Where Am I?
a short story
by Angus Brownfield
***
Published By
Copyright ? 2014 by Angus Brownfield
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WHERE AM I?
Somewhere off in the distance a truck is backing. Above the din of night hunting birds and their insect prey, I can hear it making that unnerving backing-up sound the law demands. Law equals civilization, so can civilization be far off? My kidnappers told me they would dump me in the middle of nowhere, so far from anywhere that I might be found by accident in a hundred years.
My bones found, that is.
So, where's the truck with its annoying backup beeper, that harbinger of civilization? My kidnappers never mentioned what they thought would happen after I was dumped in the wilderness, but since I'm securely bound and gagged, I assume they want me to think about a slow death by exposure, starvation, dehydration and chomping by critters: coyote size, rat size or beetle size. So far I've been inspected by insects: ants, possibly a millipede, a fluttery moth or two. No hungry cougars or curious raccoons. Knock on wood.
If I'm in the middle of nowhere, is the truck likewise in the middle of nowhere? It's as black as freshly paved macadam wherever we are; I see no lights. I haven't heard the truck's backup beeper for a while, and I don't hear the sound of a vehicle moving forward, so I figure the truck is some distance away.
Or maybe it's a tractor. Could be a bulldozer. Or a grader. It could be any vehicle that has to obey The Back-up Law. At any rate, a vehicle on a nighttime mission. Why? Why working in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere?
There it goes again. I don't find that sound so obnoxious any more. It signifies hope. Escape from my bonds. Earlier, I thought about skooching around in a circle, the better to figure out the truck's location, but for all I know they've left me on the edge of a precipice and I could die from tumbling several hundred feet into a ravine.
On the positive side, I realize it could have been worse. Instead of New Mexico I could have riled a bunch of Florida nogoodniks, got tossed into the Everglades, been eaten by critters a lot toothier than coyotes. Or squeezed to death by the patriarch of all Burmese pythons slithering through the swamp. Or, or . . .
Oh God, a cramp, ouch, ouch, ouch. If I weren't trussed so expertly (were my assailants boy scouts? sailors? cowpunchers? Their knots hold like a Vulcan's death grip) I would walk it off, the way coach used to tell us. Ouch, ouch, arghh. Power of positive thinking, me bucko. Biofeedback. Mind over matter. I must shift my thinking to another part of my body-like my bladder, which may need emptying before an angel of the Lord, or the operator of that truck yonder, frees my from my bonds. Unchain my heart / baby set me free.
Caught betwixt and between. Cramp or bladder, pissing myself or having my tendons torn asunder by the spasming of rebellious muscles.
There's the truck again. It's closer, but how much closer? Can you judge relative distance in the middle of jet-black nowhere? It could have been five miles away the first time I heard it, or it could have been two miles up a canyon that amplified the sound even though the truck was ten miles away. Is it a half mile closer? Why does it keep backing and filling, backing and filling?
Impatience with my betwixtness and betweenness makes me curse the reckless reaction that brought me to this state. The matter my mind should have conquered earlier this evening falls under the rubric, "mind your own business." But I couldn't. I do not like-no, I despise-a man slapping around a woman. Bullies do that. Misogynists. Persons who in their childhood stomped on baby chicks, turpentined cats, pulled the wings off flies. There may be times when a man is justified in defending himself from a woman who throws a punch, but in the normal course of events there's no reason to use force against a physically less well equipped person. It's not part of what got us down from the trees.
I didn't think twice, I stepped between. A left and a right sent the abuser reeling, but to my dismay, the woman being abused turned on me and attacked me with her stiletto heel. On the first swing the heel raked me just below the eye, drawing blood. The torrent of blows I fended off, taking them on my hands and arms. She was punctuating her blows, shrieking that he had a right to hit her, while I had no right to hit him. A strident harangue, not an elegant one. Really? He had the right? Go figure.
Attracted by her shrieks, there appeared two burly friends of the jerk I just decked. One grabbed me from behind as I was backing away from the shoe-wielding woman, and I might still have made a fight of it, but the other produced a blackjack and coshed me, sending me down in a heap.
This transpired outside the alley exit of an Albuquerque bar quite often visited by the police Sundays at closing time, when, for some reason, fights between patrons often break out. Where were those cops now?. Dazed, I took a couple of kicks to the shin from the furious woman and when I struggled to my feet and tried to stagger away, I was bashed again. I awoke in the trunk of a car, having no idea how long I'd been there. All I knew is, I wasn't moving an inch. I heard the hiss of tires on a dirt road, while the car rocked and swayed and yawed and bounced.
Finally it skidded to a stop. Doors slammed; voices. I heard the words, 'mountain lions' and 'rattlesnakes.' Never mind mountain lions, they don't eat what they don't chase down. And a rattler might snuggle up to keep warm, but isn't going to strike something my size unless threatened. Like, how am I going to threaten?
The thugs took their time hoisting me out of the trunk, and when they did they weren't very careful about it. I tried to protest, but they dumped me on the ground and each of them gave me a kick in the ribs. Then the woman came up to me-I could see her silhouette against the car's lights-and said, "I wanted them to run over you, crapshit, make some blood, attract the wild beasts, but they said they'd rather you just die a real slow death. So here's my going away present, cocksucker."
As she squatted she lifted her skirt, lowered panties, but did a piss-poor job of hitting my face. Still, my shirt front was wet and my dignity in the dirt. I thought, 'Piss on you too, lady. Another woman would have been grateful.'
They drove off some distance, found a place to turn around, and came back past me, missing me (purposely I assume) by inches.
I have no idea where I am, and it does make some difference. If they drove north, towards Santa Fe, I could be at seven thousand feet, and it can get damned chilly this time of year. If they went west, towards Gallup . . . my speculating isn't helping my situation. Blistering sun, freezing nights, no water, maybe even a flock of ravens eager to sample my eyeballs. Anything could happen.
Or maybe those guys went back to get a chain saw.
Maybe they want to come back and witness the results. Maybe their car has a GPS and they know exactly where they dropped me and intend to come back in a week to scatter my bones.
Lord, all I did was come to the aid of someone I assumed was a damsel in distress. Can you cut me some slack, Lord, can you work a miracle here? I think that's what
I'm going to need.
Truck again. This time it's in a forward gear and it's close enough I can tell it's not a crawler tractor. In fact, it's lights are bouncing over me like the car that brought me. It's coming right for me, oh joy, oh joy.
No joy, no joy. What if the driver doesn't see me? What if he runs over me before he knows he's hit something?
It's maybe ten yards away, doing twenty or so, when the driver lets up on the gas pedal. The truck is slowing, not stopping, it isn't gonna stop, oh Jesus oh Jesus.
Stop it did, though, its right front tire pinning my shoulder to the ground. Engine idling, a truck door flung open and in half no time a pair of legs, guarded by high-top engineer's boots, came into my line of sight. The owner of the legs hunkered next to me.
"Frat rat getting hazed?" Female voice, amused tone. Jolly good. At least she pulled the duct tape off my mouth.
I said, "Do I look like a frat rat?"
"That's the only thing I could think of. How about bachelor party prank?"
"How about moving your damned truck back six inches. You've got my shoulder pinned."
"Oh shit, I'm so sorry." Unsquatting, legs disappearing, gears meshing, truck moving off my shoulder.
"Back again. Cut or untie?"
I said, "By all means cut, I'm not saving rope this year."
"You're a little testy." Cutting the line between my hands and my feet, allowing me to wrestle my cramped leg as straight as I can, the pain intensifying. I grunt.
"Oh God," she said, "are you hurt?"
"Cramp."
"You need to walk it off."
"If you will cut the fucking ropes I will attempt to do just that."
The knife was not a lady's pocket knife, it was a big Buck hunting knife that made quick work of my bonds. Still, I couldn't straighten my leg enough to stand.
"Help me up."
I heard a tsk, but instantly a hand extended. Her grip and her pull are as ladylike as her knife, and I was up on my feet in no time. I hopped around until I could get my toe higher than my heel and the cursed cramp released its grip.
"I hate cramps," she said. "Your body's rebelling, defying you, telling you to go to hell."
"I feel a lot better. Thank God you're out here in the middle of nowhere. I might have been discovered in the next century."
"You can thank Dexter Geoconsulting for my being out here at all, and the daytime temperature for my being out here at night. What makes you think it's the middle of nowhere?
I said, "The guys who left me here said it was. -Isn't it?"
"Up to a short climb?"
"Climb?"
She produced a small but very bright flashlight from a pocket of her cargo pants and led off. We climbed maybe thirty feet higher and walked a couple of hundred yards in as straight a line as the sage and creosote bush would allow. She stopped and doused the light. When I got to her side I was astounded, truly.
Stretched out below was Albuquerque, there is no city larger in the state of New Mexico, and this was a city running miles in all directions, bright lights, street grids, twinkling headlights, the whole smear.
"Shit."
She said, "That too. You smell a tad gamey, friend."
I explained to her that a very unladylike woman had peed on me.
"We have a word for that kind," she said.
"Like bitch?"
"That's good enough. What on earth did you do to get that reaction from her?"
"I was keeping her from getting creamed by her male companion."
She said, "Oh brother. A good deed punished, as they so often are. If there's a place open I would buy you a drink."
We had got back to the truck and as we climbed in, the dome light revealed her to be a compact though not frail brunette, hair pulled into a bun a little bigger than a bullfighter's queue. Pleasant face; cool eyes.
I said, "I have recently cleaned up my apartment, and if you'd allow me to wash up and change, I would treat you to a pretty good scotch-if you like scotch."
"Geologists are noted for being non-fussy drinkers. In point of fact, we will drink about anything. A pretty good scotch, you say?"
"You wouldn't go wrong if you did not adulterate it with anything more radical than, say, one ice cube."
As we drove down the hill I looked straight ahead, holding on as she bounced her 4Runner towards the paved road. I told her the story from beginning to the moment she rescued me.
"I would be plenty pissed if I were you," she said when I finished.
"Plenty almost covers it. In fact, I'd love to go back there and kick some ass."
She said, "I have a better idea." She flipped open the console between the seats and rummaged out a revolver: three inch barrel, bigger than a .22, smaller than a magnum. She handed it to me. "I'm not suggesting you shoot them, just scare the shit out of the bastards."
"You'd to that for me?"
She said, "Isn't there some tradition about how, since I saved your life, I'm responsible for you from here on out?"
"As Bogey said, 'Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.' -Hey, what's your name?"
"Not Louie, but close: it's Louise, but you can call me Lou."
"And I'm not kidding when I say my name is Rick-was, I go by Richard since I'm grown up."
"Well, Richard, let's go terrorize some low-lifes."
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