It had been years since the space had been rented, at least 25. Burliss had been a younger man at the time, still a young man, basically, in his early thirties, and he was still wrestling with himself about fate. The Burliss family owned land in Somerset. That’s what they’d always done. Tyson “Ty” Burliss, however, did not care about land. He could fix cars, he wanted to own him a damned gas station. A Shell station up Louisville had come available. He sold two of the properties he held in Somerset, but kept the storage place, let someone else in the family run it, and he had headed off to Louisville, wife and young daughter in tow.

His wife had brought her car by to get the oil checked. He was trying to show her how to do it when the nig had come up and demanded the cash he had on him. He did not care for turning over his hard-earned money to animals—what sane white man does?—but what really concerned him was the safety of his wife and his daughter. That’s what they all wanted, and he knew it. He’d heard their gangs made it a part of the initiation—had to get you a white woman, show proof. Well, not on his damned watch. When the boy pointed his gun at Burliss, he made great show of being terrified, fumbling through the cash drawer and the receipts, and of course the dumb boy bought it. His eyes got wide when Burliss pulled out that BB&T Bank night-desposit bag; when he produced the .32 hidden within, they got even wider.

He yelled “GET OUTA MY GAS STATION, YOU DAMNED NI—“…that was the last really clear memory. The world turned into bright light and sound that seemed to explode in his ears. When he was fully aware of the world again, he could not stand the pain in his chest and his knee, and his toddler daughter was screaming and crying. Panic had overtaken both men. The robber fired first, catching Burliss a hair off from the middle of his chest; Burliss returned fire, catching the kid low, in the diaphragm and cracking his spine. The kid fired a second time, largely as a muscle spasm—he was falling, not aiming—but still managed to deposit a round squarely in Burliss’s knee. It was now Burliss’s turn to fire wildly. This shot, however, missed its intended target. What it found instead was Burliss’s wife’s face, she having frozen in panic. Tonya Burliss died instantly. Lattrell Watson spent six hours on a ventilator, and then died. Ty Burliss would need a cane and a pacemaker for the rest of his life. He was never charged with anything. Autumn Burliss was unscathed, and, of course, wasn’t unscathed. Burliss Shell was boarded shut.

Five years later, and Ty Burliss was now, having no other real choice to speak of, not only the owner and sole proprietor of Somerset Stor-All, he was its live-in manager, usually found in either the front office or the dingy ground-level apartment behind it. It was him, his daughter Autumn, and his nephew Michael, who he was convinced was a doper or a faggot or both. It was Michael who had come into the apartment, while Ty was watching Gunsmoke and eating the fifth in a series of fried bologna sandwiches that day, to tell him

“Uncle Tah, it’s a man wants to only tawk to the manager.”

“White?”

“Yessir. I know, don’t rent—“

“And he won’t talk to you?”

“Well, no sir, he said he had to—“

“I don’t blame him”, Burliss snorted as he extruded himself from the recliner. “Don’t look no more damn professional than Moody’s Goose, in that damn Dead People shirt. Deplorable.”

“Ah told you, Uncle Tah, they’re called the Grateful Dead, and they—“

“You even grateful to have you a job, you little shit? Go on.” Uncle and nephew crossed into the front office, and the boiling pit of rage that had been Ty Burliss was now a jovial used-car salesman who never met a stranger, the kind that walks right up to anyone, shakes the hell out of their hand, and busts out a conspicuously loud “HOW YOU DOIN’, PODNA?”.

It was a sharp contrast to the skinny kid with the blonde mustache who waited in the lobby, and seemed to radiate officious prick. He was one, at the time. His name, he explained in the cadence of a bored telemarketer reading a script, was P. Owen Sloane, and he was a junior member of MacMahan/Tomlinson, an old-money law firm in St Louis, and, as such, had been sent on behalf of the firm to—

“Son, you say your name’s Sloane? So it ain’t Louis L’Amour. And since you ain’t Louis L’Amour, don’t write me no damned novel.” Ty chuckled. “Do you need a storage space or not?”

Twenty-five years later, in spite of herself, Autumn Burliss now asked the same question of Tom Bonner, who was really Judson Coleman. She, however, deciding this Bonner character was kinda cute, followed with “I’m just messin’ with ya!” and what she hoped was an engaging laugh.

Coleman, equally taken by the girl, returned fire, and played at playing at being mortally wounded. “It wasn’t gonna be a novel, just a story. Looking to set up shop here as a locksmith; mostly work outa my truck, but keep some of my equipment here. Come get it when I need it. You can get in here anytime, right?”

“Yes, sir”, she said, “we’ll get you a code for the keypad, it’ll unlock the gates after 9:00; now, it’s pretty much the security we have. Daddy won’t spring for cameras. But we live on site, and we’re both pretty good shots.” They were walking through the storage site, which was the same gravel ground, metal walls, and garage doors of varying widths as any other; fortunately for them, each found the other far more interesting to look at. The only time this had not been true was when they passed space D-87, the space whose contents he was here to take. In case he had stared at it for too long, he quickly thought of an innocent reason for staring; he knelt, grabbed up the lock on the space, and asked Autumn, “hey—is this a Schlage 404 Chronicle lock?”

“Dude, do you think I know? It’s a disc lock, we sell ‘em in the office, and if you rent a space here, that’s what you gotta use. Okay, Lock Nerd?”

“If you don’t call me Lock Nerd again, yes. This space here…Not just huge, is it?”

“No, it’s five by five, our smallest size—isn’t that what you said you wanted? Because this space right next to it is five by five, and it’s available.” She tapped the door of D-88, whose latch was indeed unadorned by any kind of lock.

The nanoseconds that followed were, for Coleman, incredibly long, as he processed the data he’d just been given, and what it meant, and what a staggeringly convenient coincidence it was, and—and wait. Does she know? He scanned her face—a soft, warm, oval of a face, blue eyes accented with blue eye shadow. All he read in the face was an eagerness to close a deal. Still, he made every effort at sounding nonchalant as he said, “Is it? Well. Let’s look at it.” He bent down to open the door, and as Autumn was warning him that the doors can stick over time, he was able to fling this one open with surprising ease. Autumn was pleasantly—very pleasantly—surprised.

They both wandered into the small space: metal on all four sides, gravel floor, the gravel broken up by the metal rail into which the door fit. Single bulb, 40-watt, hanging from the metal ceiling. Judson scanned quickly for openings, crawlspaces, vulnerabilities he could exploit. None. At least, there weren’t any in the space itself. Autumn, however, seemed to have some; for an assistant manager at a mini-storage interacting with a total stranger, she stood unusually close to Coleman, close even when factoring in the 5x5 space they now occupied. Also, her posture, which hadn’t been noteworthy at all, had suddenly shifted in a subtle and unsubtle way—she leaned forward and shrugged slightly, which had the effect of pushing her B-cups towards him. This is a lot to go through to sell a storage space, Judson thought to himself. He decided to test her resolve.

“Well, miss…Burliss, this looks like it would work; no doubt I could get all my stuff in here. You vouch for how safe it is, right? I mean, my work stuff is gonna be here—“

Autumn had to laugh. “Can I vouch for this place? Can I tell you for sure it’s safe here? I have lived here since I was a kid. I’ve painted these doors. I’ve emptied these when the people renting didn’t pay. My friends from school, the ones whose momma & daddy didn’t freak about their kids being friends with a girl who lives in a warehouse, used to come over and we’d play like the empty spaces were the Bat-Cave, or our clubhouse, or whatever; when we got to high school, I’d bring the boys I liked here, and we’d hit the empty spaces and ahem. This place is safe because I keep it safe, because this”--she raised her hands in an “all-that-you-survey” gesture—“is mine. Or it will be when my daddy dies.” Her face fell slightly. “May be all I ever have. Whether I want…” she never finished that sentence.

Judson filled the conversational gap. “Okay. You sold me. This space right here—looks as good as any, right? Let’s sign stuff and pay for stuff.” Even though Autumn was scared sometimes that this would be her whole life, she was still pleased to close the deal. She’d closed a bigger deal than she could say, really. Yes, on paper, this was just another space rented, but it was a space rented to a cute guy, a guy from somewhere else, not the same passel of idiots from high school who had all groped at her in their cars or in the empty spaces. And, of course, he’d taken D-88 after staring all weird at 87. If that meant anything, anyway, and she genuinely could not tell. He was a locksmith, after all; maybe he really did just notice the lock. A locksmith. A lock nerd. Maybe test that again.

“Well, all right, lock nerd!” she said to him, tapping him playfully on the arm; he half-scowled and said, “That’s enough of that. Now, when I sign up for a space, am I just getting the space, or is the ahem thrown in?”

“The what?”

“The ahem. You said you’d bring guys to the empty spaces here and ahem; is that among the benefits?”

“Oh, the ahem?” Autumn should have been offended, but wasn’t; something about this guy made him seem like a challenge, a puzzle, a bluff to be called. She stepped closer to him. “I don’t just give out ahem. That’s earned, babe. So far, you just want a space, and you’re getting a space. Beyond that, well, anything could happen…” She was nearly toe-to-toe with him now, touching his chest, noticing his heart rate, which was climbing. To flirt so openly with a total stranger was dangerous, and she knew it was. Unless it wasn’t, because even a total stranger is a guy, and they all…

“AUTUMN LEE! WHERE THE HELL ARE YA?”

Autumn dropped her hands and stepped away from Coleman immediately, shooting him a look that, somehow, was easy to interpret as don’t say a word and be totally cool. Coleman leaned up against a wall of the storage space, and made himself not only nonchalant, but nearly a commentary on nonchalance itself.

One perfectly-measured beat after Judson had made himself nonchalant, Ty Burriss wandered into D-87. Here was a massive, abnormally round gut stuffed into an undersized t-shirt. Here were skinny legs in embarrassingly small gym-coach shorts, each leg pulling focus for its own qualities: the right leg for the tattoo of a blonde Aryan woman being seduced by an octopus which had the pattern of a Rebel flag on its skin, the left leg for the giant swath of pale scar tissue which began at the knee and radiated outward—the souvenir of his time in Louisville, or one of them, anyway. Here was a thin, sliver cane which, with every few steps, hit the ground with a harder-than-necessary thwock. Here was a massive ostrich egg of a head, mostly red from bitterness and bad circulation, the short, white hairs in a ring around the hairless crown sticking violently upward, the eyes and mouth and even the nose arching cruelly upward, as if he were eternally suspicious of the world, which he in fact was. When he saw that Autumn was in fact with a customer, he reduced this suspicious scowl by nearly five percent.

“Well? You selling this young man a space?”

“Yes, Dad; he just said he’s getting the space.” There was a plaintive tone in Autumn’s voice, and it struck Judson as odd; she was a full-grown adult woman—looking at her revealed as much—and yet she seemed to kow-tow to her father. Ty started back—“Well, I mean, you out here talkin’ to this young man, going on twenty damn minutes—“ and Judson countered. “Yes, she and I have talked a bit, and she has convinced me to rent here, absolutely. Tom Bonner, sir, glad to meet you. I’m a locksmith.” They shook hands.

“Bonner. Tom Bonner. Where you from?”

“Well, I’m from Lexington, by way of Ohio; thought I’d give Somerset a try.”

“I don’t blame you, son; man can lose himself in bigger towns like Lexington, Cincinnati, Louisville.” He paused on that one. “Louisville…I had me a Shell gas station in Louisville, thought I’d really made it, and…“

“Dad, why don’t we—“

“Not right now, I’m telling this young man something. Had me a gas station—“

“Dad, he doesn’t—“

“I’M TRYING TO TALK HERE, AUTUMN!” Ty bellowed, and his head grew a brighter shade of red, which Judson didn’t think it could do; on the word “talk”, he slammed his cane into the sheet-metal side of the building. The sound produced was a thunderclap that jolted both Autumn (even though she expected it) and Judson (who did not expect it, but found it awakened instincts in him that were already about 80% awake).

“So…you had a gas station in Louisville?” Judson redirected Ty, which kept Ty from noticing Judson’s hand upraised to Autumn. It’s alright, Autumn. This breed only bites if it smells fear.

“I did,” he said, “then come one night a nigger come and robbed me, shot me twice, took Autumn’s mother…well, that’s how bigger towns are. Somerset, everyone knows their place.”

“That’s why you use the cane?”, Judson asked.

“And the pacemaker”, Ty said, patting his upper chest as he did. “which don’t like for me to be on my feet too much, so why don’t we head up to the office and get this official, Bonner?”

The three of them began to walk back towards the office, walking in three kinds of silence—resigned silence from Ty, calculating silence from Judson, cowed silence from Autumn. At first, anyway. She finally found her voice as they entered the office. “Dad…you know we talked about you using that word with people you don’t know.”

“Well, fine,” Ty said as he produced a blank contract from the desk of the office. “Mister Tom Bonner, do you object to my saying niggers?”

“If you want me to be honest, yes,” Judson answered. “That was a bad guy that robbed you, and I’m sorry he did—and I’m sorry about your wife. But I don’t think his color is why he did it.”

“I get that, Tom Bonner,” Ty said, “and we don’t have to agree on that. I don’t have to love niggers, you don’t have to hate ‘em. All I have to do—well, really, all I have to do is die—but what I have to do for you is offer a space, and what you have to do is pay me. Sign here, Bonner.” Which Bonner (Coleman) did, and lightened the mood considerably by paying Ty $2000 in cash—over a year’s rent up front.

In doing this, he also saved the rest of the day for the Burliss family, or most of it, at any rate; Ty was thus able to buy a huge measure of groceries, which was a favorite obsession of his. Autumn, meanwhile, was able to have some time to herself at the apartment (Ty did not take her with him, ever; she had disappointed him with her inferior shopping skills, and Food King wouldn’t let him come back after he conveyed his disappointment by slapping Autumn). She relished the time alone—time to think endlessly about this Bonner. He was a knockout, but he was a mystery—he was the first stranger in years to seek their trade. She had suspicions about him, but they only heightened her arousal; if his plan was what she thought it was, for better or worse, his presence was a game-changer. He was a possible escape.

Overnight, in his hotel room, Judson Coleman stays awake. He sits at a small table, which is covered by a map of Somerset. His hotel is circled on the map, as is the mini-storage. Several different colors of felt-tip pen are laid out on the table as well. The TV is off, and he has two radios on. One is the AM/FM clock radio that comes with the hotel room, the other is a police radio, tuned to the frequency used by the Somerset police force. The clock radio is a constant source of sound, picking up a powerful FM station from Lexington running All Through The Night With Melissa Davis, a syndicated show produced by a company Mr M owns. The police radio makes noise every few minutes, as each of the five cars which constituted the overnight shift for Somerset PD sends a transmission. Judson dutifully marks the location of each car every time a location was given—each car having its own color-coded marker—and in doing so, he is learning that the cars all had fairly established circuits. He is learning, in other words, where they would be, and when.

It becomes evident to him that, between 2:30 and 3:00, all five cars are within a few minutes’ drive of the same general area, which area he has circled in pink—the southeastern corner of Somerset, basically, the area furthest from the mini-storage. Car 83 would still be fairly close to the mini-storage, but even it could be dealt with…

“Somerset, Kentucky, and we’re getting a call from Autumn, listening to us on Magic 98 out of Lexington!” Judson’s head, bent to look at the map, shoots straight up. (As it happened, Walt Sexton also owned Magic 98.) Autumn? Somerset? No way.

“Hi, I’m Autumn.” He recognized the voice immediately and froze. Whatever was about to happen would need his full attention, he figured.

Melissa Davis continued. “So, Autumn, you’re going All Through The Night with us, what can we do ya for?”

“This guy came into where I work today, and I really…he’s cute, and I—”

“Oh, okay, I think we get it; you’d like to, maybe, offer him some additional service?” Melissa laughs here, a genuine, engaging laugh.

“That’s part of it,” Autumn continues. “See, where I work is this little, Podunk town, and it’s me and my dad working here, and I just…I want to get out, I always have. And I think maybe this guy could help, or…I don’t know…”

Which is when the call drops. Melissa Davis is taken aback by this, asks if Autumn is still on the line more than once; when there’s no answer, she gives her number out again, and, at a loss for what else to play for Autumn, opts for Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For A Hero”.

Judson decides soon afterward that he has enough intel on the Somerset PD, and makes himself go to bed. He has also decided, more out of instinct than anything else, that he needs to spend most of the next day running errands, errands in preparation for the job, which he has now decided needs to happen as soon as possible. He has a seven-day window, but feels impatient at the thought.

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