Cut to the Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  “Hey,” she said, turning in her seat. “What the hell you doing?”

  “Just finding us a little privacy,” he said. “You know Exit 144? Three miles up the road? There’s a nice little pull-off there where nobody’ll bother us.”

  She thought about opening the door and jumping out onto the ramp, but the truck had already picked up a fair amount of speed, and she didn’t think she could do it without hurting herself pretty bad. She sat back in the seat, her nerves jangling, magnifying every jolt as the truck shuddered over seams and patches in the pavement. Her anxiety lessened a bit when he put on his turn signal and downshifted to take the exit.

  “Stinking Creek Road,” he said. “Reckon how come they give it such an ugly name?”

  “I reckon it don’t smell too good,” she said. He probably wanted her to say something more clever or funny, but she was feeling hungry and nervous, not entertaining.

  “Down near Chattanooga, there’s a stream called Suck Creek. Suck Creek Mountain, too. I’d hate to have to tell people I lived on Suck Creek Mountain.” She didn’t say anything. After a moment he added, “Up in Virginia, I-66 crosses Dismal Hollow Road. That’d be a bad address, too.”

  Halfway down the ramp, on the left, they passed a long shed with a Quonset-hut roof. He braked and turned onto the gravel, crossing the far end of the structure. The shed was completely open on the end, and inside she saw an immense mound of salt—the highway department’s stockpile for the coming winter, she supposed. The four-mile grade on Jellico Mountain was a nightmare when it snowed; the lanes were in the shadow of the mountain for most of the day, so stuff was slow to melt. Take a hell of a lot more’n you to thaw that damn mountain, she thought, as if the salt could hear what she was thinking.

  Just past the end of the shed, he spun the wheel again, tucking in behind the building so the truck was screened from view. “See?” he said. “Close, but quiet. If it don’t come a blizzard in the next hour, won’t nobody bother us here.” He smiled at his joke. “Aw, relax, darlin’. You changing your mind? Hell, I’ll take you back to the Pilot right now and still buy you breakfast, if you want to call off the deal. I’d be disappointed—who wouldn’t be, a good-looking woman like you?—but I’m a big boy. I reckon I’d get over it. In a year or two.” He grinned and winked.

  She shook her head. “Not changing my mind. I just need to . . . switch gears, I guess,” she said. “My boss was giving me a hard time back there.”

  “You want something to take the edge off? Sip of Jack Daniel’s? A little reefer?”

  She felt a glimmer of what passed for hope these days. “You gonna smoke?” By way of answering, he took a fat joint and a lighter from the pocket of his denim shirt. He lit it and then handed it over so she could take a hit. She took a long drag and held it; when she exhaled, she seemed to be letting go of not just the smoke but also the stress of the night, the meanness of Bobby T, and the flash of panic she’d felt when the truck had taken the on-ramp instead of ducking under the freeway to the Pilot.

  “That looks like just what the doctor ordered,” he said, and she was thinking he was right. Long as she didn’t forget to collect the money, being stoned would make it easier to zone out while he did his business. A good buzz might even help her think of something kinky enough to score the extra forty.

  She was feeling pretty good by the time he helped her down from the cab and up into the sleeper. He gave her a hand as she stepped onto the bottom rung of the ladder, then boosted her up the rest of the way by cupping her ass in both palms and pushing, with a little squeeze for good measure.

  The inside of the sleeper was like a cave; the compartment had two windows, but both were covered with blackout shades. “Here, let me turn on a light so you can see,” he said, switching on a dim dome light.

  The sleeper contained a double-sized mattress along one wall, a galley kitchen in one corner, and a shower in the other corner. “Hell’s bells,” she said, toppling backward onto the mattress, “this is nicer’n where I live.” She spread her arms wide and swung them up and down, like wings. “I ain’t never been in a sleeper this big.”

  He smiled. “I don’t expect you ever will be again, angel,” he said.

  CHAPTER 7

  Tyler

  TYLER LOCKED THE BONE lab behind him and hustled out the stadium’s lower door. He’d parked his truck right by the door—a prime spot, except for the fact that it was illegal. Just for two minutes, he’d told himself; just long enough to drop off the strip-mine girl’s bones, which he’d carefully boxed after photographing and measuring them. But the two minutes had turned to ten, then thirty. He scanned the windshield, didn’t see a ticket. Whew, he thought. That’s lucky. Then he saw the figure on the far side of the truck. It was a man, standing on the running board, cupping his hands against the driver’s window so he could peer inside. “Hey!” Tyler yelled reflexively, wondering whether he was about to plead with a traffic cop or punch out a thief. The man straightened; the man was . . . his boss. “Hey,” he repeated, still feeling trespassed against; puzzled, too. “Uh, what’s up, Dr. B?”

  “I was just looking to see how many miles you’ve got on this thing.”

  “Last time I looked, the odometer was showing ninety-nine thousand eight hundred and change,” Tyler said. Dr. B lifted one eyebrow—his trademark expression of skepticism. The man was no fool. “I thought you had a meeting with the dean today,” Tyler went on, uneasy about Brockton’s interest in the truck—interest that seemed not just intense, but somehow invested. “You said you were gonna ask him for some land closer to campus.”

  “I do, but he was running late. I’m headed there now.”

  Tyler pointed at the glossy dress shoes trespassing on his running board. “You should be wearing yesterday’s boots to the meeting,” he said, “not that fancy footwear. Grind a little pig shit into the dean’s carpet, so he knows what it’s like for us out here.”

  “Good idea, Tyler. Antagonize the boss—always a great strategy when you’re asking for a raise or a favor. You’re wasting your gifts in anthropology. You’d make a hell of an ambassador.” Dr. B stepped down from the running board but lingered by the truck, looking thoughtful. “Automatic or stick?”

  “Stick, course. Three on the tree.” The term was archaic—slang for a three-speed gearshift on the steering column, the prehistoric predecessor to four-on-the-floor and five-speed manual transmissions—but Brockton was plenty old enough to know what it meant. “You couldn’t pay me to drive an automatic.”

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about,” said Dr. B.

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, nothing. I’m just having an argument with Kathleen and Jeff.”

  “Your son?”

  “He just got his driver’s license, and he’s badgered us into helping him buy a car. Me, I didn’t have a car till I was out of college, but that’s a different argument, and I’ve already lost. Anyhow, Jeff and Kathleen are dead set on an automatic. But I say he needs to know how to drive a stick shift. What if he needs to drive somebody else’s car in an emergency, and the car’s a stick shift?”

  “Uh, right,” said Tyler. “Or what if a meteorite shower wipes out every automatic-transmission factory on the entire planet?” Brockton frowned, unhappy to have his point undercut, and Tyler figured he’d better throw his boss a conciliatory bone. “But it is a useful skill. Especially if he’s gonna travel overseas—hard to rent anything but a stick, most places. Just the opposite of how it is here.” Dr. B nodded. “Main thing, though—and maybe he’d listen to this—is that you’ve got so much more control with a manual. I want to be the one that decides when to shift. Automatics drive me crazy, especially on hills.”

  “Exactly,” said Brockton. “All that downshifting and upshifting, every five seconds? Don’t get me started.” He ran his eyes over the truck again. “Tell me, what year is this?”

  “U
nless I’m mistaken, this is 1992.”

  “Ha ha. Not the calendar, smart-ass—the truck. What year is the truck?”

  “It’s a 1950.”

  “Amazing. You’d never know. How long you had it?”

  “Me, only a couple years. But it’s been in the family from the get-go.”

  “No kidding? Since 1950?”

  “October ’49, actually. My granddaddy walked into the showroom, pocketful of cash from his corn crop, and drove it home. Drove it for the next twenty years, then gave it to my dad. Dad had it for twenty, too, but some of those, it gathered dust in a shed behind the house.”

  Dr. B appraised the truck again. “How many miles you say it’s got?”

  “I didn’t. I said it shows ninety-nine thousand and some. True, far as it goes.” He hoped the conversation was over, but his boss waited expectantly. “The whole truth would take another digit—another one on the left side of those numbers.”

  “A hundred ninety-nine thousand?”

  “Yeah. Back in 1950, Detroit took it for granted a car wouldn’t make it past ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine point nine. If by some miracle it did, all those nines rolled over—”

  “Sure,” Brockton interrupted, “to zeros, all of ’em. Back to the beginning. Clean slate. Fresh start.”

  Rebirth, or at least the illusion of it, long as you looked only at the numbers—not at holes in floorboards, or rusted-out fenders, or cracking, chalky paint, or rotted upholstery and shredded headliner.

  Tyler had been a kindergartner the last time the Chevy’s odometer had racked up so many nines, but he remembered the event with Kodachrome vividness.

  IT WAS A SUMMER Sunday afternoon, after church and after dinner, everyone stuffed and sleepy and still in their hot polyester church clothes. The truck was what his dad drove to work, or to the lumberyard or the dump or to Sears to get new appliances; everything else happened in the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, the big station wagon with the skylight windows. But that Sunday, the four of them piled into the sweltering, musty cab—no air conditioner, of course; the seat belts long since lost in the gap between the seat cushion and seat back. His parents perched on either side of the broad bench seat, with Tyler sandwiched between them, his baby sister, Anne Marie, age two, on his mom’s lap. They’d driven the thirty miles from Knoxville to Lenoir City, to the white farmhouse on River Road where Gran and Pop-Pop lived. The whole way down, his father’s gaze was glued to the odometer, and he nearly ran off the road—not once but twice, the second time provoking a gasp and a sharp “Wesley” from his mother. As they turned off River Road and crunched to a stop in the gravel driveway, his father tapped the instrument panel. “Look at that,” he’d said, “ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight point two. Perfect. Plenty of margin.” He’d then commenced to honking, laying on the horn for what seemed like forever, until Gran and Pop-Pop emerged at last, looking nappish and puzzled and maybe not all that thrilled at the surprise visit.

  “What are y’all doing here?” Gran had said, then her cheeks turned red. “I mean, in that old thing? That bucket of bolts should have gone to the junkyard years ago.” Her flustered expression brightened when Tyler’s mom handed Anne Marie to her.

  “Bucket of bolts? Are you referring to this marvelous machine, Mama? This paragon of mechanical perfection?” Tyler’s father had acted indignant, but even at five, Tyler could tell he was teasing, and he giggled. “Mama dear, we have come all the way from Knoxville to take you two for an old-fashioned Sunday drive. Get in. You’ll like it.” Tyler’s mom reclaimed Anne Marie momentarily, and Gran clambered into the cab, still looking baffled. Pop-Pop resisted, insisting he should ride in the back so Tyler’s mom wouldn’t have to.

  “Are you kidding?” she’d said, handing Anne Marie into the cab, back to Gran. “I love riding in the back of a pickup. Makes me feel like a kid again.” She fiddled with the latch, and the tailgate fell open with a screech and a bang. “Tyler and I will be happy as hound dogs back here,” she said, boosting him up onto the tailgate. Tyler could scarcely believe his good fortune. Never—never—had he been allowed to ride in the back of the truck. “It’s a death trap,” his mom would invariably say, any time his dad suggested that maybe, just this once, it might be okay.

  With another screech and a bang and a sly wink at Tyler, his dad slammed the tailgate and got behind the wheel once more. Tyler’s mom settled them in the front corners of the bed, frowning at the dirt and the rust. “Now you sit still and hold on tight,” she said, and Tyler nodded eagerly.

  Driving far more slowly than usual, Tyler’s dad pulled out of the driveway and headed farther out River Road, along a stretch that ran straight and flat between fields of dark, glossy corn. After a couple of miles, he eased the truck to a stop, right there in the road, and cut the engine. Then he shifted into neutral, pulled the emergency brake, opened the driver’s door, and got out. “Come on around her and take the wheel, Daddy,” he’d said to Pop-Pop. “Ease off that brake and let her coast when I give you the word.” Then, walking to the back of the truck, he’d opened the tailgate and helped his son and his wife hop down. Motioning her toward the truck’s right rear corner, he’d placed Tyler behind the center of the tailgate, then stationed himself at the left rear corner. “Ready, Daddy?”

  “What on God’s green earth are y’all doing?” squawked Gran.

  “The odometer’s fixin’ to turn over, Mama,” he’d hollered. “One hundred thousand miles! Daddy, let that brake off so we can push this fine machine into its second lifetime.”

  “Lord help, you people are nuts,” Gran laughed.

  The road must have had a slight downgrade—either that, or the universe joined in the celebration—because the truck rolled easily, and soon the three of them were running just to keep from losing touch with it. As they ran, Tyler’s dad began to sing. “Swing low . . . sweet chariot . . . comin’ for to carry me home.” His strong, clear voice rolled out across the fields.

  “Swi-ing low,” his mom chimed in, “sweet cha-ri-o-ot . . . comin’ for to carry me home.”

  “Here it comes, here it comes!” shouted Pop-Pop. “Point eight . . . Point nine . . . Zero!” His shout was joined by the truck’s wildly honking horn—a trumpeting horn, a jubilant horn; a horn the Angel Gabriel himself would have been proud to blow, if only the Almighty had allowed him to turn in his angel wings and trade up to a 1950 Chevy half-ton: a bug-eyed, bona fide miracle of American engineering and mass production.

  Fifteen years later, when Tyler graduated from college, his dad had surprised him by giving him the truck—but the truck as Tyler had never known it: a glorious, ground-up restoration of the truck, with gleaming new paint, leather interior, seat belts, and a stem-to-stern mechanical rebuild that rendered the rings, valves, and gearbox as tight as they’d been the day Pop-Pop had driven it out of the showroom. It was not so much a restoration as a reincarnation: as if everything else—everything but the odometer—had rolled over to zeros this time around.

  “SORRY; WHAT’D YOU SAY, Dr. B?” Tyler blinked, somewhat surprised to find himself in 1992, standing at the base of the stadium, his boss staring at him, bringing him back to the present—back from the sweet childhood memory to the grim realities of death and decay and unrelenting demands.

  “I said, what would you think of selling it?”

  “Selling what? The truck?” Tyler looked at Dr. B, who cocked his head, waiting. “You mean to you?” Dr. B nodded. “What, for your son?” Another nod. Tyler was startled by the question; no, more than startled, he was stunned and unmoored. Unhappy, too. He stared at the truck, as if it had suddenly coalesced out of thin air; as if it were some . . . alien . . . thing, rather than a steadfast fixture of his entire existence. Was Brockton trying to take over his whole damned life?

  Finally he spoke, choosing his words carefully. “This? For a teenage driver? You gotta be kidding. N
o air bags, no shoulder harnesses, no impact protection. Hell, if he hit something head-on, the steering column would go right through his chest, like a spear. This thing is a death trap.”

  Dr. B smiled slightly, looking . . . what? Wistful? “I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’d hang on to it, too, if I were you. Twenty years from now, you’ll be giving it to your son.”

  Tyler hoped the subject of selling the truck was closed, but—knowing Dr. B—knew it would come up again. “Maybe not,” he said. Brockton looked hopeful for a moment, until Tyler added, “Maybe I’ll be giving it to my daughter.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Satterfield

  THE WAND AND HOSE of the pressure washer twitched and swayed in the air like a living creature—like a cobra, Satterfield thought—as the water hissed against the long hood of the Peterbilt. Bright red water sheeted down the side of the truck’s cab, a visual echo of the blood spilled inside the sleeper so recently. Fanning the seething spray back and forth in the morning sunlight, creating airy rainbows and red puddles, Satterfield envisioned the pressure washer’s long, thin nozzle as a magic wand. “Abracadabra,” he murmured, liking the feel of the word in his mouth, liking the sense of power he felt as a sorcerer. “Presto change-o, red to blue-o.” As if in response to the spell he was casting, the Peterbilt was transformed, wand wave by wand wave, the red truck dissolving and melting—molting—to reveal its inner self, its true colors: gunmetal blue, with a fringe of orange flames edging the back of the sleeper.

  He’d been watching the news—on television and in the newspapers—but he’d seen nothing about the woman’s body being found. Apparently nobody even missed her yet, as there’d been no reports of a search, either.

  He’d be in Birmingham by sundown tonight, and back in Knoxville by morning, his tracks fully covered. The fuel tanks still had a hundred gallons of diesel in them—at six miles a gallon, more than enough to make the trip—and he was ready to roll, as soon as he washed off the last of the paint.