The Stranger

He pulled into the truck stop at 1:42 AM and ground his gears into park. He stretched his muscles as far as the tiny cab would allow him and relief wells up in his eyes. He told himself that the reason he didn’t truck the extra 36 miles to home was that he didn’t want to wake up his wife when he knocked on the door and cacophony of mutts pried her from sleep.

Really, it was because if he went home she’d show up at the door in that ratty pink bathrobe with the holes in the elbows. And likely, she’d smell the cheap perfume on him and he’d spend a night insisting that a girl at the mall sprayed it on him while he went in to buy something benign, like socks or 100% cotton t-shirts.

She wouldn’t believe him, but she’d say she did anyway. He wouldn’t feel bad, but he’d tell himself he did anyway. He was, after all, only a man. A weak man, as it turns out, because between the gap-toothed smile of the blonde that’d knocked on his flimsy tin door the evening and the wind and rain hammering the outside of the claustrophobic box he thought of as home, he’d felt alone.

He’d felt tired of being lonely and cut to the marrow with the want to feel warm again. The need to touch someone’s flesh and not be bombarded with memories of years upon years of lost empathy. That girl was just a symptom of this disease. Just another mistake in a long line of mistakes he was embarrassed by but didn’t really regret.

Now he felt greasy and the pulsing neon from the truck stop windows dancing in the standing puddles boasted “HOT SHOWERS - $3.00.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt clean – probably 1200 miles ago in Tulsa when he’d dunked his head under the water in that shabby motel bathroom and 6 of the 8 tub jets he’d paid for actually worked and soothed the wariness out of his wiry muscles.

He rubbed his palm against his stubble hard and decided the mist that engulfed the whole dark world outside looked more inviting than crawling into his twin mattress covered in the road dirt he’d accumulated along his route.

He gathered his thoughts, swallowed his self-contemplation and stepped out of his Peterbilt on the wet concrete, sending ripples out from the bottom of his worn soles and into the silence of 2 AM. He slung his towel over his shoulder, flipped his collar up to protect his neck from the undecidedly fall air, and trudged towards the nearest awning to walk under.

The weather was predictable, but no less numbing. Tiny droplets hung throughout the sky, obscuring anything not illuminated by the one lone light pole in the very center of the parking lot. Nothing but a 20 foot circle of dirty yellow light led him toward the reprieve of soap and hot water.

He walked with a limp, the humidity of the last few weeks had seeped into his bones, already at the busted out age of a 45-year-old heavy laborer. He moved like a marionette, could practically hear the hinges that held him together creaking in the silence. He thought to himself that he’d lost a percentage of him body (teeth, hair, cartilage), equal to how much he’d taken from others in the trouble he’d caused them. Fair is fair is fucking life.

Looking at the ground, trying to keep the cold mist out of his eyes, he hadn’t the shape emerging out of the haze, propped between the faded beige wall and an old rusted ice machine. He was closer than was comfortable by the time he noticed the silhouette, already morphing into the shape of a very tall, thin man as he closed ground.

He immediately looked around for another path, but that would put him back into the fog and his bones had just begun to thaw. No one of any character is out at this time of night, so as he got closer he scanned the Stranger and tensed his muscles, tucking his head further into his collar as to be completely ignored, but every muscle tensed for unwelcome attention.

He quickened his pace and passed the man, momentarily engulfed in an inferno of body hear, and stepped away briskly in relief, allowing his muscles once again to release.

“Did you think I wouldn’t see you there?” The Stranger chuckles after him.

“What?” The man half turns around briefly, but catches himself accidentally being caught up in surprise and rights his path in the opposite direction of the man.

“I said, James Oliver Tallicudy, did you think. That I. DID NOT SEE YOU THERE,” the Stranger demands with authority.

The Stranger coughs on his boisterousness and the man stops dead in surprise.

Hearing his name come from the lips of this man feels wrong, grates on his nerves and makes him flinch backwards, almost slips over the edge of the sidewalk but finds his footing just in time.

“You don’t know me,” the man spits, turning his head but not his body toward the Stranger, taking him in for the first time. He’s all knees and elbows and Adam’s apple, threatening to puncture through his paper-thin skin that’s purpled and diseased in the neon light. Despite the chill, the only thing hanging from the sharp bones of his torso is a shirt sheered with age, yet his voice and hands are steady against the cold.

He’s got a tattoo coiled above his collar bone, the snout of an adder, he realizes, and his fingers are so yellowed with nicotine that it’s obvious from several strides away in mottled lighting.

Despite his absolute belief that they do not know each other, as he observes the man from a distance his heart begins skipping more beats than it’s playing and he feels dizzy with a familiar urgency.

“Well, James, I do know you,” drawls the man, and pulls a pack of Lucky Strikes from his breast pocket, holding a cigarette in a predatory grin of nubbed blackened teeth and smiles while lighting it. The glow illuminates his gaunt cheeks and the tendons saluting from his neck as he inhales.

“As a matter of fact,” the Stranger says, “I think I know you better than you think I do. I think I know whose skin you’ve got under your fingernails, I think I know why you’re here in this very place tonight, and I think you’re gonna wanna talk with me, Jimmy. At the very least, I’m interesting, and I don’t think interested is something you’ve felt if a very, very long time.”

“But where are my manners? It’s very nice to meet you, Jimmy,” continues the Strange man, smiling widely, eyes so round and wide the dark irises are surrounded in a halo of pure white that stands stark in the darkness, and extends his hand across 30 feet of empty sidewalk.

The man considers this offering of the Stranger’s pale limb. Hypnotized by the stark veins and pale scars on the forearms and the dark lines of ink snaking around his palm, he realizes that despite himself he is enraptures. Before he realizes, he’s eating ground toward the Stranger.

After several brisk strides, he stops just short of the limb - he can’t bring himself to touch it - and pulls his lips back over his teeth, swallowing an innate uneasiness of the spidery man in front of him. Suddenly he is repulsed and angry and confused by this moment. By this strange man and the strange way he looks and talks and holds himself against the chill.

“What could you possibly know about me? You wanna talk about things we KNOW, son? I know you’re covered in track marks and you look like you haven’t seen a bed in weeks. Now,” He continues, “I don’t know who you are, but I think you’d best watch who you pull your tricks on.”

“Well,” the Stranger smiles, “You’ve certainly seen right through me. But listen. Just listen. I think I’ve got something you wanna hear. I think I’ve got the answer for you, Old Boy. I think you’ll regret it if you don’t hear me out.”

The words roll over him with an assured mocking and the tone of the Stranger’s voice grates on his confidence in a primal way he can’t place, like he’s got a chest full of rattlesnakes and could breathe out poison. His breath is too hot, hanging in lazy clouds around their faces, smelling of raw meat and cigarette smoke.

The pores on the man’s spine open despite the cold and the Stranger’s nostrils flare in response and his smile spreads.

“Well, let’s hear it then, if you think you’ve got me all figured out,” the man says, his voice shaking more than he’d like.

“There we go, Jimmy, my old friend, I just knew you’d come around. Now, let’s talk about what you want for a minute. What you need. Let’s talk about what I can do for you. Because I can, ya know? I can help you out. I’ve got some advice for you, and you don’t owe me nothing unless you take it.”

“What could you possibly do for me? I don’t need nothing you got. As a matter of fact, it looks like you ain’t got much your own self. Now look, I don’t want no trouble, I just wanna go in that building over there, alright? I just want a hot shower and to be left alone,” says the man, and makes to turn and leave.

“You’re gonna die in there,” the Stranger sings, “turns out your heart’s been working too hard to keep up with you all these years, Jimmy. That tiny little hole in there is gonna wriggle its way free and split you right open.The sad part is you won’t even make it to the better part of clean. You’re gonna die in the sweat of today. This day. Now, how do you feel about that? Is this the day you wanna die?”

“Die?” the man inhales, stopping cold, looking around frantically for another soul but finds none.

“Oh!” giggles the stranger, “I didn’t scare ya, did I? I’m sorry. No no no friend, I would never mean to scare ya. I was just tryin’ to help. Don’t know what I’d do if you hurt yourself. As a matter of fact, I can take care of that for you Jimmy. Fix you right up so you can head on home to your sweet old lady instead. She’s up right now bribing sleep with tequila – you can catch her if you hurry.

“Just come one over here and shake my hand, James. Shake my hand and go home. I won’t take nothin’ from ya you can’t afford to lose. Take my advice James, it’s good advice. Stay away from places like this and girls like that now, you hear? What do ya say?” he said, and winks in a knowing way.

The Stranger flicks his still glowing cigarette into the darkness and extends his hands forward once more. The man listened and he heard. He knew the truth of what this night was telling him. In the silence his heart beat whooshes in his ears and he can hear the tiny irregular rhythm. He knew it in his soul, as bruised as it felt. And finally, he did as he was told. Took the first advice he’d taken in years.

He closed the last inches of space between their bodies and joined his hand with the Stranger’s. They join hands and the Stranger crushes his fingers so hard his wooden bones creak, and puts his other palm on the back of the man’s neck. He looks him in the eye, with an intimacy previously lost in all of James’s years.

“Well Jimmy, it seems we have a deal.”