The Runway

"Now [she] goes along the dark road, thither

whence they say no one returns."

-Gauis Valerius Catullus

The townspeople call the two-mile stretch north of St. Gervais, Minnesota, The Runway. They say you can land a Piper Cub on the straightaway (as had once happened when a pilot noticed his engine was spewing oil) and still have room to spare, as you taxi to a stop at the fading red barn where the road angles left.

Other more down-to-earth sojourners find the freshly tarred Runway with its white lane-markers and breakdown lanes irresistible as well.

It’s Labor Day, the day before school starts, and a blond girl, Andy Leyk by name, arrives on the scene and stoops to fasten her skates. Volleyball season looms near, and her goal is to build her stamina to playing conditions. At 5'10" she’s a force to be reckoned with, whether spiking or blocking the textured white ball.

Passing farmers on their way to Pomeranz’s Mill slow to ogle the tall girl in red sports bra and black lycra shorts with her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.

But Andy is oblivious to this boorish behavior. She fusses and fumes as she fastens the buckles on her skates. This past Friday night, she’d slept with her boyfriend, Trace--their first time--and she’s miffed at herself. She said no and he said yes and she said no and he said yes and she said if it means that much to you. What a wuss she was! Spreading her legs for a hockey player reeking of Brut aftershave. Did she really want a boy like her father–a brooding, silent type with the communication skills of a fencepost?

She tosses her blond tresses, dispelling the nagging memory to an airtight compartment in the back of her mind, and triggering the stopwatch hanging around her neck, she begins the left-right motion she’ll need to get up to Bonnie Blair speed. Like the Olympic gold medalist, her arms rotate forward and back, forward and back, muscles stretching and contracting like sinewy taffy; and soon, Trace forgotten, she’s sprinting by the yellow wheat stubble on the left, breathing in the clover scent from the field on the right, and she’s feeling as if any second now she’ll lift off and fly away, much as the wounded Piper Cub had when the pilot patched the oil leak.

But then she senses something amiss, and the small hairs on the back of her neck rise to attention. She can’t shake the creepy sensation that seizes her when a car approaches from behind.

This time she has a reason to be distressed.

A sports coupe pulls up alongside; she can hear the whir of an electric window and a man says, "Hey, beautiful. You look like you could race professionally."

She slows, squints at the shiny coupe, waxed to such a high gloss it radiates heat. It’s the same guy who’s been bugging her for weeks. "Will you leave me the fuck alone!" she says. She returns to her rhythmic motion, and the coupe recedes, but she hears the engine race, and when she glances over her shoulder, the fender of the coupe bangs into her hip, hurtling her into the ditch, where she bashes her head against a large jutting rock.

The driver stops his car, gets out, and looks both ways. Nobody around, nobody coming. She’s lying there in the ditch, her head bent all cockeyed. He grips her underarms and drags her up to the breakdown lane, then boosts her up, one-hands the door handle, and carefully arranges her body on the narrow back seat, face up. He watches, half expecting her to sit up and scold him. Already he is aroused. Such a flimsy sports bra, not much support at all, and the girl has breasts that would give Anna Nicole Smith an inferiority complex.

He drives to the abandoned farmhouse at the end of The Runway, and with the girl cradled in his arms, he shoulders his way through the rickety door. His heart pounds like a welterweight’s speedbag, his hands shake, but he manages to lower her body onto the floor, one hand behind her head, as if she were a delicate Greek vase.

Shedding his coat to use as a blanket, he can hardly wait. He unbuckles the skates, pulls down the elastic shorts, the red sports bra. She’s painted her toenails an off-shade of pink, and this, mixed with the smell of talcum powder and sweat, excites him almost as much as her creamy white breasts and golden slit of pubic hair. He runs his fingers through her silken locks, pockets the green elastic tie to keep as a souvenir, then fondles her breasts, slides his hands up and down her thighs.

Paranoia grips him. Even a fresh-faced small-town girl could be screwing an AC/DC HIV positive. That hockey player she was dating could be cornholing his teammates on the side. He’d just read about these hazing incidents where some of the boys had a fondness for the old poopshooter. Yeah, the pervs were multiplying exponentially all right. Better safe than sorry, he always said.

She must be already dead, though, for when he fingers her and finally enters, she feels clammy and the juices are missing.

When he finishes, he wipes himself off, gathers her in his arms, carries her out to the coupe, gently places her in the boot. He’s aroused again, but he doesn’t want to push his luck. They’ll be searching for her, and the farmhouse is too close to The Runway.

After he’s driven several miles down the highway, searching for a quarry entrance or a farmer’s access road, he realizes he’s left her skates and clothes at the farmhouse.

Frantically, he spins the wheel of the coupe, does a screaming one-eighty, keeping his foot hard on the accelerator as the coupe barrels down the road.

No one there. But he swears he hears voices–-whispering, reproachful voices. He finds the skates and sprints back out to the idling coupe.

Minutes later, off to the left, he spots a farm with more silos than Cape Kennedy. The place is a half mile or so from the main road, and a grove surrounds the farmhouse and the outbuildings. Just past the farm, he finds an overgrown track. He noses the coupe through the overhanging leaves and brush, branches slapping at his hood and windshield. The reproachful whispering has followed, and he cups his hands over his ears. The road is muddy from a recent rain and his wheels spin; he stomps down on the accelerator, and the tires sink into the mud. His heart jumps into his throat, and nausea washes over him like dirty bath water. When he leaves the car, he hears twigs snapping and leaves crunching, and soon a man is standing there off to his right. "Got yourself stuck, huh?" he says, grey hair poking out from under a duck hunter’s cap, a week’s growth of beard. A quilted, black and red lumberjack coat frames a rifle held at parade rest.

"I guess so," the driver says. "I must’ve panicked when the wheels started to spin."

"Didn’t you see that ‘No Trespassing’ sign back there?"

"No, sir. Just wanted to see where this road went is all."

"You’re not a poacher, are you? Damn hunter shot one of my best beef cattle one year."

"No, sir. Just out enjoying my day off."

"I don’t suppose you’ve got a shovel?"

"No, sir. Didn’t think I’d need one."

The old man spit tobacco in the weeds. "There’s a deer stand back there in the woods. You and me’ll rip some boards off it and put ‘em under the wheels. We’ll have you out of here in a jiffy."

"Thanks. I’ll pay you for your trouble."

As they work on the car, the driver of the coupe becomes increasingly uneasy. What if the cops ask people about suspicious characters in the vicinity? He and the old farmer had been working together for at least a half hour and the grizzled old fellow’d had every opportunity to memorize his appearance. The old man is on his knees placing one of the boards under the front right wheel. Better do it now.

Maybe not, though. Two killings in St. Gervais and Sheriff Weaver would call up the National Guard.

A half hour or so later, well away from where he’d encountered the old man, the killer unearths another access road leading to a gravel pit. He’s scooping out a shallow grave for the girl when he hears voices. These voices are loud, profane. Hunters?

Not deep enough by half, but he drops her in and pushes the wet brown sand over her naked body. What a waste, he thinks. He’d been planning on keeping her for awhile and had staked out the abandoned farmhouse at the end of The Runway to insure no one lived there or ever checked on the place.

He pats the sand down over her body, hops in the coupe, and punches it, the churning wheels spitting gravel and leaves high into the air.

On his way back into St. Gervais, he gets hung up in a traffic jam at Bank Square, a frequent occurrence, as freight trains rattle through the West Side every twenty minutes or so. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, fiddles with the radio dial, checks his rearview mirror to see how long the line is. A couple of cars down, an ominous bubbletop protrudes above the other car roofs. Sheriff Weaver or "Jimminy" Miller, his Barney Fife of a deputy. He breathes in, lets it out slow, and when the traffic clears, he makes a right and then another when he reaches the Mississippi. He speeds down River Road, parks the coupe next to the old Antler Hotel, now a decrepit apartment house, gets out, jogs out onto the abandoned railroad bridge, and pitches the girl’s clothes, knotted around her skates, into the river.

He scans the riverbank. Listens. Nothing. He’s pretty sure no one has seen him. It’s one o’clock and most of the townspeople are either at work or just finishing their dinners.

 See Dave Schwinghammer's novel, SOLDIER'S GAP available at www.Amazon.com.