Love That Never Fail

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten in the truck. Something inside me told me I shouldn’t. Maybe it was the way it was cruising much slower than the other cars on this road, almost like it wasn’t in the same hurry as everyone else – or like it was looking for a stray hitch hiker. Or maybe it was how the driver slowed behind me, longer than necessary, sizing me up as if deciding whether I was worth the offer for a ride.

It was raining outside, and I’d been walking along the lonely highway for hours and I was furious. Max had tricked me. He said we were going to drive into the city, maybe meet up with some friends; but when we stopped at the last gas station, maybe six or so miles back, he drove off without me. At first, I thought it was a joke. He just wanted to give me a little scare, then he’d come back and get me. I walked around the store for a while, then went outside to wait, and then I came back inside to get out of the rain. After three hours, the store clerk was terrified I was there to rob her. She was giving me a look that said, Get out or I’m calling the cops. Not wanting to explain myself to anyone, I started walking. Hopefully someone would let me hitch a ride. My thin hoodie stood no chance against this storm, and I was thoroughly drenched. Every rare car that zoomed past me sprayed mud over my shoes with callous disregard, not slowing for a second to consider helping me out.

In three hours, not a single person had stopped for my raised thumb, which was my way of pleading to hitch a ride. My teeth were chattering by then, and what had started out as a slow drizzle had formed into a full-blown lightning storm. Lightning danced across the sky frighteningly close to me, and if there’s one thing I’m afraid of, it’s lightning.

I saw nothing but trees and more trees ahead of me. This place seemed familiar: I had known that Max wasn’t staying too far from where I had grown up, and then I realized, I’d been in this forest before. It had been what, five years? I actually had to focus hard to remember the details of that last trip. Sometimes the brain shelters you from things you don’t want to remember.

Although it’d been years since I’d been anywhere near here, the memories still haunted me. Not since I was 16 and my dad would drag my younger brother Jerry and me out for our annual camping trips had I stepped foot anywhere near here. My dad really enjoyed coming here. He always told my mom that the city was no place to raise two boys. He loved the way the trees grew up around you: how if you got three steps ahead of each other, it was hard to make out the other person in the dense foliage. The sun set early behind the tree tops, and I think that most of all, he enjoyed the peaceful thunder of birds’ choruses and crickets’ chirpings. I enjoyed none of those things. And I was the most creeped out when I could hear the thick leaves rustling to my left and right, but there was no sign of what caused the disturbance. My dad convinced Jerry that it was just rabbits or harmless snakes, but I wasn’t so sure. I felt like there were intelligent eyes watching me walk to and fro through our small campsite, especially when I had to go off to relieve myself, and it terrified me. Coming to this forest was my dad’s way to get away from the city.

When I refused to go on our next camping trip, right after my 17th birthday, I offered my dad no explanation why. I could tell he was hurt, but I think he sensed that something out here had shaken me to my core.

With the forest rolling out in front of me like this, the dark trees starting to climb up either side of the road, details started tumbling back to me. They called this the Hallowed Forest, and it still terrified me. You couldn’t see more than two trees deep into the expanse, but it felt like there was a presence following you; its form trembling with pleasure that you were back, alone, and all for the taking. I shook my shoulders, trying to dispel that idea. I was just creeping myself out.

“Nathan, God damn it, will you please put some bass in your voice?” I could almost hear my father telling me. I’d had a shallow voice my whole life. Not like a girl’s high-pitched waiver; just softer than what most men have developed. It was because of him I was always so subconscious about my voice.

Bringing us out here was his way of turning us into men. He figured that if we learned to light a match and skin a hare on those trips, it might make up for the long hours he worked. I rubbed my wrist, right where the scar was etched in my skin. It gnawed at me as if it was a reminder of that day: the day I had gotten separated from Dad and Jerry and had wandered around lost for hours. Suddenly, the memory made me want to walk even faster and get the hell out of here.

Now, any forest gave me the creeps. Anytime I drove past a dense patch of trees, I felt like there were eyes on me, watching my every move. I felt like they could sense my fear and they relished it. This feeling had clung to me, ever since that day I was lost in the forest. It was a feeling I hadn’t been able to shake since I was 16. It stayed with me, omnipresent, even after I stopped going on the camping trips. And it even haunts me now as an adult who no longer lives in the suburbs with my parents. But even more so, since my father kicked me out of the house when he caught me giving my best friend, Jay, a blow job. He hadn’t planned on raising a gay son. He certainly didn’t want to have that on his reputation. His realization that I was never going to be the kind of man that he was drove him to push me away.

Since then it’d been couch-to-couch, odd jobs here and there, looking for money, and looking for love in all the wrong places.

I had all but given up hope I’d ever get to the nearest town by anything but foot when the dark pickup truck cruised up behind me and rumbled to a stop a few feet in front of me, off onto the highway’s shoulder. I could see nothing but its red tail lights and the silhouette of a man with long, dark hair sitting behind the wheel. He didn’t step out of his truck, or even look over his shoulder to see me walking up on the passenger side of the door. Instead, he waited for me to come to him, with a steely patience that prickled the skin on the back of my neck.

When I got to the passenger’s side door, he reached across the cab and rolled down the window. Suddenly, a long stab of lightning illuminated his harsh silhouette. I hoped that he hadn’t noticed the way the lightning made me jump, just slightly. With a deep gravelly voice, he said, “Want a ride?”

The back of my neck tingled as I hesitated for a second, thinking about how maybe I’d be better off after all to make the walk by myself. Reason told me not to, but something drew me inside: a magnetism that I couldn’t explain. The rain was coming down like a thunderous stampede, and I felt a beckoning that drew me to open the door. Before I could talk myself out of it, my hand opened the door and I let myself inside.

“Sure,” I said, a slight quiver in my voice giving away the anxiety I had hoped to hide. I’m not sure, but I think I saw a sliver of a wicked smile across his lips. By the time another strike of lightning gave me enough light to see, the sliver was gone.

Rain pounded the old truck’s windshield, putting up a mighty fight against the windshield wipers, and I pulled the heavy door shut, cutting off the onslaught of pouring rain. I put my hoodie down. There was a small carved wooden swing hanging by a leather string from the review mirror. The wood was carved into a wolf’s head; its mouth pulled back in a terrifying snarl. That's the first time I got a decent look at him. He had long dark hair, salt and peppered, and a closely trimmed light beard. His skin was olive complected, and he was ruggedly handsome: that I could tell right away. He had the most intriguing green eyes, with speckles of multiple colors that held a mystery, a history, but these were intense eyes: the type you don’t want to cross and you know to obey.

His hard physique told me that he must be some kind of prior military. Obviously no longer, because of how long his hair was, but he certainly hadn’t let himself go. Something made me intensely interested in this guy’s story. He wore no jewelry, not a watch or necklace to give away any kind of preferences. His long sleeved shirt was red checkered flannel, at least it seemed to be in this lighting, and the sleeves were rolled up to just above his elbows, like a working man would do. I couldn’t help but notice a few scars across his knuckles, as if he was used to fighting or grappling something. One of the marks seemed to be fresh. It was a dark mark, darker than the other ones, because it was brimming with blood, and it extended around his right hand down the side of his pinkie finger.