Chasing The Last Road To Stockholm

"Where are we going?"

I looked in the rearview mirror as a dirty face slowly hove into view as she sat up.

"I'm going to stop at the next police station. I won't say anything..."

She sniggered. "The next police station. Right. And what... you're expecting there'll be some guy in blue, with a dome head helmet, saying something like, ''Ello, 'ello, 'ello! What's goin' on 'ere then?' Dream on!"

Her Cockney accent was abysmal and it sounded as if she'd been dropped on her head as a baby. Even Dick van Dyke did it better. Her stereotyping riled me.

"No, I'm expecting some fat guy in khakis and a 200 gallon hat, with an M1 strapped on each hip inspecting us to make sure we're the right colour and saying something like 'What y'all hidin' there, boy?'"

"Ouch, that hurt," she sneered, but I saw a grin flash across her face. "This is not the Deep South, you know."

"How would I know that? I'm lost, the GPS isn't working, and I haven't seen another person in the last half hour apart from you. I can't ask for directions, and for all I know, we're about to cross the border into darkest Peru."

"You talk funny. Even for a gay English guy, you talk funny."

"No, I talk perfectly normally. You speak funny." Any moment now, we were going to get into 'your mother' insults. I eyed her in the mirror. Her face was really dirty, but her eyes were very green -- a dark green, almost emerald. Attractive really. "And I am not gay."

There was a moment's silence, then, "So how come you didn't fuck me when you had the chance then?"

I was gobsmacked, unable even to string a sentence together. The words had been thrown out offhandedly, but listening was a big part of my job and I could hear echo after echo of tension, anguish and fear. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment in despair at the ridiculous situation I'd got myself into. Then I remembered I was driving and opened them again.

I had two options here. I could tell her the truth; that she looked like she'd been slow-rolled across a heap of coal, smelled like a Gorgonzola-addicted badger and was on a par with a fifty year old heroin addict when it came to being sexually attractive; or I could be polite.

"I was a little tired," I said. I can't help it. I'm English. It's what we do. In Britain, every girl would immediately know what I meant by that was that she was a minger and had more chance of falling pregnant by email than getting fucked by me. I guess we speak in some sort of code of politeness at home. It avoids violence. Underneath that imperturbable exterior, the British are, by and large, a violent race, and even our children -- on learning that we as a people have been almost constantly at war with each other and the rest of the world for almost two thousand years -- take on that fact with equanimity and an attitude of 'Legend! Get stuck in there! Lemme at 'em!'

It was her turn to look nonplussed. I ignored her, too busy trying to ignore the smell, which seemed to be permeating through the car like treacle -- an inevitable flow that stuck to everything it touched.

I finally gave up, pulled off the road and turned off the engine. "You look as if you've had a long and very exciting day, running from... whomever or whatever it is that you're running from -- possibly a bar of soap. I have water in the boot. Why don't we rig up some sort of shower thing so you can at least feel clean again?"

"You think I'm running from something?" she demanded angrily. Her tone pressed a few of my buttons.

"Good Lord, no. I would never think that. No, I knew instantly that you're obviously doing some kind of super-long marathon dressed as a bag lady in order to entertain the massed spectators watching you every step of the way -- probably for some worthwhile charity like Save All Priests From Kids. And when you saw you'd fallen behind, you thought you'd just politely borrow a car to catch up again. Stupid of me really, not to immediately commend you on your efforts. I do beg your pardon!"

Hah! We're polite, but we do sarcasm to Olympic standards.

"You're mean," she declared after a moment. I maintained a dignified silence.

There was a long pause while she considered my earlier offer. "You have water in your boots?"

I sighed. "The trunk. In the trunk."

I got out and retrieved a plastic gallon jug of water that I had stowed there against breakdowns. I'd been warned when I picked up the rental that, where I was going, mobile phone coverage was patchy, at best, and the heat was ever-present. I opened her door and held up the jug invitingly.

"You'll feel better."

"Nuh-uh," she grumbled into the blanket that she held around her like a shield. "You'll drive off and leave me here."

"I wouldn't. It would be rude. Besides, I didn't think you wanted to be in the car with me."

"I wanted your car. You weren't supposed to be part of the deal."

I thought about that and took the keys from the ignition, pocketing them. I might have just put an idea into her head and didn't want to find myself stranded.

"Come on," I ordered. "Out!"

"Not a chance!"

I lost my temper. "Get out of the car and wash! You stink like a fox in heat, dressed in a heavy fur coat that was used to clean the decks of the ark -- after all the animals disembarked! My nose is trying to crawl down the back of my shirt in defence. Now move!"

I grabbed the woolly hat off her head and threw it onto the ground at my feet, half expecting that the bugs I was sure had made their home in there would promptly lift it up over their heads and race off through the grass with it.

I wasn't expecting the mass of golden-red hair that dropped from beneath it as I dragged it away. Okay, the hair was matted and dull, and probably as filthy as the rest of her, but the colour and volume of it was certainly unexpected, to say the least. I'd never seen hair that colour before. It was a melange of copper, bronze and gold. She had precious metals for hair. No wonder I was stunned.

"That's my fucking hat!" she yelled, abandoning the blanket and clambering out to grab the filthy scrap. I quickly slammed the door closed behind her and pressed the button on the fob.

She heard the security beep from the car and turned to grab the handle, only to find it locked. Then she looked at me, tears collecting in her eyes.

"Please don't leave me here," she begged.

"Oh for Gods' sakes," I grumbled. "I won't leave you here. I wouldn't do that. But I'm not taking you a single centimetre further until you clean off a little -- it doesn't have to be a lot, just something a little more profound than a cat-lick with a wet wipe."

"You're just trying to get me naked!" she accused. She had a hair-trigger temper. Shit! Another one!

"Oh, be still my heart! The prospect of seeing a scarecrow with no clothes on has me all a-shiver, my lady. Us farmyard peasants just can't control ourselves when faced with temptations like that! It's just not fair on us, yer worship!" I frowned at her and offered her the jug once more. "Hold that. Don't let your smell melt the plastic."

I wasn't sure whether she was more offended at my crack about her smell, or the scarecrow bit. I wasn't a woman, so I had no idea of how the ranking of insults worked in the little black book of 'things men do and say that really piss us off.'

I opened my suitcase, dragged out a pair of shorts and two tee-shirts and tossed them to her. She had been taking a long drink from the bottle, and had to juggle things a little to catch them while not spilling, but it did distract her from trying to kill me with venomous bolts of lightning from her eyes. At least that's what I imagined she'd been attempting by the way her frown screwed up her face.

"Use one of the shirts to wash yourself clean. You can wear the other. And wear the shorts as well. Those knickers are not coming within twenty feet of this car from now on."

"Do you have any shampoo?" she asked, as if we were in a hotel bathroom. I started laughing at the incongruity. What else could I do?

"You'll have to wait until we get to a police station," I smiled.

She gave me a snarky grin. "I don't think that the Sheriff normally lets the public use the showers in the Station House."

I let that one go. Hey this wasn't Rome, so I didn't have to do as the Romans do. Or say.

"You'll have to wait then."

There was a long, pregnant pause which seemed to get closer to term the longer it went on.

"So... Turn around!" she said.

I thought about that for all of a split second. "Not a chance. The last time you were behind me you threatened to shoot me in the face. With a stick. A stick! Hah!"

I sniggered and she glared at me, and then flounced around to the other side of the car, dumping the jug and clothes on the boot. When she was as far out of my view as she could get, she peeled off the shirt and bent over, drawing off her panties.

I couldn't help it.

"The driver of that car's probably appreciating the view," I mentioned, nodding my head towards the road.

She gave a little squeak and raced back around to my side of the car, crouching down and bobbing up every now and again to try to see which direction the mythical car was coming from.

Her figure was... unexpected. She had small, round, slightly freckled breasts, so pale that I could see the minute blue veins beneath the skin. Her areolae were small and coral coloured, with bulls-eyes of petite, slightly darker nipples the hue of demerara sugar, which were as perky as the day is long. Her chest narrowed to a trim waist and then widened to hips that drew the eye around to the back where a bum as pert as her nipples was on display, bringing to mind the apple that Paris gave to Aphrodite, and which promptly kicked off the Trojan War. All things considered; a bit skinny and way too dirty for my tastes, but still superb.

I then caught a glimpse of that magical colour at the junction of her thighs and felt a shiver run through me.

Somewhat shame-facedly, I cleared my throat. "Sorry. That was a stupid joke. I wasn't..."

I stopped short. I was. I couldn't deny it.

I held my hands out to the side. "Sorry."

"Pervert!" she declared. Crouching there, she looked at me for an infinite moment and evidently came to a decision. She heaved a long sigh. "Fine."

With that one word, I seemed to have been dismissed as a threat. She stood up in all her glory, retrieved the clothes and water and blithely began to wash herself off in front of me. The shirt she chose as a wash cloth was a fine white Lacoste polo shirt that had set me back almost a ton in Regent Street. I'd meant for her to wear that one, and I think that's why she chose it and kept the cheaper Asics generic to wear -- just to piss me off. You try and be nice to people and... ah, what the hell. I never wore it, anyway. I never went anywhere posh enough to need it.

Making clear my intentions were not those of a cad and a bounder, I circled around well away from her as I went to the boot, scratched around in my suitcase and drew out a bottle of my favourite shower gel. I sighed. It was exclusive to one London shop, and if it ran out I would have to use the local stuff, which didn't show much promise, by what I had seen in the shops so far.

"Here," I said, stretching out my arm to keep the rest of me as far away and non-threatening as possible. Her whisper still haunted me. There'd been serious damage done to her at some stage, and while I didn't mind insulting her, I didn't want to actually spook her into running off completely naked into the wild blue yonder. Then I'd be forced to follow her and somehow get her back -- and knowing her even as little as I did, I guessed that it would probably mean carrying her over my shoulder. "If you want to use that on your hair, it should be fine. I hope so, anyway."

She nodded at me with a neutral expression, splodged some liquid soap into the palm of one hand and tried to tip water onto her hair with the other. A gallon is quite heavy and her wrists seemed finely boned. I took it from her and began to pour.

"Thank you."

When her hair was a mass of soap bubbles and she'd rubbed, scratched and finger-combed through it to her heart's content, I rinsed it off, marvelling at the nasty colour of the water. On the plus side, as it ran down over her face, it washed away what I'd thought was a bruise from my wild swing. I guess she wasn't as delicate as I'd imagined, and my poorly aimed blow had seemingly just smudged the dirt together into one place, rather than doing any real damage; which was a relief to my self-image as a gentleman and a scholar. To be honest, it was a fairly solitary image that was evinced only by me, and my sister Janie had even invented the word Moronerd -- combining moron and nerd -- to describe me more succinctly; at least whenever I was in earshot. She loved me, and that's what sisters do to show their affection -- insult and belittle their brothers as much as humanly possible. That and sometimes give me surprise hugs and a kiss on the cheek when no one could see her with her facade dropped. Naturally, I loved her in return and spent probably far too many hours trying to come up with insults that would cut her down to size. It was almost universally a waste of time.

"So what's your name? I can't keep thinking of you as my private goblin," I half-joked. I hadn't forgotten the threat to shoot my face off.

"Summer," she said after a moment, still bent over and her voice muffled as she worked the dirt out of her locks. I pursed my lips in thought. It was a pretty, if fairly uncommon name. It could be the work of overly hippy and feminist-orientated parents. Or she could be some sort of nature worshipper in disguise. How could I know? It probably wasn't her real name anyway.

"What's yours?" she asked after a few minutes more effort on her amazing hair.

"Bryn," I said, annoyed as I heard that note of anxiety in my voice that sometimes popped in when I introduced myself to strangers. It was an echo from my youth, when all the other kids had made it out to be the weirdest and silliest name in the world, and kindly let me know their feelings on the matter in no uncertain terms.

"Brian?" she asked, still hidden behind the veil of hair.

"Bryn, with a 'y'," I explained. "It rhymes with tin."

"Ah, Bran."

"Bryn like tin, not Bran like can," I averred. I'd heard it all before and had the answers on the tip of my tongue.

For a moment, I wasn't sure what the noise was that came from behind the copper-gold curtain. But then I recognised it.

She had giggled. I hadn't expected that.

She squeezed out her hair when it was finally rinsed, then jerked her head up and sent the whole lot swinging up and over her head to settle all the way down her back, reminding me of that photograph of a woman surfacing from the sea with her hair captured in a wide fan for posterity.

"Towel?" she asked hopefully.

"Sorry, milady. The maid hasn't yet brought them through from the laundry room." I used my best Parker voice, the puppet butler and driver to Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds. It went down like a loud fart during that tense silence surrounding a serve for match point at Wimbledon.

She raised her eyebrows and shook her head slightly in question. I didn't feel the need to explain the joys of my childhood television experiences.

"Sorry, drip dry service only, today," I said.

"Okay," she replied. I noticed that she was still watching me carefully from the corner of her eye. She was prepared to trust me, but only to a point. She poured soap onto my sopping designer polo shirt and washed the rest of her body, sighing with relief as great swathes of dirt were shifted back to the earth where they belonged.

"How did you get so dirty," I asked, eventually. I'd tried to keep my syndrome at bay as much as possible, desperately not wanting to know anything about her at all. It had sneaked up and mugged me when I wasn't watching, apparently with far more success than she had managed.

She paused in scrubbing at her left hip and thigh to consider the question, obviously not wanting to give me too much detail. I tried not to look at the area she was washing, but that colour kept drawing my eyes back, like some sort of golden-copper optical magnet.

"I slept in the fields," she said finally.

"When you say that, do you mean you took a nap, or that you were in permanent residence?"

"I slept several nights in the fields."

I felt my eyebrows shoot up. "Wow, now that's some pretty hardcore survivalist stuff."

It actually was. I'd been told that days in June were hot in Kansas, but that nights could get fairly chilly. I had no idea of what predators infested wheat fields, but I guessed there had to be some. Rats were the first thing that came to mind.

"I dug a hole and covered myself with leaves, to prevent sunburn, and keep warm at night. I think they'd sprayed fertiliser recently, so I kinda stink."

That explained the smell and dirt then.

"No fire?"

She gave a rueful snort. "Nothing to light a fire with -- and lighting a fire in a field of dry wheat is a quick way to get really toasty... really toasty!"

I nodded, and then thought of something.

"So what did you eat?"

There was another of those pauses. "Well, not much really. The wheat isn't ripe, and I didn't have a millstone handy anyway."

"Shit, Summer, how long since you last ate?" I asked, disturbed.

"What's today?"

"Tuesday."

"Four days."

"Christ!" I said, aghast. With my history, going without food for that long was anathema. "And water?"

"I found a hose -- part of a sprinkler system, I think -- that still had some in it. It was pretty warm and rank, but it was wet."

Fuck, she'd yanked on that trigger within me like it was set on full auto. I had to fight the urge to gather her into my arms, but I recognised it for what it was, and managed to quash it.

"Damn! Look, never mind the washing bit, just drink the water -- as much as you need. Drink it all."

"I'm okay," she smiled. "Don't worry. I drank some earlier."

As she rinsed off the soap, I couldn't help fussing. I just couldn't stop myself. For some reason, I became convinced that if she bent over too much she would probably keel over from lack of food and water. I unlocked the car and made her sit on the passenger seat with her legs out of the door. Then I took the cloth and washed her feet and lower legs, rinsing them carefully. She watched me with an odd look on her face.

"There you go, love," I said, capping the water bottle to keep the last few mouthfuls safe. I leaned forward towards her knees and sniffed. "All nice and clean."

She burst into laughter. "Did you just smell my pussy?"

I felt my face ignite into flame. I hadn't even thought about it. I'd just wanted to check that the awful smell had gone and leaned forward to do it.

"You did! You smelled my pussy." The more crimson I got with embarrassment, the more her laughter ramped up.

"No! I didn't... I didn't mean to... I mean I wasn't trying... ah, shit."

Her laughter continued, slowly growing louder and morphing into what sounded like the genesis of hysteria, and then suddenly she was crying -- great heaving sobs that racked her chest and shook her whole body.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I muttered, absolutely mortified, although I did realise that it wasn't my apparent truffle hunting in the wrong area that had caused this.

Tears were streaming down her face and dripping off her chin, her cheeks shining wet in the sunlight. I patted her shoulder and she blindly held her arms out to me.

Again, it was the trigger. I knew it was wrong, but I could no more leave her like that than I could suffocate myself by simply trying not to breathe.

I took her hands and drew her towards me. As I did so, she leapt forward out of the car and wrapped her arms around me, holding me impossibly tightly for someone so small, and crying so hard it felt as if things were breaking, tearing and shattering inside her.