Jeff Gelb - Seeds of Fear

"I'm yours now, Bastine. I belong to you. The thing is, it's always been meant for us to be together."

"Hey, wait a minute, wait one goddamn minute. What kind of horseshit is this? I don't own nobody. I don't want to own nobody. You don't belong to me, okay? I'm perfectly willing to give you a couple hundred to help you out, but no way do you go with me. I don't have meaningful relationships and all that silly yuppie shit. This was just a one-night stand, you understand? Shaw?"

She was dressing, pretending to ignore him.

"Shaw? Did you hear what I said? You can't go."

"I can't go, you can't go," she said conversationally. She pulled on black suede slippers and crawled into the passenger seat. She looked at him and there wasn't a trace of humor on her face now. "I'm yours, Bastine. I'm yours forever."

Bastine mumbled, "I can't talk to the bitch," and flung open the cab door. He jumped down to the pavement and stalked to the cafe for breakfast. He'd deal with her later when he had a full stomach and four aspirin for the headache she'd caused to bloom over his temples. Crazy woman. Forever? Nothing was forever, and if she was old enough, she'd know that. His sexual unions — for that is what they were — never turned out this way. They cried sometimes and they begged, but they never acted so cool and in control this way.

When he came back after eating and brushing his teeth in the men's room, he found Shaw sitting right where he'd left her in the passenger seat of his truck. He took a deep breath and got into the driver's seat. "This ain't gonna work," he warned. "I don't want you along, you got that? I didn't sign up for a lifetime of crap from some woman. I didn't put a ring on your finger and waltz you to the church. Now, you're gonna have to get out of my truck or I'll call the cops. You know how long they stuff you in jail for prostitution in a truck stop? You got any fucking idea how much trouble you're gonna be in?"

"You do that and I'll have to hurt you, Bastine."

He laughed and it wasn't even funny. He lowered his voice. "You don't want to threaten me, kid. I'm a mean son of a bitch when I want to be. You oughta know that already. Look at your arms! Look what I already done to you."

Shaw lifted a small handgun from her lap and pointed it at him. "I go with you or you don't go."

"Jesus H. Harrowing Christ. What do you think you're gonna do with that peashooter? Don't make me laugh." Though he talked tough, Bastine felt his insides quaking and his breakfast wanted up and out. If she shot him, he might live through the gunshot wound, but he'd die on the spot of a heart attack. Guns scared hell out of him. He had a brief crazy urge to leap through the truck window.

Shaw leaned over the console and pressed the barrel end of the gun against his thigh. "Bastine? You believe me, don't you? I don't want to hurt you, but I will, I swear I will."

Bastine sucked air over his teeth and let it out slowly. "Okay, okay. I'm laid up here the weekend. I dump this load Monday in Tallulah. We'll talk this over until then."

"Good," she said, removing the pistol and slipping it into a small black purse. "Now, how would you like to go inside the truck stop with me so I can eat my breakfast."

Bastine nodded. The whole bizarre incident was clicking fast into place in his mind. The girl who called herself Shaw was a psychopath, unlike himself, who he considered, in contemplative moods, as nothing more than a little warped out of the normal pattern. Shaw was the real thing. She was the walking, talking embodiment of Loony Tunes.

She slept most of the day while he read a Louis L'Amour western. They ate a spare dinner, he picking at his food, she nibbling at a chicken salad sandwich.

"Why are you so quiet, Bastine? Don't you like me anymore? I don't want this silence between us."

"Tell me, Shaw, what this is all about, can you? I mean, I'm not a prize or anything. I make lousy money. I live on the road. Why me?"

Shaw leaned her head to the side to study him. "I'll tell you later. As a surprise. It'll be lovely."

"Is it the sex? I mean, hell, lots of guys will give it to you rough, if that's it. You'd be surprised how many guys will do what you want. You're a damn pretty girl." Maybe a little flattery would get him off the hook.

She simply smiled her mysterious smile and returned to her sandwich.

Bastine hung his head, thoughts black, the anger coming from nowhere to press against the tight, hot band of his skull. "Let's go to bed," he said, standing with the meal ticket, taking out his wallet to pay the bill.

Shaw slipped on the sunglasses. She took his arm and he let her, though he felt like breaking her fingers one at a time.

Hours later, orgasms later, Bastine hovered above Shaw's sweat-slathered body. "You know I don't want you," he said. "You know you can't stay with me."

She moaned and pulled him down onto her breasts, holding him tightly in her arms. She moved her hips until his limp organ swirled inside her, then began to harden. Again.

"Oh, Bastine, you're like a wild beast. I always knew you were. I saw it in you even when you were young.."

Her words turned Bastine to granite. He felt a shock travel down through his arms into his frozen hands. "What are you talking about? Who are you? What's your name?" With each question his voice rose until he was shouting. "Who are you?"

Shaw rolled from beneath him and drew the crumpled sheet between her breasts. She gnawed on the tip of the sheet, her eyes like coals in the dark. "I should tell you the secret now, yes, Bastine, it's time."

"What the hell is this all about? Where did you come from?"

"I'm from here, from the same parish as you. I grew up not far from your house. Remember the old Clancine place? I was Sandy then, Sandy Clancine. I went to school with you. But I was younger… oh, I was so young and I was always trying to catch up with you, Bastine."

He sank back on the mattress, pressed his hands together in his lap. She was someone from his past. He hazily remembered the Clancine family. They lived as poorly as he, half a dozen kids running around barefoot in rags. He hated Louisiana. He should have known nothing good could come from it.

She continued in a dreamy, detached voice. "I used to sneak out to your place and watch your daddy. He hurt you bad, I saw him. And your mama, she was almost as terrible. That time. that time she helped your daddy with the rope in the backyard… I saw that, Bastine. I prayed for you, that they'd let you down before you strangled. I would have attacked them if they hadn't let go of the rope. But I was so little. When I was ten you were already in your teens. But I knew all the secrets of everyone in the parish. I spent all my time hiding out so I could learn every thing I could. Especially about you."

"What else did you see?" Bastine covered his face with his hands to keep the memories from flooding his head. Already the sleeper smelled of the outhouse to him, the air scented with a miasma of dirty, rotten things.

She rolled onto her back and reached out to touch his arm. "I saw you take out your hate on the animals, the wild things. How you went hunting, but you maimed things, then slowly killed them. I saw you turn on your brothers and devise new tortures for them. I saw you with. girls. When you started dating, I would follow you out on the dirt paths into the forests, and I saw how you talked them into things, how sometimes it got out of hand, and you had them scared of you. I saw how you mastered them, how you controlled them.

"I wanted to be those girls, Bastine. I wanted to be your one girl. I had to wait until I was old enough to attract you, but you left. That day you packed your things and fled the parish, I cried for a week. My folks couldn't do anything with me. I stopped going to school. I started thinking about you day and night. I knew we belonged together."