..... At my own truck, I picked up my toolbox, the little one, and started to close the door. Then I stopped and went into the glove box and grabbed the pistol I keep there. Late night calls, lockouts on the side of some dim road, you can't be too careful. I tucked it into the toolbox now, just in case.
..... As I walked back toward that other pickup, the crowd beyond the trees burst into another round of applause, and I could almost hear my buddies somewhere in there, getting good and drunk, cracking jokes and laughing and grab-assing.
..... The Toyota looked the same as before, motionless, defiant. I waited again. With the tools in my hands, I could open that door in seconds. With a wrench, I could shatter the window. Just a movement, just a cry, just some signal, that's all I needed.
..... But nothing came from that direction. And the phone in my pocket was silent too.
..... I went up to the door anyway. I knocked like the boy had, two quick ones.
..... The glass had an impenetrable tint, but I could feel them inside, whoever they were, watching me. I tried the door handle, but it was indeed locked.
..... "Twenty-first century calling," I said, knocking again - a quiet, singsong voice not my own.
..... I put a wedge against the weatherstripping at the bottom of the window, but it wasn't until I pulled out the Jiffy-Jak that I heard the locks click, and a young boy seemed to unfold himself onto the muddy field, pushing the door half-closed behind him.
..... He wore a black t-shirt with a trio of leering faces on it and the word Gorillaz at the top. His jeans were buttoned but unzipped and gaping. He seemed to hunch forward a little, shoulders rolled in front of him, a saggy posture like the other boy but bigger, meatier. After just standing there in front of me for a minute, he glanced without interest at the wedge under the weatherstripping, the tool in my hand, the toolbox at my feet.
..... "Wassup?" he said then, half stoned, maybe all the way.
..... Was this the kind of guy my Susan was dating? Was this him? He smelled like about a pony keg of cheap beer. I still had the Jiffy-Jak in my hand, and wished I had the wrench.
..... "Hope I haven't disturbed you and the missus," I said, a calm I didn't feel. I peered into the slight opening of the door. Was someone crouching there in the back? Cowering? She'd been threatened somehow. She'd had too much to drink. The tinted windows left only darkness within. Nothing to see.
..... "Nope," he said, not exactly looking at me, not exactly looking away. "It's good."
..... "Mind if I…?" I gestured toward the truck, began moving toward it. He was shaking his head, not a "no" exactly, but something there, some hesitation or trouble.
..... I reached out, but before I could open the driver's door, the little half-door of the extended cab sprang wide, and the girl inside flew out at me, leaping from that backseat and toppling me backwards. My glasses went flying, the Jiffy-Jak fell from my hand, the toolbox at my feet spilled over. She had landed on top of me, straddling me now, flailing her arms, punching and slapping.
..... "Hey," I heard the boy say. No enthusiasm. No urgency. And then another one, even duller. "Hey."
..... Finally, the girl stopped her thrashing and sat back. My glasses were gone and my eyes were bleary from where she'd beaten at my face. With the sunlight behind her, she seemed a dim shadow above me. Long hair - blond like my daughter's, but stringy it seemed, ragged somehow. About Susan's age too, maybe a year less. Her face was aflame. She panted heavily. A spitfire, my buddy Bill would've called her. A nice set of lungs, he would've said, how that low-cut t-shirt clung to her breasts. Princess, that t-shirt said. Pink glitter. Not her, I thought. Not her.
..... The girl reached past my head then, and I had the fleeting image of Busty Becky from all those years before, hovering over me. I remembered suddenly how I'd never been able to unhook that bra. "Your first one?" Becky had laughed, and then she'd reached back and just flicked her fingers and it was like magic. And it had been Becky who'd said "Don't move" when those headlights appeared, Becky who'd pressed her fingers lightly against my lips, shushing me, in a way that made my whole body tingle. And then I looked again at the girl leaning across me, and I thought, no, no, nothing like that. Nothing. Not her either.
..... Then the girl straightened up above me. She held my pistol in her hand. She pointed it at my face.
..... "You creep," she said. Her voice was shrill, reedy. She pressed the gun against my cheek. Her finger played unsteadily against the trigger. "You're as bad a perv as Danny is, staring at us through that window. Like nobody can leave us the hell alone." She moved the pistol over, lifted up one of my nostrils with it, then parted my lips, nudged the barrel against my teeth. "This the kind of thing you wanna see. Huh? This the kind of thing Daddy likes?" She wore a grim smile.
..... "C'mon," said the boy, a little annoyed, as if she was finishing her homework or watching a TV program and they were late for something else.
..... The smile of hers faded into a sneer, and she moved the pistol again just slightly, arcing it forward, and I could see already the damage that the bullet would do, the hole where my face had been. I forced myself not to close my eyes. Her own eyes looked empty, her pupils wide and vacant.
..... "Jesus," she said, then she tossed the gun into a puddle under the truck. Then half to herself, half to the audience of empty cars around us, "Can't a girl get her rocks off in peace these days?"
..... She stood up awkwardly, slipping a little in the mud, losing her balance. The boy stepped forward and she leaned against him for support, righted herself then released him again. She wore short shorts, flecked now with mud. She wore flip-flops. Her skinny legs looked too weak to hold her up.
..... "Let's go," she said, pushing past him, back toward the concert. The music had kept on playing even if I'd stopped hearing it.
..... "Sorry, dude," said the boy, standing above me, the sky behind him, his face in shadow. "She didn't mean anything. She just had a little too much."
..... The girl twirled to face him. "Let's GO!" she said again. Frustration there. Ferocity.
..... He shrugged. He shut the doors to the truck. She'd already begun walking on. Soon he shambled along after her. His pants, I'm sure, were still unzipped.
..... I lay there in the mud a little longer, looking up at the sun and then at the underbelly of the truck - the frame, the exhaust, the barrel of the pistol sticking up out of the dirt, all of it out of focus. The wetness of the ground beneath me had seeped through my shirt, I felt now. I hadn't noticed. The doors the boy had closed hadn't latched entirely. I'd need to get my wedge back. I'd need to get my things together. I needed to get up.
..... When my phone rang, I fished it out of my pocket. SKIPPER, read the caller ID. Twenty-first century calling. I'll need to change that, I thought.
..... But I didn't answer. I didn't know yet - still don't - what to tell her.
..... From beyond the trees, the music soared and fell. A "thank you" echoed through the speakers in the distance. "Thank you, thank you," the singer cried. "Thank you. We love you too."