Chapter Six:

Quaking Aspen

Thursday

 

 

Las Vegas

Hurricane, UT

 

Richard was on I-15 driving south. His plan? Death by cop. He was going to shoot up some major urban area. Maybe Vegas. Maybe LA. He’d thought about Salt Lake but chickened out as he drove past and continued south down I-15.

Once again, just to reiterate, to himself or to anyone who was probably watching his movements, listening, his plan was not mass murder. He wrote as much in a journal just in case. It was suicide. Death by police. A demonstration. Terry probably would have called it a “cry for help,” which in a way, it was, though Richard thought he was way past any sort of “help.”

So yes, that’s where he was going, and making good time of it, too. His plan was to write a long note, leave it in his truck. When they found it, they’d understand. Why he did it. He’d plead with them to enact mental health legislation, tougher gun control laws so people like himself were not allowed to get away with such things, more affordable access to therapy and prescription medication. Governmental changes from the top down. An end to the opioid epidemic.

Or something.

He wasn’t sure yet what he would write or whether his handwriting would even be legible. Perhaps he’d need to go to the library, type it up on the computer. Or perhaps he’d just leave his journal in the truck. It was more or less a catalog of his thoughts and actually did mention his “plan.” The puzzle pieces were all there. The reason for him ending his life was no great mystery. He was simply done.

But Richard still wanted to leave some sort of mark on the world. So that people could know he, Richard, had once been alive on planet Earth and was a human being, a person, a mammal, perhaps even made in the image of God, who had lived and suffered and done his best.

He’d done his best, hadn’t he?

The mile markers clicked by. The hours stretched.

A song came on, one of Richard’s favorites. “The road is my only friend,” the chorus went. And for Richard it was absolutely true. Richard, who’d bounced around place to place, job to job, never in one place for long, for as long as he could remember. The road truly was his only friend.

Richard stopped for gas at Levan and grabbed a twelve-pack of Bud for later. He felt like everyone was staring at him in the store as he moved through the world, as if they knew what he was up to. This one Antifa-looking fucker at the gas station, especially.

He continued on. An hour or two later and he was almost to St. George.

A jolting from the truck awoke Richard from his violent fantasies. There was jolting, sputtering, and then the truck lunged in the freeway.

“Shit.”

He kept driving.

“Fuck it.”

He made it another mile when the truck really started seizing up. Was it his transmission or engine? Oil leak? Until finally, his truck wheezing like a heavy smoker, Richard pulled over to the side of the road where whole thing groaned and then collapsed like a dead dinosaur.

Richard knew just enough about cars to know that this was something major. He’d skated by with the dying truck for some time now, and honestly, wasn’t surprised that it had finally given up, but that didn’t quiet his rage any less. Richard tried to calm himself.

He got out of the car. Examining the truck smoking in front of him. Lifting up the hood. No good.

“Fuck! That’s just great.”

He slammed the hood, kicked the dirt, and threw a rock into the sagebrush.