Locked Out

by Art Taylor

I was walking toward the music, this all-day country music thing my buddies and I were going to, when I caught sight of the boy off to the right, leaning into a red Toyota Tacoma. Probably a thousand vehicles out there, stretched across that field-turned-parking-lot, rain-sludged from the night before. The sun was high now, but the humidity was thick. Wet mud streaked fenders everywhere, dirt caked the knobby tires of the big four-wheel-drives. A row of Port-a-Potties stood nearby. Ahead, over the next rise of trees, guitars twanged, voices crooned, the crowd rumbled and roared and rumbled again. But for all that, the boy was the only person I could see, a lanky high school kid, t-shirt and ragged jeans, hunkered over the back windows of that extended-cab pick-up. He had his hands cupped around his eyes as he tried to peer through the tinted glass.

I’d seen that pose before, that look. Six days a week, all day, some nights, this is the kind of work I do. Keys left in the ignition, keys dropped behind the seat, keys that fell out of the purse somewhere. I got a deal with Triple A too, on call twenty-four/seven, so I always keep my tools with me, even on an off-duty Sunday like today. The boy was lucky that way – twice lucky, I thought then, since I’d told my buddies I might not even make the concert. But nothing on the tube, and it was the ex’s weekend with our daughter so what else did I have to do?

The boy let out a little groan – I could hear it even over that dull tangle of music and voices beyond the trees. And that was when I saw that his knees weren’t just buckling in frustration but bending and flexing, moving in slow rhythm, and that his hips were pulsing too, forward and back in small circles. I adjusted my glasses to make sure I was seeing it right.

“I’m next,” he said, a slur to the words and louder than he’d meant, like he’d already had way too much to drink. “Don’t take it all, I’ve got her next.” He gave another low groan, something like desire, something like anger. “Damn.” He went on like that, talking half to himself, half to whoever was in the back seat of that extended cab, and all the while grinding his groin against the sheet metal, like if he just pressed hard enough, he might get inside.

Later – much later – I’d think about the concert I never made it to, and about my buddies, half-drunk themselves, all of us in our 40s now but not feeling like it, most of us divorced. Second chance, we tell one another, and all of us – even the married ones – still talk about the girls who pass by, still admire a nice set of curves under a t-shirt or a tight little skirt, still vie with one another to see who can flirt most with the waitress when we go out. My buddy Bill always seems to have the easiest time getting those waitresses to flirt back.

Later, I’d think about some of the memories already swirling uneasily through my mind. About how Bill stood guard outside the closet at his parents’ house when we were about eleven years old while Wendy Shannon and I took our turn playing Seven Minutes in Heaven, both of us still and silent in the darkness, barely breathing, hardly touching – just the brush of an elbow and Wendy’s pitiful whisper: “Please don’t.” About fumbling around as a teenager in the backseat of my old Camaro, trying to get the right angle on Roberta Henderson, trying to coax her bra off. Busty Becky, all of us boys called her, and when a pair of headlights glanced through the back windows, there’d been a sudden panic, a “don’t move,” a “shhh.”

Later still, I’d think about more mature loves: my ex-wife, Julie, and my daughter, Susan. I’d think about Sundays long past: family bicycle rides and afternoons at the pool and rainy-day crafts, and then how I’d coached Susan in pee wee soccer, Julie standing beside me on the sidelines. That’s where our daughter’s nickname had come from – Skipper – taking charge in every game, leading the pack, playing her heart out. And I’d think about that too, and how that nickname stuck even if our marriage didn’t. Skipper’s seventeen now. Seventeen.

But I didn’t think about any of that at the time – not think, not really. Instead I just felt: shock and then confusion and then an anger that I didn’t understand and couldn’t articulate. The feelings came first.

“Look at that,” said the boy, low and guttural, talking to himself, to no one. “Would you look at that?” He had only one hand on the window now, palm flat against it as if to balance himself, while his other hand rubbed distractedly against the front of his jeans. “Yo!” – louder – “Leave some for-”

“Hey,” I called out. “Hey, boy,” I shouted. “Hey, you.” The wind shifted: a dank smell of urine from the Port-a-Potties behind me, a different edge to that honky-tonk jam over the trees.

The boy looked my way, our eyes met, and then he knocked twice on the window of the truck. After a moment, he just turned and strolled off as if I wasn’t there – aimlessly it seemed, weaving a little as he disappeared into the maze of cars and trucks and vans.

I didn’t follow after him – found myself unable to, or to move closer to the truck that was facing me now like a challenge. Unable to pull myself away either. Wondering about that knock-knock on the window. A signal to some embarrassed couple in the back of the truck, hurriedly snapping their jeans and tucking in their shirts? A signal just to the him inside the cab, some other boy saying “don’t move” and “shhh,” pressing his hands hard against some girl’s mouth?

Rooted to my spot, my mind adrift, I finally pulled out my cell and punched in the numbers. As the call went through, I heard a sort of stutter ring, an echo of a ring, and I held the phone away from my ear, at arm’s length, struggling to block out the hiss and crackle of the concert as I listened hard to that field of cars and trucks and vans.

“Dad?” I heard at a distance, and then louder, “Dad? Hello?”

It took me a couple of seconds to bring the phone back to my ear.

“Hey, Skip,” I said, picturing her on that soccer field, her little legs pumping, her ponytail flying. “Hey, Susan,” I started again. “It’s me, your pop.”

“Dad,” she said flatly. That “duh” sound of hers. “Caller ID. Twenty-first century on the line, and it’s for you.”

I counted to three. I kept my eye on the pick-up. I tried again to blot out the music beyond the trees.

“Yeah,” I said. “Listen,” I said, listening myself, pressing my ear as close to the phone as I could. What was that noise there in the background? The sounds of the mall, of a restaurant? Some music? A stereo somewhere? A car radio? She shifted, she moved. I could hear it. The truck stood still. “I was wondering,” I said, fumbling for what to ask, what not to ask. “Your mom and I, are we still taking you up to look at colleges next weekend?”

“Dad. We’ve planned on that for weeks. You didn’t forget, did you?”

“No, no, of course not. I just- Is that one of her weekends or…?” But that had never been an issue. Amicable – that was the word we’d learned to use.

A muffled sound – the phone held away, her hand over the receiver, or the cell pressed against her chest. A voice somewhere, not hers, and then she was back. “Hey, Dad,” she said. “I can’t talk. I’m out with a friend.”

“The new fella?” I asked. There was the question, struggling to be casual. “Your mom said you’re seeing somebody new these days?”

Laughter on the other end – that other voice again. Clearly male this time.

“Dad, I gotta run, OK? I’ll call later. Love you.” And the phone went dead.

I held my hand on redial as I watched that Toyota a little longer, its silence and stillness.

At my own truck, I picked up my toolbox, the little one, and started to close the door. Then I stopped and went into the glove box and grabbed the pistol I keep there. Late night calls, lockouts on the side of some dim road, you can’t be too careful. I tucked it into the toolbox now, just in case.

As I walked back toward that other pickup, the crowd beyond the trees burst into another round of applause, and I could almost hear my buddies somewhere in there, getting good and drunk, cracking jokes and laughing and grab-assing.

The Toyota looked the same as before, motionless, defiant. I waited again. With the tools in my hands, I could open that door in seconds. With a wrench, I could shatter the window. Just a movement, just a cry, just some signal, that’s all I needed.

But nothing came from that direction. And the phone in my pocket was silent too.

I went up to the door anyway. I knocked like the boy had, two quick ones.

The glass had an impenetrable tint, but I could feel them inside, whoever they were, watching me. I tried the door handle, but it was indeed locked.

“Twenty-first century calling,” I said, knocking again – a quiet, singsong voice not my own.

I put a wedge against the weatherstripping at the bottom of the window, but it wasn’t until I pulled out the Jiffy-Jak that I heard the locks click, and a young boy seemed to unfold himself onto the muddy field, pushing the door half-closed behind him.

He wore a black t-shirt with a trio of leering faces on it and the word Gorillaz at the top. His jeans were buttoned but unzipped and gaping. He seemed to hunch forward a little, shoulders rolled in front of him, a saggy posture like the other boy but bigger, meatier. After just standing there in front of me for a minute, he glanced without interest at the wedge under the weatherstripping, the tool in my hand, the toolbox at my feet.

“Wassup?” he said then, half stoned, maybe all the way.

Was this the kind of guy my Susan was dating? Was this him? He smelled like about a pony keg of cheap beer. I still had the Jiffy-Jak in my hand, and wished I had the wrench.

“Hope I haven’t disturbed you and the missus,” I said, a calm I didn’t feel. I peered into the slight opening of the door. Was someone crouching there in the back? Cowering? She’d been threatened somehow. She’d had too much to drink. The tinted windows left only darkness within. Nothing to see.

“Nope,” he said, not exactly looking at me, not exactly looking away. “It’s good.”

“Mind if I…?” I gestured toward the truck, began moving toward it. He was shaking his head, not a “no” exactly, but something there, some hesitation or trouble.

I reached out, but before I could open the driver’s door, the little half-door of the extended cab sprang wide, and the girl inside flew out at me, leaping from that backseat and toppling me backwards. My glasses went flying, the Jiffy-Jak fell from my hand, the toolbox at my feet spilled over. She had landed on top of me, straddling me now, flailing her arms, punching and slapping.

“Hey,” I heard the boy say. No enthusiasm. No urgency. And then another one, even duller. “Hey.”

Finally, the girl stopped her thrashing and sat back. My glasses were gone and my eyes were bleary from where she’d beaten at my face. With the sunlight behind her, she seemed a dim shadow above me. Long hair – blond like my daughter’s, but stringy it seemed, ragged somehow. About Susan’s age too, maybe a year less. Her face was aflame. She panted heavily. A spitfire, my buddy Bill would’ve called her. A nice set of lungs, he would’ve said, how that low-cut t-shirt clung to her breasts. Princess, that t-shirt said. Pink glitter. Not her, I thought. Not her.

The girl reached past my head then, and I had the fleeting image of Busty Becky from all those years before, hovering over me. I remembered suddenly how I’d never been able to unhook that bra. “Your first one?” Becky had laughed, and then she’d reached back and just flicked her fingers and it was like magic. And it had been Becky who’d said “Don’t move” when those headlights appeared, Becky who’d pressed her fingers lightly against my lips, shushing me, in a way that made my whole body tingle. And then I looked again at the girl leaning across me, and I thought, no, no, nothing like that. Nothing. Not her either.

Then the girl straightened up above me. She held my pistol in her hand. She pointed it at my face.

“You creep,” she said. Her voice was shrill, reedy. She pressed the gun against my cheek. Her finger played unsteadily against the trigger. “You’re as bad a perv as Danny is, staring at us through that window. Like nobody can leave us the hell alone.” She moved the pistol over, lifted up one of my nostrils with it, then parted my lips, nudged the barrel against my teeth. “This the kind of thing you wanna see. Huh? This the kind of thing Daddy likes?” She wore a grim smile.

“C’mon,” said the boy, a little annoyed, as if she was finishing her homework or watching a TV program and they were late for something else.

The smile of hers faded into a sneer, and she moved the pistol again just slightly, arcing it forward, and I could see already the damage that the bullet would do, the hole where my face had been. I forced myself not to close my eyes. Her own eyes looked empty, her pupils wide and vacant.

“Jesus,” she said, then she tossed the gun into a puddle under the truck. Then half to herself, half to the audience of empty cars around us, “Can’t a girl get her rocks off in peace these days?”

She stood up awkwardly, slipping a little in the mud, losing her balance. The boy stepped forward and she leaned against him for support, righted herself then released him again. She wore short shorts, flecked now with mud. She wore flip-flops. Her skinny legs looked too weak to hold her up.

“Let’s go,” she said, pushing past him, back toward the concert. The music had kept on playing even if I’d stopped hearing it.

“Sorry, dude,” said the boy, standing above me, the sky behind him, his face in shadow. “She didn’t mean anything. She just had a little too much.”

The girl twirled to face him. “Let’s GO!” she said again. Frustration there. Ferocity.

He shrugged. He shut the doors to the truck. She’d already begun walking on. Soon he shambled along after her. His pants, I’m sure, were still unzipped.

I lay there in the mud a little longer, looking up at the sun and then at the underbelly of the truck – the frame, the exhaust, the barrel of the pistol sticking up out of the dirt, all of it out of focus. The wetness of the ground beneath me had seeped through my shirt, I felt now. I hadn’t noticed. The doors the boy had closed hadn’t latched entirely. I’d need to get my wedge back. I’d need to get my things together. I needed to get up.

When my phone rang, I fished it out of my pocket. SKIPPER, read the caller ID. Twenty-first century calling. I’ll need to change that, I thought.

But I didn’t answer. I didn’t know yet – still don’t – what to tell her.

From beyond the trees, the music soared and fell. A “thank you” echoed through the speakers in the distance. “Thank you, thank you,” the singer cried. “Thank you. We love you too.”

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Art Taylor’s short fiction has appeared in several national magazines, includingEllery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and North American Review; online at Fiction Weekly, Mysterical-E, PANK, Prick of the Spindle, and SmokeLong Quarterly; and in various regional publications. Stories are also forthcoming in Barrelhouse‘s Crime Issue and in Needle. His story “A Voice from the Past” was an honorable mention for the 2010 Best American Mystery Stories anthology. His story “Rearview Mirror” won the 2011 Derringer Award for Best Novelette. He regularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for the Washington Post and contributes frequently to Mystery Scene, among other publications. For more information: www.arttaylorwriter.com.