Читать книгу Mountain Madness - Jimmy Dale Taylor - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThe day was drawing to an end. Glenn True Clark was hot, tired and horny. He was regretting all the possible lays he had passed along the highway. And then he saw her, a slender chick standing on the west side of 1-5, two suitcases beside her and leaning towards California. There was no doubt in his mind his luck had changed. Even though her purple sack dress concealed the exact formation of what lay beneath, he was certain she would be shaped just right.
What he had to do now was turn around, head back, and entice her into his car before some other stud beat him to the prize.
This one wouldn’t last long. Young and supple and willing, he would bet. The sign at the exit read: Talent. Perhaps this was an omen. Glenn pressed hard on the gas pedal.
“Hey, man, what’s going on?” Jimmy’s head raised up from the backrest and he rubbed sleep from his tired eyes.
Seconds later, Glenn hit the brakes, throwing his passenger into the dash and causing his head to bump the windshield and his revolver to fall from its hiding place.
“Damn!” Jimmy shouted as he reached for the gun and placed it back on the ledge. “Watch what you’re doing. What the devil are we pulling off for? We aren’t ever gonna get to Seattle.”
Glenn didn’t come close to stopping at the sign that ordered him to do so. After a cursory glance to satisfy himself that the road was clear of oncoming traffic, he shot a quick left.
As Glenn gunned the engine, he said, “I spotted something across the highway thumbing her way south that looks better than anything you’ll see in Seattle. Maybe she’ll have a sister for you.”
“She can’t be that good.”
“We’ll soon find out. At least she’s here and not a thousand miles away.”
“Man, it ain’t no thousand miles to Seattle. We keep driving and we’ll be there by morning. You want me to take the wheel, I’ll do it. I’ll drive us all the way up there without even stopping except to buy gas and more beer.”
“Nobody drives my car but me.”
Glenn cranked the wheel again and headed down the entrance ramp to 1-5 south. When he saw the chick still standing there beside her two suitcases, as appealing as a magazine model, he pounded on the steering wheel and shouted, “Hot damn! Don’t go nowhere till I get there, baby.”
This was going to be so easy it was almost criminal. The fact that Glenn had daughters nearly as old as the girl he was determined to pick up and use as a means of relieving tension didn’t deter him for one moment.
So far as he was concerned, women who stood alongside the road were asking for it. Probably wanting it bad. She wouldn’t have to wait much longer. Glenn was willing to give her a ride in his car but then he damned sure intended to ride her. A fair enough trade, he thought.
Terrie was shivering. The sun was sinking low. Hitchhiking had seemed to be a wise decision during earlier daylight hours but it now threatened to become a nightmare. The competition for rides was stiff. In the short distance she’d traveled this afternoon, there had been scores of hitchhikers, most going in her direction.
When the speeding car slowed and pulled off the road near her, Terrie looked relieved. Two men were in the front seat. No problem. It was the one-man rides that gave trouble.
The passenger side door opened and a young man stepped out. He didn’t say a word but folded the seat forward and placed her suitcases inside. As she crawled in after them, the driver said, “Where you heading?”
Terrie wasn’t sure where. “Sacramento,” she said. “I have a job waiting for me there. In a bank, you know.”
“This is your lucky day,” Glenn said. “We’re on our way to Sacramento.” Tell ‘em anything, he thought. Had she said Phoenix, that’s where he’d say he was going.
Jimmy slumped down in his seat. The girl was right behind him. This, they didn’t need. He had no idea where they were, but there was no doubt that Sacramento was many miles away. They had stopped there some time in the morning and now here it was almost sundown.
“I’m Jay and my little buddy here is John,” Glenn said. “What’s your name?”
“Terrie.”
Terrie settled into the white leatherette seat. But then she glanced up to see Jay eyeing her in the rearview mirror. She shivered.
Jay partially turned his attention to driving and she turned to John who had a melancholy look on his face as he sat up straight and stared out the side window. John acted as though something was really bothering him.
What in the hell is going on? Jimmy wondered as dreams of Seattle and its beautiful girls began to evaporate. Why was Jay heading back the wrong way?
Here they were, twenty-four hours after leaving San Francisco, and they still hadn’t left California.
At this rate they would be lucky to reach Seattle before winter. Although he had no idea of how far they were from Sacramento, he was certain they would probably lose another day making the round trip. Maybe two, depending on what his new acquaintance had in mind. All because old Jay was horny enough to stop for any hitchhiker wearing a dress.
He looked over at the girl. She looked tired, real tired. He looked at his driving companion. He knew what was in the old guy’s head. Jimmy sighed.
As Terrie closed her eyes, looking relaxed, it was obvious she didn’t realize Jay was watching her and planning just what it would take to get her panties off. First he would have to get her filled to the gills with beer and wine so she would see things his way. At least soused enough so that she would offer very little resistance. And then. . . . What came next depended on her. He was damned sure going to get him some of that within the next few hours. If she resisted—well, there were ways to handle those kind of women.
The car slowed. Terrie opened her eyes. There was a sign proclaiming the Ashland exit. Jay, watching her in the rearview mirror, said, “I’m thirsty. Why don’t we stop at a store and get some beer. You like beer?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Jimmy didn’t pay any attention to the name of the town. He knew only that they had traveled south for a few miles and now they were exiting. Maybe this meant they would soon turn north again. With Jay, you never knew. They had been on the road a day and a night and it didn’t seem as though they had gone anywhere. Maybe they’d only been going around in circles. Could be Jay needed a compass and map to get him out of California.
Glenn turned left and soon pulled into the parking lot of the South Side Market. “I’ll get us something,” he said.
Although Terrie couldn’t see what he did next, Jimmy did. “What the hell is he doing now?” Jimmy muttered to himself. Glenn deftly slipped the pistol out of its leather pouch and shoved it into his right back pocket. He left his round gold-plated watch on the turn signal handle, pulled his wallet out of the glove box, left the car, and swaggered through the front door.
Left alone with Terrie, Jimmy offered her a cigarette. Again she declined in favor of one from her own pack. “How long you been on the road?” he asked.
“Since two or three o’clock. That’s long, you know. It seems as though nobody is going any distance today. It’s taken me three rides to get this far. Now you and your friend are taking me all the way to Sacramento.”
Jimmy didn’t answer. Sacramento, hell! If Jay took her all the way back they might as well forget Seattle. He felt sorry for this young chick, stuck out here by herself, but she wasn’t alone. Everywhere you looked, girls were hitchhiking. Especially those who were trying to reach San Francisco.
Terrie wasn’t that much different from a host of others he’d seen. She did have big blue eyes and a nice body. Anyway, what he had seen of her legs looked nice.
Glenn returned, climbed into the car, chucked his wallet back into the glove compartment, threw a box of Kleenex onto the front seat, slipped the gun back into its pouch, and pulled a six-pack of Olympia beer out of a brown paper bag.
Before he could hand one to Terrie, she said, “Let me out. I want to go inside for a moment.”
“You’ll be back, won’t you?” Glenn asked.
“Now where else would I go? Of course I’ll be back. I want to buy a few things.”
Jimmy opened his door, got out and raised the back of his seat.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she said.
After she had entered the store, Jimmy said, “Man, what are we doing here? I thought we were going straight to Seattle.”
“We’re on our way. Let me finish with Terrie. Then we’ll let her out and we should be in Seattle sometime tomorrow. You can wait that long, can’t you?”
Jimmy knew he didn’t have any choice. Not unless he got out and started walking. Or hitchhiking.
He popped the top on a can of beer and took a sip. Damn, but that was good.
“Look at her,” Glenn said, as Terrie stepped out of the store, balancing a soda and ice cream bar in one hand and clutching a small bag containing grapes and a peach in the other. “Man, she’s built just the way I like ‘em.”
Jimmy suspected by now that the way Glenn liked them was female and breathing. If they met those qualifications, more than likely they passed the old man’s test.
Glenn told Terrie to watch her soda and backed the car out of the parking lot. Instead of heading west to where they could get back on 1-5, he turned east. “Now where in the devil are we going?” Jimmy asked.
“Oh, just driving around a little.” Glenn wondered if there was any easy way to get rid of his buddy until he was through. Two bulls sniffing around after one little heifer in heat wouldn’t work. Get a combination like that and somebody was going to get hurt. If somebody did, that person would be John.
What was important was that he keep Terrie on his side. “You ain’t in no hurry, are you?” he asked. “We got some friends living near here that we oughta stop and see before we head south. Sooner or later we’ll get you to where you’re going though. Don’t you worry about that. Probably be sooner than you think.”
“What friends?” she asked.
“Slim and Virginia. They own a ranch up in the mountains. Thought that since we’re this close we might stop for a few minutes.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“There’s a new singing group staying at the ranch. I can’t remember what they call themselves but they are damn good.”
“Sure. All right.”
Jimmy wondered what was going on. This was the first he’d heard of Slim and Virginia and any singing group. He suspected that the old guy was blowing smoke for Terrie’s sake. Whatever Jay had in mind, Jimmy owed it to the girl to see that she wasn’t mistreated. The old man had better not use force. He had too much respect for women to ever allow that to happen.
A sign pointing to the left read: DEAD INDIAN ROAD. Glenn turned onto it. Ahead lay a winding asphalt track, snaking its way up a mountain that was bare on the sides and covered with trees on top. It had the appearance of a man with a round head and a poor haircut. Robbed of sunlight this late in the day, it looked gloomy.
“Slim and Virginia live over on the other side of Dead Indian Mountain,” Glenn said.
Sure they do, thought Jimmy. And I’m the president of Cuba and Fidel Castro is King of England and old Lyndon Baines Johnson is loved by all in North Vietnam. He might be naive, but he wasn’t stupid.
On their left was a small airport; on their right was the Airport Market. “We can’t go up there with only one six-pack of beer,” Glenn said. “Let’s pull in here and get another.”
Jimmy was not one to argue against the need for more beer.
Glenn parked in front of the store. After going through his ritual again, he went inside. Terrie wiped her hands on a Kleenex and said, “Your friend is kind of strange. Have you noticed?”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
She rolled her eyes at Jimmy. “How about you, John? Are you strange?”
Jimmy shook his head. He turned in the seat until they were facing one another. “I got it together,” he said. “Being in the service did that. Your big blue eyes sure are pretty.”
“Thank you.” Terrie took a bite of peach.
“You really going to Sacramento?”
“I really am. Maybe farther.”
“You could get hurt hitchhiking.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Maybe. I don’t know what Jay’s got in mind, but I want you to know I respect women. Nothing’s going to happen to you if I can help it.”
“There’s no need for you to worry about me. Jay isn’t going to do anything to me even if he wants to because I won’t let him. I am experienced at taking care of myself, you know.”
“You might need help. Look.” Jimmy plucked the revolver from its ledge under the car’s dash. “I got this from Jay.”
Terrie pulled back. It was a small gun that John held in his hand. It was shiny, a chrome-plated revolver with light colored grips, but it could be deadly. Guns were something to be feared. “Does it shoot?” she asked.
“It better. What good is a gun if it won’t shoot?”
“But why do you want it?”
“For protection. Don’t have no license, or nothing.”
As he spotted Glenn coming out of the store, Jimmy hid his gun back under the dash. “Don’t tell him I showed it to you,” he said. “No need in making him mad.”
“It’s our secret,” Terrie said. It wasn’t clear what they were doing with a gun. From what did they need protection?
“He keeps one on the floor between his feet,” Jimmy said in a conspiratorial tone.
When it isn’t in his pocket, he thought.
Two guns! Terrie shivered.
Glenn climbed in, passed two six-packs of beer to Jimmy and broke the seal on a bottle of wine. He offered it to Terrie who drank first and then passed it back. As Glenn attacked the wine, she accepted a can of beer from Jimmy.
Glenn pointed the nose of the car up Dead Indian Road. They had traveled less than a half mile from the Airport Market when they saw a highway patrolman coming towards them. “Put it down,” Jimmy begged Glenn. “Please, put the beer down.”
He and Terrie were both looking guilty as they tucked their beer cans out of sight. Glenn just laughed and raised his in a salute as the patrolman approached. The two cars passed, and Jimmy tried to hide in his seat.
A mile or so more and Jimmy was squirming. He felt as though his bladder would burst. “Man, I gotta go,” he said. “I gotta go bad. Find a place and let’s stop.”
Glenn whooped it up. “There’s a tree,” he said. “That oughta make a good bathroom. You can go behind that tree.”
“Man, it’s not a good enough tree. It’s too little. Find us a place. I bet Terrie has to go, too.”
When they pulled into the Hooper Springs Wayside Park, Jimmy jumped out and made an awkward dash to the rest room, hoping he wouldn’t spot his britches. He barely made it inside without doing so. As he was going out, Glenn was coming in. “Can’t you hold your water?” Glenn asked.
“I can hold it as well as most. It’s been a long time between rest stops. Besides, you went when we last stopped and I didn’t. Man, what’s this crap about Slim and Virginia and a ranch and a singing group? First time I’ve heard anything about that.” “Just because you haven’t heard don’t mean they’re not there,” Glenn said as he went inside.
Terrie returned to the car soon after Jimmy and he let her in the back seat. “Are you afraid of me?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“I don’t know. You just seem to wish I wasn’t here. Is that what you wish?”
“It’s nothing personal. I’m just wanting to go to Seattle.”
“What’s in Seattle? A girlfriend?”
Jimmy was saved having to answer when Glenn returned. His reasons for wanting to go to Seattle were becoming more and more difficult for him to define.
When they were all three back in the car, Glenn reached under the seat and pulled out a deck of cards. “Do you play poker?” he asked Terrie.
“Of course.” She plucked a cigarette from her pack and Jimmy flicked his lighter. She blew smoke and added, “I know how to play.”
“Count us out some matches, John. We don’t want to take Terrie’s money. We got us a couple of hundred apiece so we don’t need to do that. Of course it would be a lot more exciting to play strip poker.”
“We’ll play for matches,” she said.
“Yeah, okay. Dealer’s choice. Five card stud is my game. I’m giving you fair warning now though. There’s been many the time when I’ve made my living playing poker. Got my training in Las Vegas. I can beat those guys any day, no problem.”
Jimmy felt certain that Jay’s ramblings were only for Terrie’s benefit. Nobody beat Las Vegas consistently. If they could they wouldn’t have to drive stolen cars.
He counted out ten matches for each of them. As Jay was shuffling, Jimmy opened another can of beer. Damn, but he was getting hungry. It had been a long time since the candy bar and even longer since breakfast. And Jay hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Just drank beer and wine.
Why were they here instead of on the road heading north? he wondered. They would never get to Seattle and the reason was obvious. Because Jay was willing to chase anything female.
Glenn saw John as a challenge for Terrie’s attention. He was dealing and talking. “You like my car?” he asked Terrie. When she didn’t respond, he plowed ahead. Time to take his new friend down a notch or two.
“Old John here, me and him had us a new Riviera but he wrecked the damned thing. Said it was the other man’s fault. It’s always the other man’s fault, ain’t it? You ever hear of anybody having a wreck when they would admit it was their fault?”
Jimmy studied a pair of queens. He’d never owned a Riviera in his life. Didn’t even know what they looked like. Wasn’t even sure who made them.
“After John wrecked our Riviera, we had to have some wheels, didn’t we? You know, we didn’t have a dime’s worth of insurance. So it was left up to old Jay here to find us transportation. That’s easy. I ain’t never had to worry about something to drive. Sometimes I buy ‘em, sometimes I don’t. This one I helped myself to. You know what I mean?”
“Well, you know, I suppose you mean this is a stolen car.” She looked bothered by the news, but said nothing further. Soon she would be in Sacramento and then these two men could go wherever they wanted to go.
Glenn laughed. “You’re a quick learner. Ain’t she a quick learner, John? Old John here stole it.”
“Like hell I did,” Jimmy replied.
“How about that, aces and kings,” Glenn said. “You gotta give me a match apiece. My luck holds, we’ll be playing for more than matches.”
Glenn kept the deal. As he shuffled the cards, he said, “I like to give presents to my girls. Now I’ll have you know I ain’t no tightwad. All I ask is if we split up they give the present back. That ain’t asking too much, is it?”
“Probably not.” Terrie frowned.
“I was in Sacramento not long ago. Now I’m going back. For you I will. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. You sure that’s what you want?”
Jay was getting drunk. The more he drank the more he talked, and the more he talked the less sense he made.
“That’s where I’m going,” she said.
“We oughta go down there to the airport, park the car, borrow us a plane, and fly down. Old John here is one hell of a pilot.”
Jimmy knew then that the man had lost what little sense he’d ever had. Given a choice, he would walk almost anywhere before he would fly. The only time he could remember being really scared was when he’d been in an airplane.
“Let’s all have a cigarette and another beer,” Glenn said. “I had me a girl in San Francisco and I gave her a pair of white go-go boots. You know the kind I mean. Pretty as a painting. The boots, not the girl. And expensive, too. The girl and the boots. Both were high dollar. We split and she wouldn’t give them back. Now I ask you, is that fair?”
When Terrie didn’t respond, Glenn said, “Reason old John’s so quiet is, his heart’s in Seattle. He’s got him a girlfriend there. Poor old John. He didn’t much more than get out of the Navy when this girl, the one he was so crazy about, was in a car wreck. About the time John was wrecking our Riviera in California, his girl was gettin’ herself killed up in Seattle. If that ain’t a coincidence I don’t know what is.
“That all happened a few weeks back,” Glenn went on. “Now you know the reason old John’s so sad. He’s kind of ignoring you because his heart is still with her.”
Terrie must have felt sorry for John. As she looked at her pair of jacks, she asked, “Were you in Vietnam?”
“Close by,” Jimmy said. “It was on a boat. We were right offshore.”
What was Jay talking about? He really was nuts.
Terrie won the hand with her pair of jacks. Beer cans and an empty wine bottle were tossed out of the car. The doors were open and the dome light was on. While Jay was shuffling, she studied both men. Although Jay had explained why John had not made a pass at her, the older man was doing just that. Well, Jimmy thought, she could take care of herself.
“Are you part Indian?” she asked Jimmy.
“I’m a full blood Cherokee,” he said. Now why had he told her that? He wasn’t full blood. Less than half.
Jay was old. Not as old as the pervert who’d propositioned Terrie earlier in the day, but he had to be past forty. His brown hair was thin and receding; he combed it straight back. His small nose had a pronounced hook and he wore false teeth.
Glenn said, “Yeah, old John’s still in mourning but I ain’t. Just look at me. I ain’t in bad shape for already being thirty-one, am I?”
Instead of answering, Terrie asked Jimmy, “How old are you?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Oh, I’d say nineteen.”
Jimmy nodded. He figured that was close enough. He didn’t tell her he was twenty-one. What was the point?
“He ain’t even dry behind the ears,” Glenn said. “Me, I got experience. That’s what women like, a man who knows how to satisfy ‘em. Ain’t that what women like?”
Terrie didn’t answer. “Let me out,” she said to Jimmy. “I need to go to the bathroom again.”
By now it was well past sundown. It was near enough to the darkness Glenn had been waiting for. “We’ll all go,” he said. “Then we’ll drive down to the store for more refreshments before we head up to Slim and Virginia’s. You can sit up front here with us any time you want,” he said to Terrie.
While Glenn was in the store, Terrie took him up on the invitation. She slipped her shoes off, stuffed them into a suitcase, then climbed over into the front seat. “Hi,” she said to Jimmy.
“Hi.”
“I was getting lonesome back there.”
“Okay, now you’re up here. No more need to feel lonesome.”
Glenn came out of the store with another bottle of wine and two more six-packs. When he saw that Terrie had moved up front, he grinned. The girl was ripe for picking. Ready to satisfy old Jay.
They headed up Dead Indian Mountain, all three riding in the front seat and drinking beer and wine. The night was black. Glenn followed his headlights around sharp curves, driving too fast, causing them to lean hard first one way and then the other.
“Man, slow this mother down,” Jimmy said. “You’re scaring Terrie.”
Glenn laughed and pressed the accelerator. They looked for the wayside park but somehow missed it. Once more he pushed the car too fast on sharp turns.
“Man, you’re gonna wreck this mother,” Jimmy said.
“Piss on you,” Glenn growled.
“Man, don’t talk like that around Terrie.”
“Piss on you, I said, and I’ll say it again. You or nobody else will ever tell me how to drive. Tell you what, I put one dent on this car, I’ll bang my head against a rock. Hand me a beer. Don’t try keepin’ it all to yourself.”
They popped the top on three more cans. Terrie looked frightened by Jay’s antics. “When are we going to get to the ranch?”
Glenn took several side roads, but always came back to Dead Indian Road. Terrie looked so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She lay her head on Jimmy’s shoulder and went to sleep. She looked content. Safe. Secure. When she awoke, her personal hell would begin.
