“Tacoma? Interesting choice,” Derek told me once we got rolling. His quilted overshirt smelled of rancid cigarette butts from an ancient ashtray. “Rides pretty nice.” He patted the seat back near my shoulder. 

I wondered if bringing him along would be worth the price of admission.

“Glad you approve,” I said, contemplating a plan to get that shirt-jacket he wore off his back and into the truck bed. Those things were basically smell vacuums with absorbent cotton air filters, capturing every unsavory odor to unleash them later in the tight compartments of the working class. 

“Take a right up here.” The younger man pointed. He looked to be around twenty-five, with the dashing looks middle-aged women titter over. A wiry surfer type. Always grinning and never serious, full of great ideas to improve your life, no matter who you are or what you do for a living.

“What do you think happened to the girl?” I asked. Even the simple-minded hold a piece of the story. A body just has to decide if the piece fits in the puzzle.

“Kayla?” He huffed. “Kid’s a handful of fireworks. Don’t care for me a-tall. Can’t blame her.” His tone lightened at the end. 

“So, you think she just ran off?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Find a place away from all the crazy.” He started searching the cab of my truck with his fingers, picking at whatever fell beneath them. 

When he touched the Nokia lying on the seat beside me, it took a good deal of facial tension to prevent a slap at the back of his hand. I pocketed the phone instead. “What makes you say she didn’t like you?” I asked, hoping to distract him from plundering my personal space.

He pushed the radio button and attacked us with static. I poked it off right behind him while he was still fiddling with the tuning knob. His hands were like birds, flitting from one object to the next in the cramped interior of the truck, as if trying to seize each one and hold it in his grasp. This hyperactive nonsense didn’t prevent him from yapping, though.

“She’s serious about play. I play for fun. She’ll smart talk me on just about anything comes out of my mouth,” he said with a small laugh. “Doesn’t really bother me. Find it kind of cool. She has grit, you know, willing to stand up to the ‘rents.”

“She has reason to escape the house?” I turned off the radio for a second time, brushing his hand away from the tuner. “Why do you say that? Seems like an odd thing.”

He harrumphed. “My old lady bumped hips with all kind of weirdos. Pissed me off fierce. I got the hell out young, myself.” The halfhearted chuckle said a lot about growing up as Derek and how he chose to live his own life. “Not at five-freaking-years-old, though. Kid’s way ahead of me on that.”

“So you think she ran off to a friend’s house to get away from Mom?”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “That Aidan’s likely got her holed up. Bat shit crazy, that one. They tell you about his castle?” he asked, using his excitable fingers to make air quotes. 

“A castle? Like kings live in?” It sounded like something the overactive imagination of a drifter like Derek would throw out as a way of keeping things interesting. But letting him talk might keep his attention away from the stuff in my truck.

“The nut job plans to build a castle out of glass. Supposed to protect him and his family from the apocalypse or zombies or whatever.” His fingers were back at fiddling, this time unscrewing the door lock next to his shoulder. He had the thing completely undone and in his fidgety hands before I could protest. 

I wanted his take on the craziness of bats and castles, but his distracting behavior had nearly put us in the ditch more than once. It made more sense to keep my eye on the road and put the truck back together once I’d dropped him off.

While he was replacing the door lock, he suddenly shifted the conversation off its tracks.

“Kinda crazy, man. The Jenkins house is only 3 miles as the crow flies from Aidan Peale’s.” This fascinating fact was so enamoring to him, his hands stopped moving and he turned half in the seat to look at me.

“Really?”

“Damn rough miles,” he went on. “All mountains. Take a hell of a man to cross that bit of ground. Guess the Indians did it all the time back when.”

The timing of this information intrigued me. What makes a person tell a story in a certain way? Attention to such details helps you understand them better, get a feel for their motives. Or, their scatterbrained thoughts confuse matters. Right now I was happy it kept him from destroying my vehicle one piece at a time.

“Mountain men too, don’t you think?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not sure why you’d drive a Toyota around these parts,” he said. “I like my Ford. Align with the culture, I say.” He gestured the concept with a gliding motion of his hand in the space between us.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Fords are definitely the thing.” Made me contemplate a detour east and south so I could slap George-the-Ford Shumaker in the mouth.

“A left at the puke green house up here.”

I slowed and made the turn. “You’ve been around here a bit?” I asked, glancing his way.

Derek stared at the landmark for a beat or two past the question before turning his high beams on me. “Six, maybe seven months. Nice climate. Easy work.”

“How’s that?”

“Indians grew tobacco here, man.” He bubbled. “It’s the mountains, and they grew tobacco! No way you can beat it.”

“That what you do? Grow tobacco?” I coated it with a mild smirk.

“Ha! Good one, C-man.” He gave my biceps a playful slap with the back of his hand. “No way. Me and Johnny Law came to an agreement. I don’t grow and he don’t show. Works out good for me.” He had that grin that makes a person forget life’s challenges. Probably what charmed Lorna Peale out of her pants. “I do a bit of handyman work where I can,” he continued. “Keeps me in green.”

“Mostly old folks, is it?”

“Yeah. Lot of crotchety old white women.” His nose wrinkled. “Got the stink of age on them. Their old man kicked it, and they’re still pissed. Full of better ideas on how to do a job. Can’t hardly make ‘em happy.” He looked at me and laughed. “Hey! I bet they did the same to the husband. Never thought of that before. Maybe what kilt him was the old I-gotta-get-the-hell-out syndrome.”

I laughed despite myself.

We went a mile or so down the road before Surfer Dude Derek calmed enough to say, “It’s why I’ll stick with marrieds. Not so tight it makes them bitch your ear off after.”

“So, you haven’t been seeing Lorna too long?”

He simpered. “Oh yeah, sweet Lorna. That woman is a catch,” he said, giving me a wink. “She’s always on for a roll. Got more heat than a wildcat. Tears me up every time.”

“She’s that good in the bedroom?”

Derek delivered the long whistle of masculine approval. “Blew my mind, C-man. I’m always down, but man oh man, I can barely keep up. That woman will be hard to leave behind. Don’t get why Aidan shoved off. Proof he’s crazy as a loon to me.”

Images of Lorna in a naked romp with Derek the Dude popped up as sprightly as teen lust. Derek was the type who reveled in reciting his amorous exploits with considerable detail and flourish. He eagerly shared every kiss, touch, and moment, leaving no particulars unspoken. I’m sure this habit caused quite a stir with his cohort and left the timid wide-eyed and blushing at the explicit nature of his stories. It was like listening to a pornographic book on tape. I couldn’t decide whether it formulated a better picture of Lorna Peale or catered to my weakness for forbidden sex.

“Might have scared him,” I suggested attempting a conversational shift back toward paternal guidance. “Some men are intimidated by hypersexual females.”

That sparked another idea in his boyish brain. “You know that Aidan’s been planning to build that fancy glass house for years. Lorna told me she loved the idea of sex under the wide open sky, but Aidan insisted it was a kind of fortress to keep the demons out. She hated that. Said his puritanical ideas left her cold.” His eyes were wide with disbelief that any man could put off such a sexually active woman. “I’d sure roll her in the wide open. She’s got a thing or two to teach some women I’ve known.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Might be she’s the demon. Married women hold a certain kind of threat. You could think about that yourself. Affairs with another man’s wife often end badly.” I left his interpretation of my expertise in the matter to his imagination.

“Sure,” Derek said with the conviction of someone who doesn’t believe but doesn’t want to take the time to argue. “Makes no sense to me.” He poked a finger up the road. “Maybe a mile, we’ll split off the main line.” He suddenly twisted in the seat, facing me with a full-on, bewildered stare. “You for real? There’s men out and about that don’t appreciate a fuck like Lorna? Sounds off.” It was refreshing, this notion that there were things in the world Derek couldn’t comprehend.

“Different strokes,” I said. “I hear some men even prefer Fords.”

Derek’s confusion faded. Eventually, his mind comprehended the joke. He released a belly laugh. “You got me, C-man. That was smooth as glass.”

He was still chuckling when the cruiser lights popped on behind us.

“You don’t have any weed in this thing, do you?” Derek asked, head bobbing like a bird as he searched the cab for contraband.

I scowled at him and pulled onto the shoulder.