They took the money, some smokes, a tank of gas, and some beef jerky and left with the lights still on and door unlocked. The Zippy Mart was out past Barton, near the Mississippi line, and probably one of the most remote convenience stores in the state. Dale had been begging his boss to have a second person work the late shift with him for ages but the asshole was too cheap to do so. A previous employee of the late shift had been shot in the head. They’d found him tied up in the office the next morning, blood all over the place. It was in all of the papers. The guy that did it was on death row but that didn’t bring anybody back. Dale figured that getting into Charlie’s trunk would be a way for him to pick up a little extra dough and maybe it would teach his boss a lesson.
All was smooth until they got to Whipperwill, which was where kids would go back then to show off their fearlessness by jumping off the cliffs into the Tennessee River. Some of the higher bluffs were probably forty feet or more, and you could break your neck if you landed wrong, or you could hit a log or one of the rocks that jutted out. About once every couple of years some teenager would get killed or paralyzed, which only seemed to make it more attractive to young rednecks who felt they were invincible and had something to prove. The trail from the road to the cliffs was littered with beer cans and used rubbers. Every so often the cops would crack down on it and police the place, but times were hard and they couldn’t really spare the manpower to actually shut it down, and besides, many of the cops themselves had come of age jumping off those cliffs and banging little redneck girls in those woods. Usually it would empty out by midnight or so, especially during the week, but on this night it was still unexpectedly crowded so they decided to keep driving around for a while, with Dale still tied up in the trunk. They would head up to the Line and get some more beer, then double back in a little while after it emptied out. Then it sort of slipped their minds.
Dale was most certainly alive when they got to Whipperwill the first time but now he appeared to be otherwise. Neither one of them were doctors, but Dale was unresponsive and didn’t appear to be breathing. Lester couldn’t find a pulse and started panicking and stuttering that way he would always do when he got nervous. Charlie just stood there, expressionless, casually lighting a cigarette and kind of staring off into space for a bit, then he closed the trunk and put the oval key in his pocket and got back in the car.
When Jimmy Ray started up, Lester got in and shut the door. “Emerald” was playing loud on the eight-track and Charlie drove slow and carefully toward Whipperwill. He figured they would be back at the cliffs in about ten more minutes.
Lester sat in the passenger seat rolling the joint and drinking another Beast. He was trying to calm his nerves but was shaking so bad he was spilling the weed, which was mostly seeds and stems anyway, onto his lap. He didn’t want Charlie, who always seemed so cool no matter what the situation, to see him so unnerved. He tried to think happier thoughts, but his mind kept returning to his time in reform school and being raped in the shower when he was fourteen and pretty much weekly afterward until he eventually found a sort of sad acceptance of his situation and to how alone he had been and how he’d never really had any friends until Charlie took him under his wing a couple of years after Lester was released. He downed his Beast and opened another. He was officially drunk now, but still shaking. He wished he had something harder.
Both of them were what folks around there referred to as poor white trash. Opportunities were few and far between in this part of the country even in the best of times, and the late seventies were far from that. So much of the local economy was built around the Ford plant, and now, better-built and more economical Toyotas and Datsuns were what was selling, and Ford was saying they were gonna close down the local operation in a couple of years. That factory was where boys who wouldn’t be going to college could find decent-paying work, and if Ford wasn’t hiring, no one else was about to take up the slack. Weed and illegal liquor were about the only steady jobs left that guys like that could count on.
They pulled up to Whipperwill and sure enough it had emptied out. It was an especially dark night with clouds obscuring what little moon there was. It was hot and muggy and no sign of a breeze at all. Just a dark stillness that added another level of creepy to the situation. Charlie turned off the engine, put the square key in his pocket, walked around to the trunk, and opened it with the oval key. Dale lay there, still and lifeless. Charlie leaned in and untied the ropes that were binding his hands, noting that he was still warm, perhaps from the heat of the exhaust pipe being so close to the trunk.
“Wh-wh-why’d you untie him?”
Charlie was trying not to be annoyed with him.
“If we leave him tied up, there’ll be too many questions. We don’t want anybody saying kidnap. We need to keep this simple so the cops don’t have to work too hard. We just need them to think he did something stupid, panicked, and jumped off the cliff.”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what about his car?”