Part 3
The weather was looking even worse when we finally got going. The sky looked more and more like a choking baby, all blue and gray. The boys may have said “tour” but there was only a single place they wanted me to visit. Sandy’s bar and grill. It was on the south end of town, not too long a
drive down that perfectly-repaired highway.
Me and Jeff sat in the cabin silently, as did the three behind us. Without other folks around, it seemed I made them uncomfortable. I felt like asking about Layne, but just held my breath instead. Maybe I could’ve mentioned seeing them on the road earlier. I could’ve said “Saw you pulled over on my way down here.” and that would have been worth a laugh.
“So my friend, how’re the women up in that city of yours? They playin’ nice with ya?” Jeff asked from across the stick-shift.
“Don’t know too many of ‘em,” I replied. “Just met one today though, and she was pretty.”
“Well, I’m sure she was. Course, country girls probably aren’t so uptight as the ones up there.” I couldn’t tell if he was trying to impress or insult me. Somehow he managed to do both poorly.
“Yeah I was just seeing this girl the other day, real fine figure even if her smile weren’t so straight...” Yada yada yada, he just wouldn’t let it go.
I started tuning him out, as he began a monolog on his experience with the opposite sex. It’s always appeared to me, that if your love of women is
your only common ground with a man, then you probably aren’t much of a man to be around. At least his rambling was easy enough to keep pacified. A “yeah” here and a “mmhmm” there and to that big man-baby it was like a lullaby and cradle.
By the gas station, a block or two ahead of our destination, we passed a couple empty pumps and a few oil tankers. They weren’t your ordinary refill trucks either, they were all chrome with funny support bars running along their sides. Must have been three or four of them parked out in that lot. The drivers must’ve been coming from North Dakota, what with oil production booming up there. They were probably taking a pit-stop inside that little gas station. Four crews, probably eight men total. I imagined that they’d feel more at home in Sandy’s bar than I would.
Before I had a chance to sulk any more, we arrived at the bar. It was dustier than I remembered, seemed like for all the years I’d been gone, nobody had ever taken a duster to the place. At least it was homy, even if I wasn’t a drinker.
We sat in a row and had a nice nothing to say to the Bartender, who happened to be one of the country girls Jeff was so fascinated with. These people, man. As soon as the cornfields swallow them up, it’s like they wake up in a sweaty, swampy Texas.
“Hey Charlie, what do you think of her, eh? Got anything on that lady of yours?” Of mine. That was starting to get on my nerves.
“Oh, the waitress? Well I just assumed Bart over here was gonna make a move. Haha.” Instead of confrontation, I went with good-natured humor. But these idiots took it to the extreme again. As soon as they saw me grinning, Jeff got the whole bunch, minus Bart of course, to laugh hard and loud. They drew it out, too, stomping that dead-horse rather than kicking it. It’s moments like those that make me question whether people find me
genuinely funny or not.
Jeff finally calmed down enough to speak. “Bart? Bart wouldn’t have a chance with her!” If Jeff and the others were taking the joke too well, then Bart was taking it too harshly.
“Ah shut up! Stacy loves seeing me around here!” He fired back at his taunting brother.
“Course I do ‘hon. Here’s your next round.” She said, holding four new beers. I just focused on my water.
...
We couldn’t have stayed in there too long before I asked about Layne. I tried to seem nonchalant about it, and only brought it up once the laugh-
ter and feckless conversation faded away. Still, it made everybody uncomfortable.
“Jeff, what’s your family been up to?”
“Aw, well, nothing as special as being in space. We’ve mostly spread out in the state, you know?”
“Yeah I thought so. Didn’t you have a sister?”
“And two older brothers, right Bart? I kinda miss Willy and Pete, don’t you?” Of course I didn’t miss them, they were probably the ones who had
decided the four of them should egg my house.
“Mmhmm. We should give ‘em a call sometime. Sure they’d love to have a reunion like this.”
“Yeah, maybe not Pete though since he’s been so busy with his family
and such.”
“I heard they were having problems.” Not Mikey said, softly like a mouse.
“Where’d you hear that from?” Jeff demanded. He might not have been drunk enough to fight, but the alcohol made him sound more aggressive.
“Forget it, just a rumor. Probably ain’t even true.” Not Mikey had less spine than he had fat on his belly.
For a minute, it looked like that would be the end of it. So we all just shut up and sucked and swallowed. The glasses were cold, and the ice in
my water stung my front teeth. Maybe I’m too sensitive. But I wanted to try one more time to get some news out of Jeff about Layne, before we left.
“Wasn’t your sister’s name Layne? Where’d she end up?” I asked Jeff.
“What’s your deal spaceman? Why you wanna know so badly about our sister, if you’ve got all these girls back in the city?” Drunk Jeff questioned, his eyebrows cocked. Apparently I wasn’t the only sensitive one.
Bart just looked down at the sticky bar floor. I didn’t know what to say.
“Well she’s fine as far as I know. Nobody’s come and told me she’s dead yet.” I don’t know what he meant by that, but he seemed bitter.
Relief from the ensuing awkwardness came from Mikey, who’d been almost as quiet as me since we’d gotten into the bar. I felt like of all the guys, he’d been the most star-struck by me. He seemed so pliable, so ready to please, like a grown-up puppy.
He said “You know Mr. Brick, we helped your dad paint your house a month or two back. All of us. What do you think of it’s new color?”
“That’s right, we did. I’d almost forgotten about that. What do ya think of it, Charlie?” Jeff asked me, as if his drunken anger had melted right off his face. I swallowed my spit and looked into my glass of water.
“Fine job by what I’ve seen. Thanks alot for helpin’ him. He can be a slave-driver, haha.”
“Hell, your dad was a saint. Let’s go back and take a look at it before it gets too dark out, what do ya say?” Asked Jeff.
“Sounds like a plan.” I replied
...
The sound hit us first. Before we even got out the door we could hear it. It was a symphony of wind, a chorus of shrieking air. It was like being
in a Cessna all over again, especially once the bar door jerked out of Not Mikey’s hands when he opened it. They all rushed out to the truck, but I
went back inside. The waitress had heard the noise, and I told her there was "some serious weather bubbling up." It wasn’t uncommon for a midwestern town like Sedalia to feel a storm now and again, but this one was sneaky. Nobody had expected anything to come out of it.
My escorts honked at me from outside, and I jogged back out to see it. A massive, gray storm front, one that stretched all the way to the ground, was pushing its way towards town from the highway. Shit was getting torn up behind us, paper was everywhere. It looked like it was moving pretty quickly, so I rushed over to the truck and hoped in the back with Mikey and Not Mikey. Bart was sitting shotgun, and Jeff started the car.
When we passed the gas station, the truckers were nowhere to be seen. Looks like they got out before us I thought. Bart kept Jeff driving slow, since he was a little tipsy. Their voices were muffled inside the cabin, but they also seemed tense. Then it started raining. Thick heavy droplets hit the street, then my neck, then my head, and then my face when
I turned around to see the black mass swallowing us up. I caught some rain
in my hand, and saw that it too, was black.
That night was unlike any I’d ever seen. To our front, the setting sun was burning everything with reds and oranges, but the storm chasing behind us was black. Not even outer space was so dark and violent. Around the truck, the buildings were bombarded with millions of tiny ink dots, and shop windows flexed and waned under the pressure. The Ford’s exhaust was lost in the howling, swirling air, and all that could be heard was the sound of the wind. My lungs felt choked with the stench of gasoline, as the thick, black, swirling rain encircled the truck.
Beside me, in the bed, Mikey slid down, and laid, trembling. I don’t think he had blinked since we passed the gas station. Specks of black covered the three of us, and Not Mikey was hunched over, wheezing in pain. He scrubbed his eyes, trying to get the liquid out of them, without realizing
that the stuff was covering his hands. The poor guy was only rubbing more of it in.
The truck got just as much as we did, and the wipers up front were so overwhelmed with gunk that Jeff could barely see the road. I could feel the panic welling up inside of me, What in the fuck is going on? Seeing that we were approaching third street, I banged on the roof and yelled: “Turn!” into the rear window vent.
Jeff spun the wheel, and the truck slid. He’d only been going about 30 miles per hour, so it was like being a part of a slow-motion train wreck. The momentum pulled the back tires around the right side of the truck, and gave us all a good