vituperation

Happy Anniversary to my wife and I. That makes seven. Years, not anniversaries.

…continued

“You don’t know how much I appreciate this,” she said, and pulled the door closed with a clunk.

“It’s no problem. Glad I could help.”

I yanked the pistol from my pocket and thumbed off the safety. Still smiling, I unloaded the full clip into her head at close range. The booming reports of the gun nearly deafened me, but the cock-raising thrill of watching large sections of her head shear away into a cloud of blood, brain, and splinters of skull made it all worth it. The scent of cordite mingled with fluids not meant to see the light of day is something of an aphrodisiac, I’ve found. Watching her corpse dance in the seat, twitching as the lead pecked away at the mealy matter of her brain, nearly caused me to come in my pants. Hot freshets of blood ran down my face like sweat, mingling with my tears of joy over getting to use my gun to kill kill kill. There’s just something special between a man, his gun, and an innocent stranger, you know?

Or that’s how it would have been if I were anything like the frothy anti-gun nuts seem to think all responsible gun owners are. Psychologists call that “projection”, if you’re curious and want to learn more about this phenomenon. In reality, it was more like this:

“You don’t know how much I appreciate this,” she said, and pulled the door closed with a clunk.

“It’s no problem. Glad I could help.”

“I was starting to wonder if you were really coming back.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I had to wake my wife up and tell her where I was going.”

We sat in silence as I drove toward Highway 72. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, and realized my initial assessment had been way off. There’s no way she was in her 30’s. Now, I wondered if she was even in her 20’s yet. If she was, it wasn’t by more than a year or two.

“So you got stranded?” I asked while we waited for the light out of the parking lot to change. A master of all things subtle am I.

“Yeah.” She laughed a little. “It’s a long story.”

Which she didn’t offer to tell and I didn’t ask about.

We drove toward Huntsville, not speaking. The gun lay heavy in my pocket, and I felt a little foolish for having brought it. Not foolish enough to not bring it again in the same situation, for the same reason that I wouldn’t hike an unknown trail in a strange place without my GPS, but a little foolish nonetheless. The silence sat heavy on me, uncomfortable.

“In four or five miles, we’re going to get to Rideout Road,” I said. “I’m going to take that, and we’ll head over by the Space Center. From there, we’ll get on a road called Bob Wallace that leads to South Parkway.”

She nodded.

“I know the woman in the parking lot told you that the Parkway is at the end of this road. It is, but there are tons of red lights down it, and it leads into north Huntsville. This way, we’ll end up at the same place, just faster. Think of it as a big triangle.”

I outlined a triangle in the air with one hand, in case she didn’t understand English.

“The way she said was like this,” I said, making a capital L in the air. “But my way—think back to geometry class—will take us along the hypoteneuse of the triangle instead of along the legs. Same end result, but a quicker path.”

Suddenly, I realized what a dork I sounded like and shut up. I glanced over to see if she was still awake. She was, but she was stifling a yawn.

We lapsed back into silence.

“There’s the Space Center,” I said, pointing at the massive Saturn V rocket that towers over everything in the area.

She nodded, and covered her mouth for another yawn. I suspected it was that she’d been up all night, not the company she was in. We rode along in silence for another eternity.

I looked up at the low, heavy clouds that hung over like a pall.

“I hope it doesn’t rain,” I said. “I wanted to go for a hike today.”

“Where do you hike?”

“You can’t see it because of the haze, but there’s a mountain over there”—I pointed east—”called Monte Sano, and it has a lot of trails on it.”

I considered.

“Well, I guess it’s really more of a foothill than a mountain, but it’s close and fun. I go there a lot.”

“Does your wife hike with you?”

I laughed, because this question is the second-most-asked I get.

“No, she hates it,” I said.

“Do you have any kids?” she asked.

“One. She’s about to turn seventeen.”

“That must be fun.”

“Yeah. She’s at the age where she thinks her mom and I are idiots, but she should be past that in the next year or two. I hope.”

She looked around. “This is starting to look a little familiar, I think.”

“We’re on Bob Wallace. That road up there that we’re about to cross is called Jordan Lane.”

The silence that descended this time was marginally more comfortable now that we’d had a little bit of actual conversation. Or part of one, interspersed with my Gumplike babbling.

“How much further?” she asked, out of the blue.

“It’s still a pretty good bit. You were in another city—a suburb—and we’re going to the far south side of Huntsville.”

“Maybe we should stop and ask for directions.”

I looked over at her. She looked a little scared. I think maybe the fact that it was taking forever, possibly coupled with the knowledge that she was in a strange man’s car, was starting to bear down on her. Couple that with the fact that I was taking a different route than someone else suggested, and you have a good recipe for nervousness.

“We can do that if you want,” I said slowly. “But don’t you want to at least try the place where the man suggested? Martin Road?”

She didn’t look so much like she wanted to, but she agreed that we should. I tried to set her mind at ease a little more.

“See those cars up there, above the road?” I pointed ahead of us. “That’s the Parkway. We’re getting closer.”

And then, because I’m a dork: “And right behind that? That’s Huntsville Mountain. It’s right next to Monte Sano.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

I guess she didn’t know what else to say.

We turned onto the Parkway and drove toward Martin Road. As the exit approached, something dawned on me.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a hotel on Martin Road,” I said. “It leads out onto a big army base. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing there. I’m going to pass it and look on the Parkway just beyond it.”

I did my best not to look like a psycho as I told her I was going to drive right by the place she thought she wanted to go.

We passed under Martin Road, and there it was: a giant sign for the Radisson. I pulled into the parking lot, and she directed me around to the back of the hotel.

If she wants to kill you, or has an accomplice, this is where it’ll be, my mind whispered.

“You can just let me out here,” she said.

I stopped the car. She turned.

“Are you sure you don’t want any gas money?” she asked.

“I’m sure.”

“You don’t know how much this means to me. I can’t thank you enough.”

I know how you can thank me, my mind chimed in, punctuating the thought with the bow-chika-bow-bow of a cheesy 70’s porn soundtrack.

“I’m glad I was able to help.”

She got out and shut the door. I turned the car around to head back to Madison. The last I saw of her, she was walking up the sidewalk to one of the glass doors leading into a door-lined hallway.