Mr. Mayflower

By Charlie Glasgow

Need some help moving? Call Rodney Yates and this will be the last move you ever make. Rodney is a mystery and vanished one night back in 1955. Last seen at the truck stop at a poker game gone bad. He and his truck went missing until he appeared again in the same truck full of patina on the outside and full of powerful things inside that the locals just had to have. The payment was never asked or a price agreed upon. Three young boys start an adventure after tracking Rodney and his haunted truck with one of the boys dying on the E.R. table. Years later and these boys come together as men and face an even scarier threat as Mr. Mayflower comes to collect!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlie Glasgow
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393072270

Charlie Glasgow

  Charlie grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a spooky old house surrounded by old mansions throughout the city of Quincy, Illinois. This is book number five and several are still coming. Phoeniz, Arizona is now home to this well traveled musician and writing is a love that was reignited after a thirty-five year pause. 

Book preview

Chapter One

Mr. Mayflower

IN THE YEAR OF 1970, I was eleven years old and twelve wouldn’t happen until Halloween. I would spend most summer days off from school with my best friend from the house next door and trouble always seemed to find us. This would end with Scot’s mother screaming his name loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear. We all knew her raised voice always meant a trip to the doctor for stitches or punishment from the electric cord attached to the percolator. I was the shy kid not prone to cooking up these ideas and was usually sent home before my friend received his medicine via the Folgers connection. Luna Smith was a tall woman with a blonde bee-hive hair do and firmly ruled the roost. Her husband Jim often sat in the front yard until later in the day when he would leave for his job on the night shift. He might raise his voice, but never raised his hand in anger or punishment. His favorite term for his son Scott was you little shit and I can still hear his voice today. He’s been gone for many years, but his son is now the spitting image of his father in every way and just as likable. 

Most days in the summer, his father was listening to Jack Buck broadcasting his play by play of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball games. Wallace Street was the place to grow up on and someday move out before urban decay washed away the memories and left behind the crumbling brick houses that we called home. Most days we walked to the park, a mere two blocks away and traveled the roads and back paths that covered acres of land on the bluff above the riverfront. Playing football, softball or sledding down the treacherous paths during winter always brought us back home to family and friends. The days of summer always included a detour on the way home to the local grocer and his ice-cold soda pop kept in a machine inside the store. Fudge bars, candy bars and every flavor of Crush soda awaited with a smile from the owner.

Some days, we would ride our bikes to the truck stop down by the bridge in hopes of finding something of interest. The city of Hannibal, Missouri was a tourist trap for fans of Mark Twain and his stories of Huckleberry Finn. Scott and I were the real life versions of Huckleberry and Tom Sawyer with adventures that never lasted too long. The summer of 1970 changed all of that and our lives forever.

One particularly hot August day when the humidity rolled off of the Mississippi River, an old moving van pulled into the parking lot. It was by far the oldest truck we’d ever seen and covered in layers of rust. The name Ridgeway Storage could be made out and it was a retired Mayflower moving van that was now used by a company that had not even bothered to repaint the body. The single headlights peeked out like eyes of a slumbering beast and it resembled something of a cross between a moving truck and bus from hell. The suspension was shot and it backfired as it lumbered into the parking lot. Surrounded by trucks that were clean and new for the road, this truck was something that roared from the junkyards of hell and perhaps a gas stop at purgatory. Several layers of rust covered the once bright paint job and wheels. The old Mayflower ship could be seen bouncing over the waves that ran alongside both sides of the truck and Ridgeway Storage was painted on the sides as well as the front. The passenger and drivers doors wrapped around to the front and ended at the headlights. Baling wire held the bumpers to the body and a thick plume of smoke trailed along behind the rust bucket as it backfired loud enough to make the locals duck for cover. The local bookmobile looked similar, but not so damned spooky!

The man who sat behind the wheel was a portly three hundred and fifty pounds and wore dirty old green overhauls. The sleeves were cut off at the shoulder and he wore a scuffed up old pair of dingo boots. His hair was jet black and deep-set eyes pierced through with jowls that hung like an old hound dog. His steering wheel was almost flat and looked like a large pizza pan in his hands, awaiting execution. A suicide knob was installed on the steering wheel and he operated it with one meaty arm while the other hand only glided up to pull on a week old cigar. We found out that his real name was Rodney Yates and he was rumored to have lived in a trailer in Marblehead, Illinois just a few miles to the North. We just called him Mr. Mayflower because of his truck and left it at that. In his younger years he might have been mistaken for Elvis, but the years of truck stop food had packed on the pounds.

Our first meeting with Mr. Mayflower happened after school let out for the summer and our parents worked all day, so we were left to our own devices. We roamed the area at will and about the worst that happened was a whooping or grounding at suppertime when the folks learned that we’d been riding double on our bikes or playing around the railroad yard. Mr. Mayflower was a welcome distraction to our hot, sunny days of August and offered us amusement that we’d only dreamed of.

Talk of his travels and jobs as a carny held us captive through the afternoons. These days he mostly sold things from the back of his truck that people needed. Sometimes they just found something they fancied on an impulse and would soon take to his van like a child chasing the ice cream truck. Scott and I got to know him on a deeper level as he sipped on his steaming black coffee inside the truck stop cafe. Sitting in a booth, we’d find him after breakfast with his coffee, rolling a coin from knuckle to knuckle. Sometimes he’d pull out a deck of cards from a pocket in his green overhauls. His tricks were endless and shuffling with the deft hands of true artist, he could pull the card you picked from a pile of fifty-two.

He always managed to keep one eye peeled for his truck and could spot a customer at the back of the trailer doors. He’d excuse himself and waddle towards the truck with a hand waving the usual greeting. He’d open the back doors up wide and pull down an ancient set of wooden steps that allowed customers the chance to step up and see the big show! From the ceiling of the trailer, he’d wired up the old clear bulbs that lit up the inside with just enough light to make your way through. If you didn’t ask for something specific, he’d let you walk through and ask questions about the inventory. On one slow afternoon, Mr. Mayflower let us step up and explore the wonders of forty feet of rusted out shell with oddities that started with wing nuts and bolts to car horns and ornaments. The ventilation was near nonexistent on those summer days and I swear that the trailer expanded to several blocks once you were inside. The deeper you went, the stranger and darker the items became.

A mason jar was filled with a small face and wide-open eyes that stared back. If you looked long enough, the eyes would blink and scare the crap out of you. He claimed he’d bought it at a small village in Mexico out in the desert. The seller swore it was a genuine alien from a crash landing and recovered by the shop owner’s cousin in the Mexican Air Force. Another jar had the dentures once worn by Amelia Earhart and a jar high atop the shelves held a finger from the hand of Adolf Hitler. It had a real German ring on the second finger with the swastika-emblem emblazoned on it. 

I found an old Hot Wheels car that was a 1962 split window Sting-ray Corvette. Purple sparkle and still in the package. Scott found an autographed baseball from an obscure player from the St. Louis Cardinals that he wished to give his dad for an upcoming birthday. Mr. Mayflower knew the price of every single item in that old truck and could do math in his head while reading the sports page and watching the Price is Right on the truck stop television. When we asked how much he wanted for these items that neither of us could live without, his mind drew a blank. His reply was that we should have these things and that someday he’d come to ask us for something in return. We’d never heard of such a thing, but shook his hand with an oath of commitment. This is where things went so very wrong.

Chapter Two 

The Vanishing

Saturday mornings were filled with the first bowl of Honeycomb cereal and cartoons for a child of the seventies. Scooby-Do and Johnny Quest were mandatory viewing while the Monkees or cartoons of the Beatles kept me happy with wailing guitars turned up as loud as our old Motorola television could handle. My uncle worked at the Motorola plant up in Quincy and we were lucky enough to have one in our home. We didn’t get color television until 1970 and my mother tried to fool us with a clear plastic sheet with different colors taped across the television.

Finding your most comfortable clothes was an equal balancing act of wearing your Sunday best for the very next day. Sneakers not fit for school days and shorts that were outgrown last year held no bounds for a Saturday of fun. Rainy days and bike chains breaking were about the worst thing happening in our lives. Around the third week of August, Scott came over excited, still wearing the milk mustache on his lip and bursting to tell me the latest. He had received a phone call earlier in the morning that Mr. Mayflower was on the move and parked just three blocks to the West and north of our homes. Shutting off the old black and white television, we rode our bikes the short distance to investigate. Scott’s classmate from the Catholic school had informed him that the house was just next door to his and we could watch all the excitement from his front porch.

The Masterson’s, an old couple who lived in the house close to thirty-five years were moving to a retirement home out of state in a warm location. Scott’s friend Chalky Webster had mown their lawn for the last two years and the Masterson’s