Michael Bunker - WICK

The long walk out of New York had affected him, and the cheerful optimism of the morning before had fled. Seeing the blank and fearful faces of people he’d passed in the gas lines yesterday replaced the optimism with a feeling of—what was it? Dread? He’d watched a man throw hot coffee through the open window of a van at a woman with her children in tow who had tried to cut in a gas line. He had seen police cars and fire trucks and ambulances rushing down country roads, and National Guard helicopters flying overhead. He had heard the words “war zone” used far too frequently to describe too many places along his route. It felt like the eye of the storm had passed and the winds were now reforming, only this time they were driven by people’s hot air and their ungracious impatience. “Blow, blow thou winter wind,” Shakeapeare wrote, “thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.” Clay worried that if that ingratitude turned nasty, things could go downhill fast.

After packing up his things and tightly lacing his boots, he strapped on his backpack and stepped out into the bright sunlight of Day 3 of his walk. He stretched a little and took in his environment, noticing the cars in the parking lot and even a couple of tents on the greenbelt leading into the motel. I’m not the only one on foot, he thought .

Despite the sunshine, the day was cool and brisk and portended change. Maybe it was the warning that Veronica had implied (“Not everyone is as nice as you are…”), but he got the sense that something was out there, something dangerous, or at least something with that kind of potential.

Thinking this as he stepped outside, Clay didn’t want to get caught up in chit-chat or to engage with any of the assorted characters that were milling about outside of his motel room as he stepped across the parking lot toward the lobby to return his key. There was a man who looked like he could have been a travelling salesman, wrapped up in tension and angst and jargon, talking in loud tones on a phone with someone who didn’t show sympathy for the fact that he might not get to his next appointment, and if he didn’t that he might not make his number, and if he didn’t that he might not keep his job. There was a man who walked around his eighteen-wheeler, flexing his tattooed arms and checking the cables to see if his load had loosened in the night and that his tires were all inflated, all the while glancing across the lot to the window of a diner where a waitress stood taking orders. Neither of these men, nor any of the other people who were milling about, were dangerous in themselves. Rather, it seemed that the environment, the system, the whole machine made up of the sum of its parts, was the problem. It was like an engine knocking but you couldn’t really tell from where or what piece needed replacing.

Clay couldn’t help noticing, despite his general unwillingness to put up with any foolishness this morning, the guy two doors down from his room. He was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup, cutting up fruit with a pocketknife and sticking the pieces of apple in his mouth. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he looked out of place.

The man was possibly in his 50’s to early 60’s, but fit, trim, wearing starched and faded blue jeans and cowboy boots. Wherever he was, Clay thought, this man was there on purpose . He wore a dark brown cowboy hat and a starched, blue dress shirt, and he smiled from under his heavy mustache and waved at Clay. He indicated with his pocketknife as pretty and matter-of-factly as you please that Clay should come over there and eat some fruit. Even as he did so, he had a look of indifference on his face, as if to say, “Suit yourself. If you want some, it’s sitting there waiting for you.” In some odd way this indifference was reassuring.

Clay couldn’t imagine why he would be responding affirmatively to a man waving a knife at him, but almost without any conscious thought or hesitation he strolled over to the back of the pickup and stood there uncomfortably with his hands in the pockets of his coat. He shifted in the backpack and looked at the man, and then at the fruit, and then at the dust on his boots.

“Get you some fruit,” the man said, smiling in a way that you could only really identify because of the wrinkles near his eyes. It was impossible to see the smile itself because a mustache extended down over the man’s mouth, obscuring it from view. Clay stared at him for a few seconds. The man looked like Sam Elliot, he decided, although, even as he decided this, he wondered why every cowboy in the world somehow looked like Sam Elliot. Still, the impression was unmistakable. He sounded remarkably like him too, with his deep gravelly voice and his as-yet-unidentified southern drawl.

“Go on. You look like you could use some, and fruit might get hard to come by here pretty soon.”

Clay hesitated for a moment, like a dog that’s not sure whether a man is going to kick him or pet him, and then he moved forward and took a chunk of apple. He stepped back to his safe spot and took a bite and started to chew.

Sam Elliot looked at him and smiled with his kind blue eyes, mindfully chewing on his own piece of apple. The two strangers awkwardly continued in this manner for what seemed like a very long time. In reality it was only a minute or so, but it seemed like it took forever, the two of them sitting around eating apples together like strangers who’ve met in the parking lot of a cheap motel after the worst natural disaster in memory. Breaking the moment of profound silence, the older man looked around and motioned to nowhere in particular with his pocketknife. “I’m Clive Darling.”

Clive Darling then looked around and nodded towards the tents on the greenbelt. “Things seem peaceful and serene now, but they probably won’t stay that way for long.” With that, he narrowed his eyes and wiped his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Most everyone here is out of gas. Even the stations that still have power are plumb out, and the last few stores I stopped in have been nearly stripped bare.”

He looked back at Clay and sighed deeply. “This is that moment when things could go either way. If things go bad, some of these folks might get right desperate and things could get ugly.”

Clay didn’t tell him that he’d had some of the same thoughts.

“I give it 48 hours or so, and then it probably won’t be safe on the roads after that. Least, not if things get worse.”

Savannah, Georgia. That’s how Clay pegged him. His accent was right out of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil . It was that slow, but exceedingly proper southern drawl, the one that made people sound rich but not stupid and caused anything they said to come across as critically important and wise no matter what it was they were saying. With a Savannah accent, one could say, “I do believe I’ll go pick a peach from that tree over yonder,” and it would sound as important and fascinating and even historical as, “Why don’t we all gather together and just open fire on Fort Sumter?” It was the kind of accent that had import .

Clay took in more of the picture. Clive was rich, or at least he looked it. You could tell from the way he handled the knife, the way his shirt was tucked, the angle of his hat. Very particular, like a man who had leisure to worry about such things. Despite the fact that he looked like he was used to having money, Clive seemed comfortable eating apples from the tailgate of a $50,000 pickup truck. Maybe he made his money in cattle, say, or corn or lumber. Maybe he was used to watching from a ridge, up high somewhere along a look-out, as the workers in some valley below pushed the livestock or the produce or the timber into trucks that would haul them away to market. Maybe he sat and ate apples as he figured out profit margins and devised economies of scale. Maybe, or maybe not. Sizing people up isn’t a science if you don’t get paid for it, Clay thought. Nevertheless, the man was impressive in a way that could not be denied.