Far From True

Twenty-eight

Ed idled his pickup truck down the street from Clinton Public Elementary School. He figured that Carl Worthington’s route to his mother’s work, or their home, would take him this way, right past where he was parked. It was a good thing the little guy had never seen him. It’d be easier to pull off what he had planned that way.

Of course, there was a chance he wouldn’t be walking this way, if he decided to go to a friend’s house, say, before going home. But Ed’s information was that his mother picked him up most days. He’d probably be looking for her, standing around, wondering why she was late.

That worked for Ed. He had his story ready.

Ed sat behind the wheel of the truck, waiting for the bell to ring, which was when he’d go on high alert. While Carl had never seen him, he’d seen plenty of pictures of the kid — Yolanda had given them to him — so he didn’t anticipate having any trouble picking out the little bastard.

While he waited, he ate a Mars bar. Unwrapped it, bit off half, chewed it up in a few seconds, then shoved the other half into his mouth. Licked his lips, glanced into the rearview mirror to make sure he didn’t have chocolate in the corners of his mouth. His mother had taught him that. Always check the corners of your mouth.

He looked okay.

The bell rang.

Seconds later, school doors flew open and hordes of kids made their escape. Jesus, there were way more of them coming out at once than he’d imagined. Ed had to keep a close watch on everyone.

But then he saw him. And just as he’d hoped, he was coming this way. He’d gotten about twenty yards from the school when he stopped, looked around.

“Looking for your mommy?” Ed said.

He got out of the truck, stood by the open driver’s door.

“Hey!” he called. “Carl? You Carl?”

The boy looked his way. He was about sixty feet from the truck. Don’t scare him, Ed thought. If the kid took off running, he’d never be able to catch him.

“Me?” Carl said, pointing to himself.

Ed nodded furiously, forced a smile. “There was a fire!”

Carl’s jaw dropped and he started running toward the man. “A fire?”

“Your mom asked me to come get you,” he said. “I was doing a couple of loads of laundry, and your mom was in the office, and one of the dryers just kind of blew up. All kinds of flame coming out of it and stuff.”

“Is she okay?” the boy asked.

“She’s good — she’s fine — but she had to call the fire department, and she asked me if I could come pick you up. She described you pretty good! I picked you right out of the crowd!”

Carl’s feet stayed rooted to the ground about ten feet away from the man. “I don’t know,” he said.

Ed put both hands out in front of him, palms out. “Look, I get it. I told your mom — I said, ‘Your son’s going to think I’m some sort of creepy stranger.’ I mean, you don’t know me. And if you’re not comfortable letting me give you a ride to the Laundromat, I understand. Go back into the office and maybe in a couple of hours or so, when the fire department is finished up, your mom can come get you. I can go back and tell her you decided to stay. I mean, she could probably use your help right now, with all the trouble that’s going on, but I think she’ll understand.”

Ed could see that the kid was right on the edge.

He started to get back into the truck. “Don’t worry about it, Carl. I’ll tell her you’re fine and that you’ll be waiting—”

“It’s okay!” he said, and closed the distance between them.

“You can get in on my side,” Ed said, moving back to allow the boy to jump in and scoot across the seat to the passenger side.

“You sure my mom’s okay?” he asked as he settled in up against the passenger door and buckled his seat belt.

“I think she might have burned her hand a bit, but not real bad. When the fire started, she tried to smother it with some wet clothes from a washer, but it was kind of coming from the back side of the dryer. So then she went for a fire extinguisher, but by then it was really going. But you should have seen her! She was amazing! I called 911 for her, and once the fire trucks got there, she was all worked up because she couldn’t come get you.”

“Are they going to have to close the laundry?” Carl asked, his face full of worry. “Because if it closes, my mom doesn’t make any money.”

Ed, putting the truck in drive, shook his head. “Hard to say. She got insurance?”

“What’s that?” Carl asked.

“Huh? They not teach you anything these days?” Ed checked his mirrors, prepared to move out into the street. But suddenly it was like trying to get out of the airport parking lot at Christmas. All these other cars blocking his way, mothers picking up their kids.

“Jesus, would it kill these little bastards to walk home from school?” Ed said. “Nobody got picked up when I was a kid.”

He glanced over at the boy. Carl had begun to look uneasy.

“Sorry, I just get stressed-out in traffic,” he said. “I’ll get you to your mom right away.”

“It’s back that way,” Carl said.

“Yeah, I know, but I gotta get out of this traffic jam first — then I’ll double back. Your mom or dad never tell you not to be a backseat driver?”

“A what?”

Ed laughed. “You’re not much brighter than your old man — you know that?”

“You know my dad?” Carl asked.

“Come on!” Ed yelled, putting down his window. There were three minivans and an SUV ahead of him, waiting to get past a crossing guard in an orange vest who was guiding kids across the street. “Honest to Christ!”

“How do you know my dad?” Carl persisted.

Ed glanced over as he powered up his window. “We’re old buddies.”

Carl’s hand went for the door handle. Ed hit the lock button on his own door. “Don’t even think about it, little man. We’re about to get moving. You jump out of a moving truck, you’ll turn into street pizza.”

“There was no fire,” Carl said.

Ed grinned. “That’s good news, huh?”

The crossing guard stepped back onto the sidewalk and started waving the other cars through. “Here we go,” Ed said. “Hope you like Boston because — Jesus!”

There was a banging on his window. There was a man running alongside the truck, slapping the palm of his hand on the glass and shouting.

“Stop the truck!” he yelled, his voice half-muffled by the glass. “Stop the damn truck!”

The man grabbed for the door handle, tried to open it without success.

It took half a second for Ed to realize who the man was, but he sure recognized him. He looked ahead, wanting to hit the gas, but the other cars were still holding him up. “Back off!” he shouted, but when he turned his head to the window, the man was gone.

“Carl!”

The guy was on the other side of the truck now, banging on Carl’s glass. “Open the door!”

Ed reached across, grabbed the kid by his shirt collar, and yanked him toward the center of the seat. “Don’t touch that fucking door.”

The guy was holding up a phone, looking at Ed. “Hey, asshole! Next call is 911! Every cop in New York State’s gonna be looking for this pickup!”

Ed’s cheek twitched.

“Think about it!” the man yelled.

On the sidewalk, kids had stopped to watch what was happening. A few mothers, still waiting at the curb, had gotten out of their cars. At least one of them was getting out a phone, maybe to take pictures.

The cars ahead were finally moving.

Ed looked forward, hit the gas.

Felt the truck lurch for a second as it accelerated. Heard a thunk.

When Ed glanced right, the man was gone. He grinned, released his grip on the kid. “Showed him,” he said.

“Not exactly,” Carl said, and nodded rearward.

Ed looked in his mirror. The guy was in back. He was in the pickup bed. On his knees, amid a litter of dirt and decaying leaves. He was keeping low, in case Ed decided to start veering back and forth in a bid to throw him off-balance.

The engine sputtered and roared as the truck gained speed. A second crossing guard at the next cross street had to shoo kids out of the truck’s path. Ed took the corner fast enough that the man was tossed into the wall of the pickup bed. But as long as he kept his center of gravity low, there was no way Ed could ditch him unless he found a way to drive upside down.

The man glanced through the window at Carl, gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Then he rolled onto his back and started fiddling with his phone.

“What’s he doing?” Ed asked. “I can’t see him.”

“I think he’s calling the police,” Carl said.

Ed cranked the wheel hard left, hard right, and back again. See if the guy could enter any numbers while bouncing around like a pinball. He caught glimpses in his mirror of the guy being jostled back and forth. Didn’t look like he had the phone in his hand anymore. Which could mean he’d already called the cops, or maybe he’d just given up. Maybe the phone had been knocked out of his hand.

“Gotta lose this guy,” he said. But even Ed, who had failed physics in high school — and just about everything else for that matter — realized that no matter how quickly he drove, he wasn’t going to put any more distance between himself and this asshole in the back of his truck.

The only way he was going to get rid of him was to get him out of his truck.

“Hang on, kid,” Ed said, and slammed his foot on the brake with everything he had.

The truck squealed to a stop. The man in the back was thrown up against the back of the cab. Ed jammed the truck into park, threw open his door, and jumped out. He was going to reach in, grab the son of a bitch by his jacket, and throw him out onto the road.

What he hadn’t counted on was how quickly the man would get to his feet.

Or that he would kick him in the face.

“Fuck!” Ed shouted, staggering back, putting both hands over a nose that was already spurting blood.

“Carl!” the man yelled. “Get out of the truck! Run!”

Carl hesitated for half a second, then scrambled across the front seat of the vehicle and bailed out of the open driver’s door. The man placed both hands on the edge of the pickup bed and swung himself over, like he was dismounting a pommel horse.

While Ed still had his hands over his face, trying to stop the blood, the man drove a fist hard into his bloated stomach. Ed tumbled backward onto the street.

Carl, safely positioned behind a tree on a nearby front lawn, watched things play out.

In the distance, sirens could be heard. One of the many mothers at the school who’d witnessed all this must have called the police.

“You better get moving,” the man said. “Cavalry’s coming.”

Ed slowly got to his feet, blood dripping down his chin.

“You’re fucking dead,” Ed muttered, making his way back to the truck. He got behind the wheel, slammed the door, and sped off.

Carl came out from behind the tree and ran over to the man, who was now bent over, hands on his knees, throwing up.

“Jeez, Mr. Harwood, are you okay?” he asked.

David Harwood went from bending over to collapsing onto the grass. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that was shaking.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was really glad when your mom finally returned my call, but now, I’m not so sure.”