The Compass

Snoring and the acrid smell of vomit kept Charles up most of the night. Jonas came back to their OU dorm room, slobbering drunk last night, and puked in his wastebasket. They had been best friends since elementary school. From Cub Scouts to Eagle Scouts. Last night's argument might have ended that friendship.

“Jonas, remember our oath? We weren’t going to use alcohol.”

“I’m not a scout anymore.” Jonas points to the poster above Charles’ bed, depicting a compass with its needle pointing north. Also printed on the poster. Stay true to your moral compass and always do the right thing. “Well, Chucky, you are so naïve. The scouts are bankrupt, and no one cares if you’re doing the right thing.”

Charles decides to get away for the day. Visit his ailing grandmother in Ashtabula. He gets an early start so he can miss the Polar Vortex headed toward Northeast Ohio. The Snow Belt.

Trevor gathers his backpack, which contains a lock-picking set, a variety of hand tools, zip ties, and duct tape, just in case. His favorite—a USB cable used to steal older Kia and Hyundai cars. Like a Boy Scout, he’s prepared. He's going to collect a credit card skimmer he installed on a gas pump the day before.

Hugo, a fence transitioning from physical property to cyber theft, offered Trevor the opportunity. “My Chinese contact sent me a prototype chip card skimmer—micro, paper-thin. The streamlined cover fits over the reader. I need someone to install it on a gas pump. Use super glue to stick it on, leave it on for a day, then retrieve it.” He knew Trevor would be a good choice for the job. Sleight of hand. Slippery as a lemon seed. Quick thinker and smooth talker in case he got caught. Hugo hands Trevor an envelope containing the skimmer. “Bring it back, and I’ll give ya a grand.”

Rosa picks up her mother, Marisol, from her janitorial job at the Schwab brokerage office. On the way home, her mom points out the car window, “La nieve es bonita,” and then makes a sprinkling motion with her fingers.

Rosa waves her hand. “And I hate the snow. I have to drive in this crap. After I get my degree in nursing, we’re movin' South.”

Marisol and Rosa are immigrants chasing the American Dream with minimum-wage jobs. Thirteen years ago, they left their pueblo to escape the violence and crime. One morning, they saw heads, faces frozen in terror, littering the plaza. Rosa watched her grandfather somberly collect the heads and place them in a wheelbarrow. One head belonged to her father.

After taking her mom home, Rosa drives to the Marathon station. When she enters the station, she’s greeted by Braxton. “I’m sooo glad ta see ya. It’s been so friggin slow. I’m tired of playing games on my iPhone.” He puts his jacket on. “That new kid, Mason, called off. His mother won’t bring him to work. You okay working alone on the midnight shift?”

Rosa stomps the snow off her shoes onto the Welcome Mat. “Yeah, the roads are bad. There’s ice under the snow. I only saw a couple of cars on the interstate as I crossed the bridge. I can handle things by myself.”

Braxton and Rosa finish the shift change details. On the way out the door, Braxton stops. ”By the way, the card reader on pump five isn’t working. I taped an out-of-order note on it.”

Rosa looks at her iPhone. It’s 12:40 AM. She looks outside and sees a car pull into the station and park alongside pump five, which faces the store. The driver gets out of the car. He’s wearing a hoodie with a billed cap underneath. He rips the note off and lets it tumble away in the wind. Using both hands, he fiddles with the reader.

Suspicious and curious, Rosa puts on her jacket and yellow vest, picks up her cell phone, and walks toward the pump, careful not to slip on the ice. She stops when she reaches the man's car, “Hey, whaddya doin'?”

The startled man turns, holding a razor knife in one hand and needle-nose pliers with a small plastic frame dangling in the other.

“I’m callin' the police.” Rosa runs toward the safety of the store. She cuts between pumps one and two, slips on the ice, falls backward, and hits her head on the edge of the pump island. Her phone spills out of her hand.

Trevor quickly assesses the situation. He understands that if someone is injured or dies during the commission of a crime, the penalty is more severe. Prison time for certain. He decides to hide her while he cleans up the evidence, the CCV. Trevor puts his tools and skimmer in his backpack. Carrying his backpack, he carefully walks to her and picks up her iPhone. It hasn’t timed out, so he goes to Settings, changes the Auto-Lock display to Never, and puts it in his pocket. He looks at the fallen, petite, young Hispanic woman.Blood trickles from the back of her head. Fog billows from her mouth. He sees an ICE bin in front of the store. “I hope ya got your green card.” He smirks at his dark humor.

After easing her head down on the pavement, Trevor retrieves a roll of duct tape from his pack and tapes her mouth shut. He rolls her onto her side and zip-ties her wrists and ankles together. Trevor puts her on her back and drags her by the feet. Keys fall out of her jacket. He stops and picks them up. When he gets her to the ICE bin, he picks the cheap lock, opens the door, removes nine bags of ice, and stacks them alongside the bin.Trevor picks her up, slides her into the bin, and folds her lengthwise to fit. He dangles the lock on the door's lip to prevent it from sealing, then closes the lid.

Trevor enters the store and looks around. Down the hallway, across from the bathrooms, is the door labeled Office. Once in the office, he disconnects the computer and DVR. Trevor takes the equipment out to his car, returns to the store, and goes behind the counter.

Charles sees a sign for a Marathon gas station. He’s been driving in a snowstorm for two hours. The monotonous sound of the wipers slapping against the build-up of snow on the windshield and the hypnotic sight of snowflakes coming at him like stars traveling at warp speed made him drowsy. Charles is headed back to Ohio University after visiting his dying Grandmother. She asked him to stay longer than he intended. He couldn’t say no. He also stopped to change a woman’s flat tire on the driver's side, fulfilling his Scout Oath to help others at all times. She pulled away without a thank you. His clothes were still wet from getting slushed by passing trucks. Maybe Jonas is right. Nobody cares if I do the right thing.

Feeling the need to ward off sleep threatening to overtake him, Charles steers his car into the Marathon station. Not requiring fuel, he parks in front of the ICE bin, his curiosity piqued by the bags of ice stacked beside it.

Trevor unrolls lottery tickets from the display and puts them in his backpack along with a king-sized Snickers Bar. About to open the cash register, he notices a car drive into the lot and park in front of the store.

Charles gets out of his car and walks into the store. A ringtone announces his entrance. He wipes his feet on the mat, looks at the man behind the counter, and points outside. “Do you know there are bags of ice stacked beside the bin?”

Trevor closes the cash register drawer and sizes up the six-foot, well-built Charles. Another oath of a scout is to keep physically strong.

Trevor made a plan as the young kid walked into the store. “Yeah, the boss wanted me to clean out the broken bags, but I haven’t put the good ones back. That’s the least of my concerns.” He threw his arms up. “My wife just called. Said our baby girl is struggling to breathe. She can’t find her keys to her car.”

“Sorry ta hear that.” Charles looks at the drink coolers. “I’ll just grab a Red Bull and be on my way so you can go.”

“I can’t go. The owner ‘ill fire me if I close. Those towel heads are heartless and penny pinchers.” He rubs his forehead. “Maybe you could do me a small favor. Stay here in the store for me until I get back. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, lock the door and put the keys in the mailbox.”

“I don’t know if that’s right.”

“Please, please. I gotta go. Here’s the keys.” Trevor tosses the keys at Charles and then heads to the door. “Oh yeah, have a Red Bull on the house, and if you do leave, do me another favor after you lock up. My back is killing me. Could you put the bags of ice back in the machine? Thanks for your help.”

Charles watches Trevor quickly get in his car, drive away, get on the interstate, and head North. He grabs a Red Bull from the cooler and lays two dollars on the counter. While sipping the caffeine drink, Charles notices the snow has let up and hopes there will be no more delays on his trip home.

Trevor gets Rosa’s phone out of his pocket a mile up the interstate. He’s going to report a robbery at the Marathon. Tell the dispatcher he saw some guy, fitting the description of Charles, put a woman in the ICE bin. While dialing 911, Trevor’s car hits an expansion joint on a bridge, sending it into a spin. It came to a stop sideways on the road. A tractor-trailer broadsided him.

Charles hears sirens. Curious, he looks out the window. First, a police car slows in front of the station, then turns north on the interstate. A fire rescue truck follows the cop car.

After fifteen minutes, Charles gets in his car, puts the keys in the mailbox, and then gets on the interstate and heads South. A couple of miles down the highway, he thinks about the bags of ice. Charles sees a sign for an exit. He slows down and contemplates. Should I go back North and put the bags of ice in the bin? What difference will it make?

Rosa returns to semi-consciousness and hallucinates. She’s a little girl. It’s a warm, dry day. She can’t talk because a faceless man in a hoodie chopped off her head. When fully conscious, Rosa realizes she’s in a freezing, dark place, bound, and her mouth taped shut. Her head is pulsating; She tries to lift it, but the urge to vomit overwhelms her. She feels cold steel against her cheek. Rosa realizes she’s trapped in a metal box and doesn’t know how she got there. I don’t want to die alone, in the cold, in the dark, in Ohio.