Free Red Herring by Archer Mayor Page B

anyway—assuming the snow didn’t get more ambitious than the flurries dusting his hood.
    And, he added to himself with pressed lips, assuming his tires held out, the engine didn’t quit, the tranny kept hold, and the creek don’t rise.
    The irony was, while he was pretty depressed by his present state, he also knew he had it better than a lot of his friends. Marginalized rural Vermont kids over sixteen could easily screw themselves up, and so far, Bob Clarke had managed to stay sober, avoid drugs, keepout of trouble, and hold a job. The fact that he was occasionally either tempted or frustrated didn’t stall the stamina that his grandmother kept stoking through her gentle support. As embarrassing as it was to be living with an old lady in her ramshackle farmhouse, Bob had to admit that the good outweighed the bad. As old ladies went, she was cool, and you couldn’t knock the lack of overhead.
    He was in Vermont by now, having crossed the river, and had been daydreaming long enough to have covered two-thirds of the journey home, when he saw a glowing aberration in the featureless darkness before him.
    There was a red flare in the road ahead, and the vague shape of someone waving him down behind it.
    Bob crawled past the flare to see better what had happened. A car was pulled over to the side of the road, and a man dressed in new insulated coveralls was standing next to it.
    “Trouble?” Bob asked.
    “Damn, yeah,” the man said, pulling his watch cap low. “My engine quit, and I thought I was gonna freeze to death out here before anybody came by. This road is, like, never used.”
    “Not too popular,” Bob agreed, wondering who this might be. He’d forgotten to check the license plate, and now he’d pulled ahead of where he could see it.
    “Where you headed?” he asked.
    “Well, that’s the worst of it. It’s only a few miles, but no cell phone, no passing cars, and no luck—until you came along.”
    Bob was assuaged by the local reference. “You want me to see what I can do?”
    The man’s eyes widened. “Could you? I know nothing about engines. They either work or they don’t. This might be super simple, for all I know.”
    Bob pulled ahead of the car and swung out of his truck, noticing as he did so the sound of rushing water far below. A year-round stream ran alongside the steep bank here—a locally known bad spot, complained about for its lack of a guardrail and propensity for swallowing up vehicles surprised by the tight curve.
    He sidestepped between the truck and the top of the bank, and met the man around back.
    The man proffered an open bottle of Scotch. “You want some?”
    Bob stopped dead in his tracks, staring. “What?”
    “You want a swig?” he repeated.
    Before Bob could answer, a large hunting knife appeared in the man’s other gloved hand, its blade pointed to right under Bob’s left eye.
    “Trust me,” he said, his voice low and steady. “You do want a drink.”
    Bob didn’t move, his heart pounding as if it wanted out of his chest.
    “Take the bottle, Bob.”
    “You know me?”
    “And Candice, your grandma. Take the bottle.”
    “Who are you?”
    The tip of the blade came to rest against Bob’s cheek, making him wince. He took the bottle in his bare hand.
    “Drink.”
    “I don’t drink. I mean, maybe a beer, sometimes.”
    He felt a light sting just under his eye. Slowly, he lifted the bottle to his lips and poured a little in. Just as he reacted to the harshness of the liquor, the man pulled the knife away, letting the boy half retch without being cut.
    But the blade returned immediately after.
    “Again,” he was ordered.
    “Why?”
    The man’s eyes narrowed. He grabbed the bottle back with hisfree hand, pushed Bob against his truck, and held the knife high and flat. Behind him, the red from the flare cast a devilish halo.
    “I do have a cell phone, Bob, and a buddy holding a knife just like this to your grandma’s throat. You either drink up or she gets to