Song of Songs

“Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside?” — Song of Solomon 6:1

Behind the motel, to the west, the night still held loosely to the nacreous ghost of its yesterday. Irresolute. Semitrucks on the interstate growled through their gears on the slight incline, oscillate tires amphibious to the ear. Weak lights of the towns behind the eastern hills like the nests of hallucinated spiders. He stood silhouetted by a wan yellowish overhead light in the motel’s breezeway, a small red coal bespeaking his cigarette. Stillness. Dark coming, uncoupled from the day, emboldened, the unfathomable night. 

He stood like that for much of the night. When the spiderlights dimmed beneath the roseate onset of morning, he climbed in his truck and headed north, the western plains to his left still enscowled by night. Rain then came sporadic to congeal the road dust, which he smeared with his wipers. But soon it was a torrent and fell for hours, mercury worms writhing on his windshield between frenzied blades. Sometimes a gale drove the rain like handfuls of gravel hurled against the glass. Great cretaceous rigs loomed and lurched from the deluge.

He drove out of the rainstorm and he pulled in when he saw an old payphone by a two-pump filling station and lifted the handset and dug for coins in the pocket of his jeans. He found two scuffed quarters—in god we trust—and dropped them in the slot and listened when she answered.

“Hello?”

He tried not to breathe.

“Hello? Who is this?” Her voice like that gentle braid of freshwater uncoiling under loose shale you happened upon after a parched trek through high sierras.

Soon she hung up and he listened to that unwarranted air and wondered, Are you still there? Who have you just spoken to?

When that evening came, the third or fourth since he’d left his past like a dark snakeskin, he thought to drink in a bar in the next town, but he only stood in the street outside and listened to the wind in the treetops of a nearby park and the raucous walled-in sounds of men and the clash of beerglass and some country lament glowering on a jukebox. What song he couldn’t rightly construe. Snatches of words from the air of your life on the staves of the wind. Just gusts. Songs and tales no other will sing or tell. Stop singing. Don’t. Don’t say my name.

Hammer Down

She was maybe fourteen when she first knocked on the door of my cab. Damn young even for a lot lizard. 

I rolled across and opened it and asked her, "What?"

"Nothing much. Name's Nora. I need a ride north…"

"Alright. I'm heading out in an hour. Be here."

"You a good man?"

I didn't answer, just stared. She looked away.

Don't sing about tomorrow because I already know I've lost you. 

She was punctual.

Underway, I cranked the tunes.

"Hope you like Waylon, little girl."

"What's a Waylon?"

I damn near busted a rib at that, while she gazed ahead with no expression on her heart-shaped face. 

After I got a breath, I asked her, "So, you a runaway?"

Ain't much for social niceties, as it happens. 

She didn't say nothing for a long time, and I was beginning to think she hadn't heard me over the outlaw uproar coming from my speakers when she finally answered.

"Not running away. Running to. I got me a man to kill."

Follow the endless poles and you'll hear our song humming in the wires.

My turn to think I heard wrong. I looked across at her, looked away, looked again. Her pretty face hadn't changed a jot, her eyes fixed on the unspooling ribbon of the eternal blacktop.

"Thinking I might've heard you wrong just now."

"You probably didn't. But I'll say it again, mister. Got me a man I need to kill."

Here's a thing. They're all lot lizards to me; I don't tell apart the ho's from the lost souls, the thumbers, the runners. Excuse the pun, but I don't truck with the former. I'll pick 'em up if I want the company, but it's strictly hands-off. I ain't stupid. Plus, each year they seem to get younger. Probl'y 'cause each year I seem to get older... ain't no mystery to it, really. But this life's a lonely one, and these girls often surprise me, make me laugh and sometimes even make me think about all the lives out there veering onto the shoulder, waiting to get bit by gators. Hell, I like their company, even the pissy ones who bitch about my choice in tunes.

"Alright. Look, miss. Back there you asked me if I'm a good man, and I never answered. But the fact is, I ain't entirely a good man. I done some bad things here and there, things I sure ain't proud of, but I ain't never been a party to no murder, so I'm thinking I'll let you out, no offense meant. There's a stop maybe a half hour up ahead that ain't no pickle park, so you'll be alright. And maybe you can think about shit while you're there and come to some different conclusions.”

"Sure, mister, I ain't offended. Ain't no murder, though. It's a mercy killin'."

Be damned if I wasn't curious, but I held my tongue and the big road kept on rolling and the music kept on twanging. 

Sing me a song of death. What do you love? The miles fill up with dread. You won't resist.

I glanced again, and her expression had changed for the first time; on her doll face was a full-on grin, wide as a toad's, made me think of some real bad thing, and I felt a tremor inside me and stood on the pedal, wondering if I should just hit the shoulder and unload her right there, be done with it. But I kept on going.

Hammer down and stack them eights. Ten-four, my sorry ass.

_______

To be continued?