Crazy Donuts

 

It always came back to the first one.  The rest had been for survival but the first one happened out of nowhere, almost like popping off a scolding squirrel if it got on his nerves.. The Walther PPK and a box of shells he found in his grandpa’s bedroom had done a good job. The gun looked like a black water pistol but it was ten times heavier.   After a few weeks of shooting up bottles and cans he was bored, so tried blowing the heads off a few chickens. He was ready for more serious game but was worried about getting close enough to a large animal to kill it with a pistol.  If things didn’t go right, a grizzly would make mincemeat out of him.  The faggot was an easy target.  As he ran to get away, he was staggering all over the road so Ralph thought his first shot had missed, but then the guy dropped to his knees and disappeared into the weeds.  When he got to where the faggot had sneaked away, Ralph’s eyes took a few seconds to get used to the moonlight as he paced the edge of the road scanning the ditch. It wasn’t long before the pervert’s white jacket gave him away, so Ralph aimed just above it and shot twice.  There was a groan and a sigh, not nearly as satisfying as an exploding whiskey bottle or the twang of a stop sign blasted full of holes. 

Back at the car, Bobby was still wrestling with the other fruit and it looked like he might be losing because the guy was sitting on top of him like he was riding a horse.

“Hey!” Ralph shouted.  “Get off or I’ll blow your goddamn brains out!”  He was Buford Pusser with a big stick, smashing in heads for right and justice, and Rambo looking for revenge.  Serves the bastard’s right, he thought, for trying their shit on a couple of regular teenagers looking to stay out of the house for a few hours. Bobby was better off than Ralph because only his dad was drunk and not both parents. What kind of mother who wakes her kid up in the middle of the night slapping his face and calling him a faggot?   And then his no-good father sticks up for her.  There was no way either of them would have found out about him and Bobby spending a few afternoons at Blake’s house.  Blake had all the latest video games and invited them over to play most afternoons but it was a secret they weren’t allowed to tell their parents.  Blake would order pizza so they’d have to pretend they were still hungry when they got home.  Not only that, he gave them money, though Bobby got less than Ralph because he wouldn’t go all the way.  Ralph preferred not to talk about what he did to earn the extra cash.  It was nobody else's business. At first it hurt but he gritted his teeth and got through it.  The money was a helluva lot more than he’d earn at some goody-goody job like delivering newspapers.   

“It’s not as bad as your dad hammering on you with a two by four,” Ralph said, to prove there were worse things.  And there sure wasn’t any pizza at home after a beating for either of them.  

The guy sitting on top of Bobby gave Ralph the middle finger.  “Suck that ya little prick,” he said, and shoved Bobby’s shoulders so hard his head hit the pavement with a thud.    

If they let him go, this other faggot would rat them out to the police and they’d end up in a reform school and that might be worse than being stuck in Fetterman where nothing ever happened.  He had already taken care of one pervert that night so another one wouldn’t make any difference. He had his story ready.  The town would thank them for snuffing out a few queers. “Cover your ass,” was something he had heard his father say on the rare occasions when he wasn’t drunk.  Ralph held the pistol in both hands and pointed at the guy’s head.

“Stay still Bobby,” he said. “This won’t hurt a bit.”  The bang echoed down the road and through the trees, and the faggot toppled off Bobby like he was a duck in a shooting gallery. Bobby squeezed out from under the man’s twitching body and scrambled to his feet.

“Damn!” he said, as they watched the convulsions get less and then stop.  “You smoked the bastard.”

“Help me drag him off the side here,” Bobby said, and together, with one on the arms and one on the legs like they were going to give him the birthday bumps, they heaved the man into the long grass.

“Now what?” Bobby asked.

“Looks like we got ourselves a ride.  The best thing is to blow this place. We got nothin’ to keep us here.”

Ralph figured nobody would come looking for the car that same night so they were safe to drive until morning.   He was old enough to have a driver's license but didn’t have one because his dad had no intention of helping him out.  Ralph knew how to drive anyway.  When his parents passed out in front of the television, he’d borrow his dad’s truck and grind through the gears where nobody could hear him.  If there were scratches on the truck the next morning, his dad would think he had done them when he came home drunk the night before.  He hadn’t driven a lot on regular roads, but would have to do it in a way that wouldn’t get him stopped by the police.  No crazy donuts in small towns.  They weren’t much further than Casper when Bobby fell asleep, but Ralph’s mind was full of calculations.  When the police found the bodies it would take a while before they put a bulletin out for the missing car.  He could steal another car from a gas station but it would cut down their lead-time.  The victim would get the attendant to call the police and depending on where the local cop shop was, they could drive straight into a roadblock.  Bobby woke up when Ralph cruised through the first gas station checking for easy marks.  If some dumb-ass driver left his keys in the ignition, it served him right.  There was nothing likely at the first station so they headed for the next widening of the highway that called itself a town.  It was then that Bobby decided to pick a fight.

“You killed those guys,” he said.  

“Yeah I did,” Ralph said.  “Remember?  They molested us.  That’s what we decided on and that’s what you tell the police.”

“If there was a good reason to kill them, why are we running away?”

“You want to be a cry baby and go back home, or do you want to leave that shit behind and get a life?”

“I’m hungry,” Bobby said.  “Jesus,” he added.  “Look at me.  I’ve got blood all over. Goddammit!  Did you have to kill him when he was on top of me?”

“You don’t even know if he’s dead,” Ralph said.  Nobody had taken any pulses, but the guy wasn’t struggling when they had chucked him into the ditch so his possible death was a technicality. 

“You killed both of them,” Bobby repeated.  At a gas station on the way out of Little Big Horn, Bobby insisted they stop so he could get cleaned up in the washroom and buy something to eat.  Ralph was curious how much money Bobby had left from what Blake had paid him last time.  Ralph's money was gone as soon as he got it.   

Bobby had no sooner disappeared into the toilet, when a woman in a red Mustang pulled up.  Ralph wanted that car more than he wanted Bobby’s company, so when the woman got out, he sauntered over to the side of the Mustang like he was admiring the paint job.  When he saw the rabbit’s foot keychain dangling from the ignition, he took the pistol out of the waistband of his jeans, laid it on the passenger’s seat, and pulled quickly away without squealing the tires.  He left the keys to the faggot’s car in the ignition in case Bobby decided to go home to his drunken father.    

Because they were almost at the Montana border when he hijacked the Mustang, the Wyoming highway patrol wouldn't have the time to message ahead to  the next state. A stolen car wasn’t a high priority and they wouldn’t know what direction he had gone.  Kids took cars for joy rides all the time and only got their hands slapped if they got caught.  It was hardly a case for the FBI.  Ralph figured if he could make it past Billings he’d go straight for the Canadian border and try to walk across it.  Good riddance to Bobby.  He would have dragged things down, complaining that he had nothing to do with it, when it had been his idea about how to rip off those guys back in Fetterman.  Unfortunately, Bobby had money and Ralph didn’t. The Mustang’s tank was half full and that wouldn’t be enough to get to Canada.  Popping off the corner store lady in Lodge Grass when she refused to hand over the money, was the only way he could get out of there.  Nobody would find her right away because it was obvious nobody used that damn store anyway.  All he got was $50 for his trouble. It was her fault for trying to phone the police. He told her not to.  What did she think would happen?

He made it past Billings and covered a good stretch north to Great Falls before he needed gas and food.  He considered swapping the Mustang for another car, but finding a full one with the keys that had the same class as the Mustang wouldn't be easy.  It would be better if he pretended to be a normal person filling up and paying for his gas with some of his stolen money.  Except that he didn’t want to pay. This time he didn’t want to kill anyone because he was close enough to the Canadian border he could taste it.  When the gas station lady was hollering at someone out front, he wandered into a back room and found a jacket hanging on a chair that had $200 dollars in the wallet.  It was hard to keep from smiling when he paid the lady for his snacks using her own money.  She commented on what a cheery person he was.  “You made my day,” she said.

Taking the Mustang over the border into Canada would have been a bad idea.  The Feds were faster on the draw than the state police. He hadn’t slept all night and all day, and driving those stretches of open prairie where the sky was bigger than the landscape, was enough to make the most hopped up tucker fall asleep.  He’d ditch the car in Sweet Grass and find a way across the border from there.  Driving around the sparse streets he checked out the double chain link fence he had planned to climb over, but it was watched, and presumably lit up at night, which was worse.  He ditched the Mustang in a scruffy parking area behind the Glocca Morra Motel and walked back to the main highway.  After watching the traffic for a while he decided that the best way to get across the border was to pick a good truck to hop onto.  All he had with him were the Walther and his wallet but if he had to get rid of one, it would be his wallet.  He was done with being Ralph.  Once he was in Canada he would be somebody else.  In the blinding yellow glow of the sunset, he crept up to the back of a canvas sided semi-trailer, unhooked the flexible rope, and climbed in.  The rig was full of boxes the size of washing machines, so he climbed over them to the front and held his breath while a border officer shone a light into the rear of the truck.  When the truck slowly pulled away and worked its way up through the gears, he knew he was home free in another country.   At the start he hadn’t planned on where exactly he would go, but now he had crossed the border, the time came to think about it.  His instincts had taken him north.  It might be a good idea to follow them all the way to Alaska and lay low for a while.  He fell asleep and must have stayed that way as the truck detoured around Calgary, before it eventually stopped in Red Deer. 

There in a shopping mall parking lot he threatened a young lady with his  Walther and forced her into the trunk of her car.  She was crying and pleading with him not to shoot her, but he had no plans to do that because his shells were running low. After he got past Edmonton, he picked one of those long straight prairie section roads and drove a couple of miles on it before he let her out of the trunk.  Looking back, he could see it had been a mistake to shoot up so many bottles and stop signs when the bullets could have been put to better use.  In Dawson Creek he had to fire the Walther because the big bossy girl in the 7-Eleven had it coming.  She thought she had to defend what wasn’t even hers, but Ralph needed food and gas to make it over the Alaska Highway.  

He did get to Alaska, to the end of the road in Homer, where sea, sky, and snowy mountains surrounded him.  There were no ferries to get across the Bering Sea, but where would that get him?  Siberia?  A Russian prison camp?  No thanks. The pickup truck he had stolen in Anchorage ran out of gas in the parking lot of the Land’s End Hotel at the tip of Homer Spit.  He was out of money and hungry but he still had a few bullets left.  If he robbed the hotel he’d have no way to get out of there unless he stole another car.  The noise of helicopters from the fuel storage depot reminded that if he tried to escape back over the Sterling Highway, the copters would follow him so it was a chase he would lose.   He walked round to the beach side of the group of hotel buildings to see if he could get onto a balcony.  

There was nobody on the fishing or beachcombing so the coast was clear.  It was just a matter of choosing the right stairs to go up, but there were so many it was like shooting fish in a barrel.  People around here trusted each other, something that was a stupid mistake where he came from.  It took a couple of tries before he found an open balcony door, which led him directly into a dining room and kitchen.  Since he was almost dizzy with hunger, he went straight for the fridge.  He had polished off a slice of leftover pizza and was shoving a big chunk of chocolate cake into his mouth, when a voice behind him said, “Can I help you?”

As he turned around, he instinctively put a chocolate-covered hand under the back of his jacket and found the grip of the pistol but didn’t pull it out.

“Are you hungry?” the man asked.  He was an older man with some white hair, and he seemed to be alone.  That would make things easier.  Ralph took his hand off the Walther.

“Sit down,” the man said.  “I’ll get you a plate.”

“Sorry,” Ralph said, showing his chocolate-covered fingers. “I was hungry.”

“Come and wash up,” the man said, “I’ll get you a towel.”

When the man brushed too closely behind Ralph as he leaned over the bathroom sink, he immediately thought of the faggot who had started all this, the one whose car he and Bobby stole.  It seemed like years ago.  After that first one, none of the others meant anything; they were just unfortunate people who had been in his way.  Now that he was somewhere, and had nowhere else to go, maybe he didn’t need to kill this man, at least not right away.