Chaucer Circle Chapter 1

By Leon Rice

Getting the Goods: A Twist in the Scenario The headlights from his car cut the night sky in front of him. There were no other cars out at three in the morning. He liked being out in the country, especially at night, speeding down the highway, with nothing but wide open space and stars above him. He felt free. The road had curves and hills that challenged his driving skills. It was a 95 mile stretch, between Andover and Camden that he had made many time over the past year. He always made the trip at night - the solitude was appealing. About five miles before you reached Camden, the road straightened out and was flat and level. This was a place for speed. He accelerated to 120 and screamed down the highway, bugs spattering on the windshield. He increased to 150, with slight vibration on the steering wheel. That was it. That was all the excitement he could handle and he backed off on the speed to a mild 90 MPH. Hed never make a race car driver he thought - not enough nerve. Camden was a paltry little place whos only purpose was a stop for the local express train to unload freight to a Wal-Mart distribution center and a truck stop located there. As he approached Camden, the night sky was lit up with phosphorescent light and the smell of diesel fuel filled the air. He down shifted into 3rd gear and the engine rumbled as the car slowed down. He turned right in to the parking lot of the truck stop and found himself lost among massive tractor trailer trucks most with engines idling; There was an open gas pump and he pulled up next to it, refueled the car, and went inside to pay. It seemed that practically everyone from the interstate was there getting fuel. He didn't like truck drivers - what a motley crew he thought. Drivers, stunk from their long journeys on the interstate smelled of perspiration, and odors that he couldn't even identify. He made his way through the crowded terminal to the restaurant and found a seat at a table next to the massive window looking out onto the parking lot. So what would it be, he thought, a burger, a steak, or breakfast. Breakfast sounded good. The waitress took his order and returned to the kitchen. He sat quietly watching the people in the restaurant. He loved to people watch. You really saw some strange people in truck stops. He was constantly amused, trying to tell as much as he could about people simply by a brief glance up and down. The eggs were crap and the bacon was charred. How the hell do you screw up eggs and bacon he thought as he shoveled in the last bite. The hash browns were nothing more than congealed grease. Truck stops were suppose to have good food. Who the hell came up with that little bit of wisdom? Dishes clattered and voices mumbled as an air of urgency from the travelers filled the terminal and restaurant. On his way out, the door swung open wide as the humid, acrid, air enveloped his face. Truck stops . . . a world unto their own. It was 4 in the morning and the temperature was still in the nineties. The heat was oppressive, but August was winding down and September would usher in cooler temps, he hoped. He started the car revved the engine a couple of times and made a left out of the parking lot. It was exactly 4 miles from the truck terminal to the abandoned store front on a now deserted main street of Camden. He turned into the alley, pulled up behind the building and turned off the engine. He turned on the radio and settled in for a short wait, till he would meet his contact. He almost always kept the radio on, no matter what he was doing; it relieved the tedium that was sometimes his life. He had to admit though, that since meeting professor Halerin, his life had become much more exciting. He was meeting new people at the college and his classes were interesting. Five hundred a pop. That's what this little trip paid. Five hundred bucks. All he had to do was deliver a

briefcase and pick up four packages about a foot square and deliver them to a location in Andover. The delivery spot was always different; Halerin always told him each time where to deliver the packages. This was easy money. He made this little trip every month. If he kept this up, he'd have no trouble meeting expenses for the next school year - tuition and all. Halerin told him that he needed to watch out and take care when dealing with the people dropping off the packages. What was it that Halerin had said, "Oh yea, these people were 'quintessentially unsavory people to say the least.'" Halerin had a way with words. The thing that really scared Enzy, was the gun. He had never been around guns in his life and just the thought of having a gun in his possession made him nervous. He had done as Halerin instructed, and practiced using the gun and had, he thought, become proficient with it. But if he needed to use it, he wasn't sure that he would have the presence to use it appropriately. This part of the trip was scary as shit. Sitting around in a dark alley waiting for God knows who these people really were. He didn't know what was in the packages, and quite frankly, he didn't give a damn. The less he knew, the better, he thought. He knew in his heart that this was illegal, but he needed the money and he was willing to take the risk. He also knew in his heart that Halerin was probably a drug dealer. To him, that was the brilliant part; no body would ever suspect Halerin, a college professor, to be a drug dealer, and after all, being a courier for him was paying for his education. * * * *

The still of the early morning was disturbed only by the sound of the birds, making their morning conversations as they awaited the sunrise. The air was hot and thick, with no breeze what so ever. As Enzy surveyed that scene, the presence of trash strewn all around, pretty much summed up his feelings about himself - trash . . . Without warning, a van turned into the alley, turned off it's lights and pulled up next to Enzy's car. Halerin had told Enzy that he really had to be careful with these people, and that if he didn't watch it, they would steel the money in the case, shoot him, and that would be the end of it. Enzy checked his gun to make sure it was loaded and stuck it under his belt in the small of his back. He pressed the trunk release and got out of the car, with his heart in his mouth. laboring to catch his breath. He was scared shitless. "No neck" got out of the passenger side of the van and slide open the side door. There they were, the object of all of this, the four packages wrapped in brown paper. He lifted the packages, two at a time, and placed them in the trunk of the car. Enzy reached in the passenger side window of his car a got the briefcase. When he turned around he was looking down the end of a pistol. As Enzy reached around to his back to get his gun, the driver got out of the van a started around the front of it, as he drew his gun from under his arm. This is what Enzy had been frightened off - the end of his life. It seemed that the action slowed down and his thoughts speeded up. As he fell to the ground, he fired a shot into the chest of "No neck," and he collapsed to the ground. The driver, looking like a line backer for the Green Bay Packers, raised his gun to fire. Enzy fired first hitting him squarely in the forehead and his frame crashed to the ground, falling into a pile of limp flesh. The sound of the gun shots reverberated through the air, sounding like the realization of eminent thunder, shattering the silence of an otherwise lifeless morning. As Enzy surveyed the scene, he realized that is exactly what he was looking at, two "lifeless" figures on the ground. He check himself; "Arms, Ok. Legs, OK. Head, Ok. Body, Ok. I won! I fuckin' won. I got the bastards! I'm still fuckin' alive!"

The scent of spent gunpowder hung in the air like a cloud of doom, but it wasn't Enzy's doom, it was theirs. "There lays two dead son-of-a-bitches," he thought. Enzy slammed the trunk and scrambled around to the drivers side of his car, got in, and exploded from the scene in a cloud of dust, trash flying in the air, leaving the birds hung in the resulting silence of the aftermath. "What now? What in the hell am I going to do now? I'm a murderer! I'm a goddamn murderer! Welcome to reality buddy. You've really fucked up now!. I never bargained for this. Not in a million years did I bargain for this. My life is ruined. It's over!" Enzy's pulse pounded in his neck and he clenched the steering wheel with his left hand and shifted trough the gears with his right. Fear rested on his shoulders like a heavy weight pressing him into the seat of the car. Oppressed. The fear was oppressively debilitating his actions. He could hardly drive the damn car. What the hell was he going to do now? As he remembered the gun in his face, his body felt the manifestation of shear terror as he raced down the highway. He was in over his head. There was no way out of this mess. Regret. He had no idea that regret could be so overpowering. He would regret this day for the rest of his life.