The TEXAS Clipper Read online

  The

  TEXAS Clipper

  ______

  Jess Butcher

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  First eBook edition copyright © October, 2011

  Cover design by Jess Butcher

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is merely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 Jess Butcher

  The Texas Clipper

  The highway gently serpentines through the West Texas dawn and passing time releases her relentless grip, allowing him a ration of uninterrupted peace. His pain momentarily suspended, Kyle Moore drifts with the ebb and flow of the concrete thread undulating through the low, purple hills.

  Since his accident, this daily round-trip from Lubbock to Las Cruces is Kyle's only source of income. He can't handle a big rig anymore; just a Ford van with Texas Clipper Service stenciled on the door, hauling tractor parts west, produce east, six days a week.

  Van Morrison whines familiar lyrics as THEM delivers a primitive, mid-sixties rock version of one of Kyle's blues favorites. Minutes pass and Kyle’s thoughts drift, returning to a dark and bitter place; he knows he should not venture there but … evil’s tentacles are wrapped tight around his writhing soul.

  For a split-second, Kyle examines his own dark eyes in the oval of the vibrating rearview mirror. He leans back in the driver’s-seat and as has become his solitary custom, grips the steering wheel with both hands before his shrieks begin. He screams over and over at the top of his lungs into the unyielding darkness; over and over until he savors the metallic taste of his own blood as it leaks from raw vocal cords and finds his tongue.

  Kyle feels better now and silence settles uneasily inside the cab of the Texas Clipper. Staring straight-ahead at a gunmetal gray horizon, Kyle’s discordant humming begins, trailing THEM by nearly a bar. He rocks gently back and forth as he drives … and he shudders without warning as raw hatred oozes from his flesh.

  Kyle Moore lost much more than his leg as a result of the accident. It had been over two years since he claimed a lone hitch-hiker stepped in front of his speeding Kenworth; the Georgia State Patrol never found any sign of a pedestrian. Kyle’s post-accident drug screen was positive and the trucking company terminated his contract; with no income and no medical insurance, Kyle’s big rig was first to go, then his house, finally his wife and baby daughter.

  "Well, well," Kyle whispers. "What do we have here?" In the dim light, he sees two silhouettes walking west along the deserted highway. One listless thumb goes up but neither head turns as the Texas Clipper rumbles past.

  That's right, boys. Don't bother to look my way. Kyle's thoughts turn blood-black. He watches the hitch-hikers in his side-view mirror as a low Texas hill silently swallows them.

  "Another mile," he whispers, pressing a well-worn button to reverse the cassette tape and replay a favorite selection. Morrison circa 1964 hammers-out the obscure tune as Kyle looks for a side road where he can turn the Clipper around. Heads bowed, the hitch-hikers don't look up as the van passes them again, this time going in the opposite direction.

  "That's right," Kyle snarls. "Keep your heads up your asses you little shits!" As an earthen wave devours the van, Kyle looks for another side road. The sun will be up soon. Kyle can feel his pulse pounding where the angry, purple stump joins his prosthesis.

  He reverses the tape again …

  The six-foot, hardened-steel cutting blade had begun life as part of a Caterpillar bulldozer; Kyle had found its worn remains in a scrap metal dumpster. Sitting on the floor of his shabby apartment, Kyle had painstakingly sharpened the blade's blunted-edge until it shined, razor-sharp. He had seen his twisted features reflected in the blade's metallic edge and thought himself so like the cold steel; used up, discarded, worthless. It was only a matter of time before the blade was bolted to a hydraulically-operated hinge hidden beneath the Texas Clipper.

  *****

  Jamming the Ford van into first gear, Kyle begins accelerating. His right hand reaches for the toggle switch on the van floor, the switch that operates the hydraulic pump. He twists the cassette-player volume knob and THEM bangs-out a blues-riff that is barely audible above the din of the roaring engine.

  "That's it, dummies. Just keep walkin'. Don't pay any attention to me,” Kyle screams. “I DON’T COUNT FOR NOTHIN’!”

  He reverses the tape again …

  Mounted beneath the passenger-side of the van, one end of the six-foot sharpened steel begins slowly moving clockwise, extending outward like a jack-knife blade. The blade's razor-edge hisses through the damp air following the landscape twelve inches above the gravel shoulder of the deserted Texas highway.

  Kyle can see the hitch-hikers walking along the highway fifty yards ahead, their backs are to him, heads down; sleepwalkers in the dawn mist. The Texas Clipper is travelling nearly ninety miles per hour now, blade fully extended.

  "JUST BELOW THE KNEES, BOYS!" Kyle screams as he deftly maneuvers the hurtling Clipper to the very edge of the pavement.

  *****

  "Hey, Kyle, you're talkin’ in your sleep again!" the bespectacled man on the loading dock hollers good-naturedly; the badge on his khaki uniform identifies him as Leon. Leon's shouted greeting startles Kyle from an uneasy slumber.

  "That must have been some dream, ol' buddy!" Leon grins as his face appears at the driver's-side window. “Tell me; does she have big hooters?”

  Kyle struggles to wake and squints up at the intruder. For an instant, Kyle can see his own dark eyes reflected in the thick Coke-bottle eyeglass lenses looming above him.

  "No … no … it’s just a bad dream. Shit, man, what time is it?" Kyle mutters, numb from his oft-visited nightmare. Leon laughs and moves away as Kyle sits gazing vacantly at the Clipper's dashboard. The ancient cassette-player in the van is switched on but only a low hiss escapes the speakers. The static is a comfort to Kyle; the tape, like him, broken long-ago, spins relentlessly within an inescapable trap.

  "Rough trip this mornin'?” Leon asks, pushing a hand-truck toward the back of the parked van.

  "Yeah … no, it was okay, I guess," Kyle mumbles, hesitating, shifting his weight against the driver's door.

  “I have scary dreams sometimes, too,” Leon shouts as he opens the van’s back loading doors. “Do monkeys ever get after you when you’re sleepin’?”

  “Fuck no, you crazy bastard,” Kyle’s words are barely audible; a searing headache is hammering at his temples. He looks in the rearview mirror expecting to see Leon but the dockhand is not standing inside the open rear doors.

  Kyle's eyes narrow as Leon’s image appears in the passenger-side mirror.

  “What the hell?” Leon whispers to himself.

  Kyle watches the bespectacled man’s reflection as Leon drops to one knee, head tilting oddly as he peers at something purple-black and stringy, something dangling beneath the passenger-side door of the Texas Clipper.

 

 

  Jess Butcher, The TEXAS Clipper

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