All stories › Horror › The Twelfth Stop › Episode 2
One Name Light
Episode 2 of 3 of The Twelfth Stop by Lorna Keough · free to read
“One name light,” Whitlow said. “That’s how it starts.”
Bramlett had written the number on a fuel receipt and handed it over without looking at me.
“Eddie Whitlow. He had Route 9 before you.”
“Why him.”
“Because I’m not going to be the one who says it.”
Whitlow picked up on the second ring at eleven in the morning.
“You’re the Route 9 driver.”
“Sharon Gentry.”
“You saw her at 149.”
“Yes.”
“Did you stop?”
“No.”
“Then listen while it’s still simple.”
I got a pen.
“She stands at 149. Nowhere else, ever.”
“All right.”
“She can’t make you stop. That’s the whole of it, right there.”
“And if I pass her.”
“You come in one name light. Every night you pass her.”
“One of my riders.”
“One of yours.”
I wrote it on the back of the receipt in block letters, like a load restriction.
“And if I stop.”
“She rides to the end. Every mile of it. At West Plains she asks you to sign her arrived.”
“On the manifest.”
“On the manifest. If you don’t sign it she takes one anyway.”
“And if I do sign it.”
He took his time. I heard a chair move on a hard floor.
“Then she is finished with this road,” he said. “And the road takes your count instead.”
“What’s my count.”
“Everybody you ever carried.”
“How do you know all this,” I said.
“Same way you’re about to.”
“Eddie.”
“It doesn’t want a ride. It wants a name.”
I looked at the receipt for a while.
“One more thing,” he said. “Read your header.”
“Mine said twelve.”
“If it says twelve, she’s out there. If it says eleven, go to sleep.”
I pulled the file box off the dispatch shelf at eight that night and went back through nine weeks of Route 9.
Most of them said eleven.
Nine of them said twelve. I laid those nine on the counter in a row. Bramlett stood at the end of it and did not pick one up.
“Nine,” I said.
“I can count.”
“Nine headers. Nine names with no body on them.”
“You want me to call somebody?”
“Who.”
He did not have an answer and I did not want one.
Kirksville at 10:40 with seven riders, which is a crowd for a Tuesday. The header said twelve.
I read every one of them off at the curb, seat by seat. Seat 12 was a woman about my age riding down to Cabool. Sheila. She had a grocery sack and she thanked me for the light over her seat.
Macon. Moberly. Columbia, ten minutes, everybody back up the steps before I moved.
Jefferson City at 1:30. Vienna. Rolla. Licking at 3:35, right on the number.
Mile 152. Mile 151. Mile 150.
She had her arm out at 149 with the bag at her feet.
I held sixty two.
At Houston I pulled the manifest off the dash and the clip came down on my knuckle and took a strip of skin. I bled on the corner of the page and went on.
Cabool at 4:28. Six off, and I counted them down with my hand on the rail, and Sheila was not one of the six.
West Plains at 5:10. Six accounted for out of seven.
I called Whitlow from the lot with the engine still ticking.
“I’m going to sign her arrived,” I said.
“Sharon.”
“It’s the only branch that ends it.”
“It ends it for the road. Not for you.”
“I know what it costs.”
“You don’t.”
Bramlett met me at the coach the next night with the manifest against his chest.
“It says twelve,” he said.
“Hand it here, Curtis.”
“You want somebody riding with you?”
“There’s no seat for that.”
Five riders. I read them off at the curb and looked at each one of them while I did it, which I had never done before.
I did the walk around slow. Lamps, tires, brakes, kit, fire bottle. I rolled the sign to WEST PLAINS.
Macon at 11:15. Moberly at 11:55. Columbia at 12:40, ten minutes, and I stood in the lot the whole ten.
Jefferson City at 1:30. Vienna at 2:15. Rolla at 2:55.
Whitlow’s receipt was clipped to the visor where the dash light hit it.
SHE CANNOT MAKE YOU STOP.
That is the part everybody holds onto. I had held onto it for nine nights and it had cost nine people something I still cannot name.
Licking at 3:35. The shelter empty.
I came down out of Licking and made myself think about numbers. Three hundred twelve miles. Eleven stops. Six hours and change of driving, five nights a week, nine years.
Mile 152.
I dropped to fifty.
Mile 151. Mile 150.
I put the four ways on. There is nothing behind you at four in the morning on 63. You put them on anyway.
The pull off came up gray in the low beams and she was standing at the post with her arm out flat, palm down, patient as a fence post.
I came down through the gears and set the brake and pulled the lever.
The air went. The step lit up.
“Get on,” I said.
Then the phone rang in the cradle.