Bad Instructions

Bad Instructions

The driver saw the old man still sitting in the shade on the side of the road. He had seen this old man now three times in the last three hours.

The car stopped in the empty road and the driver sat alone in the big car's big emptiness with the air conditioner on and his radio playing cowboy he-haw music which he hated almost as much as he hated silence. The old man went on whittling the wood he held in his lap, rocking slowly back and forth under the Elm tree that was nearly dead.


“Back again,” the old man said when the window rolled down.

The driver eyed the old man who had a thin, hard, outdoor-face.

The old man whittled away on the piece of wood, only looking up now and then from his work. He was waiting for the driver to ask a third time how to get to Billy-Ray Larson’s place out in Devil’s Fork. The way he worked his mouth it was pretty clear he was going to say something at some point soon, and the old man whittled and waited.

“Yes, I am back again.”

“Did you find Devil's Fork okay?” the old man asked.

The driver said. “No, I fucking--” and stopped himself and took a long breath through his nose smelling the mustard seed and the hot tar smell of the road and the dry dusty smell of sage in the hot air. He eyed the old man seated with out worry or care in the old rocker beside the road “No,” the driver began again, “I did not, quite, find it yet.”

The old man rocked and whittled and said nothing at all.

The man in the car, who was quite obviously a business man, took out his wallet and brought forth from its folds a twenty dollar bill which he offered from inside the car toward the old man sitting with such apparent ease and unconcern in the shade. The driver leaned as far to his right as he could and waved the bill toward the window. The old man watched the bill being waved, and the driver watched the old man watch the bill until it seemed the old man had seen enough, and his eyes went back to his work with the wood he held in his lap.

The man in the car said something both soft and vicious under his breath and turned off the radio and unstrapped his seat-belt and opened the big car door and stepped out into the heat of the late afternoon.

He walked around the back of the car thinking about opening the trunk of his car and getting out the tire iron he knew was in there somewhere.

Instead, he gently held out the twenty dollar bill.

Please man, his eyes said, please! but the old man wouldn't look up, instead he simply chose a moment to rock a bit extra forward and snatched the bill in one clean lightning flash and the bill was gone from the city-slicker’s hand and stuffed into the breast pocked of very faded blue bib-overalls. The old man stayed rocking and whittling and not looking at the man standing in front of him beside the big shiny car with the engine still running, a look of fading hope in the slicker’s tired eyes as the late sun shown down without mercy and the road remained empty and long and straight, coming from nothing and going long to nowhere.

“You go north like I say to on that thar road yonder?” the old man asked.

“Yes,” the other man said, tired of this conversation already. Tired of this job, tired of this heat. Tired.

“And took a right ‘fore the bridge?”

“And a right at the road before the bridge and then south at the first road after that road which is thirty-three miles, just so you know, and then a right on the road after that which is this road here!” He flung his arm in a wide arc that seemed to encompass most of New Mexico.

He watched the old man nod his head up and down as though it all sounded about right. Behind the old man, the driver only now noticed, through the row of nearly dead Elm trees, was an unpainted farm house with a sagging porch and lopsided window shutters. His eyes went from the house in the Elm trees back to the old man.

“That’s four rights you told me to take,” the slicker said and watched the old man nod his head again. After more silence and more glances at the old house, the driver told the old man what he already knew.

“You’re Billy-Ray!”

“You that banker feller.”

“You’re Billy-Ray Larson!”

“You found me! Shit-damn! You sharp as a cowbell!” Billy-Ray said still working the wood which was now a stick.

The banker feller could only stare.

“I won’t be needin’ none of that insurance here, sonny.”

“Reverse Mortgage!”

“Yea, that too, neither” the old man said. “Don’t need it…”

The banker feller was in his trunk before he knew it. He had the tire iron in his hand before he realized it, and was back to the old man in the rocker in the blink of an eye. He looked at the old man who looked back at him, his dear-antler whittling knife frozen half way through a slice of thin wood..

The banker feller seemed to notice with surprise how he had a tire iron in his hand. He looked at it for only a moment and turned back to his car. He threw the iron into the open trunk and slammed the trunk and got back in his car. He closed the door hard and buckled his seat-belt and turned on the radio. Then he was leaving Billy-Ray Larson with his grinning eyes sitting in his rocking chair by the side of the road. The banker feller had had enough of all this. He was going to quit the moment he got back to the office and he pressed the car to go faster, which did little good, as both the road and the he-haw music seemed to go on forever.

-The End-