Night Walk
Donovan O. Prei
The car spewed steam out the rear end of the hood like a ghost in a hollow. It flew away from the car and pushed its way through the dash and into the faces of two groaning men. The headlights were underwater by then and their glow only flickered for a moment before being snuffed into the muddy darkness that lapped over the edge of the hood. As the two men groaned once more, the car slid forward, halting only after a few inches in the muddy bank of the Neches. Cracks webbed the windshield, lancing the choppy reflections of the starry sky, like looking at the sun through a colander.
“Hell! Aw dog!” the man in the passenger seat shouted through closed eyes, his hands inspecting a gash on his forehead. “Aw hell, we’re dead!” it was a final proclamation to the driver, an unrestrained holler.
“Shut up, shut yer mouth! Get out! We gotta get out!” the driver retorted through a sideways look, turning his head to look at the man as he began to writhe. “Quit it! Get on! Get on!” he shoved the passenger with his free hand, the other one was grabbing around wildly in the backseat. Something solid slid in between the driver’s fingers, resulting in another shove at the passenger.
“We gon’ run where? Where we going now? We’re dead!” the passenger was groaning incessantly, which angered the driver, who turned forward with the object of his searching, a sawed down Remington shotgun.
“Christ, ge’cher gun! Get it!” The driver shoved the shotgun into the dash, wheeling back around to the rear seat to feel after something else. As his feet came off the floorboard to gain some reach, the driver became aware of the water that was starting to come in through the dash. The passenger moved his feet around, the sloshing noises becoming the only overture in the car as the engine seized. The motor popped and cooed as it died, the flow of the Neches stealing away the vehicle’s life like a harvester.
“Ain’t no gun! Ain’t nothin’ down there!” Blood had painted a flank of the passenger’s face, its shape black and undulating as he contorted his visage in agony and despair. “We’re dead! We’re dead! Christ, ain’t nothin’ down there!” The driver came up from his search and leapt across the bench seat at the passenger. He grabbed the face of the wailing man, squeezing and shoving until the passenger’s head hit the doorframe. As if trying to fit all of the groaning and yelling back in the passenger’s mouth, the driver shoved and shoved. His head upright, chin pointed to the sky, the passenger did nothing to resist this treatment, only moaned as he couldn’t move any further back.
“Now you shut’cher mouth now, boy! You shut up! You’re gonna get down there and grab that gun! Grab that gun down there, Reese, and shut up! Shut up!” His voice veered between authoritative commands and selfish growls, breaking in a high whine on occasion. Reese nodded, only breathing and moaning as the hands hesitantly retreated. The driver didn’t release his grip on his accomplice’s face. The contorted expression looked odd to him, just like that expression Reese made a few months ago.
“I just don’t see us making papers, Asa.” The words were honest and simple and petered out into the surrounding air that hung damp over the county road, saturating the darkness and crickets like sugar in milk. Reese shrugged at the look on his friend’s face. Leaning against a tree, the taller of the two men popped the newspaper in his hands a couple of times.
“Ain’t about makin’ no papers.” Asa’s brows, always held tensely, deepened a moment. “We got a car and some guns, ain’t nothing to it.” Cicadas began their symphony, drowning out the tail end of Asa’s assertion. He held his pose for another second before dropping the paper down by his side, his right hand pinching it closed. “The hell you talkin’ bout makin’ papers for, anyhow? The hell you sayin’ that for?” he wasn’t confused, despite the questioning. Reese’s discomfort was tenable, Asa could hear it in his voice, taste it on the wind that blew along the empty county road.
“I ain’t sayin’ nothing.” The boy’s voice had gotten small along with his posture. Reese couldn’t bring himself to tell Asa what he really believed, the idea killed him. “All I’m sayin’ is we ain’t no criminal outfit, you know? We ain’t gonna knock over nowhere worth nothin’. I ain’t uhposed to shinin’ on the side but I just don’t think we got the goods for it.”
East Texas denial at its worst, thought Asa, who looked back towards the truck parked out the side of the road. Sure, they weren’t Bonny and Clyde, but they’d leave off with enough to get somewhere, anywhere but the pines.
“Shit, Reese, you wanna keep on like that, go ‘head and get a coffin, you’ll save us all a lot of trouble. Keel over like your pa, huh? Keel over and die like a bitch?” the taller’s voice was rising. He couldn’t stand that attitude. The boy wouldn’t give him a real reason for trying to weasel out of this, it nearly drove Asa up the tree he was leaning on.
Reese’s face cringed in the darkness. He was glad Asa couldn’t see how bad it tore him, the embarrassment would have done him in on the spot. Tears threatened to fall but Reese turned, looking into the field that lay on one side of the desolate road, a shaggy bed which the moon was rising from. His hands grabbed at loose threads in his pockets, little strands of hope, tendrils of control in the distress. Swallowing hard, audibly, the boy, only two years Asa’s junior, kicked the ground.
“So it’s a bank, huh?” The words were swallowed up by the night once more, a mourning dove somewhere in the woods crying for a love lost yet never had. Asa didn’t look at Reese but a smile crept open on his face regardless.
“I gotta grab this now, you just get yer’ gun! Get yer gun now, boy!” Once more, Asa was feeling around behind the seats, his legs kicking water as he vied for further access. Water was starting to rise into the rear seating, the driver’s hands splashing in the increasing puddle. Reese limply eased forward, heeding his friend’s orders, and begin to feel placidly around for any rigidity in the black swell around his legs. The cab was filled enough that his face would occasionally catch uncomfortable rises in his nose, causing him to sputter and breath like a sprinter at the finish line.
The driver yelled, a shout of joy, as his hand hooked around a leather handle. Asa returned to the front seat proper with a mid-sized leather handbag in tow. It bulged around its belly like a wineskin at its limit, a parcel bearing its treasure.
“Alright, boy! Alright! We’re in business. We’re in business! We’re gonna make those papers!” The seatbelt rattled awkwardly as Asa fought with the buckle. It felt as if it were being exceptionally obtuse but the driver watched his fingers struggle with the device, a numbness all over his digits like a sickness. The passenger sputtered again, his mind only occupied by the object which needed to be found between his legs, a certain blindness present in his gaze into the darkness down below. “Come on, boy! Come on!” Asa crowed again, the seatbelt finally releasing him with a terrible whir and a smack into the door upholstery.
“I got it. It’s down here. I gotta find this gun.” A certain tiredness cut through the air and caused Asa to look over for a beat. He huffed.
“You find it, old boy, you just find it.” The words were spoken in parting, as Asa grabbed the shotgun and heaved himself up and out the window, disappearing into the void which seemed inescapable.
“Asa? Asa you around there?” Reese was high-strung. The bank would close in a few minutes but the patrol car was still sitting caddy-corner to the Texas First National Trust Bank, facing away from the entrance of the building. If that pig didn’t leave, all of their work would be a total waste. The thought caused Reese to take stock for a moment, his mind wandering back through all of the walks after church on Wednesday, all of the conversations and rain checks that he took with Asa, all of the times Asa smiled when he would step up and make it seem like he was ready to get it done. The idea that he would let Asa down made his arms break out in shivers and chills, the whole thing made him itch.
“Hush now, just you wait.” The voice that came from around the corner gave Reese a comfort never felt before in his life. “We’re just gonna wait a little longer, he ain’t gonna stay.” Although Reese couldn’t see him, directly, he knew the exact face Asa was making. That smug grin seemed unreasonable in the situation, as if taken from outer space and placed on his partner’s face. Reese would have smiled if he didn’t feel sick.
They both knew they looked inconspicuous. Plenty of winos and old men hang out in the streets well after the sun goes down, no different than they did on that street corner. Asa knew even better than Reese did, it gave his grin a golden sheen that could be felt just as easily as it could be seen. The empty forty ounce bottles they were holding were the cherry on top.
Reese shifted his left arm, letting the watch face just barely catch the streetlight above him and tell him what he needed to know, two minutes until doors close. The thought flashed through his head again, that night he said he was finally ready to go through with it. Asa’s face lit up like he had never seen it before. It filled him with a magic, a true feeling that something was really happening. He could have kissed him if he were any less restrained.
But it terrified him, the idea of that cop ruining their plan. He couldn’t say yes again, it was hard enough to even entertain the idea, let alone agree to it. Whatever compelled that soft hearted boy to finally give Asa the go was a mystery that Reese couldn’t figure out. He reckoned it must have been lighting in a bottle, some unknown alchemy that happened every thousand years or so. He also wondered if he had let Asa down too many times to turn him away again. To watch his face curl up in that disgusted look he made broke Reese’s heart every time, the fussing and spitting thereafter just solidified how poor the whole thing was. It felt like a sadness too great to bear any longer. It was the break he couldn’t avoid.
Reese couldn’t think straight as his stomach surged once more, nausea taking its toll and wrecking his nerves. The cop car was gone. The door bell of the bank chimed. Reese dropped his bottle.
Asa slid over the hood in short increments, his clothes wedging and sticking against the still-hot surface of the 62 Chevy Impala. He grunted as he swung his legs onto the soft mud of the bank, his feet sliding apart slightly in the muck. Light carefully reflected off of the passenger side door of the dark blue beast, cuing a look towards the source, as if seeing where they were for the first time.
Looming over them, the small bridge of the county line smiled in its nature, their misfortune only another joke to its witness. Four streetlights, two on either end, cast a faint glow which threw a soft light onto the slain steed. Reese’s face was lit up by this subtle orange as he sat upright again, his eyes still studying the water which had ceased to rise at his waist.
“Come on, old boy, come on, get on up!” The words were hurried but wrecked with exhaustion, the weight of the night was finally starting to catch up to the driver. Asa knelt on the small rise of mud next to the window, placing his back on the door which chilled the sweat that smudged against his shoulders. “Get your gun and come on!” Looking back towards the boy, his passenger, Asa was stunned to see Reese’s face covered in filth from the river and blood from his head wound. Little clear trails of tears carved paths down the cheeks of that soft hearted boy, the sight shook Asa. As if broken from a trance, the driver’s mouth opened slightly, a noise coming out which sounded like wrath and sympathy wrestling for control over his tongue.
“Asa, please.” Reese’s voice was nonexistent, just a whisper in the dense night. “Asa, I ain’t never told you but I can’t do it. I can’t do this.” There was a bubble between them which seemed to swell in between breaths. It was a pressure that ebbed with the noise of the pines, coming in and out in shallow waves. “I never wanted to break you, you motherfucker. You always were a-cussin’ and spittin’ every time I said no. Every time I opened my bitch mouth to tell you no, you just started off again. I never wanted to kill you like that, Asa, Christ on the cross.” The boy had begun crying at some point, Asa only noticed when Reese’s words became tucked between wails, as if he were talking to him in two languages at once.
“Get your seatbelt off, Reese.” Asa’s voice was small as he let his head fall back onto the car door, an expression carved on those features unlike any he had made before. Defeat was the only word that could describe it.
“I can’t, Asa. Goddamnit, what are we doin’ here?” Reese still didn’t turn away from his friend, his driver. Snot was coming out of his nose as he blinked to try and look at Asa with clear eyes, eyes that could see what face the taller man would make. Maybe seeing Asa would give the boy some more magic to get up and follow him.
“We… We’re gonna go for a night walk, boy. Just me and you, we’re gonna walk on over that bridge right there. We’re gonna walk like we been doin’.” Asa was smiling again. Holding that shotgun and that leather handbag, drenched from the waist down, Asa looked as comfortable as if they had just got out of church any other Wednesday. Reese found a smile creeping on his own expression as well. Maybe, just maybe, magic was real.
“No.” The bubble between them shattered, whatever contents it was holding spilled all around and ran into the Neches to be carried away forever. “I couldn’t tell you no then, but I’m telling you now.” Asa was still smiling, looking at that boy of his, his truthful passenger, blood and all, crying in the passenger seat. The taller man waited only another few seconds before he shifted, silently, and moved away from the door. Standing up, he turned to face Reese, that magic still on his lips. “I’ll only ever walk with you after church. I ain’t makin’ no pape-”
The shot was deafening. The pines shut up completely around the Chevy Impala. The Neches even seemed to stop its murmuring at the report. Reese’s head, what was left of it, slumped to the left, his arms had come up for a moment as whatever electricity still occupied his body slowly left, a light dimming to nothing. The shotgun fell as Asa whipped his hand back and forth, pain shooting all over, curses slipping out between labored breaths.
The driver couldn’t think straight and tried to avoid looking into the car for a few seconds, his mind catching up with what he had done. It was as if he were looking at the world through a pinhole, watching a stranger’s body reconcile with consequences that he earned through his own actions. It was a sober decision, he felt, up until he had pulled the trigger. Asa knew it happened quick and that Reese probably didn’t realize what was going on up until the moment of truth. The shooter couldn’t think anymore about it past that. He watched as the stranger’s body moved towards the car door, his own thoughts somehow interpreted by this alien body, and peered inside looking for the gun he had been barking about just minutes earlier.
Asa began to reenter his body as his head hovered just inside the window, mere inches from Reese, a tingling sensation running alongside the pain in his hand. Goddamn gun, he thought, should have held it with two hands. He was certain it must have snapped something in him, judging by the shock. Amid the agony and rancid smell in the cab, Asa’s eyes came to rest on Reese’s lap. There, placed calmly, just under the surface of the water, was the revolver. The driver stared for some time, his mind trying to keep its eyes forward and clear of any other thoughts about the world around him.
Finally, after not thinking for long enough, Asa reached in and carefully removed the gun from the boy’s lap, trying not to disturb him from whatever state he was in. He didn’t look back as he stalked away from the car. He didn’t look back when he stooped to pick up the shotgun. He didn’t look back as the faint noise of sirens finally began to make their presence known some mile or two away. As Asa crossed the bridge, he didn’t have a single thought in that head of his. He began to cry.
About the Author
Donovan O. Prei is an author of pervasive, violent, harrowing vignettes which occasionally veer into the supernatural. Seeking to link the human world of mundanity and the infinite depth of our psyche, this unpublished author is a regular student of psychoanalysis, history, art, and the occult. When not fervently crafting mirrors for those lost to find the way within, O. Prei watches Soviet cinema and has a healthy drive for scrambling and general alpinism.
