by N. Ryan Tucker
“Train a Comin’” placed first in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2024 Fall Fiction Contest.
I don’t remember makin’ the devil no damn deal. Musta bargained with him when I was a kid. Can’t call to mind much of them times anyway. I knew it weren’t no fifty-fifty shake neither, seein’ as how I’d been laid up here in this ditch for the past ten minutes, upside down with a mouthful a glass. The Bible from my glove box was flung open and wedged between the dirt and where the vent window used to be. That was all the puddin’ and proof I needed.
“L-l-l-l-l-ord have m-m-m-m-ercy Dorsey, y-y-y-ou alive?”
Bennie only stuttered when he was excited about somethin’. Like a Thompson gun, he’d fire off a word and just get all stuck, blastin’ the same letter over and over again until somethin’ clicked, and he’d go on rattlin’ off the rest of what was on his mind. We met when I started workin’ at Lou Ray’s Texaco over in Roxie about five years ago. He drove the tow truck. I was the only one ever call him by his real name. All them other boys called him Throwedtogether cause he got one blue eye and one brown, missin’ two fingers on his left hand, and looked like somethin’ the good Lord mighta just thrown together at quittin’ time. The stutterin’ don’t do him no favors neither.
“I’ll be alright, just a little blood,” I winced. Still couldn’t make him out, but I could hear the dead pine needles and gravel slidin’ beneath the underslung heels of his boots.
“I c-c-c-c-coulda s-s-s-s-swwww-orn you was d-d-d-d-ead!”
Hell, maybe I was. Maybe our Lord and Savior just happened to stutter a lot like Bennie. It’d be somethin’ if Heaven wasn’t nothin’ but a hot and humid Mississippi summer afternoon. “Naw, it’ll take a hell of a lot more than a stretch a road straighter than a preacher to put me six foot under,” my voice was raspy from all the dirt and smoke and glass I’d swallowed when I came to a stop. “Bennie, go on up to the Chicken Shack. Call Lou Ray and tell him to bring the truck, I’m gonna try and get upright and find my way outta this mess,” I hollered.
I couldn’t tell if I was hurt. Had some blood on my t-shirt. A piece of the windshield had gone clean through my Levi’s a half inch into the top of my thigh. Pulled it out and watched some blood trickle up toward my zipper as the copper haze of noon turned black.
“Ain’t gonna be quite that simple boy.”
My heart kicked over a couple times. I’d known that voice since the first time I’d tangled with law at fifteen years old. Was enough to jar me loose from bein’ passed out cold. Sherriff Lloyd Feathers. From where I was sittin’, I musta missed the grand entrance of the Franklin County Highway Patrol.
“Naw Dorsey, the way I see it is you just plumb stupid. I got you dead to rights this time son.”
“How you figure that Sherriff?”
“Oh, well seeing as we got us a couple witnesses. Said they seen you and that misfit you run around with, what’s his name, Throwedtogether? Said about a half a mile back you boys were draggin’, with him in a Nova and you doin’ about hundred miles an hour in that there piece a shit Ford Fairlane a yours. Run em right clean off the road.”
“Hey Sherriff.”
“What?”
“It was a hundred and ten,” I snarled, my teeth clenched around a Winston I’d found layin’ next to my head. Me and him was like stink on a skunk.
“Come again, boy?”
“I said, I was doin’ a hundred and ten you fat hog.”
“You ain’t in no position to smart mouth me, you hear? See, thing is Dorsey, you got luck, but it’s all the wrong kind. Been that way since you was little. You had a daddy, but he didn’t care enough about you to stick around. Only thing he was ever good for was wrestlin’ that gun away the night those two boys robbed the B-Kwik out on the highway when you was just a baby. Worthless. Still, he shoulda walked in sooner. I seen you both out in that El Camino when I went inside. You was cryin’ and he was trying to get you to behave. I wouldn’t be deaf in this here ear if you woulda just shut your trap that night and let your daddy go on in. THAT PISTOL WENT OFF LESS THAN AN INCH FROM MY TEMPLE.”
His voice was closer than before. I caught a glimpse of his dusty black felt hat in the busted passenger side glass as his knees popped like a couple a firecrackers. He leaned his face down next to what was left of the driver’s side window and picked up my torn bible.
“There ain’t enough scripture in all the Bibles in this county to save your sorry soul Dorsey Dismukes. You as worthless as your daddy was.”
He flashed a grin that would’ve made even old Lucifer himself blush and stood. I heard the thud of my Bible hit the dirt. “Where’s Bennie?”, I said, wrestling with my pockets trying to find a match.
“Oh, I’d imagine he’s halfway back to the station by now. See, I had Jesse cuff him and run him in when we found him trying to run. Of all people, you know this town moves slower than Sunday mornin’. I wouldn’t expect to see him anytime soon. Besides, you ever seen the amount of paper needs to be pushed on a charge of accessory to attempted murder?”
The cracks in the windshield made him look even fatter than he already was. “You as crooked as a fishhook, Lloyd. You know damn well he wasn’t runnin’. He was goin’ to call Lou Ray to bring the truck down here.”
“Can’t hear ya boy.”
“Tell you what Lloyd, when I get outta here…,” I stopped short. My fingers finally got hold of a match I’d been wrestlin’ with and I was dyin for a smoke. I flicked the tip against my thumb and lit the Winston that’d been danglin’ from my mouth for the past half hour. The humidity made the smoke hang in the air. I could taste the dried blood that had pooled at the bottom of my lip every time I took a drag. Was quieter than the dead. Outside of the locusts way up in the pines and the sound of a rattlesnake buzzin’ somewhere close, everything was hushed.
The click clack of Lloyd’s boots along the blacktop jolted me out of my daydreamin’. I tamped out my Winston on the dash and flicked the butt out a hole in the passenger window. His face came into view as he knelt and tore off what was left of the window frame and leaned in putting the cold barrel of a Smith and Wesson model fifteen right up against my left cheek.
“Dorsey, you ain’t never gonna learn, are ya? See, you way down here at the bottom of this ditch, long outta sight for anybody travelin’ this two lane clip. I oughta put a bullet through your skull and leave you for the buzzards. They’d pick you clean in an hour.”
“Sherriff.”
“You shut your mouth, I aint—”
“Sherriff!” I muscled in.
“I TOLD YOU TO KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Like I was sayin’, I oughta kill you graveyard dead, but I ain’t. Nobody’s comin’ Dorsey, not this ti… Goddamn. Goddamnitt. What in the…. SHIT! I THINK SOMETHIN’… Somethin’ bit me. LORD I’M BIT!”
I seen the snake right before Lloyd walked up to the car. Coiled up about three foot away. Slate and charcoal and honey and ash. All them colors camouflaged it with the weeds and dirt. Was hard to make out. Had me a little nervous too. I ain’t done nothin’ to it, but I right as figured the hurt was on the way. It kept shakin’. Warnin’. I guess old Sherriff Feathers just couldn’t hear it, seein’ as he was deaf in one ear and all.
“Dorsey, help me. Please. It got me on the wrist. PLEASE! I’m gettin’ dizzy. DORSEY!”
He kept tryin’ to stand up. I guess all that venom went right square into his bloodstream cause he just kept stumblin’ back down, leanin’ his head on the front wheel of the Fairlane. Retchin’. Chokin’ like a starved carburetor. Finally did make it to his feet. Only took a couple steps before I heard him fall out though. There weren’t so much as a peep after that, except for the whisper of that old rattlesnake still just a few feet away. I guess for me, sometimes the only light at the end of the tunnel ain’t nothin’ but a train a comin’.
Category: Competition, Featured, Short Story, SNHU Student