The wrong turn
It was way past my bedtime but not my daughter‘s, Cindy, who I’d just retrieved from a school event. I was yawning my way home behind the steering wheel while she informed me of a new approach to allowances that her school chums had stumbled on. Credit cards. Apparently some asinine parents thought teenage girls and credit cards were compatible, like oil and fire. Credit cards would fuel massive indebtedness.
“Really, mom, then I won’t have to keep asking you for money!”
“You’re right, then it would be the bank asking me for money, I can say no to you but not to them.”
“But mom, I’m the only girl in my group that still uses cash, and a limited supply at that. I feel like a kid.” Cindy wailed making me feel like the wicked witch of the west for ruining her life. She just recently got a learner’s permit to start driving. Should I be the one to tell her she is just a kid, and as far as I was concerned would always be my baby. Nope. Why burst her fragile bubble when I’m to tired to enjoy the reaction.
“Cindy, you’ll get a credit card when pigs fly. That ends this conversation.”
Cindy crossed her arms, the signal I was about to get the silent treatment. Wow, that really, really hurts. Not! Unfortunately, the lack of conversation resulted in my exhausted senses being dulled further. It seemed like it was taking me longer to get home than it had to get to the stadium where Cindy had been. Some one had recommended this route as a short cut, it was probably a short cut to his house, not mine!
Cindy stirred. She peered out the windshield and twisted around in her seat. “Mom, don’t we live in the city?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Just curious. It’s dark up ahead and all the city lights are behind us.” She said, stating the obvious. Well, apparently not to me, I hadn’t noticed we were heading in the wrong direction. How could I get lost on a straight street? Never mind, I get lost going to the bathroom at night.
Up ahead some tall, narrow edifice blocked the road. I hoped it was a guard house to the entrance of some rich and wealthy community, if someone was on duty I could ask for help. As it turned out it was an abandoned reform school. I toyed with the idea of copying the address in case I needed to drop Cindy on their doorsteps some day if it ever reopened, which I doubted as all the graduates and prospective admit-tees were running the city.
Well, the school marked the dead end of the street. Backing up I retraced my steps, not necessarily a good move since I was misplaced. Now I could see house lights twinkling merrily in the distance, the very far distance. The saying “go towards the light” made sense now. In the absence of street illumination, I followed the yellow strip highlighted down the center of the road to avoid going off into the sporadically placed ditches. Follow the yellow brick road, played over and over in my mind! Was I in Kansas anymore?
The road forked in front of me with the first street sign we‘ve seen, unfortunately the names weren’t known to me. Should I go right or left? Left. Why not? We turned down Lion Lane, still nothing looked familiar or promising. I take that back , the darkness was becoming very well-known. I had no idea where we were, I just knew where we weren‘t, close to home, or to anybody‘s home for that matter. Some short cut!
Car lights came in to view up ahead. The first sign of human life in twenty minutes. Yippee. They were parked in front of a closed marina. Several men were standing holding up someone who looked injured, while some other man was braced in front of him, fist poised to deliver another blow. My headlights hit square into very perplexed and surprised faces momentarily blinding them.
Scruffy, the family guard dog and my constant companion, was on the back seat whining. He didn’t seem to like the circumstances we had chanced upon. He barked at something on either side of him and waited as though expecting an answer, his ears perked so as not to miss a single word.
Cindy croaked out, “Mom, don’t you dare stop!” She knew full well my constant desire to lend a helping hand in moments of crisis’.
“Like that’s going to happen!” Tonight I was willing to abandon old habits.
I saw lots of blood as the “body’ was released “gently” to the gravel drive way with a loud thump heard behind my closed windows. The man rose to his knees and coughed up more blood. The upright men leapt into their car. Scruffy howled and lunged under my seat in a move so smooth it looked assisted. Grabbing my cell phone from the console I tried to remember the speed dial number I had set 911 for. Cindy yanked the phone from my hands as I reversed directions and sped off spraying loose stones willy-nilly. Driving at night wasn’t my long suit,(is this obvious by now?) and it was even more challenging on this winding back road. I could feel Scruffy’s wet nose on my ankles above my red shoes coupled with his hot breath coming fast and furious.
Cindy was screeching at the 911 dispatcher, explaining we were lost and being chased by strange men, (under normal circumstances that wouldn’t have bothered me, I mean us). No, she yelled, she couldn’t give directions, that’s what lost meant, and no we wouldn’t slow down to read street signs,(even if there were any!) I went airborne over a very large dip in the street and hit the ground hard causing the phone to soar out of Cindy’s hands onto the floor board where neither of us could reach it. Scruffy crawled forward between my legs and encasing the phone in his snout handed it back into to Cindy’s shacking hands complete with slippery doggy slobber.
Shooting started! We were being shot at! I couldn’t duck and see the road but Cindy dived downwards, hands over her head. Did she think her hands were bullet proof. Scruffy, now further out between my legs and interfering with my access to the clutch and accelerator, crossed his paws over his eyes. I tried to shove him back with my feet while I careened from side to side, making us a difficult target to hit. It was essentially close to my normal driving style. Bullets, bullets everyway and no place to hide.
At one point I swerved into some bushes beside a scare crow, so the gangsters could pass us unknowingly. Cindy explained, rather calmly, (if lurching in front of me and stabbing at the light controls is considered calmly) that in order for this to trick to work, I needed to turn off the lights, informing me the scarecrow had more brains than I did, (and she wanted me to give her a credit card, well the answer was still no from this brainless idiot!) I got back on the road but it wasn’t long before the villains realized we pulled a fast one on them and were hot on our tails again.
Around one wide curve a startled deer frozen in my headlights loomed dangerously in my way. I slammed on the brakes and my hunters swerved around me to avoid creaming themselves into my wide heavy behind, and instead found a huge buck leaping onto their hood breaking their windshield with powerful hoofs and leaping back into the heavy foliage.
Finally I could hear sirens and see blinking lights speeding towards us. Yeah, the Calvary. As the bullets whizzed past me, and presumably into my car, I prayed they would be in time.
The patrol cars up ahead went airborne over some more unseen road hazards, their lights bobbing up and down, pre warning me so I could slow down as I approached them. Closer, closer. We barely passed each other, the road being scarcely large enough for one vehicle ( I could swear their rearview mirrors were scrapping the paint from my door as they went by!) I counted three squad cars with six officers. Looking in my rear view mirror I watched as my pursuers abruptly braked, shifted gears and backed up into a deep ditch on the narrow backwoods thoroughfare. Their rear bumper went downwards tipping their hood up into the air. I envisioned the wheels spinning madly now having lost contact with pavement. This gave me cause for a little snicker. Cindy wasn’t seeing any humor yet. I’m sure she was pissed because her hair was messed up.
The very, very naughty men were now imprisoned in their car because the doors were jammed against low lying bushes but they could crawl out through the jagged opening the wonderful stag provided for them. Serves them right, chasing two defenseless women with only a tear gas gun, and a shivering terrier for protection.
A brief futile gun match ensued between the cops and robbers which the police won. The 911 dispatcher instructed us to pull over at a safe distance and wait till an officer could get to us ,take a statement and direct us home. I was shaking so badly my feet were knocking together scuffing the sides of my red shoes, all the while I kept repeating, “I just want to go home!”
Cindy fluffed up her hair while thanking a nice officer for his help. She didn’t have dating privileges yet but she was always on the look out for some one who might wait till she came of age. I didn’t feel like it was my job to tell her that her left ear still glistened with saliva that Scruffy had coated the phone with. Scruffy was now back on the back seat, panting happily giving his attention to the empty spaces on either side of him. Officer Tim Mann proofed to have a good heart as he guided us to a familiar road, this was beyond our expectations.
“Mom, did you see those police cars fly over that dip when they were coming towards us?”
“I sure did!”
“Aren’t police sometimes called pigs?”“Not by anyone in this family.” I declared
“Yea, but you said I could get a credit card when pigs fly. I think that counts!”
Not bothering to comment I just settled into the drivers seat and guided my car home, praying that gunfire was covered in our auto insurance. This was definitely a short cut after all, it cut my life short by about twenty years.
Getting up early the next morning I inspected the back of my car before calling my claim into the insurance agent, not a single bullet hole to report! Unbelievable, especially since we‘d been so close I could see those jerks’ unshaved chins! I went to run an errand and buy a paper which covered the story about a poor local marina owner (local! It didn’t seem very local to me!) who had been held up last night and saved from sure death by a car that had passed by and interfered in the burglars plans. The identities of the car’s occupants were being withheld for their protection. The marina proprietor had been airlifted to nearby hospital where he was expected to make a complete recovery. Several suspects were being detained in the county facilities facing criminal charges.
When Cindy eventually came down to breakfast she found a Visa card by her oatmeal.
“ Mom, is this for real!” She squealed.
“Of course it is, I always make oatmeal for breakfast.”
She flung her arms around my neck and smothered me in kisses before running off to make some phone calls. This was something she needed to share with her amigos before eating.
“ I didn’t realize you liked oatmeal that much!“ I yelled after her. I hope those kisses will keep coming when she discovers it’s a gift card with a limit, one that can be refilled at my discretion. At least her friends don’t have to know.
Two winged guardians hovered above the house in a sitting position, one poured himself a drink of wine from a floating pitcher and leaned back.
“Man that chase last night took it out of me,” he declared gulping down the cold beverage. Liquid poured from a hundred nine millimeter sized holes in his upper body placed there as he shielded the car last night from bullets, more accurately, shielded the occupants from injury.
Angel number two wrapped his wings around himself and laughed heartily. “You look like a garden ornament, a angelic water fountain!” He hooted over and over beside himself with mirth.
His partner whined, “Oh, toot, I might have to pay a visit to “h-e-double hockey sticks” to get these wounds cauterized!” This produced more rounds of laughter.
Inside Scruffy and I peered out the window at the sudden downpour. Strange it was just raining over our house, and the rain water looked rusty, rather, burgundy tinted. Talk about pollution. Scruffy just curled up in a ball and went to sleep feeling safe and content in his solid, motionless bed.
