The Easy Way Out

1

As dusk settled over the flaxen grasslands, a beat-up pickup truck rattled down the two-lane blacktop twenty miles per hour over the speed limit. In the passenger seat, Ashley sipped from a can of beer, the wind whipping her honey-colored hair across her high cheekbones. For most of her sixteen years, she'd grown accustomed to the male gaze and learned to deflect with what appeared to be a careless disregard. But she was aware, keenly aware. With bare feet propped on the dashboard, she cradled a crinkled paper bag in her lap.

"Last one." She cracked the top and passed the beer to the driver, still brooding, his face tight.

Harley tipped the can and guzzled. "So we haul ass all the way up to Shreveport and back. For what?" His dark hair riffled in the wind.

"He smelled a rat. You gotta know when to walk away."

He had no answer so he drank, admiring her out of the corner of his eye. It was more than the vibrancy of youth eager to blossom. There was a raging ambition, a hunger in her eyes in the way she looked at the world lying open, waiting for her.

Up ahead, a small-town gas station's lights beckoned. Harley drained his beer then tossed the can out the window. 

"This truck's just about run out and I gotta take a piss." He wiped the beer from his chin as he steered into the empty station and stopped at the gas pumps, not another customer in sight.

With his eyes on her summer-painted legs, he asked, "You got any money on you?"

She dropped her feet to the floor and fished around inside the pocket of her frayed cut-off denim shorts. She produced a folded five-dollar bill. He pushed open the door, got down from his seat, then crossed the vacant lot to the small convenience store.

Through the glass doors of the shop, she watched him shuffle to the counter. A wide-faced man with a flat nose, his belly pushing out against his faded green t-shirt, stood at the cash register. Harley gestured toward the shelf behind the man, where packs of cigarettes and cans of dipping tobacco were neatly arranged.

Observing the clumsy maneuver from the truck, Ashley clenched her fingers into tight fists. "No! No!" 

When the store manager turned his back, reaching for a can of chew, Harley hit the register, grabbed a handful of cash, and bolted.

She watched in horror, the world suddenly closing in, the unstoppable chain of events erupting. He raced for the truck, the elderly man loping after him with a tire iron in his hand, his ragged voice cussing out the insolent punk between hard gulps of air. 

Harley dove behind the wheel and cranked the engine, regret and panic widening his eyes.

The man swung, bashing one of the pickup's headlights.

Ashley jerked back against the seat.

A blue convertible sped into the parking lot behind them. The driver whipped the wheel, narrowly avoided rear-ending Harley's truck, and inadvertently plowed into the clerk, launching him off his feet, knocking the breath out of him. He tumbled out of the air, his body twisting like his arms were on backward, flopping onto the pavement, the tire iron clanging across the asphalt.

Harley floored it. The truck's wheels spun, kicking gravel.

Out the back window, Ashley watched the convertible driver on one knee attending to the motionless man. She looked down at the few crumpled bills on the seat and gasped, "We're headed to prison. Over sixty damn dollars."

His bulging eyes went to the rearview mirror. "Nobody's goin' to prison."

"That old man was staring right at us!" 

"Well, he might be..."

"Those people back there are gonna give a description of this truck to the police. The store probably has security cameras. What the fuck, Harley?" 

"I couldn't stand the notion of goin' home empty-handed."

He wasn't smart. She could accept that. In fact, his good looks and dim cognitive abilities made him useful but she couldn't tolerate his reckless unpredictability.

He took her hand. "Don't you worry. I was by myself in this truck when it happened. I'll swear to it on a stack of bibles."

She clamped her eyes in disbelief.

"Could be nothin' comes of it at all," he said. "We been lucky up 'til now."

"You can't depend on luck. Damn it."

The truck hopped over a hump in the road, momentarily tossing them off their seats.

"I love you, girl," he said. "And I'm as sorry as I can be... You love me back?"

"You picked a bad time to ask me that."