In Plain Sight

The bathroom door wheezed open and a trucker came in. He was big through the shoulders but had a fleshy face and a big belly. When the trucker saw him standing there at the sink he started to say something smart-ass, something like “Doing a little primping, eh?” or “Did you forget your hair spray?” but when their eyes met in the mirror it was as if the fat man suddenly choked on a piece of meat. All the man did was nod, turn away, and pass behind him for the shelter of a stall.

He winked at himself in the mirror, pleased with the effect he had on a man outweighing him by at least ninety pounds, then pulled his new shirt on and walked out of the bathroom.

As he passed the counter, which was stacked with displays for all-natural amphetamines and cigarette lighters in the shape of cell phones and hand grenades, he asked the bored, washed-out clerk, “Is this the right road to get to the Wyoming State Pen?”

“The pay-un?” the clerk said, mocking his accent. He was so surprised by her insolence that he didn’t know what to say. His first instinct was to reach over the box of beef jerky and pull her tongue out by the roots.

“Yeah,” she continued, either too empty-headed or jaded to care about how he felt, “this is the exit. Just get back on the road and go over the hill and you’ll see it.” She gestured vaguely over her head, to the south. “You visiting or checking in?”

Again, she insulted him! He could feel the rush of blood to his face, feel his fists involuntarily clench. If only she knew what he was capable of, he thought. If only that clerk knew about what had happened to that hunter and his wife back in Mississippi, she wouldn’t be doing this. That couple should never have left Atlanta to go hunting in their green SUV.

THE SIGHT OF the prison complex, a bunch of low-slung gray buildings sprawled across a sagebrush-choked valley, cooled him down a little. As he passed the sign that read NO TRESPASSING: ALL VEHICLES AND INDIVIDUALS ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCH BEYOND THIS POINT, his mind focused again, his anger venting out like the kack-kack-kack of a pressure cooker releasing steam, the reason for his arrival coming back into prominence.

Not that he didn’t think about that woman behind the counter, how he could come back later and wait for her in the employee parking lot so that he could break her face—and that mouth!—open with an iron bar. But he had work to do, information to get, and it had been long in planning. He couldn’t let her insolence set him back, add an unnecessary complication. That clerk would never know how close she had come to . . . what? He wasn’t sure. He would have just let his rage take over, seen where it took him. One thing he was sure of: she was the luckiest woman in Rawlins, Wyoming. Too bad she didn’t know it.

The prison was close to the interstate, but a high rocky ridge separated the two. Every day, thousands of travelers took that interstate going either east or west, and few if any of them knew how close they were to a maximum-security prison just over the hill, a place filled with murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and other scum of the earth. He had known plenty of ex-cons. Some he’d grown up with, some he’d hired, some he’d gone drink for drink with at a bar. In fact, technically, he was an ex-con, although he didn’t feel like one. Five years in his state pen down South for aggravated assault. He’d spent most of his time observing the makeup of the general population. To a man, they were stupid. Even the ones with some intelligence had a stupid blind spot that later tripped them up. They deserved to go to prison. They didn’t think, they just did. They were nature’s mistakes, human bowel movements. Prison was too good for most of them. And he’d told a couple of them that right to their faces, because he didn’t care what they thought of him.

He cruised through the parking lot, looking at the cars. Half of the plates were from Wyoming, the rest from all over. He saw a flash of brake lights from a yellow ten-year-old Ford pickup with a camper shell and Wyoming plates. The truck had just pulled in. He parked the SUV two rows behind it. While he waited, he emptied all the metal from his pockets into a dirty sock and put it in the glove compartment. The occupants of the truck, an older man wearing red suspenders and a pear-shaped woman with tight gray curls, finally got out to go inside. They were no doubt the parents or grandparents of some stupid convict, and in a way it was kind of a sweet, sad thing to see. Were they wondering what they could have done differently? Did they ask themselves where they had gone wrong, to turn out a son like this, a human bowel movement? But, he said to himself, at least they have family.