= All the Way West
  by Ray Nayler


She knew he was the one. He leaned against the pump and stared blankly off at nothing while the gas pumped into his tank. He wiped the gasoline from his hand onto his T-shirt...not caring if he smelled of it. He glanced up at her. She felt her cheeks burn as his eyes scanned quickly, professionally, up and down her body. He favored her with a smile as casual as kicking a pebble, and walked into the gas station to pay. Every movement he made told her he didn't care about anything. He would take her where she wanted to go.

Her hands were shaking. She glanced into the station and saw him paying the man at the counter, thumbing a few bills over. She went to his car...an early-model white Mustang...and opened the passenger side door. She slid in, slamming the door shut behind her. That was it...the end of one life and the start of another.

The interior of the car smelled of cigarettes, mixed with medicinal pine from a little tree-shaped air freshener that hung from the rear-view mirror. She glanced out the corner of her eyes at him. He was coming back. He hadn't seen her yet. What if it didn't work? What if he threw her out of the car, thinking she was just some crazy old lady? But she wasn't old yet.

She checked her lipstick in the mirror and watched him come. She liked the way he walked with his head down, looking at the toes of his engineer boots, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He was at the car now, moving around to the driver's side. He opened the door and slid behind the wheel, fishing through the pockets of his jeans, not even seeming to notice her. He came out with a half-crushed pack of cigarettes and the car keys. He stuck the keys in the ignition and turned the key, and the engine roared to life.

Only then did he turn his head and look at her. His eyes were the color of amber, the pupils like insects trapped inside. One of the pupils was misshaped...like an hourglass. It made his face seem somehow lopsided and cat-like and his expression impossible to read. He stuck a cigarette in the side of his mouth and pushed the cigarette lighter in, staring at her until it popped back out and he lit his smoke. Then he turned, blew a blue cloud of smoke out his window, jammed the car into gear, and pulled out of the station.

She gave a last glance at her minivan, parked at the side of the gas station. Then they turned a corner, and it was gone.

When they hit the highway he looked at her again.

"Where you headed?" His voice was baritone and almost emotionless. He placed his accents in the wrong places, like a bad actor rehearsing a script.

She leaned back, pushing her knees against the dashboard. She thought of her husband at home, waiting for her to come back with a can of gas so he could try out his new fucking lawnmower and his new goddamned chainsaw. She thought of her daughter blotting her lipstick on the torn Christmas paper. She thought of the PTA meeting last week, and how she'd compared the men's pot-bellies with the bellies of their pregnant wives. She'd had to run to the bathroom, laughing hysterically...and then crying hysterically, locked in one of the stalls, until one of the other wives had come in and asked her what was wrong, honey?

"I really don't give a shit. Just west."

He glanced over at her with his eyebrow raised over his odd hourglass eye. "Okay." The eyebrow sharpened. "You running from something?"

"Yes."

When she did not elaborate, he turned back to the road. After a few moments, he said. "Merry Christmas, anyway."

"Ha!" The laugh was like a bark. She covered her mouth.

He shook his head and turned back to the road. Evening was coming on. The orangey setting sun glared into the car. She rooted through her purse and pulled out her sunglasses.

"Could you get mine?" he asked. "They're in the back seat, there."

She dug around behind her, finally finding a pair of scratched Ray-Bans under a crescent wrench and a bunch of empty fast-food cups. She handed them to him, and he put them on.

"Thanks. My name is Jason, by the way."

"Shannon." She looked at the side of his face. It was much less confusing with the shades on, hiding that odd eye. He had a good profile...and a square jaw that looked like it could stand up to a punch or two. She liked his jaw. She wanted to bite it. She had a sudden vision of him shooting her husband in the face. It came over her like electricity. She saw her husband twitching on the ground with a crimson hole the size of a half-dollar in his cheek. His dead eyes stared up at her. She shuddered as an odd warmth coursed upwards through her, starting at her knees.

"Where are you going?" she asked. She hated her voice. It was a tiny soprano...like a mouse-squeak. She couldn't say anything without sounding like a dumb child. Men loved it.

He shrugged. "As far as I can."

"Me too." She pulled out the bobby pins that kept her hair plaited along the sides of her skull and shook her head so that her hair spilled down to her shoulders in rich chocolate ringlets. The henna smell of her hair filled the car. She tried to see Jason's eyes behind the dark glasses, but she couldn't make them out.

Outside, the sun was a burning red buoy trying to stay afloat on the horizon. She watched silver grain elevators turn salmon in the setting sun and shrink in the rear-view mirror. She had left. The thought was terrifying and beautiful. She had left it all behind. How soon before they started to get worried about her? Would she go back? She didn't want to, but somehow, she didn't trust herself not to. She could almost see it...crying into a pay phone at some gas station out in the middle of nowhere, begging Jim to come and get her. Begging him in her little, mousy voice.

And of course, he would come and get her...and they would drive home in silence, him with that set, hard look on his face, as if he had been turned to stone, her staring out the window watching all the grain elevators getting larger again as they sped home. And then he would start in on her: The children were worried about you, Shannon. I was worried sick, Shannon. What would make you do something like this, Shannon? Are you crazy, Shannon? He ended every sentence with her name when he was angry, dropping it like an insult, meant to humiliate her...as if her name were shithead, or idiot.

She realized that Jason was talking to her and turned toward him, shaking her head as if waking up.

"What?"

"I asked what you're running away from."

"My husband."

He nodded as if he understood the whole situation. "He beat you up, huh?"

She shook her head.

He said "What, then?" confusedly, as if there were no other possible reasons.

"He buys me lousy Christmas presents."

Jason reached in his pack and pulled out another cigarette, pushed in the car lighter and then lit it with the burning coil. Shannon watched him for a while, studying him. He glanced constantly at the rear-view mirror, almost involuntarily.

"What are you running from?"

He jumped a little and then laughed, nervously. "An old buddy of mine...I guess you wouldn't call him that anymore. I grabbed a little of his dough, and took off with it." He looked at her as if trying to gauge her reaction. "I figure if I can make it out of the state, he'll never find me."

She shrugged noncommittally.

As long as he keeps driving, she thought, I could really care less what he's running from. She wondered if he really cared why she was running, and decided that he probably felt the same about her...they were just sharing the same car, really...nothing else. And it was nice. She wished that she could get that silence from more people. But instead, they crowded her with expectations. She found herself changing the shape of her personality to suit them. But this man beside her...he wouldn't even care if she rolled down the window and spat. He wouldn't even blink at her. At the most, she imagined, he might be picturing me naked, or picturing fucking me in some sleazy roadside motel. And I just might do it, anyway. She could imagine it...she leaned her head back and imagined the force of him, hard, on top of her. Yes, she just might.

The sun had almost dipped below the horizon now. Shadowy, crimsoned cornfields whipped past the windows. Jason took his sunglasses off and tossed them into the back seat.

With a sudden jerk of the steering wheel and a heavy foot on the brakes, he slid the car off onto the shoulder.

"What...." Shannon blurted.

His fist hit her in the temple. Her head rocked back and thudded against the window. Blackness crept in from the edges of her vision. There was a loud ringing sound in her ears. Something in the car with her was growling. She felt her shirt tear. She heard herself saying "No...." over and over again, very far away. She kicked out as hard as she could with her feet. They connected, and he made a "whuff" sound. A fist smashed into her nose and the air exploded in gold and red stars. A voice very close to her ear said "Hold still, bitch."

She reached down into the back seat, her hand searching. Her belt was off now, a rough hand shoving itself down the front of her panties, hurting, pushing violently down and into her. Her hand found the cool metal of the crescent wrench and wrapped around it. She swung blindly and connected with a crunch.

He made a sound like a dog that has had its tail stepped on. The hand came out of her pants with a jerk and he convulsed violently on top of her. She swung the wrench again. It connected with his temple, above his ear, and he stopped moving.

She kicked at him desperately. Her hand clawed at the door handle. She struggled free of his weight, sliding out of the car backwards, onto the gravel shoulder, scraping her elbows.

She barely noticed. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring at him, still clutching the crescent wrench in her hand. He lay face down on the front seat of the car, sprawled as if dead. Blood ran sluggishly from above his ear.

The air was evening-hot, and full of tiny swarming bugs like gnats. She watched with fascination as the blood pooled on the vinyl beside his head. She had....

He came awake with a roar and lunged at her, springing free of the car in one motion.

She jerked to the side, and he landed on his hands and knees in the gravel.

She cleared the short barbed-wire fence in a clumsy leap and ran into the corn, stumbling. Grasshoppers, confused, jumped into the air and thudded against her legs and arms. Her foot caught on a furrow of earth and she fell, smashing into dry stalks. Behind her, she heard a growl of pain and rage, and the scraping of gravel. He was getting up. He was coming for her. She regained her feet and ran blindly, cutting diagonally through the rows, slapping the stalks aside. Grasshoppers burst into the air in a thousand different directions like shrapnel...the neglected field was infested with them. Her hand kept its grip on the wrench as she ran.

She stopped after a long while. Her breath came in short, choked gasps. Her ears strained, listening. The grasshoppers sawed away noisily. And inside that sound was another...the dry sound of stalks being pushed aside, coming closer. But not from one side...from two. She could no longer tell which way she had come from, but she could distinctly hear two movements through the crops, closing on her. She looked down the row she was standing in. The corn went on forever, gray in the dying light, its tips touched sunset-red, like dim torches.

A voice called out and she jerked, swinging around toward it, bringing the wrench up, readying it.

It was not his voice.

"Hey! You better clear the hell out of there! I'm comin' for ya!"

Both sounds of movement in the corn paused.

"I hear you in there!" The voice sounded slightly fearful.

She parted the corn as silently as she could, moving toward the voice, across the rows. She could no longer hear Jason moving toward her...but she felt his presence somewhere in the field, as strongly as if he were standing just behind her, ready to pounce. She saw his shape everywhere in the dim gray, crouching in every new row that she entered.

The voice called out again. "You better just turn around and clear out." It had a definite waver of fear in it now. A small circle of light appeared suddenly, rows ahead of her, and projected a weak cone out through the corn, like the beam of a land-locked lighthouse. The cone missed her the first time. She walked silently toward it as it swung back in her direction. Calling out to the man would only attract Jason's attention...tell him immediately where she was. The light swung slowly back toward her. She was very near to it, now. It could not be more than six or seven rows away. Its beam cut through the corn, casting long, thin stalk-shadows on the ground. Finally, it found her, and stopped, blazing into her eyes.

"Stand right there, you," the voice said. "I have a 30/30 pointing right at your goddamned chest, and you're on my property. I'll shoot you just as dead as can be."

She did not doubt it. She could feel a small, cold circle on her chest, where the bullet would enter.

Her voice came out little more than a stammering croak. "P-Please. I need help. There's someone after me."

The voice did not answer. The light, she realized, was growing. It bobbed up and down, slightly, waxing and waning as it was obscured by stalks of corn. She could see nothing of what was behind it. Then, there was a crunch of impact. The circle of light swerved crazily and dropped to ground level, pointing off at nothing. She heard the rough sound of breathing.

There was another crunch, and a grunt, and then Jason's breathless voice.

"You just stand right there, bitch. I'll be with you in a moment."

She was already running, smashing blindly through the corn. A shot rang out, then another, and another. He was firing blindly after her. Her back was alive with cold potential holes as she ran.

She hit the barbed-wire fence at a dead run. Its spikes bit into her leg as she went over it and onto the gravel, her hands out to break her fall. Her face thudded into the sharp rocks, and she saw stars, felt them ripping into her skin.

It did not matter. She was up in a second, her feet scrabbling for play on the loose rocks. She saw the car ahead of her and went toward it.

The passenger door was still open. The keys were in the ignition. She threw herself behind the wheel and twisted them. The engine roared to life. The car bucked forward, tires spinning on the rocks, and then got onto the road. The headlights caught Jason in their beams for a moment, a crimson-headed ghost entangled in the barbed-wire fence, its mouth open in a scream. He raised the long black rifle and fired. The bullet thudded into the car's body somewhere, and then she was out of his range, rocketing west.

She did not stop until the gas gauge was pointed at E. Then she pulled off the highway, into the large, well-lit circle of a Phillips 66, where she guided it to a pump and shut the engine off. Her hands did not want to come off of the steering wheel. Slowly, she forced her fingers to uncurl. Her hands fumbled at the door handle. She got it open and stepped out onto rigid, stiff-kneed legs. Using one hand on the car's body to support her, she stepped slowly, until she gained control over her muscles again.

The bullet hole was in the side of the car's body, near the back. It had gone into the trunk. Uneasily, she wondered if it might have passed through something vital...the taillight wires or something that would get her pulled over and questioned. She imagined trying to explain the fresh scratches all over her to some blank-faced cop while he ran the car's registration through his computer and found god-knows-what. A cop who would lead her straight back into the loving arms of her husband and daughter, back to the dying Christmas tree and the lipstick-smeared wrapping paper. Back to the PTA. She shoved the key into the lock of the trunk and opened it.

The bullet had hit nothing vital except a large suitcase, which it had passed through, exploding out and showering bits of green and white paper all over the trunk of the car before thudding into the trunk's other side, leaving a dent nearly the size of a fist in the steel.

Shannon opened the suitcase with shaking hands.

It contained more money than she had ever seen before. Much more. Sheaf after sheaf of hundred dollar bills.

She slammed the trunk shut and got into the car.

Shannon could hear her heart beating. She sat behind the wheel, her breath coming shallow and fast, staring at the face in the mirror. It was bloody, scratched, streaked with dirt...and ecstatic.

She sat for a moment, then got out on legs that were suddenly stronger and lifted the nozzle. She had a long way to go.


RAY NAYLER was born in Desbiens, Quebec. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines, from Ellery Queen to Crimewave to The Berkeley Fiction Review. His first novel, AMERICAN GRAVEYARDS, is to be published in June as issue #5 of Crimewave, and can be ordered at TTAPress@aol.com. Ray lives in California. He can be contacted at like_the_rabbit@hotmail.com

Copyright (c) 2001 Ray Nayler