The Kick It Gives

A Crime Fiction Short Story

The car was traveling more than ninety-five miles per hour, rocketing down the flat desolate stretch of Rural Route 3 that connected the bedroom community of Greencastle, a tiny town of about five hundred people, with Mt. Julip, the county seat. 

With the lights off, the dark car can be heard but not seen, except when the almost full moon momentarily fights its way through the sliding clouds. The driver, illuminated only by green dash lights, has the grin of invincibility, a grin belonging only to the young.

Tammy Deever was having a smoke outside the Filler Up, a rundown cinder block convenience store with two slow gas pumps. She heard it coming but sees nothing until it shoots past the two pole lights in the parking lot. When Mustang zipped by, it looked like a sleek black bullet hurtling down the arrow-straight county road. 

She loved speed, power and danger. It made her feel good, although she knows that a new Ford Mustang and Harly for that matter, isn’t really going to get her where she wants to go. He’s a cute puppy but she needs a full grown Pitbull. “Hell, yeah,” she muttered anyway and grounded out her cigarette with one unlaced, high-top Chuck Taylor. 

She swiped at her short, spiked, jet-black hair, which had blue streaks highlighted in bangs that hang straight down over her eyes. Her eyebrows have three small studs each and her tongue is pierced twice. Underneath all that dark look though, is a face and a body that boys and men alike find irresistible. She’s twenty two, but still looked eighteen.

As the sound of the Mustang faded Tammy headed back in but glanced back at the road and shook her head. “Fuckin’ get it, Harly.” 

The same dinging sound that announced cars pulling up to the pumps signals her walking back into the store. God, she fucking hated that sound. She will miss Harly, her on-again, off-again boyfriend of the past year. There is a keg party over in Mt. J tonight that she will miss because she has to be here one more night. This night. Darell has called in sick and the owner is shit faced drunk as usual. He told her to lock up. It was perfect and she made the call.

She needs the money. She needs to get out of this shit town and that will take more money than twelve fucking dollars an hour. She has to start somewhere. God knows her trailer-whore mom doesn’t have it. Tonight will be her last at the Filler Up.

A customer, the only one in the store, waited at the counter to pay and stared impatiently at Tammy as she strolled back inside, inspecting her chipped, black-polished nails. She has to get rid of this asshole.

“Take your time, hon, I got all fuckin’ night,” Burl Hightower said to her.

She didn't even look at him at first as she slid behind the counter and crossed her thin, pale arms. Finally she rolled her eyes and looked him straight in the eye with a bored, slack expression.

He said nothing and continued to stare at her with his jaw muscles clenched and working hard. The only other sound in the store is the old freezer case, clanking away in the back of the store.

Burl was still in his work clothes from his shift at the Golden Meadows Dairy plant. He is keeping to his normal schedule. He’s on his way home from The Boilermaker, a whitewashed clap trap tavern with a low ceiling and dim lights. He goes there every Friday afternoon, drinks half his paycheck, and unsuccessfully flirts with the waitress, Maryanne Cooper. 

He always stops here on the way home for a six-pack to go just to finish out the night, but he’s never seen this little slutty bitch before.

“I can’t ring that up, I’m not old enough to sell beer,” she lied, still bored and looking out the window now.

“Well then get somebody who fuckin’ can,” Hightower snarls, digging out his wallet.

“There ain’t somebody else. He called in sick.” Tammy sighed and cocked her head sideways. She dismissed him then and began to stock cigarettes in the overhead rack above the counter. As she did, her black cutoff T-shirt with a skull and lightening bolt on the front rode up, revealing a sliver of her black lace bra.

Burl, jaw still working hard, stared at the bra cups and her flat smooth belly. He also noticed that underneath that hacked-up hair, she was pretty damn hot. Her ignoring him was really eating at him now. It was worse than ignoring, really; she had hardly even acknowledged his presence. It reminded him of his repeated failed attempts with Maryanne Cooper, and his anger began to boil.

“Ring the beer up you little bitch,” he growled at her and leaned over the counter. 

***

It was going to be close, the Filler Up was almost the halfway point, but right after that was The Dip. The Dip was just that, a deep depression in this otherwise straight and flat county road. Harly hadn’t slowed down since Trev had yelled go to him back in Greencastle. At the finish line marked by the ‘Welcome to Julip' sign, his other buddy Jake had heard the ‘go’ on his phone and was waiting with a stopwatch in hand.

It was just a stupid game they played but Harly took setting a new record serious. He didn’t intend to back off at the dip, either. He was going to go balls-to-the-wall until he passed Jake at the Crowell Road intersection, just outside of Julip.

“Oh yeah,” Harly whispered, still grinning as he saw nothing but dark, blurred shapes all around him and the vague outline of the road. He would set a new record tonight. He can’t see the dip but he can sense it coming now, loosening his tight grip on the wheel. The secret was you couldn’t fight the dip, you had to loosen up and go with the hop, and he did drawing only sparks when the back of Mustang landed.

Deputy Sheriff Jess Glover paused at the stop sign, and then pulled out onto Route 3. He was headed over to Greencastle for a quick swing-through, just to make sure the bored country kids weren’t burning down the town on a Friday night.

A phantom car blew by him out of nowhere. It buffeted his cruiser like the outer edge of a twister, and he barely glimpsed the dark shape as it blasted past him.

“Damn it,” Glover muttered as he took hold of the wheel with both hands. His eyes were big and round as they snapped to the rearview mirror. Braking hard, he whipped the car across the dark road and sent it into the far ditch a little before heading back in the direction he’d come from, back towards Julip. 

Calling in the pursuit and location, he lit up the night with the red and blue strobes, then punched the cruiser for all it was worth.

Harlan made a snap decision when he saw the flashing lights behind him. He would not go into Julip after all. They would nail him there for sure. He broke hard and swung the wheel to the left, making a screeching, fishtailing turn. He was now headed straight back toward the headlights of the police cruiser.

Patrolman Glover sees the brake lights blink once, then go solid red, and knows what the guy is going to do. He slows his cruiser down to again change directions and continue the chase.

“Shit…Shit,” he muttered as the car flashes by him again, and a dark feeling washed over him. This was not going to end well, he was almost sure of it.

***

“Look mister, you need to just leave. Just go. Right the fuck now. We got two security cameras and they’re taping your stupid ass.” Tammy said it matter-of-factly and then popped her gum at him, as a sort of final fuck you. A blunt sign that the conversation was over.

Burl Hightower was ready to reach over the counter, cameras or not, but behind him he heard the ding of the door. Tammy reached both hands up, and again her shirt went up. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but stare at a tiny butterfly tattoo way down below her pierced belly button. He hadn’t noticed that the first time. Damn her hot little self anyway. It took him a second before it registered that she wasn't reaching up to stock the cigarettes. He saw her eyes grow big and stare at something over his shoulder.

She swore under her breath, “You idiot.” 

A high-strung male voice behind him said, “Hey asshole, turn around and get your fucking hands up…ya’ dickweed.”

Burl spun around, seeking the source of this new offender. He saw a fidgety, lanky figure just inside the door, only a few feet away, swaying from side to side and shaking a large automatic at him. The guy had a knit stocking mask on. Holes for the eyes and mouth.

“Do it now, man! NOW!” the bobbing and twitching man screeched at him.

“What the HELL?” Burl grimaced, and then with a snort of chuckling wonder in his voice, he repeated, “What the livin’ fuck?”

He put his hands up in a half-ass way and stared at the masked figure, who couldn't stand still.

“Hands all the way UP!...UP, DUDE!” the man shrieked.

Burl stuck his neck out towards the guy and peered hard into the wild wide eyes and open mouth that showed under the ski mask. Putting his hands up farther, but still halfheartedly, he grinned and said, “You’re just a coked up kid, aren’t you? Just a meth punk. Put the fuckin’ gun down before you hurt somebody, you little puke.”

Burl started lowering his hands and he heard the little bitch behind him start to say something like, “Don’t” or “No, don’t” but the last thing he would ever hear was the boom of the big .45, the noise was deafening in the confined little store.

With her ears ringing, Tammy stared open-mouthed at the fallen Burl Hightower. She screamed, a short and shrill little chirp, her thin pale arms still frozen in the air. She watched as a rapidly growing pool of blood around the man’s head began to spread out. The bullet could not have hit Hightower anymore square in the forehead, and his eyes are looking at the ceiling in a quizzical way, as if he’s searching for something up there. The small arc of blood bubbling from the wound reminds her of the low-pressure drinking fountain in the back room.

“Fuck!…Fuck! The money. Give me the money! Now!” the gunman yells, throwing a pillowcase at Tammy and aiming the unsteady .45 at her now. 

***

“Gotta be Harlan Beltrain, he’s the only one dumb enough to try this shit. Not a bad kid, really, but he’s dumber than a box a rocks.” Deputy Glover was talking to himself out loud. He did that sometimes when he was really on edge. A glance at the speedometer, showed the needle was bouncing just under a hundred. Then, his eyes widened when he remembered the dip, but it was far too late.

The cruiser jerked violently down, then bounces up, the front wheels losing contact with the road. Out of sheer reflex, Jess Glover fights it all the way. Before he loses complete control, he thinks he sees Harlan’s brake lights again at the convenience store up ahead. It’s all a blur of landscape and swirling lights now though.

Harly stomped on the brakes and downshifted hard, down into second gear, barreled into the parking lot almost sideways. He fishtailed the other way, lost it, and broke again to a stop. Shifting again, he roars around to the back of the Filler Up. After seeing the cop spin out and drop back, he decides this is as good a place as any to bail if he has to. There’s deep woods he can run to behind the store.

A minute ticked by. No lights, nothing. Sitting in the dark with his engine off, he glanced over and saw Tammy’s car parked against the store wall. Getting out quickly, he decided he would ask her for a ride home. She won’t care. He’ll leave the car here until tomorrow morning. Hell, he can claim it was stolen or taken for a joyride by someone.

He knows she will let him in the back door if she hears him knock. Just for the hell of it, he checks the handle to see if it’s unlocked. Harly grinned as the knob turned smoothly and he quietly eased the door open.

At the same time, Deputy Jess Glover staggers out of the cornfield, badly cut, bruised and bleeding from a gash above his eyebrow. His cruiser had flipped and then rolled twice into the cornfield, coming to rest upside-down with the flashing lights still turning. But he can’t hear the siren, and his radio isn’t working.

Lumbering up to the roadside, Glover realizes that he can’t hear anything at all. His vision is not much better, partly due to the blood, and he can’t seem to focus his thoughts very well, either. He weaved on the edge of Rural Route 3, looked both ways and took off across it in a rambling, weaving lope. 

***

Car lights swept across the front windows of the Filler Up. The gunman ducked and then yelled, “Out the back. Move! Where’s your car?!”

“Here’s the keys. The rusty Toyota out back. Don’t take me. I can’t go. I just can’t!” Tammy begins to cry loudly. She begins to panic for real, she hadn’t figured on a murder.

“You’re comin’, bitch,” he yelled and caught the tossed key ring.

Tammy, walking in front of the gunman with the automatic pointed at the back of her head, purposely looks back at the security camera. But past the video dramatics, there is a real, growing fear in her eyes. They move toward the swinging door to the back room in a stilted march.

At that moment, Harlan walks through. He freezes, eyes wide, only a few feet away from his girlfriend and a masked guy holding a very big handgun.

Whether out of surprise, reflex or something else, the gunman pushed Tammy to her knees and shot Harlan once in the chest. Again, the small store shakes and echoes with the boom. 

The force of the shot drives Harlan back into the wall. He ended up on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the door he’d just come through. A look of surprise and confusion is painted on his young face. His head drooped down weakly and he gazed at his ruined chest, then struggled to look up again. He fixed his eyes on Tammy’s.

“Harlan!” Her high voice choked out… “HARLY!” She let out another shrill scream. She manages one more glance at him as she’s shoved quickly through the swinging door.

Harlan is leaning forward now and reaching in her direction, but he can’t hold his arm up for more than a second before it flops to the floor. He saw only the dark outlines of things now, like a photo negative, then everything went dark. 

Now at the Filler Up, Deputy Glover does not hear the gunshot inside or the back door open. When the gunman and Tammy emerged, they saw the uniformed officer with his back toward them as he looked through the driver-side window of Harlan’s Mustang.

Panicked and beyond control now, the shooter levels the .45 again and fires the third lucky shot of the night for a strung-out meth freak. The bullet entered Glover’s upper back and tore through his heart, killing him almost instantly.

***

Authorities would never discover the fate of Tammy Deever, the kidnapped convenience store clerk, but they feared that she most certainly met a violent end. The gunman who shot and killed three men that night was never apprehended.

What was supposed to have been a simple robbery and staged kidnapping had turned into a disaster from the start. There weren’t supposed to be any customers.

“You can’t trust a meth head Tam,” her mother had always warned her, “Just can’t.” She’d been speaking from personal experience. Tammy’s mother, Christine Deever, had been right for one of the few times of her miserable life. 

The money take was a little better than epected that night, but Tammy decided right away that there would be no split. When she added in the fact that the stupid fuck had killed her Harly, well, Tammy had no qualms. 

A day later at an old deserted farmhouse, she shot the junkie drifter she had earlier recruited. Five or six times. It was a rush. Dragged him into a small leaky rowboat took him out in the middle of a pond and rolled his concrete weighted ass over the side. She can’t even remember the guy’s name now.

She kept the .45 and carries it with her wherever she goes. It is big and heavy for her, but she likes the damn thing, likes the feel. She swears to herself that she'll never part with it. It probably has something to do with the kick it gives when she shoots it.

The only real problem she has with the whole incident is that sometimes, with the lights off, late at night, she still sees Harly’s face. Still sees him looking at her with that confused young face, sees him reaching for her. He’s always reaching for her.

She is three states away these days and working in yet another shitty little store on another dark and desolate rural road. Jenny Miller has a new boyfriend, too. Her hair is now blonde, long and straight, almost down to her waist. No studs in the eyebrows or tongue.  

Taking a smoke break, she stands with arms crossed over a low-cut sheer blouse, looking out into the late night. All she knows is that she has to get out of this shit town. That takes money and she has to start somewhere. She’s still looking good in a kind of small-town, wicked-hot way, but she has to keep moving up while she can.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees a figure with a hooded sweatshirt emerge from the tree line and start across the parking lot. Yet another little puppy she has found who will follow her everywhere and anywhere. One who wants nothing more than a treat thrown his way every once in a while. In return, he’ll do anything. This one is clean, too. Sure, he drinks and all, but no drugs.

Walking inside quickly and going behind the counter to look busy, she knows that this boy will have to go too. This take will also be too small to split. Hell, as far as she’s concerned, any take is too small to split. Just like a poker player with a “tell,” she absently pops her gum, loudly and with some anger, a trademark “fuck you” to anyone and everything.

The door opens and she almost holds her hands up before being told.

*