you
Damn sure, make you
Do things, you never thought you'd be doing
Damn country music
Aaron sighed. He was being force fed country music on the slow drive towards his death. Even worse, it was Tim McGraw. Dad and his biker friend Troy would drink and listen to that shit for hours.
Ten sad songs and forty-five minutes later the big Caddy bumped off the asphalt onto Soledad Canyon Road near Sylmar. Fifteen more minutes bouncing along an unnamed washboard road, and Troy thought if the boy hadn’t crapped his drawers yet, the next step would turn his balls to jelly.
The Cadillac lurched to a stop, Aaron's big body rolled forward cramming his face into a corner. Troy popped the trunk lid; it yawned wide like a metal monster daring the outside world to snatch away its shivering prey. The hot sticky day was a springtime breeze compared to weather inside the trunk of an Eldorado.
Aaron’s left eye had been screwed into the faux carpet, the other bulged grotesquely out at a hundred suns popping like flashbulbs. The Sundogs cleared to reveal the glaring and very annoyed face of Troy Bittles, his family’s friend.
Never in the world would Aaron have figured his grandparents to send Troy; it just wasn’t the way he reckoned his nice elderly parents to do things.
The biker grabbed at the ropes binding Aaron’s wrists to his ankles and yanked him from the trunk. He dropped him in the gravel like a sack of rocks. Aaron’s face took another direct hit. He wriggled like a Nightcrawler about to impaled on a hook.
Troy clicked open a Buck knife, advanced on the bundle and dread scorched the roof of Aaron’s skull.
“Hold on Hoss! Hold on! You don’t settle yourself down I might nick a vein. Take a minute and pull it together Aaron, or you'll bleed to death before we’ve even started.”
Troy cursed as he made an effort to cut the knots. The Brothers knew how to hogtie someone but good. Aaron’s spine danced an electric jig as the cold blade slid between his belt and hands. Troy tugged the knife upward and something gave way.
“That WAS called hog-tied son, now you’re just plain tied up.” Troy laughed. It was a harsh, thick sound without any fun in it. Troy pulled the boy to his feet and pushed him towards the car. He sat him on the rear bumper.
The trunk lid stood open looking ready for another bite.
Over Troy’s shoulder, Aaron saw what Troy wanted him to see, a freshly dug grave. A shovel stood sentry on a mound of fresh earth alongside the roughly rectangular hole.
The look of horror flushing across Aaron’s face was made more pronounced by natural dark rings around his deep-set eyes. Eyeliner and makeup smeared his face like the brushstrokes of a blind man. Hideous clumps of white foundation gathered in his tangled blonde hair.
“So help me God, if you got any of that goop on my car…”
Troy worked his knife subconsciously against the stubble on his face. The boy was reasonably sure that family friend or not, Troy was considering whether to kill him now or…
Aaron’s legs shuffled anxiously.
"You gotta piss Boy?"
Aaron's voice was muffled behind duct tape. He wagged his head side to side.
Troy reached forward in one long stride, grabbed a loose edge of the silver tape, and stepped back. A dime-sized chunk of hair, bloody roots and an excellent piece of adolescent mustache came away with the tape as it ripped free from Aaron’s mouth.
Blood and plasma oozed from the wound.
Troy stood back like a disapproving parent and crossed his tattooed arms. The only sounds were Aaron’s rapid breaths, like a dog that had run too far. Even the crickets stopped chirping in anticipation of what would come next.
Then, as if a cork had popped from his mouth, Aaron emitted a string of obscenities and vacant threats. Troy calmly nodded. He agreed; most of it was true. It made the outlaw smile. His plan was working.
Troy grabbed the back of Aaron’s neck, and the boy’s tirade stopped as suddenly as it started. He screwed the barrel of his big chrome revolver against the meat between his eyes. The boy resisted and Troy struggled to steer him.
“Come away from my car! I don’t want your blood and brains on it!” Troy lowered the .357 Colt Python to the front of the boy's bizarre grin. The click of the pulled hammer changed his smile to fright. Aaron’s eyes went wide as dinner plates.
“I like your grandma and grandpa, but you plain piss me off. You think I’m kidding around? I never make jokes with a gun in my hand.” Troy pushed the boy stumbling forward. Aaron was trying to move but his legs refused to cooperate. He fell headlong into the moist, freshly dug earth landing with his face staring into the hole.
“I’m done here, Son! I’m gonna put you out of your misery.” Troy sighted the gun at his writhing victim.
“Wait!” Aaron blubbered spitting out dirt as he rolled and tried to crawl away. The gun looked like a cannon. “Wait! What the hell do you want? You can’t just kill me like that.”
“Kill you? I can’t kill you... Sure I can,” said Troy. “I could push you into that hole right now and drive away without another thought. The authorities would consider you one more runaway among thousands. And, if they ever found your body, which isn’t likely anytime soon, they would reckon you ran afoul of some bad stuff – which – would be true.” Troy chuckled at the irony. “Happens to teenage runaways every day. Just so happens that today, I am your bad stuff.
And, I can live with that.”
“Please don’t kill me!” Aaron's sobbing came out like dry heaves as he clawed unsteadily through the mound of earth. His eyes pinged from the shovel, down into the fresh grave, and back to the gun.
“You got two options Son, and by the looks of it,” he waved the gun at a dark wet stain spreading in the crotch of his Aaron’s jeans, “you figured out option one.” That made Troy smile.
“Except for filling in that damn hole, that choice would be the least work for me. It sure was a lot of hot work digging it.” The outlaw paused as if he was thinking. “So, I shoot you, bury you, and no one finds you. Ever. After all, you ran away from a stable, loving home. Right?” Aaron didn’t answer.
“Most people see that as a question Aaron, and most would expect a response.”
“Uh, I guess so. Yeah, I get it.”
“Good. Now option two is a lot more work for both of us. You mostly.”
Rivulets of sweat ran down Aaron’s forehead and the mascara drew thin black spiderwebs like a highway map across his face.
“Option two: I drop you safe and – reasonably – sound back to your grandparents who, by the way, love you a lot. You say nothing about my methods here. Ever. Then, overnight, you magically turn into the best damn grandson anyone ever had. Do I have to explain?”
Aaron shook his head from side to side.
“And throw away those nasty clothes and cosmetics. Get a t-shirt and some blue jeans for God’s sake.
Oh, and Aaron! Remember, if you choose door number two –” Troy’s voice trailed off and he scratched the gun barrel against his cheek.
“Remember what?”
“Remember, I live only a couple blocks from your house, ninety seconds away, and I’ll be keeping an eye on ya.' In fact, I have a pretty good line of fire from the top floor of my house to your room. The next time I see Aidan and Margie, I want to hear them bragging about your progress.”
“I could just call the cops,” said Aaron.
“Well, that there is one sound vote for the benefits of option number one.” Troy pursed his lips and nodded his head. “If you did, I think Aidan would back me up.”
“And, you don't wanna go getting sideways of your grandpa. I'm a kitty cat compared to him.” Troy figured there were more corpses in Aidan’s past than his.
“What do you mean?” Aaron knew there was some big mystery in his grandpa’s past. He’d always shown himself to be kind, albeit with a few sharp edges.
Troy’s phone rang, and he cursed. With the revolver, still aimed at the boy, he held up
an index finger and pulled an iPhone from his vest pocket. He sent his loser brother, to voicemail, thinking he’d like to send him somewhere much worse.
In that instant, the kid bolted.
"CRAP!” I guess he's got some balls, after all, thought Troy.
This errand could become a costly mistake. Troy could hear Aaron's boots crunching in the dirt, and he wasn't about to run after him, so he fired a round in the boy's general direction, the report boomed off nearby hills. A murder of crows took flight from the only tree sticking up amidst the surrounding coastal sage and scrub. The crunching stopped. Troy offered a silent prayer and hoped that he hadn't hit the kid.
Hobbling on his knee, and growing angrier with each step, he found the boy laying in the dirt, shivering and frozen with fear. Troy pressed the still warm muzzle to the back of his head and pulled back the hammer. “Arms straight out to your sides! NOW!”
Wrenching the boy’s right wrist back on itself, he brought it high up into the center of his back until he screamed. Troy holstered his pistol, put his boot on the boy's neck, slapped a handcuff on Aaron’s wrist and brought the other hand around. Troy ratcheted both cuffs tight until the kid winced. Troy pushed him back through the brush to the car.
“You’re becoming way more trouble than I expected.”
Aaron started to cry.
“Oh please!” mocked Troy. “Give me a break. You got the balls to run, ya’ gotta take your lumps.”
“Are you going to kill me now?”
“Are you telling me that's your choice?”
“No no no – I want to go