1. TRUCK STOP – Evan Richardson - 1
The bright morning sunlight had given way to a sky as black as night, and it was
raining buckets when Brad’s Jeep pulled up in front of the courthouse building where
Hank waited on the front steps under an overhead protection. When Hank saw the Jeep,
he raced down the walkway and quickly jumped inside.
He had a reason for asking Brad to pick him up, and soon after the Jeep rounded
the square and headed out toward Cherry Heights, where there was a crossroad to the
interstate, and back to the truck stop, Hank got right to it, when Brad asked, “Did they
know if it was Nell?”
“They don’t know yet,” Hank responded, observing the sheets of rain through the
windshield, obscuring their vision.
“Right,” Brad replied. “Well, let’s pray it ain’t.”
With the center of town not far from the crossroad through Cherry Heights, the
Jeep soon turned onto the crossroad, where on either side, the lights from the bars,
restaurants, and fast food chains whizzed past in a blur.
Picking up from Brad’s last statement, Hank asked: “You a prayin’ man?”
Brad paused. He hadn’t prayed for anything ever as far as he could remember, but
to keep up appearances he answered, “When I want somethin’.”
His eyes on him like a hawk, Hank asked: “You want my wife?”
Brad’s foot struck the accelerator, picking up speed. If this was to be the
conversation, he wanted to get back to the truck stop as soon as possible. The Jeep was
now going 60 mph, skidding every so often when large sheets of rain slide over the road,
but Hank didn’t take his eyes off Brad.
“What are you talkin’ ‘bout?” Brad asked, his nervousness making his driving
erratic, and a bit reckless.
“I see the way you look at her,” Hank replied, unconcerned with Brad’s driving.
He knew Brad wasn’t about to total his Jeep, though their speed had picked up to 70 mph,
guarded by the rain that kept the cops at bay.
“I think you got it wrong, man,” Brad said.
“I don’t think so,” Hank returned, keeping up his grilling without flinching. He
never felt stronger than at this moment. Something was giving him strength, even if it

2. TRUCK STOP – Evan Richardson - 2
was his anger. “Nell didn’t neither. I should’ve listened to her.” Then he announced what
he’d been working up to: “You and me are finished.”
They were approaching the interstate that was heavily patrolled, more than Cherry
Heights. Brad had to slow down and when he put on the brakes, the Jeep skidded and
curved. He guided into the skid and straightened up the Jeep as they came to a stop,
waiting to enter the interstate.
“You firin’ me?” Brad asked.
“Yeah,” Hank returned, matter-of-factly.
“Sure this ain’t ‘cause you’re riled up?”
“Yeah, I’m riled up,” Hank answered, his eyes still fixed on Brad, and proud he
had the guts to say these things. “I’m riled up ‘bout you. Pack up your stuff. I want you
out tonight.”
“Tonight?” Brad asked, guiding his Jeep onto the interstate. “Where will I go?”
“I don’t give a damn where you go. I want you off my property tonight.”
Rubbing his forehead, as if to calm his tension, Brad replied, “Okay, man. If
that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
Their ride back to the truck stop was swift without further conversation. When
Brad’s Jeep ripped into the parking area and stopped, Hank got out, going directly inside
the truck stop, while Brad pulled the Jeep closer to the garage.
With the rain pouring down in torrents, Brad raced up the outside stairs of the
garage, and went inside the room that Hank had loaned him. Pulling a large canvas duffle
bag from under the bed, he began throwing everything from the bureau and the bathroom
into it, including the gun with which Lulu Mae had killed Nell, still wrapped in the red
bandana.
When everything was inside the duffle bag, he hauled it to the door. His eyes
connected with the bare space behind the bed where Hank’s crucifix used to hang, and
taking the crucifix from the bedside table drawer, he re-hung the crucifix on the wall.
“So long, man,” he said to the figure on the cross. “It’s been cool knowin’ you.”

3. TRUCK STOP – Evan Richardson - 3
Lugging the duffle bag out the door, he went to his Jeep, threw the bag into the
backseat, got inside, and tore angrily out of there, disappearing into the night as if he’d
never been there.
§ § § § §
Lightening streaked across Hank and Lulu Mae’s darkened bedroom, illuminating
it. Across the big brass bed Lulu Mae lay asleep, still exhausted from her previous night’s
activities. She had gone to bed early, thankful for a rainy night that had cooled things
down to bearable, and she hadn’t heard Hank come in. The lightning was followed by a
tremendous clap of thunder, and she awakened to Hank’s ghostly white face staring down
at her, where he sat beside her on the bed.
Startled, she jumped away, and gasped, “Hank! My God! You scared the hell
outta me.”
“Sorry, honey,” he said, getting up from the bed. “I was jus’ lookin’ at your
beautiful face.”
She didn’t believe him because she didn’t feel particularly beautiful, and hadn’t
since the killings. Something about him had changed which unnerved to her.
“Did they…did they find out anything?” she asked cautiously, sitting up in the
bed.
“Nothin’ for sure yet,” he replied, half in denial, and half holding onto hope as
Sheriff Bob had suggested.
Clicking on a lamp on the bureau, he leaned across the light to place some change
from his pocket on the bureau, with the light distorting his features, reminding her of the
barker’s hideous freaks at the carnival they had seen earlier that summer.
“You been there all day,” she said, suspecting there was more that he was keeping
from her, “and they still don’t know nothin’?”
He removed his shirt, wrinkled and damp from the rain that he’d been in since
leaving Louisville early that morning.
“It’s probably Nell,” he replied glumly, staring down at the fine hardwood floor
that his father had put in the upstairs rooms of the truck stop, old but serving a lifetime

4. TRUCK STOP – Evan Richardson - 4
because of their good quality. He continued: “They gotta send stuff off to another lab.
But it’s probably Nell.”
Relieved they had found nothing more--specifically the matchbook--Lulu Mae got
out of bed, coming to him and embracing him.
“We’ll jus’ wait and see,” she said as compassionately as she was capable.
Lifting her face with his finger, he looked into her eyes. As one who knows
someone well, having slept next to them for years, familiar with their body, their
genitalia, dressed and undressed in front of them, knew even parts of their mind that they
never intended to reveal, and did, he sensed a darkness in her like she was hiding
something. With all of the deceit he believed he’d already suffered, and wanting to see
her reaction, he cut to the chase.
“I fired Brad,” he said casually.
Dropping her embrace, she responded, “You what?”
All of her dreams of escape swept away at that moment, starkly emphasized by a
streak of lightning and a blast of thunder, leaving her numb to her core.
“I didn’t trust him,” he clarified, counting the change he’d deposited on the
bureau. “I don’t want him here no more.”
She didn’t trust Brad either but she didn’t want him gone with information that
would implicate her in murder. “We need Brad!” she exclaimed, anxiously searching for
a way to change his mind. “Me and you can’t work this place alone.”
“I’ll find somebody,” he said, scooping up the change and depositing it into a
small wooden box where he kept loose change.
“But why?” she asked, confused and desperate “What did he do?’
He turned to her, and the light from the bureau lamp again cast eerie shadows
across his face in a hideous way. “You know what he did,” he said, his accusing eyes
burning into her soul like a hot poker.
As two cats preparing to spar on a backyard fence, they stood motionless staring
at one another, when, deluded that she saw a light flicker from the garage, she burst from
the room, propelled by some involuntary will; out of the truck stop, with the rain slicing
her face like razors, and up the outside stairs to the room that Brad had once occupied.
“Brad!” she screamed, throwing open the door.

5. TRUCK STOP – Evan Richardson - 5
The bureau drawers were open and empty; everything was gone, except Hank’s
crucifix on the wall. It was true: Brad was gone, and with him evidence that could send
her up for murder, along with all of her hopes of getting out of there.
“His Jeep’s gone, too,” Hank announced, entering behind her.
Whirling around, she faced him, this time as the cat that had lost the fight.
Everything was out; no more pretenses, as revealed on Hank’s face. But getting the gun
before she was implicated in murder still remained, and she had no idea how to get it.
Unable to sustain Hank’s accusing eyes one more second, she raced past him out
the door; the gushing air of her departure slashing him like a whip, beating his heart to
death.

6. TRUCK STOP – Evan Richardson - 5
The bureau drawers were open and empty; everything was gone, except Hank’s
crucifix on the wall. It was true: Brad was gone, and with him evidence that could send
her up for murder, along with all of her hopes of getting out of there.
“His Jeep’s gone, too,” Hank announced, entering behind her.
Whirling around, she faced him, this time as the cat that had lost the fight.
Everything was out; no more pretenses, as revealed on Hank’s face. But getting the gun
before she was implicated in murder still remained, and she had no idea how to get it.
Unable to sustain Hank’s accusing eyes one more second, she raced past him out
the door; the gushing air of her departure slashing him like a whip, beating his heart to
death.