by Ike Hamill
“Go back to sleep. I’ll be back by noon,” Vernon said. He gathered his pile of clothes and headed towards the bathroom.
“You come straight to the gazebo then,” Mary called. “Don’t you dare miss Ricky’s show. And don’t forget, 270 will be closed by eleven.”
Vernon grunted a response. He would have forgotten—it was a good thing she had reminded him. They closed 270 early so they could get all the cars off the road for the parade.
He made quick work of getting ready, and grabbed the cold hamburger that Mary had wrapped in foil. In Vernon’s opinion, there was no better breakfast than coffee and a cold hamburger. He liked the way the hot coffee cut through the congealed grease.
This early in the morning, he was able to take the main drag instead of sticking to back roads. Coming home, he would have to do the opposite—the main drag would be closed for the parade.
Vernon missed working the early shift. With an extra cup of coffee and a little willpower, the early shift was like getting an extra half-day every day. He used to work from five-thirty until two and got home in time to putter around the house or take the kids out fishing. And he missed how quiet the mornings were. The road was abandoned and his truck cut through the patchy fog that had settled in the low places.
Aside from the higher pay and clean hands, there was almost nothing better about having an office job. Office people didn’t laugh out loud, didn’t shoot the shit, and didn’t get to work off their extra energy by throwing wood around. He missed it.
Vernon saw a deer poking her head out between the leaves on the side of the road. He automatically slowed down to a crawl. It wasn’t the deer you could see that was dangerous. They always seemed to bound across the road in little groups. While you focused on one…
Vernon was right. Three deer jumped out from the bushes and bounded across the road. He smiled at their frantic, clumsy running.
He was still inching along, waiting to see if more deer would spring out, when he heard the horn. Vernon’s eyes jumped to his rearview mirror in time to see the headlights emerge from the fog behind him. His foot stomped down on the accelerator and he jerked the steering wheel to the right.
The headlights veered the other direction and Vernon heard the squealing tires. He waited for impact. It didn’t come from the rear. His car slipped off the road and dropped into the gully next to the pavement. The fender of his old truck scraped against the brush as he settled into the ditch. He turned to see the other car lurch around him like a drunken man stumbling across a dance floor. Vernon sucked in a breath as the car swerved back and almost clipped him with its rear bumper.
Just beyond his truck, the car’s horn cut through the morning as the other driver straightened out.
“Jesus,” Vernon whispered. He pulled the wheel back to the left and eased into the gas. The truck made a few inches before the tire spun freely in the mud it created. Vernon shifted back and forth between forward and reverse, trying to rock his way out of the ditch.
His eyelids lowered as he exhaled a disappointed sigh.
His four wheel drive was broken. He was supposed to put in a new set of hubs in the fall before the snow came. His winch was busted. There was no way for him to pull himself out.
He tried rocking it a few more times, but he could just feel the truck becoming more and more mired. On a normal workday, he could have just called one of the big trucks to come pop him out, but this was a holiday. They had only a skeleton shift. Pulling someone away from work at this point would only make everyone’s day longer. Nobody wanted that, especially from a newly minted Suit. He was already struggling to hold onto his popularity with the yard.
He picked up his phone and called Mary. Even a broken winch would allow them to tie their two vehicles together and nudge him out of the ditch.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“I’m stove up in the ditch near the crazy lady,” he said. She actually lived a half-mile farther south, but Mary would find him if she headed that way.
“I’m all undone,” she said. “I’ll send the boy.”
“Okay,” he said. He heard her disconnect and he put the phone down. Vernon got out to assess. Everything was just as he suspected. His wheels were off the pavement and the ground was still saturated from the rain a couple of days earlier. His wheel was buried to the rim.
Walking around to the front, he saw that that his problem was worse than he expected. The front tire was pressed against a big rock. Even with a solid tow, he might not be able to get over that chunk of rock. Vernon threw up his hands. He had to go backwards, and he didn’t have his tow strap with him. He got back in the truck and shifted his focus. Instead of trying to climb out of the ditch, he tried to get the truck to slide backwards far enough that he could steer around the rock.
While he was working on the issue, a car rolled to a stop behind him. He turned and saw Ricky behind the wheel. The boy didn’t have his license yet, but it was close enough. He waved for Ricky to pull around to the front.
He walked up as his son got the window down and put the car in park.
“I’ll hook up to you. Go real slow until you see the truck jerk. That means you’ll have the slack out of the line. Then, when I signal, you have to gun it. Try to keep the tires from smoking, but give it all you’ve got, okay?”
“Okay, Dad,” Ricky said.
Vernon walked to the bumper and moved between the two vehicles to get to the winch on the front of his truck. It was lucky it was still mounted there. He had intended to remove it so he could work on it. His laziness was paying partial dividends. As he unclipped the hook and tried to move the lever, he saw the car pulling away.
“Give me a minute!” he yelled.
“Sorry, Dad,” he heard Ricky shout back. The brake lights came on and the car jerked to a stop. It was a supreme act of trust for him to stand between the bumpers of the car and the truck. Ricky was just careless enough to let the car roll backwards and take him out at the knees. He attached the hook to the frame of the car and took up as much slack as he could. It was a precarious arrangement.
“Take up the slack!” he yelled.
He held tension in the cable while the brake lights winked out and the car rolled back an inch or two. Ricky found the gas and the cable began to tighten.
When it was taut enough to hold, Vernon yelled, “Keep a tiny bit of pressure on. When I wave to you, gun it.”
“Okay,” Ricky yelled.
Vernon backed away with his eyes locked on the cable. He was certain that Ricky would let up the tension, but the boy did pretty well. The cable began to sag, but everything stayed hooked up. Vernon rushed to get behind the wheel. When he did, he waved his arm out the window.
The car’s engine roared and the truck lurched forward. It was too much thrust. Vernon was certain that the cable would snap and take out either the gas tank of the car or the radiator on the truck. He waved frantically for Ricky to lay off, but the kid goosed the engine harder. Vernon heard the tires began to squeal. The truck’s front end rose a little as the tire tried to climb the rock. Apparently, he hadn’t been successful in his attempt to steer around it.
To get Ricky to stop, Vernon had to lean out his window and make a cutting motion across his neck.
They both got out and met at the bumpers.
“Is it in park?”
“Yeah, Dad,” Ricky said.
Vernon moved between the vehicles and unhooked the cable.
“I guess I’m going to have to call a wrecker. I’m jammed in there,” Vernon said.
Ricky trotted to the car. He slipped behind the wheel and Vernon looked up as his son pulled about ten feet down the road and then came jogging back.
“Let me try something, okay?” Ricky asked.
“Try what?”
“I’m going to try to push you,” Ricky said.
“No, Ricky. I don’t want to mess up the bumpers. Those things on your mom’s car are just fancy plastic. They look sturdy, but they couldn’t…�
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“Not with the car. Just trust me for a second, okay?”
Vernon started to fold his arms, but Ricky walked away with confidence. He didn’t seem to be asking permission. The boy walked to the back of the truck and then disappeared as he leaned over. Vernon started to walk to the back.
“Ricky, it’s okay. I’ll just call up Stuart and see if he’s still got that big wrecker out in his yard.”
Vernon slowed as the light played a trick on his eyes. He stopped and looked at the truck. He thought it was the light, but it didn’t make any sense. How could the truck be rolling forward?
Vernon took a step back, not realizing that he was basically standing in the road. The truck was moving forward, even though it wasn’t hooked to anything and wasn’t even in gear. He focused on the tires. They weren’t even rolling.
“Ricky, what in the…”
The truck bounced over the rock and came back up to the surface of the road. His son, panting and smiling, was churning his legs and pushing on the back of the truck. Miraculously, it was moving forward. Ricky stopped and stood up. He wiped his forehead with an arm.
“There you go,” Ricky said.
Vernon slowly closed his mouth. He realized that it had been hanging open. Ricky darted forward and pulled Vernon by the shirt. A car gave them a friendly toot and veered around them as it drove by.
“I don’t…” Vernon started. His brain was stuck in a loop. The truck was stuck. It wasn’t moveable. Ricky had pushed. The truck was unstuck. The ideas couldn’t be strung together—his brain rejected them.
“Ricky?” Vernon asked.
They both looked up. They heard a buzzing whip through the air. It sounded like the world’s biggest hornet, and it sounded like it had passed right over them.
“I’ll see you at the parade, Dad, okay?” Ricky asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. The boy jogged back to his mother’s car and slipped behind the wheel. Vernon just stood there, looking at the truck while Ricky made a U-turn. He pulled up and leaned through the window. “Get to work, Dad, okay? See you this afternoon.”
Vernon made his legs carry him back to the truck. The engine was running. He put the thing in gear and expected that he would still be stuck. His brain still refused to believe that the problem was fixed. It rolled forward easily.
“Huh,” he said. He scratched the side of his head and then gave it some gas. He was going to be late.
Chapter 17 : Hazard
[ Preparation ]
LILY POKED HER HEAD around the corner. Her father was at the small desk they kept in their bedroom. He would have been in the study, but Gerard was in there.
“Dad?”
He turned around and pulled his glasses down to focus on her.
“Hello, Lily,” he said, smiling.
She came in and sat on her parents’ bed. Her father spun his chair around to face her.
“I was just thinking about when you’re gone,” she said.
“I hope you haven’t changed your mind,” he said. “We have everything arranged and…”
“No,” she said, cutting him off, “I haven’t changed my mind, but I was hoping maybe I could ask Sarah to stay over?”
He scrunched up his mouth and turned his head down. She hated when he did that. It made all the skin bunch up between his chin and his chest. It wasn’t a pleasant look—it made her father appear very old.
“I don’t know, Lily. That’s an awful lot of responsibility that we’d be asking of Trina.”
“Trina is fine with it,” Lily said. This, of course, was a complete lie. She hadn’t talked to Trina about Sarah at all, but she had a strong sense that Trina would agree. Trina had always loved Sarah and she had always said that the two girls were their very-best selves when they were together. Sarah had the feeling that Trina said that to discourage them from hanging out with Jenny, but whatever the reason, it was something she said often.
As her father considered this new information, his chin stretched out and he looked a little less like a turtle.
“I suppose if Trina doesn’t have a problem with it…”
“She would stay in my room, so it wouldn’t be an issue of space. And she does her own shopping and everything, so it wouldn’t cost any extra money. You know how helpful she is with stuff around the house.”
Her father smiled. “You’re giving me a hard sell, which means you’re trying to do an end-run around your mother. Let me talk to her about it and then we’ll check with Trina.”
“Could you find out before the parade?” Lily asked. “I’m only asking because I’m going to see her at the parade, and if I could tell her it’s okay, she could come over after. That way she could get settled while you guys were still here and we’d all be comfortable, you know?”
“Slow down, Lily,” he said with another smile. He took off his glasses and put them on top of his head. “I’ll talk to your mother, but we may need to think about it. Please don’t promise anything to your friend.”
Lily nodded. She wasn’t sure if she should play her final card or not. It might be best to save it for her mother. No, that wouldn’t work. Her mother would hear it better if it came from her dad.
“There’s one other thing,” Lily said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“Sarah kinda needs a place to stay for a few weeks.”
“Oh?”
“You probably haven’t heard, but her brother just moved away. Now Sarah is alone with her dad and his girlfriend. It’s not a good place for her.”
“Hmmm,” he said. He knit his brow in concentration. “I’m not sure you’re thinking of this with the right perspective. If one child just left, I’m sure they’re not eager to lose another.”
“But it’s only for a few weeks and she’s only going to be down the street.”
“Lily, you don’t know the hole it leaves in a parent’s heart when a child moves away. Your mother and I have been worried to death about your sister for the past month. Having you here has been our salvation.”
“That’s sweet, Dad, but Sarah’s house isn’t like that. Her father cares more about Shari than Sarah, and he didn’t care about Jeffrey at all.”
“Please do not presume to know a man’s heart through a distant observation of his actions,” her father said. “There’s a quote like that, I’m sure. Maybe it’s a pig’s mind? The point is, you don’t know how it will make her father feel…”
She cut him off again. Bringing up Sarah’s home life had been a terrible mistake. She had to lie even more to break even. “He already said yes,” she said. “In fact, they were happy because he and Shari wanted to take a vacation, but they were afraid to leave Sarah alone in the house. Since her brother is gone, they were thinking of canceling.”
“Oh,” her father said. His eyebrows went back up. “Oh, that does work out then. You should have mentioned.”
She should have thought to lie about that earlier. It was good she had practiced on her father. Now she would have the right story if it all came up again with her mom.
“I’ll talk to your mother,” he said, spinning back around to his desk.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. She darted from the room to find Trina. She had to get the story locked in with her or the whole thing might blow up.
[ Conflict ]
“Hey, Trina?” she asked. She found her future caretaker on the side porch. Trina was doing laundry even though it was Saturday and there wasn’t much of it to do.
“Hey, Rabbit, How come you’re not down at the parade?”
Trina hadn’t called Lily by that name in a long time. She was Rabbit and her sister, Elizabeth, was Doe. Trina had dropped the names when the girls had become young women. But hearing the name made Lily smile.
“It doesn’t start for a while. There won’t be anyone to hang out with until it starts.”
“And you don’t have any horse duties this year…” Trina trailed off. A lot of people seemed superstitious about mentioning the death of the ol
d horse. The parade had centered on Big Jack, and the parade brought in a lot of money each year. Some of the locals were preoccupied with the idea that the old stallion’s death would lead to the death of the town itself.
“No,” Lily said. “Hey, can I talk to you about Sarah?”
“Sarah Cormier?”
Lily nodded. “She’s in trouble.”
Trina’s hands stopped folding the sheet she was working on. The woman became very still and her face went slack.
“No!” Lily said with a little bark of a laugh. “Not that kind of trouble.”
Trina let out a relieved sigh.
“No, it’s just that… Did you hear about Jeff?”
“He ran off with Carla Gault,” Trina said.
Lily nodded. Trina was always up on the latest. “Yeah. So that means that Sarah is alone with her father and Shari now.”
“Alone with nobody is more like it,” Trina said. “Those two wouldn’t notice the world crumbling around them when they’re together.”
“Exactly,” Lily said. “I knew you would understand.”
“What is it that I’m understanding?” Trina asked.
“Because Jeff is gone, and Sarah’s basically alone when she’s at home, I was hoping that Sarah could come stay with us for a few weeks until school starts.”
Trina tilted her head. She didn’t say anything while she finished folding the sheet and put it in the basket. She pulled out the next one and handed an end to Lily.
“Didn’t Jeffrey go to live in the barn a few weeks ago?” Trina asked.
Lily nodded. “Yeah.”
“So Sarah has been alone for a while then, right?”
“I suppose.”
“What makes it so urgent that she get out of the house now?”
“Because Jeff is gone.”
“He already was gone. Why now? How come Sarah is itching to move right when your parents are going away. You two have some plans that I don’t know about?”
“No. It’s not that,” Lily said. She should have known better. Trina almost always sided with Lily, but she couldn’t be lied to. It just didn’t work. Lily looked up and locked eyes with Trina. The woman came forward and took the corners of the sheet from Lily’s hands. “I suppose that I’m a little scared to be alone too,” Lily said. “I love the idea of staying here with you, but with my parents gone and…”
