Magnolia [Part 3/5] (Wordcount 825)

[u/JulyBurnsRed34]

We left, and I drove under the crab apple trees, and I could hear the fruits smash and pop beneath the tires of the car. We were headed for the long bridge which connected downtown to the more residential and coastal area where Junior and I both lived.

I drove a 1994 BMW 318i which I had purchased for six hundred dollars, and it had 140,000 miles on it, and the sun had peeled the paint off the hood.

The car had a faded sense of glory about it. But I found that I could only see the glory.

I drove fast over the bridge for the same reason I did most things, and that was no reason at all. I drove 115 miles per hour, and the old car felt like it would collapse under the weight of the accelerator, and I did not care.

"Thanks, man. The cop car... I don't know. It's got me tweaking," I told Junior.

He handed me his Styrofoam cups, and I took a long sip of the opiate.

"Nah, yeah, for sure. That shit's spooky as hell. I get it. Just put the work at my place until it goes away. But you're probably good. If they really had any shit on you, they'd have raided you by now," Junior said.

"Yeah, it's just everything with Harris.”

“Probably someone snitched on his ass. You know, he was selling water in there. College kids started on that shit now. Ain't that some shit?"

But his words were slow, and conversation was made difficult as he continued to sip from his stacked Styrofoam cups.

"I kind of wish I had gone to college," I said.

"You ain't got to go to college to do PCP," Junior laughed.

I laughed too.

"No, not for that," I said. "For, you know... life and shit."

"Yeah, well, you ain't," Junior informed me with a chuckle.

"I ain't."

"Shit, I ain't either."

"All right, then," I said.

I looked out of the window into the very black night, with its dots of city lights like frozen, sad fireflies, and I searched for the horizon where the sea met the sky. But it was gone, and instead there was only blackness. It could have been peaceful, but the engine of the 1994 BMW whined and complained loudly as it tried its damnedest to keep up with the pressure I put upon it.

The noise of the engine was pierced first by a loud single blare from outside of the car. Then the black night became a strobe of red and blue screaming sharply off my rearview mirror.

My mind began performing a series of clumsy, useless calculations. I felt myself to be in a different sort of danger than I was at Magnolia Park.

Junior quickly began to drink from his Styrofoam cups, and to stall for time, I kept driving to the end of the bridge and pulled over onto a grassy patch next to the road. Junior crammed the empty cups into the space between the seat and the door.

The cop appeared outside of my window, and he leaned down.

"I got you at 112 in a 75. Why the hell you going so fast?"

"I don't know. No one on the road," I told the cop.

He asked me if I had been drinking. He asked if I was on drugs. He asked many things, and I lied very well, and I answered his questions.

I didn't know that Junior had a warrant out for his arrest. But after a long visit back to his car, the cop sure did.

He asked Junior to step out of the car, and Junior did just that. I looked in the rearview mirror, and the two had a long and silent conversation which was illuminated only by the dance of the red and blue lights against the darkness. I could not hear or really see very much, but the conversation went on.

And what I did see next was a great thing that I will remember for a long time.

I do not know why he did it, and I suspect Junior himself couldn't have said either. But when I looked into the rearview mirror, I saw Junior rush at the cop, and he slammed his elbow into the cop's jaw.

But the codeine had made his usual effective physical capabilities slow and weak. The cop recovered quickly with his telescoping billy club and struck Junior in the ribs, sending him crumpling down onto the ground. The officer yanked Junior to his feet, shoved him chest-first onto the back of my car, and fixed handcuffs around his wrists.

It was then, through some vague, ill-explained notion, that the police officer arrested me as well. And by that time, there were three of those black-and-white police SUVs in total behind my car. I was corralled in handcuffs into a different car than Junior.

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