by Scott Blade
Chapter 5
Jill drove around the interstate cloverleaf and successfully merged into the southbound traffic. She headed to the nearest exit into Tupelo where she glanced over at me and said, “Sorry I didn’t drop you off before the intersection. I forgot that it was so close. I’ll let you out at this gas station coming up on the right-hand side. Maybe you can catch someone who’s headed back.”
“Don’t worry about it. It was nice enough of you to give me a ride this far. I’ll be fine.”
She followed a sign for the gas station and pulled into the lot. She pulled up to the pump and put the gear into park. Then she killed the engine. She turned in her seat to me and leaned over the center console to give me a hug. The seatbelt quietly stretched with her contorted body.
I hadn’t expected her to hug me and my body locked up for a moment, a reaction to being touched unexpected I guessed, like a reflex.
She said, “It was nice to meet you. Good luck.”
“Do you want me to pay for your gas? To pay you back for the ride.”
She smiled at me and then she said, “You really are the sweetest man, like a gentle giant. No thanks. I hope that you find your dad.”
I pulled the door lever, got out of the car, and stretched my legs and my arms out as long as they would reach. It made me think of what she had said about my arm span. I ignored my self-doubts and just enjoyed the feel of the stretch like I had been crammed into a cargo box and had just gotten free. I looked up at the sun to check the time. It was in roughly the half-past three o’clock position, but I wasn’t sure. My mother had taught me to tell direction and time by the shadows on the ground, not the sun, but I could guess. Of course, this only worked in the daytime and when there were shadows and a sun. Today was a sunny day so there were plenty of shadows to use this technique. But I had a fully charged cell phone in my pocket so why use the sun like a pioneer when it was just easier to look at the home screen to see the time. I didn’t need the sun to tell the direction either because I already knew which way was west. It had been clearly marked on the interstate signs.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone and touched the screen. It lit up, the background of me and my mom appearing behind a message that read:
Slide to Unlock
It referred to an arrow that flashed like one of those traffic arrows on the back of a road construction truck that told drivers to use the other lane.
I ran my finger across the screen and unlocked the phone. It had no passcode. Usually most phones required one at this phase, but my mother hadn’t had one on hers, no point. Being sheriff meant that you needed to maintain quick access to your cell phone, a job requirement.
I looked at the time, 3:36 p.m., and then I searched through the call log. The phone notified me that I had over a dozen missed calls, several voicemails and some text messages. Most of them were from her office. There was no reason for me to listen to them so I ignored them and clicked the power button on the phone. The screen returned to black and I slipped it back into my back pocket.
I didn’t really need anything from the store, but I decided that it was best to go to the restroom while I was near one. So I headed inside and used the bathroom. Afterward I walked through the store and peered through the window. I watched as Jill’s car pulled away from the pump. It drove onto the blacktop—the tires made that slow rolling sound—and then she sped away and was lost to sight.
I stepped outside and looked around the lot, saw four cars parked under the gas station’s cover and four drivers of all different ages and sizes, pumping gas. I could’ve approached any one of them and asked for a ride, but I wasn’t too keen on that tactic. What if they thought I was panhandling before I even got a word out? People are immediately defensive when approached because they’re always getting hit up for change by panhandlers. It was a big problem in Mississippi. I knew that for sure. I figured that it was best to let one of them approach me. On top of that, forget about a normal-sized stranger coming at you to ask for a ride in an unfamiliar gas station. Instead picture a giant coming at you while you pump gas. That would intimidate you, probably even scare you. If I kept that up it would only be a matter of time before one of the drivers complained to the clerk behind the counter and then he’d call the manager or worse—the police, or the manager would call the police. They’d think I was some sort of delinquent and next thing you know I’d be getting a ride all right, but in the back of a state trooper’s car and all because I needed a ride west. No, I was better off headed back to interstate 278 and walking until someone pulled over and offered me a ride.
So I began walking out of the lot and back to the interstate on-ramp.
As I walked out I saw an old fuel truck about medium size drive in with faded symbols along the side. I could make out the writing as the truck crossed between the pumps and I walked away. It read:
Jackson West Air Fields
Caution Jet Fuel in Tank
Far from Jackson.
I shrugged, passed the old fuel truck, and didn’t give it a second glance. I continued onto the interstate.
The on-ramp was steep and short. Walking up it was quite a brief workout, like stair climbing.
At the end of it I headed north before I could turn on the cloverleaf and go west. I hugged the shoulder of the overpass as best I could. It wasn’t very wide, not wide enough for a car anyway, which I guessed was supposed to be the standard, but maybe not on the cloverleaf parts. Having grown up in Mississippi I knew that its roads were not the best, but they were better than some of the neighboring states.
As luck would have it, I only had to walk for five more minutes because just before I turned onto the loop that took me to the westbound lane of Interstate 278, I heard a horn behind me. I turned to see the fuel truck from the gas station; it had caught up with me. The truck slowed to a stop 13 feet behind me with no cars behind it so the driver hadn’t even bothered to pull over to the little shoulder. He just stopped in the middle of the turning lane and honked his horn.
I walked back to the passenger side, remembered to smile, and looked into the window.
The guy behind the wheel was an old white-haired man in a bright red cap and gray overalls like a mechanic wears. There was a faded blue patch on the upper left breast of his overalls with writing on it. I couldn’t make it out from this distance, probably his name, stitched into the fabric.
Sitting in the passenger seat at attention was a black-and-white border collie. It was old, with gray hair checkered through the black in its fur.
The dog hadn’t growled or jumped up when I leaned against the window. It simply waited for its master to speak. This was a well-trained dog. They were quite the pair, must’ve been together for years. The dog was probably his age in terms of dog years.
The guy was very, very old, well beyond the age of retirement, probably a great-grandfather with a dozen grandkids running around somewhere, maybe spread out all over the state, maybe the country.
I grabbed the door handle and pulled the door open. It squeaked loud like it had never been opened before. The first thing to hit me about the inside of the cabin was a musty smell, not bad, but not great either. It smelled like he had been living in his truck, which was entirely possible.
The bench seat was made of old, worn leather. I don’t know what color it was supposed to be because it was so old that the color was indiscernible. I guessed that it had been light brown originally.
The dog’s fur was all over the place. It was a long-haired border collie, which was a medium-sized dog. This one was maybe 45 pounds or so. Not a small dog, just smaller than I thought a border collie to be, but then again I’d never seen one in real life.
The guy spoke first. He said, “Howdy.”
His voice was squeaky and I immediately knew why. His incisors were gone and the rest of the teeth that he had left were rotting so badly that they were a brownish color like he needed to see a dentist, and soon. The inside of his mouth looked like the
remains of a bombed city just after the bombing had taken place, like it was still smoldering. His breath hit me like a ton of bricks.
A thought occurred to me right after the smell of his breath swept across my face.
How the hell did he manage to eat? He must’ve been on a soup-only diet.
I made a mental note that if I’m going to be hitchhiking I’d better start carrying gum or breath mints or Tic Tacs. At least that way I could offer some to whatever driver picked me up.
I could’ve asked, “Would you like a piece of gum?” Polite conversation. No one would think that it meant anything in particular about his or her own breath and most people wouldn’t turn down a free stick of gum. Most importantly it would spare me from having to endure bad breath. I imagined that riding with this guy was going to be long if all I could focus on was his breath.
I said, “Hi. How is your day going?”
“It’s going pretty good so far. Nice weather. So you need a ride?” he asked. There was a kindness in his voice and face. He radiated like a proud grandparent and then I knew exactly why no one had mentioned his breath to him. His demeanor was so kind that it immediately made a person look right past his bad breath. This guy glowed like an angel, just the way you expect a loving old grandpa to glow.
I said, “I would surely appreciate one.”
He said, “Hop in. Let’s get going. And don’t mind Link. He won’t bite. Move over, Link.”
The dog moved over. It didn’t bark or snap or dismiss his command. It was perfectly obedient, truly a great dog.
Link moved to the middle of the bench, made the effort seem like a great struggle, then he curled up and rested his head on the seat. He didn’t pay me any more attention, not a sniff like I had seen other dogs do. This dog had this if it’s okay with my master, then it’s okay with me attitude, like his master’s approval was gospel.
I got into the truck, closed the door, and grabbed at the seatbelt, but it was gone. I grinned, tried not to look like it was a big deal, which it wasn’t.
The old guy noticed the move and said, “Sorry, son. Dere is no seatbelt. I hope dat’s okay? I promise dat I’m a good safe driver.”
I smiled and said, “No problem.”
I believed the old guy. Old grandpas were usually good drivers. Slow and safe was a statistical reality about old guys, so I didn’t doubt that he was a good driver. I was more surprised that he hadn’t replaced the seatbelt, especially being that he was dressed like an airplane mechanic. I guessed that airplane mechanics and car mechanics had different priorities. To an airplane mechanic a seatbelt at 30,000 feet was completely unnecessary and more of a placebo precaution for the passengers, just to give them peace of mind more than to actually save their lives. When a plane drops out of the sky at 30,000 feet and plummets to the ground, the last thing that will save a passenger’s life is a seatbelt. A car is a different story. Cars don’t reach speeds of hundreds of miles per hour and travel tens of thousands of feet above the ground and cars barely deal in gravity when compared to airplanes.
I figured that the old guy never had many passengers because he had a kind of loneliness about him.
He said, “I’m really not supposed ta pick anyone up, but ya look lost out here and I got a long drive still. I’d sure like da company.”
His voice hung on the word “sure” and it came out with a slight whistle at the end. He grinned wide. That was when I realized that one of his bottom front teeth was broken, not chipped, broken in half. The air produced by his windpipes must’ve hissed right through his missing incisors and then scraped across his broken tooth, creating a distinctive whistle, especially on the pronunciation of the letter “s.”
I was having quite the luck with drivers today. My first had been an old man missing his teeth, but in good spirits, and now I had another old guy with messed-up teeth and again in great spirits. I wondered if a lot of my future drivers would be the same type of blue-collar old guy.
Jill was certainly going to be a very rare breed of driver for me, which was a shame because I liked pretty girls. But I didn’t mind good-spirited old guys.
I looked over at him and said, “I appreciate you stopping.”
“So son, where ya headed?”
“West.”
“I’m headed about twenty-five miles west to a little fishing town called Black Rock. You can ride with me all the way if ya want and den yer on yer own.”
“Thank you. That’s kind of you.”
“Where’s your bag?”
I asked, “What?”
“Luggage? Doncha have a bag?”
I shrugged and said, “No bag. Just me.”
Then I expected him to ask, “Where do you keep your toothbrush?” But he didn’t. I guess a toothbrush was the last thing on his mind.
He hit the gas and the fuel truck picked up speed and slid over to the truck lane. He wasn’t a slow driver, that was for damn sure; that had been a miscalculation on my part. He pushed the old truck as hard as it would go, which wasn’t very fast. It wasn’t quite struggling with the sudden request from the gas pedal to jump forward, but it wasn’t like Jill’s Ford Fusion when it jumped to life.
He said, “I tought hitchhikers always carried a bag. Ya know, with camping gear or a sleeping bag or somedin’. So ya can sleep out under da stars. Ya don’t look very prepared, if ya don’t mind my saying so.”
He hung on the “s” in “saying so.” The whistle followed.
I said, “This is my first day hitchhiking. I guess I didn’t really think it out that far ahead.”
He nodded. He wasn’t surprised; then again, I doubted that much of anything ever surprised him anymore.
We continued to drive down the interstate. The old guy was fast, but he wasn’t heavy footed because he kept the truck at a steady 70 miles per hour, the maximum speed limit on Mississippi interstates.
Some of the other vehicles on the road drove much faster and some drove much slower. At one point we were stuck behind two 18-wheelers. One drove in the fast lane at a slow speed and the other drove in our lane at a slow speed. I guess that it was the responsibility of the truck in the fast lane to speed up, pass, and then move over to the truck lane if he was going to continue to drive slowly. The driver of that truck seemed not to be concerned with such formalities. I was pretty sure that I had heard somewhere that it was illegal for big trucks to drive in the fast lane. They were legally required to use the fast lane only for passing other vehicles.
We drove in silence for about 20 minutes until finally I decided to break it.
I asked, “Is there an airport nearby?”
The old guy said, “No. I’m driving out ta Jarvis Lake. I work at a small airstrip outside Jackson.”
I said, “Are you headed to Jarvis for business or pleasure?”
He said, “Officially, neither. It’s fer work, but I plan on doing some fishing while I’m dere.”
Another whistle.
The old mechanic looked back over his shoulder behind the seat to a narrow rear cargo space between the front bench and the back wall. It was an area that was too small for a backseat, but unusually wide in a single cabin truck. It was as if this truck had been specially designed. Of course, I had never ridden in a fuel truck before, so I had no idea what the interior of one was supposed to look like.
I leaned back and peered into the cargo space. There was an old metal tackle box. There were a couple of fishing rods against the rear wall, folded up.
Looked like the old guy was prepared for some major fishing on the lake.
I said, “What kind of work will you be doing on a lake?”
He said, “Flying boat.”
“Flying boat? You mean a seaplane?”
He shook his head and then he said, “Common mistake, son. Everyone calls dem seaplanes. A seaplane is a plane dat can land on water. I mean technically yer right dat dat’s what I’m going dere fer, but dere are two types of seaplanes. Da one everyone dinks of is basically just a seaplane
or a floatplane. And da second is like da plane dat I’m goin’ ta work on. It’s a flying boat or super scooper. It’s one of dose water bombers. Ya know, fer fighting forest fires from da air. Dey are da large planes. Da fuselage on dem is shaped like da hull of a boat. It’s a boat dat flies. Sometimes they’re fer transporting cargo, but mostly nowadays ya usually see dem as water bombers.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, I’m meeting a guy with a flying boat.”
“Why is this guy flying a water bomber to a lake in Mississippi? We don’t have any forest fires.”
The old guy said, “It’s some rich fella. Probably oil money. Maybe flying his buddies out ta a remote lake fer some fishing. I’ve never had anyone fly a flying boat out ta a lake before, not fer recreational use, but a seaplane, sure. Dey’re probably carrying a small boat stored in da hull or da guy has a big crew dat he’s bringing wid him. Dese planes can usually hold two pilots, one jump seat, and maybe eight passengers on a bench in da back.”
“So why does he need you to drive to the lake?”
The old guy said, “Look at dis vehicle. I’m driving jet fuel out dere for da plane. No available jet fuel in Black Rock for da rich guy ta use ta refuel da plane. I dink he’s flying from da Gulf or somewhere. Gonna need fuel ta return.”
I nodded. It made sense. The rich guy needed to refuel so the old guy was meeting him there.
Then the old guy said, “My name is Hank, by da way. Hank Cochran. I was in da navy fer 25 years; den I retired. Now I work as a mechanic at a small air strip in Jackson. Dat’s my story. So who are you?”
I said, “My name is Reacher, first name, Cameron. My mother was the sheriff of Carter Crossing and my father was in the army. She died and now I’m searching for him.”
Hank smiled a wide smile. The sight of his missing teeth and the smell of his bad breath rushed out at me, but his smile was full of warmth. I couldn’t resist smiling back at him.
Chapter 6
Jack Reacher was a name that I’d never heard before yesterday, at least not the Jack part, but it echoed in the chambers of my mind. I looked out the window of the fuel truck and my lips moved inadvertently. I mouthed the name, Reacher.