As The Storyline Progresses

More Crossed Wires. . .it seems to have taken on a life of it's own. . .

Joe Scares Dave Again

Joe and Dave got to the nearly empty parking lot next to the ABC store a little too early. Joe, not one to wear a watch of late, muttered something unintelligible and poked his head out of the sleeper.
“Just what the hell time is it, anyway?” It looked to Dave like his makeshift medicine, Jack Daniels, was suddenly not working. His mood and his continence both seemed suddenly to have degenerated into...what? Angry and annoyed?
“Settle down, partner,” Dave said, trying not to look overly concerned. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes before the store opens. Why don’t you go into that Food Dog over there and pick yourself up some other provisions? You said something earlier about suddenly having a jones for Guinness Stout. You can get beer this time of the day, you know.”
“Hmmph,” Joe grunted. “I think I’ll close my eyes for a few minutes. Sorry if I’m coming off grouchy. I am and I don’t know why.” He went back into the sleeper and lay flat on the space-fabric quilt, shutting his eyes. Damn, he thought. Something is bothering me really bad. Something is wrong. Really wrong.
Dave decided to shut the tractor down, not really sure how long they might be here in this little oasis in Podunk. Podunk, if he recalled correctly, was actually New Market and not really all that small for this part of Virginia; it was almost like a bedroom community. Bedroom for what city, he couldn’t figure.
Shaking his head, feeling his little buzz wear off by degrees, he figured it was time for a stretch and a smoke. And just as soon as he was unbuckled and had opened the door to the cab, he heard a hideous moan escape the sleeper. Oh, s***...what now?
“F****** sonofabitch! This isn’t right! No, no, NO!” Joe was swearing like a man possessed. And it suddenly dawned on Dave that he was swearing not only in English but in Spanish and what seemed like at least two other languages he didn’t recognize.
“Joe! Joe, man! Wake up! Snap out of it! What in the f*** has gotten into you, man?!”
“Oh sweet Christ, NO!”
Dave struggled around his seat and parted the curtain to the sleeper. Joe was sitting straight up on the cot, eyes wide open and so bloodshot they seemed to be bleeding. Sweat poured from his face and he was shaking like he was being electrocuted. Dave had never seen anything even vaguely like this s*** before.
“Talk to me, Joe! What the hell is going on?” Dave crawled back into the sleeper and grabbed Joe, shook him gently. “Snap out of it, for christsake!”
Joe just stared off into some misery filled distance, but just as soon as Dave touched him the cursing stopped. Tears welled up in his eyes then and he his uncontrollable shaking was joined by wrenching sobs. He began taking great hitching breaths and wiped tears and sweat from his face in wide wet arcs that splattered all over Dave and his sleeper. It seemed to Dave that there was blood in some of those tears, or coming from somewhere on his agonized face.
“He, he, he is...is going to...to kill more. And more. He...he is hunting now. He...he killed the girl’s guardian and . . . and lots more and he IS HUNTING! Dear God, he is hunting now.” With that, Joe’s eyes closed tight and he buried his face in his hands. “I can feel him, Dave. I can f****** feel him! Jesus, I need medicine NOW! Or I’ll die...and my brother will die too. Damn!”
Dave felt something then, too: it was like a cold, nearly dead thing had been thrown at his bare feet, wriggling, flopping, gasping for air.
“I’m going to go to the store now, Joe,” he said unsteadily. “Stay put, buddy. Don’t go anywhere!”
It was like he didn’t have to think about anything anymore. He was suddenly consumed by Joe’s (projected?) need and pain. Deftly, he jumped back into the cab of his truck, looked in the rear view mirror, adjusted his aviator sunglasses and pulled his hair together into a tight pony tail. What he saw, looking carefully at himself for the first time in a long while, was a middle-aged man: a rough-around- the-edges handsome forty something who probably wouldn’t strike anyone as unusual in this part of the world. Only he knew the fear that was there, growing just under the façade. Hold it together, Davy. Hold it together. Get Joe his medicine, his tequila, his beer, his lemons and salt and be quick. F*** the consequences. No one knows me from a can of paint.
He started out toward the Food Lion first, steadying himself as he walked, not looking back. The questions were popping up again, bouncing around in his head like the insistent little bastards in that silly arcade game Whack-A-Mole. Something was going horribly wrong with his reality and he couldn’t stop the momentum of it. This Joe was somebody very special or somebody very dangerous or both; he knew this, though why he couldn’t say even to himself. And now, striding toward the sliding glass doors of the supermarket, he realized just how hard he had been trying to ignore the very reality of it all. There were forces at work in his world that Dave would normally have considered pure, unadulterated supernatural b*******. This was not normal anymore.
Once inside the store, he selected a cart from the provided queue and proceeded to push onward toward the refrigerated section. The behavior seemed like such a routine thing at first, but the effort of staving off the sweat that had begun to ooze from his pores had his inner voice screaming otherwise; it was screaming, be hasty and get out!
He couldn’t recall ever having been so disoriented in a goddamn beer aisle in his whole adult life and trying to focus now on the increasingly hieroglyphic-like labels forced him to pull out his reading glasses from his breast pocket. Switching them out with his shades proved to be very difficult. Also, it became imperative that he remember what Joe had said about the damn beer--something Joe had been emphatic about while they were on their way there.
Why two four-packs of Guinness? he wondered absently. Why any of this?
It took just about every last bit of Dave’s concentrated will power to keep from breaking down into the shakes as he robotically wheeled away from the beer aisle in search of picnic sized salt shakers and two—Joe said two, damn him!—sixteen ounce bottles of Diet Coke.
Getting the lemons was the last straw. He just barely managed his way into the quick-check-out line, drenched and twitchy; he felt as if he were the f****** addict! And it just figured that there was a small framed, white haired old lady at the head of the line who seemed to be trying to dig out a house cat or something equally absurd from her small clutch purse. When she finally removed what appeared to be a check book and hesitantly asked the register person for a pen, Dave had serious thoughts about abandoning his cart and bolting for the glass doors.
Hang on, Dave. Just hang on.
At last, he managed to take his turn and make his purchases without having to engage in any kind of conversation. He then practically ran out through the sliding doors. Outside, he veered directly toward the ABC liquor store, took three or four strides and stopped dead in his tracks. He realized that he had been holding his breath and had become dizzy enough to nearly pass out. Gulping for air like a marathon runner at the end of twenty six uphill miles, he set his bags down and stayed bent over them for what seemed like an eternity.
Jesus, he thought, now the hard part! A fit of hysterical laughter almost escaped him. No, not here, not now.
With a couple more deep breaths, he steadied himself, wiped the sweat from his brow and trudged on. Once inside the ABC store, he was greeted pleasantly by a young, used car salesman type wearing a bright blue paisley tie that seemed to Dave ridiculously mismatched to his olive-drab, short-sleeved shirt. That desire to laugh maniacally crept up again, but Dave held it at bay and managed to return the man’s greeting. He set his two plastic bags down next to the counter—he hoped this gesture would allay any suspicions of shoplifting—and quickly perused the aisles, finding and picking up his selections with careful haste. Again, Joe had been very specific: a fifth of Cuervo Gold tequila and a 750 milliliter bottle of Bowman’s Virginia vodka.
Dave remembered having said something smart then: “You want ice?”
Joe had just glowered at him and had beamed something akin to a slap on the back of his head.
After paying the salesman and getting out of the store with all of his purchases and without incident, he finally started to decompress. He walked slowly back to his rig, breathing deeply and opening his eyes wide; the thought to carefully look around him surfaced and he was gratified to see that no one seemed to be paying any undue attention to him at all. He was very relieved to see that at the moment there wasn’t a vehicle even remotely resembling a police car in or near the big, asphalt lot.
Dave climbed up and opened the passenger side door of his rig, heaved his plastic bags up onto the seat and was about to step down to stretch when he heard Joe’s voice from the sleeper. What made him hesitate was that it wasn’t exactly Joe’s voice he was hearing.
What now, he thought? Get down and have a cigarette. This day is by no means over, pal.
And so he did.