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Book:Highway Don’t Care
CHAPTER 23
Wanted: Someone to hand feed me Doritos so my fingers won’t get cheesy.
-Text from Miller to Mercy
MILLER
“Look,” I said to the man who was getting ready to run. “I don’t want to chase you. I will, but I don’t want to.”
The man all but slumped.
“Get in the back of my cruiser on your own, and I won’t cuff you,” I grumbled.
The man was eighty, eighty-five, if not a little bit older.
He had escaped from a retirement facility that was on lockdown due to an influx of COVID positive cases.
He was, apparently, one of the lucky ones who was asymptomatic.
So, since he wasn’t exhibiting symptoms like all of his other friends, he’d thought the lockdown was bullshit.
So he’d decided to make a run for it, and had then decided to steal a motorcycle—from the delivery guy who’d been delivering flowers—to make that run.
I’d pulled behind him and he’d sedately pulled over.
And now was even more sedately getting into the back of my cruiser.
I pulled up my mask higher, and then tossed him one, too.
“Put that on your face,” I ordered. “I have kids and grandbabies on the way. I don’t need to take your bullshit home with me.”
The man squinted at me, but nonetheless got the mask put in place.
“This is bullshit,” he grumbled.
“I agree,” I said. “I’ll stop by Sonic and The Daquiri Express if you sit back there quietly.”
“How about you stop by Harley’s, buy me a bottle of Jack, and then drop me off at the front door. Drop the bottle of Jack at the second landing on the right. Then I’ll buy your new grandkid a fuckin’ car.”
I laughed.
“How about I drop you off, go get the Jack, then bring it back to you,” I suggested.
“We have a deal. Let me know your grandkid’s name,” the man said.
Thinking he was blowing smoke up my ass, I went ahead and dropped him off, then thoroughly disinfected my backseat, myself, and everything I’d touched with Lysol before heading to the liquor store.
After dropping not one, but two bottles of Jack off, I called my wife.
“Mercy,” I said when she answered.
“Did you hear there’s a motherfuckin’ killer hornet that just made its way into the US?” she asked without offering me a hello. “As if this fuckin’ COVID bullshit isn’t enough, now I have to worry about motherfreakin’ hornets? Killer hornets at that? They say that being bitten by one is akin to being punched in the face. Repeatedly.”
I groaned. “Mercy, get off of Facebook.”
She sighed. “I can’t help it. I work for a living. I’m essential. I have to be on Facebook to find my guys jobs.”
