The Trace: Prelude
By, Chuck Beikert
Disclaimer: This story contains subject matter that may be unsuitable for sensitive readers
Brandi and I have driven between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Hammond, Louisiana a dozen times or more. Between moving back and forth twice and visiting each other’s families at the holidays we had established our route, our habits (she; stop at the first Waffle House we see on the way down, me: fill up with gasoline at Dodge’s Fried Chicken in Tupelo on the way back up). There's even a song we sing about a lonely stretch of Kentucky road that lies between Lexington and Elizabethtown; The Bluegrass Parkway Lament. If you ask me about it, I might sing it for you sometime.
Twelve-hundred miles from my Father’s back porch to her Daddy’s front is certainly a long haul but driving is still the most affordable means to get from point “A” to point “B” if one has the time. As college students we almost always had more time than money so drive we did. I usually took the first shift and tried to knock out 700 or so without stopping too much.
In late October of 2003 Brandi’s aunt passed away. It was the middle of the semester but since neither of us were what we would call “behind” at that point, we simply made a few apologies to our professors and set out in our 1988 GMC to attend the funeral of Maudie Flowers. I met her briefly at the funeral of her sister Genevieve in 1999. At ninety-six, she was burying her sister who had died at ninety-nine.
“I’ll live to be a hundred!” she told me assuredly. “Gen’vieve used to sneak a cigarette. I never did.” True to her word she died on the 28th, three days after her one-hundredth birthday.
We left after a supper of meatloaf and baked potatoes at my parent’s house, my mother’s customary tears and my father’s insistent handful of cash in the driveway speeding us on. We hugged them and kissed them and then I drove. We listened to the local rock and roll station until the signal faded. As Jim Morrison begged me to break on through to the other side, his psychedelia gave way to pragmatic beer bottle honky-tonk and the high lonesome bluegrass that filled the airwaves of northern Dixie.
I drove into Tennessee and past Nashville onto a windy 444-mile-long road called The Natchez Trace Parkway; two lanes of heavily wooded blacktop that graze the northwestern tip of Alabama before cutting a diagonal line through much of Mississippi. Between the ancient stands of trees, The Trace, as we call it, sports wide stretches of pasture and points of historical interest. It offered us respite from semi-trucks and highway traffic in general and we enjoyed counting the wildlife as we meandered southward relaxing along its length. It runs from SR 100 outside Music City, USA all the way to Natchez, Mississippi. The Trace is dotted with Native American landmarks as the trail was originally a trade route for the tribal merchants and the French settlers throughout the region. Such thoroughfares are often paved in blood and tears and The Natchez Trace is no exception. The cursed town of Rocky Springs, the Emerald burial mound, Witches Dance, and Red Dog Road all bear intricate history of both struggle and triumph. We talk less on that road than on the highway and often sleep fitfully while the other is driving. Brandi and I have watched both sunrise and sunset many times on this trail.
She was folded into a ball and fast asleep in the middle of the night when I decided to pull over for a rest room break. We’d gassed up somewhere in Tennessee and taken advantage of the facilities at the “Flying J” a couple hundred miles before but the giant Pepsi-Cola was empty, and I had been looking for a spot for the last forty-five minutes. Rest areas are few and far between on The Trace and I was considering a clandestine pee behind some tree when I finally saw the blue sign marking the next tiny oasis. I thought briefly about waking Brandi. When I bumped off the road into the gravel lot and she didn’t stir I decided against it. I killed the engine and clicked off my seatbelt regarding the tiny white and red hut. It was dark all around with only a slight silvery moon to rival the stars. The rest rooms on the Trace employ motion detector lighting inside so I was accustomed to them being deserted and dark.
I opened the men's room door and the light blinked on and off no less than six times. A loud buzz settled into a quiet drone as the fixture warmed and remained steadily lit. My face looked distorted and tired in the wavy metal mirror. I stuck out my tongue and my reflection stuck out a bigger one from a wider mouth. Sunken eyes, too close together narrowed and I rubbed them until I saw stars inside my head. I decided against using the commode. There was no identifying the origin or composition of what lay within the bowl, so I swept the leaves and sticks that had somehow found their way in through the vents at the eaves out of the sink and into the wastebasket (containing an empty package for Fruit-Of-The Loom Fashion Briefs) and pissed in the stainless basin. Gross, I know, but I assure you that I rinsed it out and even swished pink soap powder around a little bit leaving the place undoubtedly cleaner than when I had found it.
The door banged shut as I returned to the car and a moment later the light went out.
Brandi was awake and munching on some crackers.
“Chicken-In-A-Biskit?” she asked in a very cute and sleepy voice.
I ate a couple and waited while she ran knock-kneed and pigeon-toed to the Ladies’. The light flickered on and I heard her groan in mild disgust. Apparently, the other side was just as well maintained as mine had been.
It was dark and quiet. I leaned against the fender listening to the autumn insects singing their final songs. I could hear another sound as well...faint breathing; labored and not human. The scant moonlight offered little illumination and the surrounding trees choked whatever light fought to filter through. I was startled when the door of the ladies’ room banged shut. There was my smiling girl looking at me. We laughed at my jumping. I asked her if she could hear the breathing. She said she could and we stood there a moment longer. There was a wet rattle each time breath was drawn in and a low whistle on the way out. The sound drew closer and finally in the very dim moonlight we saw the outline of a bull. It was ambling behind a wire fence surrounding the small parking area.
“It sounds just awful, the poor thing.” said Brandi with genuine concern. We approached the fence and I stopped to tell her,
“It might be electric. Don’t touch.”
When the bull swung its big head around to look at us we could see its eyes were gummy with conjunctivitis. Globs of mucus hung from its nostrils and swayed when it moved. It coughed and lumbered toward us, wheezing. Brandi’s soft heart compelled her to reach out for the creature and I snatched her wrist before she could touch it. The bull then bellowed a startling bawl and we both jumped backward. He continued to bawl and shake his head adding the clunky sound from the large bell around his neck. Snot flew out to either side and Brandi finally recoiled. In the distance another of his kind bawled out in response and more distant clunky bells could be heard.
We'd had enough and turned to get back in the car. She looked at me, only her eyes smiling at first, and then she giggled a bit. I kissed her forehead and reached to open her door.
Then, the light in the Men's room came back on. I imagined the sick buzzing of the fixture like desperate houseflies stuck between panes of glass. We looked at one another and then back to the restrooms. The light on the Ladies’ side flickered and came on again as well. Ours was still the only car in the lot nor had any others passed during our time there. A slow wind stirred the remaining leaves into dead applause.
Our tires squealed as we shot down the road with our hearts in our throats.
A mile or so away we looked at each other and laughed until we were crying. We guessed that a mouse or a squirrel had tripped the light and tried to forget it. Neither of us wanted to guess how TWO mice had turned on TWO lights. Neither of us wanted to remember the lonely bull. Brandi asked if I was ready for a break and I gratefully accepted pulling off to the side and switching seats. I promised myself I would stay awake with her until we reached Jackson where we would leave the Trace and take I-55 dead south. I had barely finished making that promise when I broke it.
I dozed and when I woke up I was holding a ball in my hands.
I looked at Brandi and asked her where it came from. She looked over at me with teary eyes. Her hands gripped the wheel tight. She was crying again but this time she wasn’t laughing behind the tears. She was half-mad with mortal fear. She looked down at the ball.
It was a bit bigger than a basketball. It was greyish white and wet. When I thought about dropping it I felt it become sticky as if it didn’t want me to let go. I began to turn it over in my hands and I could feel something like a framework inside, bones. Arms and legs were folded under it. As I stared at it the legs fell limp and the arms stretched out to the sides and pointy fingers flexed. The head began to rotate up to look at me. I could tell somehow that there would be no eyes, no nose, and no mouth. I also knew that if it ever "looked" at me that I would never return from sheer madness for having seen it. I thought it was Brandi screaming but when I looked at her she had her teeth frozen in a terrified grimace. I felt little fingers dig into my shoulders and the scent of unwashed crotch swam into my nose. It was me screaming and I kept on until the thing in my hands stopped me.
“Hush, now. You hurry home, you hear? Hurry home.” The words had come from the thing, but they weren’t out loud. They swam through my head the same way the smell had into my nose. I looked down at the thing’s feet and saw its toes hooked in my belt as it strained to put its head close to mine.
“Hurry home, now friend.”
I wrenched myself awake and stared at Brandi who was bopping along to “Goodbye, Earl” on the radio. She looked at me and laughed in a fashion totally opposite of the way she had just looked a moment before.
“Have a good nap?” she asked cheerily?
“Not really.” I croaked as a trickle of sweat ran down the back of my neck.
