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Segue Bullet

Mike Scofield

    Old Life: Upstate sister-in-law things packed tight in Ryder for South Florida. Looking forward to respite from divorce, alien kids, merciless job: fun in sun, Keys!
    But...
    Have last minute baggage in the form of sister-in-law brother, Peter, added to Ryder.
    Then...
    He, we, must say bye-bye to convenience store girlfriend, Lucinda. But not really bye-bye. She’s added to truck. At gunpoint. With beer.
    “We’ll work this out on the road.”
    All goes down hill but then down hill FAST!
    Peter gets drunk, gets drunk, gets drunk.
    “I’ll drive.”
    Peter and Lucinda argue, make up, get weird. Peter is contrite. Peter is wistful. Peter is sad. Is sloppy and sad. Wants me to shake his hand. Wants me to take twenty dollars for the trouble of being let off at a truckstop on the West Virginia interstate.
    “No hard feelings...?”
    Heave up the roll-up to fetch my bag.
    “Do us all a favor and drive yourself off a fucking cliff before your girlfriend gets back from the john. OK?”
    Brave: the gun is near.
    Stunned silence at my ingratitude. Hung head shuffling to the driver’s door. Something world-weary in alcoholese is said that I’m too sober to understand.
    Throws truck into DRIVE. Puts foot into engine. Jump back and dodge falling sister-in-law things. Tumble around me and smash a full-length double-wide mirror wrapped in quilts, an armoire, a lamp, a dresser sans drawers.
    Peter tears the Ryder past the gas pumps.
    Instability of this guy: underestimated.
    A harmless yellow rental truck entering the highway from a Service Area becomes a weapon that screams dangerously to a stop at the end of the ON ramp and then more dangerously executes a 3-point turn, dumping a Windsor chair into a lane of the interstate to a free-jazz honking and squealing, and then most dangerously heading the WRONG WAY down the ramp toward me and the rubble I stand amidst.
    Oh.
    Shit.
    Truck growing larger.
    How do I do this! Jump aside at last minute?
    NO! Run like hell now.
    Dash in among the parked cars and peer around a big pickup.
    Weaving Peter weaving truck. I think I catch a glimpse of him realizing he can’t hurt me and spitefully throwing the wheel hard left.
    The tires stutter squeal and the truck begs to go over but can’t because it plows down the gas pumps and sticks, straddling the gas pump island.
    Throw protective arms over head for coming explosion but fire is little, only flames licking undercarriage. Underground tanks don’t geyser and kill us all.
    Peter sits, wide-eyed, digesting what he has done.
    People run for cover but a garage hero runs to truck with extinguisher and whites out what has to be a mistake. The bemused hero looks quizzically at Peter who lurches right, comes up with the cannon and presses his temples together all over the hero before his expression can even change.
    Oh. Oh. Hero staggers backward over the gas pump wreckage and, past pale, wretches.
    Lucinda, in her Quik and Easy uniform, returns from the restroom.
    “Wow!” she says, wobbly.

    New Life: Lucinda works at Disney World, rotates through service jobs, likes it. I drive a truck. Got that! Our place on the Shingle River is new and nice. My kids come down once a year. We’re beyond happy.

 

    Originally published in Yemassee, Vol. IX, No.2 Winter/Spring 2002.

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