A GOOD SUMMER JOB
By
Anthony Neil Smith

Ray drove the minivan down Highway 98, carrying the killer's body from the prison in Leakesville to a funeral home in Hattiesburg. The trip took an hour, so Ray tried to tune in a decent rock station on the radio. He settled for a little static overlapping the music. Better than nothing. Anything to take his mind off the dead man covered up on the stretcher behind him.

It was a good summer job, driving bodies between Hattiesburg and other cities in south Mississippi, dropping off, picking up. Ray got to see nice scenery: Hills and pine trees, worn down farm houses, churches of all types, some with hand painted signs and really long names.

He took his mind off the past year in college, the grade troubles, the problems with that Christina girl, his parents pressuring him to drop out of the frat and concentrate on the studies. He wasn't floating through like he planned, and Ray was beginning to think law school wasn't in his future anymore. He changed his major again. He didn't care.

Ray stayed in Hattiesburg over the summer in order to take a Chemistry course, one he'd failed twice and desperately needed a credit for in order to graduate eventually. His parents insisted he find a part time job. But what could he do? A store, maybe? Waste of time. Mow some lawns? Not with his allergies. Then he saw the ad in the paper, paraphrased to: Driver's needed. Must have strong stomach.

Hauling dead people. Ray was nervous at first, but he thought, How bad could it be? Not much could go wrong, except zombies, maybe. He remembered how to pray, which he had stopped doing mostly except holidays with the folks and that one night last semester when Christina told him she was pregnant. He tossed and turned, kept from crying so the frat brothers wouldn't see, and prayed that he would wake up dead. Or that Christina would wake up dead. But he was alive the next morning, called Christina, and told her he'd pay for an abortion. Told her he never wanted to see her again after that. Last he heard she'd dropped out of school and moved back to Alabama.

The road made a wide curve ahead, and Ray sang along with The Who: "See me, hear me, touch me, feel me." Turned it up loud, shifted in his seat, glanced in the rearview, and thought he saw the cover over the dead man move.

No, just nerves. An illusion. A bump in the road, he thought. Ray had been driving for eight weeks, and not one body had ever been alive. Well, there had been that heart attack victim who released some air from his lungs, and it came out as a moan. Scared Ray to death, and he pulled over quickly, jumped out running to the closest pay phone, where his supervisor assured him it was normal. The guy was still dead.

"What, you think he's come back to life or something? A vampire?" The boss asked.

"It could be demons, possession maybe. I've seen that before with live folks."

"Then get back there and cast it out of him. You're already late."

That's what Ray did, praying as best he knew how on the way back to the van, and he found the man just as dead. One of the morticians later told him what caused the noise. It hadn't happened since, but Ray still tried to distract his mind from whoever he was carrying.

It couldn't have moved, he thought, and he looked ahead to see a semi passing on the left. Ray had drifted too close to the center line and yanked the wheel right, hugged the edge of the road. He looked into the side mirror, saw only a few cars far behind, an old brown Chrysler holding up traffic.

There was a rustling, and Ray turned to the rearview in time to see the body definitely moving.

Eyes ahead. Nightmare, coming true. Try to concentrate on the road. He felt it move, felt it sit up. A hand gripped the back of Ray's seat, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw another hand on the passenger seat. Then the dead man in the white prison jumpsuit climbed into the seat beside Ray and stared at him. The van swerved as Ray's grip on the wheel tightened.

"Easy, boy, you're going to kill us. I didn't get this far to die in a car wreck," the dead man said.

Ray blinked and looked the man over. Wet hair, half a mustache, dirty skin. There was a stale odor Ray hadn't noticed until the guy got close. Terrible.

"It's not a car. It's a van."

"Whatever."

"I thought you were already dead, right?" Ray said.

The man laughed. "Sure was. It worked out great. I think the worst part was convincing the doctor, but I had practiced holding my breath all week. It was three in the morning, doctor was half asleep when he took my pulse, didn't find it. Almost like he wasn't trying. But hey, I'm a free man!" He shook his head. "I wonder what that stuff was the guard gave me. Amazing."

Ray watched the road ahead and saw that they had just passed New Augusta, only twenty miles from Hattiesburg. No more gas stations, only woods and houses and hills. Smashing Pumpkins was on the radio: "In you I look so pretty, In you I crash cars, We must never be apart." The criminal reached to his bare feet and untwisted the wire on his toe tag.

"They tell you about me?" he said.

"A little, that you died from an overdose or something." Ray didn't say he knew the guy had killed a teenage girl. Sliced her throat after raping her and left her behind a burger joint.

"Name's Walt, like my dad." Walt held the tag out for Ray to read. Ray kept looking ahead. "And turn that noise off. Unless you can find a country station."

Walt was too loud. Ray kept his hands on the wheel and said, "We're not far now. Another half hour."

Walt reached for the volume knob and spun it down until the click. Silence in the van for a mile.

Then, Walt said, "What size are you? Your shoes. What size do you wear?"

Ray shifted in his seat, glanced in all the mirrors. The brown car was still holding up traffic. It was keeping pace. Ray thought, Friends of Walt?

"Eleven," Ray said.

"Big, but I can do big. Better than too small. You're a little skinny, but it'll work for a while. I've got some money waiting. I'll go shopping."

"They let you keep money?"

"Old bank account, different name. Got five years interest built up by now, ought to keep me for a week or two." Walt coughed, loud and wet. "So, this guard, I started talking to him sometimes, got friendly. He tells me he wants some good cocaine, and I give him some names. I promise him a slice if he thinks he can get me out. Couple of weeks later, he comes back with a plan.

"He gave me some drug to slow my pulse down, and told me if I played dead good enough, I was free to go. He had it all set up to get around the doctors and the warden. It happened pretty fast, man." He laughed, closed his eyes and rubbed his nose.

Ray wanted to go faster, but figured he didn't have a destination anymore. Walt wasn't armed, but neither was Ray. And this was a big weightlifting murderer who did not want to get caught again. What made Ray sick was the part about a guard helping Walt out. The road was straight there, and cars passed on the left. The brown one was still hanging back, though.

Walt pointed to his right out the windshield. "See that road, the paved one? Pull off there."

"Why? You know, I could just drop you somewhere, and, uh, then..."

"Exactly. How could you explain showing up at the funeral home without me?" Walt laughed, clapped his hands, then tapped Ray on the shoulder with his knuckles. Ray pulled back against his door.

"What are you going to do? I mean, now that you're out, you don't want another murder hanging over you."

Walt stared at Ray, said, "You do know what I did. Okay. I killed that girl because I had to. Because there wasn't any way to let her go after what I did to her and what she knew about me. Now that I've been in prison, in hell, I will kill, maim, rob, lie, cheat, and anything else to keep from going back. I will sell enough dope to buy loyalty, buy friends and protection, and I'd kill them, too, if one even looked like they'd rat me out." Walt eased back in his seat. "It's your bad luck you got this trip. You're going to die, because I need your clothes."

Ray turned off and followed the road, which was rough, the edges crumbling away, growing slimmer with each passing car. They passed houses on one side, train tracks running with them on the other. Walt looked out the window, shaking his head like an adrenaline rush: Pumped, pumped. Patted his hands on his lap.

Ray thought about jumping out, but would have to undo the seatbelt, wouldn't have time before Walt would grab him. If he could break loose, he might be able to outrun the guy. But then Ray couldn't think straight for too long, and he prayed for one of those lightning strike miracles that he'd heard about but never seen. He remembered in the Bible, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and Ray thought that was a funny way for God to work because right then he wished the dead would have just stayed dead. If it was your time to go, what could you do?

"You scared to die, Ray?" Walt said.

"Not scared of actually being dead, I guess. But no one wants to die, no one wants to see it coming."

"What's it for you, heaven or hell?"

"Heaven," Ray said, but didn't believe it, which scared him even more. He was sweating and trying to stop his whole life from flashing in his mind.

The road curved to the right and they were passing an abandoned gas station; two rusted chrome pumps out front under the skeleton of an awning, and a small building with a large front window that had FOR RENT painted across it with a phone number underneath.

"Pull in here, behind the store," Walt said.

Ray turned into the parking lot and stirred a cloud of orange dust as he eased the van to a stop at the back of the store. The bathroom door was open, nothing but an old toilet, sink, and leaves inside.

"Great," Walt said as he looked around. They couldn't see the nearest house from there. Trees. A worn path, probably used by kids who came here to play. Ray thought, That's who will find me, too.

Walt reached over, turned off the ignition and took the keys. "You did fine. I could barely tell how scared you were, but I knew. When I was a boy and my parents told me to be good or I'd go to Hell, I watched how they lived and wondered what good was. First time I drank a beer, I waited for something bad to happen. Same with the first time I stole and smoked grass and beat a guy to a bloody mess. And the first time I shot up, I prayed for God to stop me, or make me feel guilty, anything. But nothing ever happened. After that, selling dope to kids was nothing."

He jingled the keys in his fingers while he spoke. Ray reached for the door handle slowly, but Walt said, "Stay put," and got out on his own side, came around to Ray's door and flung it open. He grabbed Ray's shirt and dragged him out.

There was an old drink cooler with the glass busted out of the front against the back wall. Walt pushed Ray against the side of it face first so he couldn't see anything. He was crying and hated himself for it, tried to suck it in. His teeth chattered like he was freezing.

"I'm gonna slip my arm around your neck, and it'll be a snap. That's all."

"Please, don't kill me."

"Stop it," Walt said, mouth close to Ray's ear, whispering, "I don't like that begging stuff. Don't make it worse."

Ray heard another car drive up and stop. A car door opened and a man's voice said, "Let go of the kid, Walt.”

The arm around Ray's neck loosened its grip, slid off and then away. He turned and saw the brown Chrysler angled behind the minivan, a brown-haired man in uniform aiming a gun at Walt.

Walt said, "Now you show up?"

"Didn't I say wait until I pulled the van over?" The man said.

"I couldn't wait that long. Lying back there was creepy."

Ray thought this must be the guard who helped Walt get out. The man brought the gun down, and Walt sat on the dirt.

"You were going to break his neck?" The guard said.

Walt shrugged. "Needed the clothes."

"But you didn't have to paw him like that, asshole." The guard waved the gun towards Ray and said, "Get naked. Take the clothes off."

"You don't have to kill me anymore. Just let me go now, it'll be cool. You don't have spare pants?" Ray said.

The gun arm straightened, had a hard aim on Ray. "Take them off."

Ray stripped off his shirt, undershirt, then his deck shoes, socks, and jeans, kicked them towards Walt.

"Underwear, too."

He slipped his briefs off and stood with his arms crossed. The guard shot him in the head and chest. Ray dropped to the ground, twitched, rustled some leaves, then lay still and died.

Walt was halfway changed into Ray's clothes. "That's a mess."

"Help me get him into the van," the guard said. He was sorry Ray had to die, but he couldn't have any witnesses, since it was Walt he wanted to kill. Wanted to kill Walt like the son of a bitch had killed his niece. First a kidnapping, which was about five minutes away, then a rape, for which the guard had the perfect steel pole at the destination, and finally the throat slicing, but the guard had other places he wanted to cut before he got that far.

Walt finished dressing, came over and grabbed Ray's feet. They lifted him into the back on the stretcher.

"Keys?" The guard said.

Walt tossed them over and jumped out the back. "We taking two cars?"

"I'm leaving the car. It can't be traced anyway."

The guard had used a fake name to get the prison job so there would be no way to connect him to the girl's family. He'd gotten friendly with Walt, despite how sick that made him feel. And he had gotten the doctor in on it, too. Became friends with the guy-went to his church, drank with him. The guard had given Walt a couple vitamin pills, told him it would make him look dead. The doctor came in, played along, and there they were. All because the jury had given Walt thirty years instead of life or the death penalty. He even had a chance at parole. But not anymore.

The guard climbed into the driver's seat and cranked up. Walt sat beside him and complained about the clothes being too tight. Both thought the same thing: Won't be long until I can get rid of this guy.

###

Anthony Neil Smith is a fiction editor with Mississippi Review Web, and co-editor of the internet crime magazine Plots With Guns. His work has appeared in Blue Murder, Absinthe Literary Review, and is forthcoming from Murderous Intent and Crimestalker Casebook. He can be reached at ( ansmith@netdoor.com ).