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I stayed seated and unmoving, but kept on full alert, watching what was happening around me. Bubba paid more attention to the outside world than to his two captives, which was fine with me. He also stood in front of the window, which would have been a problem were I in the other seat, but where I was, I had a view straight out the front door. I noticed that my truck was no longer the hive of activity it had been. The back door was open, and I could tell from where I sat that they’d cleaned it out. My duffel and random boxes were gone. As long as they hadn’t discovered my secret compartment, I thought I’d still be in good shape.
As he watched, Bubba drank from the gallon jugs. When he was a quarter way through the second one, he turned around, looking uncomfortable. He looked at us, then down the hallway. He looked at where the door used to be, then glanced back at us. I could imagine the gears turning slowly in his head, and based on the expression on his face, several of those gears were missing teeth and didn’t run quite right.
“What?” I asked.
He shifted from one foot to another and back again. The classic potty dance.
“You have to go?” I asked?
He nodded.
“Well, then go.”
“Daddy says I need to lock the door when I go. But Mac broke the door.”
“That’s not your fault that you can’t do it. Go attend to your business. We’ll keep a look out for you,” I said. The guy next to me threw a subtle snicker, but I ignored it.
Once again, Bubba looked from the door to us to the hallway.
“Go. We’ll still be here when you get back,” I said.
Bubba grinned and pointed a finger at us. “Okay, but don’t you move an inch. I’ll be watching.”
Bubba took off at a quick shuffle down the hall and I watched him start to undo his belt as he walked. The bathroom was two doors down, about twenty feet. He pushed the door open and looked back at us. “Don’t you move,” he hollered, then disappeared.
I heard the chair creak next to me, and when I looked over, the man was up. I reached over, grabbed his arm, and guided him back to his chair.
“Not yet,” I said.
“What? No! Let’s get out of here now!” he protested.
He’d barely finished speaking when the door opened. Bubba stuck his head out, noticed we were still there, and headed back in.
“How many times a day does he go?” I asked.
“I don’t know, since I’ve never bothered to count. Eight or ten probably,” the man said.
“Okay. Let’s sit this one out,” I said. “Wait awhile and keep an eye on what happens outside.”
“I can tell you that. Eventually, they’re going to move your truck. They’ll either drive it or drag it, but either way, they’ll clean up the mess to get ready for the next unlucky folks to pass through here.”
“When will that be?” I asked.
“Hard to say. They’re somewhat organized, but they’re also inefficient and lazy, so it could sit there overnight. But eventually the leader will come through and want it gone.”
“He said he’d come back to talk to me,” I said. “When do you think that will happen?”
We both turned our heads at the same time when we heard a door open. Bubba’s head appeared, and when he discovered we were both there, he returned to his business.
“He said the same thing to me but didn’t return until the next day. I’m guessing he’s trying to wear us down, so we’ll be happy to join his little circus.”
It made sense to me, but I had no intention of sticking around. I had people to see and places to be.
I lowered my voice to a bit above a whisper. “Okay, here’s what I’m thinking. Bubba’s going to come back after his potty break and realize we’re still here. That should ease his mind a bit. He’ll keep drinking, and the next time he goes, we scamper out of here, get in my truck, and hightail it out of here. Where were you headed when you ended up here?”
“Baton Rouge.” The man took his glasses off and worked through the motion of cleaning them with his shirttail. “My home is there.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“My daughter gave birth to a boy. She lives up in Huntsville with her family. I want to move up there to be closer to the grandkids, but my wife insists we stay in Baton Rouge. She’s adamant that she doesn’t abandon the farm that’s been in her family for three hundred years. She says since she was born there, she wants to die there.”
“What do you think about that?”
He stared at his glasses for another moment, shrugged, and put them back on. “I think she’s a fool to think that way. She’s been in denial for a long time and expects that any day now everything will go back to normal. In the meantime, she sits out on the front porch with her papaw’s shotgun, waiting to defend her birthright.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say next.
“What’s your story?” he asked.
“Not much. I was living in Charlotte when things turned to crap. I moved to my uncle’s farm in southwestern Virginia. It’s as off the grid as I can get it, and pretty remote to boot, so I think I’m good there for a long time.”
“Then why are you stuck here in Alabama? That’s three states away from home.”
“Well, there is this girl...”
“Isn’t that how all those stories develop? Something about a girl?” the man interjected.
I smiled. “Yeah, I suppose.”
I sat ready to tell him the complete story, but the bathroom door creaked open, and Bubba came out. He grinned when he spotted us still sitting there.
“I told you we’d still be here when you got back. And your fly is open,” I said.
Bubba looked down. His cheeks reddened, and he turned around to close the open barn door. He took a long drink from his jug of lemonade, belched, set the jug down, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Can I have some of that?” I asked. “I’m thirsty and my head hurts. Do you have any aspirin?”
Bubba stepped in front of his jugs, as if protecting them from a bear. “Oh, no. This is my special drink. You can’t have any. You can have water when it’s feeding time.”
“When is feeding time?”
“Soon.” Bubba turned his attention to the window even though there was nothing happening outside.
“When is feeding time?” I whispered to the man next to me.
“It varies,” he whispered back. “And don’t expect a feast. The meal ranges in scale from canned beef stew to nothing but potatoes.”
“Nice. I can’t wait.”
I sat back in my chair and waited. My head throbbed as I sat, but as a couple of hours passed, the pain lessened. At one point, my comrade needed to use the toilet, so Bubba escorted us both there. I waited outside in the hallway while the man did his business, and when he finished, I took my turn. Before I entered the bathroom, I had visions of a large window that led outside that I could easily open and slip through, but it turned out to be an interior room with nothing but a toilet and a sink. I forced myself to empty my bladder and checked the sink, but found no water there, even though the toilet flushed and worked fine. Briefly I thought for a moment about taking a drink from the tank, but decided in the end I wasn’t that desperate. I’d keep it in mind, though.
Bubba escorted us back to our seats and returned to his post. The shadows were growing long outside, so I knew the end of the day was fast approaching. I also noticed the third of his three jugs was half empty. A few minutes later, he started his dance again.
“Go on,” I said. “We’ll keep an eye on the place.”
Bubba had none of the hesitation he’d had earlier in the day. Without a word, he headed toward the bathroom. When the door closed behind him, I looked over at my new friend.
“You ready to get out of here?”
My buddy was on his feet before I finished the sentence. I stood, looked down the hallway to check if Bubba was there, and crept toward the door. The front door stood recessed into the building, so I stepped outside, stopped, and looked down the street in both directions.
“Is there anyone there?”
“No,” I said. “Okay, here’s the plan. Make a run for the truck and jump in. The passenger side door doesn’t open, so you’ll have to jump in the back. The door slides down from the top, so close that the second you get in there and sit down. It’ll be a bumpy ride.”
“Got it,” he said.
I crouched, ready to run, but then I spotted a cowboy carrying a rifle approach the intersection. I backed into the doorway, waiting for the alarm that would announce that he’d spotted me, but it didn’t come. Holding my breath, I counted to twenty, then peeked my head around the corner. The intersection was empty.
“Okay. Let’s go. And be quiet.”
I swallowed a big gulp of air, then stepped a few feet out onto the road. I wanted to stop and look around, but I determined that would do nothing for me but waste time I didn’t have. It seemed like a year, but in reality, we crossed the street in ten seconds or less. I watched as he climbed into the truck’s rear while I slid into the driver’s seat. The key was gone from the ignition.
I didn’t panic. I simply reached under the mail shelf next to the driver’s seat and grabbed the magnetic key holder I’d stashed under the shelf. It took only a few seconds to extract one of the half-dozen keys I had in there and start the truck. The truck roared to life, and when I say roared, I meant it started like a combination of a jet airplane and a dump truck. I understood I had only a couple of seconds before anyone within a four-block radius heard my engine. I threw the truck into Reverse and gave it some gas. Lucky for me, I hadn’t impacted the wall hard enough to crack the engine block or break an axle. Although there was a gnashing of brick on the metal as I pulled away, I managed to back up. Since going left wasn’t an option, I pulled forward to the intersection I’d blindly turned around, then turned left, going the wrong way down a one-way street.
“They’re coming,” my new friend announced.
“Okay, hold on.”
Before me there were two cars blocking the road, but not wanting to stop, I rolled up onto the sidewalk and ran over a No Parking sign. As I neared the intersection, a tall woman dressed all in denim ran out into the street and pointed a gun at me. I jerked the steering wheel, aimed for her, and pressed the gas pedal. I didn’t want to run her down, but I’d had enough of being shot at for one day. Lucky for me, she stepped aside and let me pass. As I sped past her, I looked out the window and saw a manic grin on her face. Once I was by her, she stepped back into the street, leveled the gun, and pulled the trigger. I didn’t detect an impact, so I guessed she’d missed the truck completely.
I drove down two blocks until I saw no one behind me, then made a left turn, keeping my foot on the gas. The road dead ended a few blocks ahead, and the tires squealed as I made another turn sharp enough I almost went up on two wheels. From the back, I caught a muted clunk.
“Sorry,” I yelled.
I spotted a sign for the highway I needed, then turned another block and sped away from the city at an unsafe speed. The blocks flew by like pickets on a fence and I didn’t let up until the city turned to suburbs. As my adrenaline wore off, I eased off the gas pedal and slowed down to forty miles an hour.
“Everything okay back there?” I asked.
I waited a second for an answer but didn’t get one. After another few seconds, I turned my head to look behind me and saw the man’s shoulder, but nothing more. Wanting a good place to pull over, I looked at the road ahead and saw a sign for a fast-food chicken place a half mile up the road. I pulled into the lot and around to the back side of the building, where no one would see us from the road. I parked the truck and went into the back. My new best friend was lying on the floor face down.
“Hey, time to wake up. We need to get going,” I said.
I shook his shoulder, but he didn’t budge. The first thing that ran through my mind was that when I took the hard corner, he’d lost his balance and hit his head. When I turned him over and saw his shirt front full of blood, I realized he’d taken the full brunt of the shotgun blast from the last woman we’d encountered.
“Aw, shit,” I said. “Sorry, man.”
I sat down next to him and put my hand on his shoulder.
“I guess it was a poor plan, after all. Maybe I should have run when I had the chance.”
I looked up and saw he hadn’t closed the back door like I’d requested. I realized that once he failed to do that, he’d been unprotected. A literal fish in a barrel. I sat with him for a few minutes, unsure of what to do, then I slid the back door closed and got back in the driver’s seat. I pulled out of the parking lot and got back on the road, not sure what to do with his body. Within a mile, inspiration struck when I saw a large cemetery off to my left. The cemetery had a funeral home on the property, so I pulled into the cemetery and parked my truck behind the home. I found the back door was open, so I walked in and took a quick lap around the premises. The funeral home had three rooms for services, all decked out with chairs covered in black, candles at the front, and draped in a general cloak of depression. The fourth room was a showroom of sorts. On display were several coffins of various woods, linings, and additional accouterments to take the deceased to their eternal slumber in style and comfort unknown to most of the living. On one wall was a display case filled with urns, both plain and exotic for those who wished to be cremated. In a room off of the loading dock, I found what I wanted, which was a rolling cart used to transport coffins from one place to another.
I took the cart and wheeled it out to the showroom. There, I selected the most expensive coffin in the room. According to a little plastic placard in a tasteful gold frame, they made the coffin from solid mahogany, and it had an ivory velvet interior in a French fold design. It also came with golden jewel-toned accessories, a matching pillow and throw, and to seal the deal, an adjustable eternal rest bed. I didn’t know what the last thing was, but I suspected it was both fancy and unnecessary. It retailed at just under eight grand, but for my buddy, sticker price wasn’t an issue. I moved the cart next to the coffin, locked the wheels, and with great effort, lifted the heavy coffin to the cart, one end at a time.
I adjusted the pillow and liner and then rolled the coffin out the door and to my truck. As gentle as I could, I placed the body inside the coffin, then pushed it back into the funeral home. I pushed him into the first room I came to and set him to rest at the front of the room. On a table sat an arrangement of fake flowers, so I placed them in the coffin and closed the lid. Exhausted, muscles aching, and coming down off my adrenaline high, I collapsed into the nearest chair. I considered saying a few words but didn’t. What was I to say to a man I’d known for less than a day and had gotten killed besides?
I closed my eyes and rested for a few minutes, counting down the seconds in my head. When I was ready, I got to my feet and staggered back to the truck. Once there, I took a moment to assess what I had, which wasn’t much. As I suspected, the back was empty, except for the drying blood on the floor. They’d also taken my CD player, the CDs, and the batteries. Fortunately, my atlas was on the floor, except it now had a muddy boot print on the cover. The last thing I checked was my secret compartment, where I exhaled a long breath when I found everything intact.
I consulted the atlas, even though I was sure of the route, then started the engine and drove down the long driveway to the gate. I stopped and looked both ways before pulling out into the street.
One last look in my side mirror and I continued on my journey. I shuddered when I realized I’d gotten a man killed and had not even bothered to learn his name.
