Bent Highway
Chapter Fifteen: Screech
“Well, look who woke up.” Harold jammed his hands into the Levis and rocked back on a pair of black boots that would have given Uncle Lester a cowboy hard-on. “That genetic mutation hyper-thyroid man give you some memory pills or what?”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Hey now, you’re the one that recognized me, Rumpelstiltskin. I wasn’t gonna let on about our, uh, relationship. But then you said you knew me.”
“But who are you? Like really. Who are you?”
“Your old buddy Harold, you remember? Drinking colds ones on the porch, watching the ladies go by, shooting the shit. Or shooting whatever.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Well make up your fucking mind, M. Which one is it?”
Harold walked toward me, his hands still in his pockets, which gave him an odd gait—he was like the drunk that went from your best buddy to a swinging lunatic in a handful of steps. I knew the drill. Fuck, I’d been the drill.
Standing in front of the poplar tree I had two options. Let him come to me, or turn into the field and run like hell. I wished picked the chicken-shit option. But of course I didn’t.
I reached down and grabbed the crooked limb that I’d been eyeing since Harold pulled up in his Pontiac Laurentian. It was only about three inches round and a few feet long, but I wanted something in my hands. Harold’s hands flew out of his pockets, metal flashed and in a blurred motion, which slowed down for a half a second, two tiny knives flew out of his palms.
Time bent.
A knife stuck into the tree branch and gave that circus thrower’s sound after they’d just missed the girl tied to the wheel. Buddabuddabudda. I was not so lucky with the other blade. The pain didn’t come right away. I watched it plunge into the leg that Walt had first cut into all those years ago. Wait. Was it years? I grasped the grip of the throwing knife, gritted my teeth and slid the blade out of my leg. I flung it at Harold.
“Yeah, right,” he said as the knife flew by him.
And he was on me. I broke the branch across his back, but I had almost no room to swing. I doubted it would have made a difference anyway. He backhanded me hard, sent me flying. My body bounced off the gravel, leaving bits of me in the ground. Another blur of motion, another snip taken out of the moment, and a black-as-hell boot drove into my stomach. I gasped, trying to swallow air back into my body, pinpricks of light flashed in my peripheral. Harold grabbed my throat and lifted me off the ground.
“Hey, don’t pass out yet. You’ll miss it all.”
His thick fingers tightened around my neck. Red speckles dotted his white shirt. I realized it was my blood not his. My stomach did a gymnast flip.
“You know that part where the bad guy, that would be me, tells all to the dying hero? Oh, that would be you. Now in those shitty movies, and I hate it, the fucking cavalry would show up and save his ass. I mean c’mon, Hollywood, is that all you got? Except in the 70’s, you know they knew how to make ‘em back then. A lot of good existential nothing matters kind of shit. Those directors knew something about the fucking human condition. You a movie fan, M?”
The pricks of light were gone, and Harold’s shape blurred on the edges. Another string of words came out of him, but it didn’t sound like any language I knew. It barely sounded like a language.
“Who are you?” my voice was a thin reed.
“Ha! You not been paying attention, M? You know who I am.”
I thought I heard another hawk screeching, long and loud. A hot wind came up and blew against my face. I was barely aware of Harold’s tightening grip, my windpipe was closing for business. Sorry Walt, I gave it a shot.
The screech got louder. It didn’t sound like a bird anymore—it was more machine-like. Metal grinding on metal.
Then I fell.
It took a long time to hit the ground. Way too long.
The screech stopped. I knew the sound. It was something from cop shows, when Starsky, Rockford, Banacek, or whoever the hell was going after the bad guy, that’s what it sounded like… tires burning around a corner. I pictured the burnt rubber.
The pain which had drifted to the edge of my mind flooded back in. I coughed, spit up blood, and the yard came into focus. There was a flash of orange, a pair of boots that tugged at a recent memory. I know those boots. A shotgun blast reverberated through the air, echoing long after it should.
Always wanted one of those cars.
Someone shut off all the lights and I went out.
* * *
I awoke running across the yard. She ran at me, grabbing my shirt and ripping the collar. The flames were already several feet high.
“He’s inside, you have to get him. Please. Now!” She swung me around to face the fire.
“It’s too late!” I yelled. Then softer, “It’s always too late.”
The flames engulfed the mobile home. This time I didn’t even make it to the door.
Behind me, Chalk Girl screamed.
* * *
I awoke on the ground. Chalk Girl’s scream had turned into a screech, and this time I saw the hawk, swooping down, grabbing something from the ground, and soaring into the air. I thought I could hear the cries of whatever small rodent the hawk had grabbed, but I may have imagined it. I imagine a lot of things.
The yard was empty. The sky was the colour of a tie-dyed 70’s t-shirt, swirls of pink and purple, and the last fading line of yellow drawn across like a waistband. The mobile home was still intact. I rubbed my neck, and stared at the tire tracks. A dust cloud rose up from the road. I waited to see what would emerge. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be the green Pontiac, Harold was way long gone. My truck’s headlights shone through the dust.
She pulled into the yard and I got in.
She drove back out to the highway. Neither of said anything for the first twenty miles.
Mile twenty-one I broke the silence. “You going to take me back there again?”
She stared straight ahead.
“Some things can’t change. You must know that now,” I said.
“Everything can change. We just have to enter at the right time,” she said.
“We have to learn to live with the life we’re given,” I said.
“You and Dr. Phil can fuck the right off.”
Another twenty miles went by.
“What do you know about the Charger?” I asked.
This time she turned to look at me. “What, the car? Walt talked about it, but I didn’t follow what he meant.”
“You’ve seen Walt?”
“He was the one that told me to go back and get you. He’s kinda pissed. What about the Charger?”
“It’s hard to put it together, but I think I saw it. I certainly heard it, and they just might have saved my life. I saw tracks. Had to be them.”
“If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
I knew she wasn’t saying Harold’s name on purpose. Maybe she called him something else.
The edges of a town lifted out of the horizon—yellow lights from scattered houses, and the white and red glow of a gas station appeared. The sky was a wash of deep black, the stars shone through like slits in a fabric revealing a fiery light underneath.
“What did Walt say about the guys in the muscle car?”
“The Charger?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Only that he had misjudged them.”
“About what?”
“You can ask him yourself in a few minutes.”
“He’s here?” I asked as we entered the town.
“In a bar.”
“Of course he is.”
Just when I was wondering when we would see a new chapter Screech comes .. well.. screeching in.