text: The glow of the LED cast a circle of red light around Tommy’s wrist. He looked up and shouted, “C’mon Lee! It’s fixin’ to be eleven soon!” Lee scurried over, the knot of his stomach twisting as the weight of embarrassment set in. “Goddamn idiot!” Lee murmured to himself. He’d been waiting months for a chance at this trip. He could not afford another embarrassing mistake. Was everything ready? Lee double checked his mental list. He had inventoried the cigarette boxes. He had extra cash for gas. He had his .22 in the glovebox. Tommy knew the route. Tommy stood leaning against their van fiddling with the source of the LED, a digital watch attached to a gold band. He continued to bark orders at Lee as he ran over. Lee quietly apologized as he arrived, and both men were soon in the van and on their way. For the first hour or so they sat quietly, listening to the gentle rumble of the engine as it trotted down the road. Both were too exhausted to say anything, they had been working for over fourteen hours getting the cargo ready. Lee only occasionally broke the silence to help spot deer in the road. “I didn’t mean to snap at you son,” Tommy at last spoke, “you’ve been doing good lately. Taking initiative. You just have to learn to trust me when I tell you what to do and move with a sense of purpose.” Son? He was hardly five years older than Lee, who wasn’t sure if Tommy meant it as a veiled insult. Didn’t matter if it was. A few more of these trips and he’d have enough money to bring a load up north himself. Tommy continued to drone on, Lee only half listened. “Yessir, thank you, thank you...” was all he could bring himself to say. Pretty soon both men returned to their silence. After some time, the headlights flickered onto a billboard on the side of the road. On it read, “Howell for Governor.” Tommy gestured towards it, “That deal right there makes fifty miles to Maryland,” he said, “Yep, I measured it last trip with this new watch. Tells the time with numbers like a computer. No hands or nothing and it reads in the dark too.” Lee wondered how it might feel on his own wrist. Maybe instead of that watch, he might one day just buy a simple gold band. Something just to peek out of his sleeve when he shook someone’s hand. Lee quickly shook himself back to reality. No time to daydream when he could learn how to get the real thing soon. “The boys we’re selling these too, they sell them in Baltimore?” asked Lee. “Nah, Philadelphia. You wouldn’t believe the tobacco taxes there if I told you. They just meet us halfway. After that they sell them to Koreatown for their shops.” “Why don’t we just sell directly to them?” Tommy shrugged and shook his head, “cause they don’t buy from no one they don’t know. It’s fine by me, makes the trip shorter.” Lee made a quick mental note. He needed someone up north to get him in touch directly with the customers. His cousin was in Delaware for college...that’s pretty close, right? At that moment the van snaked around a corner, and the headlights went from illuminating trees to illuminating a car parked haphazardly in the road with the hood open. Inside the car sat a young woman, eyes closed. As the van came to a halt, she opened her eyes and began to shout incomprehensibly. Lee thought that she may have said something about her engine not working. On his right, Lee heard the faint yet distinctive noise of dead leaves being crushed under foot. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur which quickly disappeared from view. Lee came to the sudden realization of what was happening. He went to reach for his .22, his arm moving unexpectedly slow. Anxiety had made his movement sluggish, and two steel barrels were jammed into his cheek by the time his hand reached the latch of the glove compartment. Lee turned his eyes to the left to look at Tommy, a similar situation. A tall, slim man stood with a Ruby model pistol pointed towards the driver’s seat. “What in the hell do y’all think you’re doing?” Snarled Tommy. The man to his left grinned, spreading his attempt at a moustache thin across his upper lip. “Yep,” he said, “This is Tommy Jackson.” Tommy was speechless for a moment, before weakly forcing out a question, “don’t y’all know these cigarettes are for Louie Regio’s boys?” “Yeah, I know Reggie. Get out of the van.” Both men silently complied. As they got down, Lee was able to get a good look at his own captor. A man on the stockier side, his fingers were pale white from his death grip on his sawn off shotgun. “By the way, I saw that you fell fucking asleep!” The slim man shouted at the young woman, who by now had exited the car. She replied, “Shit, it’s hot sitting in there! And it gets boring!” The slim man made no attempt to respond, instead he turned to his stocky companion to mutter some instructions. The twin barrels of his shotgun remained on Tommy and Lee, swaying steadily in his nervous grip. After the slim man finished, he and his companion lead Tommy and Lee off the road into a low lying clearing. As they walked, Tommy stealthily slipped his hand into his pocket. Lee felt a slimmer of hope, did he have an extra pistol hidden away by chance? Tommy’s hand and wrist reemerged empty. He was hiding his watch. Lee figured Tommy hadn’t quite realized the situation they were in. The stocky man flinched with each shot. The recoil always did that to him. As they re-emerged from the forest, the slim man put his hand on the shoulder of the other and said, “Not too bad, next time just try to move with more of a sense of purpose.” The stocky man nodded in reply. The woman sood waiting for them in the road, car idling and re-oriented to leave. The two men climbed into the van, following her car as it gently turned the corner.