Highway Robbery

It was just after 2 am when I pulled into a gas station off the main highway somewhere outside of Oglethorpe County. The kid who came out to fill my tank wore a sweat stained Georgia Bulldogs cap and faded overalls with no tee shirt. The bib and hooks were pulled down to his waist and he had tan lines on his shoulders that looked like bra straps. He strolled around behind my rented Chevy, hands in pockets, walking in slow motion, as he passed under a broad sphere of overhead lighting. He smiled as he examined the rear license plate, exposing a set of discolored teeth that looked like a row of Maize corn.

"New York, huh?" He grinned as he said it.

I checked my watch and my New York attitude and returned the smile.

"You a long way from home, boss."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "You can fill it up, Bulldog."

"Sure thing, boss. Where you headed to at this ungodly hour?"

I thought about it for a moment. I knew that he was just trying to make idle conversation, but I was never good at spontaneous small talk. At best, it's empty and forced; at worst, painful. But I've discovered that it's wise to have a point of reference when travelling. It's also a good idea to acquaint yourself with people who can verify that you were at a certain place, at a certain time, on a certain day. Especially after midnight, and especially when everything about you, right down to your rental car license plates, identifies you as an outsider. It's even more important if you're ex-convict looking to put some distance between where you've been and wherever you're heading.

So, I made up a story about visiting relatives, a story which appeared to satisfy his curiosity. Then I quickly changed the topic. The brutal heat wave that had recently engulfed this area seemed like a neutral item for conversation. As we spoke, a silver Toyota sedan pulled up at the next pump. The driver, a stocky, middle-age man with a receding hairline, emerged from the car and quickly began filling his tank before the kid had time to get there. A red haired woman slid out on the passenger side and strolled toward for the rest rooms. She moved with a smooth, lazy glide that was all arms and hips like she was walking waist deep in water. Her confident demeanor suggested that this was a woman who knew that someone was always looking at her, even at two in the morning, out here in some boondocks gas station in the middle of nowhere. The Toyota had South Carolina plates, but the kid with the bad teeth didn't seem to notice. He was watching her walk too.

When my tank was full, I paid for the gas then went inside the convenience store. I took a cellophane wrapped cheese Danish from the bread rack near the coffee machine, poured a large cup of coffee and topped it off with some cream and sugar. I roamed the aisles for a while before pulling a local newspaper from the revolving metal stand near the doors. The girl at the counter stared at me with suspicion as she handed me my change. It was the kind of stare that would have offended me ordinarily. But when I was up at Otisville, there was a guy doing time for beating a convenience store clerk into a coma with the money tray from the register. People who work a cash register at night usually have reason to be suspicious.

When I walked out of the store, the red haired woman from the Toyota was standing near my car with a black canvas overnight bag hanging from her shoulder. The nighttime blackness hummed with crickets and cicadas. Giant moths the size of butterflies formed halos around the forty foot light posts above the station. I looked out to the area beyond rest rooms where an old plantation style home with a four column veranda sat in the middle of a field, but at this hour all I saw was darkness and the silhouette outline of a row of tall corn stalks about twenty-five yards away. Everything smelled like fresh cut grass and gasoline. The silver Toyota was gone.

"I seem to have lost my ride," the woman said. "Which way are you headed?" She didn't have an accent, or rather, her accent was the same as mine, so I assumed that she wasn't from this area. She looked at me with that practiced gaze that attractive women use so effectively when dealing with men they seek to control. It's a look that lies somewhere between promise and hope, but you can never be certain because that's how the game is played.

"How far are you going?" I said.

"I'd like to get as far as Marietta, but I'll go wherever you can take me."

I looked her over for a moment, wondering just how far I could take her, then told her to get in. She wore a burgundy Danskin top tucked into a pair of black jeans that were snug in the hips and thighs. The stiff, unnatural roundness and awkward position of her breasts suggested that they were implants. She opened the front door and tossed the canvas bag onto the back seat. As she slid in on the passenger side, a narrow roll of fat the size of a sausage link formed above her belt line. Her black Frye boots were chalky with red dust, as though she had been walking in the Georgia clay roadside for a while before hitching her previous ride. Under the roof light, I could see a callous edge in her expression, the subconscious half-sneer of her upper lip, a brief flicker of unmistakable meanness just below the surface in her dark eyes. She was attractive but hardly my image of the ideal fantasy hitchhiker. Now that I had the opportunity to look at her up close, I decided that she looked much better walking toward the rest rooms.

But after seven hours on the road, most of it spent mumbling to myself or complaining about the endless line crackpot talk radio hosts who still lived in the 1950's, I figured I could use some human company. The fact that she was female company, mean looking or not, didn't work against her.

Once we were back on the highway, I asked, "Why'd the guy ditch you?"

She sat with one knee crossed over the other, her back wedged against the door like she had already planned her exit just in case I was looking to try anything on her. She glanced at me, wordless, then stared through the window at the luminous highway signs that whipped by on the roadside. Mentally, I kicked myself, thinking about what a mistake it was to pick this one up.

When she finally decided to speak, she said, "I guess he wanted something that I wasn't willing to give up."

I looked over at her and stifled a grin.

"What about you?" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"It's two in the morning. A complete stranger pops out of nowhere, asks you for a ride, and just because she's a woman, you say okay?"

"That mean you want to get out?"

"No." A quick glance from the corner of her eye. "I'm just asking."

Now it was my turn to be the silent one. She was right. If she had been a man, I would have left her back at the station with nothing more than well wishes, and perhaps a quarter for a phone call.

"If you turn off up ahead you can take the back roads and avoid going near Atlanta," she said.

I hadn't planned on going near Atlanta. Actually, I hadn't planned on going near Marietta either, yet somehow I found myself heading in that direction anyway.

Not long after I turned off onto the rural route, I caught a set of high beams coming up fast in my rearview mirror. I checked the speedometer. I was well within the speed limit. But no matter what anyone says, speed trap towns still exist, and the terms of my probation didn't allow me to drive outside of my home state.

"What's that coming up behind me?" I said, squinting.

The woman looked over her shoulder and shrugged. "Just another car."

"I wish he'd turn off his high beams."

I slowed down slightly, hoping the driver would take the cue and pass me rather than hanging there on my ass. I watched the lights jump around in the side mirror as the car accelerated with a sudden burst, then when he was finally abreast of me, I realized that it was the silver Toyota from the gas station. The driver cut around in front and hit the brakes, forcing me to come to a stop. I reached down under the seat for my .38 Smith & Wesson, but when I brought it up the woman was already holding what looked like a .40 caliber Beretta in my face.

"Put it down," she warned. "Put it down and pull over and nothing bad will happen here."

The Toyota stopped in front of me, hemming me in, then backed up at an angle so that I couldn't move around it. The driver didn't get out, he just sat there waiting for whatever was coming next. The woman reached over, took .38 from my hand and tossed it out the passenger window into the tobacco field. She removed the key from the ignition but accidentally dropped it on the floor between my feet. She snapped her automatic into the firing position and put the tip against my head. The gun barrel was hard, heavy and cool. I could see the bright full moon staring down at us through the front windshield. It had an odd lime colored tint which made eerie shadows beneath the trees along the roadside. We were on a two lane rural route in the middle of nowhere with nothing but dirt, trees and flat plains of tobacco on both sides of the road. It was so silent I could hear my own heartbeat. I was certain that I was about to die.

"Give me your wallet and all of your money," she said.

"In the glove compartment," I stared straight ahead.

She looked at me skeptically, then popped the little door on the dashboard and removed my wallet, my passport, and a small, tight roll of twenty dollar bills held together with a rubber band. A flash of light winked in the rearview mirror. I could see a car approaching in the distance about a quarter of a mile back, cruising at an even speed. The woman noticed it too.

As the car drew nearer, I could see the distinct outline of a dome light rack on the roof. The man in the Toyota backed up until he was parallel with us, then through the open window, he shouted "Let's go! Now!"

The red haired woman looked at me briefly, like she was trying to decide whether to shoot me, or just get out and go. The man hollered again. This time she slipped out quickly, ran over to the Toyota and got in on the passenger side. They pulled out onto the road with the front and rear lights turned off so that they would not be seen by the approaching trooper. Within a few seconds they were around a curve, out of sight.

I sat there and waited as the patrol car coasted to a stop behind me. The trooper got out, took note of my plates, adjusted his hat and came up to my window with his right hand resting lazily on his Glock. He was a big guy, perhaps six foot three, stiff military posture, jawline like a horseshoe.

"Everything all right here?" he said.

"Yeah," I said. "I was just resting for a bit. I've been on the road a long time."

"Well," he sighed. "You shouldn't be sitting here like this. You'd do better to find yourself a motel back out on the main road. We've had a string of robberies in these parts lately."

I nodded. Obviously he didn't think I was the one behind them.

"A man and a woman," he added. Then with a grin, "I think they're from up North."

I nodded again. Obviously.

I looked around and found the ignition key on the floor under the break pedal. I thanked the trooper for his advice and drove ahead until I was back on the highway. At that moment, I realized that the red haired woman had left her bag on the rear seat. I checked the mirror to make sure the trooper was gone. I pulled over at a nearby gas station and parked in front of the ice machine. I reached back for the black canvas overnight bag, pulled it onto my lap, and opened it.

Inside were more than a dozen men's wallets along with a nest of loose bills and assorted credit cards. I reached in and flipped open one of the nicer billfolds, one with a designer name on the label, tan cowhide with light brown swirls. I removed all of the photo ID and left the rest inside. I put the wallet in my back pocket then gathered up the money from the bag, folded it into a roll, snapped a new rubber band around it and threw it in the glove compartment. I left the remaining wallets and credit cards in the canvas bag and tossed it out onto the roadside. Then I got back on the highway heading south again.

If I drove nonstop until daybreak I could probably be in Valdosta by noon. Nobody knew me there, and thanks to the woman with the red hair, I now had more money than before. I also had something that I had wanted ever since I left Otisville. A new identity.