A bedtime story

Here's another story I wrote last winter during my miserable time in New York. I was about to go out one night and meet some friends, when I was taken over by the desire to tell this girl's story. Because I don't want to plant my ideas in your head, I won't tell you any more about it. But, I can tell you that it did not get the intended response from people, which means I still have a long way to go in terms of accurately portraying any sort of message. Feel free to give me helpful suggestions and comments.


The Godlist

"Hope ya ain’t goin’ far.” I didn’t answer him; I just climbed up into his early-nineties Ford dually and set my rucksack between us. He made another stab at conversation. “Pretty girl like yaself…dangerous to hitchhike, even around here. They’s crazies all around this side of the Sierras.”

“I know, but I’m not scared.” I said, looking right into his eyes for the first time since he shoved the truck down the highway. We made small talk, and I let little notes of laughter hang for awhile on his unfunny jokes. He commented on my intelligence, to add to his earlier “pretty” complement. They always did this, always tried to appear so kind.

I came onto him subtly, enough to let him know I was interested, but not enough to make him think I was for sale. He got the hint. After we passed a sign out of Lone Pine, California, cautioning “next services 77 miles” he called my attention to the nasa satellite array a couple miles east. Six upturned mushrooms big as freighters pushed their stalks up to the sky as the seti project’s search for Truth.

It was then—with my attention turned eastward—when he cut the engine and began his acting debut: “Oh, shit, shit! Goddamn this piece of shit—”

“What? What is it?” I knew the stunt.

“Goddamn truck run outta gas, all a way out here.” He really was making this too easy. His biggest mistake was pulling off on the frontage road, where he said we wouldn’t be hit by any drunk drivers. There was a muffled pop in my pocket as I eased off the lid.

He hopped out of the cab once we rolled to a stop. He’d call Triple A to get this whole mess fixed, he said. Good play, I thought, most girls have probably fallen for that. I saw his fingers mash nine digits into the cell phone’s key pad, knowing that Triple A is a ten-digit 800 number. He carried on a magnificent fake conversation, really an Oscar-worthy performance.

Jumping back in the cab, he flipped on the radio and scanned for awhile. The only station in range, propitiously, was an evangelical station. I asked him if he believed in God. He said, very openly and matter-of-fact, “Well, hell, sure. I think God’s in them mountains over there and in that little fishing stream we passed awhile back. Maybe God’s in these little moments that test your mettle, too.”

“What makes you believe in God? I mean, don’t get me wrong: I believe in God, too, of course, but I just want to know what keeps your faith.”

He drew in a sucking breath while he composed himself. “They was a time when God didn’t shine too brightly down on me, tho’ I think he coulda shined down with a spotlight and I still wouldn’a seen it, I was so damn sick,” he spoke dreamily, the way shy people pick one spot in space to stare at while they spill their guts. I didn’t interrupt him; I felt a gem coming. “Then it was all the beauty in this ‘ere world and the beauty God still shined down when I didn’a deserve none, that’s what brought me up on outta that hole. I started-ah livin’ his will and gettin’ right by him, the best I could anyway.

“That stuff’s fine, but what about the balance between good and evil and reckoning and judgment and all that?” I was flaring up now, his little sermon had let me down right when he was about to really get it. “That stuff doesn’t matter at all to you?”

“Oh, sure,” he sputtered defensively. “But, when ya get to be my age, ya start to see that it ain’t all black and white like they taught ya in sundee school. They’s good wolves and bad wolves in all of us. The one gets fed everyday, that’s the one gon’ win.”

I pretended to mull this over. It seemed appropriate. He decided the time was ripe to put his hand on my thigh. We both looked at it flopped there, helpless. I’m sure we had completely different thoughts on what would happen next.

He leaned in for a kiss, eyes closed. I maced his tear ducts and open mouth. While he flailed around, going on about, “What the fuck! Jesus!” I fingered open my cargo shorts pocket. A more cultured man would know that cargo shorts are suspicious on a girl who looks as good as I do. I took out the medicine bottle of ether and soaked my handkerchief in it as he groped along the door for the latch. I strong-dosed him, enough to keep him from moving so much but not enough to knock him out.

Opening my own latch, I climbed down and around to his side door to let him out. His weight helped the door flop open and he collapsed in the cloddy sand. After a few deep, controlled breaths, I worked on his face with my boots and at some point he stopped blocking.

Skulls are like piñatas: once you split them they practically dissolve. Pink bits and red and tooth squeezed out of the entrances to his caved-in face. After his pulse stopped, my rucksack of tools took its position on top of the sternum. I put on my gloves and fitted the surgical saw attachment to the cordless drill. I carved out his upper and lower mandibles and removed the soft palate; teeth are a bitch to get rid of, and on this trip I didn’t have access to an incinerator, though there were some smelting kilns up in Bishop if I really needed them.

Only one car passed in the half-hour and there was a high sandbank concealing me from the highway. I unzipped the vacuum-sealed pouch and removed the six-foot bag. From the other rucksack pocket I pulled out the Tupperware of Centenella larvae, which would dispose of 200 lbs of evidence in a few days. Before I zipped the whole mess up to throw him in the hole—oh yeah, I dug a hole after I removed his dental records—I plucked up his sausage fingers and dabbed one in the pools forming near his neck. I opened my notebook to the bookmarked page that read “Buckley Dewitt” at the top. Somewhere near the bullet points of “OCCUPATION” and “KNOWN RELATIONS” I smudged his gooey fingerprint, blowing lightly on it until the wet crimson lost its sheen.

Ten minutes later I climbed up to the highway. North to the right and South to the left. I opened to the back of my notebook, to “The Godlist.” Of the nineteen entries, I glanced at the remaining eleven. After crossing through “Buckley Dewitt, rape, Big Pine, CA,” my pen rested on “Othelia Downs, child molestation, Needles, CA.” I scampered to the southbound side of the highway and was about to thumb a ride when Mr. Dewitt’s cell phone rang in my cargo pocket. After contemplating the number appearing on the caller-ID screen, I answered.

“Oh, hello,” offered a warm-voiced woman, “someone from this number requested the emergency fill-up service. We’ve dispatched a tow truck from Bishop. Should be there within the hour.”

“Oh, thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”

“Is there still a problem?”

“There was, but I think we fixed it.”