6
Anthony Morrelli could not believe his luck. Most weekends he would head to the bar for its 11:00 a.m. opening time, blow his wages far too quickly, and end up getting sent home in a cab before early evening. Tonight, however, he had paced himself and lasted the entire day. Having arrived at Scotty’s in the late afternoon, been fed, got drunk, and spent his cab money, he felt a vague sense of accomplishment. With no cash or options, and with the warped wisdom of drunkenness, he decided to stagger unsteadily home along the dark, dusty road leading to town.
Scotty’s Bar was a hacienda-style place four miles out of Laughlin, Nevada. It was off the beaten track, but to Anthony, and a cluster of regular patrons, it was worth the journey. The beer was cheap, the waitresses were hot, the burritos were big enough to keep you full for a day and a half, but best of all, none of the asshole tourists ever came out here. Tourists - or fuckheads, as he affectionately liked to call them - were the bane of Anthony’s life. His day job down in Laughlin involved renting jet skis and motor boats to piss about on the river. Most of them couldn’t fit into a life vests or, in some cases, a boat.
“Don’t you have anything bigger?” they would whine, day after mind-numbing day. He had even gone as far as buying in a few extra-extra-large personal fucking flotation devices, which resolved part of the problem, but the boats were still designed for reasonably fit people, so he often ended up having to assist, as they squeezed their fat asses in and out of the vessels.
It was a hot night as Anthony wandered along the desolate roadside, and his feet kicked up the dust. Above him, the stars were clear, and an occasional plane would blink a trail towards Vegas. One previous evening, after a day of drinking, he had been walking unsteadily back down to Laughlin, when a neat black triangle had blocked out the stars overhead, as it silently crossed the sky. Anthony had stood with his neck craned watching it, feeling like he was in some Spielberg movie. He imagined for a moment a blinding light would fasten onto his body and spirit him off to another world. But, then, as the angular shape moved away from him, he saw the orange glow of the stealth plane’s two afterburners.
He had walked back to town on only one other previous occasion, and that time, he had been accompanied by a guy called Trey Evans. Trey was a small guy and a big drinker. Anthony reckoned he was probably somewhere in his late forties, but it was hard to be sure. He usually sat at the end of the bar, dressed head-to-toe in faded denims, and would often be the last customer there when it closed. Usually, he would be driven back to town by Marianne – one of the more compassionate barmaids. There was nothing romantic about the arrangement – everyone knew Marianne lived in Bullhead City with another woman in a civil partnership. However, one occasion where Trey’s hands started to pay her unwanted attention, and another where he vomited on her passenger seat, was enough to end Marianne’s generosity. After that, he was required to book a cab, or take the long walk.
The April night Anthony had walked back with Trey had been colder, and they had walked briskly to stay ahead of the frost settling on the desert around them. The fact both men had someone to talk to about baseball, the price of gas, and asshole tourists made the journey pass quickly.
As they reached town at about 3:00 a.m., the men were bonded in drunken accomplishment. They shook hands and agreed they would repeat their journey the following weekend.
But that journey never happened. Anthony had been laid up in bed, after eating some bad prawns, and the furthest he journeyed all weekend was from his bed to the bathroom. The next time he was in Scottie’s, he looked for Trey at the end of the bar, but his space was occupied by a group of three women sharing glass jugs of cocktails.
When he asked Marianne if she had seen the small man, she rubbed her temple, and said he’d been in the previous weekend, and made his own way home alone.
Anthony hadn’t seen him in the bar in the following months either, and so he figured the journey out of town was perhaps not worth it without the promise of a free ride home.
Shambling through the dark night, Anthony began singing various Bon Jovi songs to cheer himself up. At one point, his tuneless murmur was interrupted by the startling sound of a snake’s rattle, coming from the road up ahead. Anthony stopped dead, spreading his fingers on both hands, he looked like a man who had wandered blindly into a field of land-mines. Anthony may have been drunk, but he still knew a bite from a rattler out here, in the middle of nowhere, would mean serious trouble. The creature fell momentarily silent, masking its location. Breathing carefully, Anthony leaned forward, and peered into the gloom. He could see the vague change in tone from the roadside to the sandy scrub, but nothing more than that.
From somewhere in the darkness he heard the rattle, like a crazed maraca. The chilling sound came from somewhere just in front of him, possibly within striking distance. Anthony let out an involuntary yelp, and leapt backwards. His survival instinct overpowered his rational mind, and he ran to the side of the road, then hurried a few metres ahead.
For several minutes, Anthony had walked quickly, imagining if he slowed down, the rattler would somehow catch up with him to take deadly revenge.
After half an hour of walking at a decreasing pace, Anthony decided walking to town had perhaps not been such a great idea after all. He was ravenous; his feet were hot and sore, with the first sting of a blister on his heel was starting to cut through his drunkenness. He looked over his shoulder in the hope of seeing a car to flag down, but there was nothing except the indistinct grey ribbon of road stretching away from him in both directions.
Eventually, a glow on the horizon swelled to reveal an approaching car. A smile crept across Anthony’s face, and he began to wave his arms wildly in the direction of the approaching vehicle. In his mind, he was already anticipating getting back home to his trailer, and microwaving some frozen pizza. Not only did the car not slow down, it accelerated and drifted to the opposite side of the road to Anthony.
‘Bastard!’ he shouted as the tail lights shrank into the distance.
He wandered on for a several more minutes, before the urge to urinate sent him to the edge of the road. He unzipped and sighed as his urine hissed on the arid sand. He shook and zipped up, then began his solitary wander along the deserted road once more. By the time the bus appeared on the horizon, Anthony’s attention was lost in a haze of fatigue. He was simply counting his steps in groups of ten. Eventually, the growling engine sound was too loud to ignore.
At first, Anthony thought the low groan was emanating from a 747 rising out of Vegas, but he turned around to see bright lights on the horizon. His next thought was it could be a truck delivering cargo or fuel through the night, but as he peered into the darkness, Anthony Morrelli smiled. It was a bus.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said. He began to wave his arm back and forwards.
As the bus approached, Anthony held his arm up to his eyes to shield them from the fierce lights. The bus jolted to a stop beside him, and juddered from the vibration of the engine’s intestinal rumble. The doors expelled a loud hiss, and slammed open.
Without waiting for an invite, Anthony leapt aboard, and climbed the two steps to face the driver.
The interior of the bus was lit by a cool blue light, in which Anthony Morrelli could discern the vague, dark shapes of sleeping passengers.