Out in the Dark Read online

  Jake chuckled. Ramon would have a thing or two to say about that. In fact the old mechanic would turn his baseball cap around on his head, tug on his right earlobe and settle into a long diatribe about the dangers of globalization and free trade. Jake knew Ramon’s rants by heart.

  He pushed open the door to the diner and was surprised to see it was a clean and friendly place. This early in the morning there were already a number of truckers having breakfast and catching up with old mates. They must have parked their rigs behind the building, out of sight of the road.

  Jake went into the restroom and found another traveler, shaving. The man nodded at Jake and continued to shave. Jake rubbed his chin and wondered when he might have enough to shave. The peach-fuzz hardly counted, though he did shave from time to time, just to practice. He ran his fingers through his unruly, dark blond hair and splashed some water on his face to freshen up.

  When he came back out he took a stool at the counter and watched the waitress behind the counter balancing three plates to take to a table by the window. He grabbed a menu and studied it while she chatted with the customers.

  “What’ll it be, hon?” she said, standing across from him with her order pad ready. He looked up at her and noted the bright pink lipstick. Something Jessica would have worn to a party, he was sure. “Out a bit early, ain’t ya?”

  “Yeah, off to pick up my dad,” Jake said, trying to sound more mature than he felt at that moment. “Let me have some scrambled eggs, sausage, hash-browns and coffee,” he said.

  The waitress, Marge as her name tag said, wrote it all down in her special shorthand. “Whole wheat or sourdough toast?”

  “Whole wheat.” A concession to his mother.

  “It’ll be right up,” she said, and stuck her pencil back in her teased-up hair. She wore it twisted into a bun at the back, but it poofed up quite a bit in front.

  While he waited, he pulled out his phone again and sent a text to his mother. She liked to get up early so he figured she should be up by now. He reasoned she would worry less if he kept in touch. Besides, he felt lonely and obviously he couldn’t text Jess anymore. He had shut that door.

  “@ truckstp for brkfst doin ok xx” He didn’t think he should say anything more, and sat there cradling the phone in his hand, watching the screen, pretending to be reading, but in fact, willing it to receive a message.

  “Here you go, hon.” The waitress had returned with his coffee and a plate loaded with food. He could not remember ever seeing a bigger or fuller plate.

  Suddenly the waitress said in an odd voice, “Portia, dear, what’ll it be?”

  Jake looked around and saw that a girl about his age had come in quietly. She looked out of place, dressed in a short skirt, a tight sweater and a short jacket. Her hands were covered by fingerless mitts, her hair pulled back in a severe, high ponytail. What struck him most was that everything was in garish colors that clashed with every other item of clothing, as if she were some kind of neon signpost. The long earrings jangled as she climbed onto the stool one over from Jake.

  She gave him a sweet smile, which almost made him blush.

  “I’ll have some granola with yogurt and coffee, Marge,” she said, pronouncing the woman’s name with slow deliberation. Jake wondered what history there was between the two women.

  “Very good, Portia, dear,” Marge said, with a similar deliberateness.

  “Hey, is that your classy ride out there?” The girl moved to the stool next to Jake, just as he put a forkful of eggs in his mouth. He nodded.

  “Cool. Going far?” she asked.

  Jake swallowed and said, “Nevada, probably.”

  “Can I hitch a ride? I’m going to Arizona to go to college. I got a scholarship.” She pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her jacket pocket and showed Jake the acceptance letter.

  He nodded and poured some ketchup on his hash browns. He wasn’t sure if he liked this girl or if she got on his nerves. She was perky and very friendly. She waved at some of the other customers and blew them kisses while she waited for her breakfast and Jake’s answer, which annoyed him.

  “You got gas money?” he finally asked, figuring that might put her off.

  “Sure do,” she said, smiling up at him again.

  Jake shrugged. “I guess you can come along, for a while.”

  “Great!” She hopped off the stool again and disappeared into the ladies’ room.

  “You take care of her, you hear.” The waitress was suddenly standing over Jake, pointing her finger at him.

  “Sure, I’ll just give her a lift to Nevada. No big deal,” he said, startled by the fierce look in the woman’s eyes.

  “You see that you do, and no messing about. That’s my baby girl you’re driving off with,” Marge said.

  Jake was surprised the woman would care that much, considering how frosty the exchange between mother and daughter had been earlier. He was equally surprised when the girl returned, dressed far more modestly in corduroy pants, an oversized sweater and lace-up boots. Her hair hung in a neat braid down her back, the end just reaching the small of her back. Her face was freshly scrubbed and bright.

  She sat down again and without a word started eating her breakfast.

  Jake continued chewing the piece of toast in his mouth, slowly and deliberately. He felt confused; things weren’t adding up.

  Just then his phone announced a text message. “OK be safe love u mom xxx”

  Chapter 6

  “So, where are you from?” She had said nothing for the first ten miles of their trip together. She had said a frosty goodbye to her mother, and loaded a bulging duffel bag into the trunk of the car and a small tote bag in front with her. Then she just sat in the passenger seat, buckled up and was quiet, staring out the window at the road ahead.

  “The Bend, foothills, east of Seattle,” Jake replied, not looking at her. He sensed something odd about her, but he knew this was not a good time to try and “read” her.

  “I went to Seattle once,” the girl said. “This really sweet trucker, Randy, took me there once. He also paid extra for my services. That’s how come I can go to college a whole quarter sooner than I planned.”

  Jake’s breath caught in his throat as he imagined what services she might be talking about.

  “My name’s Jake Hanson,” he said, to change the subject while he tried to push the image her words had conjured up out of his brain.

  “Portia, you know, like the actress on that TV show?” the girl said cheerfully.

  Jake groaned. Another one like Jessica.

  “Is that your real name?”

  “No, it’s my working-girl name,” the girl said, giggling to herself.

  “So what do I call you?” Jake didn’t like what he was learning about her. “You can’t be working while in my car.”

  “My real name’s Shelley. Dopey isn’t it?”

  “No, not at all. I like Shelley.” Whether he did or not was unimportant, he was not going to call that girl Portia.

  “Then you may call me Shelley.” She seemed quite pleased to have settled that, as if it was a huge problem she alone had solved.

  “Do you live around here?” Jake knew what he wanted to ask, but he also did not want to know the answer and cautiously tip-toed around it.

  “Yep, my mom and I live on an old farm a few miles from the truck stop. Some days we have hot water, some days we don’t. Ma inherited the place from her grandpa and after Dad died we moved there. Ma was lucky to find that waitressing job. We don’t have a car either, you know. Life’s pretty rough out here and no social services like you find in a city. We gotta do it all on our own. My mom taught me lots of things.” Shelley smoothed her braid and played with the end of it, brushing it across her hand.

  Jake wondered, with loathing, if her mother had taught her to turn tricks at the truck stop as well as braiding her hair. He couldn’t look at her; instead he clenched his hands tighter around the steering wheel and pressed his foot a little farth
er down on the accelerator. As far as he was concerned, the sooner they got where she could get out, the better.

  They drove on in silence for a while, until Jake couldn’t take it anymore and blurted out, “Your mother is concerned about how I’ll treat you and yet she lets you turn tricks for money?” His voice was louder and more accusing than he had meant it to be, but there it was, out in the open.

  “That’s what’s been bothering you?” Shelley almost laughed. “Sheesh, what kind of jerk are you anyway? Don’t they do that sort of thing in your little town?”

  “Not that I know of,” Jake snapped back.

  “Well, here it’s the only way to make enough money to get out. I’m smart and want to go to college as much as the next kid, more even. Let me tell you something, Jake Hanson of The Bend. My mother was only sixteen when she had me. My dad left her, and the man she ended up marrying, a nice guy, didn’t live long enough to get his business off the ground. He was a magician and dreamed of working in Vegas. Ma said he was a dreamer, but she loved him. Do you know what that is? Real love. Well do you?” The girl turned to face him, slipping her arm over the seat belt and leaning against the door frame to give Jake a good look. She tucked one leg under her and pulled the other one closer.

  “Of course I know about love. My parents had that, I know.” He glanced at his passenger briefly, but quickly turned his eyes back to the road. This wasn’t right; she should not be lecturing him.

  “Yeah, well, so much for love. It don’t pay the rent and when this good man, the only daddy I knew, died, we were out in the cold. My mom was homeless for a while. An aunt took care of me, but she couldn’t make ends meet either, with an extra mouth to feed. Grandpa took us in and Ma cared for him while he lay dying. She schooled me at home, and her without even high school! “Shelley took a deep breath before continuing. Jake kept his hands clenched on the wheel, his lips pressed together so tightly it hurt. He had learned from his time with Jessica that if a girl was on this kind of a rag, he had better keep his mouth shut.

  “She got a job to feed us and sometimes pay the bills that piled up. She works hard at that truck stop and, yeah, sometimes she sleeps with a driver just passing through. She taught me how to perform oral sex and make a man happy that way. What of it? How else was I going to get into college? But I never, ever, not once have had full sex with any of them. That’s strictly out of the question. I’m a virgin and will stay that way until I get married.” Shelley crossed her arms and looked defiantly at Jake, daring him to judge her. “If I get married.”

  He could think of many comments and wanted to yell each and every one of them at her. He was disgusted by what she had told him. Disgusted by her and her mother. Nobody should have to live like that, but then he also knew she was not the only one who had endured a hard life. He would have been disgusted with the world for letting this happen to a kid, had his head not split open in a violently painful vision of his dad.

  Jake had just enough sense left to pull the car over before clutching his head and doubling forward, hitting his head on the wheel.

  “Hey, what’s with you?” Shelley yelled.

  Jake ignored her and flung open the door to once again throw up on the road. His dad was being beaten again for not doing what his captors wanted. That was becoming clear now. But why would his dad send him all these images? Was the link between them so strong that Jake now felt and saw everything his father experienced?

  “Hey!” Shelley called out to Jake. “You’d better not be throwing up because of me, Mister! I’m no slut and I deserve respect too, you know!” Her voice grated on him, but he needed a little more time to pull himself together. His stomach heaved again, but this time nothing came up and he was able to sit up and close the door.

  He rolled down the window to let the cold air in and leaned his head back against the headrest. It still pounded but the searing pain was subsiding.

  Shelley started to say something but Jake snapped at her to shut up.

  “It’s my dad, you moron.”

  “What?” Shelley looked around to see if maybe they were being followed, but there was hardly any traffic on the road. Just some trucks speeding by without a second glance at them.

  “What do you mean?” she asked again.

  “In my head.” Jake didn’t have the strength yet to explain, though he was oddly grateful for another person with him in the car even if he did not feel up to talking to her just yet.

  “In your head? Right. You some kind of nutcase?” The girl backed farther against the door frame while keeping her eyes on Jake and reaching for the door handle. “And you judge me?”

  “No, I’m not. I can see what my dad’s going through, and it’s not pretty,” Jake said softly, and held out his hand in a conciliatory gesture. “I’ll be fine in a minute. Honest.”

  Shelley reluctantly took his hand and could feel how cold it was and that it was shaking. She could see the pain in Jake’s face and realized she too had perhaps judged hastily.

  “Sorry to scare you, but this is the reason I’m on this trip,” Jake said, trying to focus his eyes on something. He fixed his gaze on the knobs on the radio. “He needs my help.”

  “What happened?” Shelley’s curiosity overcame her fear that Jake might be a raving lunatic. “To your dad, I mean.”

  “He was part of a government ESP program a long time ago and then he got called back again for more work, but it’s gone wrong somehow,” Jake explained, not very well.

  “ESP? Like that stuff they show on the SciFi channel in the truckers lounge; people guessing what’s on cards and stuff?”

  “Sort of, but more advanced,” Jake wasn’t sure how much to tell this girl. “Look, it’s complicated, but all I know is that he’s in trouble. He’s not where he’s supposed to be and he’s being tortured.”

  “How do you know that?” Shelley asked.

  “I can see it, and now I can feel it. That’s why I threw up, not because of what you told me. Although, you know, ick.” Jake looked at Shelley to see if she believed him. At that moment it seemed very important that she did.

  His phone rang and he was relieved to find it was James.

  “Yo, Jake, where are you, man?”

  “About an hour or two past Moses Lake. Picked up a hitchhiker.”

  “Cool, but just to let you know, word’s going around the school you ran away, and the coach wants to call in the troopers,” James said hurriedly. Jake looked at his watch and saw that his friend must be at school and probably in the bathrooms, making the call during first period. He hadn’t realized how much time he had spent at the truck stop, and now just sitting by the side of the road.

  “Why would Caruthers do that?” Jake felt anger rising at the man’s meddling. Wasn’t it bad enough he was having sex with his mother? Did he now also need to screw up Jake’s life?

  “Don’t know, but something about being under age and stealing a car and other nebulous comments of that ilk,” James said, in his favorite professorial voice.

  “He’d better not do anything. I need to do this, and nothing is going to stop me. Not even him and his troopers.”

  “Gotta go, text me from time to time, maybe I can find a way to keep you ahead of Caruthers,” James said, and disconnected.

  “Thanks J,” Jake said out loud.

  “Trouble?” Shelley asked.

  “Maybe. We’d better get going.” Jake started up the car again and merged smoothly back onto the road.

  The road signs showed that Spokane was coming closer, and then it was a short distance into Idaho. The sun was well over the horizon and cast a hazy, golden glow over the fields, but also shone right into the front window of the car, nearly blinding Jake and Shelley.

  “Look in the glove box for me and see if there are any sunglasses there.”

  Shelley leaned forward to better see as the light hit her eyes. Jake squinted. Even the sun visor was too high to block the sun. He held his hand up against the windshield. It helped a litt
le, but made his field of vision quite small, and by now there was more traffic to contend with.

  “Here,” Shelley said, and thrust a pair of old aviator sunglasses at him. He took them and using his teeth opened them up and then slid them on. They were his dad’s, from his early flying days. Jake remembered that as a kid, Jake would put them on whenever his dad was working on the car. Jake would sit behind the wheel and pretend to drive. The wheel had seemed enormous back then.

  “Thanks, that’s much better.” Jake gave Shelley a quick glance and a smile. She seemed to be settling down too. She had her arm back on the right side of the seat belt and leaned back with her eyes closed against the sunlight.

  “So, your dad was a magician. Was he any good?” he asked her. Jake felt the need for simple conversation—nothing deep or heavy, just something to pass the time and maybe get to know this girl a bit better. Like his mother always said, “Try to find at least some good in everyone you meet; it will make life easier.” Maybe she was right, though his mother’s life seemed far from easy lately.

  “Yes, Melvin was great. He would do these really cool card tricks and we’d go from carnival to carnival in our old Winnebago. It was great. He could have gone to Vegas, too, he was good enough. He had this amazing fire act. Whenever he was on stage he was fearless. My mother would put on this sequined dress and look awesome. They just belonged together, you know,” Shelley said in a dreamy voice. “I got to learn so much and we saw a lot of the country, too. Ask me anything about this continent, I’ve seen it all! The Grand Canyon, Sawtooth Mountains, Mt. Rushmore, the Mississippi. Oh, one year—this is so cool—one year, Melvin got a job on a boat that went all the way down the Mississippi. We got to come along. I was only about five, but I still remember it. It was magical.” She closed her eyes again and hugged herself, lost in the memory.

  Jake thought about the memories he had from when he was that age. They made him feel the same way. Perhaps they had more in common than he thought, but he wasn’t going to get too attached to her; she was on her way to college and he had his own mission.