“Tell me about it. You reckon we can find help, baby? I haven’t seen a car since we turned off that four lane.”
Matt held Mona’s hand tightly as he helped her up the incline, taking care to ensure that she didn’t slip in the mud.
“We better.”
Once they’d crested the hill, Matt looked in both directions as if trying to decide which way they should go.
“Otherwise there’s a good chance that we’re gonna die out here.”
SCENE THREE
The truck bounced over the ruts in the country road with enough force that the passenger had to brace himself with one hand against the dashboard and the other pressed into the roof. The suspension creaked and popped as tires crunched through snow and every so often there was a loud thump from the bed at the same time the man bounced off the ripped vinyl seat like a rodeo cowboy.
“Damn it, Earl, slow the fuck down!”
The driver grinned but said nothing as he gripped the steering wheel with hands so large that it made the cracked leather look like a child’s toy. Perhaps the extra weight the man carried around his midsection achored him more solidly to gravity than his lanky companion: his gut spilled across his waistline, overlapped a belt buckle shaped like a confederate flag, and caused his white tee shirt to ride up just below his navel. . The broad ass that spread across the seat, however, remained firmly planted in the trough it had forced into the springs and cushion over the years. Even the trucker’s cap perched atop his scraggly mass of brown hair stayed in place, not so much as even jiggling as the front wheels plummeted into another snow-encrusted groove.
Whereas the driver’s unshaven jowls were exaggerated even further by a smile, the passenger’s narrow face held the expression of a man who expected to meet the Grim Reaper just around the next bend. His eyes were wide and round with pupils dilated both by the darkness of the night and also by the panic that made him his heart feel as if it were about to leap into the narrow confines of his throat. Thin lips quivered beneath a mustache that randomly curled over the chapped, pink flesh below them and his sunken cheeks were flushed with the warmth of fear. Even beneath the green coveralls that engulfed him, it was obvious that the man’s entire body was trembling.
The truck slid around a curve in the road, the rear wheels drifting in a way that made it seem as if the back half of the vehicle were moving independently of the front. The driver jerked the wheel in the opposite direction as he let out a whoop and his passenger slammed into the door. From the bed of the truck came a sound like plastic sliding across metal, immediately followed by another thud.
“You’re gonna kill the both of us, Earl! If you don’t slow the hell down, I swear t’ God I’m tellin’ Mama.”
The smile disappeared from the driver’s face as quickly as the flakes of snow melted on the warm windshield. He shot his brother a glance that could have flash frozen that same slush as his lips pulled back into a sneer.
“You ain’t telling Mama shit. I’ll pound your ass so hard, Daryl, you won’t see straight for a week, hear?”
Daryl stiffened and dropped his gaze to the empty beer bottles that clinked against one another in the floor board. He swallowed hard and then looked back up.
“I… I don’t care. I’d rather take an ass whoopin’ than die. And Mama would have your hide if she knew you were drivin’ like…”
“I ain’t scared of Mama, you little pussy.”
Earl’s voice was softer and his foot eased off the gas pedal just enough that the bumps would no longer jar his brother’s spine and cause his teeth to clack against one another. He adjusted the brim of his hat with one hand, looked at himself in the rear view mirror, and scratched his chin. For a moment, neither man spoke: now that the truck no longer clunked with the washboard like ridges in the road, the soft strains of Willie Nelson singing Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain crackled through the dashboard speakers, fading in an out through the hiss of the heater like a memory that refused to surface.
“I ain’t scared of Mama.” Earl finally repeated. “But, at the same time, I reckon she could live the rest of her life without knowing ‘bout this little argument of ours. Sound about right, Daryl?”
Daryl only realized he’d been holding his breath when he let it free with a quick sigh. The air pulled the tension that had gripped his muscles for past ten miles from his body and he slouched back in the seat as he closed his eyes.
“Right as rain, brother… right as rain….”
Ten minutes later, the rusted Dodge pulled onto a wide place on the shoulder of the road. Its headlights punched holes in the darkness that surrounded it, illuminating the trunks of trees that were clustered together so tightly that it almost seemed as if they were seeking shelter from the frigid wind that whipped through their boughs. Some of the branches glistened beneath sheaths of ice and they clicked against one another like chattering teeth as the truck’s engine rumbled and sputtered below. Except for these sounds the night was silent: no owls or whippoorwills called out from the forest, no insects chirped amid the rustle of unseen creatures slipping through the underbrush. It was almost as if Winter had laid claim to everything living thing within those dark woods, swallowing them into the glacial caverns of its gullet where the warmth and light of the sun would never touch them again.
A soft glow lit up the cab of the truck and revealed the snow that swirled around it. Inside, Earl shifted his bulk and stuffed his meaty arms into the sleeves of a flannel shirt that looked as if it had been tailored for a giant. The cuffs were ratty and frayed and the pieces of fabric that formed the left lapel peeled away from one another, revealing the batting within; but it was as thick as a jacket and was quilted with smooth, red lining.
The passenger door opened, then thunked shut as Daryl zipped his coveralls almost entirely up to his chin. His hands were covered now in a pair of leather work gloves which he used to pull a gray toboggan over his ears. At the same time, Earl eased out of his own door and the front shocks seemed to groan with relief as the entire left hand side of the truck raised half a foot higher.
The pair walked around either side of the truck, their feet crunching through the icy crust on the snow, and plumes of fog curled from their mouths and noses. They worked silently, each seeming to instinctively know what was expected of him. Earl removed the black bungee cords that took the place of a busted latch on the truck’s tailgate and the shrill screech of rusted hinges was like the fingernails of a demon raking across the blackboard of the night. Almost before the tailgate had been fully extended, Daryl scrambled into the bed of the truck and walked to the other end in a half-crouch. Lying next to the rear of the cab was a large, blue tarp that had been rolled into a burrito of canvas and tightly cinched with twine. Daryl slipped his fingers through the cord and grunted as he pulled the tarp backward. It slid toward him a few inches and then he took a deep breath and repeated the process. Again, the bundle inched closer and he shuffled back a few steps before pulling again.
Despite the ribbed bed liner, it took the man several minutes to drag the tarp to the very rear of the truck; by the time he was finished crystals of frost had formed on his mustache and he was huffing like a man who’d just finished a marathon. He stood there for a moment with his hands resting on his kneecaps, slightly bent over the large parcel at his feet. Sucking in gulps of the cool night air, he motioned to the tarp with one hand almost as if he were swatting some unseen insect.
In response to this gesture, Earl grabbed the knotted string with both hands and yanked. For a moment, the blue canvass slid toward him but then he was falling backward, his arms flailing in the air like Goliath after David’s stone had found its mark. He fell onto his ass into a drift of snow and cursed beneath his breath as he looked at the severed pieces of cord he held in either hand.
“Cheap ass shit. Where the fuck did you get this, Daryl?”
He pushed himself off the ground and dusted the snow from the seat of his pants with hands that were now as cold as the metal on the truck’s frame.
“Shed. Was a whole spool of it out there and…”
“You dumbass mother fucker. You know how old this shit is? We was using this to tie off ‘maters when you was knee high to a grasshopper. Stupid son of a bitch….”
