by Jason Trevor
The man groaned again, finally becoming more aware of his surroundings, and fumblingly pulled out his service revolver, trying to point it at Joe.
“Give me that!” Joe snatched the pistol away from him. “You’re going to get yourself hurt. You don’t need that right now. What you need is an ambulance. You’ll have a lot of company any second, and they can call you one, you dumb little shit,” Joe tossed the revolver into the sand, out of his reach, and turned to his car. Then he stopped in his tracks.
Rebecca was standing in the wet sand between him and the totaled Charger. “Don’t curse so much, Honey. I’m proud of you. I always have been. You don’t have long. Get out of here,”
“Who is that?” the battered cop finally managed to moan. “When did she get here?” He angled his head to look at her.
“None of your business!” answered Joe, pulling the backpack out of the broken passenger window. “Try not to make any more stupid decisions, like chasing a suspect on the shoulder of a freeway, and you’ll have a nice, long life,” he admonished as he pulled the backpack over his shoulders. He began buckling the chest and waist buckles on the backpack as he turned in the direction of the rapids under a train trestle that ran alongside the freeway and took off at a trot, towards an eight-foot galvanized culvert just beyond, which connected to a nearby detention pond. Looking back one last time, he saw no one but the injured young man and his bent Charger, with steam drifting from under the hood.
“I love you, Rebecca,” He continued on his way to the culvert.
Amidst the noisy splashes of his feet and the turbulent water on the rocks under the trestle, he was sure he heard her shout back: “I love you, too!”
◆◆◆
Sims and Le ran down the steep embankment as fast as they could without falling on their faces, followed by Wakefield, Franks, and an army of uniforms. The helicopter landed on the bridge. Dozens of men and women swarmed the crash site in and alongside the river under the bridge. All they found was a foolishly injured small-town cop, whose life had obviously been saved by Danton, along with two totaled cars.
There was no sign of Joe Danton.
Sims put one hand on his hip and turned to Le. “I don’t think we’ll ever see him again, and I think I’m fine with that,”
Epilogue
Joe trudged down a dry, dusty two-lane highway outside of Amarillo. His thick, dark brown hair was getting long, and he was considering putting it into a tail, but it wasn’t quite long enough for that yet. His salt-and-pepper beard had finally softened and he enjoyed stroking it, but it was unkempt. Perhaps the next town he stopped in would have a respectable barber where he could get both of them trimmed up.
The photos that Greenie had sent to one of his disposable phones showed that the repairs to his house were completed and positively beautiful. He hoped that one day he would get to live in it again.
Joe heard a distant, harsh grinding behind him. It was a jake brake. A truck was coming down this nearly-forgotten road. He continued to walk, shifting the weight of his backpack on his shoulders for the hundredth time that day and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose where sweat kept causing them to fall.
To his surprise, the truck pulled alongside him and stopped. It was an old flat-nosed style rig, with a tall load wrapped tightly in canvas. Small sections of the canvas slapped in the wind, creating little clouds of dust around them as they did.
The driver cranked down his window and looked at Joe, but didn’t say anything.
Joe stopped walking, turned to face the man, and stared back.
Both stared at each other for an additional minute, sizing one another up.
“Dodging the scales?” Joe finally asked.
“I’m headed to Channing before I double back to Okie City. That work for you?”
“Is the air in your cab refrigerated?”
“Of course,”
“Then Channing sounds like a good place to lay my head for a while,”