Jesus and Freddy's Short Cut

Freddy Tamburrino admitted he was lost. Trees were trees, and in the dark, they all looked the same. They blurred together in an inky haze; their creeping limbs stretched over the road, touched knobby fingers and formed an arch of sinewy branches. Freddy felt as if he was traveling down the gullet of some giant prehistoric snake. He hated being lost.

He knew better than to travel down country back-roads, no matter how neat and easy they appeared on the map. On paper, things always looked neat and easy. Freddy, of all people, knew this; he was a Bible salesman. Boxes of Bibles slid back and forth on the back seat of his beat-up station wagon with every turn of road, and a plastic crucifix swung from the rearview mirror. Fortunately, the little plastic Jesus was incapable of being carsick.

But Freddy had a disease: the short-cut disease. This was as much of an addiction to him as the lure of a cigarette to a nicotine addict or a cool sip of brew to an alcoholic, and Freddy felt secure in the knowledge that his own addiction was considerably less harmless than smoking or drinking. He was a traveler, a noble crusader spreading the good Word of the Lord to those in need and anyone with enough cash to buy the Word in print, and the call to a more time-efficient, traffic-less and smooth short-cut on his journeys was more than Freddy could pass up.

On paper, it looked so neat and easy, he thought again. In reality, all country Podunk roads were the same: curvy, tree-lined, and potholed, they wound through woods and fields, twisting and turning; and if you were lucky, after what seemed like an eternity, they spat you out back out into warm glow of civilization. If you were lucky.

Freddy hated being lost. He knew that it happened inevitably to every short-cut seeker, to every traveler of strange and distant lands (strange and distant lands defined as anything outside of home and a ten-mile radius), but Freddy was the kind of man who prided himself on the fact that he had never been lost before. Now, he stewed in the thought of it.

Through the darkness, a small light pierced through the shady trees, just a twinkle and then a glow of yellow around the next curve. Like a moth, Freddy felt compelled to the light, this beacon of electric civilization. The light grew as he approached, and he placed his foot heavier on the gas pedal.

As he drove around the curve, he squinted through his glasses to get a good look at the light source. A tall light-pole stood alongside a gas station, nothing more than a single rusty looking pump outside of a squatting, square concrete building with cracked and crumbling corners. A bug light hung from the roof. The little station reeked of disrepair, even from the first glance. Along the front of the building, broad and cold blue block letters proclaimed, “GAS HOT FOOD COLD DRINKS.”

A squirrelly-looking man in faded overalls leaned against the wall of the station, a baseball cap pulled low over his brow.

Freddy pulled the car over, tires crunching on the gravel; Jesus on his plastic cross swayed to a slow stop. Freddy didn’t like asking for directions, didn’t like the feeling he got from this isolated gas station, and especially didn’t like the look of the lone attendant in the overalls. Being a good, God-fearing Christian, Freddy was never one to pass judgment, but he still had to admit that the man had the look of a particularly undereducated backwoods redneck. As if he read Freddy’s mind, the attendant spat into the gravel at end of his boots.

Freddy said a quick, mental prayer and stepped out of the station wagon. He approached the attendant, the gravel crunching under his feet reminded him of crackling Rice Krispies, and he felt beads of sweat beginning to develop on his forehead. The humidity was stifling, but Freddy figured his sweat was more of an effect of the attendant. The attendant’s gaze seemed indifferent, and he stayed rigid except for his jaw, chewing up and down. If it wasn’t for the eyes looking in his direction, Freddy would have thought the attendant didn’t even know that he was there. Something about the attendant’s whole demeanor disturbed Freddy.

“Hello, maybe you can help me,” Freddy said as he approached and extended his plump hand in greeting. The man in overalls spat and didn’t bother to take it.

“Depends,” he said with the thick Southern drawl that Freddy expected.

“Yes, well, I seem to have gotten myself a little turned around, and maybe you could point me in the direction of the highway?” Freddy said, straightening his glasses. He had a habit of straightening his glasses when he was nervous, but why was he nervous? He handled strangers all the time, without a problem. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed his forehead. He didn’t understand why he was so uncomfortable. He just hated being lost.

The attendant looked at him for a moment, chewing. Freddy heard a loud zap as an insect buzzed into the bug-light and then hopefully bug-heaven.

“What brings you out here?” the man asked and spat, a little bit of tobacco dribbling down his chin.

“Spreading the Good Word and Gospel of Jesus wherever I may,” Freddy said proudly, gaining back a little bit of his self-confidence. It was his standard answer whenever anyone ever asked him about his work, and he thought maybe it would win him a few points with the attendant. He was lost in the very heart of the Bible belt, after all.

“Ain’t seen no Jesus ‘round here for couple years now,” the attendant replied and wiped his chin, “Figured he forgot ‘bout us.”

“Well, I assure you that’s not the case, and in fact, I would be more than happy to help change that very...”

“First left,” the attendant interrupted.

Freddy stammered for a moment, caught off guard by the attendant’s interruption.

“What... what’s that?”

“First left,” the attendant repeated and spat another wad of brown tobacco on the gravel. In the dullness of the streetlight, it looked like a gigantic dead tadpole.

A faded blue cap obscured most of the attendant’s face, and the only part of it that Robert could see was the man’s jaw, chewing tobacco, moving up and down, his mouth perked faintly in a grin at the corners. Freddy wondered if the man was making fun of him.

He opened his mouth, almost began stuttering in indignation, and then closed it before he could say something he might later regret. A nagging feeling told him that his best option was to say nothing and move on. No sense in getting into a verbal tussle with some country bumpkin.

“Left?” Freddy asked, turning towards the road.

“First left,” the man agreed with a curt nod.

“Many thanks,” Freddy said, swiveled on his heels and made his way back to the car.

He slipped into the driver’s seat, closed the door behind him, and gripped the steering wheel. He found himself doubting the hick’s sincerity. The hick had better have given him the right directions or else. Freddy envisioned the wrath that he would unleash upon him. He half wanted to get out and start throwing a little bit of it around beforehand. Just as a warning, of course. The hick didn’t know what he was doing getting himself into a battle of wits with Freddy Tamburrino. Freddy took a deep breath. He was over-exaggerating the entire incident; wasn’t he? It was time for him to come to his senses and settle down.

He started the car. No, Freddy would have to wait until he had a legitimate reason to accost the redneck attendant, but he had a very definite feeling that the man purposely misled him.

The car rumbled down the narrow road, headlights spearing through the twilight. Freddy muttered to himself under his breath, grunts and curses more appropriate coming from the mouth of a caveman than a civilized Christian and modern man of the world. His eyes narrowed to slits as he squinted out the windshield and peered for the road that the man at the gas station had told him to find.

Freddy almost missed it. In fact, he had to slam on his brakes and reverse a bit to make sure that his mind hadn't played a trick on him and an actual road lay beyond the tangle of high grass and overgrown branches. It didn’t look much like a road though, more of a footpath or a bike trail. It wasn’t even paved: just a forlorn dirt road that didn’t look as if it had been used for a decade or two. Could this be the road that the attendant had meant? Did this even classify as a road?

No. Freddy refused to believe that a road leading to the highway could be so weedy, overgrown and unmarked. A road leading to the highway would be paved and well-tread, right? This logic made perfect sense, and Freddy glanced at plastic Jesus for confirmation. Jesus merely hung from the rearview mirror, an eternal look of despair etched on his face during those last moments of the crucifixion, saying nothing. The decision was Freddy’s alone to make.

Freddy put the car into drive, put some pressure on the gas and continued forward, looking for his path to the highway, to salvation, towards the left. After some time, Freddy found what he was looking for: a paved, perfect strip of asphalt, decorated with a white dotted median and strips of yellow on the sides.

“Hallelujah!” Freddy praised, gave Jesus a bright smile and turned left.

***

After some time, Freddy began to think that he’d made a mistake. The road wound longer than it should, twisting left and right, no end in sight. Doubts began to plague him like gnats, buzzing around his brain, gaining purchase on the frontal lobe and then flying away again, never in the same place twice.

A familiar light crept around the next bend, and Freddy felt his heart drop into the pit of his stomach with a splash of digestive fluid. As the car rounded the curve, the gas station slipped out of the darkness like an unwelcome ghost. The block letters promising hot food and cold drinks were bold and dark and somehow foreboding in the light of the setting sun. Freddy saw that the door to the station was open, light spilling onto the rusty pumps, the attendant’s dark form a lonely silhouette leaning against the doorframe as if waiting for Freddy’s return.

Of course he was waiting. He’d set up Freddy to look like a fool on purpose, hadn’t he? Freddy was just city folk, someone to be ridiculed. Ridiculed for what? For being educated? For having all his teeth and good hygiene? Freddy began to feel the blood in his veins bubbling to the boiling point. His knuckles turned white as he clenched the steering wheel in a death grip.

Freddy pulled into the gravel driveway of the station with a screech of braking tires and took a deep breath, calming his jangling nerves. He had to raise himself above the attendant’s level, didn’t he? He was on business as a representative of the God-fearing Christian community, and what was it that Jesus kept telling everyone to do all the time? Love your neighbor. Yep. He sighed. Love your neighbor.

“I bet Christ never got bad directions,” Freddy grumbled under his breath. He blew a long breath through his lips, unbuckled his seatbelt, and stepped out of the car.

“You’re back,” the attendant said with an indifferent tone as Freddy approached. He didn’t seem surprised. The cap was pulled higher on his head now, and Freddy could make out the attendant’s face through the shadows. He was a middle-aged man, tan and sun burnt around his nose from working in the summer sun. Crow’s feet curled at the corners of his eyes, and an unexpected intelligence glimmered behind his steely gray eyes. Perhaps the attendant wasn’t as stupid as Freddy had first supposed. Or perhaps the intelligence that Freddy thought he saw in the man’s eyes was merely a figment of his imagination, something that his mind conjured up, not wanting to admit that he’d been suckered by a dimwitted corn-fed country bumpkin.

“Looks like I got turned around. I took the left you told me...”

“Nope. If you’d took it, you’d been long gone,” the man said. His tone had a sense of finality. A corner of his mouth curled into a partial smirk.

Freddy frowned. The attendant was so smug with his silly stupid smirk and his overalls stained with tobacco. He wanted to yell at him, berate him and tell him that Freddy wasn’t some guy that could be ridiculed, fooled, made fun of. But Freddy knew he had to be the bigger man here. There was no chance of this redneck jerk wad taking the high road, so Freddy would have to do it.

“How you have faith in Christ when you ain’t even got none in people?” the man said, his eyes locked onto Freddy’s own. It stopped him in his tracks. Freddy tried to shake off the remark; but like a dog with a wet coat, as much of he wanted rid of it, it clung to his fur in damp, matted blotches.

A heavy silence hung on the air between them. After a moment, the attendant broke it by spitting a clump of tobacco out of his mouth with a sloppy splurt. Freddy heard it splatter onto the gravel. The two men considered each other, and then the moment vanished as a zap popped from the buzzing bug light: one less horsefly in the world.

“The dirt road? Was that the left you meant?” Freddy said.

“First left,” the attendant confirmed, his penetrating gaze burning through the back of Freddy’s skull. Freddy tried a few follow-up questions in his head, but nothing seemed to gel, nothing seemed right to say out loud. His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt thick: a spongy and useless piece of meat. Giving up, he just nodded.

“First left, ok.”

He turned away and scurried to his car.

***

On the road, Freddy felt the anger return like a long lost son, and he welcomed it home with open arms. He didn’t like the way the attendant had looked at him, didn’t like the look in the man’s eerie eyes as if the man could see through his skin, through the flesh and bone to the struggling soul underneath.

It was a ridiculous thought, and Freddy pushed it out of his mind. Still, something about the attendant brought an inkling of fear tickling his back and up his spine with a cold shiver.

He almost missed the dirt road again; night slipped through the branches and weeds and hid it from sight. Freddy had to slam on his brakes, brake lights glaring an angry red, and then reverse before he could make the turn. He paused, listening to the rumble of the car’s engine, and milled over the attendant’s strange demeanor. Could he really trust that hick over his own instincts? The road looked about as untrustworthy as the man did.

“First left,” he muttered under his breath and turned onto the road. The car lurched and bounced up and down, rocks and sticks crunching and cracking audibly under the tires. Freddy rammed a foot on the brake pedal, and the car skidded to a violent stop, a branch whacking the front windshield, a few leaves fluttering down like green rain. It was obvious that no one ever used this road.

Freddy wondered what exactly the gas station attendant had up his sleeve. It was simply impossible that a road like this could lead to the highway. Through the windshield, he saw that the dirt road led onward past the headlights, stretching forward with no end in sight. Most likely to a dead end and Freddy would have to reverse all the way back to the main road through the dark. And who knew what hungry creatures lurked in the woods at night? Worse, his mind began to wander to all sorts of stories and movies he’d read or seen, the ones where someone gets lost out in the country, in the woods just as he was, only to become victim to a number of terrifying horrors.

Perhaps the attendant wanted him to travel down this road and into the waiting arms of his inbred, cannibalistic family. The idea held some validity as it turned over in his head.

Freddy wondered if he had somehow missed a turn on the paved road he’d found earlier, if maybe he’d gotten himself turned around without realizing it only to find himself back where he’d started. That was the road to the highway, he felt sure of it. Not this dirt road that probably led anywhere but the highway. This particular road was the gas station attendant’s idea of some kind of joke.

Freddy hesitated a moment longer, then put his car into reverse.

***

He turned left on the road he’d discovered earlier, keeping careful track of any turns or signs that he might have missed on the first go round. He saw none, and his confidence began to waver. After some time, Freddy’s groaned as his eyes became aware of the one thing he didn’t want to see: the glow of the dreaded gas station around the next bend. Frustration barreling into him, he felt hot tears attempt to leak from the corners of his eyes. He’d just drive past the station and try the paved road again. Third time’s the charm, right? He must have missed something, and the last thing he needed was another confrontation with the wily attendant.

On cue, the orange low fuel light lit up on the dashboard with a shrill beep.

Freddy opened his mouth to yell loud and frantic curses but noticed the expression carved on plastic Jesus, the face of ultimate sacrifice, and he clenched his jaw shut, his lips tightening to thin white strips. He needed gas, and he’d get some. Let the attendant make his comments and treat him like a fool. What did it matter?

The attendant sat on an overturned tin bucket, probably one that he used to feed slop to the pigs at his house or something. It gleamed blue under the streetlight. A pipe hung between the man’s lips. Tendrils of smoke ushered from the corners of his mouth and into the night air; between the pipe and the chew earlier, he had an obvious addiction to tobacco. Freddy knew that it was a sin to wish cancer on anyone, but the thought was still tempting.

Freddy put the car in park and turned off the ignition. The car ticked as it cooled down, and Freddy took a moment to mentally prepare for battle. The back of his shirt clung to him with sweat. After a moment, he figured he was ready. Pushing open the door, he said, “Fill me up.”

The attendant simply sat on the tin bucket, puffed his pipe, and responded, “Didn’t take the left.”

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but it’s not going to work. That dirt road leads nowhere, so why don’t you just tell me how to get to the highway? The joke’s running a little thin right about now, and my wife will start worrying if I’m not home in a few more hours, ok?” Freddy said, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them, his tongue betraying the cool demeanor he’d hope to apply to the situation.

Standing up, the attendant walked over to one of the gas pumps, picked up a nozzle, popped open the car’s tank, and thrust the nozzle into the car. Then he flipped up the lever to begin pumping fuel into the tank; a bell rang as numbers spiraled through the pump’s glass face, detailing gallons and price for the gas. He did all of this with the pipe dangling from his mouth, and Freddy considered mentioning the possibility of the burning tobacco igniting an explosion, sending them both to heaven or hell in a fiery inferno.

Instead, the attendant turned to him and said, “First left.” He smeared his oily hands on his overalls and took his seat on the tin bucket.

Freddy waited for the tank to fill up, handed the attendant a wad of bills equivalent to the number on the pump plus a decent tip, told him to keep the change and started to climb back into the car. He couldn’t be rid of the gas station soon enough.

The attendant reached out his hand and grabbed Freddy’s arm, pulled him back for a moment, and the man leaned his face close to Freddy’s. The bittersweet smell of pipe filled Freddy’s nostrils.

“Take the left,” the attendant said, “And when you do, don’t turn around. Only works once.” Then he released his grip and backed away towards his preferred seat on the bucket. Freddy didn’t know what to say or how to respond. He sat down and closed the car door behind him. A funny feeling gurgled in his gut.

***

For the third time that day, Freddy sat in his idling car and examined the rough stretch of dirt road that the gas station attendant had told him to take. What had the attendant meant when he said that the road only worked once? He tapped his finger against the steering wheel. Something strange was happening here; something that wasn’t quite what Freddy thought it was.

Finally, the thought of ending up at the gas station again was what propelled him to make the left onto the road. His mind and heart protested, but his hands twisted the wheel to the left on their own accord. He hated the thought of the attendant being right, but he had to take that chance if only to prove the attendant wrong. And if the road did lead to the highway, well, then he could leave the gas station and the weird attendant behind him for the rest of his life. He relished the thought.

Tree limbs smacked against the car in protest; branches scrambled for purchase as if trying to pull him back. The wind howled past and showered the car with leaves and ghostly moans. Freddy felt his stomach lurch as the car plunged into an occasional soft spot in the road, and he prayed that he didn’t get stuck in a patch of mud out here in the middle of nowhere. He tried to not think of werewolves and inbreeds lurking through the woods, watching him, setting traps ahead on the road, but it was impossible to keep such thoughts out of his mind on a road such as this one. This kind of road inspired the worst horror stories.

Then the car stopped bouncing and settled on a stretch of asphalt. Freddy braked hard and peered around him. A shiny sign jutting from a patch of high grass read 52 surrounded by the familiar symbol of a shield: the highway he had sought all day. The dirt road had just vomited him up where he was supposed to be.

With a kind of shocked detachment, he realized that the gas station attendant had been right all along. Freddy sat in amazement and patted his hands against the steering wheel. For some inexplicable reason, this only made Freddy angrier than he had been before. If the oily, tobacco-stained nitwit had been more specific, Freddy wouldn’t have had to drive around in circles all day, and he wouldn’t have spent a good forty bucks refilling his car twice. He felt his rage seethe up inside, and he was reminded in some corner of his mind of a tea kettle boiling and imagined steam issuing forth from his ears with a high-pitched whine.

Just as he was about to put the car in reverse to drive back and give the redneck a piece of his mind, he caught sight of Jesus precariously hanging from the rear view mirror on his plastic cross. Freddy licked his lips. Would Christ feel the need to turn around and berate some grinning fool who had given him wrong directions? Freddy thought not. He also remembered something the attendant had told him which had seemed ridiculous at the time but now was somehow believable in the lurking darkness of the night: “Don’t turn around. Only works once.”

Freddy barked a hitch of laughter. The thought of a left turn only working once was absurd, but it still kept him hesitant to turn the car around. He wondered what would happen... would he simply drive around in circles for the rest of his life, never finding a way out of the woods, always doomed to end up at the same stained, run-down station to fill up for gas? That was the kind of stuff people used to make up urban legends and baloney like that.

Yet, the car idling patiently around him, he wondered.