Love Lost

By

Jude O’Rourke

Larry and Gretchen stand behind a row of tall bushes lining an interstate on-ramp just outside of Memphis. It is dusk and the young couple smokes a single cigarette, passing it back and forth between them. Larry is talking–-Larry is always talking. He is nineteen and tall, with dark hair that hangs in his eyes, and as he speaks, he removes a rubber band from his wrist, pulls his hair back into a ponytail, and rocks back and forth on the heels of his feet. Larry is always moving. He has a nervous energy that makes him unable to remain still and Gretchen finds watching him exhausting, though she would never tell him that. Larry stands next to her, talking a mile a minute, rocking back and forth in his cowboy boots and dirty jeans and canary yellow bowling shirt. A dusty gray knapsack lies at his feet.

Gretchen takes a long drag from the cigarette and feels the ground rumble as another eighteen-wheeler passes by on the highway just hundreds of yards away. Gretchen is seventeen. She is short and cute and usually the perky optimist but right now she is dirty and tired and growing more homesick by the minute. She and Larry have been hitchhiking for six days straight with no destination and no end in sight. They had wanted to get away from Seattle, and they did, but now they were broke again and hungry. They had already done something bad in Chicago. That money was gone and Larry wanted to try it again.

"I need you to do this, Gretch," he says, taking the cigarette from her. “If a car stops and you don’t like the looks of the driver then just run away. I’ll be right here. But I don’t want to stay out here all night in the middle of nowhere and I know you don’t either and it’s getting darker by the minute. The worse thing that could happen is we might get a ride. The best thing that could happen...” Larry leaves the sentence hanging and shrugs his shoulders. Gretchen starts to tear up; she doesn’t want him to see her cry.

"I know you're tired, baby," he says. "Hell, I'm tired too.”

Larry turns away and walks to the end of the row of bushes. He stands at the edge and watches an old black Cadillac drive slowly by on the on-ramp. The car is a piece of junk, dirty and noisy as hell with a busted-out taillight, but it’s a car–-the third car Larry has seen pass by since he and Gretchen have been standing there behind the bushes. The third driver that got away. 

After the old car is out of sight and on the highway, Larry reaches down and picks up an empty beer bottle. He turns his head to look back at Gretchen but she is not looking at him–she’s staring off into space. Larry tosses the bottle underhanded high up in the air toward the on-ramp. The bottle hits the pavement and shatters, and the noise makes Gretchen jump.

“We'll get to Baton Rouge and then we'll stop for a while,” Larry says. His back is still turned to her as he looks on the ground for something else to throw.

“Why Baton Rouge?” she asks.

“Well,” Larry says and bends down and picks up a rock. “I’ve got a cousin Ronnie in Baton Rouge. I told him a couple of weeks ago we might be coming and he said we could stay with him for as long as we want. So relax, Gretch. It’s gonna be okay. You just gotta trust me." Larry takes aim and throws the rock at nothing in particular.

This is the first time Gretchen has heard about a cousin Ronnie in Baton Rouge and she wonders if Larry is lying to her. A week ago she never would have thought that but he acts so different now.  She looks over at him and he turns and walks up to her and put his hands on her shoulders. She cannot look him in the eye.

"But we gotta get there first," he says. "And it's a lot easier to get a ride if the driver thinks he's just picking up a pretty girl by herself.  At first, anyway."

Gretchen sighs and says, "I don't wanna do any more bad stuff."

"Me either, babe,” Larry says. “That's up to the driver.  I didn't want to hurt that old man back there but it was him or us. You know that."

"I know," Gretchen says. She thinks about the man who picked them up in Chicago--the nice old man who told them all about his wife and kids and grandkids. She thinks how hurt and scared the man looked when Larry first pulled the knife out and screamed at him. That was right before Larry made him pull the car over to the side of the road.

Larry said later he had to kill the old man because he wouldn't shut up, but Gretchen doesn’t remember that; all she remembers are the whimpering sounds the man made just before Larry stabbed him over and over again. They took the old man’s wallet but left his car--Larry said that would be too risky. Larry did take a St. Christopher medal from the dashboard and put it in his pocket, “for good luck.” He also went through a suitcase he found in the trunk of the car and took the only thing he liked--a canary yellow bowling shirt with the name "Herb" stitched in black and red thread across the front pocket.

Gretchen is staring at the name on the shirt, not hearing a word Larry is saying, until he draws her to him and kisses her on the forehead. She realizes she’s been crying.      

“Come on, babe," Larry softly pleads. "We'll play it by ear. I'm a good judge of character. You know that. If it doesn't feel right, we won't do anything. We’ll just get a ride." Larry tosses the cigarette on the ground, bends down, and pulls the hunting knife in its sheath out of the knapsack. He rolls up his jeans leg and tucks the knife down into his boot. He stands back up, kicks his leg out karate-style, and makes chopping motions in the air with his hands.

"I'll wait here," he says and starts rocking back and forth on his heels again. "Now go on."  He motions with his head toward the on-ramp. "You know what to look for." But Gretchen has no idea what to look for. She remembers Larry had said no truckers, something about the drivers being too prepared, but she doesn’t remember much else. She is so tired. She walks the hundred steps to the on-ramp very slowly. 

Gretchen never felt more alone than when she stood on the side of some road trying to get a ride. She knew Larry was always watching her; that thought no longer brought her any comfort. He had once made her feel safe, but now she felt used. She remembered the eyes of the people in the cars that had passed her by over the last six days–the eyes of the women in the passenger seats mostly, young wives, grandmothers, women of all ages, judging her, pitying her. Gretchen missed her family--her mom and dad and especially her little sister Maddie. She missed her old friends, the ones she hung out with before she met Larry, and she even missed school. She thought she should go home, by herself, if Larry didn't want to go with her. Besides, he was scaring her. She turns around to look back at him. She can’t see him but she knows he is watching her.

The plan is if a car pulls over to offer her a ride she is to play sweet and innocent with the driver just long enough for Larry to run up. It’s almost always a man who stops–always a man and always alone.  More times than not the driver, realizing his fantasy of a pretty young hitchhiker all to himself ruined, would step on the accelerator and leave Gretchen and Larry standing on the side of the road. But every now and then it worked.  It worked in Chicago.

Gretchen stands next to the on-ramp for ten minutes and watches the cars and trucks speed by on the interstate below. It is just after eight-o'clock and the sun has gone down completely when Gretchen sees the headlights of a car turning onto the on-ramp. The car is a couple of hundred yards away and driving toward her very slowly. She leans out into the road and puts her thumb up in the air. A hundred yards away the car turns on its high beams. Gretchen holds her left hand in front of her face to block the blinding light but keeps her right hand in the thumbs up position. The car is moving slowly but not slowing down and Gretchen steps back as it passes her by. The car goes another fifty yards, hits its brakes, and stops in the middle of the road. It’s a big black car that’s loud and dirty and idles roughly as Gretchen runs up to the passenger door. She turns to look back in Larry's direction. It is too dark to see him, but she knows he is watching her and will be there soon.

She opens the car door and sees a fat man grinning at her. He is the fattest person Gretchen has ever seen. The front seat of the man’s car is pushed back further than she realized a front seat could go, almost all the way into the back seat, and the man’s belly is still pressed up against the steering wheel. "Where you going, honey?" he asks. He has the rosy cheeked face of a boy and a body that reminds her of Humpty-Dumpty. She puts on her best smile and leans into the car. The man wears a dirty white cowboy hat and glasses with rose-tinted lenses that don’t seem to match his face at all.

"Headed to Baton Rouge," Gretchen says. "But anywhere you can take me will be okay."

The man laughs and says, “Get on in.” Gretchen sees a bible on the passenger seat and hopes the man isn’t a religious nut. The man notices her, picks the bible up, and places it on the back seat. He smiles at her and pats the front seat.

“I’ve got to get my stuff,” Gretchen says.

“Well, go get it,” the man says.

Gretchen turns and looks back for Larry. As she stands by the open car door, she thinks about leaving Larry there on the side of the road. She thinks about jumping in the car and telling the fat man to drive and keep on driving. Her parents had been right–Larry was trouble. She realized she had never really known him at all, she doubted he ever loved her, and she just wanted to go home. Larry had no family in Seattle and no real friends there besides her–chances were good Gretchen would never see him again. She could jump in the car right now and leave Larry behind. The fat man could drive her to a pay phone, and she could call her parents, and then everything would be all right.

“Well?” the fat man says, still grinning. “What are you waiting for?”

Larry rushes up suddenly out of the darkness, surprising both Gretchen and the man in the car. Gretchen sees the knife in Larry’s hand and wonders what the hell he is thinking. The fat man grabs her by the wrist and pulls her into the car. She bangs the back of her head on the door frame and falls backward onto the seat with her legs still hanging out. With his left hand, the man holds a gun up just inches above her face and shoots Larry three times in the chest.

Larry falls to his knees and collapses on top of her, and she cries out his name as his blood spills onto her in the front seat. The man uses the gun barrel to lift Larry's head up off of her, grabs him by the shoulder, and shoves him out of the car. Larry groans as he falls over backwards onto the side of the road.

The man pulls Gretchen all the way into the car and shuts the door. She is dazed and covered in blood. She has been in shock but now she starts to scream. The man punches her in the side of the head and tells her to shut up. He opens his glove compartment and pulls out a pair of handcuffs. He pushes her face into the dashboard and snaps the cuffs onto her wrists behind her back.

"Try to trick me, sister," the man says with a sneer. He puts the car into drive but keeps his foot on the brake. He reaches back and picks the bible up off of the back seat. He waves it in Gretchen’s face and says, “You need to hear from the good book, young lady. And you will.” He places the bible on her lap and stares straight ahead. “Now say goodbye to Larry.”

Gretchen starts to cry, and the man hits her again. She whimpers as he grabs a roll of duct tape from the front seat, rips off a piece, and puts it across her mouth.

 The last thing Larry sees is the big car pulling away with Gretchen inside. The dirty Cadillac’s one good taillight casts a red glow over him, as he lies dying. The glow from the taillight makes the blood on Larry’s yellow shirt appear as black as the night that surrounds him.