H: Chapter Three

Travis and I continued walking down the highway, with the sun in our faces, and sweat dripping down our backs. I still hadn’t told Travis the plan, and I could see that it was getting to him. His muscles were tight, and I can bet that his heart was racing. I could imagine the thoughts swirling inside his brain: Why are we walking? What is Payte doing? What does he want? I had become his addiction. I was at the forefront of his mind. Knowing that all someone thinks about is you, is truly an intoxicating feeling. You essentially become a drug that they cannot escape from.

“Hey, Payte.” Travis muttered.

“Yeah?” I said with a great smile and wide eyes, ready for the inevitable question.

“Do you think Thomas and Jack are alright?”

I sighed and bit my lip, “Yeah, they’re fine. Trust me.”

The highway was completely empty. I was losing hope that the plan would ever happen, but I reminded myself that it was only a matter of time. Finally, I saw something. It was a red Volkswagen van. Different year, but it was close enough to Bessie.

“Lay down on the ground!” I yelled to Travis.

Travis turned and stared at me, “What? Why?”

“Do you want this battery?”

“Sure, I guess…”

“Then lay down!”

Travis froze and fell onto the asphalt. He winced as his head hit the ground and did a little bounce. I sprinted into the middle of the road and waved my hands in the air, trying to flag the red van down.

The driver slammed on his brakes and stopped mere inches away from me. I launched myself backwards and froze. I gotta admit that I didn’t expect that to happen. A couple inches more, and I would’ve been street-pizza.

The driver jumped out of the van. He was a middle-aged man, not of much stature. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He shouted. “I could’ve killed you!”

I cupped my hands together and begged, “Please, man, it’s my friend! He had a seizure or something, you gotta help us!”

“Oh god!” The man raced over to Travis. “Are you okay?” The man shouted.

As they both talked, I jumped into the van, and put it in drive. I slammed on the gas pedal and began moving forward. Travis shot up from the ground and I slowed down enough for him to catch up. “Get in!” I yelled over to him. I reached over and opened the passenger-side door. Travis jumped in and slammed the door. Soon we were off in the distance, leaving the man behind in the dust.

“Jesus Christ, Payte…” Travis mumbled in a shrill voice. “This was your plan? This!?”

I nodded and took a cigarette out of my pocket. “Yup.” I lit the cigarette and took a drag.

“You’re a fucking psychopath! We just left that man in the dust.”

I shrugged, “Well, we have a new battery now.”

Travis brought his hands to his face and hyperventilated. “Now, the police are gonna be after us, we’re gonna go to jail—“

“Just chill out, man. I got a plan for that.”

“Your plans suck though!”

“Sometimes, but they always work out to some degree.”

“Whatever…”

The silence returned. The windows were all rolled down. The wind blew in our faces, sending our hair up into the air. We were going at a steady pace of eighty miles-per-hour.

There was a water bottle filled with Mountain Dew in the cup-holder. I soon felt thirsty, so I reached over and grabbed it. I opened the cap and poured some in my mouth, then immediately spit it out. “Dude, this tastes like piss!” I yelped.

Travis erupted into a laughing fit. “I think that is piss.” He said with a shit-eating grin on his face.

I grimaced and tossed the piss bottle out the window. “Fuck you.” I said to Travis with a sour face.

* * *

The sun was setting, creating a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The sky just above the mountains was a magnificent pink, which rose into the air and turned into a royal purple. Bugs buzzed about in the corn-fields and bent the leaves. Every now and then a car would zoom by, disrupting the peace and quiet, and children would stare out at the car wreck.

Thomas sat up against a dying tree, reading his book. A single fly consistently buzzed around him, landing on his sweat-stained jeans. The summer weather had not been kind to us. But it’s time like these where you have to learn to embrace the suck.

In the entirety of my life so-far, I have always felt a certain contentment in struggling. Even when I was living in the Seattle trailer park, I always felt, not happiness, and not sadness, but the feeling of just being present. Of being in the here and now.

Jack was laying on the ground, passed out cold. He only woke up when the same fly landed on his nose and he subconsciously went to swat it away, accidentally hitting himself. Jack yawned and stretched his arms out, “Payte’s real name is Patience,” he said. Jack wasn’t really expecting a response, he just said the first thing that came to mind.

Thomas closed the book with his thumb in the pages and placed it in his lap. “What was that?”
Jack did another stretch of his arms and sat up, “I said, Payte’s real name is Patience. But don’t tell him I told you that, or he’ll be angry.”
Thomas grinned from ear to ear and said, “Don’t worry, I won’t.” Thomas reopened the book and finished his page. As he turned the thin paper, he looked up again and said, “Imagine giving a boy that name. No wonder he always goes by, ‘Payte.’”

Jack scratched his head, “Yeah.” He said. “Hey, where are we?”

“Just outside Des Moines, I think.”

Jack’s eyes went wide, “Jesus, how long was I passed out for? What the hell happened?”

Thomas sighed and closed the book. He gave the entirety of his attention to Jack. “Well, you smoked a joint, then we got pulled over by a cop, and then, well, Payte crashed the van.”

Jack nodded softly. “So that’s why Bessie looks so fucked up.”

“Yup.”

There was silence for quite some time, until Jack stood up. He walked over to the van and to the trunk. The earth crunched beneath each footstep. There were no cars coming. It was so quiet, Thomas could hear his own heartbeat.

Jack felt his stomach rumble as he walked, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in at least ten hours. He slid open the van door and walked to the trunk. Jack dug through layers of dirty clothes, candy-bar wrappers, trash bags, and bottles of liquor for food. Finally, he found a package of stale bagels. As he grabbed the bagels, he saw something underneath them. It was a tiny bag of cocaine. Jack did a double-take, making sure Thomas couldn’t see, then sniped it into his hands.

“I’m starting a fire, you wanna help?” Asked Jack, as he stepped out of the van.

Thomas set the book down and stared at Jack with a raised brow. “Isn’t it too hot for that?”

Jack shrugged, “Yeah, but we can just sit away from it.

Thomas nodded and said, “Alright, but first I wanna ask you something…”
Jack grimaced, “Uh, okay, what is it?”

“What’d you put in your pocket?”

Jack dropped the bagels onto the dirt and took a step back. “I didn’t put anything in my pocket.”
“C’mon, man, don’t play dumb. You found something and put it in your pocket. What was it?”

“Cocaine.”

“You had cocaine—“

“Yeah, I did, alright? It’s my own fucking business.”

“And you didn’t think about sharing it?”

* * *

We had been cruising down the highway for about twenty minutes. I couldn’t tell if we had just walked ten miles, or we kept passing the camp. Either way, all we could do was keep driving.

Our heads were all fucked up from the hangover. I never knew that weed could do that to someone until I tried the one that was, supposedly, grown on Mount Everest. Each time I would smoke it, I made the conscious decision to never do it again. That worked until I was bored and there was nothing else to do. Once again, my master would call me.

Travis rested in the passenger’s seat with his feet up on the dashboard. He stared out the window with a listless gaze, smoking a cigarette. He tapped his foot to the beat of the music and softly sang aloud to the words. When Travis went to turn the radio up even louder, he felt his stomach roar. “Man, I’m hungry. Think there’s food in here?”

It’s no surprise this happened. After a while of not eating, you start to get used to it. You feel alive when the urge to puke your insides out is there. It’s a reminder of your pure strength, and insanity. You feel like if you can go twenty-four hours without eating, and only consuming cigarettes and coffee, you can do just about anything. You feel like a God. Every time you think about it, you have this strange smile on your face that doesn’t match your eyes. It’s like you’ve totally gone insane, but it feels amazing.

I shrugged and took the cigarette out of my mouth. I flicked the ash out of the window and put it back in between my lips. “Maybe.” I said.

Travis turned around and dug through the backseat. He tossed aside boxes, empty bottles, and soda cans, until he found a big ol’ glass bottle of tequila. He turned around and held it up in the air for me to see, It was the Tito’s brand. Not a bad brand of tequila. Unlike most types of booze, tequila doesn’t make me depressed. Whenever I’m drunk, whether it’s off my own prison-hooch or some whiskey that I stole from my local grocery store, all I wanna do is listen to depressing music and lay in bed.

We passed the bottle back and forth for a while. Soon we were slurring our words and had lost most of our motor control. We must’ve passed the campsite ten times or so. Travis would regularly lean over and say, “Dude… I think, uh, you skipped the campsite…”

To which I would reply, “Ohs, shit. L-Lemme flip a bitch right arounds… here.”

The tires would skid as I turned the steering wheel all the way to the left. Then I would be in the opposite lane and have to reverse back into the right lane. I’m honestly surprised we didn’t die. Like, I had no control over myself during that drive, I could’ve totally killed someone. I mean, I’ve driven intoxicated countless times so I’m basically a pro at it. Most of the time it wasn’t even on alcohol, it was usually weed, ecstasy, or acid. But there’s something about tequila that just totally fucks me up.

On the twelfth turn-around Travis leaned to his left and said to me, “Dude! You’re on the railing!” I could barely make out his slurs.

“Ohs shit!” I yelled.

I jerked the steering wheel to the left and we swerved into the turning lane. The tires squeaked on the asphalt and dust flew up into the air. I made one more jerk into the right lane, and we continued on our way.

I reached over and grabbed the bottle of tequila. I held it to my lips and only a few drops came out. “Shit, we’re out! Is there, uhs, anymores back there?”

“Payte…” Travis said.

“Whaaat? I said that we’res out!”

“Payte!” Travis yelped.

“What? What the fuck is it?”

“Look to your left, man…”

I craned my head to the left and my face dropped. The same cop from before was staring straight at us, with a big frown on his sunken face. “Pull the vehicle over.” The officer said in a cold and stern tone.

I grimaced and did as he said. My plan was to wait for the little pig to step off his little bike, and then speed off down the road. That would certainly work, right? Well, that plan failed miserably. I put the van into drive and slammed on the gas pedal, but we weren’t moving. Somehow the tires were completely stuck. Just my luck, I guess.

“Yup, this is it.” Travis said. “This is how I go to jail.” I turned to him and saw that his face was a ghostly pale. He stared straight down with his mouth was frozen in shock.

“Don’t worrys about it.” I said to him. “I… I gots a plan.”

I hiccuped and looked in the side-mirror. The police officer stepped off his bike and walked over to the van. He leaned in through the window, and in a gruff mumble, said, “Step out of the vehicle.”

I shook my head, “Listen, I-I didn’t do anything, man. It… It was a trick of your eyes, man— your eyes! I wasn’t, no, holding a bottle of booze.”

The police officer nodded and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a little, rectangular, cartridge and held it to my face. “Blow into this.”

I rolled my eyes, “Fine. But just listen to me, that number’s gonna be wrong!” While Travis watched with eyes full of horror, I put my lips around the breathalyzer and gave a tiny little blow. I don’t know what the fuck that number was, but the look on the cop’s face was something I had never seen before. It was something which I do not know the words to describe.

“Oookay,” The cop said slowly, “You’re being arrested.”

“Just listen to me!” I yelled.

“Sir, lower your voice.”

“Listens to me man! That number’s fake! It’s bullshit!”

“Lower. Your. Voice.”

“Alright.” I said. “You wanna fucking do this?” I opened the door and jumped outside. I raised my fists into the air and swung. The cop dodged it and immediately grabbed me by my neck, and forced me to the ground. He held my arms behind my back, and before I knew it, I was being hauled into the back of the cop car.
The cop pushed me down into the seat and then went over to grab Travis, hauling him into a police car.

In the back of the car, Travis leaned over and said, “Nice going, asshole.”

* * *

The cell bars slammed behind us, signaling the end to our freedom. As we waited to get processed, we sat on the bed, slumped against the wall. A cop sat at the desk in front of us, staring into a computer screen. The desk was covered in papers and coffee cups. In the corner, stood a tall man with dark skin. He wore a white tank-top revealing tattoo sleeves. His pants sagged, showing a tattoo which read, “ENTER HERE” with an arrow pointing to his anus. He must’ve been a giant, as his head nearly touched the ceiling of the jail cell.

I crossed my arms and fidgeted with my thumbs. The alcohol was beginning to wear off, and I had nearly come to my senses. “You know, I always figured that I’d end up in jail, I just didn’t know that this would be how it would play out.”

Travis sighed, “You just had to get drunk. Do you have no self-control?”

I turned to Travis and said, “Hey man, you’re the one who found the tequila!”

“And you’re the one who took it from my hands! And you also stole a car!”

I shrugged, “We needed to get a new battery somehow.”

“And you thought that was the way to go about it? Really? Did you ever think for a second that there might’ve been some other way?”

“You guys need a new battery?” The man in a corner said. I nearly jumped out of my seat when he spoke. His voice was deep and soulful. I don’t think I even heard him breathe until then.

Once I regained control over my fear, I raised an eyebrow and looked towards him. “Yeah, and what’s it to you?”
The man smiled and said, “I can get you one, but you’ll need to do something for me first.”

* * *

The moon was high up in the sky. The animals were asleep, but the incessant buzzing of the flies never ceased. Jack had started a fire, and within twenty minutes it had turned into a towering wall of flame. Thomas continually cast sticks and logs into the fire, one after another. The tree that was once standing tall, had been stripped of it’s limbs. It now looked like a bare log.

“I’ve never had sex, but god damn, I bet I could fuck like a racehorse!” Jack screamed. He jumped up in the air to the nonexistent music. His heart nearly pounded out of his chest, and enough sweat poured out of him to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. They had just done two lines of coke each off of each-other’s arms, and one more off of each-other’s backs.

Coke is a funny thing. It’s twenty-minutes of pure energy, thoughts racing at a speed that could rival the the cars at Formula One, and pure full-bodied, non-merciful, mania. It’s like running down a hallway at the speed of a cannonball. Then, it’s over. You can’t sleep, your nose is fucked up, your jaw feels like it’s about to disintegrate, and you feel like the absolute essence of death. The next day you never want to touch it again. But while you’re on it? Oh, dude, the urge is an all consuming void. The worst part is that while high off it, you’re doing lines every twenty-minutes trying to keep it going. But, each time it gets less and less. And then your left alone with that same void that’s always there. It’s never quite enough to fill it.

Thomas giggled, “I can’t feel my nose, man. It’s numb!”

“I could climb a mountain, right now. I really could!” Jack screeched as he threw his arms into the air and jumped.

“Fuck!” Thomas screeched. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “We are the coolest fucking people on this planet. Which animal do you think you could take in a fight? For me? Definitely an alligator, no— a bear. Yeah, I could take a fucking bear. I could rip it’s god damn head off and piss down it’s throat!”

Jack giggled and said, “I could take a damn horse. Let it kick me, I don’t give a fuck, I can still take that asshole.”

“Yeah, I could too!” Thomas said. “I’d kick it right in it’s FUCKING face!”

` Thomas raced to the tree and to pull the last branch off of it. He sprinted to the fire and cast the branch into it. The branch was vaporized by the fire almost instantly. Thomas took a few steps back, and even twenty feet away, he could feel it’s heat on his body.

Jack got on all fours and began searching for the baggy of coke. The high was fading for him, and he knew that he needed more. There is nothing more depraved and disgusting than a man sacrificing his self-worth for his fix. H, snow, booze, whatever your poison is, you always end up sacrificing who are you for it.

He found the bag on a log and sniped it away in his hands. Jack held it up to his face. There was enough for at least five more hits. A smile crossed Jack’s face, like a small-child seeing Santa Claus. He dipped his pinkie into the bag then up his nose. Jack sniffed and then reeled backwards. “God damn!” He yelled. Jack moaned as his breath became rapid and heavy.

“I know what we need to do.” Jack said. He looked up at Thomas with cold, reptilian, eyes.

“What is it?”

“We need to fight each other, we have to see who’s the strongest.”

Thomas nodded. He took his shirt off, revealing dark skin and rigid muscle. “Alright.”

They locked eyes silently. They were taking each-other in, breathing the same air, and thinking the same thoughts. “You ready?” Jack said.

Thomas nodded. “Yeah, I’m just coming up with a way to beat your ass!”

Jack snickered and said, “Oh, what? You scared?”

“No! I’ll kill you!”

“Then do it, motherfucker! Do it! DO IT!”

“Just give me a second! Hand me the coke!”

Jack sneered and tossed the baggy to Thomas. It flew into the air and landed in Thomas’s palms. He stuck his finger into the bag then took a sniff. He growled and reeled his head backwards. He took a deep breath, the type where you can feel it move through your body, and rushed towards Jack. Jack slid out of the way and Thomas fell to the ground. Jack grabbed Thomas by his shoulders and lifted him up. He threw Thomas to the ground and went to kick him.

Just as the kick was about to land, Thomas’s phone rang. Jack took a step back, “Are you gonna answer that?” Thomas looked up at Jack and then at his pants. He reached into his pocket and grabbed the phone. Holding it to his ear, he said, “Yeah? Who is this?”

“It’s me! Do you not recognize my voice?” I cried out.

“I do. Now, what do you need?”

“We’ve been arrested, man. The bail’s set at a thousand-dollars, you gotta help us!”

“What the fuck?” Thomas shouted. “How did that happen?”

“Too long to explain that! We’re in the Des Moines police station, come on man!”

“Okay, just.. give me some time to think.”

“Please—“ The dime that I had put into the payphone ran out, and it automatically hung up.

“What the hell was that?” Asked Jack.

Thomas put his phone in his pocket and turned to Jack. “Payte and Travis have been arrested…”