Disconnected Abbigail Smith

Disconnected

by Abbigail Smith @wintersblossoms

Life of Riley

Anders Ross

The jackals are at the door again. You can hear them, scratching on the broken wire of the screen, jealous faces baying at the moon as they fall over themselves across the porch. They want blood, this time. ‘Go away, wretched dogs,’ you say to them, loading your rifle, a shell in your mouth. ‘I’ll show those mongrels to come around here.’ The chamber snaps shut.

A couple of steps forward. The plastic blind screams open. The sound of the rifle’s hammer. But there’s nothing outside.

You don’t bother locking the shack up; there is little point sparing a condemned railroad property. Frank will clear up the mess, anyway, you reason. The truck outside looks just about how you left it, jade-green and rusting. You palm your rifle and duffle bag in the torn passenger’s seat and climb in.

After twelve miles going fifteen, most of it behind cautious school buses and probing snowplows, you leave the highway and pull into the gas station, a diner beside it.

‘Do you have a phone?’ you ask the sea of hunched backs and alpine hats sipping percolator coffee at the counter. They reply with a grumbled moan.

‘In the corner.’ The elderly waitress points to a wooden phone box beneath a neon clock.

You feed the machine the vestiges of your back pocket, about a quarter, and punch in the number. Dial tone. Buzzing. Click. You’ve reached the phone of … You don’t allow the automated message to reach Frank’s disjointed statement of his name before the beep. You ring off and realize the phone proffers no refund.

'What are you lookin’ at, buddy?’ A rail of a man with sallow features is standing about a foot away from you.

‘You gonna make another call or what?’ He stretches a gnarled finger to the black plastic receiver you are still holding.

‘Because if you are—’ You pass it to him with a heaviness that causes him to stagger backwards a little as you rush out of the diner.

You fumble for your keys, dropping them with a jangle onto the concrete forecourt of the gas station. ‘Bitch,’ you intone, bending on one knee to pick them up. They scratch the barrel of the truck’s lock and stick to the left when you turn them, eventually letting you open the steel door. Inside the cabin is the smell of burnt clutch and fumes. You don’t fasten your lap belt or see the two squad cars coming in for gas as you rejoin the highway.

A few miles down the road, you notice the snow has retreated behind thick black clouds pregnant with the worst rain of the season. Some drivers have pulled to the side of the highway to wait it out but you change up and speed past them. The Ford slews across two lanes with the howling wind that buffets at its sides. You pull the wheel with both hands to right it, but it is too late. A Caterpillar bulldozer parked at the side of the road catches the front right fender of the F-150, shearing away some of the paint, revealing more rust.

The truck continues sliding down the gully to the side of the highway. You press all your weight into the brake pedal, almost standing in the tilted cabin. Finally, it halts beside a boat pontoon and abandoned campground.

You let the motor idle as you gather your thoughts, checking you haven’t broken anything in the foregoing drama beyond a sweat. Feet, fingers, and neck all seem to move, but the truck gives off a fatal cough with a judder. It’s had it, you decide, pulling the key out from the barrel and throwing it into the woods.

In the action (not that you saw it), your supply of hooch has cascaded all over the footwell. The duffle bag was open. Amongst the broken glass, you pick up one of the few bottles of Crown Royal that looks pretty good, along with your rifle and box of shells. You then head into the pine forest over the river.

Although cold to the bone, the crossing is easy as you are quite high up in the mountains still. Even so, you wish you hadn’t given up smoking so soon. ‘Christ,’ you mutter into your denim sleeve as the current floods your boot. You could do with a Red.

Sitting on the other side of the bank, sheltering underneath an ancient pine, you watch the blue and red of the squad cars, now numbering four, pass by on the highway.

‘Fools!’ You raise the amber bottle to toast them. ‘If only you knew.’ Jackals, the doleful creatures, they savour the taste of blood from a big target. But now, stalking the county line, do they realize you’re one man? It’s a small crime that shakes the city.

The whisky is sweet—the peach one, always the peach one survives—but warms against the cold. Having voided your boot of its damp bath, you steel yourself to keep going. ‘It’s now or never.’

The wake of water that has formed by decades of logging and latterly daytrippers is sodden so much that you keep off it, walking in the knee-high grass instead. At least there’s no more river in here, you reason, slowly crossing through the plantation. It’s a lonely road to freedom, after all, Dad would say.

There he would be, in the kitchen at home. A Red dangling from his lip, the pack rolled under his cotton sleeve, matchstick dancing between thumb and forefinger, with a Sam Cooke record spinning behind him when he would tell you a day spent inside Angola is freer than doing what men like us have to do outside to get by.

About five miles in, you reach the sheer white of Lake Charlotte, and, farther beyond, the freedom of the border. The trees have changed—from pines to maples—and an eagle wheels around the tops.

You drop your whisky bottle, now empty. You wield your rifle. You take one last look into the green expanse of woodlice and sprites. You run. . . . You tried to.

While you were draining the peach whisky, you didn’t hear the crunching snow underneath state trooper boots. When you tore out of the highway gas station diner, you didn’t notice your face was on the TV news. You didn’t think the thin man was dialing America’s Most Wanted.

But you half-looked over your shoulder in the direction where you swore you heard a shortwave crackle. You felt the .22 casing. Three of them hit your knees. Exploding in a sea of flesh and blood as the whirr of chopper blades filled your ears.

You reach for your rifle one last time, crawling out onto the frozen lake. A blizzard has come. The snow reduces visibility to maybe ten feet. ‘One hundred yards to go,’ you mutter, drawing the sight up level with your left eye. But it locks up. The barrel has frozen.

The jackals want blood this time.