Max Collins - The first quarry

Shit.

I’d been hoping for one of the state-run rest stops. With a little luck, at one of those-which were just toilets and vending machines-I might have what I needed to deal with Annette’s captors, which was no audience.

I pulled off anyway. Were they going to eat again? Wasn’t that Sambo’s feast enough for them? Maybe they worked up an appetite overpowering a twenty-two year-old college girl.

The Fleetwood pulled into one of the slots along the row of restaurant windows. If these guys had a brain between them, they would take the nearest window onto that stall. I stopped at the gas pumps, cut the engine, got out and instructed the kid to fill me up with regular, which was pushing forty cents a gallon, highway fucking robbery. Then I went into the gas station portion of the interconnected buildings. They sold some trucker gear, and I bought a rabbit-lined brown nylon zipper jacket.

I’d left my corduroy jacket in the car. While I had no reason to think those two had noticed me at Sambo’s, I also had no reason not to. The gas station had all kinds of toiletries, so I was able to buy a tube of Brylcreem and a comb. I went into the Truckers Only restroom, which had showers and an array of sinks, at one of which I dumped water into my hands and dumped it on my head. Then I used the Brylcreem, and a little dab didn’t do me, no, I squeezed that shit out of the tube and combed my hair into a style that must have been at least as effective a birth control method as the Pill.

After paying for the gas, and getting an odd look from the young attendant, since I seemed to be a different customer now, I drove the Maverick over into another of the stalls. I was still flying by the seat of my pants, and when I got out and then walked past the parked red Fleetwood, knowing that the girl was in that trunk, I wondered if I could somehow get her out of there and toss her in the Maverick and just book it the hell away.

Problem was, her black escorts were seated at the window adjacent, as I’d figured they would (apparently they did have at least one brain between them). What was I supposed to do, shoot the lock off the trunk? I’d never tried that, and I doubt you have. I would have probably killed the girl and then those assholes would have come tumbling out the restaurant and jumped my ass, if they didn’t just fire through the window at me.

Or I could shoot out the window of the Fleetwood, reach in and open the car and hope this vehicle had a trunk release button; that should be standard on a Caddy, right? But where? Under the dash, or in the glove compartment, and oh by the way, those black bastards have killed me by now.

So I did what any other hero hoping to rescue a fair maiden would do: I went in and had a piece of coconut cream pie. I could use the sugar rush. The waitress was young and cute but not at all interested in a guy with greasy kid’s stuff on his hair. I ate my pie and drank my iced tea and did my best to listen to the two black guys in the booth right behind me.

Green hat: “Man, why not have some fun? Enos is gonna kill her ass, ain’t he?”

Red hat: “He might. He might not. Do you sit at the table with Enos and the others, planning shit? No. Do I? No fuckin’ way. We muscle. We goddamn good at it, but we muscle.”

“We could go someplace with her. Some motel or some shit. We tell her we let her go, she’s nice to us. We can fuck her one at a time or each take a hole.”

They were whispering, by the way. But I was right behind them, and even if I’m filling in a word here or there, trust me-I’m giving you more than the gist.

Red Hat: “You think she go for that?”

Green Hat: “Why not? These white girls, these college girl cunts, they sluts, they whores. And they curious about whether black men is all hung like fuckin’ horses, which I am and if you ain’t, that’s your problem.”

The previous had been mixed with laughter and was clearly kidding, but the guy in the red hat said, “Fuck you and the horse cock you rode in on.”

“Aw, come on, don’t be a dick. You think she won’t bargain?”

“Then what?”

“Then what, we tape her up again and take her to the boss.”

“And she tells the boss his boys diddled her up and down? How’s Enos gonna like that shit? What if Enos wants to trade the little twat? He might want her not fucked up and shit.”

“Well…I just sayin’.”

“You say too much, Leon.”

“Kiss my ass, Charlie.”

Not another Charlie!

They didn’t talk much after that. They had big platters of chicken and fries show up soon after. Yes, they ate chicken-fucking sue me. They ate chicken like all the white truckers around them were eating chicken. Jesus.

And speaking of truckers, the I-80 restaurant was packed. The I-80 Truck Stop was popular and the possibility of me getting these two alone was somewhere between slim and none.

So I finished my coconut cream pie and iced tea, and paid the check, and went back to my Maverick and started it up and sat waiting. Within minutes, Leon in his green hat and Charlie in his red hat returned to the Eldorado. Charlie again drove; maybe it was his wheels.

I let them leave the lot and take their ramp before I picked up the chase, if you can call it that. I was praying that that chicken, which everybody in the truck stop was gobbling down like junkies jamming heroin, was as greasy as it had looked and smelled going by on waitress trays. That might mean a bathroom break would come our way, and with just a little luck, that would also mean a state-run rest stop, not a restaurant or gas station.

Since I hadn’t seen either of them go off to the can, that meant those guys had the Sambo’s breakfast in their guts mingling with that greasy chicken, and if that combination didn’t explode into flying shit sooner or later, I didn’t know my chemistry.

And less than forty-five minutes later, the Eldorado pulled into a little rest stop right off the Interstate.

So did I.

The brick building was small, a glorified shed. Through its smoky glass front doors glowed vending machines. A car and two open spaces were between the Eldorado and where I sat in the Maverick. I watched the now hatless Leon rush in, holding his belly. Casually I got out of the Ford and walked into the little rest stop building. I had been able to glimpse a disgusted Charlie sitting at the wheel of the parked Eldorado, beating the heel of his hand against the steering wheel, possibly in tune to something on his radio. The engine was going.

Inside, the vending machines and a bulletin board that was mostly a big map of Illinois were in between the doors marked MEN at left and WOMEN at right. Next to the WOMEN’S door, just past the bulletin board, was another door that said PRIVATE.

I tried that door; it was locked. Over in one corner was an abandoned mop and pail, and a yellow plastic sign, an inverted V that said, CLOSED FOR CLEANING. This sign was up against the

brick wall at my far right, just shoved there when a lazy employee took off work. This theory was validated by a notice on the bulletin board above the map: NO ATTENDANT IN ATTENDANCE 10 PM-6 AM.

That seemed awkward to me: “ATTENDANT”/“ATTENDANCE.” Maybe I was hanging around the Writers’ Workshop too much. Anyway, it was nice news, knowing I didn’t have to deal with some poor janitor.

A guy came out of the MEN’S, a pasty-faced middle-aged character in a rumpled blue suit and no tie, probably a salesman. I had my hand on the restroom door, half-open, taking my time going in, watching the blue suit go out and cross to that other car parked between mine and the Eldorado.

Good.

I went in.

Man, it smelled like shit in there. Okay, that’s no surprise, but the chicken clearly wasn’t sitting well with Leon, who was in one of two stalls making a lot of noise, some of it from his mouth. I waited for him. Pee-yew, I thought.