Eric couldn’t think. Eric couldn’t hear, or speak, or think.
His face was pressed down on cold, hard tile while his ear felt as if it would burn off at the slightest touch. He was being restrained from movement, partially by the self-entrapment of his arms under 170 pounds of flesh, and partially by an unknown force introducing itself to his back.
Do not get up.
But, I have to..I have to check on…
Mandy.
Mandy.
She’s dead. And you will be too if you try to get up.
Mandy.
Mandy. The poor girl. The poor (probably) innocent girl. Shot with a revolver, which fired right next to Eric’s ear. That’s why he couldn’t hear. But what the hell was keeping him from getting up. Why couldn’t he just get up?
Why can’t I just get up?
Because you want to live. I didn’t shoot you, I shot her. I will shoot you if you do anything other than exactly what I say.
Why am I talking to myself?
“Very funny, douche bag. Now just stay down while I take care of her.”
He could hear. Eric opened his eyes, and found himself face-to-boot with Mack the truck driving murderer. The other boot was squarely on Mack’s back, holding him down, thought he had been offering little resistance. He wasn’t thinking or arguing with his inner self, he was speaking to and arguing with Mack, the truck driver who murdered Mandy, the Idaho Welcome Center attendant. In one swift motion of thoughtless and stupid bravery, Eric, from somewhere deep within, summoned the strength to arch his back into the size ten of Mack. The truck driver, who happened to have been looking at the bloody product of his actions at the moment, was thrown backward in his moment of inattention, allowing Eric to roll over and regain a standing position.
“Now see,” snarled Mack as he turned around, cocking the revolver with a sinister click, that was not in your best interest. I know your last name, and while I’m not going to kill you, Mr. Dunbar, I will not hesitate in putting a piece of hot lead straight through your kneecap. Do you know what happens if you get shot in the kneecap?
You never walk again.
Mack saw his gears spinning. “That’s right. You spend the rest of your life being wheeled around by your friends and family, literally crawling into the bed and shower, and having trouble at first completing simple tasks like using the pisser or cooking.
It seems like he knows a lot about this. What the hell?
“It seems like you know a lot about being paralyzed,” Eric half-asked.
“Not the point. The point is in fact on this bullet right here,” Mack the murdering truck driving patted his lead-slinger like a dog, “and what it will do to that point right there,” he nodded at Eric’s right leg-bender with a “don’t-screw-with-me” stare.
“Capisce?” With that, the murderer turned around to face his victim, assessing her head to foot. Bloody inch by bloody inch, Mack surveyed Mandy over. The blood trail ran from the half-inch gaper in her temple down the side of her young, beautiful face. Eric could see from his position that she was still warm, but very much dead.
Mack walked casually up to the body and laid a scruffy hand lightly on her forehead, keeping the gun loosely pointed in Eric’s direction as he knelt down beside the girl.
Eric protested, “Don’t you touch her, you sick demented piece of shit!”
Mack, keeping his hand on Mandy’s forehead, rebutted, “Now see, that’s not the kind of talk that typically comes from a man with a loaded gun pointed at his head.”
He’s not going to shoot me. He said he wouldn’t kill me when he learned my last name, and he was bluffing when he talked about my knee.
“I ain’t bluffing, and I will shoot you, just as sure as I shot pretty miss thing here….just not in the head.”
Eric took a cautious step forward, making his presence known, but not getting too close to the murderer standing not six feet from him.
“Well then what’s this all about Mack? I mean, you shot Mandy, yes. But why? And now what will you have with me?” inquired Eric. He was serious, not just killing time. This whole situation had been perplexing from the beginning. After Eric finished, something strange happened. In retrospect, nothing after the entrance of Mack should have been considered strange. However, when the a recent murderer and threat to your life turns around from the body he’s trying to dispose of and smiles at you, it’s a little strange.
Yet, there was Mack the truck driving murderer, having just closed the eyes on his victim of five minutes previous, smiling at the man whom he had just threatened with paralysis by gunshot to the knee. Just smiling.
--
Eric had never been a “gun person” per say. This was odd, considering he spent his adolescent years waking up each morning to feed his parent’s horses, clean chicken coup, and polish the manure off of his father’s work boots for the impending day’s labor. His father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather were currently or had been card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association. Eric, who was in cub scouts and chewed sunflower seeds while manning little league left field and even taken a squirrel on his first ever hunting trip with his father, was not a gun person. Per say.
So, it would be completely understandable to the average person when and if Eric became uneasy around a loaded revolver. Especially if this pistol were sitting unattended in a car on a bumpy ride. Even more so if Eric were driving, but not in control of the gun, which was coincidentally being eyed by a murdered. What could possibly make Eric even more uneasy about the situation would be the memory of being walked to his car at gun point not thirty minutes prior, thankful that Mack had not “put a piece of hot led through his knee.”
“Wanna tell me where we’re going, Mack?” ventured Eric.
“No I don’t,” declared Mack the murdering truck driver.
Why the hell not?
“Why the hell not?” fired Eric.
“Because,” rolled Mack, “you already know, now don’t ya?”
Eric stammered, and tried to wrap his brain around the events and conversations from the last thirty minutes. “So we’re, um, we’re actually going to the ….wait is your wife truly pregnant?”
Mack let out a long sigh, scratching his head with his off hand as he gazed down the length of I-84. The murdering truck driver stared straight ahead and did not offer any clues as to where they were going, or when he was going to reveal this information to his hostage. Eric had only the road and his thoughts to occupy him at the moment, and the latter were frightening and unnerving.
This guy put a bullet through an innocent girl less than an hour ago, and now he’s just gonna sit there? Just gonna sit there and not speak to me as he points the same damn gun at my chest. And where the HELL are we going? I mean what would happen if I just turned around…if I just spun the car around and slung this bastard up against the window….
“That would not end well for you,” Mack said matter-of-factly.
Holy shit he can read minds.
“What are you talking about?” Eric demanded defensively.
“Whatever you’re over there plotting, besides taking me to the hospital, would not end happily for you,” Eric said, patting his revolver comfortably. He continued, “Son, I know I’ve put you in quite the imposition, but I will be damned if anything, or one, gets in between me and my pregnant wife. Understand?” Mack the murdering truck driver again patted his revolver, eyed down the barrel, and then brought it round to face Eric’s head.
“Hey! What the hell man I’m doing what you want!”
“I know. And you’re doing a mighty fine job. Now continue to do what I want by pulling over.”
Eric took several deep breaths and replied, “Ok. Ok, Mack. There’s an exit coming up in two miles,” nodding at the mile marker.
Mack sighed a short breath through his nose, and then depressed the hammer of the gun, bring the muzzle flush against Eric’s temple.
“Now.”
Eric didn’t think. The all too familiar shallow sound of metal clicking shot him full of adrenaline, causing him to slam on the brakes, mash the button for the hazard lights, and pull the Jeep over to the shoulder of I-84.
--
Eric had been staring down a truck driver whom he had recently witnessed commit murder for the last five minutes. Neither had said a word, nothing coherent, at least. The murdering truck driver, Mack, had been mumbling to himself, almost angrily. It was strange, this progression. Eric felt as if Mack was fumbling over something: a decision perhaps?
“Anything I can help with? Or do for you, Mack? I mean, don’t we need to get you to the hospital?”
No. How could I be so stupid? There’s no hospital. There’s a gun, and there’s the decision to kill me or not. Right now. Right here on the side of this hell strip called an interstate.
“Yes. Get back in the car,” groaned Mack. He was confused, and still wrestling over something.
“Hey Mack,” Eric ventured, “we’re still in the car,” giving the steering wheel a nice tap as he flashed a sarcastic smile at his kidnapper.
“Get out.”
Mack swung his giant legs over each other and pushed the door of the Jeep open, shielding his eyes from the midday sun. Eric did the same, rounding the hood of his vehicle carefully, under the direction of Mack’s muzzle. The gun formed an imaginary dotted line path to a spot two feet in front of Mack, who looked scared, in spite of the weapon. Eric followed directions and eye movements carefully, being sure to do exactly as the man with the gun said.
Mack looked Eric dead in the eye, gun still trained on Eric’s chest. Then, the murdering truck driver released the hammer from its cocked position and stowed the gun. He finally spoke, “There is no baby, because for there to be a baby, I have to get a women pregnant. For me to get a women pregnant, we have to have sex, and I haven’t done that in a long time.”
Eric was confused and a little put off by this sudden swing in unbridled honesty. This wasn’t Oprah’s couch. “Oh?” Eric had no idea what to say, but the following was definitely not it, “And why is that Mack?”
There are moments in one’s life when one feels the overwhelming need to bite one’s tongue in half after a partiually stupid and ill-timed comment. There are also times when one makes such a comment and prepares for the well deserved punch that would justifiably follow it. In this case, the offended was a murdering truck driver, and the punch would come in the form of a fired .09 caliber revolver round. Luckily for Eric Dunbar, said round was fired straight into the air, acting as a starting gun of sorts for Mack’s turn to speak.
“I’ve listened to your shit enough today, and now you’re going to listen to mine. What I have to say is very important, and would still be important if I were telling it to you over a burger and a beer instead of the smoke of my revolver. Either way, I suggest you listen very carefully.”
Eric had never heard anyone talk with such urgency and confidence. Mack knew that Eric was going to listen to him, and he portrayed this knowledge with a sort of swagger usually reserved for football players and hip-hop stars. With the gun out of Mack’s hands, Eric relaxed for the first time in hours, and leaned against the side of his Jeep on the shoulder of I-84. Mack clasped and unclasped his hands, and began.
“Right now, you’re supposed to be dead, in the back of your own car, heading back to Portland. I’m not talking about in a hypothetical sort of I-should-have-shot-you-too-you-lucky-ass way. No, I mean exactly that: you should be dead right now. There are very real, very powerful people who had planned on you being dead at this time. Now, they know that you are in fact very much alive because they haven’t received a call from me, informing them of your passing.”
Eric’s head was swimming, and he needed to sit down. He had so many questions, but he knew Mack had much more to reveal.
He did.
“The revolver that I shot the pretty young thing back there with..” Eric grimaced and interjected, “Her name. Was Mandy.” Mack had the gun drawn and cocked before Eric had dropped his last syllable. He grunted, “Do not. Interrupt me. Again. This is important, dumbass.”
Mack holstered the weapon again and continued, “that revolver was handed down to me from my father. You might have guessed that. What you will not have guessed is that my father died when I was a teenager, and left this gun to me in his will, along with a few worthless trinkets and mementoes.”
Eric winced, Anything left by your dying father was not worthless. I wouldn’t expect this maniac to feel any different about such things, though.
“When he died, a business friend of my mother’s started coming over more often. He didn’t want to replace my dad, which was good because I would have hated him for that. What he did, however, was guide me. A true mentor, or godfather, if you will. He was there for all of the important steps: my driver’s license, graduating high school, failing out of college – all of it. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have upper education, or a job, because he would offer me a new position at his company. It was based out of Portland.”
Eric swallowed a brick as it dropped into his stomach. He began to sweat, even as the sun moved behind the clouds, and the cool Utah temperatures hovered around 70 degrees that afternoon. This was starting to make too much sense.
“Ahh, you get it now do ya? Well, after getting a job working under my godfather, I quickly became the most hated poor sumbitch in that hell hole. I was selling paper products to fortune 500 companies, making six figures a year, and getting a promotion every six months. ‘Dad’ wasn’t very discreet about playing favorites.”
Eric was racing, he was sure his face was giving him away. Surely Mack knew that he had figured it out. And yet, both of them, deep down in different ways, wanted it t be said out loud.
“Keep going,” Eric breathed.
A wry smile crept across the murderer’s face. “You want to know, you need to know, don’t you?”
Eric couldn’t help but smile in spite of himself and the situation. The grizzled, cynical truck driver who had just murdered a random young woman, the same man who the same murder weapon now trained on him, was playing mind games with his prey. Eric murmured an “On with it.”
“Well as I worked my way up to the top of this Fortune 500 trading company without having ever sniffed a college campus, heads began to turn, and some roll, on my way there. One of those heads you would be able to recognize from any angle: a Mr. Boss Harrison. Harrison sniffed me out just like I’m sure he sniffed you. He noticed my blue-collar work ethic, my no-holds-bar attitude, and my unrelenting drive. I was hired away from my father to join Harrison on his newest project:
The Portland Trailblazers.
“The Portland Trailblazers,” Eric whispered.
“The Portland Trailblazers,” affirmed Mack.
Wow.
Mack turned the gun over and over in his hand, inspecting each inch and crevice, as if looking for what to say next. The cold metal was heating up in the sun, and Mack was forced to hold it down on the butt, using the wood as insulation for the sunlight. The weight of the old revolver looked off in his hand, only controlling about one fifth of the surface area and mass of the piece. From the current angle there was no way to get it up in time if Eric made a move.
Which he did.
The entire time that Mack had spent reliving his childhood, Eric had been inching forward and to his left. It was enough movement to be in the right angle and position for his next maneuver, but not nearly enough to attract any suspicion or attention away from the enthralling story. It was more for Mack than Eric, anyway. By the time Mack repeated “The Portland Trailblazers”, Eric was ready for the gun.
Mack made a few crucial mistakes when they got out of the car. The first was allowing Eric to walk to and fro as he pleased, not establishing complete and immediate control over the victim and the situation. After that, Mack taught Eric, however quick it might have been, not to fear the one thing that could kill him: the gun. Mack waved it around carelessly, kept it pointed at his hostage less than half of the time, and even put it out of sight for a solid ten minutes, when they both knew Eric could have killed him.
So, when Eric saw the gap he needed, like a sniper hunting a live tiger, he jumped. For the 7 seconds that Mack held the gun in the shifted grip while looking down, away from Eric, the latter sprung forward off of his back foot, grabbing the gun with his left hand out of Mack’s right and putting the rest of his body into Mack’s left side, propelling the duo down the shoulder. They started rolling down the embankment towards the woods, each trying to gain top position on the other, each still managing to keep a grip on the revolver, and each grunting for the entire 12 seconds they spent tangled together.
--
The grass was itchier than Eric remember grass being. This was a weird first thought after a fight over, but not involving a gun, but it was the truth. The grass was itchy. The lump of fat and bones laying on top of him was heavy. He shoved his hands into the largest area he could find, and pushed. Mack the murdering truck driver didn’t move. Eric’s ears hurt, the same way they hurt two hours ago when….
THE GUN.
Mack’s father’s colt revolver was laying not three yards away from the pair of them, all alone and shiny, expectant even, to be held in such a dangerous time as this.
“Mack?”
No answer. My ears hurt. The gun was thrown 10 feet away. What the hell just happened?
And then, the blood came. Slowly at first, the thick red liquid flowed through the grass blades like a miniature tsunami crushing through trees and villages. It saturated the ground and seeped up on Eric’s shirt sleeve. There was so much blood. It reminded Eric of Mandy’s body.
“Mack? MACK!”
The gun shot has deafened him. I can barely hear myself, and depending on how closely it went off to his head…
Mack was not listening. Mack the truck driver was not moving. Mack the murderer was not breathing. Mack the murdering truck driver was not living. With each movement and expectation of Mack’s body, Eric came to another successive realization. By the end of it, Mack was dead, his blood on the ground and Eric’s clothes, and the gun that did it lay smirking three yards away.
There’s no way that gun murdered Mack.
The first stage of grief is denial. This can be a denial of facts, like Mack being dead. Or, a grief sufferer can deny blame, like the gun being the murderer over, say, the only other living human at the scene. Mack wasn’t dead, and if he was, there’s no possible way that he was shot by a gun.
These were the facts as Eric believed them. The facts that actually existed were much more gruesome. With Eric in mid-air hurtling toward him, Mack had almost no time to react. When they hit the ground, Eric’s hand was wrapped firmly around the gun, with Mack’s finger still choking the trigger. The collision had jerked the gun from its sideways position adjacent to Mack’s chest and forced the barrel of the Colt against Mack’s chest. The force of two grown men hitting the ground together took precedent over all other functions as each body braced itself for impact. The result of this was a momentary loss of muscular control, causing Mack’s own figure to slip.
Eric’s ears were ringing so badly because his head had been pressed close to the truck driver’s shoulder as they down the embankment when the gun had gone off. In fact, there was blood on the left side of his face, but it wasn’t his.
The facts were these: Eric’s hand and Mack’s finger had been firmly wrapped around different parts of the gun when it went off. Eric’s hand had forcibly changed the muzzle’s direction, and Mack’s finger had pulled the trigger. The rest was up to the bullet, which was lodged in the truck driver’s chest cavity some four inches from the surface. It had severed many main blood passageways leading in and out of the heart, and had flooded the left ventricle.
The gun had fired. The gun had fired into Mack’s heart. Mack was bleeding from his chest and mouth, indicating blood in his lungs.
Mack, the murdering truck driver, was dead on the side of I-84, bleeding out down the embankment towards the tree line.
It was 2:34 in the afternoon, and Eric Dunbar had just assisted in the murder of Mack the truck driver.
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