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The Kick It Gives

John J. Wilson

The car is traveling over 95 mph, rocketing down the desolate stretch of Rural Route 3 that connects the bedroom community of Greencastle, a tiny little town of about 120 people, with Mt. Julip the county seat. With lights off, the dark car can be heard but not seen, except when the half moon momentarily fights its way through the skidding clouds. The driver illuminated only by green dash lights, has the grin of invincibility, a grin belonging only to the young. 

As Tammy Deever is having a smoke outside the Filler Up convenience store, she watches the Mustang go by. It looks like a sleek black bullet hurtling down the arrow straight two lane county road. She heard it coming and then it shoots past the illuminated lot and two gas pumps in a blink. She loves speed, power and danger. It makes her feel good although she knows that a new Ford Mustang isn’t going to get her where she wants to go.

“Fuck yeah” she mutters appreciatively, grounding out her cigarette with one unlaced, high top tennis shoe. She swipes at her jet black hair that has blue streaks highlighted in her bangs. The cropped and spiked short hair hangs straight down over her eyes. An eyebrow has three small rings and her tongue is pierced twice. Underneath all that dark gothic look though, is a face and body that many boys and men alike find trampy, slutty and of course, irresistible.    

“Fuckin’ get it Harly” Tammy says again over her shoulder as she walks back in, the door jingling a bell above to announce her entrance. She will miss Harly, her on again, off again boyfriend of the past year.

There were a couple of beer parties over in Mt. J tonight that she would miss because she had to be here. She needed the money. She needed to get out of this shit town and that took money. She had to start somewhere. God knows her trailer whore mom would never give her any money.

A customer, the only one in the store, waits at the counter to pay and stares impatiently at Tammy as she strolls back inside inspecting her chipped black polished nails.

“Take your time hon’, I got all fuckin’ night” Burl Hightower said to her.

She didn’t even look at him as she slid behind the counter and crossed her thin pale arms. Instead she rolls her eyes and looks out the window with a bored, slack expression.

He says nothing and continues to stare at her with his jaw muscles clenched. Worn out fluorescents lights buzz softly above them. The only other sound in the store is the old freezer case clanking away in the back of the store.

He is still in his work clothes from his shift at the Golden Meadows Dairy plant. Burl is keeping to his normal schedule; he’s on his way home from The Boilermaker, a whitewashed cinder block tavern with a low ceiling and dim lights. He goes there every Friday afternoon, drinks half his paycheck and unsuccessfully flirts with the waitress, Maryanne Cooper. He always stops here on the way home for a six pack of beer, but he’s never seen this little gothic slut.

“I can’t ring that up, I’m not eighteen” she lies, still bored and looking out the window.

“Well get somebody else who fuckin’ can.” Hightower snarls, digging his wallet out. 

“There ain’t somebody else. He called in sick.” Tammy sighs, rolling her eyes again dramatically. Dismissing him, she begins to stock cigarettes in the overhead rack above the counter. As she does, her black cutoff t-shirt with a skull and lightening bolt on the front rides up, revealing the bottom of a black lace bra.

Burl, jaw still working hard, stares at the bra cups and her flat smooth belly. He also notices that underneath that hacked up hair, she is pretty damn cute. Her ignoring him is really eating at him now. It’s worse than ignoring really, she has hardly even acknowledged him. It reminds him of his repeated failed attempts with Maryanne Cooper and then the anger really begins to boil in him.

“Ring the fucking beer up you little bitch” he growls at her and leans over the counter.   

***

It was going to be close, the Filler Up was almost halfway, but right after that was The Dip. The Dip was just that, a deep depression in this otherwise straight and flat county road. He hadn’t slowed down since Trev had yelled go to him back in Greencastle, with his other buddy Jake listening in on a cell phone on the other end. Harlan didn’t intend to back off at the dip either. He was going to go balls to the wall until he passed Jake with a stopwatch at the Crowell Road intersection, just outside of Julip.

“Fuck yeah” Harlan Beltrain whispers, still grinning as he sees nothing but dark blurred shapes all around him and the vague outline of the road he is flying down. He would set a new record tonight. He can’t see the dip but he could sense it coming now, loosening his tight grip on the wheel. You couldn’t fight the dip, you just had to go with it, and he did.

***

Deputy Sheriff Jess Glover pauses at the stop sign, and then pulls out onto Route 3. He is heading over to Greencastle for a quick swing through, just to make sure the bored country kids aren’t burning down the town.

About three miles later, a phantom car blows by. It buffeted his cruiser like the outer edge of a twister and he barely glimpses the dark shape in his headlights as it blasts past him.  

“Shee-it” Jess mutters as he takes hold of the wheel with both hands. His eyes are big as they snap to the rear view mirror.   

Braking hard, he whips the car across the dark road and sends it into the far ditch a little before heading back in the direction he had just come from. Calling in the pursuit and location quickly, he lights up the speeding car ahead, and then punches the cruiser for all it was worth.

Harlan makes a snap decision when he sees the flashing lights behind him. He will not go into Julip. They’ll nail him for sure there. Braking hard, he swings the wheel to the left and makes a screeching, fishtailing turn. He is now headed straight back towards the headlights of the police cruiser.

Patrolman Glover sees the brake lights blink once, then go solid red and knows what the guy is going to do, slows his cruiser down to make another reversal in direction and continue the chase.

“Shit” he mutters again, a dark feeling that this just wasn’t going to turn out good at all washes over him.

***

“Look mister, you better just leave. Just go. Right the fuck now. We got two security cameras and they’re looking at your stupid ass” Tammy says matter-of-factly and then pops her gum at him, as a sort of final fuck you, a ‘this conversation is over’ statement.

Burl Hightower was ready to reach over the counter, cameras or not, but behind him he hears the bell jingle above the door. She reaches up again and again her shirt goes as well. Despite himself, he can’t help but stare at a partially visible butterfly tattoo way down below her pierced belly button. It takes him a second before it registers that she isn’t reaching up for the cigarettes. Then he sees her eyes grow big and stare at something over his shoulder.

A high strung male voice behind him says “Hey asshole, turn around and get your fucking hands up, ya’ dickweed.”

Burl spins around, seeking the source of this new offender. He sees a fidgety lanky figure just inside the door, only a few feet away, swaying from side to side and shaking a large automatic at him. The guy has a stocking mask on.  

“Do it now man! NOW!” the bobbing and twitching man screeches at him.

“What the fuck?” Burl grimaced, and then with a snort of chuckling wonder in his voice, he repeats “What the livin’ fuck?” 

He put his hands up in a half ass way and stares at the masked figure that can’t stand still.

“Hands all the way UP fucker!” the man shrieks.

Burl cocks his head slightly, looking hard into the wide eyes and open mouth that are showing under the ski mask. Putting his hands up farther, but still halfheartedly, Hightower grins slightly and says “You’re just a coked up fuckin’ kid aren’t you? Just a little meth punk. Put the fuckin’ gun down before you hurt somebody you little puke.”

Burl starts lowering his hands down and he hears the little gothic witch behind him start to say something like ‘no don’t’ but the last thing he would ever hear was the boom of the .45. The noise was deafening, even louder in the confined little convenience store.

With her ears ringing, Tammy stares open mouthed at the fallen Burl Hightower. She screams, a short and shrill little chirp, her thin pale arms still frozen up in the air. She watched as a rapidly growing pool of blood around the man’s head begins to spread out. The bullet could not have hit the Hightower anymore square in the forehead and his eyes are looking at the ceiling in a quizzical way, as if he’s searching for some unknown answer. The low bubbling of blood coming up out of the wound reminds her of the low pressure drinking fountain in the backroom.

“Shit!...Shit! The money. Get the money! Now!” the gunman yells, throwing a pillow case at Tammy and aiming the unsteady .45 on her now.    

***

“Gotta be Harlan, he’s the only one dumb enough to try this shit. Not a bad kid really, but dumber’n a box a rocks.” Deputy Glover thinks quickly, glancing at the speedometer which has just topped 100 mph on his dash. Then with widening eyes he remembers the dip, a split second too late.

The cruiser jerks violently down and then bounces up, the front wheels loosing contact with the road. Out of sheer reflex, Jess Glover fights it all the way. Before he loses complete control, he thinks he sees Harlan’s brake lights again at the convenience store up ahead. It’s all a blur of landscape and swirling lights after that.  

Harlan brakes and downshifts hard down into second gear, barreling into the parking lot almost sideways. He fishtails the other way, loses it and gets it back. Shifting again, he roars around to the back of Filler Up. After he saw the cop spin out and drop back, he’d decided to try hiding behind the store. He is ready to take off on foot and into the deep woods behind the store if he has to.

Sitting in the dark with his engine off, he glanced over and sees Tammy’s car parked against the store wall. Getting out quickly, he decides to ask her for a ride home. She won’t care. He’d leave the car here until tomorrow morning. Hell, he’d claim it was stolen or taken for a joyride by someone.

He knows she would let him in the back door if he bangs loud enough. Just for the hell of it, he checks the handle to see if it’s unlocked.

‘Damn I’m rollin’ sevens tonight’ he grins to himself as the knob turns smoothly and he eases the door open.

***

At the same time, Jess Glover staggers out of the cornfield; badly cut, bruised and bleeding from a gash above his eyebrow. His cruiser has flipped in the ditch and then rolled twice into the cornfield. It had come to rest upside down with the flashing lights still turning, but he didn’t hear the siren and his radio wasn’t working.  

Lumbering up to the roadside, he realizes that he can’t hear anything at all. His vision is not much better, partly due to the blood, but he couldn’t seem to focus his thoughts very well either. Weaving on the edge of Rural Route 3 he looks both ways and takes off across it in a rambling, weaving lope. ‘Damn you anyway Harly’ he hisses through the pain and grits his teeth.

***

Car lights sweep the front windows. “Out the back. Move!...Where’s your car?!” the gunman ducks and then yells.   

“Here’s the keys. The rusty Toyota out back. Don’t take me. I can’t go. I can’t!” Tammy begins to cry loudly. She had not figured on a murder.

“You’re comin’ bitch” he yells, catching the thrown key ring.

Tammy, walking in front of the gunman with the automatic pointed at the back of her head, purposely looks back at the security camera. But past the video dramatics, there is a real, growing fear in her eyes. They continue their walk towards the backroom doors in a stilted march.

At that moment Harlan walks through those same swinging doors. He freezes, eyes wide and only a few feet away from his girlfriend and a masked guy holding a very big handgun.         

Whether out of surprise, reflex or something else, the gunman pushes Tammy to her knees and shoots Harlan once in the chest. Again the small store shakes and echoes with the boom. The force of the shot drives him back into a rack of chips and salsa. He ends up on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the doors he had just come through. A look of surprise and confusion is painted on his young face. His head droops down weakly and he gazes at his ruined chest and then his look struggles up again as he fixes his eyes on Tammy’s.

“Harlan!” Her high voice chokes out... “HARLY!” Tammy gets out a shrill hysterical scream the second time. A real scream. She manages only one more quick look back at him as she is shoved quickly through the backroom doors.

Harly is leaning forward now and reaching in her direction but he can’t hold his arm up for more than a second and it flops to the floor. He only sees the dark outlines of things for a second, like a photo negative, then it all goes dark and he feels nothing.   

Deputy Glover has not heard the gunshot inside, or the back door of the convenience store open. When the gunman and Tammy come out the door, they see the uniformed officer with his back towards them and he’s looking through the driver side window of Harlan’s Mustang.

Panicking and strung out beyond control now, the man levels the .45 again and fires. The third lucky shot of the night for a strung out meth freak, enters the officer’s upper back. It tears through the heart of Jess Glover, killing him almost instantly.

***

Authorities would never discover the fate of Tammy Deever, the kidnapped convenience store clerk. It was feared and expected by authorities that she had met a violent end. The gunman who shot and killed three men that night is never apprehended.   

What was supposed to have been a simple robbery and a staged kidnapping had been a disaster from the start. There were suppose to have been no customers. “You can’t trust a meth head Tam” her mother had always warned her, “Just can’t.” She’d been speaking from personal experience and firsthand knowledge. Christine Deever had been right for one of the few times of her miserable life.  

The money take was surprisingly good that night, but Tammy decides quickly that it is still too small to split. When she adds in the fact that the stupid fucker had killed Harly, well, Tammy has no qualms with wasting the junkie drifter she had earlier recruited. She can’t even remember the guy’s name three weeks later.

She keeps the .45 and carries it with her wherever she goes. It is big and heavy for her, but she likes the damn thing, likes the feel. She will never part with it. It probably has something to do with the kick it gives.     

The only real trouble she has with the whole thing is that sometimes, with the lights off, late at night, she still sees Harly’s face. Still sees him looking at her with that confused young face and he’s reaching for her. He’s always, reaching for her.

She is three states away these days and working in yet another shitty little store on another dark and desolate rural road. Jenny Miller has a new boyfriend and her hair is now blonde and straight, almost down to her waist.  

***

Taking a smoke break, she stands with arms crossed over a low cut sheer blouse, looking out into the late night. All she knows is that she has to get out of this shit town. That takes money and she has to start somewhere. She’s still looking good in a kind of small town, wicked hot way but she has to keep moving up while she can.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees a figure with a hooded sweatshirt emerge from the tree line and he starts across the parking lot. It isn’t her boyfriend, who doesn’t know yet that he’ll never see her again. No, it’s yet another puppy she has found that will follow her everywhere and anywhere, wanting nothing more a treat thrown his way every once in awhile. In return, he’ll do anything. This one is clean too. Sure he drinks and all, but he’s no meth freak.

Walking inside quickly and going behind the counter to look busy, she knew he would have to go too, this take would also be too small to split. Hell, as far as she was concerned, any take will be too small to split.  Like a poker player with a ‘tell’ she absently pops her gum, loudly and with some anger, a trademark ‘fuck you’ to anyone and everything.

Abruptly, a small bell jingles over the door and she almost holds her hands up before being asked to.

Copyright(c) 2007 by John J. Wilson

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