Author: allen0997
He Fell Over Dead ~ A Short Story
He Fell Over Dead
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~
They lived on a small farm. They grew corn and wheat, strawberries, peaches, tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, melons and cucumbers, among other things. Their chickens yielded four or five dozen eggs a week. They sold most of their eggs and whatever happened to be in season to two different stores in the town of Marburg twelve miles away. In the lush season, they set up a stand out in front of their property on the highway and sold whatever surplus they had to passing cars.
Lathrop was fifteen. He had gone to school through the eighth grade, and then he wasn’t obliged to go any farther. He wanted to go on to high school in Marburg but father said he was needed on the farm. Lathrop did the work of a hired hand without any pay. When he was younger, they had a hired hand, but his father fired him when he found he was stealing vegetables and selling them on his own in town.
Lathrop liked working at the vegetable stand. It was easy work in the shade of an enormous oak tree, and it gave him a chance to see and talk to other people, who were mostly friendly and cheerful. Sometimes somebody he knew from his school days would stop by and he would talk to them, but most of the people he had never seen before. They were just passing by on the highway on their way home from wherever they had been. They would see the stand, and the idea of fresh tomatoes, corn or cucumbers for supper would make them stop.
On a warm Tuesday afternoon in the middle of June, Mr. Wessel, the nearest neighbor, came by. He was happy to see that Lathrop still had a dozen eggs left and some tomatoes.
“How are you doing today, Lathrop?” Mr. Wessel asked as he counted out his money.
Lathrop felt flattered, somehow, that Mr. Wessel would speak to him in this way. Nobody else ever did. “I’m just dandy,” he said jauntily, with a smile. He put Mr. Wessel’s purchases in a wrinkled paper sack and handed the sack over the makeshift counter.
“Do you ever read books, Lathrop?” Mr. Wessel asked.
“I did when I was in school,” Lathrop said. He was reluctant to say that he lived in a house without books or that he had only gone through the eighth grade and would probably never go any farther.
“You seem like a smart boy. I have many, many books in my house. If you ever want to borrow, drop by and I’ll see if I have anything that might interest you.”
“Yes, sir! I’d like that!”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. My first name is Eldridge, so you can see why people call me Wessel. It’s my handle.”
Lathrop smiled, even though he didn’t know what it meant. “I might just do that, sir,” he said. “Stop by and borrow a book, I mean.”
Late in the afternoon Lathrop was happy. He sold all the vegetables and eggs and had a cigar box full of change and one-dollar bills. He handed the money box over to mother.
“Mr. Wessel came by the stand today,” Lathrop said at the supper table. “He told me I could come over to his house and borrow some books to read.”
“You stay away from him!” father said.
“Why?”
“I don’t like him, that’s why!”
“If you don’t like him, does that mean I’m not supposed to like him, too?”
“If I find out you’ve been over there, I’ll knock your head off your shoulders and feed it to the hogs.”
After supper, when mother was clearing the table and father had gone outside, Lathrop asked her, “Why doesn’t he like Mr. Wessel?”
“He’s heard something about him, I guess,” mother said. “You know how he is.”
“What did he hear?”
“God only knows.”
“Well, I like Mr. Wessel. He’s nice to me. Most people don’t even look at me. I’m only Hodge’s kid and I don’t mean a damn thing.”
“I don’t like you to use that kind of language in the house.”
“Mother, when I was in school, I heard ten times worse than that every day.”
“I don’t want you to be like him.”
“Why did you ever marry him?”
“You never met my mother.”
She laughed then, something she hardly ever did, and Lathrop wiped the crumbs off the table onto the floor.
“I want to go back to school,” he said. “Eighth grade isn’t enough.”
“I know,” she said. “We’ll manage it somehow. And if you want to borrow books from Mr. Wessel, go ahead and do it. Just don’t let your paw find out. Keep the books hidden in your room.”
The next time father went to visit his ailing mother, a trip that always took all day, Lathrop, with his dog Ruff, walked the mile to Mr. Wessel’s house. His heart hammered in his chest as he knocked timidly at the door. He half-hoped that Mr. Wessel wouldn’t be at home.
Mr. Wessel came to the door and when he saw Lathrop he smiled and motioned him inside. Ruff settled himself on the porch for a nap.
“I hope I’m not bothering you,” Lathrop said.
“Not at all,” Mr. Wessel said. “I’m always glad of visitors.”
The house was cool and dark. Lathrop sat in a large padded chair across from the couch. Mr. Wessel sat on the couch and crossed his legs. He wasn’t wearing any shoes.
After some polite talk in which Mr. Wessel asked Lathrop about his family, his dog Ruff, where he went to school and other mundane things, he took Lathrop into the next room, his “study,” where he wrote and had his books.
Lathrop never saw so many books in one place before. There were shelves and shelves of books, so many books that the ones that wouldn’t fit on the shelves were stacked neatly in rows on the floor.
“Where did you get so many books?” Lathrop asked.
“Some are mine and some belonged to my family. When you’re the last one left alive, you get, by default, everything that belonged to everybody who came before.”
Lathrop wasn’t sure what Mr. Wessel was talking about, but he smiled and nodded his head.
Lathrop looked over the books. There were novels, volumes of poetry, short stories, books on history and books that people had written about their own lives.
“Do you have anything in mind that you’d like to read?” Mr. Wessel asked.
“I don’t know much about books,” Lathrop said. “In school, I only read what I had to to get by.”
“Have you ever read anything by Charles Dickens?”
“No. I’ve heard of him, though.”
“How about David Copperfield? Do you think you’d like to read that?”
“Sure, I guess so.”
“I read it when I was about you age. I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble with it.”
“Sure, I’d like to give it a try.”
With David Copperfield clutched tightly in his hands, he followed Mr. Wessel back into the front room. They sat again and after they had talked for a while Mr. Wessel got up and went into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of sweet cider and a little plate of walnut cookies.
After an hour or so, Lathrop realized he had been in Mr. Wessel’s house for over an hour. He would like to have stayed much longer, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome. He thanked Mr. Wessel for David Copperfield and walked back home with Ruff trailing along behind.
He showed mother the book when he got home and inside the front cover where Mr. Wessel had written his name.
“That’s so you’ll remember who the book belongs to,” mother said.
He hid the book in the bottom of his dresser drawer. He couldn’t let father see it. He would be mad at him for disobeying orders to stay away from Mr. Wessel’s house and would make fun of him for reading such a story book.
That might after mother and father had gone to bed, he began reading David Copperfield in his bed. If father came and unexpectedly opened the door, which he never did, Lathrop could easily thrust it under the covers and pretend it wasn’t there.
He considered himself mostly ignorant and uneducated, but he didn’t have any trouble reading David Copperfield or knowing what was going on. There were some words he didn’t know and the characters talked in a funny way, but Lathrop knew it was just because they were in a different country and the book was written a long time ago.
The next time he worked the vegetable stand, he overhead two ladies from town talking as they picked out their vegetables. Lathrop didn’t care what they were saying, but when he realized they were talking about father he paid closer attention.
Lathrop gleaned from the ladies’ talk that father had a “girlfriend” in town and she had a small child by him. He paid the rent on the house she lived in and visited her regularly. The ladies had seen father, the woman and their child together at a fireworks display in the park on the Fourth of July.
“That old coot,” one of the ladies said. “He ought to be ashamed of himself. And she’s half his age, too.”
“She’s the one that ought to be ashamed,” the other lady said. “Damned old home wrecker!”
“Well, you never know about people.”
In a little over a week, Lathrop finished David Copperfield and was glad for a reason to make another trip to Mr. Wessel’s house.
Mr. Wessel asked Lathrop how he liked the book and Lathrop said he was surprised he was able to get through such a big book so fast and with seemingly so little effort. He forgot about the time when he was reading it.
Next Mr. Wessel gave him A Tale of Two Cities, which, he said, was a little more challenging than David Copperfield but of moderate length. Lathrop agreed to give it a try.
When the conversation switched from books to other matters, Lathrop told Mr. Wessel how he hated his father and was sure his father hated him. His father was gruff with him and impatient and turned his head away whenever Lathrop walked into a room. The two of them had very little to say to each other and never talked about anything that mattered.
He told Mr. Wessel his father didn’t want him to come there and borrow books but that he was doing it anyway when his father was away. His mother knew about it and thought it was all right. To Lathrop’s surprise, Mr. Wessel smiled and nodded his head.
“I never got along well with my father, either,” he said.
“What did you do about it?” Lathrop asked.
“Left home and didn’t come back until after he was dead.”
“What did you do away from home?”
“Went to college. Taught high school. Worked in a lumber mill and as a copy boy at a newspaper. I was clerk in a book store. I was even a waiter for about ten months.”
“Did you like that?”
“It made my legs tired.”
“Then what did you do?”
“When my mother died, I got a little money. Not enough to make me rich but enough to keep me from having to work, at least for a while.”
Then, even though he was embarrassed to say it, Lathrop told Mr. Wessel what he had heard the town ladies say at the vegetable stand.
“Do you think it’s true or just gossip?” Mr. Wessel asked.
“I think it could be true. He’s away from home a lot.”
“Does your mother know?”
“I don’t think so.”
Then there were other books: The House of Seven Gables, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Sea Wolf, The Red Badge of Courage, Life on the Mississippi. There was a whole world in them that Lathrop didn’t know existed.
On a stifling afternoon in August, Lathrop was sitting in the wagon in the barn looking at an old newspaper he had found when his father came in. Ruff went to meet him, tail wagging, and Lathrop’s father kicked him. Ruff yelped and leaped out of the way.
“What did you do that for?” Lathrop said. “He only wants you to notice him.”
“I’m going to take him out and shoot him!” his father said.
“What?”
“I can’t stand that dog and I never could.”
“The only reason you can’t stand him is because he’s mine and you know I like him!”
His father wiped the sweat from his mouth with the back of his hand and grabbed Lathrop by the arm and pulled him off the wagon onto the floor.
“What’s the matter with you?” Lathrop said, trying to stand up.
“Yeah, what’s the matter with me? You’d like to know what’s the matter with me, wouldn’t you? The question is, what’s the matter with you?”
“I haven’t done anything!”
“You’ve been going over to that Wessel’s house. Don’t bother to lie about it because I know you have. What filthy things have you been up to with that man?”
“What?”
“What have you been up to with that Wessel?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! He lends me books. I read them and then I take them back.”
“Yeah, and what do you do for him in return?”
“I don’t do anything!”
He grabbed Lathrop by the arms and turned him around and struck him on the side of the head with the flat of his hand.
“Let go of me, you bastard!”
“What did you just call me, you little chicken shit?”
Lathrop started to run and his father grabbed him from behind and slammed him to the floor. He was straddling him, undoing his belt to thrash him with it when Lathrop pulled himself up and started running again. He nearly ran into the wall of the barn and when he did he saw the big knife in the leather case his father used when he butchered hogs. He pulled the knife out of its case and when his father charged him he stabbed him in the throat. He then stabbed him two more times, once in the side of the neck and then just above the heart until he went down.
Right away Lathrop knew his father was dead. When he caught his breath, he took an old canvas tarpaulin and threw it over him so he wouldn’t have to look at him. Then he thought about all the blood that was leaking all over the floor of the barn that would be very difficult to clean up, so he wrapped his father in the canvas the best he could and pushed the body against the wall. Ruff jumped up and wagged his tail and seemed to think he was helping.
After he got himself a long drink of water, he went into the house and told mother what had happened. She dried her hands and sat down at the kitchen table and looked at him and didn’t say a word.
He thought about what he could do with his father’s body so that nobody would ever find it. Just burying it didn’t seem the right thing.
Two miles away was an old homestead that had been abandoned for seventy-five years or more, people said. There was an old well that went down two hundred feet, maybe three hundred. Lathrop remembered seeing it when he was seven years old. It had given him bad dreams for a long time.
After midnight, while mother was sleeping the sleep of the innocent, Lathrop went out to the barn and, without too much effort, pulled his father’s body, using ropes, into the back of the wagon. He then hitched the sleepy mule, the one they called Timmy, to the old wagon and set off into the woods along a road that could hardly be called that.
There was no moon. Lathrop could barely see past Timmy’s ears, but he found the old homestead from memory. He pulled the wagon around to the back of where the house once stood and jumped down. The well was right where he remembered it.
A metal plate covered the well. He was able to lift it by one corner and, with a huge amount of effort, slide it to the side far enough to drop a body in.
He pulled the wagon as close to the well as the remaining foundation of the old house would allow and, pulling on the ropes, maneuvered his father’s body to the opening and dropped it down, canvas and all. He listened for the body to hit bottom, but he heard nothing so he believed that meant the well was hopelessly deep.
He pushed the metal plate back into place and kicked the leaves and sticks that he had disturbed back so that the well would look undisturbed.
When he got back home, it was after three o’clock in the morning. He washed his hands and face and fell into bed, exhausted. He slept until nine o’clock and when he woke up breakfast was waiting for him in the kitchen.
For supper that day mother cooked fried chicken and mashed potatoes, Lathrop’s favorite. She baked a chocolate cake as a sort of celebration and put little red candy stars on top. It tasted so good that Lathrop ate almost half of it at one time.
In the evening it was rainy and cool and the dark came early, as if announcing the arrival of fall. Lathrop laid a fire in the front room, the first since April.
“You killed your father,” mother said, and it was the first words she had spoken about it.
“He was going to kill me.”
“Yes, but you killed him.”
“I couldn’t let him hurt Ruff.”
“You killed him.”
“We don’t need him. We can get along with him.”
“You killed your own father.”
“He got tired of farming and ran off to California or someplace even farther. He hated me and I’m pretty sure he hated you. He doesn’t want us to find him. Anybody who ever knew him could easily believe it of him.”
“I don’t know what to think of a boy who kills his father.”
“You’re as glad as I am that he’s gone.”
She looked at him in her quiet way and picked up her knitting and sat in her rocker near the fire. Lathrop lay on his back in front of the fire, a pillow from the couch underneath his head, and read a book. Ruff lay beside him. Now he could read all the books he wanted without having to hide. He was going to start to high school in September. It was a fine life.
Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp
They Can’t Take That Away from Me ~ A Short Story
They Can’t Take That Away from Me
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~
(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet with a different title.)
My name is Charles A. Rilke (rhymes with “silky”). Some people call me Charlie but mostly I’m known as just plain Charles. I had been married for twelve years and had two children. We lived the American dream in a mortgaged-to-the-hilt ranch house in the suburbs. I was a solid citizen, a straight arrow, a model of sobriety, a true believer and a professional man. I figured my life was all plotted out for me until the day I died, without any deviation in any direction. I didn’t expect to find myself in love for the first time at the advanced age of forty-two.
I had a job I didn’t like very much as an editor at a publishing firm. I had been with the company for seven years and had been passed over for promotion in favor of younger, less-experienced people. I hated every minute I spent in the corporate world. I wanted to throw everything down and become a writer. Not practical, you say? You’re probably right.
Every morning I got into my aging Pontiac and drove the twelve miles to work. The morning drive could be fraught with drama, depending on the weather, time of year and traffic conditions. A sudden thunder storm, a little bit of rain or unexpected snow flurries? A cardboard box fell off the back of a truck onto the highway? Any ugly and unexpected occurrence might make me up to an hour late for work. Late again? Don’t worry about it. Make up your time at the end of the day.
My gas tank was nearly empty, so on Monday morning on my way to work I stopped at Gus Gray’s to fill up. Right away I saw there was a new attendant manning the pumps. He smiled at me as I pulled up and rolled down my window. His name, stitched in red on the pocket of his shirt, was Colton.
“Fill it up, sir?” he asked as I rolled down my window.
After he pumped the gas, he cleaned my windshield.
“New here?” I asked.
“Started last week.”
“You like it?”
“Who likes pumping gas?”
“Probably nobody.”
The next time I needed gas and stopped it at Gus Gray’s, Colton was standing beside the pumps as if I was his only customer all day. He gassed up my car and cleaned my windshield and before I left I asked him to check the oil so I could keep him near me for a little while longer.
As he raised the hood, I got out of the car and stood beside him. I watched him as he bent over into my engine. He checked the oil, said it was fine and closed the hood.
“You’re not like the others,” I said, saying what I was thinking without considering whether it was appropriate or not.
“How is that?” he asked.
“You don’t look like you just crawled out of an oil can.”
He laughed. “Nobody notices.”
“Somebody notices. I notice.”
“People just want their gas. They don’t care about the person pumping it.”
He was around thirty, I figured. He had brown hair, what little I could see of it under his cap. His face was covered with brown-blond stubble, just enough to look appealing instead of scruffy. He was broad-shouldered, trim-waisted, shirt tucked neatly into pants. His clothes were spotless and he wore new-looking work boots. He was a perfectly proportioned male specimen. I saw much in him to be admired.
“Gus Gray knows who to put out front to attract the customers.”
“Are you flirting with me?” he asked.
The next time I went into Gus Gray’s was for an oil change. I hoped Colton would be there. It was raining, so he was inside at the cash register. I gave him the keys to my car and sat down inside while he went to move my car. When he came back in, he seemed to have forgotten I was there. I got up and bought a soda out of the vending machine.
“Slow day?” I asked.
“What?”
“I said it’s a slow day because of the rain.”
“Oh, yeah. People don’t get out if they don’t have to.”
“Then why am I here?” I said.
He smiled and shrugged and I felt like the main thing I needed to do was to keep my mouth shut.
I sat back down with my soda and, after I had drunk about half of it, he said, “Gus is off today so I have to take care of any customers.”
“It’s always nice when the boss is gone, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yeah. Gus is all right but he runs a tight ship.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“You know what they say, though. It’s a job.”
“I don’t like my job very much, either,” I said.
“What do you do?”
“I work for Ellis and Peacock downtown.”
“What’s Ellis and Peacock?”
“Publishing house.”
“You’re a publisher?”
“Just an editor and a junior editor, at that.”
“What does an editor do?”
“I make sure copy is ready for publication.”
“What’s ‘copy’?”
“Stuff that other people write.”
“Why don’t you write it yourself?”
“I’m lacking in ambition and enthusiasm.”
“Why don’t you quit, then, and do something else?”
“It’s not that easy. I have a mortgage and two kids.”
“And a wife?”
“Yeah, a wife, too.”
“Most people have at least one wife running around,” he said.
“How about you?” I asked. “Do you have a wife?”
“Not me,” he said.
“Smart man.”
Over the next three or four months I saw Colton every time I stopped in for gas. We usually exchanged a few words of no importance that I recalled over and over in my mind until the next time I saw him. I wasn’t looking for any hidden meaning; I was only remembering the way he spoke the words and the look in his chestnut eyes as he spoke them.
I began thinking a lot about him as I sat at my desk at work. At night when I turned off the light I saw the cleft in his chin, the tiny chip in his tooth when he smiled, the way his trousers clung to the contours of his ass, his laugh, his hands, the hair on his forearms, the hair that spilled out at the top of his shirt collar. All the things about him I liked.
I wished that I might have a chance to know him better, to talk to him away from the station. Would he think I was a lunatic if I asked him to meet me in a bar or a restaurant somewhere? Would he tell Gus Gray and have me banned from the station? Would they call the police and have me arrested?
Being drawn to a good-looking younger man was not a habit for me; it had never happened before, not even in my younger days. Most people left me cold, didn’t move me one way or another. Hadn’t I decided long ago that feeling nothing was the best way to get through life unscathed? Hadn’t I always gone out of my way to fit in with the herd and not draw attention to myself?
And why would I think Colton would ever give me a thought? I was nothing special. I wasn’t especially young or good-looking or interesting. My car was boring. My hair was thinning on top and already I was starting to pack on weight around my middle. I believed I might be on the verge of making a complete ass of myself, as I did in high school when I thought I was a poet and published a poem in the school newspaper that made everybody laugh and hoot because it was so bad.
On a Friday morning, looking forward to two days at home doing as I pleased, I stopped in for gas. I had finally decided to ask Colton to have lunch with me one day or to meet me after work for a drink.
He wasn’t waiting at the pump as usual and he didn’t come bounding out of the station. The weasel they called Johnny Walker Red was there instead. He had long red hair that made him look like Rita Hayworth. I was sickened at the thought of having anybody but Colton pump my gas.
“Where’s Colton?” I asked Johnny Walker Red.
“Who?”
“Colton.”
“Don’t know no Colton.”
“He works here.”
“Oh, yeah! I forgot his name. I think Gus said he’s sick or something. In the hospital.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I dunno.”
“When’s he coming back?”
“I dunno. I ain’t his keeper.”
I paid for my gas and went on to work. I felt low and unhappy all day long. I only wanted people to leave me alone. I couldn’t wait to get back home in the evening so I could be alone with my thoughts.
I waited a few days and went back to the station, hoping Colton would have returned. This time Gus Gray waited on me.
“What’s happened to Colton?” I asked him.
“He called and asked for a few days off. He’s been sick. In the hospital, I believe.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
“Nope.”
“Is he coming back?”
“I guess so. He didn’t say.”
It was about this time that I started having trouble at work, which involved enforced overtime. We had missed a couple of deadlines recently and the boss was ready to bring out the guillotine, set it up in the lobby, and start chopping our heads off. We were all going to have to knuckle down and work extra hours every day just to get caught up. It moved me one step closer to quitting but not without punching a few people in the nose first.
Days passed and I avoided Gus Gay’s. When I needed gas, I drove to another station farther away. If I didn’t see Colton, I reasoned, I would stop thinking about him and eventually forget about him altogether and go back to being the fatherly drudge I had always been, the same as everybody else, with none any the wiser.
After two weeks, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I had to know that he was all right and hadn’t died or anything. The next time I stopped in to fill up at Gus Gray’s, he was standing at the pump. I was so happy to see him I could have jumped out of the car and embraced him.
“May I help you, sir?” he asked, as I rolled down my window.
“You’ve been gone,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“They said you were sick.”
“I’m all right.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, sir,” he said.
“Fill it up.”
When he brought me the change from the twenty-dollar bill I used to pay for my gas, he gave me one of Gus Gray’s business cards. He had crossed through the print on the front and written his name and phone number on the back.
“If you ever want to talk,” he said.
I drove on to work, happier than I had been for long time. The good feeling lasted through the entire day. I was kind to my co-workers and felt calm and relaxed. I took an extra long lunch, by myself, and walked three blocks away from the office and had a good fish dinner at a better place than I usually go.
That evening, while my wife and kids were watching TV, I went to the phone with the card in my hand. Heart pounding, I picked up the receiver and then put it back again. I hadn’t planned on calling him at that moment; it was only a dry run to show myself I could do it if I wanted to.
On top of all the overtime at work, I began having trouble at home. My wife and I began arguing about small things. She had a biting tongue and so did I. A lot of the self-restraint I prided myself on had left me. I hated arguing and bickering but I couldn’t seem to help myself. My parents had had a miserable marriage and I seemed to be following their example.
The fight of all fights came on a Sunday. I had been hoping to have a peaceful day at home, resting up for the upcoming week of hell at work, but my wife and I started arguing at the breakfast table. After several hours of anger and tension, I packed a bag and went to a motel so I could be alone.
After I checked into the motel, I had a nap and then a quiet meal in the motel restaurant. After dinner, I sat down on the bed and called Colton’s number. He answered on the third ring.
He knew from the first word who I was. I didn’t have to explain myself. He said he was expecting me to call any time.
“Gus fired me,” he said.
“Why?”
“He thinks I’m too slow. I spend too long with each customer, while other customers are waiting, and I’m not assertive enough. He wanted me to push products to customers. Spark plugs, fan belts, wiper blades, motor oil, and all that kind of stuff. I told him I’m not a salesman, so he fired me.”
“I’m going away and I want you to go with me,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m going to quit my job in the morning. I hate it and I’m tired of being unhappy. I’ll pick you up wherever you say at nine o’clock, so pack a bag.”
“That’s a little impulsive, isn’t it?” he said.
“Probably, but I don’t care.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long will we be gone?”
“I don’t know.”
In the morning I was up at six o’clock. After breakfast, I called my place of employment and instructed the secretary to tell the boss I was quitting. I’d never have to see or speak to that evil son of a bitch again. I’d mail in a letter of resignation later if they had to have it in writing.
I put my stuff in the car and checked out of the motel. I stopped at the bank and withdrew eight hundred dollars in cash from my savings account and arrived at the address Colton had given me at ten minutes to nine. He was waiting outside with a small suitcase. I asked him how he was, but he didn’t seem to want to talk so that was altogether fine with me. I didn’t feel much like talking in the morning either.
I didn’t know where I was going. I went out through town to the highway and headed west.
At lunchtime I had driven a hundred and twenty miles. I stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the highway at the edge of a small town. Colton and I sat across from each other in a sunny booth.
He told me a little bit about himself. His parents, both dead, had been alcoholics. His mother kicked him out of the house as soon as he graduated from high school. He had had an older brother who died from a drug overdose. He had been married briefly at twenty-one to a girl he hardly knew. The marriage lasted less than a year. For the last ten years or so he had gone from job to job, looking for something, he wasn’t sure what.
“A life without much to show for it,” he said.
“No worse than anybody else’s,” I said.
I asked him why he had been in the hospital and reluctantly he told me. When he was three years old, he had rheumatic fever and it left him with rheumatic heart disease, from which he would probably die by the age of forty. He made it clear he didn’t want sympathy or pity.
“When it comes, I’ll be ready for it,” he said.
I drove all day in a westerly direction, stopping only at mealtimes and to fill my car up with gas. Neither one of us talked about where we were going or what we’d do when we got there.
At eleven o’clock that night, after driving for fourteen hours, I had to stop. We found a quiet, inviting-looking motel with red-and-green neon signs just off the highway and I engaged a room.
We talked for a while and watched an old black-and-white movie on TV. When the movie was over, he wanted to take a shower. When he came out of the bathroom, he got into bed naked. I got in beside him and held him in my arms and kissed him. As he kissed me back, I realized I had, finally, the thing I had been dreaming about for months. If I died right at that moment, I would die happy.
After a long silence, he asked, “What state are we in?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, not as long as I’m with you.”
He surprised me by taking my hand and entwining his fingers through mine.
“Do you want to go back?” I asked.
“Nothing to go back for. No home to speak of. No job, either.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll find another job.”
“I don’t want another job. I’ve had plenty of jobs. I’ve thought about it long and hard and from where I stand it looks like I’m just about finished.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“Ever think about just bringing down the curtain? Ending things on your own?”
“I’ve thought about a lot of things.”
“I read a story once about a suicide pact between two men. It seemed like a good idea.”
“Why?”
He thought for a moment and then he said, “If you do it with somebody you care about, it’s not so lonely.”
I showed him the gun I had in my suitcase.
“I have two bullets,” I said.
He smiled as if he thought I was making a joke and then he knew I wasn’t.
“I see,” he said.
“Is it what you want?” I asked. “Truly?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“You have to be sure. No regrets.”
“I’m sure. I don’t have any regrets. Have you ever fired a gun before?”
“Sure.”
“Make sure the bullet does its job.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Wait until I’m asleep.”
“You won’t feel a thing. And know that I’ll be right behind you.”
I sat there in the chair beside the bed with the gun in my right hand. He turned over in the bed away from me and pulled the blanket up under his chin and went to sleep.
There was just enough light coming in from the window that I could see him. I watched him all night, listening to him breathe and sigh, and I knew he was the only person in the world I had ever loved in the way that I always knew was possible but had never experienced before.
He slept through the night and when he woke up a little after daylight he turned and looked at me.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Still in the motel beside the highway.”
“What time is it?”
“Time to get up and get dressed.”
We were on our way again in a half-hour. We crossed one state line and then another with dizzying rapidity. I planned to keep driving for as long as I could and for as long as my car and my money held out. When it was time to stop driving and do something else, I’d know. Until then, nothing much mattered except my feeling of being free and the happiness I felt when I looked at the person beside me.
Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp
