spying Danielle’s wounded vehicle. The dingy wooden building rose up in front of them, like a symbol of times past. It looked like an isolated general store. Not part of a nationwide chain, it appeared as though the restaurant’s best days had been in the 1950s. The exterior appeared so decrepit that its angular verticality was in some doubt.
An unassuming neon sign that had long since lost its sizzle perched above the entrance and probably hadn’t worked for years. Even though no other vehicles grazed outside, an OPEN sign was stuck into the corner of a window.
“It’s not the Ritz, but maybe we can get a burger and fries,” Luke said to Danielle.
His shiny motorcycle looked out of place as he pulled to a stop in front of two ancient gas pumps—the kind that had glass tops. They looked like two huge old-fashioned salt and pepper shakers, or maybe bishops from a giant chess set standing like a pair of sentinels guarding nothing of much importance. Danielle wondered if the interior would be equally antique and hoped that it was.
Luke climbed from the cycle and helped Danielle off with his helmet, allowing her blonde curls to fall back to their natural shape.
He yanked open a rickety screen door and they walked in. The place smelled like coffee grounds and re-circulated cigarette smoke. It had a food counter with four swivel stools. A handful of patrons were scattered around the room sitting with heads bowed over drinks. Some of them looked up as the couple entered. It was a real old-fashioned cracker-barrel joint all right—a place that might have been stylish during World War II when people gathered around a Zenith radio and listened to comedy shows and war reports.
They strolled to the counter and took a stool. A woman who wore thick Coke-bottle glasses and a plain off-white dress shuffled out through a door behind the counter. She looked tired and charmless.
“What’ll it be?”
“Two cheeseburgers and fries and the coldest beer you can find.” To Danielle, Luke said, “Does that sound like it would hit the spot?”
“As you wish, Captain America.”
“Huh?”
“Burgers and beer sound wonderful.”
The waitress disappeared through the door, probably to fix the order herself.
Although Luke’s words revealed little, Danielle saw a spark in his eyes that revealed the pleasure of her company. He looked into her soul rather than ogling her boobs.
“So what do you do when you’re not flying around the countryside on your bike?”
“I write,” he replied.
“Really. What?”
“Suspense thrillers, mostly.”
Luke absentmindedly looked over his shoulder at the assemblage of evening customers. One man scanned something in a newspaper with a hand that was minus two fingers. Another lifted his beverage to his mouth with his left arm, the only arm he had.
“This is some interesting place,” he told Danielle.
Danielle liberated a plastic straw from its paper prison and chewed on it. “I just hope the burgers are huge and juicy. To be honest, I could eat a cow.”
Luke smiled at her. The waitress returned with two cold beers and said the beef was on its way.
When the burgers arrived, Luke leaned over the counter, closer to the woman and asked in a hushed tone, “So what’s the story on your customers?”
“You have a strong stomach?”
“Cast iron.”
“There’s a trooper that covers this stretch of highway. He don’t cotton to them that cause trouble,” the waitress said and wandered off to fill the other patrons’ coffee cups. Danielle looked at Luke with some trepidation.
“I had to ask about missing body parts. I’m a writer, remember. There might be an interesting story here. Something titled Luke’s Episode of Believe It or Not.”
“So a patrolman doesn’t like trouble. What has that got to do with disabilities?”
Luke shrugged as he and Danielle downed their burgers and fries with satisfaction. They were sipping their beers when a car’s headlight beams shown against the dingy plate glass window, like two large cat’s eyes.
As quickly as the lamps winked out, the waitress skedaddled through the swinging door with the mystery of the general store’s customers left untold.
****
Outside the restaurant, a vehicle door slammed shut. Soon the store’s screen door opened. A tall, strongly built man who looked impressive in his trooper uniform stood inside the doorway. He surveyed the room with the imperious disdain of a sultan observing his minions.
Then he looked in Luke’s direction. “Hey, fella,” the man said. “That your motorbike parked outside?”
Danielle could feel the strength of the man’s gaze through his mirrored lenses. Luke nodded that it was indeed his vehicle.
“That’s the handicapped parking spot, don’tcha know. You got shit for brains or something?”
A Handicapped Parking sign in front of this dump? Yeah, right.
The patrons in the store tensed noticeably but had nothing to say. She saw Luke stiffen a bit as if sensing that a not-very-friendly encount
er was likely.
“I didn’t realize,” Luke answered in a calm voice. “We’re leaving as soon as we finish our drinks.”
The trooper looked tough for a moment, then allowed his face to crack into the slightest of smiles. “Keep your seat. Damage is done. Law’s already been broken. Movin’ now ain’t gonna change that.”
The trooper peeled off his wraparounds. He strode lazily across the space from the door to the counter in a few swaggering, John Wayne-like steps. Watching him walk, Danielle was reminded of an Old West sheriff in the movies who doffs his hat to the ladies, then sweeps the town clean of armed saddle-tramps.
“Ma’am,” he said to Danielle and planted himself next to Luke. To the waitress he called, “Gimme the usual, darlin’.”
Danielle didn’t know what Luke was feeling, but she felt the cloak of intimidation. Her father had thrived on that emotion. The trooper pushed his hat back and took hold of the coffee mug the waitress presented him.
“Where you two headed?” he asked Luke.
“California.”
“Same’s most people who stop here.” A muscle twitched in his jaw as he glanced at the patrons sitting around the place as though they were something he’d want to scrape off the bottoms of his shoes. “Some of these fools had the same intentions at one time, but they all stayed here.”
Luke looked at them again. “What do you mean? People were passing through, and they just stayed?”
The trooper did a little better than a slight smile. His stone face cracked on either side of his thin lips. “Didn’t have disabilities when they got here.”
The darkness of the man’s words brought goose bumps to Danielle’s arms and sent a shiver down her spine. She didn’t want to hear the end of this story. She just wanted Luke to pay so they could get the hell out of Dodge.
Luke reacted the same way. He stood and fished in his pants pocket for money.
“Hold on a minute. Let me tell you what happened.” The trooper put his big hand on Luke’s shoulder and eased him back onto the stool. “You seem to have forgotten you parked illegally. This place may seem like a crap-hole to you, buddy, but I take pride in this stretch of the planet. We like to keep things nice and tidy and show that crime doesn’t pay.”
“I think it’s very nice,” Danielle chimed in, “but we need to get back on the road.”
The trooper’s smile evaporated. His face turned grim and cruel. “I take breaking the law personal.”
Danielle’s heart pounded, and her palms began to sweat.
“I’m going to tell you what happens when you break the law on my watch, and then you can go. Take Joe over there in the corner.” Disdain dripped from his voice as the trooper nodded toward the man with only one hand. “He shortchanged the waitress that used to be here.”
“Why’s he still here?” Luke cautiously asked.
The patrolman seemed to enjoy the chance to embellish his story. “Because Joe and the others know what will happen to them if they try to leave. I wouldn’t take kindly to that. Yeah, many have broken one law or another. Brody over there, the one missing his fingers. Tried to use the five-finger discount on some of the merchandise. Had to take him down a notch. Know what I’m saying?”
Oh my God. This is a horror movie, screamed Danielle’s inner voice.
The trooper took a sip from his steamy cup, working up his own head of steam as storyteller extraordinaire. “You’d get a kick out of what happened to one ole boy. Lightnin’ Jack, I called him. He breezed in like he owned the world. A real booger-snot, that one. A pretty boy like you. Had the hots for Clara. She used to work here. She liked him, too. Moral frailty. That was their mistake. You’d never guess what they parted with?”
Danielle didn’t want to guess. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a narrow precipice about to be shoved off.
“They’re gone, but not forgotten,” added the trooper.
This wasn’t the unwritten script Luke had bargained for, Danielle felt sure.
“These two are still here, along with a few others. A little discipline and they’re right as rain now.”
Another shiver teased the hair on Danielle’s neck. Her mouth was dry with fear. The trooper had to have more bats in his belfry than a Gothic church. He was claiming to have maimed these men for one infraction or another. Not only that, but it sounded as if they were held here in purgatory to suffer their transgressions indefinitely.
But the most chilling thought in her head at the moment: What’s the penalty for parking in front of some unreadable handicapped parking sign? Danielle doubted the sign was even there.
Luke stood again, laid cash on the counter, and pushed out his words. “Sorry if I broke some kind of rule, but we’re leaving now. If you want to write a ticket, then do it, but we’re leaving.”
“Well, that handicapped sign could take some cleaning up so’s it’s not so easy to overlook,” the trooper said. “Guess you sorta feel like I’ve been pissing on your head and telling you it was rain.” Then he chuckled at his attempt at humor. “Me and my big mouth. I guess I’ve told you a little too much. Things can get slow out here in the middle of nowhere. Know what I mean?”
“I know a setup when I see one.”
The trooper grinned that perverted grin. “You must’ve sniffed some pink paint, son. I’m not setting you up to do-diddly, although I’d be within my rights to do a body search on you and meow-kitty there, in case you two are breaking any other laws.” He leered at Danielle. “People are like roadmaps, and I can unfold them better than anyone.”
“I bet you can,” Luke agreed, “but contraband isn’t our thing. Anything else?”
“Does a fat baby fart? There’s plenty else. I’ll be listening when you fire up that banger of yours to make sure it’s muffled properly. Not too loud for code.”
The trooper was sounding farther and farther east of sane, becoming more disgusting with each word that crawled out of his mouth.
“Tell you what,” he continued. “I’ll give you and your bubbly little fluff-ball here a break. Lucy will warm up some coffee so’s you won’t get sleepy while you’re driving, and we’ll forget about the whole thing.” His grin broadened into something that fell somewhere between canary-swallowing and shit-eating. “Besides, you’ve probably got people waiting for you out there on the coast.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Give them a coffee to go. On me,” the trooper instructed Lucy. “I don’t want to have to deal with an accident on my stretch of the highway.”
Danielle would have liked to see the steaming coffee thrown in the trooper’s face, but she knew that would be a bad idea, one that could result in being strapped to some table, her clothes torn away, the leering trooper hovering above her holding a knife.
Luke had handled things fine, and all she wanted was to get out of there fast.
In the parking lot, Luke gave Danielle his helmet again. “Are things always this interesting with you, Luke?”
“That was all bullshit. See? There’s no sign out here, dirty or otherwise. This was entertainment for the locals. Fun and games, but it gives me a great idea for a story.”
“What about those two guys?”
“War vets, probably.”
“Just the same, let’s get back to the motel in case he comes out and decides to carry his little joke any further.”
“Yeah, I can really pick ’em. So much for the back roads,” Luke said, trying to lighten Danielle’s mood. “At least our bellies are full.”
“Thanks for buying. I’ll settle up when we get back.”
Luke took the foam cups and dumped them. Danielle wondered if it was because they couldn’t handle them and ride, or if he thought they might have something in them besides coffee.
“Forget it. I had the pleasure of your company, and who knows how far Smokey the Bear’s sense of humor might have gone if you hadn’t been there to protect me.”
That made Danielle smile as they sped away from the gener
al store, or whatever it was.
****
In Danielle’s mind, danger and foreboding lurked around every bend in the road on their return trip to Crosshairs, but she was discovering danger combined with a handsome stranger could be an addictive package. She expected to see headlights behind them, coming fast, carrying the joke further. If it was a joke. Fortunately, that circumstance didn’t materialize.
She relaxed enough to notice the heavenly bodies overhead as she clung tightly to Luke’s waist. The moon looked like a golden glob of honey camouflaged just slightly in a cradle of cirrus clouds.
Out in the middle of nowhere, the stars had a new brilliance. The breeze caressed her face, like a man’s hands. It was a night made for contact of some kind. She breathed deeply, relishing the sensation.
Even though she’d been horribly frightened, she also felt more luminous than she’d felt in a long while. As long as her arms were wrapped around Luke, she would feel safe.
Luke shut off the engine in front of Danielle’s unit. “I’m going to get a room at the Actus Motel right next to yours,” he said, leaving off the unlit C. “I want to make sure there’s no trouble from the loonies at the general store or from Queen Kong tonight.”
“Down and out in Crosshairs, New Mexico,” Danielle said, trying not to feel too frazzled and shake the memory of the trooper. “Hey, that could be the title of a story.”
“Let’s hope that eight o’clock in the morning is where this story ends. Right now, I’d rather work on a romance about happy trails than a horror story set in Bumbly-fuck, USA. Try to think about how good the burgers and beer tasted after a long day.”
She decided to try. A few minutes after Danielle locked herself in her room, Luke knocked.
“It’s me.”
She opened the door.
He displayed a key attached to the oval piece of plastic. “I got 102, so if anything happens, beat on our adjoining wall, or just scream. Hopefully, you can sleep, but I wouldn’t advise sleeping pills if you have any.”
Danielle didn’t have to ask why. Not a good idea to be drugged, just in case. Luke gave her a pensive look as if he didn’t quite know how to say goodnight, or didn’t want to.