Nowhere Man - 9. Chapter 9: Fireworks

There was often a disconnect between the things I wanted and the things I knew I should want. Growing up, I never ate my vegetables, even though I knew I should. I just couldn’t bring myself to want them.

Ready to shotgun the truck and leave Tyler to deal with his own disasters, I knew I should want to leave. He approached the window slowly.

“Need a light?” he asked. A drop of rain hit him on the forehead and he squinted.

“I’m good.”

“Scoot over,” he commanded. I held my ground. He repeated the command, sounding slightly irritated.

“I’m driving.” He stared me down. The message in my gaze was unmistakable. I would get us to Easton, retrieve what I needed and then follow him anywhere.

Or I could chase pavement right then and leave him behind.

I didn’t need to say anything; it seemed that he understood my intentions. He circled the cab and slid into the passenger’s side like a snake slithering into its cage.

“You’ve got spunk,” he muttered to me as I turned the windshield wipers on and headed for the main road.

Two hours later, I pulled into Easton Park, surprised at how little everything had changed. It seemed as if I’d been away for a year, when in reality it had been only a weekend.

Dustin and Ashley were home and fast asleep. It was one of those rare nights that Dustin didn’t have to work and Ashley’s bar had long since been cleaned and locked up. I’m sure they’d taken advantage of my absence as well. The place was pitch dark. No one was looking for me.

I shuffled quietly to my bedroom and without turning on the light, fumbled for a small lunch box under my bed. I pulled it out, opened it and grazed the letters with my finger. It would have been hell going on without these letters. As old and dingy and stupid as they were, leaving them behind would have killed me, faster and more painfully than Tyler could any time.

I tiptoed to the kitchen and opened the fridge with a loud plunging sound. I didn’t want to wake up my brother, and Tyler had warned me vehemently not to. His words more than implied that he would have to kill the three of us if I did. His implications were like promises and to test them would have been suicide.

I used the light from the fridge to scribble a note on the pad of paper on which Ashley wrote her shopping lists. I scratched out eggs, milk and cornmeal and below them, I wrote my brother and sister-in-law a message.

I’m leaving nowhere and heading somewhere. I love you.

I took 300 dollars out of the tin box and slipped it under the note. I wanted to wake them, say goodbye, but I couldn’t.

As I took one last look around the darkness of a place I’d considered home because I knew nothing better, I heard a whimper. It was faint, but unmistakable. I raced outside just in time to see Tyler slam the door to his trailer and bound up the hill.

“Get in the truck,” he whispered loudly as he sprinted towards me. The rain had soaked his hair and his shirt. His eyes were bloodshot and I wondered if he had been crying in the trailer. “Get in the goddamn truck!” he said loudly. I shut the trailer door behind me. There was so much more I wanted to do. There was so much I thought I needed to take in. I was leaving Easton Park forever, and I needed more ceremony surrounding my departure.

As soon as I slammed the door closed, stashing the tin under my seat, I said a little prayer. It was the first time I’d prayed since as long as I could remember.

Dear God, let this be the right decision.

Tyler accelerated and the truck skidded out of the gravel trail, creating a small cloud behind us. As he turned onto the main road, I smelled something wrong.

“Is that gasoline?” I asked. Why did it smell like gasoline? “What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Like hell nothing. You ran up that hill like a madman—and then…”

Boom.

It was the loudest sound I’d ever heard. We were well down the street by then, but the echo sounded as though the crash had happened right next to us. I turned around, looking out the back window through the rain. The fire hovering over Easton Park looked like fireworks on the fourth of July. The cloud of fire was beautiful. Dangerous and beautiful.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, unable to utter anything else. “Did you?” I looked at Tyler. He continued to face forward. “You blew up… holy fucking shit!”

As we drove away from the fireworks, the magnitude of what he’d done hit me like a ton of brick. As a siren hummed in the background, I wondered how big the explosion had actually been. Had any of the other trailers been affected? Was my brother okay?

“What did you do?” I repeated.

“You know English?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“What part o’ nothing ain’t English?”

“You blew up the park.” It wasn’t a question. It was an observation. How many people had he just injured? How many people had he killed? And the whimper before he ignited what turned into a fire cloud the size of Kansas.

“Pete,” I whispered. A tear rolled down my cheek.

“Pete’s a dog.”

“Stop the car,” I said evenly.

“Trav.”

“Stop the goddamn truck!” I had gone from serene to a wreck in the time it took for a trailer park to blow up. I punched Tyler in the chest with my left fist. “Stop the fucking truck! You’re a goddamn psycho. Stop the truck, please stop the fucking truck.”

He pulled over just at the edge of town. A second siren buzzed in the background as I jumped out of the truck, into the rain. I struggled for breath, feeling as though I was choking. I could faintly smell smoke lingering above me. There was something mixed in with the smoke. It didn’t just smell like burning wood. I could have sworn it smelled like burning flesh. Like barbeque on a summer day. Like fireworks on the fourth of July.

I cried openly, unable to catch a breath. What had I gotten into? Why was I still with this madman? I would have paid anything right then to be back in Easton, sleeping in my trailer, unaware of the calamity I faced. If I had died in that explosion, would it have been such a bad thing? Would it have been worse than living knowing everything I knew had just gone up in flames?

“Fuck!” I shouted through the sobs.

As the rain beat down on me, I wanted to make a break; run back. He could shoot me, run me over, for all I cared. But I didn’t run. I stood there, crying, trying to breathe.

Then I felt his hands. The warm, soft hands of a cold blooded killer wrapping around me. He pulled me in close, shielding me from the rain, from the smell of smoke, and replacing it with the musk fumes of gasoline.

I cried hysterically in his arms, unable to move and barely able to breathe. I didn’t run. I was stuck in those arms that smelled like gasoline as everything I knew became fireworks behind me.

An eternity later, Tyler squeezed his arms around me and then let me go. He stepped into the truck. Wet and freezing, I followed suit. A minute later, we were speeding north down the freeway.

“My seats are gonna be wet,” he mumbled. I glared at him. That’s what he was worried about?

We rode in silence for the next two hours. I had nothing to say and as usual, Tyler was more than content with the quiet. At some point, I dozed off. I didn’t know where we were headed. I hardly cared.

“Wake up, babe,” Tyler said. I opened my eyes. The sun was shining. There were clouds in the sky, and the ground was wet, but there was no rain. Tyler carried a box into the house that must have contained all of his travelling belongings.

“Were are we?” I croaked. I stretched and yawned.

“Somewhere.”

I surveyed the area. We were in a trailer park, not unlike Easton. Two rows of trailers wove around in a semi circle. We parked at the fourth unit on the outer row. I yawned again.

“Where is this place?”

“Does it make a difference?” He was totally right. It didn’t make a lick of difference. This was my new home.

I followed him inside the unit furnished with a small couch, an end table and a chair. The kitchen was full service with everything one would need save plates and food. We went straight to the bedroom and I collapsed on the spring mattress with no sheets.

“You planning on making a waterbed?” he asked. I realized I was still damp from the rain. I stood up and shed all of my clothes as Tyler did the same. He tossed me the sleeping bag and I spread it out over the bed. Exhausted, I slid in. I would consider where I was when I woke up.

Feeling Tyler slide in next to me, both of us stark naked and cold, surprised me. I asked myself what I was still doing there, I really did. I was fully aware that no sane person would be sharing an army issue sleeping bag with a confessed murderer and small town terrorist. But I wasn’t insane and I enjoyed his body heat. He wrapped his arm around me, effortlessly this time, and I scooted into him. He needed me and I needed him. Besides, I had nowhere else to go.

“You asleep, Tyler?”

“Does it make a difference now?”

“I just… nevermind,” I shifted in his arms.

“You may as well ask me now,” he replied. “After you woke me up.”

“How many times have you done this?”

“Done what?”

“This. A new town. A new park. A new guy.”

“Three, three and zero.”

“I’m the first?”

“You’re the first babe,” he said. The use of the word ‘babe’ really threw me for a loop. Where was this affection coming from? I liked it, but it was surprising. He yawned behind me.

“What about your gay friend?”

“What about him?” he asked. I felt him tense up slightly. I held the hand that was around me close to my chest to reassure him.

“What’s the story there?”

“Ain’t no story,” he said. That was a lie. There was always a story. I didn’t push it. Instead, I let the skinny arms pull me close. He kissed the back of my neck and sweetly cooed “Let me in, babe.”

Again, I was thrown. New town made Tyler a new man. Having him behind me, rubbing into me, almost made me forget everything. Almost.

“I want you,” he whispered. The hand not wrapped around me was gently massaging my ass as his lips played with my ear.

Did I really want to know the story behind his allusive gay friend? Was it the kind of friend that disappeared like Pete had? Up in another cloud of fireworks? Was that my destiny as well? The last time I pushed him for answers to something, he ended up confessing to murder.

“You can have me all you want,” I said, leaning back into him. “If you tell me what happened to your friend.”

Tyler went from hot lover to ice box in t-minus three seconds. He let go of my ear, unwrapped his arm around me and curled in a ball facing the other direction like a baby.

“You’re worse than a fucking chick, you know that?”

“I just… I want to know everything. I need to know, or it nags at me.”

“I know the feeling.” He lifted his head and glared at me. I was sitting up, hand on my elbow, eyebrow raised. Waiting.

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “Before I met you. Right after Les died. Before I started having these feelings for… well, for you, alright?”

“Okay.”

“And he was into me, like really into me. I don’t know. He pushed me too far, too fast. He wanted more than I was ready for. Not like you. And so I woke up one day and he was on my dick, riding up and down and I freaked out. And I hit him. There was blood and he fell and he didn’t wake up. That’s when I hopped in the car, drove to Easton Park and found you.”

The body count was rising.

He rolled over, enveloping me with his warmth.

“I don’t know what happened to him, and I don’t give a shit. He was nothing like you, babe.” I continued to melt. “He was a stupid clown. Leaving him behind brought me here to you.”

His words warmed me as he slipped into me softly, taking complete control of me. One word, however, stuck out like a sore thumb. It wasn’t a word someone uses regularly or just tosses around. And even with Tyler expressing his feelings for me, harder and harder, deeper and deeper, the word scratched at the back of my mind.

Clown.