TRUCK STOP – Evan Richardson - 1

The bright morning sunlight had given way to a sky as black as night, and it was

raining buckets when Brad’s Jeep pulled up in front of the courthouse building where

Hank waited on the front steps under an overhead protection. When Hank saw the Jeep,

he raced down the walkway and quickly jumped inside.

He had a reason for asking Brad to pick him up, and soon after the Jeep rounded

the square and headed out toward Cherry Heights, where there was a crossroad to the

interstate, and back to the truck stop, Hank got right to it, when Brad asked, “Did they

know if it was Nell?”

“They don’t know yet,” Hank responded, observing the sheets of rain through the

windshield, obscuring their vision.

“Right,” Brad replied. “Well, let’s pray it ain’t.”

With the center of town not far from the crossroad through Cherry Heights, the

Jeep soon turned onto the crossroad, where on either side, the lights from the bars,

restaurants, and fast food chains whizzed past in a blur.

Picking up from Brad’s last statement, Hank asked: “You a prayin’ man?”

Brad paused. He hadn’t prayed for anything ever as far as he could remember, but

to keep up appearances he answered, “When I want somethin’.”

His eyes on him like a hawk, Hank asked: “You want my wife?”

Brad’s foot struck the accelerator, picking up speed. If this was to be the

conversation, he wanted to get back to the truck stop as soon as possible. The Jeep was

now going 60 mph, skidding every so often when large sheets of rain slide over the road,

but Hank didn’t take his eyes off Brad.

“What are you talkin’ ‘bout?” Brad asked, his nervousness making his driving

erratic, and a bit reckless.

“I see the way you look at her,” Hank replied, unconcerned with Brad’s driving.

He knew Brad wasn’t about to total his Jeep, though their speed had picked up to 70 mph,

guarded by the rain that kept the cops at bay.

“I think you got it wrong, man,” Brad said.

“I don’t think so,” Hank returned, keeping up his grilling without flinching. He

never felt stronger than at this moment. Something was giving him strength, even if it

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was his anger. “Nell didn’t neither. I should’ve listened to her.” Then he announced what

he’d been working up to: “You and me are finished.”

They were approaching the interstate that was heavily patrolled, more than Cherry

Heights. Brad had to slow down and when he put on the brakes, the Jeep skidded and

curved. He guided into the skid and straightened up the Jeep as they came to a stop,

waiting to enter the interstate.

“You firin’ me?” Brad asked.

“Yeah,” Hank returned, matter-of-factly.

“Sure this ain’t ‘cause you’re riled up?”

“Yeah, I’m riled up,” Hank answered, his eyes still fixed on Brad, and proud he

had the guts to say these things. “I’m riled up ‘bout you. Pack up your stuff. I want you

out tonight.”

“Tonight?” Brad asked, guiding his Jeep onto the interstate. “Where will I go?”

“I don’t give a damn where you go. I want you off my property tonight.”

Rubbing his forehead, as if to calm his tension, Brad replied, “Okay, man. If

that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

Their ride back to the truck stop was swift without further conversation. When

Brad’s Jeep ripped into the parking area and stopped, Hank got out, going directly inside

the truck stop, while Brad pulled the Jeep closer to the garage.

With the rain pouring down in torrents, Brad raced up the outside stairs of the

garage, and went inside the room that Hank had loaned him. Pulling a large canvas duffle

bag from under the bed, he began throwing everything from the bureau and the bathroom

into it, including the gun with which Lulu Mae had killed Nell, still wrapped in the red

bandana.

When everything was inside the duffle bag, he hauled it to the door. His eyes

connected with the bare space behind the bed where Hank’s crucifix used to hang, and

taking the crucifix from the bedside table drawer, he re-hung the crucifix on the wall.

“So long, man,” he said to the figure on the cross. “It’s been cool knowin’ you.”

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Lugging the duffle bag out the door, he went to his Jeep, threw the bag into the

backseat, got inside, and tore angrily out of there, disappearing into the night as if he’d

never been there.

§ § § § §

Lightening streaked across Hank and Lulu Mae’s darkened bedroom, illuminating

it. Across the big brass bed Lulu Mae lay asleep, still exhausted from her previous night’s

activities. She had gone to bed early, thankful for a rainy night that had cooled things

down to bearable, and she hadn’t heard Hank come in. The lightning was followed by a

tremendous clap of thunder, and she awakened to Hank’s ghostly white face staring down

at her, where he sat beside her on the bed.

Startled, she jumped away, and gasped, “Hank! My God! You scared the hell

outta me.”

“Sorry, honey,” he said, getting up from the bed. “I was jus’ lookin’ at your

beautiful face.”

She didn’t believe him because she didn’t feel particularly beautiful, and hadn’t

since the killings. Something about him had changed which unnerved to her.

“Did they…did they find out anything?” she asked cautiously, sitting up in the

bed.

“Nothin’ for sure yet,” he replied, half in denial, and half holding onto hope as

Sheriff Bob had suggested.

Clicking on a lamp on the bureau, he leaned across the light to place some change

from his pocket on the bureau, with the light distorting his features, reminding her of the

barker’s hideous freaks at the carnival they had seen earlier that summer.

“You been there all day,” she said, suspecting there was more that he was keeping

from her, “and they still don’t know nothin’?”

He removed his shirt, wrinkled and damp from the rain that he’d been in since

leaving Louisville early that morning.

“It’s probably Nell,” he replied glumly, staring down at the fine hardwood floor

that his father had put in the upstairs rooms of the truck stop, old but serving a lifetime

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because of their good quality. He continued: “They gotta send stuff off to another lab.

But it’s probably Nell.”

Relieved they had found nothing more--specifically the matchbook--Lulu Mae got

out of bed, coming to him and embracing him.

“We’ll jus’ wait and see,” she said as compassionately as she was capable.

Lifting her face with his finger, he looked into her eyes. As one who knows

someone well, having slept next to them for years, familiar with their body, their

genitalia, dressed and undressed in front of them, knew even parts of their mind that they

never intended to reveal, and did, he sensed a darkness in her like she was hiding

something. With all of the deceit he believed he’d already suffered, and wanting to see

her reaction, he cut to the chase.

“I fired Brad,” he said casually.

Dropping her embrace, she responded, “You what?”

All of her dreams of escape swept away at that moment, starkly emphasized by a

streak of lightning and a blast of thunder, leaving her numb to her core.

“I didn’t trust him,” he clarified, counting the change he’d deposited on the

bureau. “I don’t want him here no more.”

She didn’t trust Brad either but she didn’t want him gone with information that

would implicate her in murder. “We need Brad!” she exclaimed, anxiously searching for

a way to change his mind. “Me and you can’t work this place alone.”

“I’ll find somebody,” he said, scooping up the change and depositing it into a

small wooden box where he kept loose change.

“But why?” she asked, confused and desperate “What did he do?’

He turned to her, and the light from the bureau lamp again cast eerie shadows

across his face in a hideous way. “You know what he did,” he said, his accusing eyes

burning into her soul like a hot poker.

As two cats preparing to spar on a backyard fence, they stood motionless staring

at one another, when, deluded that she saw a light flicker from the garage, she burst from

the room, propelled by some involuntary will; out of the truck stop, with the rain slicing

her face like razors, and up the outside stairs to the room that Brad had once occupied.

“Brad!” she screamed, throwing open the door.

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The bureau drawers were open and empty; everything was gone, except Hank’s

crucifix on the wall. It was true: Brad was gone, and with him evidence that could send

her up for murder, along with all of her hopes of getting out of there.

“His Jeep’s gone, too,” Hank announced, entering behind her.

Whirling around, she faced him, this time as the cat that had lost the fight.

Everything was out; no more pretenses, as revealed on Hank’s face. But getting the gun

before she was implicated in murder still remained, and she had no idea how to get it.

Unable to sustain Hank’s accusing eyes one more second, she raced past him out

the door; the gushing air of her departure slashing him like a whip, beating his heart to

death.