Dead Stop Page 4

  A brief flicker of distant lightning lit the room, causing her to look up and glance at the clock.

  “Crap,” she muttered, “Looks like the rain is almost here. If there’s going to be any supper for Dr. Killjoy, I guess I better get moving.

  Rachel grabbed her jacket off the hook, started for the door, then came back to her desk to grab her Kindle and notebook as well. She decided she might as well have a book to read if the storm got bad and she stayed late. And who knows, maybe she could also write Mrs. Tatum something while she sat out there.

  A distant rumble of thunder mirrored her thoughts on the subject, and she turned and headed for the door.

  ###

  Twilight - Deke

  “You want me to what?!” Deke choked on his Coke and sputtered at his grinning companion. “Are you out of your mind?”

  The two sat parked beside the water tower on the low hill overlooking Masonfield, drinking sodas and watching the storm front roll in. The line of clouds towered over the little town. They rumbled with internal flashes of light that ricocheted back and forth throughout the approaching mass. Tiny street lights started to flicker on, a good half hour earlier than normal as the great shadow moved across the streets and houses. The distant lights of the football field already blazed with the game well under way.

  “Calm down,” Harley laughed. “You act like I just asked you to jump off a roof or something.”

  “Yeah? Well that might hurt too but it would be a lot less humiliating!”

  “Aw c’mon, Deke. You’ve asked out girls before. Hell, you were running around with that Harper girl when I first got back.”

  “Yeah, but that was Molly Harper. This is a whole different ballgame!”

  “How?” Harley took a long swig of his drink then crumpled the can. “Did Molly have webbed feet or something?”

  “No! Jeez, Harley!”

  “Okay, just checking. You never know. So what’s the big problem here? I don’t see it.”

  “The problem is, we’re talking about Stacey Collins.”

  “So?”

  “So?” Deke looked at Harley as if he had grown a second head. “We’re talking about me asking out Stacey Collins! Do you realize who she is?”

  Harley squinted at Deke, tossed the can into the back of the truck, and started the engine. Then he tilted back his hat and made a big show of scratching his head.

  “Let me think…works at the Textro, pretty face, sexy smile, sunny disposition, and ginormous ta-tas. That Stacey Collins?”

  “Harley,” Deke shook his head, “you just don’t get it. I went to school with Stacey. She was a pom-pom girl…hell, she was THE pom-pom girl. She was runner up for both Homecoming Queen and Prom Queen. She dated the quarterback, fer God’s sake. She was way up there on her end of the social ladder…and let’s just say I was a few rungs down.”

  He wasn’t about to go into just how many rungs those were.

  “Really?” Harley shrugged and pulled the truck out onto the roadway. “Well, high school is over and now she’s a waitress at the Textro, trying to keep her ass from getting grabbed by every horny trucker who drops in. She might not look down on you from as high as you might think. Besides, the worse that can happen is she says ‘no.’”

  Deke wasn’t so sure about that. He had a pretty vivid mental image of the gorgeous waitress dissolving into a fit of hysterical laughter so full of feminine scorn the mere sound of it would melt him into a puddle of pure humiliation.

  “So this is why you wanted to go hang out at the Textro tonight, isn’t it.”

  “Well, I had noticed you looking at her before, and I just thought…”

  “Of course I was looking at her, Harley! I’m male and I’m human! I’ve noticed the other hot number they have waitressing there too, you know.”

  “I just thought,” Harley persisted, “that you have been pretty down in the dumps lately and needed to do something to shake things up. I hear she’s available right now, and I think it would be good for you to take a risk and ask her out.”

  “Getting my pride squashed and used as toilet paper ain’t exactly what I call shaking things up, Harley.”

  “Oh come on,” the older redneck laughed again. “Now I know you’re bullshittin’ me. You’ve been turned down before, and you survived.”

  “Yeah, but those were surprises. At least I thought I had a chance with those girls. Besides, what would I say? Hey Stacey, how’s it going? You want to come hang out over at my house with me and Mom?”

  Harley didn’t answer right away.

  The two sped down the hill in the rattle trap truck, neither speaking for a moment. Harley reached over and popped open the glove box with a sharp blow and pulled out a cd case. He fished out the disc and pushed it into a dusty cd player he had duct taped on top of the dashboard.

  “Oh no,” Deke groaned. “Not this.”

  “It’s time for some man-up music, Deke. You need this, son.”

  The deep twang of a steel guitar rang through the truck to the tune of Ghost Riders in the Sky. Deke rolled his eyes as Harley started beating the steering wheel to the rhythm of the song with his hands.

  “Harley,” he raised his voice to be heard over the music, “this ain’t the answer to everything, y’know.”

  “It is for what ails you.”

  “Aw c’mon. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Harley didn’t answer right away, but chose to sing along with the song instead. It didn’t end until the truck chugged to an intersection where they turned off the road and onto the highway heading away from town. The shadow of the great line of clouds fell across them as they accelerated down the roadway towards a distant white sign glowing on the horizon.

  “Your problem,” Harley nodded towards him, “isn’t that you’re afraid she’ll turn you down.”

  “Oh no?”

  “Nope. You’re scared to death she is going to say yes.”

  “What do you mean, ‘is going to’? I’m not sure I’m doing this.”

  “You will.”

  “Oh, you think so? I’m just gonna march up to the hottest living female in Mazon County and say ‘Hey babe, how about you and me gettin’ together and startin’ something special,’ huh?”

  “I don’t know how you’re gonna do it…and I sure don’t recommend that approach…but you will. You promised, remember? Besides, you need to.”

  “I do?”

  “Yep. You need to start doing something to feel good about…even if it means getting shot down. Remember, it ain’t about whether or not you win every battle but whether or not you fought them. There’s the way you win the war of life.”

  “That’s deep, Harley.” Deke rolled his eyes. ”Maybe I ought to just walk in and shoot the girl. It’ll save us both a bunch of embarrassment and I don’t have to grow old living with my Mom.”

  “That’s a solution too,” Harley nodded sagely.

  “You’re not helping.”

  Deke felt a small pool of acid form in his stomach as the Textro sign grew larger in the windshield. Even if by some unbelievable miracle she agreed to this, what the hell was he going to do with a girl like Stacey Collins?

  “You see, you are going to do it. Good for you!”

  “I am? Oh really?”

  “Yep. I can tell by the look of sheer terror on your face. You’re already considering outcomes.”

  “You’re a real pal, you know that?” Deke watched the approaching sign like it was a harbinger of doom. “If I ever get hit by a bus, at least I know who I can count on to tell me how painful it looked.”

  “I’m just here to help.”

  “Oh, yeah? So what exactly am I supposed to ask this girl out to do? Sit at home and watch Jeopardy with Mom?”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  “Dammit! If you’re going to throw me to the wolves, you can at least throw me a bone to wave at them! This is your stupid idea, so how about a little help?”

  “Listen to you!�
�� Harley crowed, “Think about where you are…now you have reached a place where the idea of succeeding in asking out a hot girl scares you.”

  “I know, Harley! Maybe I ought to start smaller. What do you think?”

  “I think you would only end up with ‘smaller’…which is part of your whole problem. If you don’t do this, you’re going to end up ten years from now sitting at home with your mom and making excuses to yourself for another girlfriend with webbed feet.”

  “Molly didn’t have webbed feet!”

  “Don’t you think it’s time you upgraded your criteria from that?”

  Deke slapped his forehead into his palm, and then dragged his hand down his face to see they were arriving at their destination.

  The Textro was a medium sized truck stop. It sat near the front of a five acre square of grease-stained asphalt at the corner of the US Highway 103 and a small country road. Its bleak isolation was accented by the cornfield bordering the parking lot on the other two sides. The main building was a rectangular structure with large plate glass windows running across the front and about two thirds of the way down each side. A large row of gas pumps sat under a red and gold awning out front of the store/restaurant, and another long awning covered the diesel pumps off to the south.

  At the rear of the lot, a large maintenance building housed the garage and mechanic shop. Attached to it was a smaller structure containing a restroom, showers, and a small locker room for the truckers parked nearby. Most of the trucks were parked in a line near the back of the parking lot. At the moment, only the tall Textro sign and the red and gold neon around the top of the main building was lit, leaving the trucks sitting back in the gathering gloom.

  “You ready to do this, kemosabe?” Harley pulled the old pickup into a parking space between the gas pumps and the front of the building. The spaces for cars ran in a row parallel to the building, about thirty feet away from the front sidewalk.

  “Just give me a minute,” Deke complained, his throat suddenly tight and dry. “I need to think up an approach that at least has some chance of success here. You act like you just want me to run in there and tackle her or something.”

  Harley laughed.

  “Now I would pay real money to see that!”

  Deke shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  “You’re a sick man, Harley,” he sighed. “Just so you know.”

  “But I’m in your corner, Deke. Never forget.”

  “Oh yeah, lucky me,” Deke grumbled and opened the truck door. “Well, let’s get on with it. I can figure out how to do this over some coffee.”

  He hopped out and met Harley in front of the truck before the two strode across the parking lot under the darkening sky. The air felt thick and electric from the approaching storm. It wasn’t quite nightfall, but the windows already shined with a cheery light casting long bright rectangles on the ground outside. Still, the only hint of autumn Deke could detect was the less than usual number of bugs starting to fly around the outside lights.

  He pushed open the door and stepped into the truck stop.

  The entrance opened into the store side of the truck stop, with another glass door to his immediate left leading to the restaurant. The store itself featured a bright collection of knick knacks, bumper stickers, drinks, and the usual junk food that people on the road found convenient to eat on the go.

  Gladys Deacon looked up from her perch behind the counter, then immediately lost interest and went back to watching the little portable TV behind her counter. A skinny, middle aged woman with a beehive hairdo, Gladys had been a fixture here as long as Deke could remember. The only concession the schoolmarmish clerk had made to the changing times was now she stepped outside to smoke her cigarettes. Otherwise, she remained the same dour woman Deke remembered when his father brought him here as a kid.

  He wasted no time in turning and pushing through the side door to the restaurant beyond.

  “Hey Deke! Hey Harley! I’ll be right with you.”

  Candy Beller finished ringing up the tab of a couple of highway patrolmen then hustled around the desk to them. The little blonde was a bundle of energy in a constant motion.

  “I’m going off shift here in just a minute, but I can get you drinks if you like. I’ll leave the menus with you guys, and Stacey or Marisa can get your orders when they come up front.” She gestured at the mostly empty diner. “Go ahead and pick your own table.”

  The only other diners in the place were a couple of truckers sitting at the bar, a pair of young out-of-towners at a table beside the window, and a woman he vaguely recognized as the veterinarian, Doc Sutherland, who sat reading one of those new e-readers in a booth against the inside wall.

  Deke gave a brief thought of asking which tables were served by which waitress, then came up with a more elegant and less embarrassing solution. He headed for an outside booth by the windows. Whichever girl had the inside tables would also have the bar, and if it turned out to be Stacey he could easily move there later to talk to her without raising a spectacle.

  Pleased with solving his first problem in this evening’s little exercise, he took his seat and smiled up at Candy as she brought them their coffee.

  “Not much happening tonight, huh?”

  “Not yet.” The waitress set their coffees in front of them and added a pair of menus. “This place don’t see much action on Friday nights until the football game lets out…then it’s a madhouse.”

  “Pretty crazy, huh?”

  “Yep.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice. “That’s why I’m in a hurry to clock out and get out of here, before Big Earl calls in and wants me to work a double shift. It’s still a couple of hours till the game lets out though, and until then this place will be dead as a graveyard.

  ###

  Twilight - Benny

  “Hey girls, come check this out!”

  Benny Trujillo held the back door of the truck stop open and motioned to the pair of girls who were just putting on their aprons to go on shift. He waited patiently as Marisa and Stacy glanced at him, and then at each other. The look conveyed their shared opinion of men and the often dubious outcomes that particular line led to.

  In his case, the portly little janitor knew it was just habit on their part. In truth, both of them considered him a safe, older, and married man who was fun to tease yet trustable enough to confide in. Still, he found it slightly humorous and flattering the habit extended towards him too.

  Not that he blamed them.

  It only took one glance for anybody to understand their job history hadn’t been the first thing Big Earl Anderson looked at when he hired this pair. They were as different as night and day, and quite possibly the two most smoking hot women within a hundred miles. Both were sharp as tacks, and had turned out to be surprisingly good workers, but there the similarities ended.

  Marisa Valdez was a tall and graceful Latina with a full mane of lustrous black hair, expressive brown eyes, and legs seeming to stretch for miles. She moved like a dancer through the tables, drawing admiring looks from most of the patrons…especially after she passed. As Big Earl had once so eloquently put it, “If eyes were lasers, that girls butt would have caught fire after only a few seconds on the job.”

  Benny had laughed at the time, and pointed out if that had been the case then poor Stacey would have gone up in flames as soon as she stepped into the room.

  Stacey Collins was not near as tall as Marisa and built along completely different lines. She had short brown hair, perky features, and a bright elfish smile that lit up any room she entered. The girl possessed an earthy, slightly redneck charm combined with a vivacious good cheer which tended to infect the people she interacted with. She also had what Earl once poetically described as “the most magnificent pair of huge, natural born hooters this side of the Rocky Mountains.”

  Benny had warned Earl that hiring these two beauties and putting them on the same shift (hell, even the same crew) was asking for trouble. He pictured the Textro tur
ning into a battlefield of feminine egos and seething rivalry, with the rest of the crew caught in the middle.

  As it turned out, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

  After a couple of days of quietly sizing each other up, the two astonished everybody by forming a tight working friendship that at times seemed to pit them against the world. Despite their vastly different backgrounds they became a two girl team, supporting each other with both customers and coworkers alike. After his initial surprise—and a big helping of crow—Benny came to understand that despite their differences the two girls realized they had a lot in common in a world prone to dealing with them primarily on their looks.

  Now they regarded him with matched smiles of mock suspicion as he gestured towards the door.

  “You see?” Marisa addressed Stacy while nodding towards him. “I told you he was a dirty old man. ‘I want to show you something,’” she made little quote marks with her fingers. “You know how that always works out. Like we’ve never seen one of those before.”

  “Maybe he meant it like ‘Hey girls, watch this,” Stacey responded. “But those are usually more funny than bad…especially when they wipe out and break bones.”

  They both giggled, eyes twinkling in merriment.

  “Ay yi yi!” Benny groaned aloud, “You two are exactly like the awful daughters I was afraid I would get, way back before I got lucky and had boys! When you’re through giving a poor old man a hard time, you should at least come over and see what he was trying to show you.”

  “Sorry, Benny!” the pair sing-songed together with exaggerated looks of contrition on their faces. “We’ll be good!” They made a big show of shuffling over to him with their heads down and hands clasped in front of them like chastened school girls.

  “Augh!” He rolled his eyes and pointed through the open back door into the twilight. The girls peered out in the direction he gestured,

  “Que?” Marisa frowned out into the gloom. The sodium vapor lamps were just beginning to flicker on and illuminate the back parking lot under their yellow glare. “I see the maintenance garage. And I see some trucks lined up along the back of the lot. Aaaannnnnd I see a cornfield.”