"Go, go, go, go, go, mister, go," she said, looking over her shoulder out the back window of my car.
I pulled out into the road, accelerating a little faster than I might normally, but not really fast.
Not fast enough. The 4x4 with the huge tires slammed into the back of my BMW with his fat, thick bumper guards and jolted us forward. My head hit the headrest and I glanced into my rear view. All I could see was grill.
"Go, go, go, please, go mister," the girl implored me.
I went. Slamming through the gears and pushing the BMW coupe as fast as it would go down that two lane country road.
Wait, wait, wait. Rewind this story about ten minutes back. You would find me driving down a rural back road listening to the radio, bored out of my mind. The song was apropos.
'Well I'm a gonna raise a fuss, I'm a gonna raise a holler, About a working all summer just to try to earn a dollar. Every time I call my baby, try to get a date, My boss says, no dice, son, you gotta work late. Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do, But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.'
No shit. I'd been driving three hours back from some godforsaken backwoods burg where I'd just spent another three hours doing an estimate for a job we probably wouldn't get anyway. And my girlfriend, that is my ex gf, was off at the beach. 'You work too much,' she told me, 'for summertime.' And off she sashayed.
And now this. What the fuck. As if my life wasn't fucked up enough right now. What a dumb ass thing to do, pick up a hitchhiker. But as I floored my Beam, I was too damn busy to regret having pulled over for her. I don't normally pick up hitchhikers, but this one was kind of frantic, more or less flagging me down, looking quite desperate.
And, she was cute as hell.
"Who the fuck is that?" I yelled, focused on that massive truck grill slowly getting smaller in my mirror.
"It's my boyfriend," she spat out, "no, no, not my boyfriend, a guy who thinks he fucking owns me."
Fuck. That was ten grand in body work he'd just done. And he was still on my tail, looking to do more. But he was losing ground. He'd lose more in the curves ahead.
I glanced over at her. She looked about eighteen. Blonde, naturally. One of those country cuties you find in any small town. Homecoming queen. Prom princess. Healthy, well built, effortlessly sexy. She was a living American Summertime Dream, the girl you'd most like to raft down the river with, go water skiing with, spend a day at the beach drinking beers with. She was wearing blue jean short shorts, a button up white shirt with the tails tied in a knot to show off her flat tummy and the collar unbuttoned to a precipitously deep cleavage, sporting a pony tail and bare feet.
The kind of hometown girl who drove the boys crazy through high school.
And the one behind us was clearly insane.
"I'll drop you off at the police station," I said through gritted teeth.
"Got no police station in Pine Tree," she replied, all the while keeping her eyes glued to the rear view mirror on her side.
"Sheriff's office?" I tried.
"Yeah," she said, "but his daddy's the sheriff."
She had that country twang that is normally very sexy on a girl like her. But I was too busy to really think of it that way. It sounded like country hick in the present circumstances.
"You got family? Can I drop you off at your father's or something?"
She looked over at me. "Got a mom," she said, kind of flatly, "at the trailer park."
"Why the fuck is he so fucking pissed?"
"He was born pissed, Mister."
The BMW loved the curves, and his truck was falling farther behind.
"Well," I said, getting exasperated, "where can I drop you off?"
"New York City."
We were 500 miles from New York.
She saw my look, then added, "Can we drive right through Pine Tree? Go on down to Hudson Falls?"
That was another two hours down the highway.
"I gotta get gas in Pine Tree," I said.
"We're fucked." She looked out the window.
"Why?"
"I'm sure he called ahead to his buddies. They'll be waitin' on us."
"Maybe I can talk to him."
She looked at me again. I guess she was sizing me up. "Sure you can. And maybe have a beer and shoot the shit awhile too," she said, then she dropped the other shoe. "Them boys ain't the talkin' type."
I took stock of my situation. The low gas light was already on. My smashed rear end was like a big neon sign; there was no way they wouldn't see me in a tiny town like Pine Tree. I'm not armed. My phone wasn't currently getting a signal, but even if I could call the cops they'd send the sheriff.
And the sheriff was his daddy.
"What if I left you off on this corner coming up?" I tried.
"Well, then, he might not kill you," she offered back, "but he'd sure as shit fuck you up bad. Probably me too."
"Fuck."
A sign said we were coming up to the town of Pine Tree. Population 460.
"Turn off at the first dirt road we come to," she said. 'Bubba' was so far back we could turn in without being seen. "I got a friend who lives out there."
"Does she have a twelve gauge?"
"I don't know, but we can borrow her car."
Well, not her car, exactly. Her other car. The 1964 Valiant her father was restoring. As we drove it through the two stop lights that comprised the township of Pine Tree, she ducked down in the front seat, putting her head in my lap, or, very close.
It was a nice head. And under almost any other circumstance, those luscious teeny lips lingering so close to my rocket man would have set him up on the launch pad. But fear outranks lust.
Driving down the main street I didn't see Bubba, but I saw several trucks and a couple of hot rods that looked like Bubba's friends and I kept my eyes peeled for trouble. But I guess she didn't have as much to look at as I did. And so, she put her hand on the rocket, sort of like she was seeing if it was real.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry mister," she said all sweet and perky, "you can't expect me to have my face this close to that monster and not look."
"You're doing more than looking."
"I'm a normal teenage girl."
"No shit. What part about this situation seems normal to you?"
"My lips being kissing distance from a large cock," she asserted from down there, then, "oh my!" Then added, in her cute twang, "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"
The rocket had twitched.
She was clearly delighted. "Do you think the big guy could hear me talking about him?" She poked a finger at it.
Well, the big guy was definitely aware of a 'normal' teenage girl being within kissing distance of his big stupid head.
But we'd come to the outskirts of town. "You can sit up now," I said, not without a slight twinge of regret. She sat up and looked in the rear view.
"Oh shit."
"What?"