LJ Idol 7, #5 - Afterthought
Hindsight's 20/20, but I'm nearly going blind...
The plaintive voice of Randy Travis fills the cab of the old red and black pickup as Jane opens the door and slides in, kicking away stray bits of hay that she had stirred up with her entry into the truck. Joe looked over at her, grins, touches the tip of his finger to his old straw cowboy hat, and the old Ford F-150 lurched off from the parking lot of Kelley's into the nearly deserted city streets.
Nervously, Jane is grasping the door handle with her left hand. The knuckles on the right hand are white, clutching the handle of her purse like she's holding onto a life preserver in the middle of an ocean. She is trying to study the writing above the glove box - FORD XLT LARIAT, she reads. She is spelling it backwards in her head, a parlor trick she's done ever since she was a kid to distract herself. "Tairal TLX Drof," she murmurs, but Joe is not paying any attention.
For just a moment, she feels her stomach lurch as the truck goes flying into the air for a moment as he drives - too fast - over a pothole.
"D'ya really think that is such a good idea?" she asks as she is fastening her seat belt and turning the radio down a notch. "You had a few back there, babe, you know I can drive."
"Aw, baby, you don't got a thing to worry about," he assures her. He clicks the radio back up. Garth Brooks is singing a song about a girl named Samantha in Baton Rouge. He begins to sing along, loudly and off-key. "Operator, won't you put me on through, gotta send my love down to Baton Rouge..."
For the rest of Jane's life, she remembers this moonless night, the smell of Joe's breath in the cab of the pickup, the sound of Garth Brooks coming through the car radio. She will remember it all. She finds herself waking up in cold sweats for months afterward at the faintest memory.
***
"See the sights, see our friends, feel all right," sings the young man in the other car, a college student on his way home for the holidays. He's put in a mixed CD that his girlfriend made him before he left two days earlier. His mom was going to give him a plane ticket to fly back instead, but he was insistent. He'd rather drive. He loves to drive. Give him some music, give him a full tank of gas, and he's in heaven.
"Holy shit," he breathes.
All he can see are the headlights coming straight at him. For a split second, he begins to pray, but after his beginning of "heavenly Father", there is nothing else. When the police calls his mother, who's been sitting up at the kitchen table, playing Scrabble with her daughter, waiting to see him come through the door, they tell her that he didn't feel anything and that it happened right away. There was no pain. It is no consolation to her. He was her only son - her husband had died three years earlier - and now her daughter is an only child. The line has ended with him.
"Do you have the person who hit him?" his sister asks after her mother slumps to the floor in the apple-cinnamon scented kitchen. "Do you have that drunk motherfucker that killed my brother?"
It was a hit and run, the officer tells her, but they know what they're looking for. An older pick-up truck, probably a Ford, red and black, with significant body damage. In a town the size of the one where the accident took place, it shouldn't be hard to find.
***
Jane is screaming.
They are home, the truck is in the garage and they are walking into the house. His brother does auto body. Joe will slip out in the morning and take it into the shop.
Joe backhands her. "Shut up," he hisses, "the neighbors will hear and wonder what the hell is going on. SHUT UP."
The "whys" are going through her head.
...did she believe him when he said he was okay to drive?
...didn't she insist on it?
...didn't she force him to stop after he ran right into that little green car?
...didn't she call the police?
She keeps seeing the face of the kid that they hit - maybe twenty years old, if even that, dark-haired and dark-eyed, his mouth moving like a fish when he saw the truck coming right at him. He never stood a chance.
Joe kicks off his ostrich cowboy boots, throws his hat on the kitchen table, sheds his clothes as he walks into the bedroom. Five minutes later, she sees him, collapsed, belly-first, on their queen-size bed.
There is a trail of clothes leading back to him in the bedroom. Just like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb trail from the fairy tale. And she thinks for a moment, and she knows what she has to do.
"Hello," she says as the woman on the other end of the phone picks up, "I'd like to report a crime..."
An hour later, she hears the knock at the front door.
She watches from the living room window as Joe is led out of the house in cuffs, put into the back of the police car. Lifts a hand in goodbye.
As Jane watches, all she sees is the police car exit the driveway, leaving a cloud of dust behind.
Nobody looks back.
The plaintive voice of Randy Travis fills the cab of the old red and black pickup as Jane opens the door and slides in, kicking away stray bits of hay that she had stirred up with her entry into the truck. Joe looked over at her, grins, touches the tip of his finger to his old straw cowboy hat, and the old Ford F-150 lurched off from the parking lot of Kelley's into the nearly deserted city streets.
Nervously, Jane is grasping the door handle with her left hand. The knuckles on the right hand are white, clutching the handle of her purse like she's holding onto a life preserver in the middle of an ocean. She is trying to study the writing above the glove box - FORD XLT LARIAT, she reads. She is spelling it backwards in her head, a parlor trick she's done ever since she was a kid to distract herself. "Tairal TLX Drof," she murmurs, but Joe is not paying any attention.
For just a moment, she feels her stomach lurch as the truck goes flying into the air for a moment as he drives - too fast - over a pothole.
"D'ya really think that is such a good idea?" she asks as she is fastening her seat belt and turning the radio down a notch. "You had a few back there, babe, you know I can drive."
"Aw, baby, you don't got a thing to worry about," he assures her. He clicks the radio back up. Garth Brooks is singing a song about a girl named Samantha in Baton Rouge. He begins to sing along, loudly and off-key. "Operator, won't you put me on through, gotta send my love down to Baton Rouge..."
For the rest of Jane's life, she remembers this moonless night, the smell of Joe's breath in the cab of the pickup, the sound of Garth Brooks coming through the car radio. She will remember it all. She finds herself waking up in cold sweats for months afterward at the faintest memory.
***
"See the sights, see our friends, feel all right," sings the young man in the other car, a college student on his way home for the holidays. He's put in a mixed CD that his girlfriend made him before he left two days earlier. His mom was going to give him a plane ticket to fly back instead, but he was insistent. He'd rather drive. He loves to drive. Give him some music, give him a full tank of gas, and he's in heaven.
"Holy shit," he breathes.
All he can see are the headlights coming straight at him. For a split second, he begins to pray, but after his beginning of "heavenly Father", there is nothing else. When the police calls his mother, who's been sitting up at the kitchen table, playing Scrabble with her daughter, waiting to see him come through the door, they tell her that he didn't feel anything and that it happened right away. There was no pain. It is no consolation to her. He was her only son - her husband had died three years earlier - and now her daughter is an only child. The line has ended with him.
"Do you have the person who hit him?" his sister asks after her mother slumps to the floor in the apple-cinnamon scented kitchen. "Do you have that drunk motherfucker that killed my brother?"
It was a hit and run, the officer tells her, but they know what they're looking for. An older pick-up truck, probably a Ford, red and black, with significant body damage. In a town the size of the one where the accident took place, it shouldn't be hard to find.
***
Jane is screaming.
They are home, the truck is in the garage and they are walking into the house. His brother does auto body. Joe will slip out in the morning and take it into the shop.
Joe backhands her. "Shut up," he hisses, "the neighbors will hear and wonder what the hell is going on. SHUT UP."
The "whys" are going through her head.
...did she believe him when he said he was okay to drive?
...didn't she insist on it?
...didn't she force him to stop after he ran right into that little green car?
...didn't she call the police?
She keeps seeing the face of the kid that they hit - maybe twenty years old, if even that, dark-haired and dark-eyed, his mouth moving like a fish when he saw the truck coming right at him. He never stood a chance.
Joe kicks off his ostrich cowboy boots, throws his hat on the kitchen table, sheds his clothes as he walks into the bedroom. Five minutes later, she sees him, collapsed, belly-first, on their queen-size bed.
There is a trail of clothes leading back to him in the bedroom. Just like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb trail from the fairy tale. And she thinks for a moment, and she knows what she has to do.
"Hello," she says as the woman on the other end of the phone picks up, "I'd like to report a crime..."
An hour later, she hears the knock at the front door.
She watches from the living room window as Joe is led out of the house in cuffs, put into the back of the police car. Lifts a hand in goodbye.
As Jane watches, all she sees is the police car exit the driveway, leaving a cloud of dust behind.
Nobody looks back.