The driver swore in the rain. Everything had gone wrong. The heist, the car, the road, and that didn’t include the weather soaking the driver’s clothes wet and cold.
The driver tugged on the leg, drawing the body out through the shattered window, and then taking up the second leg like a small burro with a cart. The largest of the bodies, thankfully, was tall but thin. The body bounced and tumbled along the streambed rubble. Only a slight relief came from the swelling of the small December stream. It would become larger with the winter rains. The body floated for a moment and then caught on the rocks of the other side. The driver kept dragging.
The light mist had turned the dirt road to a snotty slide now wept the blood of the driver into larger patches about the clothes the driver wore. The blood from the other man’s head curled and danced down the stream, washing away into the late night, screeds of something becoming, and then disappearing.
The driver breathed hard, dragging the body up the small incline to the shallow flood-washed cliff-side cave. Pulling the taller man by the clothes and body parts, the driver fed the warm corpse into the natural tomb. The driver stopped for a moment and looked at the expensive diving watch on the body’s wrist.
Quietly, the left hand smoothed over the short hair from the body’s forehead. The driver sat thinking of the last few years. Better times.
In the distance, a flash of lightning cracked, and the boom of thunder rolled across the South Bay Area and up into the low coastal mountain range. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The driver twisted and continued pushing the body into the cramped, shallow cave next to the other smaller body. Finally, the feet were needed to push and roll the larger body up and on top of the smaller to make room for what was still to come. The driver reached in and closed the now opened eye, hand hovering for a moment, and then withdrawing.
Slogging back down the damp incline, the driver once more crossed the small stream, and with dispatch, noted the volume had increased. The hills above would have been getting rain for more hours before. It was now flowing downhill.
The driver kicked at the back door of the car. With a long slender limb, the driver pried the complaining door partially open. Wedging their body into the gap, the driver began to work on widening the access. The screaming of the steel was loud. The driver wasn’t worried. The nearest house was probably well over two miles away. And even if it were next door, the sound of the rain and storm would have just made it another noise during a dream in the night.
“Shit.”
The last body was pounded into a ball and pummeled down into the leg area between the driver’s seat and the back seat. With the car mostly upside down, it was obvious a great force had placed him there. Only the left arm hung free into the space of the car.
After stumbling among the large rocks and flood bed wastage and stubble, the driver clawed around the back of the car, pulling through to the front window. The car had spun-out above, rolled, and then flipped, causing the driver to be ejected on the second roll before the next flip had taken the car over the hundred-foot slope to the stream bed below. The driver marveled at the durability of the car. As 1937 was a great year for Chevrolet, it had also been a terrible year for Chevrolet. The cars were almost indestructible. Now, nearly seventeen years later, they were still running.
The last pitched flip had thrown the car into the ravine eighty feet below and forty feet across the stream bed for one last roll.
The driver stooped and slid upside down through the driver’s window. Arching and stretching while feeling for the seat release, it was obvious nothing seemed right upside down. The mutilation on the arm didn’t help.
The large black Bakelite knob felt right. The driver tugged without a result. The lever didn’t move.
“Shit.”
The driver hung from the knob, thinking how the car had rolled over and righted, right hand becoming the left before orientation finally became solid.
The driver’s hand jerked, and then jerked harder. The lever moved. A click and the seat jumped forward an inch.
The large body thumped sickly down onto the ceiling.
The driver hung for a moment from the knob. A slight, wan smile crossed the pale, freckled face; the right, lower lip, and the left upper sucked into the teeth at the same time. The driver was still thinking.
Scooting with back down face up, the driver started moving the last body toward the other side. Pushing feet against the window post and moving the body using upper body strength—shoulders, hips, legs, shoulders—each part pushed one at a time.
Exhaustion was taking a toll.
The eyes of the driver flashed open at the sound of a rock as it rolled down the hill and splashed into the deepening water. The cold was setting in, and it hadn’t helped drifting off on a nap. The driver wearily eyed the small stream. It was rapidly becoming a much larger stream now moving rapidly.
The driver rolled over, realizing sleep had come with the driver’s head in the face of the last body—the face of the one person who in life had been the most repulsive.
“Shit.”
Moving with renewed vigor, the driver pushed the body around until the legs were sticking out of the window. The body was now aligned to cross the now larger body of water. “You better float, you big tub of lard.” Thinking, the driver realized the body’s coat was insulated and still dry. The driver stripped the body of the warm, dry shirt and jacket.
Crawling out the other window, taking up the two feet, pulling and drawing the body out and onto the water—now waist-deep, the driver was relieved as the body floated.
“Now, if you could just float up the fucking hill, you asshole.”
The swearing somehow lent a certain amount of indignant strength. The body fit almost perfectly in the hole, leaving a space for the last objects.
Crawling back into the car, the driver flipped the two custom latches. The back seat swung down, and the four large bags fell from their hiding space. “Shit.” The driver, picking up one of the bags and realized it would take three trips. Opening one of the bags, they looked in, and then drawing one of the objects out—the driver whistled low.
As the sun began to glow through the clouds, a lone figure plodded along the road. The driver’s fingers were torn up from digging the dirt to fill in the gravesite. This caused the driver to reminisce of times making fun of all the 4-H kids in school and how dirty their hands were—which was almost as horrid as how bad they always smelled—like wet animals. The farm kids were not much better.
No, sir, the driver had never wanted any part of raising animals or growing things and had damn sure never intended to plant a garden—especially not one as unbidden as the one just planted.
The driver washed off in the now hard-moving cold river. Not even hot water and soap would be able to remove the stain of the night’s planting.
The driver turned up the collar of the oversized wool P-coat. It was a very long walk to Salinas down the low coastal mountain range. With any luck, walking the road known as The Snake would only take a couple of days.