The thing people forget about Texas, it kind of sucks.
It’s okay—I’m from Texas, so I’m allowed to say that.
And I’m not just talking about politics. I mean, specifically, the weather. There is lots to love about my home state, but it was hard to remember as I experienced some sort of radiation criticality event on my walk to find some cell signal. Barely a hundred feet from the car and I already wanted to die a little. Late afternoon sun baked me in my skin, the day’s heat rising from the sharp-smelling asphalt road doing a damn fine job of making sure I got blisters even through the soles of my shoes. Oscar and Ezra, when I glanced back, were filming something for CeCe’s vlog, gesturing expansively at the farmland behind them. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I thought Ezra might have been mooing. I tromped another several yards, checking the bars on my phone and finding a flicker of one more bar just at the edge of a drainage ditch. I stood still, looking like an absolute jackass as I lifted my phone and lowered it, held it far out to one side, then up close to my face, chasing the elusive signal.
“Son, what the Hell are you doing?”
I nearly shouted, managing to swallow the sound just in time as I spun to face the man who’d managed to come up behind me.
On a fucking horse.
Because Texas.
The man, wearing a dusty canvas coat and a battered hat, peered down at me from the back of his paint. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just trying to get a signal so I can call AAA for a tow. Our car…” I gestured back at the obviously immobile car, and Ezra and Oscar who were now doing some strange dance for the camera. Ezra looked like he was being electrocuted, but Oscar’s movements had an odd formality to them, almost delicate.
Or maybe it was the whole embroidered vest and lawn shirt thing he had going on, making him look like he was going to a fancy-dress event.
The man grunted. “Not many folks come through town this way,” he remarked, leaning down across the horse’s neck to peer at me. “Y’all looking for something in particular?”
“Er, no?” I took a step back, feeling suddenly too close. “We’re on a road trip on our way to a, um, job site. We were heading down scenic roads since they’re new to the area and I wanted to show them some…” I gestured at the brown, dry fields. “Wildflowers and such.”
The man snorted and sat back upright. “Well, y’all would do best to stop in up the road for help. There’s a house about half a mile that way,” he pointed towards a slight curve in the road, where a small copse of trees blocked the view of what was beyond. “Might be able to use their phone.” He looked back towards Ezra and Oscar and made a thoughtful sound. “They’re… they’re bright, aren’t they? So bright.”
They were done dancing and now Ezra was definitely mooing. “Brighter than you’d think,” I said, edging back again. Something about the man was unsettling but I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was. I wanted to run away, put as much distance between us as possible. Instead, I forced myself to stand still and scolded that niggling back-brain voice for being a jerk. He’s got to live out here. It’s not like he teleported in on a horse. Christ, Julian, get it together.
“Not what I meant, but good to know,” he chuckled dryly. “Now go on up the road a bit. There’s a drive there. Old house, real nice. Go on now. Get off the road before dark. Wouldn’t want an accident to happen because someone didn’t know you were there.” He turned his horse, and they started walking across the field, back towards the copse of trees.
The buzz of my phone startled me, and I nearly dropped it—it suddenly had full signal and a ton of emails and texts flew into my inbox, filling it up faster than I could read the notifications. Three texts were from Harrison, giving me a head’s up that Jacob’s team was definitely going to subpoena me and probably Oscar and Ezra too by the end of the month.
Fun.
Several texts from my mother, a few from old work friends, one from Rey which I deleted without reading, and finally a text thread from CeCe, giving us hints and tips about the vlog, reminding me to check in with her, giving me her own itinerary for the trip. I opened the last text to reply, tell her what was going on, but as soon as I hit send, the phone lost its signal again. “Shit!”
“Alright?” Ezra called.
I nodded, glancing around again as if I’d see some magic floating Wi-Fi or something. “No,” I called back. “Not at all.”
He waved merrily back at me and returned to whatever weird pantomime he and Oscar were acting out for the video. My phone buzzed in my hand, and I heaved a sigh of relief to see CeCe’s name and half a dose of bars. “Thank God,” I muttered instead of hello. “Guess where we are? Go on. Guess.”
“It’s not Brenham, is it?” she sighed. “Are you trying to make better time and skipping the sites I marked? You are, aren’t you?”
“No. I mean, a little, but not why I’m glad to hear from you. The signal’s shit out here so I need to call AAA for me. We’re in Budding, Texas, and—”
“Wait! Hold up!”
I could hear her frantically typing and, a moment later, her whoop of excitement. “Julian, you accidentally wonderful curmudgeon! That is perfect! Budding, Texas. Home to the Wandering Ghoul!”
“That is not a great slogan. Someone needs to talk to their tourism office.”
CeCe snorted. “I need an address to find you at. Are you going to a hotel or…”
“We’re on the side of the damn road,” I sighed. “Um, there’s a farm like half a mile up though so maybe we can use that as a pick-up spot.” Please don’t be cannibals and want to wear our skin… Damn it, Ezra, we’re switching to rom coms when we get to Denver. I gave her the name of the road we were on, and approximately how far we were from the highway turn off, and she promised she’d work on a tow for us ASAP. “But Julian, I’m serious. Wandering Ghoul. It’ll be gold for the promos. Don’t make me call Ezra.”
“Good luck with that,” I muttered, hanging up as the phone started to fritz again.
I looked towards the trees and there was the man on the horse. He raised one arm in salute before turning and disappearing into the shadows of the copse.
An icy finger of something unpleasant ran down the back of my neck, waking up those ancient fight-or-flight instincts we all have and pushing the switch firmly to flight. I started walking back towards the car a little quicker than I’d walked away, my leg muscles fairly twitching with the urge to just run and get away from that feeling that was still settled just below my skull, that icy touch of unpleasantness that signaled some subconscious awareness that something was wrong. Ezra and Oscar had stopped filming and were watching me trudge back, Ezra with a definite air of boredom and Oscar more hesitantly, more concerned.
Guilt began to nibble away at me as I dragged myself back to the car. Once we were somewhere with air conditioning, I owed Oscar an apology.
But only after we’d cooled off physically because I was pretty sure I’d murder someone if we had to stay one minute longer in the heat.