Just Another Town (rev)

Just Another Town
(Word count: 1615)

In the afternoon heat, a big-rig truck bore down upon the quiet little town of Harmony Bend.  Fields of wheat trembled as it rumbled past, and the wheat stalks shied away from its massive wake.  The road wound by driveways pointing toward bright farmhouses nestled like pretty little Easter eggs on their green grass lawns.  The truck threw sand and dust into the air and shook the wooden beams of a bridge as it crossed the outskirts. 

A great roiling cloud blew across the sky and snuffed the sun out like a candle-flame, bringing on a premature twilight.  The wind howled in mourning.  A storm was on its way. 

The growling behemoth turned down the empty main street, past a tranquil, tree-lined park.  Inside the park, a little child tossed a brightly colored ball up into the air and usually, but not always, caught it as it tumbled back to earth. 

This ain't so hard, Jimmy thought to himself as a strong breeze ruffled the lush canopy of leaves above his head.  Alerted by the snarling engine, his eyes grew big with wonder at the sight of the approaching truck.  The momentary distraction caused him to miss the ball.  It struck his little sneakered foot and bounced through a flowerbed on its way to the street.  He leapt after it, but it was too late.  The pink-and-red ball rolled right into the path of the oncoming truck and disappeared beneath its massive wheels.

The tiny shriek that came from the boy couldn't have been any more miserable if the ball had been a favorite pet.  The radar ears of his mother, set to receive all incoming childlike squeals as her eyes skimmed her romance novel, heard the shriek and flashed a glance over to her son.  Jimmy's fine, she noted.  Then she, too, was distracted by the big-rig.  Air brakes screeched as it braked at Main Street's single stop light. 

From its cab to its taillights, the truck was painted midnight black.

"Mommy."  Jimmy complained, scampering up to her, "The truck ran over my ball!  He smooshed it!"

"Really, Jimmy?” she asked sympathetically, as she ruffled his brown locks.  “I'm sorry.  We'll tell Daddy tonight, and maybe he'll buy you a new one."  She shot a glance back over to the truck.  Brilliant red letters along the sides read: ‘Allah Saves.  Free books from The Holy Muslim Alliance.’  Through the driver’s window she saw a dark-skinned man look her way.  His lips slid back over yellow, misshapen teeth and he feigned a horrible rictus of a smile.  Her breath caught as she noticed his eyes. They were so dark, they looked like empty holes.  He hawked and spat a wad of bile-colored phlegm into the street.  “And that’s not all we’ll tell him,” she murmured, shivering as a cold wind whipped along her spine. 

The truck accelerated away, trailing a cloud of oily black exhaust fumes that spread out finger-like across the town’s center.  At the end of Main Street, the big-rig dwarfed the Harmony Motel parking lot as it pulled up outside the manager's office.

The office clerk smiled at her reflection in her heart-shaped compact. She smoothed the touch of grey in her hair and checked her lipstick before turning to greet the swarthy trucker.  One sleeve of his long, pajama-like djellabah caught the little china doll on the counter, and knocked it to the ground.

His thick accent made it difficult to understand his apology.  "Don't think twice, it's all right," she said.  He signed the register and paid in grubby, crumpled bills.  She asked, "Been truckin' long?"  Her attempt at friendly small talk was brushed aside as he took the key and left without a word.  Her eyes narrowed as she watched him go.  As she walked outside to take down his plate numbers for motel records, she noticed a peculiar smell.  The truck smelled like oil, and something dirtier, foul.  She puckered her lips and tried not to breathe, then saw the big letters on the truck’s side.  Her quick gasp of surprise subjected her to more fumes and her eyes watered.  Her face compressed into sharp, angry lines, and she hurried past the end of the motel to the gas station where her husband worked, and gave him an earful.

At Jimmy's house, his dad ignored his request for a new ball.  He pouted and watched his dad’s jaw clench when his mother described the words on the ball-murdering truck.  Jimmy's older brother, recently fired from his day job delivering hay bales, got a funny angry look in his eyes which Jimmy had never seen before.  His father left for his night job at the bar, his brother went to a rehearsal with Uncle John's band, his mother ranted on the phone to the other wives, and Jimmy sat alone in his room mourning the loss of his pink-and-red ball.

The oily stench of the truck seeped into the night, permeating everything in the town with the taint of wrongness. 

From the town bar, to the barn where the band practiced country ballads, to the ladies' quilting circle, an ugly red tide began to transform the town.  Eyes looked out from behind lacy curtains at the big black blemish in the parking lot of the motel, and smoldered. 

Stray cats spit and howled, and a normally obedient dog snapped at its owner.

A tangible miasma of evil slunk into every nook and cranny of the town.  Husbands fought with wives, friends hurled insults, and an old juke-box in the corner of the bar suddenly shuddered to life.  It’s rusty workings played “Strangers in the Night” at half speed, making ol’ blue eyes sound like an animated ghoul from a carnival’s haunted house. 

“Something’s not right,” one neighbor grumbled to another.  A few beers later the phrase escalated to “Something’s gotta be done.”  The phrase echoed around the darkened bar, became a chant, and gained in rhythm and volume.  Clenched jaws became clenched fists and obscure rhetoric became ominous resolution.  The bartender yanked the juke-box’s cord out of the wall, but the hideous music continued to play.   

The first roll of thunder rattled windows and loosened a bottleneck of unreasoning anger.  Enraged residents picked up bats and tire irons, glaring around them in confusion.  The bartender got into a fight with long-time customer over who would take the signed Mickey Mantle bat that hung over the bar.  As one, they turned and marched toward the Harmony Motel. 

Those who were still coherent hung back.  After all, they thought, the trucker would be leaving in the morning, no harm done.  They scurried off to their houses to wait out the storm.

But others fell under the sway of the quickening beat of evil in their souls.  There were so many things that demanded payback in their lives, and this was as good a time as any.  They were dead set on eradicating this infuriating threat to their way of life.  A brilliant flare of lightning illuminated their intense faces: there would be a reckoning.

A tide of anger raced through the town, picked up those who had hard hearts and narrow minds, and spurred them toward the motel where the sinister black truck gleamed under the street lights.  Lightning flashed and the ripping explosion of thunder hid the hollow clump of work boots thudding across the motel parking lot.

The murderous mob burst into the motel room, jostled into one another in the darkness, and swung their implements at the sleeping form on the bed.  Sheets twisted and pillow feathers flew.  Grunts of effort echoed out the open door as neighbors who couldn’t recognize each other through their masks of rage, shouldered in to get a good swipe.

Abruptly, the bass rumble of the big-rig's engine resonated over the panting of the attackers.  They paused and then tumbled out of the doorway to see the ebony big-rig roar out of the parking lot.  The truck suddenly swerved and clipped one of the pillars supporting the large lighted roof over the gas station's pumps.  The roof spat sparks of electricity as it collapsed onto the pumps.  The pumps smashed into the ground, their severed pipes disgorged rivers of gas from the underground tanks.

As the big-rig's straining engines powered it out of the town, a huge fireball lit up the sky behind it.

In the cab, the swarthy man wasn't shaking in fear about his narrow escape or the destruction left in his wake.  In fact, he had a smile on his face.

As the big black truck thundered down the highway, it underwent a transformation even stranger than the one the town had experienced. The truck's black sides now boasted new ruby red lettering: ‘The Book Net.  Free Children's books from Lester, the Happy Clown.’  In the cab, Lester shifted in his seat as a cheerful clown costume sprang up and wrapped itself around him in place of the djellabah.  His face became pale-skinned and jolly.  Behind him, small pictures of laughing, playing children appeared along the back wall of the sleeping compartment.  Some of the pictures, which were visible even from outside the cab, showed children in bathing suits, and in unusual poses.

As a friend of the devil, he was privy to certain information.  He knew of another little town where the townsfolk might resort to violence if they thought there was a child molester in their midst.  He grinned in the glow of the dashboard lights.  He wasn't just a friend of the devil, he had the honor of being the devil's best friend.  In fact, they were inseparable.  Wherever the trucker went, hell was sure to follow.