The One That Stays With You

1

Trooper Davis was an excited sarcastic.

The passing workdays brought a slow stinging grind, becoming shallow without so much as a speeding violation to flip the gumballs on. In weeks, there wasn't a broken tail light, no calls for domestics, public intoxications, or delinquents to stir up a little shit. For Davis and his fellow boys in blue, the world had settled.

Patrol was boredom in its purest form. Every potential for a drug bust or a felony warrant to break the monotony grew hopeless. His peers and even his wife pointed out that he wasn't complaining much on payday. Another point of contention was that action in the way Davis was asking would mean a perp, likely carrying and ready to pull the trigger if cornered. It was dangerous thinking, and he found keeping his yap shut was best. Besides, as a rookie, who was he to complain? Maybe he watched too many Clint Eastwood flicks and had the wrong idea about the job. The consensus of getting what you wished for always backfired anyway, or so the vets claimed. There were more than enough stories around the water cooler to support the statement. Sometimes you would get a broken light, and sometimes the asshole driving was doped out of his mind on a life sentence worth of low-grade heroin. Alas, the glamour faded as the starry eyes of a young kid dimmed with the weight of a badge.

A security job would have more action. Davis thought, knowing the only grip he had left was the prestige when the luster began to fade. Wedding detail and crowd control at concerts wasn't anything to brag about. Despite the current culture, being a cop still meant something, and you couldn't get that doing security.

It was Friday, which meant checking out the defunct Vanderbilt Rest Area, or VRA, to the locals. This menial task left for rookies and punishment for those in the captain's shithouse. The place went unmarked on the road but still showed up on Google to sucker in unsuspecting travelers. Once they got a little way in, seeing the ruin and desolation that gave it more of a haunted feel against the idea of rest, they turned back in a hurry. Reputation established of a place where you got yourself mugged, your wife raped, and your kids taken to be sold off into political sex slavery, according to the news. In reality, it was the kind of place that only attracted the drug-using homeless and school skippers. Well, if you were lucky. That was usually the extent of it.

It didn't happen in the imagined extreme. Davis nor anyone ever got a call for so much as a 126. The former VRA was nothing more than an eyesore. Little did anyone know that it would be razed in the summer. For what? Davis didn't care, and neither did anyone else. Good riddance. It was still on the weekly checklist. Not so much high profile, but enough to lend worry on a future lawsuit. While muggers hadn't set up shop, no one's wife managed to get violated or their kids stolen. It did have a little action from time to time. This part springing forth a conversation years ago when the place closed down. The department took bets on how long it would take to become a meth lab. Dealers always tried to set up shop somewhere obviously stupid, which VRA was thought to be a prime location if you were a fucking idiot. The takers on that had been pissed about their money. The odds in favor of a secret fuckhouse used by local homosexuals who didn't want to spend the money on a motel or risk their wives finding out they weren't really playing poker on Saturday nights.

Wrong, but not entirely. There were a few reports of men who had come and used the facilities for precisely that. Though, it wasn't often enough to win any cash. Davis once heard Trooper Evans tell a story of having found a few guys drunk off their asses, with one refusing to leave until he finished masturbating to the point of threatening violence. Unsubstantiated, these stories came and went. Everyone had one except Davis. His best was a gang playing hooky so they could smoke some grass and kill time on their phones to avoid exams. Nothing to really write home about.

The cruiser turned into the entrance. The facility was shrouded in murk and gloom, falling in disrepair into an ugliness Davis couldn't wait to be rid of—taxpayers' money hard at work. Why anyone would want to hang around here was called into question. He winced to the graffiti on the southernmost wall that read last week in black spray paint as Gregor is a God, but now God had a line through it and read, Gregor is a FAGGOT. Someone actually took the time to respond with no takers. He understood the negativity associated and attracted. It would soon be gone and forgotten. The heebie-jeebies passed over him as the sun hid behind a cloud, and VRA couldn't have appeared more abysmal. Decayed leaves covered four years' worth of trash on the lawn. The once baby blue painted blocks were withered down to the gritty underneath. The little bit of color that managed to hang on had faded from exposure to molded tans and browns, protected only by the awning above but not from the reach of summer humidity. The interior had undoubtedly been gutted. Any pipes, any metal, for that matter, had been stripped by low-life scavengers looking for a quick payday. This place was a pleasure.