Radioman (A 2/19th Spinoff) - Complete

Act in Haste

"Why are you doing this, Paul?" My wife asked me, her expressive and well trained theater voice full of tragedy and helplessness. I glanced at her from where I was packing a change of clothing into the suitcase and felt the rage and anger I had been holding back well up again.

"You know good and goddamn well why," I told her, moving to the dresser to grab another pair of underwear.

"It was just once," She tried.

Liar, I thought, picking up the boxers.

"It just happened," She kept saying.

Liar

"It was just sex, it didn't mean anything," She tried another card.

I ignored her, closing the suitcase with a snap. I grabbed the handle and stared at her. I shouldn't have married her, I had been stupid to do so.

"It wasn't just you fucking my best friend," I told her. I started walking toward the door. "It's everything."

She followed me as I moved through the little single wide trailer we lived in. "You can't hold that against me, that was months ago!" she tried.

It still matters, I thought to myself.

"I can't believe you did this behind my back!" She tried again.

She was good at guilt, I'd give her that. Why was it that I could see it all now. See how she'd manipulated me, used me, lied to me at every turn. I stopped at the door, resting one hand on the cheap aluminum knob, the other wrapped around the handle of my suitcase. I stared at her for a long moment, and I had admit, she was beautiful.

Eighteen years old, over a full year older than me. Brown hair that shone, clear blue eyes, pale skin, and an hourglass figure more suited to a model than a teenager.

"It doesn't have anything to do with you any more," I told her. I opened the door. The neighbor's dog started barking at me. I hated that stupid thing.

"It affects me too!" she cried out as I stepped onto the rickety wooden deck. There was a puddle in the middle of the astroturf that covered the plywood, the deck sagging in the middle. It was still drizzling, the sky overcast and cloudy, hiding the stars and the moon.

"Not any more," I told her. My cheap deck shoes splashed as I walked through the water, trying to ignore her.

"You can't leave," She said when I reached the chain-link gate and opened it. My car, a 68 Dodge Dart that barely ran and was a mottled pattern of Bondo, rust, and red paint, sat there, the white soft-top wet and splotched with mold.

"I can, Gail, and I am, so you might as well just give up," I told her. "You signed it. You're not my wife any more."

The grass whispered against my shoes as I walked across the yard, toward the car. Thunder grumbled off in the distance.

"How will I survive?" She asked. "Are you really going to leave me to starve?"

"My last paycheck from the mill is on the table," I shrugged. "Beyond that, I don't care. We're divorced now, you signed, just like I did."

"I didn't know what it was!" She said.

She was right about that. I'd just walked in, slapped down one page while she watched her soap opera, told her to sign it, and she had. I'd left, turned it in at the court house, then came back to pack up.

"Then it'll be a good lesson to read what people hand you," I told her coldly, walking around to the passenger side door. The door squealed when I pulled it open, sagging slightly.

Water was dripping through the convertible soft-top and into the back seat and the smell of mildew and mold hit me. I tossed the suitcase onto the floorboard on the passenger side and went to get in the car.

Gail grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging into the inside of my upper arm. When I looked at her, her eyes were red with tears running down her face.

"I'm pregnant!" She blurted out.

My heart got colder. The same words she had used when I was in 10th grade and tried to break up with her. Same thing she told all her friends and her parents. Same reasoning that had ended up with my marrying her in front of  a Justice of the Peace with her shotgun packing father standing behind us.

The same goddamn lie.

"Then have Dave raise his own child, slut," I told her, yanking my arm from her hand and sliding into the passenger seat. Before she could recover I slammed the door and slid over to the driver's side. She was still standing there when I ground on the starter, pumping the gas and playing with the choke with my left hand. Before she could completely recover the Dart started and I backed out of the driveway. One of the backup lights were out, just like the headlight, blinker, and brakelight on that side, but I could see well enough to turn the car around and head up the pot hole filled dirt road that would take me out of Smiling Oaks trailer park.

I didn't bother looking in the rearview mirror. I didn't want to see her. I didn't care any more.

The road hissed under the worn tires of the Dart as I pulled onto the highway, heading for town. I had an appointment to keep, and I intended on keeping it. It was the first decision I had made in my life that was for nobody but me. The trailer-park dwindled in my mirrors until I turned the corner, heading toward town.

The Greyhound bus station was on the edge of town, and when I pulled up there was a big beefy buy in a Hoosiers windbreaker and a camouflage hat standing by the bus, talking to the driver. The cargo hatch was open, but it was empty. Both of them looked at me when I pulled into the parking space nearest to the bus. The bus station was closed at this hour so nobody would be able to tell anyone where I had gone. I slid out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition, and grabbing the suitcase before I slammed the door twice before it finally stuck.

The guy in the windbreaker came up, handing me a packet.

"You have your ID?" He asked me. He looked doubtful as I took the packet and nodded. "Good luck," was all he said. He handed me a bus ticket. A glance at it told me that I'd be heading across the border to Nashville.

"Get in, we can get an early start," The fat bus driver said in an odd accent. I just nodded. He took my suitcase, throwing it under the bus and slamming the cargo hatch shut as I climbed on the bus.

Empty.

I took a seat in the middle, leaning the seat back so I could stare at the ceiling as the driver put the big bus in gear and pulled out.

We didn't go through town, heading south on the highway. I made the stupid mistake of looking when we passed the trailer park.

Dave's truck, a brand new 1981 Ford pickup, was parked where the Dart had been only a half hour before.

I just looked away.

Happy seventeenth birthday, Paul.