Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

The deputy, who will be driving him to his meeting with the district attorney, has a reddish-blond mustache, graying sideburns, and light-blue smiling eyes. He folds a stick of Wrigley’s chewing gum onto his tongue.

‘Trying to quit smoking. Wife hates the smell. Car’s over there.’

He nods toward the vehicle. It’s splattered with mud, which is drying in the morning light, forming a dull crust on the fenders.

Sandy and the deputy walk toward the car.

Today is the day he finds out just what lies he’s to tell when he testifies before the grand jury. He doesn’t even know what a grand jury is. Probably something like a grandmother: a jury of really old people. Maybe they’re wiser than a normal jury. It doesn’t matter; he doesn’t want to do it. Just thinking about talking in front of a group of adults makes his stomach ache. He isn’t sure he can lie the way he’s supposed to lie. In the past when he’s lied it was to get out of immediate trouble. It was thoughtless lying. Like a tapped knee kicking out, a reflex lie shot out of his mouth before he could think to be honest. This will be a story given to him by someone else, a story he’s supposed to speak as if it were truth remembered. He’s afraid he’ll forget what he’s supposed to say, or say it wrong.

He can’t do that. This is a lie to get him out of trouble too, more trouble than he’s ever been in before, and he doesn’t even have to concoct a story, only remember one. He can do that. He’ll be nervous and sick to his stomach the whole time, but he can do it. They probably won’t even think there’s anything strange about him being nervous. Anybody would be. Even someone telling the truth.

He can do it. He can do it because he has to.

He reaches for the back-door handle.

‘You can sit in front with me if you want.’

‘Okay.’

He slides into the front passenger’s seat and pulls the door closed behind him.

The deputy slips in behind the wheel, his weight rocking the car.

‘I got a boy about your age,’ he says. ‘Good kid. Great shortstop. You any good at baseball?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Bet you would be with a little practice.’

Sandy doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. He simply looks at the deputy for a moment, wondering what it might have been like to have a father like him, a father with smiling eyes and easy conversation, then, realizing he’s been staring too long, he looks away embarrassed. He looks out through the water-spotted windshield to the dirt driveway curving out to the street. He’s glad to be leaving this place. He knows it’s only temporary, but he’s glad all the same.

The deputy starts the car. The engine rumbles to life. The deputy puts the car into gear, and they roll down the driveway.

Sandy looks back over his shoulder and watches the buildings shrink. He wishes they would get so small they’d disappear.

Then he wouldn’t have to come back.

2

Fred sits in his Mack truck. The truck is parked on the side of the road, half on the shoulder and half on the gray asphalt. He sits with a porcelain mug of coffee resting on his fat stomach. The collar of his T-shirt has mostly torn away from the rest of the shirt, sitting apart like a cotton necklace. He sips his coffee and fishes through his ashtray for a butt worth smoking. He should have bought a packet of cigarettes this morning. Usually when he fills up his tank with gas he paces the area and finds several good lengths of cigarette on the asphalt — he especially likes the ones with lipstick on the end; it feels sexy to smoke them, like he’s kissing the women whose lips last touched them — but after yesterday’s rain there’s nothing but smears of paper and loose tobacco.

Goddamn rain ruins everything.

He finds a butt with at least half a dozen hits left on it and sticks it between his lips. He wipes the gray film of cigarette ash off his fingers and onto his Levis. He strikes a match and lights his cigarette and takes a good deep drag. The cigarette is old and inhaling its smoke tastes like licking an ashtray. He doesn’t care. He takes another drag and follows that with a swig of coffee.

The sheriff’s car rolled by him, heading toward the juvenile-detention facility, about fifteen, twenty minutes ago. It should be heading back soon, and this time with the boy in it.

He starts the truck. It rumbles to life, the big engine turning over slowly.

The driveway’s about a mile further up the road, which should be enough distance for him to get this hunk of rust up to speed. With the weight it’s got behind it, it’ll do just what’s needed. And it’ll look like an accident too. So long as it goes the way he wants it to, and so long as there ain’t no witnesses around to contradict him.

He takes another drag from his cigarette and follows that with another swig of coffee. He wishes a man could live on cigarettes and coffee. If he could live on just that he’d never eat nothing else ever again. Except maybe the occasional donut. A man without a sweet tooth is a man who might as well hang himself in his coat closet, because he don’t know what life is for.

The Sheriff’s Department ain’t gonna be happy about one of their own getting killed in an accident, but so long as it is an accident there won’t be much they can do. It’ll just be one of those tragedies that no one could have predicted. They’ll put a flag on his coffin and shoot some rifles at the clouds and call it a day.

He watches the sheriff’s car pull out of the driveway, just a toy at this distance, and turn toward him. He puts his truck into gear, eases off the clutch. The truck jerks and rolls out into the street, rumbling like the great metal beast it is. As he picks up speed, he slurps down the rest of his coffee and tosses the mug aside. It bounces off the seat and clunks to the floorboard, clattering against the litter lying there — another mug, a Mason jar lined with black mold, a few nuts and washers, loose paperwork, a red brick. He takes a final drag from his cigarette, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, and tosses it out the window. He waves the smoke from his eyes, wipes his greasy forehead with the back of a wrist, grips the wheel in both hands.

It’s time to earn his money.

The deputy’s car is only three quarters of a mile away and the distance is closing.

He shifts into second, then third. He checks his rearview mirror. No one behind him, the road is clear. This is good, better than good. It’s necessary.

As the deputy’s car approaches Fred yanks his steering wheel left, into the oncoming lane. The car’s horn honks. Fred can barely hear it over the rumble of his truck’s engine, like a goat’s dumb bleat.

He shifts into fourth gear.

Now the two vehicles are less than a quarter mile apart. Fred’s speedometer claims the truck is going just under fifty. Add in the speed of the deputy’s vehicle and that should be plenty.

Another bleat from the deputy’s car.

Then it swerves into the lane his truck should be occupying. This is just what Fred was hoping for. Deputy was trying to pass another car, see, swerved into his lane, and he couldn’t help but run straight into him. He was coming right at me, officer, what the hell could I do? Run myself off the road? Get myself kilt?

Just as the vehicles are about ready to fly past each other, Fred jerks his steering wheel to the right. Hard.

3

Sandy sits in the passenger’s seat and looks down at his right hand as the deputy pulls the car from the driveway and into the street. His middle finger is still swollen and purple. The swelling makes it difficult to bend. He pushes the bruised finger against the armrest. It hurts, but he likes the hurt. It reminds him of what he did to that boy.