Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
FOREST
Tucker stares out the window in equal parts awe and fear, the latter he’d never admit.
I was in his shoes once, but watched the world change around me one foot at a time.
I made my way on foot, watching the cars pass.
It felt like a nightmare I didn’t want to wake up from because I was free.
Eventually, a stranger pulled over on the side of the road and offered me a ride.
I was too tired to say no and thankfully passed out before he could ask too many questions.
I’ve long forgotten his name, but I remember vividly the lessons he instilled in me as he let me hitch a ride for three states, leaving me in Ohio.
I learned the value of currency, and not just money.
To survive, I exchanged my body for the next fifty or so miles.
I sucked dick for food, and a night in a downtrodden motel was worth a long hard fucking, but usually they’d spend it all in a matter of minutes, leaving me to sleep in a comfortable bed for the night.
I know what Tucker is thinking because I once thought it too. An endless oblivion. The difference is I only had eighteen years of damage to undo. He has almost thirty.
I ease off the salted, slick road and pull next to a pump at the gas station. Tucker jerks his head sideways, high on alert.
“Stay in the car,” I scold him like he’s a child. “I can’t be having you make a scene.”
“What are you doing?”
I point to the yellow blinking light on the dashboard. “We need gas, and I need to pick up a few things.”
He points at the small box of a convenience store. “What’s that?”
“It’s where you pay for gas, buy overpriced shit, and jerk off in the bathroom on really long road trips.”
“Sounds dreadful.”
“It is,” I say with a wink as I push the driver's door open and hop out.
I make my way inside the weathered building, the glass door glossed over in frozen tears of snow.
Inside, a middle-aged lady stands behind the counter with a pair of cracked glasses resting on the tip of her nose.
Her eyes follow every movement, watching me.
And I get it, people around here don’t look like I do.
Out here in the sticks, even in modern society, anything that stretches too far from the norm is terrifying.
All these piercings, tattoos, and hair bleached to hell and back.
The roots are starting to show, though, thanks to Bash and his commitment to not coming back home as expected.
I peruse the aisles of the store, grabbing only the necessities—two large bottles of real fucking water, a package of wet wipes, a small bag of cookies, some black nail polish, and a bottle of silicone lube because they’re fresh out of water-based.
Whoever says countryfolk don’t do anal, the empty shelf disagrees.
The lady offers a disgusted sigh as I place my order on the counter.
I point to the rows of cigarettes behind her and ask for a pack of menthols.
She retrieves the cheapest pack and does the rest of her job silently, scanning each of the items and placing them into what appears to be a used brown paper bag.
Six months ago, I would have toyed with her a little bit to make her as uncomfortable as possible.
Now, I know it’s best to get in and out lest she ask too many questions.
“Thirty-seven dollars and forty cents.”
“For this?” I scowl.
What the fuck has happened to the economy in the last six months?
I reach into my pocket, pull out a stack of hundred-dollar bills, take one, and stuff the rest back into my pocket.
As I slap the bill on the counter, I catch a glimpse of a stack of novels resting on the counter.
There’s a thin layer of dust on them, but there’s something about the name of the book that draws me in—The Wolf of Raven Mountain by Joel Wolfe.
There’s a sticker smacked on the cover that claims it’s a book written by a local author.
I grab one copy and slide it onto the counter.
“I’ll take this too.”
“What’s that?” Tucker asks as we pass the local elementary school on the outskirts of Blue Falls. There is a line of yellow buses parked at the curb, waiting for the bell to ring.
He’s like a toddler, pointing at everything with the same childlike inquisitiveness.
“That’s a school. It’s where kids go to learn.”
“Their parents don’t teach them?”
“Their parents are too busy trying to survive. People have jobs.”
He shakes his head, dissatisfied. “This whole thing reeks of pointlessness.”
Yeah, I’m prone to agree. The beauty—what the fuck—-of the Wilds is the simplicity. Everything, everyone has a place. We don’t spend our lives toiling away at a job that’ll only replace us in the end with a smile as the world keeps turning.
As we pass the painted green sign of the town limits, the forestry cuts back deeper and deeper. Old houses, most of them large by modern standards, take root where the trees used to live and breathe.
I reach into the brown paper bag in the back seat, grab a bottle of water, and twist the cap off. I get one solid gulp before it’s ripped out of my hand and Tucker throws open the passenger door—while we are cruising at forty miles per hour, nonetheless—and tosses it onto the road.
I glare at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“That’s poison,” he seethes.
“You just littered,” I point out to him, but I’m not sure he understands what that means. “You’re killing the precious wilderness you adore so much.”
“I adore you more.”
I laugh nervously, moved but taken aback. Adore is a special word. Soft and gentle, like a warm, cozy blanket. It’s not a word I would surmise would even be in Tucker’s vocabulary.
His cheeks flush a light red. He punches his tongue against the inside of his cheek and looks ahead at the road. “What’s that?”
“It’s a motel.” A downtrodden one like the ones I used to stay at. There are only about four cars in the parking lot, and I wonder how it’s able to survive out here in small town nowhere.
But then something else…
The other truck, the one with the cargo hold on the back, is parked at the motel.
I slam on the brakes, sending Tucker flying forward. He grunts as he rubs his head, eyes glued on me. I whip into the parking lot and pull up beside the truck.
There’s a pensive look written all over Tucker’s face as I kill the ignition. “Why is Bash’s truck at an elementary school?”
“Again, it’s a motel.” I sigh and throw open the door, boots crunching over the snow-packed gravel. “Are you coming?”
He purses his lips and nods. “Let me know if you need me.”
Bash’s truck is parked directly in front of room seventeen, the number bolted to the scratched yellow door.
I knock on it a few times, but either there’s nobody inside or I’m being ignored.
I walk a few feet to room sixteen and do the same.
The door flings open and I’m greeted by a gruff, big man.
He wears jeans and a tank and looks like he just woke up from a long nap.
“Sorry.” I feign a smile. “I think I have the wrong room.”
He huffs and slams the door in my face, which isn’t the worst outcome for knocking on a stranger’s door.
I make my way to room eighteen and knock.
No answer. As I’m knocking again, I hear the deadbolt sliding on the other side of the door.
The door opens, but only a crack. A brunette woman stands with a newborn baby held against her chest. Her eyes are puffy and tired, and her cheeks are stained with mascara.
“You don’t look like room service,” she whispers. “But if you are, could you let the front desk know that the ice machine is broken?”
“I’m actually just looking for a friend.” I point my thumb over my shoulder at Bash’s truck. “Have you seen him coming and going?”
She ducks to the side, taking a peek at the vehicle. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I just got here this morning, but that truck was here when I arrived.”
The baby’s hands claws at her shirt as she begins to stir. The woman groans as she closes the door. “I’m sorry.”
I turn on my heels and watch Tucker in the van, his gaze fixed on the compass hanging from his neck. He doesn’t even seem to notice that I run across the parking lot to the office at the end of the L-shaped building. A silver bell chimes overhead as I push the glass door open.
“Hi, I’m looking for a room,” I say to the attendant dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans behind the counter.
He cracks his knuckles as I approach and plasters a fake half-smile once I arrive at the counter. “You’re passing through, huh?”
“Something like that.” I retrieve two hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and slap it on the counter. “Is that enough to buy me a night without identification?”
He takes an elongated inhale and huffs with amusement.
He senses something is shady, but there’s a hunger in his eyes that’ll let him turn the other cheek.
This motel is dying. He can’t afford to turn me away.
He grabs the cash and pockets it, grabs a key off the wall beside him without looking, and passes it to me. Room twenty-three.
“I was actually hoping I could stay in room seventeen,” I say. It’s a tactical way of knowing whether the room is occupied or not. And they say investigative journalism is dead. “Seventeen is my lucky number.”
He grabs the key with the number seventeen engraved on it and exchanges it with me. “I don’t want no trouble in my motel, you hear me?”
I nod. “Understood.”
“People pay to sleep here?” Tucker scoffs, not moving an inch from the front door of room seventeen. “I’d rather sleep under the stars.”