Sunflowers

This is a short story that I've picked up again. Not the first time I revised it and it won't be my last.

I keep finding new details to add to the existing story. It's like marinating food - the longer you marinate and season it, usually the better it tastes. It can be a subtle as a single word, like a hint of nutmeg. So Avrum doesn't now so much as "stumble" across the parking lot as "limps". Instead of putting his foot down on the accelerator, he puts his "foot to the hammer". The first example was to prepare the reader for new character/plot developments which I've decided to entertain later in the story. The second example came from an extensive list of trucker jargon I found yesterday, which I decided to sprinkle my story carefully with. Alongside the trucker-culture themes, I've started to integrate some drug and Christian metaphors (like "an addict to a high" and "breaking bread").

However, at the same time I'm adding detail, I've a consuming desire to write as succinct as possible. I don't want the story to be over-marinated and heavy. I'm always finding redundant sentences to cut and paragraphs to rephrase. It's all about jamming as much detail in as few words as I can get away with. It's supposed to be a fast-paced short story, not a medieval novel. Balancing the need for detail and the need for succinctness is a definate challenge.

Still, despite the gruelling pace, I really have only two more sections to go in this story - the sex (the "meat", he he he, of the story) and the aftermath. So maybe it will get finished eventually.

Oh, and yes it has a new title now. "The Hitchhiker" was really way too generic. I've also thought of a suitable tag-line for the Literotica site where I'll be posting my story if I ever git done:

Some bonds no time can break, some roads go back to the start...

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I’m standing alone in a broken-glassed bus shelter on the 401 with the rain pouring like a spilt shipment of beans. Streetlights have started throwing their light on anything they can get at, staining everything the colour of a wet orange.
It’s cold.
I’m hungry.

He’s late.

And then, it happens. A bus pulls over and a body jumps off. I can’t see his face yet but I know right away it’s him. It’s in the swagger, the splashes, the fuck-you attitude of someone brought up by the backhand.

Slap, slap, slap, go his boots on the pavement as he walks towards me. Just like that, nothing else registers. Not the cold, not the rain, not even the shit-hole of a shelter. Only his footsteps are real.

Slap, slap, slap!

My eyes snapped open.

A fat swine was thumping the diner table. “No snoring,” it rasped, sour-looking. “Yer disturbin’ the customers.” It heaved its flesh to the kitchen, carrying a tray as empty as the joint I was in.

I rubbed the dull ache on my chest, clinging to the bits of my dream like an addict to a high; hating it, loving it, both.

My eyes floated down to my watch. The jumper cable to reality connected and an instant later I was on my feet, my shoulders setting the grimy lights jangling and the coffee bean snarling. I wiped the grease on my pants and lurched towards the exit with a body that felt as though it had rusted over years ago.

As chance had it, there was a jingle at the door just then and Jim Burkman sauntered in. He gave me a once over and an easy smile.

“Hey, Avrum.” he greeted in a voice too friendly to be innocent.

“Jim.” I nodded, but didn’t smile back. The man howled in a chilling way when he shot his load. Better not chance it tonight with a full moon. I was late as it was with the new shipment.

I limped awkwardly across the parking lot, fumbled for my keys, and finally fit myself into the snug and slightly smelly lair I’d called home for the past seven years. The weary leather seat sighed as I shifted my weight. My fingers lingered for a moment on an old postcard clipped to the dashboard, and then in went the key and I was off.

I switched on the radio as I pulled onto the highway but I was only half listening to the ACE go on about some escaped felon stalking the region. Golden lights illuminated a familiar and friendly road, but the moon cast its own ghostly glow on a landscape that was neither familiar nor friendly. It was the kind of landscape which could corner a man’s thoughts and make him think about the things which could or should have been.

It was then that a figure caught the periphery of my headlights. I slowed to a stop with the engine still roaring and moments later I heard the rapid staccato sound of shoes hitting gravel shoulders. A burly shape materialized at the side window. Much later, I’d wonder if I’d have done anything different if I’d a sense of what was to follow.

“Pretty late to be on the road, eh?” I yelled.

“Can I get a lift? North, maybe?” the other man shouted back, shielding his mouth from the exhaust which obscured his form.

“Aye, get in!” I signalled. Just another hitchhiker, I thought.

A thick arm reached up, grabbed the side door, and swung the rest of its cargo smoothly into the front seat. He slammed the door shut and I pressed the gas. I could just make out the outline of high cheek bones and a wide-based jaw with a week-old crop of fur. A dirty wifebeater was stretched between a pair of heavy-set shoulders and a waist narrow enough to make most women jealous.

“Name’s Cameron.” said the man, turning sharply. “Call me Cam. You got a lighter?” All of a sudden I was feeling funny. There was something familiar in that rough, rumbling voice. His restless eyes were as dark as crude oil.

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled as I flipped him the lighter. He pulled my hand close, a cigarette already in his mouth. Turning, I caught his face in the red glow of the flame. Red like the Devil. I hit the breaks hard.

He swore and looked at me fiercely, eyes narrowing into slits. “Hey, trucker, what the hell…” His arms loose on both sides, ready for a fight.

“Sorry, Cam…” I said, biting the end off his name and tasting bitterness. “Thought I saw something cross the road.” I took my foot off the break, picking up speed again, my eyes fixed ahead. I was angry. I had an idea why.

“Y’know what…” His voice was suddenly like black ice, cold and tinted with danger. “Maybe you’d better pull over, mister…”

I put my foot to the hammer. I was shovelling coal to Hell, but I didn’t care, not even when I felt something hard and sharp pressed against my middle. “I said to friggin’ pull over, you mother fucker.” His eyes were twin drums of petrol set ablaze. I almost laughed. The damn universe had shifted and he still hadn’t got a clue. The engine roared like a beast at a hundred and sixty.

“Why don’t you teach me?” I said then. “Teach me again.” And that’s when I looked straight at him, at the body he’d built to fight, the lips he’d taught to lie, the eyes he’d made to hate. Straight at a memory.

“Jesus,” Cam said, sounding like someone being crucified. He’d finally figured it out. He pulled away in a hurry, nicking me as he did. I could see his eyes still burning, but now more like cylinders spilt and running. They were running in panic. He dropped his knife and started groping frantically for the door with one hand and for something in his pocket with another. For a moment I thought it was a gun until he pulled it out and jabbed it into his arm.

He sighed as he calmed right down.

Backing off the hammer, I was starting to feel like a burnt out engine stranded in the desert. We were in for a long night.

“Give me the lighter again?” Cam asked, finally. He still sounded strained, like wheels trying to flop-flip fast. As he wiped at his brow with his forearm I got a whiff of him, a hundred miles of fresh sweat and adrenaline.

“Yeah…” I cleared my throat. We met for an instant as I handed him the lighter (still in my hand, somehow) before his eyes stretched away into the darkness. Cam took a deep drag of his cigarette. When he spoke again, his voice had a distant quality, like a siren a long way down a foggy road.

“You know,” he said slowly, “Me and my pal Mur – that’s short for Murva – used to go driving just like this. Except that we were sixteen, and we didn’t have no rig. Just my Gran’s station wagon, all patched up with yellow house paint.”

He rested the knuckles of one hand against the window, the other he lay slightly curled on his thigh. I had no illusions. These hands could break a man’s neck as easy as break bread.

“Don’t get me wrong, Mur wasn’t my girlfriend or anything – just best buds – though she was definitely all girl. She had that queer sway in her hips, if you know what I mean. Always thought she’d look gorgeous in a red satin dress.” The corners of my mouth itched to betray me. Little bastard, I thought. I didn’t need to check to know his lips were curled.

“Anyway,” he continued through half-closed eyes, “This one weekend her folks decide to take the train down South. So I thought, what the heck, why waste the free car? I was real proud of my new licence, see. Mur hadn’t gotten hers yet, though I’d already taught her the ropes…” Cam trailed off.

With an effort he tried to sit up, only making it part way. “Anyhow, I say to Mur, ‘Why don’t we go pick up some girls at the bar?’ Mur wasn’t sure of the plan so I said she could pick up some pansy guys if she liked.” Cam paused, a lazy smile.

He continued, knowing I was listening. “So I drove us done to the bar that night, and I kissed-up some girls. Pretty soon we were all pissed drunk and making stupid talk, but then when we got back to the car, we saw it – a big friggin’ dent in the back of the K-Car! Someone must have backed up and ran off. Mur started going on about her folks killing her, and I was feeling like shit because it’d been my idea. So, we decided to take it to the panelbeater and get it fixed. I drove, she paid.”

Cam took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled through the side of his mouth so that the smoke came out in drowsy wisps. His words were beginning to slur. “Mur’s parents came home the next day, and we didn’t say a word. But then we hear her father come in from the garage and go to Mur’s mother, all amazed, ‘Nancy, you won’t believe this, but a miracle has happened! Remember that dent I’d told you about on Thursday? Well, the dent’s GONE! Bless our souls, the car’s dang well fixed itself!”

He chuckled, a low rumble of amusement. Even sedated as he was, I couldn’t help feeling a shiver run up my spine from the familiarity of it.

I risked another look at the man in my truck when the silence stretched. Asleep, his expression was as innocent as an angel’s. But I found no peace in it. Images slid in and receded in my mind like scenery in a rear-view mirror. I saw a small dark house with sticky floors; a young, pretty mother never without her Kentucky Bourbon; a hard-bitten grandmother; an angry, pixie-faced boy; the void where a father should have been…

I turned back to the road. Time passed.

“Y’know, I never did pay her back for the bodywork.” Cam remarked abruptly. His eyes were still closed but his voice sounded steady. “Mur and me…” he was quiet for a minute. “Always imagined she’d be married with children by now.”

He opened his eyes for an answer. I shook my head.

“Who’s that from?” Cam asked then, jabbing at the old postcard of sunflowers I’d clipped onto my dashboard. He was staring at it hard with eyes I knew were hazel.

“My bud Mac,” I said. “We thought one day we’d buy up a lot and start a sunflower farm together.” Then I surprised myself by adding, “Really wish we had.”

“Huh,” grunted Cam, watching the darkness again. “What happened?”

“Well, Mac… he disappeared. Don’t know where he went. I got this in the mail a couple year later. No message. No return address. Just the card.” There hadn’t even been a name. But I’d recognized the chicken-scratch as soon as I saw it.

“Sounds like a pretty shitty friend to me.” said Cam softly. “Why d’you keep it?”

I’d been trying to figure that one out myself for the past five years. I shrugged my shoulders and said carelessly, “I don’t know. Maybe to remind myself to ask if I ever met him again.” I was getting tired of playing this game.

Cam’s breathing quickened like an answer, and he reached to grip his pocket as though he’d a nugget of gold inside. Meanwhile, a bright green number thirty-two flashed by the side of the road and I was suddenly worried. I’d missed a turn somewhere and Cam, or whatever he wanted to call himself, was about to get himself smashed again.

But I was dead wrong, as it turned out. Cam was about to take us both clear off the map.

He let out a breath and began. “Y’know Mur and me, we were real close. Close like some brothers are. Trusted each other with almost everything. I thought we’d be there for each other, always.” I glanced at him. He was talking through clenched teeth, as though he was trying to lift ground pressure.

“Gawd dang it. It ended so badly,” he burst out then. That’s when I knew where we were headed. I got cotton mouth and every part of my body went stiff. I might as well have been pedalling in the middle with another truck coming head-on.

And the truck wasn’t stopping. “That night… A friend of mine had given me the stuff earlier. I still don’t know what it was. But it messed me up bad. It made me see things, things which weren’t there.”

His voice was going faster now. The thudding in my ear was going faster too. Everything was going full throttle. “Somehow I ended up in my room. I don’t know how I got there. But somehow I was in my room, and I saw a guy standing there, staring at me. He looked just like me. It was me looking scared, like I was seeing some kind of thing from Hell. It was like I was staring at a mirror, except that the guy in the mirror backed up when I stepped up, and that’s when I hated him. Hated him like I’d never hated anything before.”

We were going to hit. Here it came –

“So I hit him. Full upper-cut. And then I hit him again. And again. Knocked him down, kicked him. I heard him yell, but I wasn’t listening. I threw him down the stairs. And that’s when the yelling stopped. But then I realized something. Why wasn’t I feelin’ the pain?”

His voice was breaking up. Breaking into pieces. Everything had closed in like a tunnel. Bloody images screamed at me, pounding me into a bleeding pulp. There were no breaks on this one. The breaks were broken.

How much time passed I don’t know, but when I began to make out muffled noises coming from where Cam was, I knew I needed to turn and see. It was hard though. Real hard. I was like a P2 driver making the bend at top speed. It was so much easier to just go straight on, to end it all. But I wasn’t ready to crash and burn. Not yet.

Cam, though, didn’t look like he was going to make it. He was sitting hunched over, rocking. A small dark river trickled down from where his teeth were breaking into his knuckles. I watched as he fed on the pain, fed on it to keep sane.

“Mac,” I said, when I had had enough. “Stop.” I reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. Feeling his warm skin beneath my palm, I felt a stirring and realized just how long I’d gone without. The stab of guilt almost made me let go. I couldn’t even touch a guy without turning it into something dirty. But Mac needed help now and there was no one else. So I held on and spoke to him again. “Don’t make me pull over, Mac.”

With a real effort he pushed his hands away and sat on them instead. I knew what it felt like, not trusting your hands.

I listened to his ragged breathing as I kept the wheel steady. A faded road sign read “Service Station 20 km Ahead” and reminded me we were lost. I was hoping to God that we’d find a decent Timmy’s at the pickle park. I needed mud bad and the last greasy spoon had been a place no trucker should ever have to visit.

But as things turned out, I wouldn’t get a chance to find out.

I felt an electric shock when Mac put his hand over mine. He was looking at me for the first time since he’d knifed me earlier, and the way he was looking was making me uncomfortable. I tried to move my hand away but he held fast.

“Y’know, Avrum… I’ve always known about you.” He said softly, soft like a goose-down bed. I was getting goose-bumps all over.

“You known how I knew?” he leaned in close, his breath hot against my neck. I took a shallow breath, and immediately regretted it. After all that had happened, after trying so hard to forget...“Because every time you thought I wasn’t looking, you’d look at me like a starved man looks at prime beef.”

My mind spun, like tires stuck in the mud, going nowhere. I wasn’t sure what to think. Seven years ago I’d have denied it. Denied it to high Heaven because there was no way in Hell I was going to loose Mac. But there wasn’t anything worth saving now. Too many words left unsaid; too much time passed; too many forks in the road taken.

I wanted to say something, anything, but when Mac started talking again there was a catch in his voice which made me listen. “Y’know Avrum, no one’s ever looked at me that way,” he said. It was the kind of catch that opened dusty, dangerous doors that lead to God knows where. “And you know something, Avrum? You know something…I never thought you needed a red satin dress.”

And just like that, I discovered I’d been wrong about everything. The truth was in his voice, naked as a newborn baby. “Not for me. Not ever,” he said, and it moved into his eyes. He looked away and sat back.

How much it had cost him, I’d never know. But there was another truth too, and this one sat just over my heart. I’ll never forget the look he gave me when I moved my hand into his. It was as if he’d seen a miracle – one part wary, like he was trying to figure out the catch behind it, the other part in awe and maybe a little afraid. So I let him see it all for what it was, because it was what he needed, and because deep down I’d wanted him to see it all along.

Some words don’t need saying; some bonds no time can break; some roads go back to the start.