Shut The Fuck Up And Die! Read Online Free Page B

THREE
     
     
    The truck bounced over the ruts in the
country road with enough force that the passenger had to brace
himself with one hand against the dashboard and the other pressed
into the roof. The suspension creaked and popped as tires crunched
through snow and every so often there was a loud thump from the bed
at the same time the man bounced off the ripped vinyl seat like a
rodeo cowboy.
    “ Damn it, Earl, slow the fuck
down!”
    The driver grinned but said nothing as he
gripped the steering wheel with hands so large that it made the
cracked leather look like a child's toy. Perhaps the extra weight
the man carried around his midsection achored him more solidly to
gravity than his lanky companion: his gut spilled across his
waistline, overlapped a belt buckle shaped like a confederate flag,
and caused his white tee shirt to ride up just below his navel..
The broad ass that spread across the seat, however, remained firmly
planted in the trough it had forced into the springs and cushion
over the years. Even the trucker's cap perched atop his scraggly
mass of brown hair stayed in place, not so much as even jiggling as
the front wheels plummeted into another snow-encrusted groove.
    Whereas the driver's unshaven jowls were
exaggerated even further by a smile, the passenger's narrow face
held the expression of a man who expected to meet the Grim Reaper
just around the next bend. His eyes were wide and round with pupils
dilated both by the darkness of the night and also by the panic
that made him his heart feel as if it were about to leap into the
narrow confines of his throat. Thin lips quivered beneath a
mustache that randomly curled over the chapped, pink flesh below
them and his sunken cheeks were flushed with the warmth of fear.
Even beneath the green coveralls that engulfed him, it was obvious
that the man's entire body was trembling.
    The truck slid around a curve in the road,
the rear wheels drifting in a way that made it seem as if the back
half of the vehicle were moving independently of the front. The
driver jerked the wheel in the opposite direction as he let out a
whoop and his passenger slammed into the door. From the bed of the
truck came a sound like plastic sliding across metal, immediately
followed by another thud.
    “ You're gonna kill the both of us,
Earl! If you don't slow the hell down, I swear t' God I'm tellin'
Mama.”
    The smile disappeared from the driver's face
as quickly as the flakes of snow melted on the warm windshield. He
shot his brother a glance that could have flash frozen that same
slush as his lips pulled back into a sneer.
    “ You ain't telling Mama shit. I'll pound your ass so hard,
Daryl, you won't see straight for a week, hear?”
    Daryl stiffened and dropped his gaze to the
empty beer bottles that clinked against one another in the floor
board. He swallowed hard and then looked back up.
    “ I . . . I don't care. I'd rather take
an ass whoopin' than die. And Mama would have your hide if she knew
you were drivin' like . . .”
    “ I ain't scared of Mama, you little
pussy.”
    Earl's voice was softer and his foot
eased off the gas pedal just enough that the bumps would no longer
jar his brother's spine and cause his teeth to clack against one
another. He adjusted the brim of his hat with one hand, looked at
himself in the rear view mirror, and scratched his chin. For a
moment, neither man spoke: now that the truck no longer clunked
with the washboard like ridges in the road, the soft strains of
Willie Nelson singing Blue Eyes Crying In
the Rain crackled through the dashboard speakers,
fading in an out through the hiss of the heater like a memory that
refused to surface.
    “ I ain't scared of Mama.” Earl finally
repeated. “But, at the same time, I reckon she could live the rest
of her life without knowing 'bout this little argument of ours.
Sound about right, Daryl?”
    Daryl only realized he'd been holding his
breath when he let it free with a quick sigh. The air pulled