Thirty minutes later, the second car arrived—a slightly older model, well-maintained. Out stepped a fellow with a bright smile and a clean-shaven face. He didn’t loiter; he walked straight to the porch, hands clasped behind his back, respectful of the perimeter.
“Hello, sir,” he said, offering a firm handshake to the air between them. “My name is Joe. I’m here to pick up your daughter, Flo. We’ve got tickets to the matinee show downtown. Is she ready to go?”
The farmer evaluated the grip, the cadence of the speech, and the clear lack of malice. He found nothing to object to. “Go on, then,” the farmer grunted, a flicker of approval behind his eyes. “Make sure she’s back before the porch light turns off.”
The farmer leaned back, the creak of his chair the only sound in the night. The moon climbed higher, casting long, skeletal shadows across the yard. Then, the third car appeared—a low-slung thing with an engine that purred with a deep, menacing vibration. The driver didn’t bother turning off the headlights, which blazed across the porch like searchlights.
The man stepped out. He was dressed in leather, his hair slicked back with something that looked like grease, and he wore a grin that didn’t reach his eyes—it was a jagged, predatory sort of expression. He didn’t walk to the porch; he sauntered, his boots clicking with a hollow, rhythmic authority. He reached the bottom step, tilted his head, and looked at the farmer with a casual, almost insulting lack of concern.
“Hi,” the guy drawled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. “My name is Chuck…”
The farmer didn’t wait for the rest of the sentence. He didn’t wait for the name of the daughter, the destination, or the itinerary. He didn’t even blink. He simply brought the shotgun to his shoulder, tracked the movement, and squeezed the trigger.
BOOM.
The sound ripped through the stillness of the night, scattering a flock of roosting birds from the nearby trees. Smoke curled from the twin barrels, drifting slowly into the humid air. The farmer didn’t lower his weapon; he just watched the dust settle on the driveway. He knew exactly what was coming next, and he didn’t care one bit.
Some people might call it extreme, but out here in the country, you didn’t need to hear the rest of a sentence to know when a man was named Chuck and had come for your daughter—because in this farmer’s book, any man who introduced himself as “Chuck” was clearly just asking for a “Truck” to be the last thing he saw, or perhaps a “Buck”shot reality check. He leaned back into his creaking chair, exhaled a long breath of contentment, and stared out into the darkness. He had done his duty. His daughter wasn’t going anywhere tonight, and the porch was, once again, perfectly, peacefully quiet.
