Something Bad (4 page)

“Got to think about his. Which way back home?”

His mind began its usual spiral toward a solution. His spiral was quick. One of the quickest in the Tri-counties, he thought, although he would never say so to anyone.

“Reverse,” he said, loud. “Must have gone too far. Had to put it in quick.”

He sat upright in the seat and peered over the hood. His mind was in control of his heart now. He was figuring. There was no land between the hood and the water.

“Must be at the edge.”

He opened the driver-side door and leaned out, but not too far. The front tire was three, maybe four feet from the water’s edge, but a wheel rut led into the water. Actually, two ruts went into the water, but they were partly overlapped. He slammed the door shut. The need to pee was back. He’d have to get out to do that. An extra beat and a pause.

He turned to look out the back window. If only he could see something familiar in the distance. He could hold the pee for a little while longer.

The truck was pulled off a paved road, on a gravel and sand turnout. He had an idea. Hopefully it wasn’t a well-used beach. He turned around and kneeled on the seat and put his face close to the glass of the rear window. The pulsing in his head was regular, but it was matched by a similar pulsing in his bladder. He looked left and then right, and then swung his head left. There they were. Tracks in the sand bent off to the left. He had come from the left.

He swung around in the seat and pushed his legs toward the pedals. The gearshift found his abdomen and the pulsing in his bladder turned to pain.

“Got to go now.” He scanned to the right and left. The closest bushes were to the right, but a good twenty-five yards away. He slumped.

“Something bad.”

An extra beat, then another left a long pause, and he felt the beginnings of light-headedness.

“Control,” he said. “Got to do it.”

He slid over to the passenger side, threading his legs past the gearshift, and cranked at the window lever. “Better do it on this side. Some will probably get on the running board.” He opened the door and let it fly, relaxing into a regular heartbeat. It felt like he was draining fluid all the way from his shoulders.

The clutch was a stiff one. Good thing it’s my good leg, he thought. He hoped the starter button would do its job. A quick push and the engine snarled at the water. It was already in reverse, but the truck had to be eased back. The lake sand was loose and deep in these parts. At least it was in the Tri-counties. He let the clutch out a little fast, but the truck responded with movement so he stayed on the gas and swung the truck around, facing his tracks. Instead of first gear, he went down to second. It was a four-speed with a close first-to-second ratio, and in snow or other loose footing it was better to start in a higher gear to keep from spinning the tires. The engine lugged a little, but the tires gripped, and he forgot to look back to the right before the front tires found pavement. Fortunately, the road was deserted.

Gabe leaned back into the seat. He was headed back. Then his mind spiraled. Headed back where? To the Tri-counties? To somewhere else? Where would the road lead?

An extra beat. And a pause.

Gabe scanned the horizon through the windshield. Nothing familiar. If he had turned even once on the way to the lake, he’d be in trouble. He tried to wring a clue from his situation. When he had been laying on the front seat back at the lake, the sun had reflected into his face in the passenger-side rear view mirror. He must have been facing west. Then he turned around and faced the sun, and turned left onto the road. Going north. Now, the direction of the sun told him he was heading northwest. To where? There weren’t any familiar landmarks. He could be going away from the Tri-counties just as easily as he could be going toward them.

His heart gave an extra beat, then the pause. He tried to think of something else, but the extra beats came one after another, fast. It felt like his heart was in his throat again. His head went light. He gripped the steering wheel hard and took a huge inward breath. The thumping continued, irregular, and he was beginning to lose the light at the periphery of his vision. He slumped in his seat and sealed his mouth and nose. Valsalva’s Maneuver, Doc called it. Contract the stomach muscles and hold the breath in. Just like you’re taking a dump, he thought. Just like Doc said. It increased pressure in his chest, as it was supposed to, but it made him feel even more light-headed. He held it as long as he could and then released, and his heartbeat came back, fast. And regular. His vision cleared and he scanned the horizon again.

“Got to find something familiar—fast.” He leaned forward until his chest was nearly against the steering wheel.

Nothing registered as familiar and he felt the pressure building in his chest again. Just need to see something from the Tri-counties and everything will be okay, he thought.

A sign grabbed his attention—”Speed Limit 55.” He hated speed limit signs. Who came up with these numbers? They seldom represented what was safe. He knew what was safe, and for this road it wasn’t fifty-five. Not even close. He looked down at the speedometer and the needle pointed directly where he wanted it.

He wasn’t one to resort to vandalism to make a point, although he was tempted to run the speed limit signs down every time he saw them. One of his greatest joys was to see a sign peppered with buckshot. Each time, he imagined himself with the warm wooden stock of his 12-gauge pressed against his cheek and shoulder. He squeezed the trigger between breaths and grinned. Pellets flew from the barrel in slow motion, spreading as they approached the sign. The shot produced a staccato chord as the lead beads punched holes in the two fives of the sign.

He looked down again. “That’s a safe speed,” he said out loud. “Forty-five. No one needs to go faster than that. Not around here.” His mind wasn’t done, so it spun off leaving his reactions on autopilot.

A little over two minutes, he thought. If someone drives ten miles at fifty-five, he only saves a little more than two minutes over someone driving forty-five. Was two minutes worth the extra risk?

“Never,” he said. “Stupid thing to do. Risk your life for two minutes.”

A car whizzed past to his left. It slid back into the right lane without a signal and shrunk as it ran away from Gabe’s old pickup. He shook his head. Something bad can happen when you drive that fast. The speeder would find out, sooner or later.

Gabe gave the steering wheel an affectionate pat. “You always get me there safe.”

His truck qualified for an “Historic Vehicle” license plate, but he didn’t want one. It wasn’t a glorified relic. It was a co-worker and a good friend. It listened to his problems without judgment, and on more than one occasion it got him out of a bind. Just like today, he hoped. He patted the steering wheel again.

When he scanned the horizon, Gabe realized that the distractions had returned his heart into a regular rhythm.

“See?” he said. “Control. Just don’t think about it.”

His mind started to slip back into apprehension when something familiar flashed in his peripheral vision. He pulled his foot from the gas pedal and touched the brake, but he didn’t apply pressure. Off in the distance, to the left side of the windshield, he saw them. His foot went back on the gas.

The two silos of Wes Worthing’s farm were visible from most parts of two of the three counties that made up the Tri-counties. The silos were huge—at least twice the size of everyone else’s. Some said he didn’t need them that big. That he was just showing off. But Gabe knew better of his good friend. Wes had the largest farm in the area, and a huge crowd of livestock. His silos were large for a purpose. He was one of the few farmers in the area who didn’t face the pressure of debt when the crop prices fell. His farm was the model of efficiency, and the silos were part of that.

“Just jealous.” Gabe smiled. “They’d never say anything to Wes’ face.”

Wes was six-feet five, and his skin was the color of the rich soil he farmed. He was the voice of reason in an area of small minds, so he was on his fourth consecutive term as Chairman of the Corporation of the Tri-counties. Gabe was glad to have Wes as a friend since their minds usually ran in parallel. He was glad for another reason. Because of Wes, he could get shoes. They both wore size fifteen shoes, and with two customers with like needs, Mac McKenna kept at least one pair of fifteens in stock in his General Store in Boyston. Otherwise, Gabe would have to leave the Tri-counties to get shoes. No. He would do without until someone else was going. He sent a silent thank-you to Wes.

Gabe wanted to push on the gas pedal, to speed up across the county line, but his eyes locked on the “45” of the speedometer. The needle stayed right there. He eased back in his seat. It was the first time his back had rested fully on the fabric of the seat covers for miles. He knew what he needed now—what he always needed the morning after a card game. Scrambled eggs and aspirin powders. And he needed to see

Miz Murtry.

Gabe passed up the county road that looped around to his farm and stayed on State Route 27 as it approached the border of Herndon and Boyston Counties. He squinted at the Herndon’s Edge Café, which straddled the line, and counted the cars in the parking lot. Two cars. A white Olds Dynamic 88, around 1965, had mud caked on the side panels giving it a two-tone appearance from a distance. The pickup was a newer model Ford, early eighties, with a badly dented tailgate.

He looked for the Volkswagen. The one that had the rear engine cover held in place with baling wire. The one in which the interior headliner was detached, hanging down across the back window to render the rear view mirror useless. It wasn’t there.

He thought about going home when an abdominal growl brought his stomach and head pain back into his consciousness.

He swung the pickup between the two cars and ambled to the door, trying to decide which was worse, the pounding pain in his head or his dizziness.

When he entered, the blast of the space heater caught him off guard. The swirling in his head intensified and the churn of his stomach nearly made him retch. He bypassed his usual stool at the bar and settled at the far end of the counter, as far from the straining heater as he could get.

“Hey, Gabe. Why you sitting over there?”

Gabe looked up at Teddy Rosewald’s smiling face.

“Your stool messed up or you still drunk?” Teddy said. “You really went after it last night. I was worried about you.”

Gabe forced a smile. He owed Teddy a smile. Teddy was a friend of the caliber of Wes Worthing, and the main reason Gabe still attended the card games.

“I was going to grab your keys, but you drove off before I was done taking a leak,” Teddy said. “You know you can always sleep it off with us.”

Gabe’s smile turned timorous. For all of his harping on speed limits and safety, he didn’t think twice about driving after drinking. Maybe it was the hour—all roads were nearly deserted after midnight. Maybe it was a false sense of control, or a need to prove his control in his safe universe. More likely, it was one of those inconsistencies of character that come out in extreme circumstances.

“Where’d you end up?” Teddy said. “Sleep in the truck again? You still have the same clothes on.”

“Yeah. Better get me some aspirin right away. My head’s about to split in two.”

Teddy leaned over the half-wall that separated the counter area from the kitchen and tossed a bottle of aspirin to Gabe. “Pour your own,” he said. “Scrambled?”

Gabe nodded and rounded the counter. He filled a glass with water and headed back to his seat. Movement caught his eye from the opposite end of the bar. He should have recognized the Olds, but his mind was focused on his own problems. Horace Murtry was hunched over a cup of coffee, muttering to himself. The only word Gabe could recognize was “damn.” It seemed to come out every two or three words.

Gabe downed three aspirin with a huge swig of water and looked down the counter. He thought about how much he hated Horace Murtry. It wasn’t the kind of hate that produced daydreams of physical harm, or worse. It was a resentful kind of hate. He resented the fact that Horace and Miz Murtry were married. Horace didn’t deserve her, and she deserved much better. He resented Horace for how he treated Miz Murtry. On the best days, Horace was indifferent towards her. And he resented how Horace seemed to revel in her dedicated attempts to make their marriage work.

Teddy slid a plate onto the counter and Gabe swung his stare from Horace up to Teddy.

“Don’t get worked up about him again,” Teddy said. “He’s not worth it.”

“Where’s Miz Murtry?”

Teddy stiff-armed the bar with his right hand. “Called in. Said she would be a little late.” Teddy pushed off from the bar and rounded the half-wall and started working on a new batch of biscuits. “Said she had some big news to share,” he said loud enough for Horace to hear.

Gabe glanced at Horace, who remained hunched over his coffee mug.

Maybe she’s dumping him, Gabe thought. Maybe she’s churning up the courage to tell him to get out. For the first time, the pain in his head receded a little.