Toni Sala - The Boys

He was already stepping on the gas when he heard the motorcycles behind him. He saw them in the rearview mirror, and slowed up again to wait for the teenagers to pass him. When they were out of sight he exited the highway at the first road he came across, turned around, and went back to the scene of the accident.

He swerved his Megane onto the shoulder. He parked where the motorcycles had stopped before and found it all banal: the black S’s on the asphalt, the bouquet of flowers tied with a white ribbon around the wounded tree trunk, and the smattering of glass on the ground. The violence of the accident — the extinction of two lives — had nothing in common with the stillness of the tree nor with the cement mass of the Montseny in the background. He remembered the car in the photograph with its engine on the ground, the mourners, the parents’ sobs. They had nothing to do with it either.

The highway that linked Vidreres with the main freeway had little traffic. He heard the rhythm of some music a kilometer away. He looked up. The girl from before was dancing, holding her cell phone to her ear. It was just a moment, the music rode in on a gust of wind. He could no longer hear it, but he was captivated by the sight of the girl’s hair and white dress, silhouetted against the fields and little houses of Vidreres. The distance made her dancing more precise. The flame of a candle in memory of the boys. Suddenly, the girl was still. A truck was approaching. It was the truck that was loaded down with hay before. Its turn signal flashed and it slowed. The girl got excited and took up her dance again, more joyfully, to convince the client, or maybe to show him that she wasn’t dancing for him.

The truck left the highway onto the access road, and stopped just past the girl. The driver stuck his head out of the window and looked back without turning off the engine or his turn signal. Ernest recognized him. The girl continued dancing. The truck driver started waving to get her attention. He must have been shouting at her. The girl danced as if she didn’t hear him, with her cell phone against her ear. The driver disappeared back into the cab of his truck. He shut off the engine. He got out and stood by the door, hands on his hips. The girl didn’t even look at him. The driver put a hand in his pocket, pulled out his wallet, opened it, and held out a bill to her. He waved it at her. The girl stopped. The trucker put the bill back in his wallet. The girl walked toward him. Then he leaped into the cab and started the engine. When she reached the driver’s side door, the truck’s horn blared with such violence that the girl jumped onto the highway without looking. If a car had been passing just then, she would have been hit.

The truck backed up a few meters. The girl followed it. The truck accelerated. Finally, the girl stopped. The truck stopped too. The girl again walked toward the truck. When she was beneath the driver’s side window, he honked the horn again. The girl covered her ears. She turned to leave. Then the trucker stuck his arm out of the window and closed his hand, leaving his middle finger raised. The girl turned, made the same gesture, and started to shout, but over the noise of the truck she couldn’t be heard.

The truck driver advanced slowly until he reached Ernest’s car. He stopped the truck behind it and got out.

“What a whore,” he said. “Did you see that? When I showed her the bill it got her attention. . fucking whore. Maybe she thought I’d pay her a hundred euros! Who knows what she’s on. Look how she’s dancing.”

She had turned to dance facing them, to provoke them. The truck driver lifted his arm.

“Little whore!. . Littttle whooore!. . Come here, you little pussy!. . There are two of us! Litttle whooore!. . Come here, littttle whooore!”

The girl made another rude gesture, turned her back to him, and kept dancing.

“When they’re high they don’t concentrate,” said the truck driver. “But I have to admit she’s really hot. You gotta admit she’s really hot. Thin with small breasts, easy handling. . A little ass the size of my hands. An easy little pussy. There aren’t many like that. You see, over on the other side of the highway?”

There was a white van half-hidden behind a tree.

“She’s new. They’re keeping an eye on her. I’m not surprised, she’s out of this world that whore — I could lose my mind over her. Am I right or am I right? What do you say? Sure is a coincidence to find such a nice piece, just the way I like ’em, isn’t it? Let’s see. How can it be that I’d find her here, on this bit of lost highway, right as I’m passing by, when I never go this way? A new girl? Was she waiting for me? Right now if somebody said: Tell me, Miqui, what kind of girl are you looking for exactly? Ask for whatever you want. How do you want her? Like this one, yes or no? Would you change anything about her? No. Could you improve her? Impossible. Well, here you go. All for you. Seriously, man, wouldn’t you be suspicious? Really, I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be suspicious. But I’m cranky. I’ve had a crappy morning. Maybe it’s instinct. A man can get it on with a goat, with a hen, with another guy, if need be. I don’t know, maybe she’s not as hot as she looks, you know what I mean? What do you say? What do you think? Look at her. Is she fine or what?”

“Too young.”

“She’s super hot. It’s so obvious. What, you like old ones, or what? The problem is she’s high. When they’re high they don’t concentrate.”

Then the truck driver saw the bouquet of flowers on the tree.

“Shit,” he said. “They must be fresh, too.”

“I didn’t know them,” said Ernest, as if he’d been caught taking advantage of a tragedy. “I don’t know anything about it. I work in Vidreres, but I’m not from here.”

“Well, it’s lucky not to be from here today. Unless you’ve got my bad luck, because I had to deliver some bales of hay to the house of the girlfriend of one of the guys who died at this tree. There were two of them. This was their final stop. I had to spend the morning in the social club’s bar, scratching my ass with the girl who works there, and then her dad told me they just came from the burial of a very close friend of their daughter’s. Then I saw the daughter. . oh man.”

A few cars passed, coming from town. The drivers slowed down and glanced at the tree.

“We’re idiots,” said the trucker. He walked past the plane tree and pissed behind the trunk. “We should be used to it by now. You think thirty or forty years will make a difference? Even fifty, you think that’ll make a lick of difference?”

“The years don’t belong to you, no.”

“They never belong to you,” said the truck driver.

“When I got here, there were some kids,” he said in his defense.

The trucker came around the plane tree, zipping up his fly. He stepped on the broken glass, extended his hand, and pulled a flower out of the bouquet.

“We must be taking turns. First the kids, then you, then me. .” he said. “Do you know Cindy?”

“Cindy from the club?”

“She is a fox, too, isn’t she?” He plucked another flower and turned. “I don’t get it. Why do people put out flowers? It’s bullshit. Where do you usually die? At home or in the hospital, right? And no one puts out flowers there. These bunches of flowers bug me. Dead people don’t give a shit about flowers. You take flowers to the cemetery, not the highway. Two days from now nobody’s even going to remember. It’s disgusting, rotting flowers all over; I see them everywhere. We should be happy, shit, two more chicks for us; let’s worry about the girls. Damn, that one over there was nothing to sneeze at. She was begging for some tenderness.”