Flatbed Ford

Flatbed Ford

Ian Cooper

This Smashwords edition published by
Ian Cooper

Copyright 2014 Ian Cooper

Design by J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-927957-10-3

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The following is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or
events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters
and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. The
author’s moral rights to the proceeds of this work have been
asserted.

Table of Contents

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Nice Ride

One Hell of a
Revelation

Who is Ian Cooper?

Flatbed Ford

Ian Cooper

It Seemed Like a Good Idea
at the Time

It seemed like a good idea at the
time.

Going while the going was
good.

That’s all he could really
say.

Franklyn Warner stood at the side of
the road, a stick-man in blue denim and white high-top runners. He
took a drink of water, hitched his pack up higher and then moved on
again.

He was in for a long day at this
rate.

It was the middle of summer and the
middle of Kansas. Hot and hazy, the sky arched blue overhead, with
a lavish dollop here and there of puffy white cotton-ball clouds.
Drops of sweat occasionally worked their way down inside his shirt.
His mouth still felt dry.

It was very quiet. Nothing moved. It
was merely a landscape and he was just a figure moving across it…
although he had passed a house as he trudged, not far back. A real,
live, living and breathing house.

There was a dog laying under a tree,
in front of the porch and in the shade. It looked up and let out a
dull, gruff greeting as he went. That was the single noteworthy
thing that had happened to Franklyn when passing that
house.

There were voices, or so
he thought, inside that house. It sat quite close to the road.
There really
ought
to be some voices in there.

Even if he hadn’t actually heard
anything.

That was simple justice.

Those people didn’t even know he
existed. They probably didn’t even know he had passed their house
or had ever walked along this road. They may very well not have
been near a window when he went by.

He didn’t really exist for them. He
saw that more clearly now. He was a cat in a box to them—neither
was he living, and neither was he dead.

There were vehicles in the driveway,
and for whatever reason, he tried to recall what they
were.

That way he could prove, at least to
himself, that he had actually been there, and that the experience
was not entirely meaningless.

To Franklyn, there was no act that did
not hold some meaning, and it was meaning that Franklyn sought. Oh,
so effortlessly, as it turns out.

A couple of days ago, he’d seen an
Opel GT rotting away behind somebody’s barn. The act of rotting
away held meaning. The act of abandonment held meaning, and then
the act of observation also held meaning—according to some theory
somewhere, it also affected the outcome.

Franklyn wondered how all of this
would turn out, as he trudged along the road. Take that last house,
for instance, there were two cars in the driveway.

He was pretty sure it was a silver
sedan, gently rounded on all four corners and sides. Four-door,
probably GM. That was the first one. And then there was a big,
two-tone, white and burgundy, three-quarter ton behemoth of a
pickup truck. It was typical for farm and country. That one had the
dual rear wheels, with big fenders sticking out the side. It was
probably a Ford. He was almost certain of that, and yet they
blended in so well after a while.

He hated assumptions and yet one must
draw a conclusion once in a while.

Did it matter if he was right or
wrong? Did it change the meaning? How would that change the
eventual outcome?

A man could only ask, and perhaps all
would be revealed in due time.

They were all the same. They were all
different. A house, one that seemed so promising, so unique on
first onset, and then trudging by, noting the details as you went,
might be pretty ordinary after all. It might be empty and forlorn,
with no signs of the life that surely went on there at some hour or
other. A house might suit its owner, and the owner might suit the
house…and so on and so forth.

People lived there. He could see that
much, and that was about all. It was sheer speculation.

Someone had to live there. And after a
while, each one had blended into the next and each one had so
easily and quickly been forgotten.

They were eminently forgettable, a
special gift of the human mind.

It was a wonder what your mind
retained at all sometimes.

Up ahead, perhaps three hundred yards,
lay an intersection. He walked towards the stop sign, as the sun
moved ever westwards and his belly rumbled.

In spite of the birds, the bees
buzzing in the tall weeds and familiar blue heads of the chicory,
which he at least recognized, strung along and across the fields,
there by the side of the road, Franklyn felt lost and
alone.

If anyone asked, not that anyone ever
would—he could see that quite clearly now, he would have no
answer.

What in the hell am I doing
here?

There were no easy answers sometimes.
And, there were times when you wanted to get out of one place
without having any other particular place to go before you
left…sometimes rather hurriedly.

On a whim, almost.

Almost as if there were no longer any
time to waste.

The gravel crunched as he walked. The
scent of something sweet came on the wind.

He was free, and that had to count for
something.

Free at last.

Something buzzed, shrill, high and
penetrating. It was a cicada.

When he was a boy, he’d heard that
sound through the open rear window of the family car. His dad’s old
’66 Rambler, painted battleship grey, in the garage, with a couple
of quarts of tire-store paint. His old man loved that thing. They
must have been coming or going, on their way someplace else, on the
proverbial family camping-type vacation. His old man had a boat on
a trailer and all of their things were in it. Coolers and tents and
sleeping bags.

At the time, he’d thought it was the
telephone poles that were singing.

He was just a child of course, seven,
maybe eight years old.

Nice Ride

There was really only one place to go,
of course, and that was straight ahead.

“
Neither rain, nor sleet,
nor dark of night, shall keep me from my appointed
rounds….”

United States Postal Service. An
inspiring thought.

The stop sign stood on his right as he
walked past, and a mental picture of a cop whooshing up out of
nowhere and ticketing him for jay-walking flashed through his mind.
There was nothing off to the right or left but slight elevation
changes, ditches lining the road, a few distant treetops and the
verdant green of the fields of corn, coming up nicely now at about
two to three feet tall.

The road rose in front of
him.

It was going to be a long hot summer,
and yet, with plenty of rain. He’d seen some of that already. He
didn’t really mind, as it cooled things down and forced him to rest
every few days….out of the rain.

A familiar sound droned its way into
his consciousness. It was a truck, a white, flatbed Ford pickup
from a bygone era. One replete with lacquered stake-work sides and
white-letter tires all around, fifty series up front and sixties on
the back. It rolled, braking, engine at idle, up to the stop-sign
and then it came to a halt.

The motor rumbled and purred and he
couldn’t help himself. He stopped. He turned and stared.

That was one wild ride.

With a grin, he raised a hand in
greeting.

“
Nice.”

The vehicle sat there, as the revs
went up a bit then came down again. It sat there.

The passenger window came down and he
could see a long-haired girl in there leaning over to reach the
hand crank. She was long, lean, tanned and young.

““
Hi.” Franklyn walked the
short distance back to the intersection.

If she was looking for directions, she
was shit out of luck.

Holy, crap.

“
Hi.” This was the most
exciting thing that had happened in quite some time.

Not since Cincinnati at least. Punks
in a laundromat. Bloody nose for one of them, broken arm for the
other.

At least that was his
assessment.

Her right arm was up and across along
the back of the seat and her other hand was relaxed across her
lap.

She smiled.

“
What’s up?” Franklyn
found her expression enigmatic at best.

“
Need a lift?”

“
Ah---sure, but, uh…” He
stood there, not reaching for the door handle just yet.

She had been traveling east, and he
was headed south, so as to pick up the Interstate. He was going to
talk to truckers at a major choke-and-puke. Her turn signal wasn’t
on for a right turn or anything.

“
Where are you headed?”
Her right foot was on the brake, her left heel was down and the
toes on the clutch pedal.

It was three in the tree, probably
just a big six-banger up front under the hood. He could tell by the
sound it didn’t have dual exhaust.

Franklyn sighed.

“
It’s complicated. But,
pretty much anywhere, really.”

Her eyes were deadly, crystal clear
and amazing.

His guts were all ice for some reason.
He didn’t care to linger on the thought.

“
I’m Alice. Sounds like
California to me. Am I right?”

He cracked a grin. Franklyn laughed
when he heard that one.

“
Yeah—”

She patted the passenger seat as he
leaned in a bit.

“
Hop in and you can tell
me all about it.” She reached for the gear lever, which was at the
neutral position.

Franklyn noted the accessory gauge
set, available way back when for about thirty bucks at the tire
store at the far end of Breckoridge Mall.

Alice was wearing tan sandals with the
laces going all up the calves, white leather hot-pants, and a white
cotton halter that left nothing to the imagination. She had her
face on, with earrings, something silver pierced through the belly
button and a twirling rosary tattooed around her neck or at least
he thought it was something like that.

That cicada was going again and he
strained to think.

“
Franklyn. Pleased to meet
you.”
And how.

He un-slung his pack from his
shoulders, mind made up. Franklyn unsnapped a major strap from the
pack frame and then put his pack on the back of the vehicle,
securing it with the strap and its fastener. That wasn’t going
anywhere. She looked out the flat rear window and gave him a
nod.