Hot girls in skin-tight denim were everywhere. I was fairly sure every store in town that sold hairspray had made a killing in the last two days. One particularly impressive pair of hip pockets went rolling by, and I temporarily forgot my name.
“Close your mouth, Sam, before a horse craps in it,” Will said with a grin, but he was looking too. “Come on. I’ve got a surprise for you.” He led me to the high-dollar box seats set up in the dirt to the left of the chutes. I would have been hard pressed to find a better seat in the house.
“How the hell did you score these?” I asked. “I know you’re too cheap to pay for them.”
“Lori won them on some radio contest yesterday and said to tell you happy birthday.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but you do know my birthday’s not until next month?”
“Well, yeah, moron, but she don’t know that. Stay put.” He walked off behind the chutes to say hi to some local riders.
I sat looking through the ten-foot wire panels that were soon going to be the only thing between us and several thousand pounds of pissed-off beef, and I tried not to get caught staring at two hotties leaning over the rail above our box. They were both wearing bandanas for shirts, and from my angle, the bandanas weren’t doing much good at covering anything. Neither wore a bra.
The blonde caught me looking and gave me a wink and a grin before whispering something to the redhead beside her. They came down the steps and sat on either side of me, and I forgot to breathe.
“I’m Lori,” the blonde said, “and this is Gwen, your date for the night.”
I almost jumped out of my jeans when Will vaulted over the rail and landed in the seat behind me.
“Happy birthday, my brother,” he said and laughed out loud at the grin on my face.
Now, this is how you’re supposed to spend a Friday night, I thought.
An hour later, only three riders had made it to eight seconds, dust was thick in the air, and Gwen had generously spiked my Coke from a tiny pink flask. Where she’d hidden it, I could only imagine. She was wearing my hat and playing with my hair, and I was about three seconds from heaven. I looked toward the chutes to get a glance at the next bull coming out.
The gate flew open, the bull immediately whirled to the left, and the rider went flying toward our box. He slammed into the steel mesh and dropped. Clowns converged to distract the crazed bull. Two cowboys dragged away the dazed rider, who was feebly trying to climb the concrete wall beside our box. Almost every eye in the place was on the action—every eye but mine. Jesse Stangler was leaning on a rail beside Randy only thirty yards away.
Randy was staring at me, shaking his head. The crowd let out a gasp as the bull caught a slow-moving clown and sent him flying just as Jesse looked directly at me. We locked eyes, and suddenly, I really had to pee. Jesse smiled wide and fake. He gave me a nod before turning to disappear down the ramp behind the chutes. Randy glared and followed Jesse out of sight. I fled for the bathroom.
I wanted to figure out how to convince Will we had to go when I got back to our seats, but to tell the truth, I was scared to death of the long walk through that dark parking lot. Sticking with the crowd seemed safer. I knew I never should have driven my truck. The chances of them spotting it in the darkness of the lot were slim, but we still had to get to the gate and out of town.
Lori finally convinced Will to leave a little early “to beat the crowd,” but we all knew she was just in a hurry to get him out of his Wranglers. Gwen seemed to have much the same idea and forced herself up under my right arm, with one hand shoved in my hip pocket as I hurried toward the door.
I watched every shadow as we moved through the lot. We left Lori and Gwen at their car with a promise to follow them back to Lori’s place. We made it to my Dodge without any sign of the Stanglers, but my heart was trying its best to fly out of my chest. I pulled through the lot with my lights off, spotted Lori’s Mustang, and followed her out the gate in a long line of other trucks. We took fifteen minutes to finally hit pavement with me sweating like a tweaker at a pawn shop.
I watched the rearview and every car in it, hoping no one was following us, but so many trucks were back there that I couldn’t be sure. Five miles outside town, we left the traffic behind, and I could finally breathe more easily. Will took a swig from his flask and turned up the stereo. Lemmy from Motorhead was singing “Eat the Rich,” and I was just starting to join in when I noticed the headlights a quarter mile behind us. I was doing seventy, trying to keep up with Lori’s crazy driving, but they were coming up fast. I glanced in the mirror again a second later, and they’d already halved the distance between us.
“Put your seat belt on, Will,” I said.
He started to laugh then saw the look on my face as I glanced once more in the mirror, and the light was reflected in my eyes. He looked back, saw the bright lights bearing down on us, and frantically scrambled for his belt, but he was too late. They were going to ram us if I didn’t do something, so I jerked the wheel to the right, whipping my old truck onto the shoulder at speed. The truck flashed past us, braking hard. They matched my speed, and Randy’s frightened eyes appeared in the passenger window. Jesse leaned forward, grinning from behind the wheel, and gave me a little wave. Our door mirrors made a little pinging sound as they touched. He mouthed two words at me that I couldn’t hear, but they were pretty easy to guess since the first one started with an exaggerated F. They dropped back a few feet, and I felt a burst of relief. Maybe he was just trying to scare me. Then he slammed into my left rear fender.
The Dodge was built in ’76 when Chrysler still used steel, but the impact, with us half off the shoulder going nearly seventy miles an hour, was too much. The rear end skidded into the ditch, and I never had a chance to get it back.
We hit something solid, probably a culvert, and the world slipped out from under us and spun around the cab. I lost count of how many times we rolled. Everything slowed to a crawl. I was dimly grateful I had my lap belt on but deeply annoyed Dad had never kept his promise to help me install shoulder straps. I noticed that Lemmy had switched from “Eat the Rich” to “Ace of Spades,” and I learned exactly how the little marble in a spray paint can felt. Will was rolling around the padded headliner. I tried to grab him but was being whipped back and forth so hard that I could only flail helplessly.
For some reason, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t saved the game on my Xbox the night before. I just paused it and fell asleep. If Mom saw it still on, she would probably just hit the power switch, and I would have to start the whole level over. For a long second, my head was in Will’s lap somehow, and he looked down at me wide-eyed before another bang sounded someplace. My body whipped back up and left. The lap belt was still holding my butt firmly in place, but my head smashed through the side window, and the whole world broke up into snowflakes of light and sound.
#########
When I came to, I could smell gas and something else. It was hard to make out since my nose didn’t seem to be working correctly. Each time I inhaled, it bubbled and wheezed. I tried to reach up to feel what the problem was, but my arms were already straight up over my head. Am I under arrest? I thought about that for a second. My eyes were blurry with tears and something thicker. I heard the rapid clicking sound of my old CD player skipping. The singer kept roaring, “The ace—The ace—The ace—”
Of spades, I thought. It’s the ace of spades.
I could feel my pulse in my ears, my neck, my hair. I thought about that for another second, or maybe it was a year. I looked out the window beside me and wondered why the sky looked like pavement. A big white stripe stretched across it. I stared at the tiny pieces of glass scattered like glittering stars. I focused a little closer and noticed the window was broken out except for a few ragged chunks around the edges. A tractor-trailer rig drove past upside down on the sky highway. My hair on that side felt wet.
I tried to pull my arms down, but they stubbornly stayed above my head. A pair of black reptile-skin
boots came crunching across the glass. They were what folks called roach killers, the pointy kind that would let you squish a bug even if it ran into a tight corner. Like everything else, they were upside down. The legs attached to them bent, and some guy with a Fu Manchu mustache, receding black hair, and a beer gut stared at me wide-eyed.
“Jesus, kid. That was the worst wreck I ever saw. Are you alive?”
I tried to turn my head over to look at him right side up but only made it partway. Am I alive? I wasn’t completely sure it mattered.
“The hell you uh-side down for?” I finally slurred.
“I’m not, kid. You are. Just don’t move. I already called an ambulance, okay?”
I’m upside down? That made a little more sense. I looked down and realized my seat belt was still doing its job. The truck was resting on its cab with the tires pointing entirely the wrong way. The engine was still running.
I finally got my arms down, turned off the ignition, and tried to punch the belt release, but it wouldn’t let go. I looked out the front windshield and noticed it was gone too. In the spray of glass on the shoulder was another pair of boots attached to someone I couldn’t see much more of than butt and legs. Those boots looked familiar.
Reality came roaring back, and I started screaming. I fumbled my pocketknife out and sawed frantically at the seat belt, cutting my hip in the process. The belt finally gave, and I crashed onto my already throbbing head and crumpled around it.
I found myself staring straight out at Will’s boots. The left one twitched slightly, the right not at all. I recognized the other smell finally. Blood even smells red, I thought. Like spaghetti sauce with too much salt. Somewhere, a girl was screaming.
With a heave, I fell over onto my side. The padded headliner was almost too comfortable to leave. Grinding my teeth, I started to crawl from the cab.
“Kid, please don’t move. You might be hurt bad,” the man said, pushing at my shoulder.
“Get off of me,” I said in a voice so loud and deep that even I jumped a little.
Blood sprayed the pavement in front of my eyes. Gravel and broken glass ground into my forearms. Finally, clear of the window, I pushed up onto hands and knees.
My head hanging, I prayed fiercely, “Don’t you take him too, God. You damn well better not.”
When I could face it, I turned to look at the truth. The truck was balanced perfectly on its cab on the shoulder of the road. Except for the shattered windows, it had taken surprisingly little damage. Even the headlights were still working. Will lay on his stomach, his head turned away from me. It didn’t seem to be shaped quite right. Angling off into the ditch, a thick river of blood maybe eight inches wide stretched from his head to the grass. The blood almost seemed to stand up on its own like some giant piece of taffy melting on the pavement. Chunks of something gray were floating on top. I stared hard at his back, willing him to breathe. Twitch. Anything. No way could someone lose that much blood and live, not even Will.
The girl had finally stopped screaming, but I could still hear her whimpering and sobbing someplace nearby. From the corner of my eye, flashing lights drew my gaze. A cop car was racing up the highway toward us. The guy with the ridiculous mustache still squatted beside me, making patting motions in the air by my right shoulder, his eyes locked on Will. The look on his face was tough to describe. His eyes were full of horror, but excitement too. He was breathing heavily, mouth a little open, tongue twitching restlessly at the left corner of his mouth. A faint smile or maybe a grimace twisted his lips.
"Did the other truck even slow down?" I asked.
“I was too far back to see much, just some taillights. Then yours jumped sideways and started spinning. It was freaking crazy. I don’t know how you’re alive. Like something out of NASCAR. Shouldn’t you lie down or something?”
I looked around—anywhere but at Will. Lori’s Mustang was parked facing us maybe twenty yards away. Gwen was rocking Lori against her chest. She looked for all the world like some redneck mother nursing her kid’s skinned knee. She stared at me with no expression and just kept rocking and crooning into Lori’s hair.
The sirens got louder. Christmas lights flashed on the road and trees. The moon shone down, indifferent to my tears.
#########
Two hours later, I was stretched out on clean, stiff hospital sheets. The room smelled like too little Lysol sprayed on too much puke.
The questions went on and on, the same ones at least five times. I lost count after that.
“They sideswiped us. We hit something. I lost control.”
“What did you hit, sir?” the cop asked. He was young and skinny with a dark crew cut. The uniform looked as if it’d been designed for someone with bigger shoulders and a smaller stomach.
“Hell, man. I don’t know. A rock? A culvert?”
“My name’s not man.”
“Yeah, well, mine’s not sir, but you keep calling me that, don’t you?”
“You’ve got a pretty smart mouth for somebody who just had a wreck with alcohol in his system.”
“Yeah, I have a smart mouth. My brother has a shattered skull.”
“Can you describe the truck that hit you?”
“A blue Chevy.”
“What model?
“I don’t know what model. Older.”
“Did you see the license plate number?
“No, I didn’t see a plate. I was too busy trying not to die.”
“How much did you have to drink?”
I took a deep breath. “One beer and a shot of whiskey hours ago. Will was drunk. I wasn’t. That’s why I was driving.”
“Are you on any drugs? Smoking a little weed, maybe?”
“No, I don’t do drugs, and neither does he, and you know that because you've seen my blood test. I don’t know about the girls. I just met them tonight.”
“And where were you heading when the accident happened?”
“Lori’s house. I told you. We were going to Lori’s house. And it still wasn’t an accident.”
“How do you know this Lori again?”
“She’s Will’s girlfriend.” I thought about that for a second and said, “Was.”
I was finally saved when Dad came in—I thought. The cops left and closed the door, but I could feel them outside, waiting to pounce. Then I got to tell him the same story. The only difference was that when Dad asked me, I told him everything—the faces in the other truck, the smile and wave, everything.
Stanglers or not, I knew it was all my fault. Even when the blood test came back and showed I was under the limit, that didn’t matter. If he hadn't been with me, if I had just stayed home, Will would still be alive, and I wouldn’t see red taffy and bits of brain every time I closed my eyes.
I’d broken my nose on the steering wheel, and my eyes were swelling shut. They said I might have a concussion, so I couldn’t have any pain meds. They insisted on keeping me overnight. Dad left while the nurse was checking my blood pressure and pulse for the fifth time. Mom wouldn’t budge, no matter what they said. Sometime around three, I finally fell asleep.
#########
The funeral was an endless drone of hymns and scripture. The preacher pretended to know Will and read a list of things people had written down at the viewing the night before—memories of Will that sounded mostly made up. He was repeating that thing everyone always said, where the dead were perfect and had a big house in heaven. I caught only bits and pieces. All I could think about was everything I might have done differently, all the reasons it should have been me. I felt I'd been gutted and sewn back up around an acre of pain.
The preacher made the most of his chance to convert some more checkbooks to his cause. Nonfamily filed by the casket. A surprising number of girls were there. Apparently, Will hadn’t lied about his sexual adventures quite as much as I thought. Lori was there too, but she looked drunk—no sign of Gwen.
Then our turn came. We walked past one at a time for a last word, a last touch. Mom co
llapsed in a puddle of tears. Dad and her brother James all but carried her away.
I went last and took my time, looking at the things people had slipped in with him. A baseball glove was tucked under his arm. A folded note was in his hand. A blue flower pulled from somebody’s garden was tucked into his lapel. A camouflage New Testament hid safely in the crook of his arm. A yellow-and-black fishing lure lay on his chest. It was an H&H, the only kind he ever used.
He wore a blue suit and tie he’d never owned. I loosened it and undid the top button of his shirt. He hated ties. He called them nerd nooses. Makeup stopped at a line at the edge of his collar. The skin under it was the greenish gray of old lasagna. He’d been meant to look like the airbrushed graduation picture above the casket but ended up looking like a clown’s corpse. His lips had never been that red, his cheekbones never so rosy and chiseled. And that was the first time I’d ever seen his hair lie down flat. I reached down and mussed up his bangs a little. He’d done the same every time he looked in the mirror.
I shrugged off a helpful hand at my elbow and ignored the preacher’s practiced words. I couldn't really say how long I stood there before taking my place with the pallbearers. Men in black suits closed the lid. One started carrying out flowers, while the other herded us out the door.
They wheeled the casket out on a gurney. I, two of Will’s friends from high school, and a couple of cousins I vaguely remembered from some family reunion stood behind the hearse and helped roll him into the back. On the way to the graveyard, I looked out the back window of the limo. The line of trucks and cars stretched out over the hills behind us like a patchwork snake.
At the gravesite, the coffin slid out on oiled rollers. That time, we actually had to lift it by the wooden handles on the sides and carry it. I hadn’t known it would be so heavy. The wood was obscenely smooth and warm in my hand. I gagged a little. If I had eaten breakfast, I might have thrown up in the carnations. Will would have loved that. Rolling the casket into place on a contraption over the hole, I took several deep breaths.
A Portion for Foxes Page 14