Read Online Day Into Night by Dave Hugelschaffer - Free Book Online Page A

furiously about what to say next.
    Telson offers me a conciliatory smile. “I’d better get going.”
    “Why? That was nothing.”
    She slides off the bench. “Thanks for the drink.”
    Then she’s gone and the bar isn’t so much fun anymore. Some guy in the jukebox is wailing about having seven bullets in his six-gun. Where can I get a gun like that? My eyelids grow heavy, my speech slower. There’s a fight outside — the caveman has found someone else to play with — and Carl is helping me to my feet, the tassels of his buckskin coat in my face. We stagger home together, both too drunk to drive. I remember mumbling Nina’s name as Carl helped me to my room.
    Carl’s house is quiet late the next morning when I stagger out of bed. I spend a half-hour in the bathroom, in long distance discussion with parties unknown over the big porcelain telephone. I haven’t had a night like that in over a year and I conclude my conversation with a familiar farewell. Never again. The operator gushes her condolences, but I know the phone bill is going to be a killer. Serves me right.
    As penance, I saddle up my mountain bike.
    My first stop is the parking lot of The Corral, where my Land Rover sits alone, dented and forlorn in the noonday sun. No new dents though. I make a loop around the squat little building, looking for what, I don’t know, and notice there’s fresh blood mixed with the gravel near the rear door. The Neanderthal’s handiwork. Have to remember not to point the next time.
    I wheel onto the highway, cross the bridge over the Curtain River — the water level is low this early in the year, the channel braided, gravel bars exposed — and head into town. Like most of the towns I’ve worked in, back when I had steady work, the highway is mainstreet and it’s here the majority of the town is strung out: the bars, grocery stores and gas stations. The post office. It’s the sort of town where sideburns never went out of style. I veer right at a carwash, spend a few minutes in the backwaters of the town as my legs warm up. Half the population appear to live in trailers but, judging by the additions and the number of old cars in the yards, not many of them are in danger of going anywhere. I get lost in the crescents for a few minutes — an embarrassing feat in a town this small — find my way back to mainstreet.
    An old Chevy pulls out from an alley behind me and follows uncomfortably close. I glance back, expecting a pass, but the driver, invisible behind the sun glint of the windshield, is in no hurry. The truck is on old Apache, a classic of sorts. But this one is a Frankenstein truck, the body put together from numerous carcasses. None of the colours match — the doors are red, the hood white, the fenders blue. Rust splotches and peeling paint complete the effect. It’s jacked-up, the tires as high as my bike. I’d noticed the truck twice before, behind the carwash and then barrelling through a vacant school zone. The owner must be some kid, burning gas and doing his part to run up the Gross Domestic Product. Not much else to do here. I turn onto the highway, pass the last gas station and head uphill, out of the Curtain River valley.
    The truck is still behind me, which is odd given we’re both on the highway now and I’m doing about ten miles an hour. If this is a tail, the driver has a lot to learn. I glance back once more — the grille looks like the mouth of a monster with bad teeth. This idiot is way too close and I veer into the ditch, let him pass, crane my neck to see who’s driving. But the window is too high and the driver remains anonymous — hammering the gas and leaving me in a blue haze of exhaust fumes. I watch the truck roar up the highway, sounding like a badly tuned Harley, shake my head.
    A slug of water from the bottle on my bike and I push on.
    Downshift. The throbbing in my head assumes a nasty resonance and it occurs to me this wasn’t such a good idea. But I think of Nina and of