Robert Lubrican - For Want of a Memory

The wipers were caking up with frozen slush. He thought about stopping and knocking the stuff off, so they’d clear the windshield better. He was afraid that if he got out and moved around, though, that he’d find something else wrong with him. He’d been hunched over the wheel, his hands frozen to it for so long, that he wasn’t sure if the pains he was feeling were associated with that … or with other bullet wounds.

Five more miles, now. Then he could rest and get warm.

Lou Anne Rowan hustled from the babysitter’s front door to her car, which was still running. It was a miserable night, but she knew her boss would bitch and moan if she didn’t show up for work. It was unlikely there would be much work to do, but he wouldn’t care about that.

She felt lucky that she’d met Roslynn. She had to drive four miles out into the country to get Ambrose there, but Roslynn was willing to watch him from eleven-thirty at night until two the next afternoon, while Lou Anne worked the graveyard shift at "The Early Girl Eatery," a 24 hour diner on highway six, and then got some sleep. Working nights let Lou Anne spend her afternoons and evenings with her four year old, who was the light of her life and made all the horse shit worth putting up with. Besides, when he was at Roslynn’s, he had kids his own age to play with during the mornings.

While others met in this story thus far were all unremarkable in appearance, Lou Anne broke the mold. In fact, she’d broken it when she was thirteen and had been ever-so-noticeable ever since. The truth was that she would stand out in any crowd the average man … or woman … might wish to assemble.

Standing five feet nine inches in her bare feet, she had the body of a well developed fifteen year old. Pale skin, with a rosy hue, made her look like she’d just stepped in from the cold. A broken nose from her youth had healed slightly crooked, but no one really noticed that because her lips, while small, were lush in a way that drew attention to them. Her voice might have had something to do with that, because her voice sounded like she might be pushing thirteen.

Lou Anne was no child, however. At twenty-four she had been a lover half a dozen times, a mother once, and a thoroughly remarkable looking woman the entire time.

With the onset of puberty, Lou Anne had decided she wanted to look different from the other girls. She’d accomplished that by the simple expedient of shaving the sides of her head, leaving a wide mohawk, of sorts, except that the hair that was left wasn’t stiffened or cut short. Pick a color of the rainbow and she had dyed what was left of her hair that color. She had also made it some colors that are not in the rainbow, like electric pink. Occasionally, she even left it the almost black that she’d been born with. That hair was left to flop down over one side of her face. It was long enough that it went to her jaw, sometimes, but was usually cut short enough to leave both ears clear. Startlingly intense eyes peered through that hair, when it fell across her face.

Doc Martin’s, leather vests, and a certified, genuine Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket made her look like a rebellious and dangerous girl. In reality, though, she was a sweet young woman. She didn’t go in for the dark makeup that would have suggested she had goth tendencies. She just liked looking like she’d just as soon kill you as argue. It made getting through high school much less tense. Of course, most high school bullies tend to shy away from what they believe to be Satan-worshiping lesbians, for fear of having a hex put on them. Tattoos had been added, as sort of a garnish, when she was fifteen. She’d actually had her parents' consent for that, which gives you some idea of the freedom she’d enjoyed as she grew up. She disdained piercings, except in the ears and her navel.

Lou Anne had also disdained college, and had taken a job as a waitress in a small town she found herself in one day. That didn’t mean she was uneducated. Far from it. She’d always been curious about things, and loved learning just for the sake of learning. She was, in fact, probably better educated than the average college sophomore, though not in any specific educational track. She didn’t think college was a bad idea … she just hadn’t gone to one.

Some of that was because, out of the abandonment of joyfully exploring sex, came an unplanned little bundle of trouble, that had turned into a bundle of joy. With a little boy to support, she didn’t feel like she’d gotten a raw deal. She’d just needed a job and taken the one that was offered, though her future boss did look askance at her, initially.

She was popular at The Early Girl for a lot of reasons. She was a good waitress, for one thing. Her memory for details was astonishing. She knew her regular customers and what they liked, or might like. Those customers liked her for that, but one of the main reasons they returned again and again, was that the diner, situated on a well traveled highway, also got a lot of one-time customers. It was watching Lou Anne deal with those customers that was sometimes entertaining.

Lou Anne didn’t take shit from anybody, but she wasn’t obvious about it. If a trucker pinched her butt, she just smiled in that flirty way she had, and then accidentally spilled hot coffee in his lap. Whole plates of food had ended up on shirt fronts too, or in laps, if the offending customer didn’t drink coffee.

Regulars liked to make bets on who she would flirt with, and who she wouldn’t … what she would take, and what she wouldn’t … who she would smile at, and who would receive her wrath. To Hank, the owner, she was a pain in the butt, but the regulars made sure he knew that wherever she went, they’d go too, so he had to put up with her. Besides, sometimes she even flirted with him … just a little … if he was being nice to her.

The first second Kris knew something was wrong was when the world lurched and he was thrown to one side. He had nodded off, and there was no shoulder or ditch to drive on. There was only a drop off, beyond which were thirty feet of precipitous downhill terrain, at the bottom of which was a river.

The car rolled five times, traversing those thirty feet. Not being strapped in, Kris flopped around in the interior, amidst every loose item in the car, which filled the air with projectiles. The driver’s side window exploded in a hail of glass chips, which were added to the storm of things hitting his body. Rolling one last time, the car came to rest on the frozen surface of the river, upside down.

Barely conscious, Kris tried to gather his wits. His head wound had reopened, and he could feel blood running into his eyes and down his face. A horrible knocking noise came from the engine, which suddenly died. He smelled gasoline, and terror produced a surge of adrenaline. He wiggled through the broken window in a silence that was almost shocking after the noise of the car rolling down the hill. He became aware of creaks and cracking noises as his hands scrabbled on the ice.

His legs had just cleared the window when a crack like a rifle shot filled the silence. The car lurched and Kris scrambled away from it as it began sinking through the ice. Water rushed up onto the ice he was scrambling across and soaked his pants and side. He reached for a branch and pulled himself onto the snow-covered shore.

The only light was from the headlight, which suddenly went out, leaving him in darkness. He knew he had rolled down. It was freezing. He was tempted to just sit down and let it all be over, but something drove him to start climbing. The adrenaline helped, for the first twenty feet, and then he had to stop and rest, gasping.

Even though it was too dark to see, he wiped the blood from his left eye. He knew that if he didn’t get to level ground soon, he’d give up.