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  The Bad Country

  By

  Hervey Copeland

  Copyright © Hervey Copeland 2018

  The moral right of Hervey Copeland to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication is to be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is coincidental

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  “It looks like it’s a decent sized town.” Mary lifted her eyes up from the map and gazed out the windshield.

  “Surely there must be a place where we can get something to eat and use a restroom.”

  She desperately hoped she was correct, because if she was wrong it meant pulling over to the side of the road and running into the forest. And if there was one thing she wanted to avoid, it was that.

  They had been driving for almost four hours now, and all the while the little baby inside her tummy had been pushing up against her bladder, ensuring that the urge to use a toilet had been on the forefront of her mind. And out here in the sticks, where rest stops were almost nonexistent, that tended to complicate matters considerably.

  She sighed and wished they had just flown up to her in-law’s place in Billings as she had suggested. But David had insisted on driving, convincing her that she would love the spectacular scenery along the way, and as per usual she had given in to his wishes. David had been so excited that she hadn’t had the heart to put her foot down. She regretted that now.

  This section of the trip was just forest, hills and mountains, and she had grown tired of it after the first hour. It wasn’t all that different from the scenery around her hometown. The town she couldn’t wait to get away from by the time she was ready to head off to college.

  No, the scenery didn’t interest her much. She would much rather have spent two hours on a plane and be over and done with it. But there was no point dwelling on it. The decision had been made and she would just have to deal with it.

  “Ok, let’s check it out,” David said from beside her in the driver seat and flashed her a bright smile. The blue eyes behind the round spectacles revealed he was completely unaware that his wife’s temper was starting to rise, and could quite easily lead to an unpleasant remark if he didn’t tread carefully.

  Half a minute later he slowed down the old Mazda and turned right after passing the bullet ridden sign that said ‘Minden 5 miles’.

  “I sure hope the sign isn’t an indication of the inhabitants’ feelings towards out-of-towners,” he said in the same cheery voice as they entered a much narrower road that had trees coming right up to the shoulder.

  “I’m sure the locals are very friendly honey,” Mary responded in an impassioned voice as she placed a hand on her tummy and tried not to think about her full bladder. For a moment she was tempted to tell her husband that he should worry less about hostile locals and more about his wife who was apt to get very grumpy if they didn’t make it to a restroom within the next ten minutes. But she managed to control herself. She also knew that the irritation that had been steadily building up over the last thirty minutes would disappear once she had been able to relieve herself.

  She felt bad for getting irritated with David, and she knew it was not what Jesus would want her to do. He would want her to be a nice and caring person, and most of the time she was.

  She lifted her hand off her tummy and began stroking David’s hair with her fingers.

  “I’m sorry if I’m a little bit on edge honey,” she said. “It’s just the hormones playing up.”

  David turned his head and looked at her, his cheery expression replaced by a slightly more worried one.

  “What’s wrong Sweetie? Is the baby causing you pain?”

  Mary smiled and shook her head.

  “No, both the baby and I are fine. It’s just all this driving that gets to me. Sitting strapped to a seat for hours on end is tiring when you’re almost five months pregnant.”

  She grabbed a lock of his hair and tucked it behind his ear, and thought that if David ever were to grow a beard and a moustache, he would be a spitting image of the painting of Jesus that was hanging on the wall in their living room.

  “I know Sweetie, and we’ll be able to stretch our legs when we arrive in Minden,” David said in a soothing voice as he put his hand on her thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “The fresh air will make you feel better, and a nice hot meal will give you some more energy.”

  “I know it will,” she said still stroking his hair, even though she wasn’t entirely convinced that it would.

  It took them just over eight minutes to get to the little picturesque mountain town of Minden. They cleared a low crest and there it lay before them. The narrow road that had brought them up from the highway turned into Main Street, which consisted of half a dozen blocks, of which the first three were set aside for businesses of various kinds. The remaining three blocks were taken up by timber clad residences of various sizes that must have stood there for at least half a century.

  The forest circumvented the town and joined up again at the other end of the street, where it continued for about a mile or so before it gave way to a craggy looking mountain that reached up against the blue sky like a giant grey pyramid. There were a couple of streets on either side of Main Street, and Mary doubted that the town contained more than a thousand souls.

  They found a little diner about half way down the road, and parked in the little gravelled parking lot behind the modest establishment. David eased the Mazda up next to the only other car there, a beat up old rusty pickup truck with a ‘Proud member of the NRA’ sticker stuck to its tailgate. Right next to it was a slightly smaller one urging the politicians and bureaucrats in D.C to ‘Make America Great Again’.

  David glanced disapprovingly at them, but didn’t say anything. It was a free country after all, and people were allowed to stick whatever they wanted on their cars, even if he himself found it deeply offensive. He guessed the owner of the pickup truck would be just as outraged if he saw the Bernie Sanders sticker that he had decorated the rear window of the Mazda with a few months earlier. He let out a sigh and instead of dwelling on the thought, studied the red two story brick building through the side window of the car.

  “I guess this is the only diner in town,” he said as he undid his seatbelt.

  It was an old building with what he assumed was apartments on the top floor, and the diner on the ground floor. An exterior wooden staircase with a small landing led up to a single door, and the words ‘parking reserved for patrons only’ had been stencilled in white on the wall next to it. And like all the other buildings they had seen so far, the place seemed to have been well looked after.

  “Let’s hope the food is ok,” he said and flashed Mary a cheeky grin. Then he turned off the ignition, quickly got out and opened the passenger door for her.

  “Do you want to go for a little walk before we get something to eat?” he asked as Mary clutched his hand and got out of the car.

  “No, I’m going straight in there. If I don’t get to a toilet within the next sixty seconds, I’m going to wet my pants.”

  She placed her hands on her hip and stretched her back, flinching momentarily as she did so. Then she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, secured it with a hair band and straightened her jumper before she started walki
ng toward the front of the building with a determined stride.

  David stood where he was for a second or two, raised his eyebrows and muttered a low ‘ok’, and caught up with his wife just in time to hold the door for her as she walked into the diner.

  The interior could only be described as dated, but at least it was clean. The walls were painted in a green colour that reminded him of phlegm, and the chequered linoleum tiles were worn down and faded. There were eight booths along the wall facing the main road and four more further in, separated by a wide aisle.

  A handful of customers were spread out at various booths, mostly older people, and they all looked up when David and Mary walked in. The conversations, which had up until that point been lively died down, and the feeling of being an intruder washed over him. He had half expected that this would happen. There probably weren’t that many non locals dropping in for a meal, and if they did, odds were that the majority of them didn’t looked like him, a left leaning liberal with shoulder length hair and dressed in clothes that were in vogue in the seventies.

  The silence started to feel awkward, so he did the only thing he knew that would break the ice. He nodded his head, said a quick hello and began making his way down the aisle. And that seemed to do the trick. The conversations resumed and the patrons went back to doing whatever they had been doing before the two of them had shown up.

  David sat down at a booth facing the street as Mary headed for the restroom. He slid all the way in, and grabbed one of the plastic menus wedged between the salt and pepper shakers. A few minutes later Mary returned and sat down on the opposite side, looking much more relaxed.

  “You feeling a little bit better?” David asked as he placed the menu on the table and gave her a quick smile.

  “A thousand times better, thank you. You don’t know how much you miss modern amenities until you have to do without them.”

  David was about to say something, but stopped when he noticed the waitress, an old lady with grey hair and a weathered face had stopped in front of their booth and was now looking at him. He turned his head and smiled, and saw the white apron she was wearing had a brown gravy stain in the middle of it.

  “Good afternoon folks, what can I get for you today?” she said in a raspy voice that revealed she had been a heavy smoker for most of her adult life. She held a little notepad in her left hand and a ballpoint pen in the other. The expression on her face was neither friendly nor unfriendly, just business like.

  For a brief moment David wondered what would happen if he asked for a vegetarian meal, gluten free toast and a soy latte. But just as quickly as the thought entered his mind, he pushed it aside and instead he picked up the menu again, gave it a quick glance before ordering a steak sandwich, fries and a coffee.

  The waitress nodded and quickly jotted down the order before turning toward Mary.

  “And what can I get for you miss?”

  “I’ll have the same thanks,” Mary said.

  The old waitress put the notepad in her hip pocket and told them that their food would arrive shortly. Then she returned to the other side of the old Formica counter, where she yelled out the new order to the chef in the kitchen, grabbed a couple of mugs and a half full kettle and returned to their booth. After having poured their coffees and gone off to attend to some of the other patrons, Mary leaned forward and began speaking in a low voice.

  “Did you see that?”

  Her gaze was alternating between David and the old lady who was currently facing the other way.

  “Noticed what?”

  “The way she kept looking at me when we placed our orders. She was literally glaring at me. It was so uncomfortable that I had to look away.”

  David gave her a puzzled look.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, it was awful. For a brief moment, I actually thought she was going to attack me. There was pure hatred in that look.”

  David didn’t know how to respond and just sat there looking at his wife for a good ten seconds. He could tell that she was upset, but even so he found it hard to believe that the waitress would deliberately make her feel uncomfortable. Surely she must have imagined it. It had to be the baby that made her act this way. He had noticed how her mood could change in the blink of an eye these last few months. One moment everything was ok, then the next she was crying for the most trivial reason. These changes also affected her personality. A harmless reply to a question, or a remark that was in no way ill intended, would be interpreted as an insult and she would take offence. And when that happened it was better to play along, rather than to hint that perhaps it was her hormones playing up. It was a lesson he had learned quite early on in the pregnancy. He exhaled and briefly looked down at the table before he looked back up at his wife again.

  “Listen, I’ll admit she wasn’t the friendliest waitress I’ve come across,” he said as he put his wife’s hands in his and gave them a gentle squeeze. “But I don’t think she has got anything against us personally. Why would she? She has never seen us before today. If she came across as a little bit grumpy, it’s probably because that’s who she is as a person. There are lots of people like that around, and especially in small towns such as this.”

  He looked into Mary’s eyes and noticed that the words were having a calming effect, although he suspected she wasn’t entirely convinced that his explanation was correct.

  “Let’s just enjoy our food. After that we’ll leave, and we’ll never have to set foot in this establishment again. How does that sound?”

  Mary bit into her lower lip and nodded.

  “Yes, I think it sounds like an excellent idea,” she said and let out a nervous little laugh.

  When their meals arrived five minutes later, David noticed that Mary was averting the waitress’s gaze. And for a moment he seriously contemplated whether he should say something to the old lady. Ask her if there was a particular reason why she was giving his wife hostile looks and making her feel uncomfortable. But he quickly dismissed the idea. It just wasn’t worth it. Twenty minutes from now, they would be back in their car, watching this town gradually disappear in their rear view mirror and consequently out of their consciousness.

  He realised it had been a mistake to drive all the way to Billings, and he felt guilty for having suggested it. What had he been thinking? Mary was almost five months pregnant, and it was just too much for her to handle in her current condition. They should have just hopped on a plane. If they had, they would have been sitting in his mother’s kitchen this very minute, and not in some tired looking diner in the middle of nowhere.

  He lifted the mug up to his lips and finished the rest of his coffee, and started on the meal. He cut off a large piece of the sandwich with the blunt steak knife that the cook had thrust through the top of it, and began chewing on the tough meat.

  Maybe Mary could fly back to Seattle? Air fares weren’t that expensive, and they would only be apart for two days tops. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that it was the right thing to do. He would tell her about it just before they were ready to head back home. It would be a pleasant surprise and a nice way to end their vacation. He made up his mind there and then, and decided he would sort it out when they arrived at his parent’s place.

  They didn’t talk much during their meal. They were both hungry and eager to get back on the road again as quickly as possible. If they were lucky they would arrive in Billings just before nightfall. Every now and then David looked over at Mary, and noticed that she kept looking at something behind him with regular intervals, before quickly lowering her gaze and focusing on her food. She had the same worried expression on her face that he’d seen after the episode with the old waitress. But this time he knew it had to be something else, because the old lady was busy talking to a customer sitting at the counter, and it seemed like she had forgotten all about them.

  “What’s wrong Sweetie?” he asked after his wife lowered her gaze from whatever had caught her attention for the sixth or
seventh time.

  He was about to turn his head to see what it was, but Mary quickly put her hand on his forearm and told him not to.

  “What is it?” he said as he placed his knife and fork on the plate and looked her in the eye.

  “Promise me first that you won’t turn around,” she whispered through clenched teeth and looked back at him with pleading eyes.

  “Why can’t I turn around?”

  “Because I don’t want you to. Now promise!”

  David exhaled slowly and turned his gaze momentarily to the empty seat next to his wife before looking back at her again.

  “Ok, I promise. Now what is it I’m not supposed to look at?” He had pushed the plate aside and was leaning forward, face only a few inches away from his wife’s, which had taken on a slightly pale complexion.

  “There is an old guy a few rows behind us that keeps staring at me, just like the waitress did. And he’s got the same hateful look in his eyes, like I have done something to offend him.”

  Her voice was shaky, and he could tell that the tears were not far away. He wet his lips and looked at her cautiously for a few moments before he started talking again.

  “Are you absolutely sure that it is you he’s looking at?”

  Mary gave him an exasperated look.

  “David!”

  “Ok, ok, I’m sorry.” He lifted his palms and shook his head. “I believe you.” Even though deep down he wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. He could feel his pulse quicken, and he was at a loss at what to say next, but he knew he would have to tread carefully.

  “Maybe he’s just a grumpy old sod who is checking you out because you’re a non local,” he said after a brief pause. “You know what it’s like, you live in a small place in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden two new faces that you’ve never seen before show up, and you just can’t help but looking at them, trying to figure out who they are and why they are here.”