Page 43 of Break for Me

TRISTA

I didn’t have to walk very long before a trucker pulled over to ask if I needed a ride. Hitchhiking wasn’t wise. I’d always known that. But the feral man I’d left chained to a bed in a hotel a few miles back was probably way more dangerous than this older, overweight, balding man with kind eyes and a crooked smile. He said his name was Mark. I hadn’t bothered to offer one in return.

“Where are you headed?” He asked once I’d climbed into the cab with him and tucked my backpack down at my feet.

“Wherever you’ll take me,” I said and tried to smile.

“Not going anywhere in particular?” He asked again. “That’s odd. I’m taking this load to Louisville. Driving straight through from here. Only stopping for piss breaks. It’ll be about seven hours from here.”

“Where is here? Where are we now?” I asked. He looked at me like I was insane.

“Just this side of the state line between Iowa and Illinois,” he finally said. “You alright? Don’t know where you are, don’t know where you’re going. You okay? You know, in the head?”

I laughed at that. I was most certainly not well in the head.

“I didn’t break out of a mental health facility, if that’s what you’re asking, Mark.”

“Did you break out of a prison?” He asked. “Not trying to be too nosy. Just don’t see many gals like you out here hitchhiking these days. It’s really not safe.”

“I didn’t break out of prison either,” I said and laughed again. “I just don’t have a lot of other options right now, but I can pay you for the ride. Or pay for your gas.”

“I don’t need your money. Sounds like you’re going to be needing it if you’re moving across the country without much of a plan. I’m going this direction anyway, it’s not taking any extra effort on my part to just let you sit there.”

I felt like a horrible person instantly. I had no idea what kind of danger I was putting this man in just by asking him for a ride. Jersey hadn’t exactly hurt me. He didn’t hit me. He didn’t touch me until I started instigating it. Hell, the man even asked if I wanted him not to before he fucked me like a savage. But he was also the kind of man who stuffed me, and likely others, right into his trunk without even a second thought when there was money to be made. He carried weapons and technology that were undoubtedly illegal. I hadn’t seen him kill anybody, but the unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that it probably wasn’t outside the realm of his job requirements. I found myself hoping to any holy creature, Persephone included, that if Jersey did catch up to me at some point in the next seven hours, he wouldn’t hurt Mark just for trying to help a stranger who needed a ride.

“You have kids? Or a wife?” I asked him.

“No ma’am,” he said and shook his head. “Truck driving isn’t very family friendly. Seems unfair to try to have a wife that you’d never get to see and still expect her to be faithful.”

Thank God.

“You?” He asked. “Family?”

“Not really,” I said and felt everything inside me come to grinding halt. “My dad passed away when I was six. Heart attack. I gained a stepdad and stepbrothers when my mom remarried, but I don’t think I’d call them a family.”

“Sorry to hear that. You were close with your dad?”

“I don’t really know. It’s hard to say. Six years isn’t a lot of time to have with someone when you were too young to remember most of it. And the more time passes, it seems like the more I forget what I did have with him.”

Mark didn’t seem interested in asking other questions after that. My depressing and detached air must’ve filled the cab of his truck and made it terribly uncomfortable for him, but you couldn’t have a stepdad like mine and continue functioning with regular human emotions. You couldn’t have stepbrothers like mine and still allow yourself to feel the kinds of things they used to do every time someone asked about family. That was when people ended up becoming victims of their own minds. Those people found themselves dead by their own methods all too often.

We only stopped twice between wherever we’d been in Iowa and Louisville, and while Mark got out to get gas once and go into a rest stop the other time, I waited anxiously in the truck the whole time. I couldn’t forbid him from stopping, but I sure as shit couldn’t shake feeling like Jersey would be getting closer by the second. I didn’t know what kind of resources he and Memphis would have to get those tires replaced or how quickly he’d be able to escape those handcuffs. I had no way of knowing how much of a head start I’d given myself, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t big enough.

“My stop is just a few more miles up this road,” Mark said. “Anywhere in particular you want me to drop you off?”

We weren’t really within what I imagined were the “city” pieces of Louisville. This was more residential, with houses and farms, restaurants and bars every so often.

“Just anywhere is fine,” I said. “The next gas station or bar or restaurant. Anywhere that’s open to the public where I can decide what happens next.”

“Do you need help?” He asked, pulling into what I guessed was a bar. “I don’t want to get mixed up in trouble or nothing, but do you need a phone or something? You can use mine if you need to call somebody for help.”

He didn’t want to help any further than the ride he’d just given me, but he wanted to be able to offer me access to someone who might help. That’s probably what a sense of self-preservation looked like in normal humans. It was weird.

“No,” I said and smiled while I hopped out of his truck. “But thank you. You might’ve saved my life, Mark.”

“Might have?” He asked.

“I’ll be fine,” I said and smiled at him another time. I waited where I was in the parking lot while Mark took the truck in a big circle to turn around and leave the lot before he was on his way again.

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