The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113933 Message #2432953
Posted By: Amos
06-Sep-08 - 08:32 PM
Thread Name: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
Tam trudged through white dust and sand along the side of the tarmac double-lane road. The sun was hanging low, and the shadows were reaching out from the dense brush along the sides of State Road 332 South winding toward Waterloo, Palermo and Perrysville. She didn't need to pay much mind to her walking, and her thoughts drifted back to the morning before last, when she had startled awake on the rusty porch swing bed, and half-entranced by the skitter of moonbeams in her eyes, had tiptoed away, leaving a note for Jesse that said "Gone. Do not try to follow me. Tam", and shifted her ratty backpack with all her stuff in it onto her shoulders, and started down the creek road. She had spent the night in a soft bed of pine needles huddled against a rock wall and started again this morning.
The blunt red and chrome nose of the Mack cut the late afternoon West Virginia air like a dull shovel the big diesel winding down an emergency alarm, shifting and grumbling as he brought her down one more long windy hill on the western face, heading for better roads and places. He knew he could make WHeeling before he got too tired to see straight, if he took it all fast but careful. That was what Mariah always told him--"Fast, okay, but careful, you big jerk...". He dreamed up an image of her saying it, fondly, with her Buick smile and the soft shape of her neck and jaw when she tilted her head one way to look up at him. Man.
So he almost missed the waif with the big backpack trudging down the side of the winding blacktop, eyes down and thumb out listlessly. But he was struck by the halo or something, Anyway, he skidded the Mack to side, and waited for her to catch up and climb in. Who knows, a little company might keep him awake on the long road home.