King Of Hearts
Driving home was always the worst part.
The laughter lingered longest. A child clapping. A nurse smiling despite herself. Someone forgetting pain for five blessed minutes. Those things stayed with him for a while, riding shotgun through the dark roads of Delightful.
Then the silence returned.
He stopped at a drive-through beverage store and bought a grape water he didn’t really want. Across the street, several teenagers loitered outside the closed cannabis shop, posturing for one another beneath the buzzing streetlight. One of them kicked an empty bottle into the gutter.
He noticed the old Monte Carlo when he pulled back onto the highway.
It stayed behind him through three turns.
Not close enough to panic.
Not far enough to ignore.
At the next red light, the passenger door flew open and a skinny kid slid into the seat beside him before he could react.
“Drive.”
The knife looked too large for the boy’s hand.
“Where?”
“Straight. And don’t talk.”
He drove.
The Monte Carlo disappeared in the mirror after a few blocks. The boy kept glancing over his shoulder as if police cars might materialize from thin air.
Fifteen years old, maybe.
Sixteen if the wind was behind him.
An audition, he thought.
And somewhere tonight, invisible judges were scoring it.
“You nervous?” he asked.
“Shut up.”
“That a yes?”
The boy pressed the knife harder against his ribs. “You think I won’t use it?”
“I think you don’t want to.”
The kid stared ahead. Jaw tight. Breathing too fast.
The truck rolled through the empty roads north of town.
Finally the boy muttered, “This some kinda joke to you?”
“No. Just trying to figure out why a kid your age thinks this ends well.”
“It ends however I say.”
“Does it?”
The kid shoved the knife toward his neck. “You wanna test me?”
He checked the mirror.
Then jerked the steering wheel hard left.
The truck swerved violently across the center line before straightening again.
The boy slammed against the passenger door with a curse.
“You crazy?”
“If I die,” the driver said calmly, “it won’t be because some frightened kid with a knife decided tonight was his big moment.”
The boy blinked at him.
“You’d wreck your own truck?”
“Paid for and insured.”
“That’s insane.”
“What if somebody’s got nothing left to lose?”
For the first time, the knife lowered slightly.
The road stretched black ahead of them.
The driver coughed hard into his fist. Long enough that the truck drifted toward the shoulder before correcting again.
“You sick or something?”
“Aren’t we all?”
Another cough.
The boy shifted uneasily now, less predator than passenger.
“You really don’t care if you die?”
The driver was quiet for a moment.
Then he said softly, “You ever love somebody so much that losing them rearranges the world?”
The kid looked away.
“No.”
“Hope you never do.”
The truck passed beneath a lonely traffic light blinking yellow through town.
“You got family?” the driver asked.
“My moms.”
“She know where you are?”
“She don’t know nothin’.”
“She probably knows more than you think.”
The kid swallowed but said nothing.
The driver reached into his pocket, shook out a tic tac, then offered the box across the seat.
The boy hesitated before taking one.
Funny, the driver thought.
Still a child after all.
“You don’t wanna do this forever,” he said.
“Like you know me.”
“No. But I know fear.”
The boy stared at the knife in his hand.
“I ain’t scared.”
“Son, your hand’s shaking so bad that knife’s practically tuning itself.”
For the first time, the kid almost smiled.
Then the driver coughed again.
Worse this time.
When he pulled his hand away, there was blood at the corner of his mouth.
The boy froze.
“Oh hell.”
“Relax.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Seen worse.”
“You need a hospital.”
“Nah.”
The boy looked suddenly younger now. The performance slipping off him in pieces.
“I don’t wanna kill nobody.”
“I know.”
“Those guys… they said…”
“They said if you didn’t do something stupid tonight, you weren’t one of them.”
Silence.
The boy looked out the window.
“How’d you know that?”
“Because boys have been trying to prove themselves since Cain picked up a rock.”
A few miles later the truck turned beneath the bright lights of the State Highway Patrol barracks.
The boy sat bolt upright.
“Oh no.”
“You’re not in trouble.”
“You just said—”
“I know what I said.”
The truck rolled to a stop.
Inside, the dispatcher called for an officer while the boy sat pale and rigid in the chair beside him.
A patrolman finally stepped forward.
“What happened tonight?”
The driver reached into his pocket and placed something small onto the desk.
A gelatin capsule.
Red stained.
The officer frowned.
“What’s that?”
“Stage blood.”
The boy looked up slowly.
The driver smiled.
“I work children’s ministry at St. Matthew’s.”
The patrolman stared at him.
“The coughing blood?”
“Card trick.” He shrugged. “The King of Hearts. Usually kills with the Sunday school crowd.”
The boy’s mouth fell open.
“You lied?”
“About some things.”
The officer folded his arms. “You want charges filed?”
The driver looked toward the kid.
The knife was gone now.
So was most of the swagger.
“No,” he said quietly. “I think he’s had enough fear for one evening.”
The officer nodded slowly.
Five miles later, the driver’s phone rang.
“Hey, lover,” his wife said. “You on your way home?”
“Yep.”
“You’re late.”
“I picked up a passenger.”
“Well hurry home. We miss you.”
He smiled as the highway unwound ahead of him through the dark Ohio hills.
“I miss you too.”