Lone Rock

by Duane Lindsay

  “Why didn’t you? Don’t you?”

  She seemed lost for words. How do you express to someone else what you barely acknowledge to yourself? “When I was five I used to stand in front of the mirror and pretend I was performing . It was always what I wanted to do. Then I grew up and life got in the way. I went to college and got the job at Carlson and surprise! Turned out to be good at it. Music sort of moved into the background.”

  “When I was five I took apart my mother’s hair dryer,” Adrian said.

  “So you always wanted to be an engineer.”

  “No, I wanted to break her hair dryer. The thing was loud and it scared me.”

  Maggie smiled but it was a faraway thing. Adrian regretted making the joke so he put his hand on hers and lightly stroked it.

  “I tell myself I don’t care,” Maggie said. “But I’m lying. That’s why I got so mad at you when you brought it up. I hate being afraid, I hate it.” Jerome and Amber launched into Celebrate and she didn’t look too pleased with that either. “I’m better than these guys,” Maggie said bitterly. “But there they are, and here I am...”

  “It’s hard to face your fears,” Adrian said. “I know. I haven’t done too good a job at it. But it’s not too late, you can start anytime.”

  She shook her head and looked away. Adrian pulled at her hand until she looked at him again.

  “It’s not too late,” he said again.

  “It is—”

  “No, it isn’t. And I’ll be there cheering you on.”

  “Will you?” She sighed and straightened. “Really?”

  “Of course. Unless...”

  “What?”

  “Unless you play Muskrat Love—”

  Maggie laughed out loud, an explosive release, and Amber began to sing Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.

  Corley drove the one eyed Camaro down Main street in an increasing frenzy. He felt like someone in a bad play, cursed by the Gods, doomed to drive this road forever. The dashboard clocked mocked him. 9:27, it said in arrogant green numbers, indifferent to the suffering it caused. He wanted to hit it with a brick.

  He wanted to hit Adrian Beck with a brick. As the night went on, Corley’s mood went down. Too many cigarettes, too little food, too many chemicals sloshing inside him had combined to make him jittery and tense, more than a little crazy. His desire to find Adrian and get back to Denver was an obsession. His inability to find him in this town made him writhe with impatience. How many can Casinos could there be?

  He had that incipient paranoia of a man who, while busy flying his plane, becomes convinced that someone is stealing his boat. On perhaps his thirtieth trip up and down the strip he got an idea: the car. The bright yellow Studebaker. The one with scratch marks all over it, how many could there be? Fewer than Casinos, he figured.

  Revitalized he turned around and headed for the State Line, the biggest and therefore first choice. Turned into the lot, drove up one lane after another and there it was! As obvious as a hooker’s wink, standing out like a lemon drop on a chocolate bar. Ass-hole, thought Corley, driving a car like that. Of course Adrian didn’t know he was being hunted.

  He parked in the first space and loped to the lobby like a wolf nearing the kill. He charged to the front desk and shoved aside an old man with an oxygen bottle. “You got a guy named Adrian Beck registered here?”

  “Sir, I’ll have to ask you to wait.” The girl, barely twenty-one, in a reddish uniform, glanced nervously at the old man, back at Corley. “I have other—”

  “Yeah, right. This’ll only take a second. You got a guy here named Adrian Beck?” She shot a look at Corley and frowned at her computer screen. Pressed some keys and smiled a bit nastily.

  “No sir, we don ‘t,”

  “What? Of course you do! Look again.”

  “Sir, there’s no one here named Beck.”

  “Tall guy. Scar on his cheek.”

  “Sir, please. People are waiting.”

  “God damn you,” Corley barked and immediately felt a hand on his elbow. He spun around and saw a very muscular black man in a uniform watching him with interest.

  “Problem, sir?” asked the security guard.

  Corley tensed and the guard smiled, suggesting. ‘Please don’t .There are a lot of us here.’

  Corley nodded, realizing he didn’t need trouble. He gently eased his arm from the man and said softly, “No problem at all.”

  “Why don’t you leave, sir?”

  “Sure.” Corley turned away, under the man’s interested gaze. He walked straight across the street and into the lobby of the Silversmith. over to the elevator and pushed the button marked Skyway. More than one way, he thought, to skin a Beck.

  Maggie stood in the gift shop next to the slot machines and peered at a postcard of a concrete tree lit up like a UFO landing site. Huge concrete ornaments scattered around it looked like alien eggs. All in all it was less Christmas than the invasion has started.

  “Hey, look,” she said. “I want to go see this.”

  “Now?” asked Adrian dubiously. “I don’t know if it’s lit up now.”

  “So what? If it isn’t, we’ll see a skeletal concrete tree in the desert in the dark. It’ll be an adventure.”

  Adrian shrugged—why not? They paid for the postcard and walked past the chiming cacophony of a thousand slots out into the cool air of Nevada in January. The snow had stopped but the sky remained as black as octopus ink, an unfriendly lid over the world. Maggie shivered at the thought.

  The sight of the little yellow car, cocky despite her savage wounds, eased their spirits and the sense of romance returned.

  “Turn on the heat.”

  “Let it warm up first. Jeez.”

  “Is there a blanket?” Maggie asked.

  “In the back.”

  She pulled out a thin wool thing of black and red that smelled vaguely of gas and cut grass, and draped it over their legs. They backed up and swung forward and Adrian carefully used the left turn signal as he curved out under the sky bridge into the wide bright boulevard that was Main street.

  A flash of yellow caught Corley’s eye at the same moment a drunk woman in pink pants spilled a cup of nickels on his shoe. His attention went first to the coins— there were so many!—then back to the sparkle of light. He hurried to the rounded Plexiglas dome of the sky bridge and gaped down at the well-lit street two stories below.

  The back end of a shiny yellow Studebaker was perfectly centered in the road beneath him, as if framed for his inspection. He could even make out the marks of his vandalism slashed across the flat hump of the trunk. Corley couldn’t see the driver from this angle, but it was impossible to be anyone else.

  The car was driving away, east toward the Interstate. He was getting away! Very, very slowly, Adrian was leaving Nevada. After so many frustrations it was almost an unbearable release. There he was, just under the towering neon lit cowboy. He went that-away, Pardner. Corley’s face split into a grin, his first real smile in two days.

  Gotcha!

  He pivoted on his heel and ran through the tunnel of the sky bridge, raced down the stairs and through the casino, earning stares of disapproval from many older women and an occasional security guard. None tried to stop him however, and he shoved through the doors into the same night that had so recently swallowed Adrian and Maggie. A quick run to the Camaro and Corley raced to the highway in hot pursuit.

  He made it three blocks, past the Subway and two pawn shops, a Laundromat and eleven mini tourist motels when the red and blue light flashed on behind him. A block later he still hadn’t stopped and was seriously considering running for it when the siren came on. Seething, Corley drifted to the side of the street, next to the Howdy-Do Inn. (Yes! We Gots Lots of Slots!)

  He rolled down the window and kept both hands plainly in sight on the wheel as he’d been taught in Chicago many years ago. The gesture was for the safety of police who often feared approaching a felon, armed and dangerous. At the moment, Corley Sayres was possib
ly the most dangerous man in Nevada.

  The cop seemed pleased at this sign of surrender and was aloofly pleasant when he leaned into the window and said, “See you license, sir?”

  “Sure.” Corley carefully picked up his wallet, making sure the cop could see his every move. He flipped it open and took out the laminated card. “The car’s a rental. I’ve got the papers in the glove box. I’ll just get them out.” Without waiting for a reply he leaned across the seat and pulled out a handful of papers. He straightened and handed them back, his movements sure and relaxed, belying the incredible sense of frustration he was feeling.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked. He was surprised that his voice was so calm.

  “No problem, sir. Headlight’s busted, that’s all. I’ll just run these through. Be just a minute.”

  A minute! Just a minute. While Adrian Beck drove farther away with every second, this piece of shit state cop wanted to waste time looking up his record. He waited nearly twelve minutes before the cop finally strutted back.

  “Here you go,” he said and Corley took the papers without any sign of violence. “You be sure to get that fixed, okay? And drive safely.” He waved and walked back to his car, never once considering how near death he had come.

  Corley waited while the black and white cruiser—we serve and protect!—made a U-turn in the road and headed away to the west. He swallowed from a dry mouth and started the car, put it in gear and moved carefully out into the deserted street, his movements as jagged and imprecise as a puppet. A steady twenty miles an hour all the way to the edge of town, he moved up to fifty at the entrance to the Interstate and stomped his foot down on the accelerator as he hit the highway.

  Overdrive kicked in, the tach surged to red line and Corley was pushed back into the seat as if jet propelled.

  There was no way in the world Adrian Beck was going to get away this time.

  The lights were off and it was a skeletal concrete tree in the desert in the dark, hardly anything to write home about. But it was, in an odd way, a romantic place, and Adrian took unusual advantage of the situation by saying, “You ever made love under a skeletal concrete tree in the desert in the dark?”

  Maggie said, “Sure.” She peered through the windshield. “Where’s the exit?”

  “I’m looking.” In the rear view mirror, in the distance, a single headlight appeared. A full moon had risen, making the desert glow with an eerie phosphorescence, like a motionless sea. He moved into the left lane and began to slow down.

  The light behind bothered him, though; if the Studebaker had hazard lights, which were undreamed of in 1960, he would have turned them on to indicate that he was in the left lane. He did turn on his signal, which blinked comfortably, and continued to seek out the gravel path that led across the highway to the concrete tree. He was thinking about Maggie saying, “Sure.” She had? When?

  The single headlight grew brighter.

  There, up ahead, no more than a mile, was the blinking red tail light of a car. It had to be Adrian. Who else would be out here? The sense of futility that had been threatening Corley all day gave a spastic leap in his stomach. He belched deeply for relief and let his foot off the gas. The Camaro immediately began to slow down.

  What was Adrian doing? Corley watched through his own windshield and wondered. And now, what was he going to do? He was down to fifty and the Studebaker was close enough to make out the color: canary yellow glowing like a beacon. It seemed to Corley as if Beck was looking for a place to turn around, which made no sense. Why drive thirty miles into the desert and turn around?

  An idea occurred to him. If he hit the Studebaker while it was still moving slowly, he could force it off the road. He adjusted the Camaro to collide with the other car at a speed that would be jarring but not fatal.

  “What’s happening?” Maggie half turned in the seat to watch the single approaching headlight.

  “I don’t know,” Adrian said watching the mirror. “But he doesn’t seem to see us,”

  “Is the signal on?” She knew it was, she could see the dim red glow blinking on and off, on and off. The other car couldn’t possibly miss it. “Do you think he’s drunk? What is he doing?”

  The car was closing fast and Adrian made a sudden decision. He jerked the car to the right and hit the gas; the car leaped to the opposite side of the road.

  And the other car swerved as well.

  “Hold on, he’s gonna hit us!”

  He squashed the gas pedal. The Lark jumped and was nearing twenty-five when the collision came. There was the sound of scraped metal and broken glass as he and Maggie were thrown forward, but momentum kept the accident from being worse.

  Maggie twisted back to see. “He’s backed off a little. Wait, he’s coming back,”

  Adrian kept his foot down, trying to run. Why was he deliberately trying to hit them? Was it a lunatic out for some crazy joke?

  The car hit them again and Adrian wrenched the wheel for control. To the right, then the left, fighting the skid, he slowed the car. It shuddered and yawed before drifting to a stop on the side of the road, the right tires resting in gravel.

  The other car stopped and the driver’s door opened. In the flash of interior lights Adrian saw a big man lurch out in to the night. “He’s coming this way.”

  “Lock the doors,” Maggie said. She pushed past his shoulder and shoved the button down hard.

  Corley rushed up against the back of the Studebaker, adjusted his speed and hit it. His Camaro lurched hard and he fought the wheel, but the other car didn’t lose control. And it didn’t stop.

  Damn. He adjusted his aim and charged forward again. Just like a video game; aim and shoot. Beck was speeding up, trying to run, which struck Corley as both funny and infuriating. After all I’ve been through, he thought, there’s no way you’re escaping.

  He sideswiped the car at forty, a bone jarring collision that rattled his teeth. His hand wrenched on the wheel and a stab of pain lanced up his arm, but he smiled widely despite it. The Studebaker was stopping.

  Corley also braked, and scrabbled with the door handle. He yanked the door open and advanced on the stricken car. He reached it in three long strides, grabbed at the door handle and pulled. Nothing happened, the door was locked.

  He stared at the glass. From only a foot away, dimly seen through the glass, Adrian Beck gaped back at him.

  Corley looked around for a rock to smash the window.

  “It’s Corley!” Adrian said.

  “What?” Maggie was terrified. “Corley Sayres? How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. He’s looking for something. I think he wants to break the window.”

  “Adrian, we’ve got to do something.” Maggie hit the glove box, looking inside for anything to help. There was nothing but the vehicle title and slim handbook.

  He thought frantically. What should he do? What could he do? The age old desire to hide was overpowering. It look a desperate effort of will to realize that it wouldn’t work. If Corley didn’t find a rock he’d surely think of his tire iron. He’d get in the car, that was certain. And when he did...Adrian shuddered.

  “There’s nothing here,” Maggie said. “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s gone back to his car. I think to get a gun or a tire iron to smash in to get us.” Adrian slumped in the seat, unable to come up with an idea.

  It was Maggie who said, “Get us out of here.”

  “What are you talking about? We can’t...”

  “Do it! If he gets in here we’re dead. If we drive we have a chance. Go.”

  Adrian agreed. He bolted like a rabbit cornered by a fox. Corley was turning back to them with a long piece of metal in one hand.

  The Studebaker threw gravel as Adrian spun the wheel, pulling them back on the highway. He had a brief shot of Corley standing next to his silver car, astonished, then he was on the open road, speeding away.

  “How is this going to help?” he asked over the howling of the engine. “
He’ll just hit us again.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Maggie. “Listen, if we’re going fast enough, he can’t hit us. This car is heavier than his and if he tries to hit us, it’ll kill us both. This isn’t like the movies, Adrian. Nobody sideswipes a car doing ninety.”

  She was right. Hitting them at that speed was suicide. The only question was, how fast could a Studebaker go?

  The Lark roared away as Corley hefted the lug wrench. Astounded, he watched it go, the left tail light glowing white through a broken red lens.

  “Bastard,” he yelled into the night. He leaped back into the Camaro and took off in pursuit. His car was faster; it would catch Adrian in no time. And then what? He had the same thought as Maggie; hitting the other car was insane. It would only kill them both.

  He pulled up behind and waited, wondering what to do. He inched forward until he was nearly touching their bumper, hoping to rattle Adrian, but the yellow car just kept driving, gaining speed as it went.

  Ninety miles an hour. Corley hadn’t thought the Studebaker could do it. He goosed his car and struck their bumper hard, but it was the Camaro that reacted. The Lark, a mass of old Detroit rolling iron barely felt the bump, but Corley’s car went into a wild skid, careening across the road. He fought the wheel and managed to avoid spinning out into the desert.

  He dropped back a hundred feet and followed. Now what was he going to do? He couldn’t just follow. Somewhere Adrian would find a town and get help. Maybe he was calling the highway patrol right now on a cell phone.

  He shook his head in fury; nothing was going right. One hand pounded the steering wheel in frustration, but he willed himself to calm down, There had to be something he could do.

  Seven miles passed in silence before Corley got another idea.

  “What’s happening back there?”

  “He’s just riding behind us.” Maggie had already searched the back seat and found nothing to help. In an attempt at black humor she said, “Do you have any oil slicks we can shoot?”

  “What?”

  “How about tacks to puncture his tires?”

  “What are you talking about?”