by Jeff Strand
“How’re you holding up with the driving?” she asked me when she returned. She was holding an assortment of six chocolate bars she’d bought from the vending machine.
“Fine. I’m enjoying it, actually.”
Okay, I’ll be honest with you. Samantha was absolutely stunning. She had long, curly blonde hair, an awesome figure, and a killer smile. Of course, since she was probably able to take on other forms at will, why not pick one that was physically attractive?
(You know, it just occurred to me that some of you may be reading this and thinking I’m some kind of aluminum foil-wearing freak. So let me clarify that despite my numerous comments, I didn’t really believe Samantha was Satan, an alien, or a shape-shifting beast. It’s just my sense of humor. Really. I apologize for any confusion.)
Samantha flashed me her killer smile and tossed me a candy bar. “Energy for the road.”
“Thanks.”
I should also share that Samantha didn’t know how I felt about her. At least Roger claimed never to have told her (“She doesn’t need to know you’re an idiot.”) and she certainly didn’t act like she knew.
The children returned and Samantha provided each of them with a candy bar as well. Nothing like sugared-up elementary school-age kids to add some excitement to a road trip, but hey, I wasn’t sitting back there with them.
When Helen got back, we piled into the motor home and resumed our drive. It was uneventful until twenty minutes later, when Samantha walked up and leaned behind us.
“You can get off at this exit,” she said.
“That’s not what the map says,” I told her.
“I know. This is a shortcut.”
“No shortcuts.”
“It’ll save us about half an hour.”
“I don’t care. We’re sticking with the map. I no longer accept money from strange women in coffee shops, and I certainly don’t take surprise shortcuts.”
“She’s good with directions,” Roger insisted.
I glared at him. “Do you remember being locked in a cage to be hunted for sport?”
“Yeah, but that was because we accepted money from a strange woman in a coffee shop, not because we took a shortcut.”
“No shortcuts.”
“That’s fine,” said Samantha. “No big deal.”
“Thank you.”
Samantha returned to the main part of the camper.
“That was pretty rude,” said Roger.
“No shortcuts.”
Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the map-approved exit.
Fifteen minutes after that, we were driving down a narrow, creepy dirt road through the woods that sort of made me wish we’d taken the shortcut.
Chapter Four
A RUN-DOWN, BARELY standing store had a faded sign that read “Last Chance 4 Gas.” (The word “chance” was barely visible, but identifiable through context clues.) Fortunately, our gas tank was seven-eighths full. There would be no running out of gas in sinister locations during this trip. No way.
“Joe needs to go potty,” said Theresa.
“You just walked him at the rest area.”
“He needs to go again. He’s walking funny.”
“Okay, fine.” I pulled the camper into what passed for the parking lot. There were no other cars, not even one for whoever worked there. Maybe nobody did.
“I’m going inside,” said Roger, getting out of the vehicle.
“Why? Do you have to go potty, too?”
“I want to check the expiration date on their beef jerky. I’m guessing late eighties.”
“Doesn’t it hurt to be such a geek?” I asked.
“You can’t say you aren’t curious. Samantha, Helen, you coming with us?”
“I think we’re fine,” said Helen.
“We’ll send a search party in ten minutes,” Samantha added.
Roger and I walked inside the store, careful not to slam the door and cause the entire structure to come crashing down to the ground. The aisles were narrow, the scent was interesting, and an elderly man sat behind the front counter, glowering at us as he paged through a tattered sports car magazine.
“Got any beef jerky?” Roger asked.
The old man coughed. “Yeah, but you don’t wanna eat it.”
“I’ll trust you on that one,” said Roger, looking through the candy rack for unusual and ancient selections. I noticed the magazines on the rack were at least a year old, unless a certain celebrity had gotten re-married and re-divorced without my hearing about it.
“Where’re you headed?” asked the old man.
” Wreitzer Park,” I told him, looking uncomfortably at a doughnut that had cherry filling leaking from the side with an ant imbedded in it, like those fossilized bugs in amber.
“Not the safest place to be.”
“Really?”
The old man nodded. “Bad elements there.”
“What kind of bad elements?”
“Dangerous ones.” He coughed. “Deadly ones.” He coughed again. “You don’t want to be anywhere near Wreitzer Park, trust me on this.”
I stared at him, trying to figure out if he possessed great wisdom or great senility.
“What kind of bad, dangerous, and deadly elements?” I asked.
“Just stay away from Wreitzer Park.” He returned his attention to the magazine.
“Got it.”
“I bet these M &M’s are worth something in the collector’s market,” said Roger, taking them off the rack. He bought the candy, along with a spooky pickle, and we left the store.
“I think we should camp someplace else,” I told him.
“Why?”
“Because a creepy old man just told us there are deadly elements there. That, to me, is a good reason to find another place to camp.”
“Aw, c’mon, Andrew. He was a nutcase.”
“Yes, but nutcases are often the best people to trust.”
“Samantha said this park is an abandoned paradise. Nobody ever goes there! We’ll probably have the entire place to ourselves!” Roger considered that. “Hmmmm, maybe that’s why the dangerous elements decided to go there.”
“At the very least we’re going to tell Helen and Samantha about it. If we do go to that park and something bad happens, I don’t want them finding out later we didn’t heed some creepy old man’s warning.”
Theresa and Kyle were helping Joe run in circles around a tree, so Roger and I approached the women.
“Slight problem,” I said. “Apparently Wreitzer Park has a bad element.”
“Meaning?” asked Samantha.
“I don’t know. It was a vague warning. Something about it being deadly.”
“I see.”
“I’m not necessarily saying we should find another camping option, I just wanted to point out there’s been a warning about our current plan of action, and if there are other options readily available, maybe we should consider them.”
“What exactly did you hear?” asked Samantha.
“The old man is right inside. Go in there and tell him where we’re going.”
The women exchanged a confused look.
“So, you’re saying we should go someplace else?” asked Helen.
“Yes.”
“Roger?”
“I’m sticking with the ‘Looney Old Man Babbling Nonsense’ theory, myself.”
“I’m not suggesting we cancel the whole trip,” I insisted. “I’m just saying that if our choice of parks has been classified as deadly, that maybe we should pick another one that hasn’t been classified as deadly, that’s all. It’s not like there aren’t other parks. It’s, what, one o’clock? We’ve got plenty of time to find another place. What do you say?”
“If you’re really not comfortable going there, then yeah, we should find another place,” said Samantha. “We’ve got the Georgia guide, I’ll look through our options while we head back to the highway. What do you think, Helen?”
“I’m fine with it if everybody els
e is.”
“I think it’s kinda stupid,” said Roger. “But I got my antique M &M’s, so we can do whatever you want.”
“Great,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
We called the kids back to the camper, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot, heading back the way we came. Yeah, I felt like a total wuss, but total wusses tend to stay alive. I had my children and pregnant wife with me, and I wasn’t going to take any chances whatsoever with their safety.
“He probably just wanted the best fishing spot for himself,” said Roger.
“Probably.”
“I have to wonder if perhaps you’re taking this responsibility thing a bit too far. Maybe there’s, you know, a middle ground.”
“I am on the middle ground,” I said. “I could have us all wearing life preservers.”
“I guess you’re right.”
” Wreitzer Park didn’t sound all that great anyway. I hear it’s overrun with earwigs.”
Roger shrugged. “Yeah, but apparently Joe back there is a fearless earwig hunter.”
I was silent for a long moment. “We have some dumb-ass conversations, don’t we?”
“This was a conversation?”
We’d backtracked about two miles before Theresa and Kyle started to fight over the final chocolate square from one of their candy bars. Theresa claimed she’d been saving it for future consumption, while Kyle’s counter-argument was that he, not Theresa, had been the one with the foresight to ration his chocolate, and the final square contained his personal tooth marks on the edge as evidence of his decision.
“One of you is lying, and they’d better fess up,” Helen said, using the version of her don’t-mess-with-me voice she directed at children, which was substantially less frightening than the version she directed at husbands.
“It’s mine!” Kyle insisted.
“Should we pull over for DNA testing?” asked Samantha.
In the rear-view mirror, I saw Helen give Samantha her please-don’t-encourage-my-easily-encouragable-children look.
“I think the store had a DNA test by the jar of pickled eggs,” said Roger.
Helen gave the same look to Roger.
I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.
“Give me the chocolate,” Helen ordered, holding out her hand.
“But it’s mine!” yelled Kyle.
“I don’t care. If you’re going to fight over it, nobody gets the chocolate.”
“But then she gets her whole candy bar and I don’t get all of mine because she’s a liar!”
“I am not!”
“Are too!”
“Am not!”
“Are too, asshole!”
Whoa! Kyle’s first curse word. I was glad to be there for a truly memorable parental moment. I stopped the camper and turned around in my seat, not wanting to miss this showdown.
“What did you say?” Helen demanded.
Kyle looked surprised and terrified, as if the word had escaped from his mouth without his consent. “Nothing,” he said in a small voice.
“What did you say?” Helen demanded again. It seemed peculiar to want him to repeat a word he was in big trouble for saying in the first place, but I wasn’t about to call her on that.
“He said the a-word,” Theresa pointed out, helpfully.
“You be quiet,” Helen told her.
“But he did!”
“I know what he said.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“All right, I’ve had enough of this! I don’t want to hear a single word out of either of you until we get to the campground. If I hear one word, even one, you will both be in more trouble than you can imagine!”
Theresa and Kyle sat back in their seats to glare at each other.
I resumed driving.
Vague threats like “more trouble than you can imagine” really weren’t Helen’s style. She was usually capable of describing potential punishments in such minute detail they seemed to be the work of weeks of preparation. I wondered if she was genuinely shaken up by this third pregnancy.
“See, Roger, all of this could be yours,” I said.
Roger grinned. To be perfectly honest, though my children drove me absolutely bonkers on a regular basis, I really had gotten a good deal, considering what they’d been through. It had only been about two years since Kyle and Theresa were kidnapped and almost killed. It was my fault, the direct result of a horrific mess Roger and I had gotten ourselves into. Theresa recovered fine, but Kyle had spent a year going to a school for emotionally disturbed children.
That said, most of the time he was a perfectly happy little kid, and if the worst we had to deal with was him calling his sister an asshole, Helen and I were extremely fortunate.
We rounded a corner and I applied the brake. A large dark-green truck was stopped in the center of the road, about fifty feet ahead, blocking our path.
“What’s he doing?” asked Roger.
“I don’t know.” The truck was filthy, the front grille covered with unidentifiable gook. Somebody was in the driver’s seat, but he didn’t appear to be moving.
We waited for about ten seconds.
“Honk at him,” Roger said.
“I’ll decide when to use the horn, thank you very much.” I gave the horn a light tap.
The truck didn’t budge. The driver didn’t react.
“I don’t think his engine’s on,” said Roger.
Samantha moved up to the front and looked through the windshield. “What’s up with this guy?”
“Is he awake?” Roger asked.
“Yeah, his eyes are open,” said Samantha. “Honk at him again.”
“I will make all decisions about the use of the horn.” I waited for several seconds to prove I was making the decision on my own, and then honked at the truck again.
No response.
“Jeez, I hope he didn’t have a heart attack or something,” I said, putting the camper into park. “Everybody wait here, I’ll go see what the deal is.”
I got out of the vehicle and walked toward the truck. The engine was on. The driver was a guy in his late thirties or early forties, with at least a week’s worth of beard growth and unkempt long black hair. As I got closer to his truck, it was clear that he was very much conscious and watching me closely.
But as I walked up to the driver’s side of the truck, he stared forward, watching the camper. “Hi there,” I said, waving to get his attention.
No reaction.
“Hello? Sir?”
Nothing.
What was wrong with this guy? I hesitated for a moment, and then knocked on the door. “Sir?”
He didn’t move.
Now, I could tell the guy was watching me when I approached the truck, so why was he ignoring me now? “Sir, I really need for you to move your truck. We can’t get around you.”
Again, no response. Now I was getting irritated. I knocked on the door again, harder this time. “Hey! I need you to move the truck, okay?”
Very slowly, the man turned his head to look at me. He narrowed his eyes, and then very slowly returned his attention to the camper.
I got ready to pound on the door, but decided that perhaps this was a gentleman I didn’t want to make mad. Did I really want to piss off a guy who was acting this strange, and who could easily have a shotgun resting on his lap?
We could always return to our original plan and drive back the way we’d been going before the wimp-out. Of course, there wasn’t nearly enough room on the road to turn the camper around until we reached the store. I wasn’t quite comfortable enough driving the motor home to relish the idea of driving in reverse for three miles, but what was I gonna do, throw open the door and drag this idiot out of his truck?
I rapped my knuckles against the window. “Sir? Is something wrong? Do you need me to get help?”
He looked at me and rolled down his window. “Quit touching my goddamn truck.” He said these words in a surprisingly articula
te manner.
“Sorry about that, but you’re in the way.”
“What way?”
“The way of my camper. We need to get past you and you’re in the middle of the road.”
“No kidding.”
“Uh, right. So could you move?”
The man opened his door and slowly climbed out of the truck. He wore filthy blue jeans and a T-shirt bearing the faded slogan “Quality Counts!” He was tall, at least six-two, and lean but muscular. He had an ID badge clipped to his pants pocket, which featured his picture and the word “Goblin.”
“You can’t go down that road,” he informed me.
“Yes, I realize that. That’s what I’ve been saying. Your truck is in the way.”
“I know my truck is in the way.”
I wanted to grab him by the shoulders, give him a good shaking, and scream “Then move it!” but wisely refrained. “Okay, well, since we’re both aware of that, maybe you could move it? Just a bit?”
“A tree fell, about a mile up ahead. It’s blocking the road. It’s right as you go around a corner, and I didn’t want you to crash into it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s very nice of you. Maybe we could help you move it.”
The man (Goblin?) shook his head. “The tree’s too big.”
“We have a couple of people in the camper who could help.” Technically, Helen wasn’t far enough in her pregnancy to be exempt from manual labor, but regardless, I wasn’t going to let her engage in any. “It’s just a tree, right? We should be able to get it off the road.”
“Nope.”
“C’mon, four people should be able to move a tree.” Never having moved a tree in my life, I had no idea how much manpower was required, but none of the trees close to the road seemed anywhere near large enough to provide much difficulty.
“What did I just tell you? It’s too big of a project. Go back the way you came.”
“There’s nowhere to turn around.”
“That’s not my problem. You bringing an oversized vehicle down this narrow road doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part.”
Clearly, this guy was not going to move his vehicle. “All right, well, thanks for not letting us crash into the tree.”
