Would any of that have happened if I’d just stayed in my shack?
No, probably not.
And then I realized something that should have made me feel sick, that should have made me pull over suddenly to the side of the road, throw open the door of my car, and cough up a layer of stomach lining. But it didn’t, which only proved my realization was the inescapable truth.
I wasn’t sorry.
I’d puked my guts out back in Jolene’s mobile home out of terror and revulsion, not guilt. Maybe I knew it even then and just didn’t want to believe it.
Yes, two women were dead. But I was alive.
Alive in a way I’d never been before.
If I’d stayed in my shack, yeah, Lauren and Jolene might have lived. And the Sno-Inn Motel might still be open for business. And I might not have a bunch of broken ribs and a stomach eaten away by painkillers.
But I would still be dead.
I learned then that living doesn’t come without painful sacrifices, and that they aren’t always your own.
***
When I got too tired to drive any longer, and I felt the car starting to weave, I pulled over at a rest stop somewhere between Moses Lake and Ritzville.
I didn’t go to sleep right away. I pulled out the yearbook from underneath my seat, turned on my map light, and flipped through the pages.
The first thing that tumbled out was the “Where Are They Now?” newsletter. There was a nice write-up on Lauren that made her sound happy, successful, and very rich. It was an enticing advertisement for easy money to Arlo Pelz.
I flipped through the stiff, glossy pages of the yearbook and found Lauren’s class picture. She had a bright smile, full of hope and enthusiasm, that was in sharp contrast to her eyes, intense even then, hinting at a darkness I didn’t see in any of the other teenagers’ faces. It was a darkness that was still in Lauren’s eyes when she looked at me on the overpass, right before she took a flying leap.
There was nothing in Jolene’s picture that hinted at the disappointments and violence in her future. Her face, like most of the others, radiated nothing but boundless expectation and desire. When she leaped into the air in her cheerleading photos—her arms and legs spread, her face arched up into the sky—the borders of the page could barely contain her from soaring free.
A few pages later, alongside another photo of Jolene in liberating flight, was a picture of Lauren, looking slyly at the camera as she emerged, slick and wet, from the swimming pool. It was the women’s sports page, the page a hundred horny high school boys undoubtedly jerked off to. I would have. It was a page for dreaming, for looking at a picture of a cheerleader or swimmer or runner and thinking as you came in your fist . . .
She could be mine.
Years later, Arlo Pelz looked at that page and had the same dream.
The next few pages were torn out. I flipped to the index to see what was missing—it was the crew picture of the women’s swim team.
I closed the yearbook, slid it back under my seat, and turned off the map light. I spread out across the big, bench seat, shut my eyes, and worked on some dreams of my own.
Chapter Twenty
I woke up because I had to piss.
It was still dark outside. The clock on the dash said it was a little after four a.m. I sat up slowly, my back stiff, my ribs aching, opened the door, and staggered across the empty parking lot to the restrooms.
The bathroom reeked of stale piss. It probably hadn’t been cleaned in months. I relieved myself at the urinal and trudged back to my car, thinking I might get another hour or two of sleep before hitting the road again.
That wasn’t going to happen.
The driver’s side door of my car was open, and so was my trunk.
“Hey,” I said.
The trunk slammed shut and revealed a man, about six feet tall, wearing a puffy down jacket, flannel shirt, jeans, and a pair of muddy Doc Martens. Seeing the guy scared the shit out of me.
“No fucking suitcases?” he said angrily, looking right at me.
I suddenly realized just how alone I was. I glanced around and noticed a pickup truck at the far corner of the lot, hidden in the shadows. It must have been his. The infrequent traffic on the Interstate seemed a long way off.
And then I remembered who I was, and where I was going, and why I was in that parking lot. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was excited.
“Get the hell away from my car,” I said.
“Or what?” He whipped out a switchblade from somewhere inside his jacket and marched toward me, a lopsided grin on his face. “Give me your wallet and your fucking car keys and maybe I’ll let you keep your shriveled little balls.”
I made like I was reaching into my back pocket for my wallet and pulled out my gun. He froze, his eyes wide with shock, and then he forced a smile.
“Well, fuck me,” he said. “I guess this makes us even.”
“Not unless you’ve got a semi-automatic handgun hidden up your ass,” I said. “Then again, you’d have to get to it first.”
Now that I had my gun out, I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. A hundred tough-guy scenes from a thousand TV shows and movies seemed to run through my head at once. And they all made me realize just how important this moment was for me.
“Drop the knife,” I said.
“This is my special knife. I got it in ‘Nam.” He just stood there, smiling, as if I wouldn’t notice he was twenty years too young to have been in Vietnam. “What if I put it in my pocket and I just walk away, no harm done?”
“You could,” I said.
He retracted the blade and his hand started towards his pocket.
“But you’d better ask yourself a question first,” I said. “Do you feel lucky today?”
His smile began to waver and his hand, the one with the knife, stopped before reaching his pocket.
“Well, do you, punk?” I grinned.
I probably sounded more like Bart Simpson than Clint Eastwood, but the props and the atmosphere more than compensated for it. From the way he looked at me, I could tell he’d decided I was crazy. He dropped the knife.
“This was a setup,” he said. “You’re one of those psycho-assholes who goes looking for trouble.”
“What if I am?” I asked, motioning him towards me with my free hand. “Walk this way until I tell you to stop.”
As he came towards me, I moved off to one side, and we made a little circle, until I was near my car and he ended up where I’d been standing before.
“Stop right there and empty all your pockets,” I said, “then pull them out so I can see them.”
“Fuck you.”
“You want to make this hard?” I shrugged and aimed my gun at his groin. “Go ahead, make my day.”
He must have seen something in my eyes, because he quickly held up his hands in submission. “Okay, okay, I’ll empty them.”
He hesitated for a moment, then slowly reached into his jacket. First one wallet, and then another, and then another, hit the ground. Then watches, necklaces, and some car keys. Then he got to his pants; out came some condoms, some loose change, and another wallet, which I figured was his.
I shook my head at him. “You’ve been a bad boy.”
“No worse than you, motherfucker.”
I grinned again. I liked that he thought I was tough. But the truth was, if I didn’t have my fake gun, by now I probably would have given him my car keys, my wallet, and been sobbing for mercy while he butt-fucked me into the pavement.
As much as I was enjoying the moment, I didn’t want to press my luck. If I stayed much longer, I was afraid the guy would see my gun in the right light and realize it was a fake and kill me with his bare hands. Or somebody would drive in, see me with the gun, and think I was the criminal. And if I was really unlucky, that somebody would be a highway patrolman.
“I want you to crawl into the bathroom, then lie face down on the floor with your feet sticking out the door so I can see them.”
“No fucking way I’ll crawl for you or anybody else,” he said. “You’re gonna have to shoot me, asshole.”
I sighed. “Works for me.”