For a moment, the three of us stood there beside Cotton’s old car in reflective silence. In a way, all three of us killed him. Yet the fact also remained that none of us did. The boy we knew died long ago, over there in the fields of France, along with the other three boys who went there with him. The difference was that we found a way to survive the death of those boys and, in the end, he didn’t. And I honestly didn’t know if that made us better men or not.
I sort of doubted it. I still do.
The only thing I knew is that we were still men with a future.
Designated Driver
I must have taken a wrong turn at Hearne.
After spending the past hour driving on this back highway, somewhere around Waco and Temple, I was completely lost. I found myself in no hurry though because nobody expected me to be at Scott and White Hospital till morning. That, and three quarters of a tank of gas, gave me the whole night to kill and still have time to find a breakfast diner before visiting hours began. Plenty of time to caffeinate myself, so I could face Uncle Frank and reassure him that he rested in good hands and that lots of people survived cancer nowadays.
Uncle Frank is hardly my favorite family member, but he has never figured it out and the rest of the family expected an appearance out of me. I wouldn’t wish cancer on him though…I don’t hate him either. He just comes from an older and different world, and has a habit of always listing my shortcomings. I didn’t want to become like him as I got older, getting bitter at younger people for living in a world I no longer understood.
Assuming my world made an appearance again anytime soon.
No moon glowed down from the sky tonight, making the world outside my headlights a blackness that crowded close to the pavement. The way the road twisted through this back expanse of farmland told me I must have wandered off the highway somewhere a while back, although I couldn’t figure out how. All roads go some place though, so as long as my tires stayed on asphalt and followed that broken line down the middle of it, I would come out somewhere. Besides, I found the drive both relaxing and enjoyable.
The road belonged to me alone, which suited me just fine. No other headlights showed themselves in the last half hour, although once my car nearly got creamed by an old pickup running with its lights off. The offending old Chevy was pulling a rickety cotton trailer to wherever the nearest gin in the area could be found. It lurched up out of the darkness and into the cone of my headlights with no warning, causing me to swerve and almost forcing my car off the road. Some of these older farmers with small cotton patches use whatever junk they can get running to haul their crops in. This probably meant I now wandered the old farm and market roads that make a maze through much of central Texas.
Many of them lead to former towns, some of which only exist as a road sign and a graveyard off the road somewhere. Sometimes a church will still remain, puzzling modern urban drivers over why somebody would stick a church way out in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes a single country store might be left, serving the farmers in the area and whoever else happened to drive by. But for the most part, the motorist will just encounter a sign announcing a town no longer in existence.
I kept my eye open for one of those. Even if the town no longer existed, it still might show up on the map in the glove box…giving me a fix on my location and how to find my way back to civilization. Keeping an attentive eye toward the side of the road, looking for any sign that might be of use, I spotted something else instead.
For a brief second a car appeared out of the darkness, far off to the side of the road. I would have probably missed it if not for my attention being so focused on that very side. Its lights were out, and it sat in the weeds at an angle that suggested it didn’t get there on purpose. The vehicle fell behind me and back into the blackness before I could react. For an instant I debated the wisdom of stopping, but then remembered the old truck running with its lights out.
The car back there may very well have encountered the same guy, and not been as lucky as me.
With a sigh, I eased over to the side and then made a three point turn in the middle of the road. Assuming there weren’t more maniacs running around with their lights out, it should be safe to do since any headlights coming would be visible from a mile away. I slowly headed back the way I came, and it didn’t take long before the car came back into view. From this angle I could see that its nose mashed squarely up against a telephone pole. Somebody had come to a swift and unplanned stop.
The tires crunched over the roadside gravel as my car rolled to a stop, across the road from the wreck. I pulled my little LED flashlight from its pouch on my sun visor. It didn’t have the brightest beam, but it wouldn’t go out on me. I’m a big fan of LED lights, because they are reliable and have tremendous life off of just one battery. My car also features a couple of those click-it LED lights, stuck in strategic places. Swinging my door open, I lit my flashlight and stepped out into the warm Texas night.
The rhythmic song of crickets surrounded me and crowded almost as close as the blackness. The stars above were brilliant, but shed little in the way of useful light. I couldn’t really make out a horizon, the sky not even being light enough to silhouette whatever trees or other objects that would be tall enough to stand against it. The darkness almost seemed unnatural, the way it swallowed even the brighter lights of my headlamps and emergency flashers. Suppressing a growing sense of unease, I walked across the road and made my way down into the ditch toward the car.
The weeds and unmowed grass whisked against my knees, while my little light revealed the twin ruts made by the car as it careened off the road. Coming up on it from behind, I made out a large, seventies model station wagon. That gave me hope for the driver, because those old metallic beasts didn’t crumple easily…and from what little could be seen, this one’s owner kept it in very good shape. I walked around to the side of it, noticing the faux wood paneling on the side.
This thing was definitely a classic.
The telephone post had crunched into the front of the car, inverting the bumper and folding the hood, but the passenger compartment remained intact. The driver’s door hung open, grass and weeds covering it up to the handles. The fact the inside light stayed dark with the door open, told me that either a battery cable hung loose or the battery died. That made me wonder how long ago this happened.
With a growing sense of unease, I stepped wide of the car while approaching and shone my light through the door.
The front seat sat empty.
Relieved, I stepped up to the door and shone my light around the interior of the car. I hadn’t seen one of these since I rode in one as a kid, and I had forgotten how big a car could be on the inside. Compared to my little Hyundai, this thing’s interior seemed cavernous. Well kept, too. The interior and floorboards were clean, not at all like the pile of cups and McDonalds bags filling the passenger side floorboard of my car. I noticed a crack in the windshield though, that may or may not have been caused by impact with a head.
But what happened to the driver?
I walked up to the front of the car. Picking a place where the hood crumpled up, I shone my light through the gap to see the engine beneath. On the surface, it looked unharmed other than a bent fan, but the damage could quite easily be more extensive. I put my hand through the space and felt the engine block. It felt a little warm, which in this Texas heat didn’t tell me much. It could have meant the wreck happened a couple of hours ago, or this morning and the car sat out in the sun all day.
Either way, I could think of nothing further to do here and I needed to move on.
On the brighter side, the stop provided me with a piece of information that hadn’t been available to me from the interior of my car. On dark nights like these, when you are out in the country, you can see the glow of towns against the sky…even when they are too far away to see the lights of the town itself. Now that my eyes were adjusted to the dark better, just such a glow showed on the horizon in the direction I originally heade
d. I scrambled back out of the ditch and walked across the road to my car.
Another three point turn and the car now headed back in the direction of town. For the next twenty minutes, my car flew down the murky road in silence. Lighting a cigarette, I turned on the radio to break the monotony. A quick sweep of the FM dial revealed that this stretch of road must have been in a dead spot, not uncommon out here, so my choices amounted to AM or nothing. Being in no mood to listen to yokels calling in to air their grievances on talk radio, I chose to kill the thing and drive alone with my thoughts.
I took a quick glance down at the dial as I turned it off, and then looked up just as I drove past a solitary figure moving along the shoulder of the road. It seemed the driver had turned up after all.
I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. Leaning around, I looked back over my seat and through my rear window. The figure slowly shuffled up out of the darkness and into the red glow of my taillights. Something about him didn’t seem quite right. I could make out a white button up shirt with its tails hanging out, and a pallid face under a short dark mop of hair. His arms hung limp at his side and he approached in a wooden, disjointed fashion that I found a little unsettling.
It is not my normal policy to stop and offer people rides, but the proximity of the wrecked station wagon to a man out beside the road this late at night suggested a connection. The passenger side door opened, and he slid into the car without comment. The man appeared pale, and his complexion bore a decidedly waxy look to it. He sat there, staring out the windshield without saying a word. I waited a minute to see if he intended to say anything, or even close the door that he left hanging open. He neither moved nor spoke.
“Do you need me to come around and close the door?” I asked, as much to get him to say something as to get him to comply.
He blinked owlishly, as if trying to understand the request, then he reached over and pulled the door shut. I once more sat in the dark, only now with a stranger who seemed to have no capacity for speech. The most logical conclusion would be that he had been the driver of that classic station wagon, and spent the past hour or two walking down the road in shock. There didn’t appear to be any blood on him, but lots of serious injuries didn’t bleed. Regardless, there definitely seemed to be something wrong with him.
Once again, my little car accelerated away from the shoulder and headed down the road. A quick check of my cell phone revealed no bars were showing, meaning we were in a dead spot for more than just radio. This now qualified as “one of those nights,” although my passenger probably had more justification to complain. If he could find the words to, that is.
“Here,” I said while holding the cell phone out to him, “keep an eye on this and if any bars show up you can try giving somebody a call for help.” Maybe giving him something to do would help him come around.
Again he gave no verbal response. After a few seconds though, he reached a tentative hand up and took the cell phone. Gingerly turning it over a couple of times, he stared at it like it came from some other planet. Then he just laid it down on the seat beside him. Without a word, he resumed looking out the windshield and into the night.
“Buddy, are you okay?” I was now officially creeped out.
Still no response.
They didn’t have cell phones back in the 70’s.
There’s no telling where that thought came from, and I wish it never came at all…because as soon as it did, every hair on my body started to stand up. Some primal part of my brain started sounding alarms, giving me one of the worst cases of the “willies” I have ever suffered in my life. My passenger was just a dim shape, somewhat illuminated by my dashboard lights, and I suddenly couldn’t decide if it would be a good idea to get a better look at him or not.
For the next few minutes we drove in silence. I wrestled with my nerves, knowing that being spooked like this would do neither me nor my passenger any good. Both of us needed me to get a grip and do something useful.
Taking a deep drag off of what survived of my cigarette, I used the now brightly burning cherry to light another one. I’m seldom a chain smoker, and my throat would hate me in the morning for this, but tonight it seemed to work for me. With a flick of my wrist, I exposed a couple more cigarettes from the open pack and held it over to my passenger.
“Smoke?” I offered, figuring he would either just take one by habit, or at least speak to say he didn’t smoke. Either move would have gone a long way towards settling my stomach. Unfortunately, he ignored the gesture and continued to just stare out the windshield. Only the glint of the dashboard lights off of his eyes let me know he stayed conscious beside me. His pallor in the dim light seemed even more pronounced than before.
Whatever was going on here, it didn’t look good.
Which explained the surge of sheer elation in my chest at the sight of a light a few miles down the road.
I had started to get the most unnerving feeling that my passenger and I were the only two people in a world that consisted of nothing but a road and the night. A glance over at him revealed he now leaned forward a bit in his seat, so he must have seen it too. His eyes remained wide and somewhat glassy though, and he still hadn’t acknowledged my presence at all after examining the cell phone.
Coming around another curve revealed what looked to be a small truck stop at a crossroads about a mile ahead. The fluorescent lights created a garish blue-white oasis in the black countryside. I found it a sight of pure beauty. The old style neon sign could now be made out, announcing it to be the Riverview Truckstop and Café. I looked over at my passenger, for some odd reason almost expecting him to be gone. He still sat there though, staring at the approaching truck stop with a fixated blankness.
His eyes tracked the front door as we approached. After wandering around in the dark for the past few hours, he must have been glad to see this place too.
His skin looked more corpselike than ever under the harsh lights of the fluorescent bulbs. His face also looked sunken and deathly gaunt as we pulled in under the truck stop’s awning. But now that we found civilization, my nerves calmed and I realized with an inward cringe of embarrassment that what sat beside me was just a badly hurt man. A man who had needed my help, instead of me giving in to childish flights of imagination while he must have been fighting to remain conscious. I should have been talking to him the whole way.
I intended to just run inside and get help, but my passenger opened his door so I walked around the car to see if he needed assistance. Once again, he ignored me as he pulled himself up by the top of the car door. Moving seemed to come as a real effort for him. Without a word, he started shambling toward the door of the truck stop. Even though the inside seemed brightly lit, the blinds to the tall glass windows were down, so whoever sat inside couldn’t see the drama approaching them.
I stayed right behind him, making sure he wouldn’t fall, and then stepped ahead of him and opened the door as he reached it. I now noticed the small track of dried blood running down from his scalp along his jaw line, and then down further into his shirt. It had been on the side away from me while he sat in the car. I followed him into the cheerfully lit diner, just in time to see a woman with a waitress outfit and a tall hairdo come out from behind an old style cash register and approach us.
“Oh my word!” she drawled in one of the thickest small town accents that I heard in years, “this feller’s plumb out his head! Get him over to that table there, and I’ll call Sheriff Gartner. He’ll know what to do.”
“I picked him up beside the road a ways back.” I responded while guiding my charge towards the table, “His car is in the ditch about 20 miles that way.”
She frowned at me and headed towards the large black telephone on the back wall.
There were several other patrons, scattered amongst the booths in here. They were all silently looking at the pair of us. After an initial curious look in our direction though, they went back to eating or talking amongst themselves. We must have made an
interesting sight, but people in this neck of the woods aren’t known for being rude. They had their own places to go, and their own business to mind. This is a pretty old fashioned area of the state. I had actually been sort of surprised see an open diner off of the main highway at this time of night. And a very nice diner, too.
Bright red and white linoleum tiles formed a checkerboard pattern on the floor, on which cheerful crimson booths flanked chrome edged tables. Little juke box selectors sat on the wall at each table, behind the tall glass sugar bottle and smaller salt and pepper dispensers. Apparently they worked because Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be The Day” filled the diner with a most appropriate background music. A bar ran along the side of the diner away from the windows, starting at the old cash register, and was fronted by red upholstered bar stools trimmed in more gleaming chrome. Somewhere behind there must have been the kitchen.
“Sheriff Gartner will be here in a few minutes.” The waitress announced while returning to the table. I noticed the stitched nametag on her uniform said “Cora”. She squinted at my fellow traveler who now sat in the booth across the table from me. He still sat upright, but with his eyes now tightly closed while gently rocking. His eye sockets were dark and sunken.
“Poor thing’s completely disoriented,” Cora tutted, “that happens sometimes…especially with car wrecks. You’ve done something special, bringing him in out of the dark like that. I’ll go get you a coffee while you wait on the Sheriff.” She walked off towards the towering silver coffee pots behind the bar.
I wondered why she didn’t call an ambulance, but then realized if a sheriff patrolled nearby that he could probably get the man to a hospital faster than waiting for an ambulance to come all the way out here and then take him all the way back. Or maybe the sheriff simply radioed the ambulance once he got Cora’s call. It still seemed odd though. Nevertheless, this guy would stay my responsibility until the sheriff got here.
Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen Page 20