—I love my wife and kids.
+++++But sometimes a man just needs to get away. You know? Just have a little time to himself.
+++++It’s not like I was looking for trouble.
But—
+++++Just a drive. That’s all I wanted. Just me and the highway. It didn’t even have to be the highway. I didn’t have to come this way. I could have taken a different turn. I could have kept to the backroads. I could have just driven around town. I wasn’t going anywhere.
+++++But you always wind up somewhere, don’t you? You can’t literally go nowhere. It could have been a gas station. It could have been a rest stop. I could have just pulled off the side of the road and looked up at the stars, far away from the city lights. I did that once. Just drove out an hour or so, pulled off the road, lay back on the hood of the car and smoked a cigarette and watched the stars. Then I went home. I could have done that tonight.
+++++I could even have gone to a strip club. They’re all over the highway.
+++++But I didn’t. I’m not that kind of guy. So I saw this little bar. Not my usual kind of place.
+++++But I don’t even have a usual kind of place. I don’t go to bars. I don’t look for trouble. Like I said.
+++++I’ve got a great family. I like my job. I live in a nice house. Nothing fancy, just nice. And I’ve got this new car. Okay, it’s a Porsche. Sporty, but not a Boxster or anything, just a base model Panamera. It’s got a back seat. For the kids.
+++++But I wanted to drive it. Just me. That’s all. Just a little drive and go back home.
+++++But I drove a little longer, a little farther out than I might have. No reason. After a while I felt like stopping. It could have been anywhere. I passed a couple of convenience stores. I could have stopped at one of them.
+++++But I didn’t. I felt like a drink. Not just a can of beer out of a cooler, a real drink. Why not?
So I saw this little bar with a busted neon sign and a gravel parking lot full of pickup trucks. It looked like a place where people have a good time, and I could hear the music all the way out to the road. I parked back from the building, away from all the trucks that might kick up gravel and scratch the finish on the Porsche.
+++++But away from the lights, too. I didn’t think anything about it. Just sensible.
+++++The thing is, after driving all that way, and pulling off the road, and walking across the gravel up to the door, and even putting my hand on the door handle, I almost didn’t go in. I almost just turned around and headed back home. I could have done it.
+++++But this fella coming out pulled the door from the other side, and he stopped, and kind of looked at me standing there, and he just held the door open, waiting.
+++++So I went in.
+++++Right off, I knew I was in a sketchy place. It was packed, but I still got looks from the people at the tables, the kind of looks you get when you’re a stranger walking into a local hangout.
+++++But you don’t just turn around and walk out, right? You walk in like you belong there, or at least like you got the right, just like anybody else. Even if you think maybe you shouldn’t be there.
+++++But I liked the ragged-looking band. I liked how loud they played. I liked the way the stage was cluttered with boxes of Solo cups and plastic straws, stacked high to make room for the amps. I can’t say it was a nice place.
+++++But I liked it. Sometimes it’s like that, you know?
+++++I tried to squeeze my way past the dance floor to the bar. That’s when she bumped me and spilled the beer on my shirt. She came off the dance floor like she stepped wrong on her heel or something, and I caught her from falling.
+++++But she said “Hey!” and looked at me like I was the one bumped her, and I said “Sorry,” and tried to move past, but she put a finger out and touched the wet spot on my shirt and looked me in the face.
+++++“You owe me for that beer.”
+++++I thought it was funny. I smiled. And yeah, I looked. I’d never seen a woman wearing a fringed vest over a tank top. It caught my eye.
+++++And she smiled back. I didn’t see who she was dancing with. I didn’t see if she even was dancing with anybody.
+++++But I wasn’t looking for trouble. I wasn’t looking for anything. I went on to the bar. Minding my business.
+++++I tried waving one of the bartenders over, but it seemed like he didn’t see me, so I yelled something stupid. “Hey, Barkeep!” Like in an old western. That’s all it was. And it worked. He heard me.
+++++But he gives me a look. I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think I offended him. He just looked at me the way local people look at people they know aren’t local.
+++++Honestly, I could have used a nice frozen margarita. It was hot in there. Close. People were sweating that weren’t even on the dance floor. I could have said, “Frozen margarita,” and I bet he wouldn’t have batted an eye. It’s not a strange drink. I saw people at the tables with them.
+++++But I said, “Double Jack!” Just barked it out like it was something I ordered all the time.
+++++I only wanted one. I only ordered one. He only poured one, at first.
+++++But when I laid a twenty on the bar, he just scoops up the bill and slaps down two more shots. No hesitation, no hurry, just a look that told me I wasn’t getting any change.
+++++I must have stared at the drinks like I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t want them.
+++++But what I told myself was there’s no way I’d ever get three double shots of Jack for that price in the city. What a deal, right?
+++++So I drank them. I drank them as slow as you can drink three shots of whiskey in a crowded, country bar on a hot Saturday night.
+++++But maybe I drank them too slow.
+++++I heard somebody next to me yell, “Hey, Barkeep!”
+++++It was the gal from the dance floor. Woman, I should say. I don’t mean any disrespect. She’s right next to me, leaning over the bar. The bartender comes over—
+++++He didn’t have any trouble seeing her—and she says, “Are you the Barkeep?” And he says, “That’s what they tell me,” and I thought he shot a glance at me, and it was weird, like there had been some conversation going on. Conversation about me, I mean.
+++++But I thought I was just being paranoid, and anyway, that’s when she noticed me and says, “Hey, I know you!” and she puts her finger on my shirt again, and she says, “You’re the fella that owes me half a beer!”
+++++And she kind of laughed, and I kind of laughed, and if she’d been a guy, it could have been a tense moment, because that’s the kind of joking guys do in bars when they’re trying to decide if they want to fight.
+++++But she wasn’t a guy, and when I said, “I guess this round’s on me,” she smiled at me the way she must have learned a long time ago makes a man’s knees go all wobbly.
+++++She must have thought she was pretty slick, her tank top cut low and tucked in tight to her faded jeans, really showing off what she had. She had razor slits all down one leg, and red, licorice-strap shoes with high spiked heels.
+++++But I didn’t go wobbly. I’ve been around. I’m a married man. A family man.
+++++So I bought us two beers, and we talked and smiled some more, and two beers led to four, and beer led to whiskey, and talking and smiling led to long looks where we didn’t do either one, and that’s when married get men into trouble.
+++++And for just a second there, I might have thought that was the kind of trouble I wanted to get into. I admit it.
+++++But when she pulled away and said, “I think I better get some air,” I was grateful. The spell was broken. I was ready to go home.
+++++But I didn’t go home. I couldn’t just go, not without being rude, right? I took her outside, and the air felt good, even a little breeze blowing, and we walked around the parking lot, just strolling like, smoking cigarettes, and the next thing I know we’re standing right next to the Porsche.
And she says, “Somebody’s doing all right,” and she leans back against it and takes a big drag on her cigarette and blows a kiss of smoke up at the moon.
+++++So I say, “It’s mine,” and her eyes get all big, and she steps back and looks at the Porsche, and she looks at me, and she says, “This is your car?” Like she couldn’t believe it.
+++++But if I’d thought about it I might have thought it was funny how she’d steered us right to it, parked off there in the dark where you couldn’t hardly see. If I’d thought about it, I might even have been a little irritated how she pulled back from me in the bar, but now that she’d seen the Porsche, she was up against me with the big brown eyes and the fingers of one little white hand playing at the buttons of my shirt.
+++++But truth to tell, that’s why a man buys a Porsche, isn’t it?
+++++“Like a ride?” I said. I dangled the keys like a real suburban jackass, trying to trick his dog into going to the vet.
+++++And a voice behind me says, “Yeah, I reckon we’d all like a ride,” and I felt something poke me hard in the back, and another voice laughed, and the girl stepped back and took another drag on her cigarette, her eyes narrow and cold and looking at me like I was the dumbest prick in creation.
+++++“I don’t want any trouble,” I said. My voice sounded strange.
+++++“Well, Mister, you got it.” He snatched the keys out of my hands and tossed them to the other fella.
+++++The car whoops, and the lights blink, and doors start opening, and I’m shoved into the passenger seat with a gun at the back of my head and a shaggy beard breathing tequila on my neck. “You don’t want trouble, maybe you don’t fuck with another man’s gal, huh?”
+++++And I looked at the woman in the back seat next to him, and she blows me a kiss, and the other fella, just as shaggy and tequila-soaked as the one in the back, howls like a hyena and cranks the engine and sends us fish-tailing out of the parking lot, spitting gravel and kicking up a wild horsetail of dust.
+++++The one in back told me to hand over my wallet, and they had quite a time counting up my cash and credit cards and talking shit about my family photos. I didn’t respond to anything they said, or even try to follow it. It was all just one mother-shit-fucker-ass jumble of noise.
+++++But I noticed the further we went down the highway the quieter they got, and that’s when I knew this wasn’t just a joyride.
+++++“You can have the car.” That’s what I said.
+++++I felt the butt of the pistol crack me on the top of the head. They all laughed.
+++++“You think I want this piece a shit?” says the one in the back. “Hell, I got a F-150 with more features than this little can a sauerkraut.”
+++++“Anyway, dumbass” says the driver, “we already got the car.”
+++++“And we’re gonna chop it up into little pieces, just like you,” says the girl in the back.
+++++“‘You can have the car,’” the one in the back repeats, very sarcastic. “Pompous-ass motherfucker.”
+++++We pulled off the highway, and I thought of jumping. You can survive a jump from a moving car if you’re not going too fast. I told myself I was thinking crazy.
+++++But I jerked the handle and heaved against the door. It didn’t budge.
+++++“The fuck you doing,” the driver says. “Don’t you know these fancy cars got kiddie-proof locks?”
+++++They ragged me a little more, but their minds were on business now.
+++++We pulled up to a bank, and the one with the gun says, “Out.”
+++++We went to the ATM, me with the card, him behind me with the gun, crouched down, his hat pulled low over his eyes. In the glass I could see he wore one of those straw cowboy hats with the curled-up brim. The other one stood off to the side, out of sight of the camera, a hoodie pulled over his head. He rested a pistol across his middle, finger off the trigger, but ready.
+++++The one behind me says, “You know what to do?”
+++++I thought of wheeling on him and making a run for it, but he jammed the gun into my kidney hard enough to make me grunt.
+++++“Yeah.”
+++++“Smart boy.”
+++++He read the pin number off as I punched it in and withdrew the maximum.
+++++Back at the car he tossed the card to the girl and repeated the pin number. She wrote it down on a pad of paper I could see had rows of names and numbers. That’s when I knew for sure where this was going.
+++++“If it’s money you want, I can get more,” I said.
+++++The one with the straw hat laughed. “IF it’s money we want? That’s a good one.”
+++++“But—”
+++++This time he cracked me in the teeth. I felt it all the way to my knees.
+++++“Shall we continue, Mon-soor?”
+++++“May-wee,” says the driver, and off we went.
+++++More cards, more banks. After we finished, the one with the hat says, “Business account, money market account, four different credit cards—you some kinda big shot, asshole?”
+++++“No.”
+++++I saw the girl put all the cards in an envelope and write my name across the front. Things got wet and blurry, and I turned my face to the window, watching the lights of the banks and stores and houses of whatever little town we were passing through flicker away.
+++++We pulled off the road and barreled down an embankment near a washed-out bridge. I didn’t have a seatbelt on, and the top of my head hit the roof.
+++++“Hope you’re not too particular about your suspension,” somebody said, and I had the crazy thought—can they read my mind?
+++++We stopped where the river runs narrow and deep and the water is fast. I was ready this time when the locks popped, and I tried to make a break, but they were on me quick. I got a lick or two in, but all three of them just whaled away until I didn’t have any fight left.
+++++I heard spitting and cussing, but I couldn’t see anything until I was grabbed by the hair and pulled upright, my knees in the gravel and my ankles folded under my backside.
+++++The hat was gone, and I got my first good look at the face that went with it, but all I could see were angry eyes and flashing teeth and a long nose with a thumb of blood spreading into the mustache and beard. He had me by the hair and sneered in my face.
+++++“This is where we part ways, motherfucker.”
+++++He let go of my hair and stuck his gun out like an accusing finger.
+++++“You don’t have to—” It was all I could get out.
+++++“Oh, but I WANT to, asshole.”
+++++“But—”
+++++Begging words formed in my head, but I couldn’t say them. I saw faces, but I couldn’t call their names.
+++++“But—”
+++++“Bu-but what? You gonna beg? You gonna cry?”
+++++“Naw, man, he’s gonna tell you about his wife and kids.”
+++++“You better not, asshole. You better not say a motherfuckin’ word about no—wife—and—kids!”
+++++He stuck the gun in my eye.
+++++But—

 

[Image Credit : Photo by Elijah Pilchard on Unsplash ]