Burn Scars, Eddie Generous [read full novel txt] 📗

generally, they weren’t exactly conspicuous in any event. “Another hour or so ‘til we get there.” Cary stepped in pulled the door closed.

Rusty hurried back to the pickup in the Tim Horton’s parking lot. Traffic was sparse enough that they had no trouble clinging together. However, the closer they got to the cities on Highway 6, the thicker the traffic would become.

Once they hit the outskirts of Hamilton, the highway traffic quadrupled. Mostly it was cars, but a few transport trucks kept the slow and steady in the right hand lanes. Police cruisers blew by every few minutes and Rusty tightened his grip on the steering wheel with each set of running lights moving into the light-speckled horizon.

Rusty followed as Cary merged into the Highway 1403 lane and the pace picked up drastically. For a moment, with the crosswind attacking, it was difficult to breathe inside the truck. The flow in the cab swirled, sending a whipping frenzy through the broken window, fast enough that twelve Timbits didn’t hold the box steady on the seat and Rusty had to put a hand on it. Once he straightened into a lane, the atmosphere normalized and he could breathe freely.

It wasn’t much different from the smaller highway, just brighter and faster. The task remained the same: stay close to Cary and go where he went.

Time mounted and Rusty felt his sore body relax some. Driving into the triple digits always had a soothing effect on him. For the first time in many days, he imagined buying something useless but fun with his chunk of the money—only a piece going to fun, of course, even his fantasies knew better than to stray too far afield. Nineteen minutes after getting on the highway, Cary signalled to take an exit toward Hamilton’s waterfront. Not a nice area, it was mostly industrial, and smelled as such; it featured a lake teeming with chemical waste and if stories were true, three-eyed fish. Mostly it was warehouses and dated and ramshackle two-storey homes.

Rusty checked his mirrors and hit his blinker. A gust crossed the smashed window again and picked up the Tim Horton’s packaging. He put his hand on the donut box to keep it from flying away when it lifted, instinctively grabbing at it because food remained within, but the wrapper from his bagel was already gone like an exorcised ghost.

Instantly, lights flashed behind him, filling the cab of the truck with the understanding of trouble, big trouble. His guts lurched again and adrenaline poisoned his veins, stiffening him. A voice inside told him to gun it, run for his life, but an ingrained, cooperative nature took hold. Rusty did as he had to and pulled to the paved shoulder of the exit lane, watching Cary trail away. Last he saw, Cary took a left at the first T intersection from the off-ramp.

He watched his rear view mirror like it was good porn, but nothing was happening yet.

“Come on. Come on,” he said.

By the time he’d thought of it, the walkie-talkies were out of range and his beeps went unacknowledged. The cop was doing whatever it was cops did to find all the previous dirt on a vehicle and Rusty watched for all the signs he was deeper than deep, imagining the next steps: the cop coming up, the cop looking in the back, saying something like is that blood and get out with your hands behind your head and spread’m and you’re going to jail for a long ass time you scar-faced, murderous freak.

With a shaky hand, he reached into the glovebox for the ownership and insurance papers. They were there with a dozen condiment packets and three white napkins. Then he reached into his pocket for his wallet. He didn’t even know if Cary’s tags were up-to-date. Almost had to be, Cary was considerate, didn’t like to draw attention. Cary was the best of the working class ilk and played by the rules—until recently, anyway. Before Linda got to him, he was almost too good to be true.

The cruiser door finally opened and the officer started walking with long, steady steps. Rusty tried to balance his breath, finding a modicum of hope in that at least one point of his damned fantasy proved wrong.

“Licence and registration,” the officer said. She wore a ponytail beneath the uniform hat. She was shorter than Rusty and slimmer in the shoulders.

“Not my truck,” Rusty said, perhaps a little too quickly, handing everything over.

“Oh?”

“It’s my friend Cary’s. Cary Watson.”

“Okay,” she said and started away with the sum of what he’d handed her.

Rusty was a sitting duck, one already shot out of the sky. Dead. Dead. Dead and Purgatory was waiting on the side of the road to find out whether or not you were about to be right and proper screwed. Waiting was part of this cop’s game for Rusty.

And he did wait. And watched. And imagined every terrible scenario that came to mind. If there was blood, he was going to say it was deer blood, or pig’s blood, or dog’s blood, maybe. He didn’t have time to settle on which one sounded like the best and most likely excuse for it being all over him.

She was back, suddenly.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“Uh, maybe.

“And?”

“The wind whipped some garbage out the window?”

“I pulled you over because you littered—where’d the window go?”

“Broke, uh, a deer came out of the bush, at a hill. Freaked out when it landed in the box.” Not a pig or dog, but better, it was always best to stick to a lie and then embellish it with a borrowed truth. Maybe this even seemed plausible.

“Where was this?”

“In the bed,” Rusty said, pointing over his shoulder.

The cop sighed. “In what part of the world did this happen?”

“Oh, outside Andover. In the country. Uh, northeast