I live in town.
But sometimes I live in the country.
I took Dara to the last drive-in theater left in east Texas. It was a hike getting out there, but it was worth it. Dara likes those old-fashioned type things. Staying up to all hours of the night watching old black and white movies. Getting all giddy when the traveling carnival blew into town in hopes of feasting on roasted peanuts and going home with a lifesize stuffed bear. An old soul, people would call her I suppose.
It was late when I pulled into the driveway of her parents’ house. An inviting two story home located in a nice and neat subdivision. Your average middle class family. I was a step up for her in that regard. She knew it too. Dara wasn’t the type to really care about those types of things, but I think deep in her subconscious it brought a sense of pleasure that the clean cut, All-American son of the wealthiest man in town might be her future husband. It certainly impressed her friends.
She kissed me deeply after I put the truck in park. A warm, sensual kiss that hummed in my lips and down through the rest of my body. I kissed her back and softly caressed her bare thigh, wandering further and further up her leg.
Dara pushed my hand back down. “Walk me to the door?”
I knew it wasn’t happening tonight. She’d already made up her mind. The principles and rules she’d set in her mind were still a mystery to me. But a mystery I was hungry to solve.
We quietly made our way up the path to the front door. At the stoop she wrapped her arms around me and gave me another one of those deep, buzzing kisses.
“I have so much fun with you,” she whispered with a smile.
“I do too.”
“You’ll call me tomorrow?”
“You know I will.”
Dara laid her head against my chest. I pulled her close, giving her that safe, protected feeling of being in my arms that I knew she craved.
With a final peck on my lips, she whispers goodnight and quietly makes her way inside. I jump back in the truck and back out of the driveway as quietly as I can.
I switched on the truck’s high beams. The blackness of the night rushed with harsh, white light. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning. There wasn’t another car on the road. We lived in a small town. The kind of town that closed up after the sun went down. I think that’s what I liked about it. The solitude. The solitude and the silence.
As the truck hummed its way through the darkness, I thought of Dara. I wondered why she’d rejected my advances. I wondered if I would see her the following day. I wondered if I loved her.
I thought maybe I did. I’m not sure I ever really knew what love felt like, but the feeling she gave me must’ve at least resembled love. At the very least, she satisfied some sort of need I knew I had inside of me.
The headlights illuminate a large metal sign reading: CITY LIMITS
My family had a large estate in town. A sprawling victorian with a pool, tennis court, horse kennels on a ten acre lot. Not that it mattered, I passed the turn off over two miles before.
Dad was a builder. The biggest builder in the state as a matter of fact. I’d never known what it was like to be poor and I supposed I never would.
As the truck poked deeper and deeper into the country, I got to noticing just how black the night truly was. All dark, no stars. I thought if the headlights somehow died on me, the darkness would swallow me up. Pluck me from existence.
My family owned land all throughout the county. Mostly real estate investments and yards to house the fleet of construction equipment we owned. But truthfully, I think dad got off on having our southern community firmly under his thumb.
The only property we owned that ever meant anything to me was deep in the country. Cradled in a sea of river birches well off the main roads, a large gravel lot stood enclosed in a barbed wire fence. Dad bought the place before I was born. It belonged to an old Caddo indian that kept it as a junkyard.
Dad had plans to use it as a dump yard for his truck drivers - you know for dirt and gravel and the such. But I guess it was just too far in the middle of nowhere to have ever been of much use. So for the better part of twenty years, it sat in cold silence.
My truck’s headlights shine off the thin wires of the chain link fence. I reach into the glove compartment for a long policeman’s flashlight. I kill the engine and am immediately drenched in darkness.
I step down from the truck and click the flashlight on. The bright narrow glow guides me along the fence to the opening I’d cut long ago. It was easier this way. Barbed wire lined the top of the fence and the main gate was sealed with a heavy padlock. No reason to go snooping around for the key.
I pull the chain link at a 45 degree angle where I’d cut it just wide enough to slip underneath. The fence sways and hisses after I let it go.
Using the flashlight as a guide, my eyes survey the long abandoned junkyard. Scrap metal, mountains of broken up concrete and asphalt, and in the far corner - the cars.
Old cars. Like out of a time capsule. Cars that would have fit perfectly in the streets of Havana.
I eye up a maroon Crystler. That’s where she was always waiting for me. Every time we met I told her she could sit up in the front while she waited, but for some reason she always preferred the trunk.
I open the driver’s door and grab the key from the dashboard. Walking around back towards the trunk, I notice my hands are shaking. I always got nervous at this part. Nervous she was going to stand me up. Because nobody did that to me. I never got anything less than what I wanted. And tonight I wanted her.
With held in breath, I stick the key in the lock and twist. The trunk pops open.
I exhale. She showed up.
I carefully remove the blanket wrapped mass from the bowels of the car. I couldn’t help but notice the rips and tears in the linen. Animals must’ve gotten to it. I’d have to bring out some new next time.
I carefully place the mass on the gravel and begin unrolling it from the blanket. I pull the blankets out all the way, like you’d do for a picnic. I smile.
“Hey, baby.”
She showed up. Wearing that sexy red top with the short checkered skirt that always drove me crazy. Just as I left her.
Her skin was gray all over. Not tan the way it was in the summer when they’d first met. But that was okay. I could still see the deep purple fingerprints I’d left in her thighs that night they’d first had sex. The harder I dug into her, the more she screamed with delight.
When it was finally over, I was pleasantly surprised to see her eyes were open. I was the last person she ever got to see. Who’d she’d see forever.
One of her eyes was gone now though. Just an empty socket smeared with gore where decay and animals must’ve gotten to it. Sad. She had such pretty eyes.
“Did you miss me? I told you I’d be back.”
The remaining eye just stared up at me.
I reached into the little pocket of her skirt and pulled out a brass colored tube of lipstick. She’d never worn lipstick but I realized she looked gorgeous with cherry red lips.
I gently applied the lipstick to the cold, gray lips. Being that I didn’t have any personal use for cosmetics, the application was crude. Almost like how a young girl would do it when she first ransacked her mother’s makeup case.
I capped the tube and tucked it back in her skirt pocket.
“That’s better… I missed you so much baby.”
I leaned in and kissed her red lips. As I always did, I tried slipping my tongue into her mouth, but her teeth were clenched so tight, making it impossible. But it never hurt to try. Maybe one of these days she’d change her mind.
As I furiously kissed her lips and neck, Dara appeared in my mind. A pang of guilt echoed in my stomach. What would she think if she caught me like this? Here with another girl. All the trust we’d built, all she felt about me, gone in an instant. I pushed the thought out of my mind.
My hands ran over her chest, rigid and stiff as a board.
“Baby I missed you so much!”
It was wrong what I was doing. This had to be the last time. I knew then that I loved Dara. Loved her in a way I never loved this girl. She meant nothing to me, that’s why I had to keep her a secret. But Dara, she could be the mother of my children.
My hands moved down to her thighs. In the darkness, I felt something moving down there. Something creepy crawly. Like I disturbed a nest or something. But I ignored it. The lust was overwhelming me.
My hands worked their way up her thigh and under her sexy checkered skirt.
She didn’t stop me.
Later, the lights from town began to appear in the distance. It was nearly sunrise.
Before I left her, I said it was the last time. And I meant it, but I knew it wasn’t true. She was my country girl. We got to share the solitude together. The river birches and the stars. We played in the darkness together.
I thought again of Dara. Hopefully fast asleep by now. I looked forward to hearing her voice later on in the day. I knew then she truly was the one.
Maybe I could make her understand. Understand what I need. Maybe I could convince her to leave the city behind and live the country life I always wanted.
I’ll make her understand. Whether she likes it or not.