Drop Off

I own my own rig, and do Wal-Mart runs in this area of Oklahoma regularly. When I come through Arrowhead, I get here early, early enough to unload and spend some time in the break room with some of the workers on the morning shift. Queen of the break room is Gladys, with her scowl and protective instinct for the other workers, especially the young girls, like Mary Beth, who get hit on regularly by a stock man named Vic. Now Vic unloads the truck, and also stocks the shelves, and has been around this Arrowhead store for quite some time, so I guess I know him as well as anyone. And I know that, yes, he's hit on most of the women working there at that store, except maybe Gladys herself, who's married, and he's been successful with quite a few of them, and he never gave up on Mary Beth herself, always trying to charm her, often right in front of me and anyone else, shamelessly, relentlessly. It was no secret that he was after her.

Mary Beth, young, shy, pretty, turned pink easily, and was the object of a lot of attention around Arrowhead, I'm sure, although she grew up in the country outside of there and not everyone knew her. But one time I was up front, buying something, and some young local guy had come in, just to talk to her, and it was uncomfortable at her register, because he was stammering, wanted to ask her out, and whatever he was buying was long ago rung up and in its bag. I remember being a little amused because they were both so young, so uncomfortable; I'd kind of had my eyes on her myself, but I'm a little older, not in the area, and all that, so I didn't worry too much about it. Anyway, I figured there were lots of guys like this one, but everyone kind of wondered who Mary Beth would fall for, and Gladys, for one, was trying to make sure it wasn't Vic.

There were some other characters around, Leroy, the huge Indian guy who helped unload; Ferris, the manager, a kind of go-getter guy who wanted to make it in the business world, and was concerned about the image of his store; and one dairy man, Maxwell, who I remember because he'd be there like clockwork, no matter what else happened; he was always putting the milk on the shelves, stopping in the small room to read the paper or grab a cup of coffee before his next drop-off. I had more in common with him, since we were both drop-by visitors, but he knew the town better, since he was from around there, whereas I did five or six towns before the run was over, and never went anywhere in Arrowhead besides this particular Wal-Mart.

The roads outside Arrowhead are deserted; the woods come right up to them, and the hilly country flattens out, I'm sure, to the west, but is pretty wild right there, and foggy in the mornings when I come through. So one morning I see this car dangling off the edge of the road, about four or five miles before I get to Arrowhead, early in the morning, front tires on the road, facing the center of the road, but back tires just hanging in the air over the side of the road, not sitting on anything. I thought, if a person jumped on the hood of the back trunk, that car would go rolling down into the ditch, about twenty feet down, and be hard to get back up off the road. I stopped my truck, which is no small accomplishment, set blinkers going, and walked back to inspect it, see if there was anyone asleep in the seat, or unconscious. Nobody around, not a sound; there were skid marks on the road, but mostly only crickets was all I heard, the sounds of the woods moving in on me. I got back in the truck, and used a cell and a cb to let everyone know what was going on. I'm pretty well connected to the police, the road crews, just about anyone who has anything to do with stuff like this, so it's a big day when I get to really use any of that equipment.

So when I got into town, and unloaded, I really wanted to know what they'd found out, but I almost never skipped my morning break back with the workers, Gladys the queen bee ruling the roost, Maxwell popping in with his creamer and fresh donuts, and old Leroy downing coffees like he was hooked up to a machine. There were several other people there: Ferris kept trying to get someone to clean up a mess up in the front corner of the store, but I also remember Magdalena, Emily, Dorothy, and LeeAnn. I remember this partly because I mentioned the car, a two-toned boat, a Buick or something, and several of these women got a strange look, and Gladys scowled and, I'm sure, intimidated them into silence. What could they know? I was curious to be by my radios and find out the details, but I also wanted my coffee. I didn't want anyone to think anything was unusual.

Now there were several conflicts going on at that time, and one was between Ferris and me; a dead dog had been found in a piece of furniture, a return, that I had picked up at this very Arrowhead store, and Ferris was all over me, trying to figure out how it had gotten there. I don't touch this stuff, I told him; it was their responsibility, not mine. He wanted to know where I stopped after Arrowhead; what happened when I was in these break rooms; could anyone theoretically get at this piece of furniture and slip a dead dog in there if they wanted to, and all that. It's not my problem, I told him, I'm just a driver. You load and unload. Ask these guys, I said, pointing at Leroy, and Rodney too; who was another stockman, a shy, mousy guy who occasionally loaded and unloaded. I noticed at that moment that Vic wasn't around; he usually popped in, eying the women, but he could be anywhere, for all I knew. All three could be guilty, if you asked me, I had no love lost for any of them, though why I assumed it was a guy, I don't know, maybe just because they had the best access, back there where the loading happened, and the women had different routes, to and from their cash registers and all.

So I'd almost forgotten about the Buick when I got back in the truck, but my radios immediately reminded me. I'd barely gotten out of Arrowhead when I heard the details: it was a Buick, registered to one Dale Byrum, who had worked the night shift at the factory, had denied using the car, and had passed all sobriety tests. Usually they're looking for a drunk in cases like this; some guy like Dale Byrum runs off the road, realizes he's in trouble for being drunk, gets out and walks home the dark way, hoping to sober up before they come after him. Not Mr. Byrum- he appeared to be at the factory the whole time. So they were running around town, trying to figure out who could have gotten the car, taken it for a joy ride, and run off the road in the middle of the night, leaving it dangling there for me to find. But they still hadn't found out, when my radio went out of reach to their police scanner, and I hit my next drop off.

To tell the truth, I was still stinging at Ferris' accusation that I was somehow responsible for the dead dog, negligent in the way I handled my truck at the drop offs, or somehow letting someone get in and put a dog in his returned furniture. I retraced my steps, through all the drop offs, starting at Arrowhead, and tried to figure out where someone could get into the back of the truck and put a dog there, but I really couldn't come up with anything. I went through my day like I usually do, more or less helping people with the loading, but not doing much of the really heavy lifting, and this time I stayed more aloof from it than usual; the merchandise was soiling me, ruining my name, and I didn't have to touch it, it said so right in my contract. I had a bad taste in my mouth from Ferris' questioning and the lingering feeling that he'd thought maybe I'd put that dog in there. I figured, that dog could have got in there himself, for all you're paying attention. He should be watching the people in his own store, and not be worrying about what I do on my route. Now I knew that the big boys would be down, asking questions and all, but it was only a dog- how much attention did that merit? Did anyone even miss it yet?

When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine, and when I called it back, it was a detective. This was now in the evening. By now there had been some developments in the Buick case, though the detective was not exactly forthcoming. They had towed the Buick to a police lot that morning, but later in the afternoon another car was backed into it, and they heard a yell come from the trunk. At that point they had opened the trunk and found a man, bound and gagged, stuffed in the trunk, still alive but pretty stiff from sitting in there a long time. I told them the same thing I'd told them earlier; I hadn't heard a thing. I thought of that big old Buick trunk dangling over the edge of that road, though, and wondered if that guy was even awake then, or, if maybe he was put in there later, or what. I remember thinking, one bad move and this car goes down that twenty-foot drop off.

The detective was nice enough, but he didn't get much out of me; I didn't know much. They already knew how the car had skidded; how it had ended up where it was; how the driver had just walked away, apparently. If they'd found the driver, they didn't tell. Wasn't Dale Byrum, he said; we know that. And it didn't look like his wife, either; she, Gladys Byrum, was working at that same Wal-Mart that you deliver to.

Gladys, I thought; she'd been there at the break room that morning, I knew it. If she'd put some guy in the trunk and left the car there in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, she sure did a good job of getting to work and making everything look like normal, her scowl in place, her apron in order. This is what I was thinking as I rolled past that lonely spot on the road, about four or five miles outside of Arrowhead, where I'd seen the Buick. I slowed down, looked at the skid marks, looked at the drop off, looked at the woods on either side. In my mind's eye I could still see that Buick, dangling there.

When I got to Arrowhead, I got the rest of the story, or at least, I got most of the pieces, as time went on. It was Vic who had been tied up and stuffed into the trunk; it was Mary Beth who had not only been missing that day, but had been missing since that time. She was hiding out there somewhere, and not coming to work, apparently. And it was her dog that had been killed, too. She'd been close to that dog, but the dog got in the way between her and Vic, and Vic had done it in, maybe, it was unclear exactly what had happened. Vic had stuck that dog in the furniture. But Leroy, it seems, had caught him, and told everyone. Getting Vic tied up and stuffed in the trunk was a cooperative effort, apparently; there were lots of people willing to help. They were grateful, though, that Vic hadn't been killed; that would have been a burden to carry, if that had happened. But Vic was grateful too; he woke up at just the right time; he lived through it; he came out better than the dog, and he didn't press charges against anyone. I don't think anyone really believed his story of the dog attacking him, him doing in the dog out of self-defense, but, they kind of grudgingly let him work there again, and he unloaded lots more trucks, even after the big boys were finished talking to him. I guess he must have been a dependable worker, or a smooth talker, or both, because he didn't lose his job over the incident, and in some ways, he went on like nothing had happened.

I always kept my distance from him, after that, though. He'd used my truck in his plotting, and that crossed my line. And besides that, I never saw Mary Beth again, and that was too bad; it seemed to me like she should have stayed there at the Wal-Mart, and he should have run off and hid somewhere. But who knows? I'll probably never know the whole story, like where exactly she was going to put him, because, after all, I don't even live there, and I only hear what they feel like telling me, and, because, maybe they didn't even know. Besides, they're the ones who have to keep living with each other, long after the big boys, and the dairy man, and I, have rolled on down the road.

6-07