King Coral - Honey Bare

After I’d turned over the motor I sat there for a couple of minutes letting it warm up before I drove away. I could hear the rain drops hammering on the roof of my car, the stream of water running down my windshield. I turned on the wipers, high speed, but they were barely able to keep the glass clear.

Then I turned on the lights and pulled away from the curb. I’d traveled only about a half block when I saw the intersection ahead of me. Like numerous intersections in San Fernando Valley, this one was flooded with a stream of water.

In the center of the intersection a car was stalled with the hub caps covered by rushing water. A man’s arm was extended out of the driver’s side window and as I approached, he waved at me to push him out of the intersection. It happened all the time. With the water that high, some of the dumb nuts never slowed down. The moment they hit it at a high rate of speed it flooded out their motor. For a second I thought about going around the car and letting him sweat it out for awhile. But I didn’t. Good old Sam. That was me!

I entered the intersection slowly, feeling the force of the water shake my car and I heard it banging up against the muffler. Gently I moved it forward until I’d made contact with his rear bumper.

I accelerated slowly, shoving his forward. After I’d gotten him out of the intersection I noticed that he was pulling over to the curb. I shoved down the gas pedal to give him enough momentum to coast over to the edge of the street.

But at that moment he was waving again, motioning that he wanted to talk to me.

I kept on pushing over to the curb, and when we finally stopped I was parked directly in back of him. He jumped out of the car and came back to me. I cracked the window down, feeling the rain drops splattering against my face.

“My car won’t start,” he said.

“It’s probably flooded out,” I told him.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that either your wires, plugs, or distributor cap is wet. Probably all three.”

“How do I get them dry?”

“Just wait a little while,” I said, “and then you try to start it again. If there wasn’t too much water, it might dry out by itself.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then you’ll have to dry everything yourself. Your best bet is to get to a filling station. Do you want me to stop at one and tell them to tow you in?”

He swung his head back and forth and stared dismally up and down the street.

“Nah,” he said. “I’d rather sweat it out. If you’ll show me what the distributor cap is.”

“You’re kidding?”

He was shaking his head. “I’m not mechanical minded. Maybe it’s time I learned.”

I didn’t especially want to give him a short course in auto maintenance; and I wasn’t happy about stepping out in the rain. I decided to make it quick, and be on my way.

“All right.” I turned out my lights and slipped out of my car.

He’d headed back towards his car but now he was even with my front wheel. He stopped abruptly and turned around.

“I’ve got a gun,” he said.

It was true. He’d whipped it out of his trench coat pocket and it was aimed at my chest. “Get up on the sidewalk,” he said.

Then I saw the light go on inside the other car. A man crawled out of it and slammed the door shut. Now he was walking towards me.

“You bastards,” I said. I had to blink rapidly because the rain was beating down on the top of my head and water was gushing into my eyes. I figured they wanted my money. And maybe my car.

I’d performed my duty like Good Sam. Twice. The first time and the last time.

The one with the gun said, “Let’s take a little walk, Lincoln. Come on.” He stepped to one side, the gun still pointing at me. “That vacant lot over there.

In the corner.”

I started walking, realizing that they didn’t want my money. He’d called me by my name. That meant they’d been waiting for me until I cane out of Honey’s apartment. I hadn’t been looking up the street while I’d let the car idle. Even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to them.

The water was above my shoe toes; and every time I took a step my feet were making sucking sounds as I pulled them out of the mud. Behind me I could hear the two of them making the same kind of noise as they followed.

It was so dark that no one would have been able to see us from the street. I couldn’t understand why they wanted me to walk to the farthest corner of the lot. And then I knew, but I tried not to think about it.

Suddenly I was very cold and there was a heavy clump of fear huddled in the pit of my stomach. Nobody likes to die. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die because I’d done nothing that merited death.

The worst part of it was that I didn’t know when he’d pull the trigger.

I felt the prickles of fear spreading across my back and shoulders and I found that I was holding my breath, getting prepared for’ the shock of the slug when it came.

“That’s far enough.”

I froze, becoming a statue with my right foot to the back of me, the shoe halfway out of the mud. Both of them came forward. When they finally stopped they were so close to the back of me that I could hear them breathing.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to turn my head to see what they were doing. When I’d pulled it around so that it was a quarter turn to the right, the back of my skull exploded.

The next thing I knew my head was being rocked viciously back and forth, there was a half dozen vague figures ghosting by in front of me, and the world was spinning. With each blow to the side of my face it felt as though my skull was cracking open even further.

The left side of my face and left eye felt strange and eventually I realized that it was coated with mud. A lot, of it was in the left side of my mouth and the gravelly dirt coated my tongue. Abruptly the blows stopped. I was slammed forward. My legs were weak but I didn’t fall to the ground.

“Can you hear me, Lincoln?”

I faked it, not wanting to answer immediately. Vaguely I began to realize that I hadn’t been shot and I’d been unconscious for a long time. I even figured it out that one of them was holding me up; while’ the other one stood in front of me, slapping me face to revive me. He slapped me again. Twice, and in quick succession.

I tried to answer him but I had all that mud in my mouth and my tongue didn’t want to function. So I merely grunted.

“You stay away from Bonnie and Honey. Do you hear?”

I heard but it didn’t make sense. Why?

This time the blows that rocked my head were really vicious. “Listen! You don’t go back to Bonnie or Honey! Now say you understand!” I grunted.

After that they worked me over. In the gut, in the ribs, the kidney area. The back of my head and my body felt like it was covered with a mass of open sores sprinkled with salt and then set afire. The pain was unbearable and before long I didn’t care anymore. I was so tired, I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t fight back.

Eventually the darkness closed in and the pain disappeared; and I was happily slipping into it, knowing it was more than the darkness.

It was a world that consisted of mud and it was cooling and soothing and it welcomed me and gave me a chance to rest.

Time and space I’d lost track of both. It was impossible to tell how long it had taken me to get from the parking lot to my apartment. My throbbing head was filled with a jumbled mass of incidents, some real, some nightmarish. But now it didn’t matter any more. I’d made it home.

My shoulder was propped up against the apartment wall next to my front door. I was doubled over weakly as I dug the key out of my pocket. It was covered with mud and I tried to dean it off the best I could before inserting it into the lock.