Pale Kings and Princes

Brett came out of the fishhouse with a tall thin guy wearing a tan down vest over a red woolen shirt. Brett got into the cab of his tractor and the guy in the down vest walked over to a refrigerator trailer and waited. The tractor started up and Brett ground it into reverse. The guy in the vest gestured him back and Brett backed the truck up and locked in with the trailer. There was no lettering on the trailer. The guy in the vest came up to the tractor and stood on the running board talking for a moment through the open window with Brett. Then he stepped down and headed back into the warehouse and Brett turned the big trailer tractor up the main drag again and crawled on out of Belfast. I went to the car, got it going, and crawled along behind him. The snow was spitting a little faster as we went, fast enough for me to move the wipers from INT to LO.

Brett didn’t go home the way he came. He took Route 3 to Augusta and picked up the Maine Pike southbound. I tooled edgily along behind him. The snow was intensifying and Susan’s car, while splendid for exceeding the speed of sound on a dry highway, was harder to manage on a slick surface. The drive had so much torque that the wheels tended to spin any time you accelerated. Fortunately, Brett must have been nervous in the snow because he stayed down under sixty and I was able to slither along behind him without spinning off into a ditch.

A little after noon, Brett pulled the rig off into the parking lot of the rest stop on the turnpike south of Portland and parked it back of the restaurant. I came in after him and parked Susan’s car in close to the restaurant and locked it and put the keys in my pocket. Brett had already gone in, his head ducking into the snow that was coming harder as the day developed. I walked over to the truck. It was locked. I went around back to the trailer. It was locked. The trailer had Maine plates on it. I went back around to the driver’s side of the cab, shielded by the cab from the restaurant, and sat on the running board, and hunched my shoulders, and put my hands in my jacket pockets, and shivered.

In fifteen minutes Brett came back. He was carrying a takeout order in a Styrofoam carton. When he came around the front of the truck and saw me sitting on the running board, he stopped. He was a fat kid dressed in gray sweatpants and work boots half laced and a black and orange Wheaton High School football jacket.

“Excuse me,” he said, as if a guy sitting on the side of his truck in a Maine snowstorm was the usual stuff.

“Sure,” I said, and stood up and stepped aside.

He climbed up on the running board clumsily, carrying the takeout in one hand and swinging up by holding the outside mirror strut. Standing on the running board he fumbled the keys out of his jacket pocket and opened the cab. I took my gun off my right hip and pointed it at him and said, “Take me to Havana.”

The kid looked at me and saw the gun and his eyes widened.

He said, “Huh?”

I said, “You’re being hijacked. Get down, and give me the keys.”

“What’d you say about Havana?” he said.

“A joke, kid, just climb down and give me the keys.”

The kid climbed down slowly, holding the keys in his left hand, and the takeout in his right hand made it harder and he had to jump off the running board. He landed heavily and staggered a step and the takeout carton pulled loose from his grip and spilled into the snow. It looked like cheeseburgers again, with a side of fries.

Brett stared at me, still holding the torn-loose cover of the Styrofoam takeout and the keys. I put out my left hand. He gave me the keys.

I said, “You can go on back into the restaurant and order up some more and take your time eating it.”

“I ain’t got no more money,” he said.

I put the keys in my pants pocket, took out my wallet with my left hand, extracted a five-dollar bill with my teeth, put the wallet back in my pants pocket, took the five from my teeth and handed it to Brett.

“Go on,” I said.

He took the five and stared at me. We both had to squint to keep the snow out of our eyes.

I jerked my head toward the restaurant. “Go on,” I said again.

He nodded and turned slowly and began to walk slowly toward the restaurant.

I climbed into the truck and put the keys in the ignition and started it up. The kid was still walking with his head down, slowly and more slowly. I put the clutch in and shifted and let the clutch out and the truck lurched forward. It had been a while since I had driven a truck. Through the snow I could see that the kid had stopped and turned and was looking after me. It was hard to see and I couldn’t tell for sure. But he might have been crying.