Shine

Abe’s flying down Highway 29 in his battered old Chevy pickup, nothing but a giant orange moon watching him. That’s good, because if anybody knew he was on his way to see the Widow Bettina, they’d be flapping their gums something fierce. And Abe doesn’t like nobody in his business. He’s put in all his dues comforting her ever since her ratfink husband Jacob died: calling her every night, listening to her sob her eyes out, dropping little hints here and there that Jacob wasn’t precisely the great man she thought he was, although just stopping short of telling her just what a tomcat Jacob was up at that men’s club out deep in the sticks – Fur, they call it. The place where fellers go to get liquored up, fondle the scantily clad young women they got working there, and do a little gambling on the dogfights. Not that Abe’s been there himself, although it ain’t for lack of trying. And now it’s two months into his ‘good friend’ scheme, and she give him the call tonight.

“Think I’m ready,” she says. “I don’t wanna be alone tonight.”

Doesn’t matter that Abe’s polished off about a third of a Mason jar of his own special recipe moonshine. Nor does it matter that he’s got two DUIs already, and if Sheriff Garris catches him, that’ll be it. No, Abe’s got two Viagra pills saved just for this occasion. And he’s damn sure that with a little Listerine and a little Visine, he can safely make that trip down to the Widow Bettina’s waterbed and all the requisite unmentionable comforts she’s promised him. Plus a few he’s just got rattling around in his lizard-brained imagination.

He twists open the Mason jar of shine, wedged between his thighs. It’s still cold from the minifridge up at the house, and that cold has worked its way right through the denim of his overalls, giving a nice chill to his thighs. It occurs to him suddenly that maybe that cold could counteract the Viagra.

“Hell no it won’t,” he says, and brings the jar to his mouth. Only there’s something solid in there, and lips don’t catch it before it enters his mouth. Something hard and sharp. Jar in one hand, steering wheel between his thighs, Abe reaches into his mouth and pulls out the object on its tongue.

Damn it if it ain’t a cricket.

He’s so shocked and repulsed that he drops jar right into his lap. Abe entertains the idea that this is ‘cricket water’ and is now no longer worth saving before he comes to his senses and remember that this is the last of a damn good batch. He reaches down with an old footballer’s instincts to steady the jar before it hits the floorboard and manages to save nearly half the contents in the process.

“Sweet Jesus, thank ya,” he says, and then sees the red wolf flying out from the woods and right onto the highway.

Before he can even yell out, Abe yanks the wheel to the left, hoping to God either the truck will outrun the wolf or vice versa. If he’d tried to swerve right, he would have gone right into the ravine that would mess his truck up something fierce. Too far left and he’d go straight off the mountain.

A second later it’s all moot as he hears the body of that wolf thunder into his Chevy’s grill. The tires squeal, and there’s a thud-thud as both axles crunch the life from that poor creature. He banks the steering wheel hard, driving a moonshine-slickened boot deep into the brake side of the floorboard. Only the emergency brake keeps him from running straight into the mountain, though it sends him spinning.

When the truck finally comes to a stop, it’s facing back in the direction it came. The taillights illuminate little red furry legs about 30 yards away, still on the highway.

And they’re dragging themselves into the darkness.

What the boys took to calling Abe’s ‘teakettle’ – a long, whistling noise that rustles the white hairs in his nose and comes close to setting dogs howling – starts in earnest. His heart’s racing in his chest. He starts sniffing the air for almonds and toast just in case he had a stroke like Earl from up the mechanic’s shop. But the night falls back quiet, and his heart settles down. He’s pretty sure that the vein-widening characteristics of that boner pill are the only thing keeping poor Abe out of the grave.

His stomach does turn a bit when the old Chevy won’t start. Three cranks of the key, and nothing. Not even a click. And with Earl out of commission, he’s lost his only connection at the mechanic. This is gonna cost him a pretty penny.

Abe fumbles in his jacket for his phone. He feels the tug of 13-year-old First Class Scout Abraham Wallace to call the cops and come clean to them. But sixty-odd years later, Abe’s gotten pretty good at drowning that little voice, and he does it once again. Even if it is with cricket water. Instead, he punches in another number.

“Hello?”

“Bettina, it’s Abe. I just hit some kind of critter on 29. Wolf, I think it was. I’m stuck here.”

“Stuck?”

“Truck won’t start.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long minute. There’s TV on in the background. Noisy commercial guy selling cars down in Fairview proper, a commercial he’s seen about a hundred times. Last chance! says the smiling suit in the commercial.

“All right, Abe,” she finally says. “Just get here when you can get here.”

“Well, Bettina, thing is, I need –”

But she’s already hung up. Abe sighs and puts his head in his hands. The vein in his temple starts to throb, and he feels the first glimmer of a moonshine headache. Whatever blood that Viagra pill sent to his little Abraham has all been rerouted to his stomach. It’s a bad feeling. He just wants to be home in bed, if it weren’t for the goddamned truck and the goddamned wolf that broke it.

There’s a flashlight in the glovebox, and he reckons he better use it. Some kind of noises are coming out from the darkness, and it’s obvious to him that the wolf is dying but not yet dead. He sighs again and grabs his Ruger American off the rifle rack behind the cabin and heads in the direction of them sounds.

What the flashlight falls on doesn’t make sense. He’d only seen the wolf briefly, but headlights don’t lie. It was a red wolf that had shot like lightning down from the mountain and into the road. The legs he saw sliding into the darkness were covered in that same thick red hair, with dark marks around the feet. This leg sticking up from the ravine right now, though, is hairless. The foot is long, like a person’s foot. There’s a glint of sparkle and blue. As Abe and his flashlight approach the dead wolf, it goes ghastly still. And soon he can see down the ravine.

It ain’t no wolf at all. It’s a woman, bare as the day she was born.

“That’s impossible,” he says, just as another pair of yellow headlights approach. After a second, those lights are joined by a flashing blue and red.

“Is that you, Abraham?” says Sheriff Garris, coming closer.

Abe clicks off his flashlight, as though he can make that body just disappear in a puff of smoke. The clip clop of Sheriff Garris’s shoes gets closer. Abe can just make out the man’s condescending grin and those silly white veneers. But the smile disappears once Garris lays eyes on that form in the dark. Abe sees him go for his own flashlight.

“Don’t, Sheriff,” he says, but it’s too late.

The woman lying stiff and dead-eyed down there can’t be more than twenty-five years old. Her long hair, shining out like a halo from her head, is a dark, sanguine red. There’s no light in those blue eyes. As Abe continues to stare, doing his best to avert his eyes from the poor girl’s more modest regions, he starts to feel a sense of recognition. He knows this girl. Maybe it’s from town, or from the television. Maybe it’s from one of them posters up at the post office. One of the girls that go missing every six months or so out here in the Fairvew sticks.

“You hit her with your truck, Abraham?” Sheriff Garris says in a hollow whisper.

Abe shakes his head. “I did not, Sheriff. What I hit was a wolf.”

This catches Garris off guard, and for a moment the girl returns to darkness as the sheriff trains his light on Abe.

“A wolf?”

“I know what it sounds like.”

“You been drinking, Abe?”

Abe stiffens. He’d been holding in his breath, trying not to get too close to the sheriff. “No.”

“You reek.”

He takes a step back and regrets it, knowing what that looks like. “It was a present for the lady friend I was going to see. I … I spilled it on accident, and … and when I went to grab it, I looked down for, for just a second, and then …”

Garris’s stony expression doesn’t crack. He’s a good twenty years younger than Abe, who remembers the now-sturdy sheriff as a scrawny second-string center for the high school basketball team. Boy was an embarrassment for the team, as Abe recollects. But now look at him.

“Sheriff, I tell you … I did have a little sip of that moonshine. Just to calm my nerves. But only after I was come to a stop and figured out what had happened.”

“When you realized you’d run over a woman, you mean.”

“It was a wolf, goddammit!” Abe screams. Something’s churning inside of him. He’s pretty sure he needs to cry, but he’ll be dipped in lanolin if he’s gonna do it out here on Highway 29 in front of little Mickey Garris. Badge or no badge.

Garris drops his flashlight back down to the dead girl, illuminating a spot by her right hip. There’s a little pool of blood beside it. Abe watches Garris hop down into the ravine and take a closer look at the wound. He doesn’t want to follow the sheriff down there and tempt fate any more than he already has. But it does look like there’s a good chunk of the flesh from that poor girl’s hip missing. Square inch, maybe even two.

“Shit,” says Garris, finally. He climbs back up onto the highway. “Abe, I’m gonna need you to get in the car.”

Abe moves toward his truck.

“My car,” Garris corrects him, and opens the back seat. “I ain’t gonna handcuff you. I know you’re a decent man. And I know this is a horrible accident. But we are gonna have to go down to the station.”

“But my truck –”

“Don’t you worry about the truck. I’ll call Edmund’s Towing, and they’ll keep it safe for you.”

Garris opens the back door of his cruiser. Abe debates running off into the woods, right in the direction of where he seen that wolf coming. Odds that the sheriff would fire on him were slim. But they weren’t none.

“Can I just … get my phone and call the friend I was going to meet? I know she’ll worry.”

“Who’s this friend, Abe?”

“Bettina Amos.”

Garris cocks an eyebrow. “Jacob’s widow?”

Abe drops his gaze, but nods. He hears Garris chuckle.

“C’mon, then.”

The two men head for the truck. Garris has Abe by the elbow, not too rough, but enough to make sure everybody understands the situation here. He’ll be seventy-six in two months, and Abe really starts to wonder if he’ll spend that birthday incarcerated. The odds that Bettina will come down there and visit with him – conjugal or otherwise – are slim to none. Ain’t none of this fair. Yes, he may have had some of the devil’s liquor in him. But he knows what he saw. He can tell the difference between a wild animal and a human being. And maybe it is a human being down in that ravine. But it sure as hell ain’t what he hit.

“Go on,” says Garris. “Get your phone. And Abe, don’t you dare start that engine.”

“Truck’s dead.”

Abe climbs in and rifles around. The entire cabin reeks. He wants to shut the door behind him to keep that stench out of reach of Garris’s nostrils, but he knows that’ll set off alarm bells. He wants to keep himself out of the paper tomorrow. Fat chance of that, he thinks.

“Abe,” Garris says.

“Yeah?”

“Want you to come out here for a second.”

Abe wriggles himself backward and climbs out. Garris is squatting in front of the Chevy’s grill, flashlight trained on something.

“Your wolf. What color did you say it was?”

“Red,” Abe says, and squats with Garris in front of the vehicle. There’s a smear of drying blood on the mutilated bumper. Not far from the left headlight, there’s a chunk of hair lodge in a fold. Red, short, coarse hair, as unlike the long, flowing locks on the dead girl as Garris’s own hair is unlike Abe’s balding pate. He reaches out to touch it.

“Don’t,” says Garris. “It’s evidence.”

Abe stands and takes a deep breath, then makes his way toward the police car. Any thought of the Widow Bettina has given way to a dull ache in his skull. Damn these woods. Damn them right to hell.

“Ain’t evidence, Sheriff,” Abe says as he escorts himself into the back of the cruiser. “It’s wolf hair. And you know it. I seen it on your face.”

He turns his eyes to that fat orange moon watching over everything. Maybe it’s the shine – but damned if that old moon ain’t laughing at him.

Laugh, you old son of a bitch, he thinks, and then passes out.

***

Tommy Trull is an award-winning author with a passion for weaving tales that blur the line between reality and the supernatural. He holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and has shared his love by teaching writing at Greensboro College. With a penchant for horror and magical realism, Tommy's unique storytelling style has garnered him numerous accolades. He is a three-time winner of the prestigious Mark Gilbert Play Award and has also been honored with the Charles Getchell New Play Award, showcasing his versatility and talent across different forms of literature. Hailing from Maryland, Tommy now calls Charlotte his home, where he resides with his wife, Mara.