by David Archer
“Speaking of money,” he said aloud to himself, “time to fix that problem.” He finished putting the carburetor back together and then mounted it in its place on top of the intake manifold, set the air filter on top and connected all the hoses, and hit the key. The engine cranked over a few times before the fuel pump filled the ball with gas, and then it backfired once before coming to life. He leaned down and adjusted the jets, turning the screws back and forth until the engine was purring like a kitten on all cylinders.
“There we go,” he said. “Just the way you ought to be running, right, baby? Now, let’s get cleaned up and go make us some money.”
He snapped the engine cover in place, then climbed down from the passenger seat and gathered the tools. One thing he’d learned from the old man was to keep his tools clean and properly put away, and the next twenty minutes were spent making sure that both were done properly. The toolbox in the back of the van had been the old man’s, but C.J. had inherited it after a truck fell off the jack and crushed the old bastard’s head. It was big and heavy, and he could probably have sold it many times over, but it was the only thing in the world he truly prized. It was the only thing in the world that made all the abuse and the beatings worthwhile.
When all the tools were put away properly, then it was time to clean himself up. He glanced around to make sure nobody was paying attention to him there in the rest area, then popped open one of the side doors and leaned in to find a clean shirt. He tossed it carefully over his shoulder, locked the van and went into the restroom to wash up.
Twenty minutes later, after taking a quick rag bath at the sink and ignoring the men who came in and out while he was there, C.J. Willis stepped out of the restroom looking clean and fairly sharp. He was in his mid-thirties, a little bit on the hefty side, but stronger than most people would give him credit for, and his dark brown hair was still covering his head. Considering how bald the old man had been, he had expected to lose his hair by the time he was thirty, but it was still flush and full, even if it was a bit on the long side.
His most distinguishing feature, however, was his nose. It was a little bit crooked, having been broken a couple of times when he was younger, times when the old man had exploded over some simple mistake at the shop. The back of his father’s hand had felt like a brick when it struck him, and the impacts had caused his nose to flatten and turn slightly to the left. A spot beside his right eye where the old man’s Masonic ring had caught him also contributed to his slightly roguish appearance.
Of course, that roguish look was one of the reasons he never had a serious problem getting laid. Women like the bad boys, he’d always heard, and he considered himself living proof of that old maxim. More than half the women he flirted with would flirt back, and a fair percentage of those would willingly get into his van with him. Didn’t matter how old they were, either, and he had developed a fondness for the young ones.
That had started about a year after the old man died, or he thought it had. Sometimes, when he let himself think about it, it almost seemed like there was something older, some memory that wanted to surface, but was held at bay. More than once he’d thought he was about to grasp it, but it always slipped away at the last second, until he finally ignored it and let it go. Maybe it was in his imagination, anyway.
He’d tried to keep the shop running after Charlie died, mostly just to keep his mom happy, but he was only eighteen. Most of the old customers didn’t like coming back to where Charlie Willis had been killed. Charlie had been one of the local good old boys, and had gone to school with most of his customers, but while they knew C.J. had learned a lot from his daddy, most of them felt like the place wasn’t the same without Charlie around. They’d gone to other mechanics, and at last, his mother was forced to sell the building. C.J. had loaded up the toolbox into the ’83 Chevy van he’d bought and painstakingly rebuilt during his high school years, and went looking for work.
Unfortunately, none of the other shops wanted to hire him. He talked it over with his mom and his girlfriend, Tracy, and decided to try college. His grades had been good enough, and he was able to get Pell grants and student loans, so he enrolled in the Criminal Justice program at the college in Lake City.
Some part of him had always wanted to be a cop, and he thought this might be his chance. Tracy was going to school in Miami, but they were planning to be married when both of them had their degrees. That all fell apart one day, though, when Tracy called to confess that she was in love with somebody else.
He’d managed to get past that, finished his Associate’s Degree and started applying for positions with area police departments, but nobody seemed to be hiring. In desperation, he decided to join the Army. He opted for Military Police training and was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he was one of more than seven thousand recruits in his group. There were three battalions comprising seventeen companies, with each company having its own instructors. After twenty weeks of combined basic and advanced training, C.J. was sent to the 25th Military Police Company, 503rd Military Police Battalion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he quickly rose to the rank of Corporal.
C.J. was happy in the MPs. He began to feel like he’d found a place for himself in the world and was seriously considering making a career of the Army. He was a decent looking guy even with his scars, and the ladies around the base found him likable. It wasn’t long before he was sharing an apartment offpost with one of them, and life was beginning to look pleasant.
And then everything went wrong. C.J. came home early one day and found his girlfriend in bed with his best buddy, which led to a big fight, some wild gunshots that left holes in the walls and a dishonorable discharge for both men. C.J. was kicked out with one of the biggest black marks his career could have, and any hope of becoming a cop in civilian life went out the window.
He’d gone home and looked for work, but word spread. After the news that he’d been charged with assault against the man who’d been with his girlfriend, there had been some speculation about the accident that had killed his dad, and nobody wanted to take a chance on him. He was a pariah, and rumor said that he was dangerous.
After a couple months of frustration, he’d applied for a job with a big company, traveling from place to place to fix large backup generator engines. The company didn’t care about his past, just his mechanical ability. He’d gotten hired, and then he’d gotten behind the wheel and driven away. Things went well for a few months, but then it dawned on him that he could make more money as a contractor, so he quit and went into the business for himself. He hadn’t been home since.
He called his mother now and then, though. She always took the calls, always told him that he ought to come home, even told him about whichever girl he’d gone to school with who was lately divorced. He understood, she wanted grandkids someday, and since he was the only child she ever had… Well, he figured she felt it was up to him.
He didn’t want to have kids. A family would only tie him down, and he had found that being single was best. It meant he could keep moving, not worry about what anybody else thought, and could indulge his—his hobby.
It started two months after he left home. He’d been passing through some little town and stopped at a small café to get a bite to eat. The waitress was cute and quite flirtatious, and he was seriously thinking of hanging around until she got off work, but then those girls had come in. There were two of them, cute as buttons and in their first year of high school. They sat in the booth across from his and looked over and smiled, giggling when they realized he was looking them over. He was about to turn back to studying his chances with the waitress when one of the girls spoke up.
“See anything you like, mister?”
C.J. had focused his attention on her and suddenly realized that he did like what he saw. He could remember when girls that age were the most tempting things he’d ever seen, and he’d left a couple of broken hearts back in high school. He’d always gotten what he wanted from them, and there w
as something exciting about their fumbling innocence and naïveté, as he talked them out of their clothes there in his van.
Suddenly, he missed that innocence, and the waitress was forgotten as he chatted amiably with the two young girls. They were obviously smitten with him, and while he knew that it would be messing with jailbait, he wasn’t worried. He’d be long gone before anybody found out he’d had a little fun with one of them. The only question was which one he would go for. They were both rather cute.
That question got settled when he finished eating. The girls had stopped in for a soft drink, and one of them got up to leave before the other. C.J. watched her go, briefly thinking that she was a little prettier than her friend, but then dismissed the thought. He turned to the one that remained and suddenly that old feeling returned, like there was something he was trying to remember, but it was just out of reach.
He pushed it away and smiled.
“All by your lonesome now, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah. She had to go, but I don’t have to be home as early as she does.” She smiled coquettishly at him as she sipped her soda through a straw.
“Well, that’s good,” C.J. said. “I remember when I was your age, my daddy used to raise all kinds of hell if I wasn’t home by a certain time. It’s good your folks don’t treat you that way.”
“Oh, no, they don’t. They think of me as an adult, so they trust me to come in when I want to. Do you live here in town? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”
“No, I’m just passing through,” C.J. said. “I saw this place and was hungry, so I stopped in.” He grinned and saluted her with his glass. “Now I’m glad I did.”
She blushed prettily. “Me, too,” she said. “I don’t get to talk to too many people who aren’t from this stupid little town. Where you from?”
“Dallas,” C.J. said, lying automatically. He was keeping one eye on the waitress, who didn’t seem to be paying any attention at all to them. “What’s wrong with this town? It seems pretty nice.”
“Oh, it’s boring,” she said. “There’s nothing to do here, and the boys are just—they’re just boys.”
C.J. grinned. “Way too immature for a young adult like you?”
“You know it,” she said. She glanced at the waitress, also making sure that no one was paying attention to them, then turned back to C.J. “So, what’s your name?”
“I’m Darrell,” he said, some instinct bringing a lie to his lips without even thinking about it. “Darrell Pearson. What’s yours?”
“I’m Breanna. Nice to meet you, Darrell.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” C.J. said. “So, what do young adults do for fun around here?”
Breanna glanced at the waitress again, then leaned a little closer. When she spoke again, it was softly, conspiratorially. “Mostly, they go out by the lake and make out,” she said, and then she blushed.
“Ah,” C.J. said. “That sounds like fun, but I guess I’ll never know.”
He deliberately turned away from her and took a sip out of his glass, as if dismissing her. He could feel her eyes on him, and he could even feel her desire.
“You could,” she whispered just loudly enough for him to hear. “I’m gonna go. If you’d like to see what it’s like out at the lake, just go up to the next road and turn right.”
He turned and looked at her, and she batted her eyes and smiled. Another quick glance at the waitress, who was standing at the window talking to the cook, and then she blew him a kiss as she slid out of the booth. A moment later, she walked out the door, and glanced back through the window at him as she walked across the parking lot toward the road.
C.J. sat there for another minute, just trying to give the impression that he had barely noticed the girl, then went up to pay his ticket. It came to just over ten dollars, so he gave the waitress a ten and the five and told her to keep the change. She smiled and thanked him as he walked out the door, and then he got into his van and pulled onto the road.
There was another road that cut to the right a few hundred yards ahead, and he almost drove past it. At the last second, he cut the wheel to the right and made the turn, and was delighted when he saw young Breanna walking along the side of the road ahead.
The road was lined with trees and there was no other traffic. He pulled up beside her and stopped, then hit the button to lower the passenger side window.
“You need a ride?” he asked. “I thought I would go check out the lake, like you said, but I can give you a ride somewhere if you need it.”
She gave him a big smile, then opened the door and climbed inside. “I was going down to the lake, too,” she said. “I was hoping I might see you there.”
C.J. looked at her. “You know, if anybody saw you with me, they might think I was up to something bad. Maybe I should let you out before we get there, so nobody thinks I’m up to something.”
“No need,” she said. “I’ll show you where to go so nobody else will be around. We can have a good spot all to ourselves.”
He continued looking at her and let his eyes roam down her body before coming back to meet hers. “That does sound like fun,” he said.
She giggled. “And it sounds like maybe you do want to get up to something bad,” she said. “Just not too far, okay? I mean, I don’t mind making out, but I don’t go all the way.”
He grinned. “I won’t go any farther than you want to,” he said. He took his foot off the brake and drove forward, following the directions she gave him. She took him down several dirt roads, and they finally ended up at an old, overgrown boat landing.
“Nobody ever comes out here,” she said. “Some kid drowned out here a few years ago, so everybody thinks this place is haunted. I been out here a few times, and I ain’t never seen no sign of it.” She gave him a flirtatious grin. “You ain’t afraid, are you?”
“Naw, not me,” he said, noticing that she seemed to have lost the carefully cultivated grown-up grammar she had displayed back at the café. “You want to sit here in the van, or should we get out? I got a blanket we can sit on.”
She giggled again. “Get it,” she said, and then she jumped out and ran down to the water.
C.J. got the blanket and followed her, then spread it out on the ground a short distance from the edge of the water. As far as he could tell, there was no way anyone could see them. They sat on the blanket together, and Breanna made sure to scoot closer to him, close enough that their hips were touching.
The time for talking was over, he thought, so he put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him. She tilted her face up and he kissed her, and a moment later, she laid a hand on his thigh.
They spent the next few minutes kissing and touching, and C.J. found that she started breathing hard when he kissed her neck. It didn’t take him long to get inside her shirt, and she didn’t object when he unsnapped her jeans. They lay back on the blanket, still kissing, and C.J. used every trick he had ever learned in dealing with girls to convince her that she wanted him to be her first.
It was working, and she was laying back with a smile on her face as he tugged at her jeans. They were just down to her knees when he saw a sudden look of fear cross her face, and knew that she was about to try to back out, so he yanked them off quickly the rest of the way.
“Darrell, wait…”
He leaned down and kissed her, and she started to respond, but then tried to push him away. “Darrell…”
“What are you, a tease?” he asked. “Don’t you know better than to tease a man?”
She pushed him again, trying to push him off her, but he held her down. “Darrell, I can’t…”
“You can’t? You brought me out here just to tease me, just to play games? I thought you said you were an adult. Adults don’t do that kind of thing. We both knew what we came out here for, so don’t even try that game.”
The reality of what was happening to her set in, and she started to cry. “If—if you don’t stop I’ll—I’ll scream.”
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nbsp; He slapped her across the face. “Now, that would be a very bad idea,” he said. “I mean, probably nobody will hear you anyway, but even if they did, all I have to do is tell them you brought me out here. I might get in a little bit of trouble, but I bet you’d be in a lot more. Everybody in town would know you brought a man out here so you could have sex, and everyone would laugh at you when you walked by. Do you really want that?”
She sniffled. “N-no,” she stammered. “But, D-Darrell…”
“Then shut up and kiss me again,” he said. “Relax, baby, you’re going to enjoy this.”
And then it happened. She lay there and stared at the trees above her, trying to pretend she was somewhere else, that she was someone else, but it wasn’t true and she knew it was. It didn’t even last long, and then C. J. climbed off her and started pulling his clothes back together.
He looked at her. “Go ahead and get dressed,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride back to town. Come on, hurry up or I’ll leave without you.”
She sat up and reached for her clothes, tears running silently down her cheeks. She managed to pull them on, then turned and looked at him. “You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll just walk home.”
C.J. looked at her and started to get to his feet, but something in her eyes caught his attention. There was anger there, maybe even hatred. It took him all of two seconds to figure out that she had every intention of getting his license plate number and telling someone what happened.
It took even less time to figure out what would happen to him if she did. He smiled at her, said, “Suit yourself,” and then turned as if he was going to walk away and leave her.
And then he spun, his fist connecting with her face in a satisfying crunch. She fell, dazed enough that she didn’t even cry out, and he landed on top of her again. He beat her face repeatedly, until she quit moving completely. She was breathing raggedly, weakly, and it hit him that she was probably dying already, but he wanted to be sure she wasn’t going to tell on him. He picked her up, carried her into the water and pushed her underneath some overhanging bushes. With any luck, he figured it would be weeks before she was found, if she ever was.