* * *
The Jeep Wrangler scythed a furrow through the fallow field. The driver had veered off the path he had carved the night before, opting instead for the fastest route out of the grassy hell.
Still reeling in disbelief (and from a killer hangover), Hector’s head pounded with each bump in the overgrown terrain. The sound of clinking bottles in the back seat only added to his agony. Realizing he’d have to get rid of them or run the risk of juvie if pulled over by a nosy cop, he stopped the Jeep and tossed the beer and whisky bottles far off into the field, away from the tracks.
After discarding the evidence, he felt better—not one hundred percent better, but lighter, less encumbered. He climbed back behind the wheel and resumed plowing through the stalks. When it seemed like he’d never get out, the grass thinned and the road popped into view. He skidded on the dry, chalky shoulder, spraying a crow’s wing of dust into the air before turning sharply right and bringing the Jeep onto the road.
Hector drove the blacktop, traffic all but nonexistent. He passed only one vehicle as he went: a tractor hogging both lanes of the two lane road. When he slowed to go around the old fart driving said tractor, vapors from the hot asphalt poked filamentous fingers up his broad, flat nose. Chemical death. That’s what it smelled like. So bad that his eyes teared up and his gorge rose. Then, looking down at the yellow mess in the footwell, he realized that, as much as he felt like vomiting, he probably wouldn’t be able to. And somehow this comforted him.
What the hell did I eat yesterday that was yellow?
After passing the old man, Hector pushed the Jeep to eighty. He still didn’t know where he was or which road he was on. Realizing this, he regretted not asking tractor man where the hell here happened to be. He was about to turn around to do just that when he spotted a small, green, wavering phantom half a mile down the road. He accelerated until the white letters on the green metal resolved themselves. Greenville 2 Miles. Above it, a smaller square marked: Hwy 71.
Hector sighed and slowly pressed the brake pedal. Highway 71 was a seldom-used route between Riley and Greenville. It was a little out of the way for most residents of Riley, but it ran straight through downtown Greenville. Hector had taken the road many times, mostly because he could speed on it and never get caught.
He pulled a U-turn and headed the opposite direction—toward Riley. It wasn’t long before he crossed paths with tractor man again. This time Hector waved at the living fossil, who smiled a jack o’ lantern’s grin and raised a sunburnt hand in reciprocation.
Like a breached dam, a euphoric flood rushed through Hector’s body. It wasn’t a logical sensation, considering that he was hot, sweaty, and dehydrated, but it was the way he genuinely felt for a brief moment. His ego had received a boost from that small gesture to the farmer. Hey, he thought, maybe I’m not such a monster after all. And when he got back home, he could tell his mother and his friends that he had done a good deed. He could also tell Michelle.
His bliss grew and his headache faded. Deep down, in the meat of his brains, he knew things were going to be better from there on out. But he also knew that if he wanted it to stick, he would have to meet those better days half way. He would have to change. First, he’d have to quit drinking. That was obvious. Then, he’d have to start being nicer to his mother. After that, he’d have to start treating Pete better. Did I really punch him yesterday? He didn’t know why he picked on the kid so much, but now, for the first time, he truly felt horrible about doing it. Rusty was right. It is my responsibility to protect the little ones. And if Pete ain’t a little one, then no one is.
He ticked off the resolutions silently to himself: study harder, eat better, lose weight, get a job, learn how to play piano…again. But as he formed these most personal of goals, he also became cognizant that these were the areas of his life that were either lacking or malformed in some crucial way. The natural high began to dissipate. How could he study harder if he wasn’t smart? How could he learn to play the piano if he wasn’t talented? How could he be nicer to his mom if he wasn’t nice? The apple of optimism he had tossed by waving to the farmer had reached its zenith and was now plummeting back down to earth. And when it hit the ground, it would come to rest closer to hell than it had been before he’d picked it up.
"She should’ve aborted me," Hector said to no one.
The headache ripped through his brain. Far away, a black lump hovered over the asphalt. As the Jeep closed the distance, it became obvious what it was. Buzzards flapped away from the mass, the sound of the growling engine scaring them to flight. In their hooked beaks, they carried ragged pink chunks. Hector stopped short of the mess and got out. Feeling a rumble in his guts, he thought that he might be sick after all.
Strewn across both lanes of the blacktop were the remains of a dark haired dog. It lay mostly on its side, but its pelvis faced the sky. Ruptured abdomen and intestines spread out like a fan on the asphalt. Jumbled gray tubes dispersed in a congealed fly-ridden matrix that looked like, but didn’t smell anything like, vanilla pudding. Its flattened rib cage could have passed for a lumpy quilt with missing patches. If that wasn’t bad enough, the dog’s mandible was dislocated and turned upward from its cranium, resulting in a grotesque, V-shaped muzzle. The eyes were gone, of course. The buzzards had taken those first.
Hector looked at the horror on the road. His first thoughts were of Lola and a surge of adrenaline shot through his system. He relaxed slightly as he remembered that Lola was too old and weak to wander off this far. Besides—he told himself—it looks nothing like her.
Then he saw the bloody tire tracks and anger quickly surpassed relief as his primary emotion. The skid marks stopped after the dog, reversed back on themselves, stopped at the dog’s neck, then continued forward: a zigzag of dried blood and rubber.
Whoever did this is one sick fuck.
At that, he ran to the edge of the forest and vomited, something he didn’t know he could even do. Only a few tablespoons of bitter yellow bile came up. Fortunately the dry heaves didn’t set in. Staggering back to the Jeep, feeling slightly better but still royally pissed, the sudden urge to urinate overwhelmed him.
Unbuttoning his fly, he hurried back to the tree line and settled on a large pine. Leaning back, he sprayed an arc of urine high up the tree’s trunk—higher than his own head even.
He didn’t know why he did it.