A Hitch in Time Read online

  A Hitch in Time

  By Emery C. Walters

  Published by Queerteen Press

  Visit queerteen-press.com for more information.

  Copyright 2014 Emery C. Walters

  ISBN 9781611526608

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America. Queerteen Press is an imprint of JMS Books LLC.

  * * * *

  A Hitch in Time

  By Emery C. Walters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 1

  My great-aunt Sophie was a character. That’s what they called her, and not nicely meant, either. She never married or had kids, though she had a live-in companion/housekeeper, and raised a couple of nephews. I only met her a couple times, and stayed with her once when my Mom and Dad went on a cruise. I was thirteen at the time and had stopped being an adorable baby, cute toddler, sweet little Mama’s boy, and dirt magnet with a brilliant smile, and was an awkward combination of legs, arms, elbows, big hands and huge feet, with hair growing in places I’d never known I had skin, and a face that only a mother could love, or in this case, a great-aunt.

  And, oh yeah, inclined to moods, anti-socialness, writing poetry, and falling out of trees. One other thing, aka ‘self-pollution’ as our ancient dictionary called it, was now a rather frightening joy, and I say that because, well, all I ever thought of while doing it was my gym teacher, Coach ‘call me Dick and I’ll kill you’ Richard Weston.

  I was only there a week and never had a clue. So now I’ve just turned eighteen, and the ‘rents are going on another cruise. I told them and told them I’m old enough to stay home alone and watch the house, and besides, my friends aren’t the kind to come over, drink up all the booze, and have sex all over the house. Neither of them. But I digress. Anyhow, they shipped me off to Aunt Sophie’s again.

  They’d given me money to buy a train ticket and dropped me off at the station. Little did they know…they knew I was old enough to take the train by myself but not to stay home by myself? Parents. Mom? Dad? Hello? I’m a legal adult, you know. Many people my age are living on their own.

  As soon as they left, I pocketed the money and went out a different door to hitch a ride. That money was mine. I had a bit of an attitude about this trip, and I planned on nursing that anger as long as I could. I considered taking up smoking, but, ugh. I considered wearing clothes from a thrift store, but, bleagh. I considered working my way through every girl that had ever winked or smiled at me, but, oh God, no. I shuddered. My mom had said some perfectly awful things to me. Well, there’s more but I don’t want to talk about it. I am not a girl liker. Too bad.

  Now. Hitch-hiking! Let the games begin!

  Chapter 2

  I stalked out the side door of the station and crossed over the street to the eastbound side. It was busy enough and yet out of the way. My folks had to go the other direction. I leaned up against a lamppost, pasted on a happy and innocent smile, and stuck out my thumb. This was going to be a cinch.

  I wondered what I looked like, if I would scare people or look like I was muggable. I tried different facial expressions, laughing at myself. Then I wondered how much to talk to them. Would they rather just concentrate on their driving or was I supposed to supply entertainment?

  I could talk, I’ll give you that. My mother is Irish. My father is Welsh. My name is—hold on—Shenandoah Morgan. I go by Shen or Shane, however people hear it; I don’t care. Apparently it sort of means I’m a piece of good land near the sea, but I will never tell a living soul that. I think they were both drunk when they named me. Can’t you just hear my dad calling me for supper, when I was out playing down the road with my pals?

  “Shenandoah Tristyn Morgan!”

  My friends lived for that moment, the bastards.

  * * * *

  An hour passed; oh wait, my watch says it’s only been ten minutes. But look—oh goody, my first ride. This—thing—drew up in front of me. It was purple and white, so shiny it was like a mirror. It was boxy and ugly, but when I opened the door and slid inside, I sank into luxury. I looked at the driver. He looked at me (I looked better; me, dark reddish hair, dark brown eyes, clean-shaven) (who am I kidding, I didn’t have to shave yet), smiling. A legal, non-shaving, adult. Him—fat, old, balding. But of course—it was a convertible, right? It might be a slow ride but it looked like a safe ride.

  He peeled rubber and we roared off down the highway. The radio shouted out, “And now for the number one Billboard hit from 1990—‘Hold On’ by Wilson Phillips!” And hold on I did. I had to.

  “You into cars?” my driver asked. “Oh, by the way, my name is Phil Filbert, ha-ha, I know. My mother had a sense of humor, the old bi…ird. I’m a pastor. Hold on, while I change lanes, this broad in front of me—I just gotta get past her! Ha-ha, I kill me.” My driver guffawed and when he dwindled down to chuckles, so did his speed. We were back in the appropriate lane. Did I mention it was a two-lane highway with a double yellow line? I was so glad I’d gone to the—oh wait, I hadn’t. I glanced down at my pants to make sure I still hadn’t, either. Nope, all good. I breathed.

  Mr. Filbert shoved a box toward me. It was full of doughnuts. “Open this up for me, will ya? Want to keep a hand on the wheel here, you know. “Help yourself. Pass me one of them cream-filled ones.”

  We determined where he was going and that I was going there with him, all except the last few miles. Actually he was going a lot farther, he said, but he had to stop at his mother’s first, about an hour’s drive away. He said he’d let me off as he left the highway, and did I want to know why he had to go to his mother’s?

  My mouth being full of chocolate doughnut, I nodded, since he wasn’t watching the road anyhow.

  “Well since you ask,” he stated, glancing back at the road. “You’re a nice looking kid,” he added. “You aren’t in trouble with the law, are you, ha-ha?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re not—selling anything, are you?” He glared at me suspiciously.

  I gulped. I shook my head frantically.

  “None of my business anyhow,” Phil said cheerfully. “But why buy milk if you already have the cow? Or something. Anyhow, okay here’s the story, son. This is my mother’s car. I’m supposed to use it to take her to her doctors’ appointments and church and shit like that. Her church, not mine. Anyhow…” With this, the hands both came off the wheel. He turned the radio up. “Do me!” the radio shrieked. I gulped. My imagination went from selling to cows to what the hell, what did ‘do me’ mean? Was I about to learn?

  But Phil was stuffing his face and rattling on. “So I took her to her docs yesterday and for that I got a free home-cooked mea
l and a bed for the night.” He grimaced. “And I get to use the car again the next day. Now mind, I never did like this piece of shit, but it’s only had two major recalls…so I’ve added a few things here and there. Did your folks ever tell you that if you don’t like something, you can do what you can to make it better? Yeah, you have a right to do that. Maybe even a responsibility. Too bad it doesn’t work with people. Though we can change ourselves if we try.”

  I scarfed down another doughnut. I opened my mouth to say something but didn’t get a chance. No worries about conversation here.

  Around a third doughnut, spitting sprinkles everywhere, Phil continued. I could see how he might enjoy making sermons. “This here car is, at today’s value, a fifty thousand dollar piece of crap. It did have a V-6 engine, but when I was a kid I yanked that out and upgraded. Yep, used to be a real good mechanic. Now this thing…”

  I tuned out. A car started, stopped, played music, and looked cool. That’s all I wanted in a car. Maybe a big back seat. Some fine day.

  I watched the scenery. We were going through a small backwater town, somewhere. Right in the middle of town was an old building that looked like it was ready to collapse.

  Phil nodded, “See that? That’s the Black Pussy Cat Café. Not the original, of course, but like this car, it’s been new and improved for decades. Except for the whole wood rot thing. And of course, it having been a whore house in the old days. Man, speaking of black cats.” He cleared his throat and turned to make sure I was paying attention.

  Of course I was. I tried to look rapt. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Get some Cokes out of that cooler behind ya, will you? One for me and one for you.”

  I did as requested. “Damn good stuff. Now, you remember the Black Plague, don’t you? Ha-ha of course neither of us were there, were we? Ha-ha. Now listen to this. I do sermons about this all the time. You know, how you make a change thinking it’s for the better but decades later you find out you really fucked up? Yeah, I know I just said you should change things to better when you can. And that’s exactly what this Pope Gregory the Something or other thought he was doing.”

  I got out, “But…”

  “Listen up, hear? This idiot was a lousy Pope. He tortured people, caused crusades and inquisitions, and believed that black cats were from Satan. He had his morons, I mean minions, killing cats by the gazillions. Sort of like your present day morons and gay people. Anyhow a hundred or so years passed and—whoops!—let’s pass this moron in the black Porch, er Porsche, bigoted entitled assholes all of ‘em. A nice Camaro, now, that’s different. But these Porches, ugly things. Where was I?”

  All this while passing the ugly, expensive ‘porch’ at full speed, over a double yellow line. And back into our own lane. I breathed again, wondering if Phil was going to yell yee-haw, but he didn’t.

  Phil continued, “So when all the rats infected with the Asian Black Plague came flooding into Europe, what did they find? No cats, amirite? Hence death everywhere. Now, what’s the lesson in that?” Phil glared at me.

  The radio answered, “‘Black Cat’ by Janet Jackson!” And it blared out music.

  “Damn straight,” Phil said, eminently satisfied.

  I was still confused.

  After Phil dropped me off with a wave and a trailing, “See ya!” I stood on the corner with my head spinning. He had a point, but I wasn’t sure what it had been. He was sure a funny pastor, which made me chuckle. I wondered if what he’d said about making changes would be something I could do in my own life, and if it would make things better—or worse.

  But what was the point there, short term change, long term change. Did they balance each other out? Balance, maybe that was the word I wanted. Phil had said something about balance, but I thought he’d meant the new shocks he’d put on the car.

  I also wondered what he’d meant when he’d said, “Watch out for the cops!” with a wink, just before he’d peeled out. Ah, just a joke, I figured, shrugging. And inside I thought smugly, legal adult, can’t do anything to me. So there.

  Chapter 3

  I turned and stuck out my thumb. Six police cars pulled over in front of me.

  Well, uh, I thought, hyperventilating. I took a deep breath. The passenger in the car in front of me, which was the third one in line, rolled down the window. “Get in the back,” he snarled. I gulped, opened the back door and slid in. The back seat was already occupied, by a nun.

  “Hi there, cutie!” she oozed. Then she snapped her fingers. “Give me some lovin’!” she shouted. I cringed back against the seat. My mouth may have been hanging open.

  Then the radio came to life, with a song about lovin’…oh. And the nun turned back to me and took her sunglasses off. She looked at me with my wide eyes and dropped mouth. She shook her head. “You’re not a movie buff, are you?” she asked in a deep voice. And then she and the two in the front seat roared with laughter, and we all pulled out and drove off in a cloud of six smelly exhausts.

  Cue me wracking my brain as to what movie they could possibly be thinking about. The nun crossed her legs, exposing a very hairy calf. I said politely, “So, what are you in for?”

  The answers came from all three of them.

  ‘‘We had two bags of grass, no wait, three? And how many tabs of uh, that other stuff?”

  “Now, don’t scare the boy, Sister.”

  “For impersonating a police officer.”

  I swallowed hard. I hate to admit this, but I never had been exposed to adults who teased, lied, fibbed, whatever, like this. I never even suspected adults could act like this, you know, immature. But they seemed to be having a wonderful time. This, like almost everything else, I did not know at the time. I believed everything adults told me. It was only clear to me later that they were joking and having fun at my expense. I haven’t been that naïve since. I also didn’t know that sweet innocent naivety is highly attractive to some people. Perhaps that’s why the nun smiled at me, leaned over, and planted a huge kiss right on my forehead. And that’s when I started to wonder if the nun was a man.

  It never dawned on me that these were not real police cars, either, but cars made up to look like specific police cars. Yeah, not until I saw the movie years later. I face-palmed so hard I almost broke my nose.

  But back to the present time. They were passing around a bottle of something…hesitantly I took a tiny taste. It was Kool-Aid. I didn’t taste the vodka they swore wasn’t in there. The two in the front introduced themselves as Jake and Elrod.

  Then I knew nothing.

  * * * *

  And I continued to know nothing until I woke up with a terrible headache. The sun was in the wrong place, and we were parked behind a grubby looking building. Jake and Elrod were talking quietly in the front seat, laughing together over something on someone’s phone. The nun was asleep, drooling, her—or his—face buried in my lap. My face felt funny. I didn’t feel polite. I felt sick. All I got out was a very froglike croak but Jake turned, laughed out loud, and rolled the window by me down automatically. Just in time for me to barf out of it. I was too sick to be afraid.

  Finally that part of it was over, I was empty. Jake handed me the Kool-Aid. “Just a sip,” he said. Bleagh, it tasted funny now. Elrod turned, looked at my face, managed to get his under control, took a photo of me with the phone, giggled, and said, “We ran out of vodka. That’s gin. Don’t waste it.”

  My lap warmer sat up, barfed out the other back window, gulped down some Kool-Aid, and holy shit, she really was a he. No nunnery would have ever taken that one. “I won again,” she grinned, I mean he. “Didn’t I?”

  “No, you came in second,” Elrod smiled. “Right behind Miss Sippy Valley there,” and he was looking right at me. My face fell into a silent snarl, but it made my skin hurt, so I blinked and looked at the video on Elrod’s phone.

  Not-a-nun screamed with laughter until he said, “Gotta take a whiz!” As she exited, Jake handed me a wad of money and a box of chocolate
s and three wilted roses with bites out of them. “First prize hon, you’re a wicked drag queen. You should take it up as a career.” And there I was on the screen of the little phone, made up like a hooker, an expensive one, having the time of my life. I didn’t remember any of it.

  “Don’t worry,” Elrod added, “We didn’t let anything bad happen to you.”

  Well, wasn’t that reassuring. I wanted to say, ‘define bad’, but I let it go. Elrod handed me the phone; it was mine. I smiled. Then my head attacked me again. My head buzzed like six loud cars revving their—oh, wait, there were.

  “We better let you out here,” Jake said. “The cops in the next town aren’t enamored of our—imitations. Even though they’re famous and all, but we really don’t want to be accused of ‘transporting a minor across state lines’ again.” He tilted his head. “You’re an adult, but you don’t look like one yet. But you’re a great kid, a good sport, and I have no doubt we’ll see you again.” My backpack was produced, the money shoved into it, and my not-a-nun companion said, “Go in the bar there and wash your face. You’re still wearing make-up.”

  Any smile I had fell off my face as I stood there thinking, What did she just say? But then I remembered the video on my phone. Make-up. Yeah. And a bright pink wig. And, well, never mind. I had my own clothes on, and not a breast form to be seen. And hell yeah, I’m a mother—uh, I’m an adult! I can wear make-up if I want to. I just really, really, didn’t want to, that’s all.

  I watched as the six old Dodge sedans, painted in different shapes with black and white paint, drove quietly out of the alley, and listened to the roar as they hit the highway, then I laughed and entered the back door of the bar, where, apparently, they knew me. When I came out an hour later, my face was clean and I’d been fed three hamburgers, a plate of chili fries, some beef jerky, and a soda. No booze.

  Chapter 4