“I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel,” Johnny Cash’s rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ song played through the radio in that same slow, sad cadence. It was a song I’d learned to understand deeper than I ever wanted.
I had mixed feelings about staying and listening to the whole track in my parked rig or getting down at the Flying J rest stop and grabbing a quick, probably non-nutritious meal.
It was one of her favorite songs and I didn’t want to think about her right now. I turned off the engine and climbed down the front steps to the dirt ground.
It was late in New Mexico right outside White Sands Naval base. To be honest, the place kind of gave me the creeps. There was something just not right about that area of the world. I’d heard all the conspiracies, of course: government testing, aliens, even interdimensional portals.
There was no doubt they were doing something they didn’t want people knowing about, but I also doubted they had little nude green men running around.
I crossed the parking lot where other trucks were bedding down for the night, some plain and straight from the manufacturer, others chromed out with a full set of chicken lights like my own. I fully intended this to be my last stop. There was a frozen burrito in the Flying J with my name on it and maybe a Mountain Dew.
As soon as I opened the door to the rest stop, I knew there was something wrong. The Flying J was on the smaller side as far as these things went. I’d been to every rest stop from San Diego, California to Augusta, Maine. I’d seen rest stops with barely enough room to fit a toilet and cashier up to ones that you would have thought were a full-on shopping mall.
This one was smaller with restrooms in the back, a handful of aisles, and the cashier next to the front door.
Right now, that cashier was a young man with a face full of pimples, shaking as he stuffed bills into a coffee pot. You heard that right, a coffee pot. It still looked warm by the way the cashier palmed it from hand to hand like he was playing hot potato.
Another man held a handgun to his chest, screaming at him so quickly, the words seemed to come out together.
“Hurry, hurry, the money in the pot, all of it.” The man holding the gun looked at me with wild eyes. He pointed the gun in my direction. “Oh snap, oh snap, you, you get over here. Hands up, hands up!”
I’d always wondered what the odds were that I’d be party to a robbery one day. I knew it had to happen sooner or later. Out on the road more than I was home. Who am I kidding; the road is my home.
Entering thousands of gas stations and rest stops over the years, it looked like the odds had finally swung my way.
“You deaf, man?” The guy with the gun was erratically moving from pointing his gun to me and then the kid packing the coffee pot with bills. “I said, you deaf, man? You want to die today? You want to die today?”
I lifted my hands as adrenaline jolted through my system like a bad gearshift.
“Over here, over here,” the man with the gun said, motioning with the weapon for me to stand in front of the cashier so he could see us both. “Let’s go, come on, let’s go.”
I was no John Rambo. I had no experience in the military, either. I’d never even been in a fight, unless you counted getting beat up while I was blacked out drunk.
I didn’t.
I walked over to stand in front of the cashier, hands still in the air. I got a better look at the man holding the gun to my head. He had to be in his thirties or forties, with dragging pants, chains around his neck, and a sports jersey two sizes too big.
“Here—here, that’s all of it,” the cashier said in a shaky voice. He handed the coffee pot full of cash to the man with the gun. If I didn’t have a gun pointed at my head, I would have thought seeing a coffee pot full of cash was funny. Apparently, our brainiac robber didn’t anticipate needing something to put the money in when he arrived.
A puddle of spilt coffee by the coffee machine told me all I needed to know. If I weren’t so scared, I’d be kind of mad how much coffee had been wasted.
“All right, all right, all right.” The man with the gun bobbed his head as if he heard some kind of beat in his mind. He was about to go when he thought better of the idea and motioned to me. “You, your wallet, ring, empty your pockets. Let’s go, let’s go.”
I started sweating when he mentioned my ring. Thus far, I had planned to stay out of this whole ordeal. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Money would come and go, but lives wouldn’t. I knew that better than most.
“Slow, slow, hurry, hurry,” the man said, wiggling his gun from my head to the pot.
“How am I supposed to go slow and hurry?” I growled as I slowly and quickly reached for my wallet and dropped it in the coffee pot.
“And the ring, the ring,” the man said looking at my wedding finger. “I swear to God I’ll kill you. Drop the ring in the coffee pot.”
I had to stop from shaking. There was no way I was giving up my ring.
“Come on, you’re going to die for a ring, man?” the guy with the gun asked, stepping closer and pressing the barrel into my forehead. “You some kind of slow inbred? What, your wife give this to you? Your slow inbred wife gave this to you and it means something?”
Tears stung my eyes at her memory.
“What, are you crying?” the man asked. “Are you crying? Are you going to die because of this ring?”
Sadness turned to anger like a flip of the switch. I was ready to go. I’d made peace with that a long time ago. Without her, I was just a shadow in this life anyway.
“You willing to die for this ring?” The man pressed the barrel of his gun harder into my head. “You’re going to die for this ring?”
“No,” I told him under the halogen lights and the bright-colored chips in the aisles to our right. “You are.”
Fueled by years of repressed anger, I moved into action.
Too slow.
Eating frozen Tacos Culos Locos beef burritos and flaming hot Cheetos didn’t exactly make me the spitting image of the perfect athlete. By the time I lifted my hand for the gun, the guy had already squeezed the trigger.
CLICK!
I heard the sound even as I grabbed at the weapon with both hands, bulling the man backward. I guess those extra cheese puff pounds were good for one thing. I had to outweigh the robber by fifty, maybe sixty pounds.
I pushed him back, not really sure what my plan was. Apparently, I didn’t need a plan. I forced him back right into the puddle of coffee he’d emptied for his money container.
The robber’s athletic trainers slipped on the dark liquid and he went back hard. I heard his skull crack against the edge of the coffee stand so violently, I’d be amazed if it didn’t do some serious damage to his skull.
I fell on top of him. The coffee container full of money dropped to the ground and shattered. Tiny glass pieces shot out in all directions.
“Oh, oh,” the kid behind the counter was yelling.
I wasn’t really sure what he was going on about, but I was sure there was no way I was going to let the robber under me up.
Through shards of the broken coffee pot digging into my hands, I secured the handgun and threw it behind us. I was ready to…what? Try to wrestle the guy into submission or choke him out? I didn’t know what to do next, but I didn’t have to know.
The would-be robber under me was out cold. A puddle of dark red blood poured from the back of his head, mixing with the brown hue of the spilt coffee.
“Yes, yes, nine, one, one?” The casher, to his credit, had his cell phone in his left hand and with his right was already going to secure the discarded firearm. “We need help. Someone just tried to rob us.”
I heard the sounds of the conversation through a daze. My head hummed. I felt sick from the adrenaline. With shaky hands, I reached for my wallet through the broken glass of the coffee pot.
I stood up, not sure if the guy below me was dead or just unconscious.
“Yes, yes, he’s down,” the cashier was saying through a panicked voice. He held the gun on the unmoving robber now. “A trucker, I think, someone knocked him out. What’s your name, sir? Sir, what’s your name?”
The yelling pulled me out of whatever mental fog I was in. Later, I’d realize I was in shock. I looked down at my hands covered in glass and blood.
“Sir, are you okay?” the cashier asked me. “Help’s on the way. Sir, can you hear me?”
I’m not really sure to this day why I ran. I was confused, numb, still so hyped up on adrenaline. I just knew I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to find out if I’d killed the guy or not. Because I had wanted to kill him for a moment.
I ran.
I hit the door at full sprint, heading for my truck, the shouts of the cashier chasing behind me.
It was late now. The New Mexico sun was gone, showing off a vast array of stars and a half moon.
I was breathing hard by the time I reached my Peterbilt 379. The adrenaline was still there but beginning to wear off, reminding me I had glass in my hands. I ignored the pain for a moment longer, climbing up into my rig. The engine roared to life and I was gone out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell.
Do you really want to die? You knew he was going to pull that trigger. Did you want to give up? Are you done? What would she think of you? What would she say if she knew?
More thoughts crashed through my mind. I felt like I was going to throw up as my stomach rolled. I found my way onto the highway and pressed the accelerator, gaining momentum to reach the max speed limit allowed.
It was later than I thought, only a few vehicles near White Sands occupying the lanes. Blood smeared across my steering wheel. I shifted again and hit the gas.
The road was my home, my rig, my sanctuary, and for a brief moment before I was taken, I began to calm down.
It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. You helped that kid back there. That guy you tackled isn’t dead. He’s just knocked out. It’s going to be okay, I told myself.
I couldn’t have been further from the truth. One moment I was rolling through White Sands on a dark highway. The next thing I knew, a bright white light filled my rig from the windshield inward and I was taken.
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