Bent Highway
Chapter Ten: Starshine
Sometimes you wake up from a dream only to realize you’ve woken up into another dream. I fucking hate that.
I woke up to the smell of cow shit mingled with motor oil and old cigarettes. Crammed into a small space, strapped into something, and moving fast. Damn fast. I moved my head, pain knifed through my skull, the driver spat on the floor of the truck.
“Morning, Starshine.” A chortle.
“What—where?” I tried to sit up, held fast by the strap and buckle.
“Now where the hell are you fixing to go? You ever jumped from a vee-hickle going,” a pause, “79 mile an hour?”
The outside slid into sharpness, as if someone twisted a long lens. I remembered the huge guy, what was his name again, and that wolf of his—they drove me somewhere, then what? I was with her. And then I wasn’t. Then it was Harold, and we were at his Uncle Lester’s. He asked me about living in another time.
“Why did you hit me?” I asked.
Another series of chortles. He sounded like he was trying to start a lawnmower.
“Hell, I barely grazed you. If I woulda nailed you head on, well, we wouldn’t be talking right now, Twinkle-toes.” He reached into a breast pocket of his overalls, yanked out a badly rolled smoke and lit it off the car lighter. He pulled down on the John Deere cap.
“But why did you—”
“What the hell were you doing down in that ditch anyway? If you’re one of those faggot dope-smoking hitchhikers, and I know you are, then you should be up on the shoulder wagging your limp-wristed thumb in the air. Not lying in the ditch like a goddamn dead dog.”
The smudged lens that pretended to be my memory sharpened. This guy. His truck trying to run us down—the slide into the ditch, and then she… Where did she go?
“Y’know, I thought I saw someone else with you, but it must have been the light. Weird as hell this morning. All sparkly and shit.”
The ground opened up and swallowed her. How can that even happen? Oh damn. That’s what happened in Harold’s kitchen when I was on the chair—except it wasn’t Harold’s kitchen.
“Tell you the truth,” a drag and another spit onto the floor, “I am not sure why I did it. Hit you, I mean. Woke up with one helluva hangover. Jungle drums were pounding and there weren’t an ounce of liquor in the house. She must of poured it down the toilet before she split. So I am driving along, you unnerstand, in one piss-poor of a mood, and I see you hitchin—”
“I wasn’t hitching.”
“And something comes over me. Damn, like a case of the mean reds, or blues or neon pinks, whatever they call them. I figured I’d just scare you. Still, if you bounced off the bumper, that would have been just fine with me.”
The ground ripped open and she went into it. The floor opened and I ended up in this truck with a guy who would have the lead psycho-role in a swamp movie.
“Anyway. I’m over it,” he said.
He reached across and pushed my head forward, studying my wound.
“Fuck! What are you doing?”
He let his hand go and my head fell back.
“You’ll live. Could use a stitch or two, but shit, I’ve had worse. Had an angry-ass cow just about cave in my forehead this one time. I showed her. Helluva cheeseburger.”
Damn. I remembered that. My mom told me how it happened. She made us go to the hospital ward to visit him. Wait, Harold said he was his nephew. That’s not possible. That would make us brothers. And that makes even less sense than any of the other shit that has been going on.
“You’re Lester.”
“What? How the hell do you— oh, the truck. Say… you don’t look like the sort that needs painting. But maybe so. You got some love-nest somewheres you need painted a shade of faggy pink?”
“Why do you think I’m gay?”
“I didn’t say you were gay. I said you were a fucking homo. One look at ya told me that.”
I hadn’t even been aware of what I was wearing. Black jeans and a bright purple sweater—a colour that would have been big a couple of decades ago. Somehow, when we went through the rip, after Walt spit us out, our clothes changed. Though, I couldn’t remember what Chalk Girl was wearing. Again, I saw her face disappear into that black pit. Where did she end up?
“And I don’t hear you denying it, Fairy-McLarry.”
I pulled my sweater away from me.
“You telling me that the colour of this makes me gay?”
“Is that what they’re calling it now? Ha! Ruining a perfectly good word on the likes of you sissies. And I tell you, if you ain’t a homo, then why the jewellery? Ain’t that a signal or some damn thing? Archie in the bar told me that about your kind—before we went over and laid the boots to a couple of pumpers.”
Lester reached across and cuffed me on the ear. It stung like hell when he hit the small hoop earring. I reached up and felt it. I hadn’t had my ears pierced since the 80’s. It embarrassed my mother and Dad had long since lit out. I’d wanted one as a teenager, after seeing hippies on the TV. They all seemed a million miles away from the backward existence I was trapped in.
“Why are you driving me?”
“Well, ain’t that the 64-dollar question? I guess you could say ole Lester actually has a conscience. Ha. Surprised the hell out of me, too. I saw you laying in the ditch, off in la-la land, and I figured I’d just give you a boot to the head and leave it at that. Then I got to thinking about how that would stain my fine pair of Tony Lamas. You see these? 800 smackers. That’s a shitload of painted living rooms. And then damn if I didn’t start thinking about my sister. She always said they were a waste of money.”
His sister?
“Course she’s just like that. And I don’t blame her. That deadbeat of a brother-in-law, went out for a pack of smokes and stayed out. If I ever see that two-bit scum sucker, I’m not going to give a damn about the Lamas. He’ll study them first-hand going through his teeth.”
Wait, brother-in-law? Damn was this when—
“And now that she’s living with me I get to hear it first hand. All about the spending of money, and working for a living, and actually giving a damn about—what the hell?”
Like something out of a 50’s comedy, we both rubber-necked around to the sound of a roaring engine behind us. On TV there would have been a boing or a clang. A flash of yellow appeared, and then a cracked grill that was gaining on us. It didn’t look like it was about to pass. It looked like it was going to drive right through us.
Lester pushed down and the truck whined in protest, and then like it found some hidden gear and kicked like a Brahman bull. My body pressed into the seat with the sudden acceleration. I glanced over and watched the needle hit 85.
“Bunch of fucking hippies. They think they’re gonna grill me.”
The road wasn’t quite gravel, but it sure wasn’t asphalt either. It felt like we were driving on water, the back end started a fishtail and Lester made a quick move to straighten it out. It happened again, and Lester eased the truck back into place, splitting the middle of the road. Turns out that Lester’s talents were not limited to smoking, swearing and kicking. He could also drive like a son-of-a-bitch.
Behind us, the car had lost no distance. In fact, it had gained enough for me to see the spider cracks in the windshield, and just make out the Nascar logo.
“Pop the box.” Lester pointed to a spot ahead of my knees.
It took a second. Another slide of the truck. The needle passed 90. I flipped open the glove compartment, already knowing what I’d find in there.
“You know how to work one of those, Starshine?”
“What the hell do you want me to do?” I yelled, barely heard over the trucks engine and the spitting gravel. Any moment I pictured us airborne, rolling, and sinking into our own ditch pit.
Lester jerked a thumb toward the back window. I grabbed the gun, a flash of memory to Harold’s place.
“Yeah, it was my old man’s. Easy peasy lemon-squeezy.”
I watched Harold slide back the top half of the pistol, and fire three rounds into a cutout of Ronald Reagan that he’d nailed to the big oak in his backyard.
I rolled down the truck window. It was a helluva lot different than drinking beers and taking aim at a Republican stuck to a tree. For one thing, Lester had to have the truck up to near a hundred. The wind pushed against my forearm as I reached across, and pulled back the slide.
Lester hit a bump and I fired one off into the air.
“Make ‘em count. I only got three in the magazine, Starshine!”
“Just drive the goddamn truck,” I shouted into the wind.
There was about as much chance of me hitting anything on the Charger as Lester getting a citizenship award. It didn’t help when I spied something coming out the passenger window of the Charger. Something in the shape of a shotgun. Actually, the exact shape.
As goofy as it was, I had one clear thought in my mind.
Help me Obi-wan.
I fired.
The bullet eased out of the end of the barrell, a red L painted on the edge of the casing, in a slow spin, and with the slightest of arc. My vision zoomed into the exact spot where it plunged into the Charger’s front left tire. That was weird.
Lester shouted something I didn’t hear.
The blowout sounded—out of sync with the rest of the car that bent and slid across the road. The driver’s side lifted and I waited for the car to roll.
And waited. And waited. And, shit, waited.
A dust cloud rose up obscuring the Charger. Lester let out another whoop. I ducked my head back into the truck, watching the cloud grow smaller through the rear window.
“I underestimated you, Starshine. You get the Lester Marksman award of the day. I might even pour you a warm Pilsner when we get to my place.”
The dust cloud dissipated, leaving a long stretch of empty road.
“I’ll introduce you to my sister. With my luck, she’ll probably like you. And oh yeah, her little shit of a son. I think he might be gay too. Damn. Maybe that is a good word for it.”
Her son.
“You know you look kinda like him. Ha! Maybe you’re some distant relley, and I didn’t even know it. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the nuts?”
Yeah. It would be.