Wandering Highway

by Ike Warren

  Beside her, a pale and rather skinny man with big glasses that seemed too large for his face handed Allan a small Dixie cup. “Help yourself to one cup full only.” He instructed.

  “But I’m here to get water for my wife too. She’s pregnant and waiting outside.” Allan said.

  “One cup per person sir. That’s all we can allow.” The skinny man said as he looked nervously over Allan’s shoulder where three very large men stood, apparently on guard duty.

  Allan took the tiny Dixie cup from the man and his mind began to race. This cup won’t hold enough water for both Jennifer and me. I won’t drink any. I’ll give it all to her. No, that’s still not enough. It will take a dozen of these tiny cups to get Jennifer hydrated again…

  Someone in the line behind Allan nudged him to move forward.

  Maybe I could take a cup of water to Jennifer, rub the ink stamp off my hand and go through the line again…

  Another nudge and Allan stepped directly in front of the first water cooler.

  No, they’ll recognize me. I shouldn’t have spoken out to the skinny man with the big glasses. I’m acting too suspicious already. They’ll recognize me for sure…

  “Move along sir.” One of the giant men guarding the water line roared.

  I just need a moment to think. Maybe I could steal the cup from the person who’s pushing me, fill up both cups with water and run away…

  Two of the big guards walked up to Allan and grunted.

  No more time to think. It’s too late.

  Allan bent down and began filling his Dixie cup. When it was full to the rim he placed it gently on top of the water cooler. In a flash he flung off his white undershirt and held it under the water spigot and began soaking it with water. The big guys at his side were momentarily stunned at Allan’s display of desperation and they looked on for a few precious moments while Allan’s undershirt became saturated with water.

  “Alright, that’s enough for you.” One of the men said as two large hands gripped Allan on either side and escorted him out of the church. Before it was out of reach Allan grabbed the Dixie cup from the top of the water cooler and cradled the cup and his water soaked undershirt in his arms. The hulking men tossed Allan out the front doors and as he fell to the ground a few spatters of the precious liquid escaped from both the cup. Allan did not mind the loss of the few drops of water for he was ecstatic that he had successfully carried more water out of that place than anyone else thanks to his quick thinking. All the bystanders in the water line behind him stared at the commotion in disbelief but Allan did not feel remorseful for stealing from the church. What he did was necessary to save his wife and his unborn child. As he walked away the saturated undershirt dripped more precious drops of water on the pavement beneath Allan’s feet and he realized that he needed to hurry up and he began to run back towards Jennifer as fast as his injured and tired legs would allow.

  ----

  As they approached the rusty truck Jennifer noticed the woman start to become more fidgety. She saw that the woman’s hands were trembling as she reached one of her fingers up to her mouth and bit down on a fingernail. Jennifer had watched videos of people experiencing withdrawals from drugs during nursing school and the woman walking beside her had all the classic symptoms of an addict in need of a fix. The clammy hands, the tremors, the sunken face and the sores on her skin. Methamphetamine or maybe even bath salts. She thought. As she considered what types of drugs could cause such effects on a person another thought crossed her mind.

  She looks nervous.

  Suddenly the woman’s male companion pulled out a wooden club that he had been concealing behind his waist and he struck Jennifer hard across the head. The blow was fierce and in an instant Jennifer’s world became black. She awoke to find her body tumbling to the ground and although she had only lost conscientious for a fraction of a second it felt like she had been out for an eternity. She braced herself to protect her womb just as her body slammed against the hard pavement. It took everything Jennifer had not to cry out in pain for she knew that if she did her attackers would surely beat her again. She lay as still as possible and prayed that they would let her live.

  “God-dammit!” Roared the man with the wooden club.

  “What is it Frank?” Asked the woman.

  “I didn’t want to do this to this woman. She’s pregnant for God’s sake Anne.” Frank yelled.

  “Hey I looked up at you and you nodded back at me to do this.”

  “Yeah, because you were making it so painfully obvious that we were up to no good. Biting your god-damn nails like you’re hatching a plot. Besides, what am I supposed to say ‘Naw, let’s not rob her, she’s pregnant’ as I’m standing right over her? Don’t be so stupid Anne.”

  “Just get the shit and let’s go.” Anne huffed and the man reached down and began tugging hard to rip Jennifer’s backpack off of her. Jennifer thought that her arms were going to be ripped off right along with the bag but finally the two straps on the pack gave loose with a loud pop.

  “Let’s go!” Frank yelled.

  Jennifer lay silent and listened to the footsteps as the thieves ran down the shoulder of the highway. When she figured that she had given them enough time to escape she slowly opened her eyes. There were still stars in her vision and there was a terrible throbbing emanating from the back of her head where she had been struck with the club. Her knees and elbows were scrapped and bruised from where she landed on the hard pavement. If the cramps in her stomach were to return at that moment she wouldn’t know, as all the pain and burning elsewhere in her body were drowning out all other sensations. Her thoughts turned back to her attackers.

  Why would they steal the backpack? It has nothing in it. Except for my purse…

  Her heart sank as she remembered that her wallet and Allan’s wallet and keys were in her purse. She ran through the list of stolen items in her mind. All of our credit cards, our identifications, the money in both our wallets, my asthma inhaler.

  My inhaler!

  She suddenly became aware of her own breathing and realized that she was wheezing. During the attack and the resulting pain she had failed to notice that she was having difficulty breathing but now with the realization that she no longer had her inhaler to help open her airways her breathing condition became exasperated. She pulled her body off the pavement and hunched over her knees as she began to desperately suck in tiny amounts of air. Each heaving breath was a struggle and the minutes felt like hours.

  ----

  Allan returned to the spot where he had left Jennifer sitting by the roadside under the tree but she was gone. For a moment he thought that he was in the wrong place until he looked down and saw the depression in the grass where she had once sat. He placed the cup of water and his shirt down on the pavement and began to look around.

  “Jennifer!” he called out. “Jennifer!” but there was no response. He felt panic start to rise inside him and he began dashing around, looking between, inside, and under the stalled cars within the immediate vicinity. He ran down the roadside embankment praying to God that she hadn’t slipped and rolled down the hillside and fallen into the ditch below. When he got to the ditch at the bottom of the hill he looked down and thanked God that she wasn’t in it and then he ran back up the embankment and stopped at the depression in the grass.

  “Where could you be?” He asked aloud. He began running down the highway back towards the church building, thinking that maybe she had gotten up and went looking for him. As illogical as it seemed he thought maybe he had simply walked right past her on his way back. He called out her name again and again and he kept looking in and around all the stalled cars along the way but she was nowhere to be found. He had gone a good ways past the church when he decided that she couldn’t possibly have made it that far and so he took off sprinting, leg pain be damned, in the opposite direction back to where he had last seen her sitting in the grass. When he got to the depressed spot in the grass again he kept on running and yelli
ng for her.

  “Jennifer!” He panted heavily from a combination of fear and over exertion.

  Up ahead Jennifer was hunched over herself, wheezing heavily, when she first heard Allan calling her name. She tried to respond by saying, “I’m over here” but the words only came out in a muffled groan. She sucked in as much air as her narrow airways would allow and she tried to speak again but the results were the same. She saw him running fast and he had a frantic look on his face and she feared that if she could not get his attention then he might run right past her. She dug her fingers into the pavement where the rocks were loose near the edge of the roadway and grabbed a handful of small pebbles. She flung them at the rusty truck beside her and the sound of the rocks hitting the truck’s fender sounded like tiny hailstones against a metal roof.

  Allan stopped in his tracks. “Jennifer?” He walked around the side of the truck and found her kneeling on the ground with one arm supporting her weight and the other clutching her chest.

  He fell to his knees beside her. “What is it baby?”

  Jennifer sucked in enough air to whisper, “Can’t breathe.”

  Allan looked around the area for her backpack but it was gone. “Where’s the backpack with your purse? Where’s your inhaler?”

  “Stolen.”

  “Stolen?” He asked and his mind began racing. How could it be stolen? What is she doing over here? He had many more questions but right then he knew that he needed to focus on helping to calm her down so that she could breathe.

  He sat down on the pavement and pulled her body into his open lap and held her as he whispered softly, “It’s ok. I’m here with you now.” He repeated the phrase over and over and each time he could feel her breaths come in and out a little more smoothly. He wiped the hair out of her face and felt that the strands of hair were moist. At first he thought it was only sweat but as he looked he saw that it was blood and he became terrified. He inspected the wound on her head and found that she had a small swollen gash near the back of her head. The gash looked like it had already stopped bleeding but Allan was confused. What happened to you? He thought but he knew all the answers would come in due time. Now she just needed to breathe.

  When her airways finally opened up enough she said, “I think I can breathe now.” He allowed a few more minutes to pass before asking her all of the questions that were still racing through his mind.

  “What happened?” His asked in a demanding tone.

  “A couple of people came up and lured me over here.” She replied with shame.

  “Lured you over here?”

  “They said they had some water, some Gatorade, but when we got over here they hit me on the head and stole my backpack.”

  The anger swelled within him. How could she be so stupid to go along with complete strangers? How could I be so stupid to leave her alone in a situation like this?

  “What did they look like? What were they wearing? Where did they go?” He had to force himself to calm down and stop interrogating her.

  “They ran away. I’m so sorry.” She buried her face in his shoulder and began to sob.

  “You don’t have to apologize.” He said and his words came out like he was the one apologizing for being so angry. “I’ll never let you leave my side again.”

  Allan thought of the items that were lost along with the backpack. Jennifer’s purse. There goes my wallet and everything in it. Jennifer’s inhaler. The screwdriver. Allan remembered his loose belt and how he had made a mental note to make a new hole when he had time. Dammit I forgot to make that hole in my belt. At least we’re still alive and together. Everything else is just material things that can be replaced. He reminded himself.

  He helped her off the pavement and then carefully led her over to where he had left the cup of water and his saturated undershirt. He strained to ring every droplet of water into Jennifer’s mouth that he could. They took sips from the small Dixie cup until every last bit of liquid was gone and then they set out walking again, mindful of just how careful they needed to be from now on.

  Chapter 11: Exhaustion

  They walked southeast as the big 10 lane interstate made its long stretching arch around the city of Dallas. The 635 highway had opened in 1959 as a means to ease congestion in and around Dallas but as the city grew outwards the loop itself became a constant traffic nightmare, especially during rush hour. Accidents and construction were ever frequent which always worsened the traffic problems. Even just a stalled car on the shoulder of the road would shut the highway down for miles as rubber neckers would slow down all the traffic behind them just to get a quick glimpse to see what was going on. Allan and Jennifer approached one such traffic snarl, except this was the mother of all traffic jams.

  Two days ago traffic had become backed up for two miles in both directions because an eighteen wheeler had side swiped an SUV and sent it careening end over end. The SUV flipped over the concrete barrier wall and crashed head on with a Jeep Wrangler that was going the opposite direction on the other side of the road. Traffic immediately backed up in each direction and just before the emergency personnel arrived, the blast occurred, which created an instant parking lot of the entire traffic jam. That would have been bad enough, but there were multitudes of cars and trucks that were still speeding down the highway at the moment of the blast. All of the drivers that were still speeding down the road were unaware of the parking lot that was immediately in front of them as there were no brake lights on any of the cars in the traffic jam and that, combined with the bright flash outside, caused all of the drivers to become confused. Most of the drivers failed to apply their brakes at all but others either applied too much or not enough brake pressure to adequately stop their vehicles. All of the drivers were only familiar with modern power assisted anti-lock brakes but without power supplied from the engine those smooth anti-lock brakes were suddenly old style manual brakes that, like in the old days, needed to be pumped in order to properly engage. When the old style manual brakes are depressed too hard they were also prone to locking up but unfortunately none of the drivers were expecting this nor had many ever driven a car with manual brakes before in their lives. A lucky few were able to control their vehicles despite their failed brakes and the additional lack of power steering but the majority of the drivers crashed at top speed into the vehicles at the rear of the traffic jam. This created a tangled mass of crashing metal that traveled at 70 miles per hour in a domino effect of cars slamming into one another for several hundred feet until the force of friction finally decided to intervene and stop the chain reaction. What remained of the massive wreckage that lied in a tangled heap of destruction reminded Allan of the aftermath of buildings that had been demolished with explosives and wrecking balls.

  They walked on the service road which was easier to walk along because it had been spared from much of the wreckage that had occurred on the main highway. Neither Allan nor Jennifer could take their eyes off the scene. So many times in the past Allan had driven past car accidents on the road but never had he seen one in such fine detail. He had always been cautious near car wrecks, always slowing down to be careful of the emergency personnel, but mostly to get a better view of the wreck itself, yet every time, regardless of how much he slowed down he could never really get the look that he wanted. Often when riding in the car with Jennifer she would be the only one to spot the interesting details of an accident and she would ask him, “Did you see that?” and always to Allan’s disappointment his reply would be, “No, I did not.” Deep down he always wanted to turn the car around in a fit of childish jealousy and drive back through the wreckage once more to take a closer look so that he wouldn’t feel left out. Now, looking upon the horrible wreckage while walking at what seemed like a snail’s pace because of leg cramps and Jennifer’s constant wheezing, he wished that he could blow by the scene at high speed and not have to look at any of it. Every car torn to pieces, every charred ruin of unextinguished car fires, the silhouettes of the dead slumped over their st
eering wheels, it was all too much for their eyes to absorb. The sight was horrific, but the smell was even more horrendous. The relentless summer heat had accelerated the decay of the bodies and the wretched smell of death entered his nose and Allan was taken aback that the dead could already smell so terrible. It took all that he had not to vomit.

  There was no one to bury the dead on the highway. There were no more emergency personnel on the scene. There was no coroner to take the deceased away. Everything in that place would sit there just as it was, rusting and rotting forever. As Allan looked ahead at the wreckage something caught his eye. He squinted to make out what it was until finally he saw that it was something nearly bleach white lying motionless inside a car, brighter than everything else around it. It was the body of a little girl who had been wearing a white dress with blue polka dots and her dress seemed to be highlighted in the midst of all the charred wreckage around her. The girl looked like she was older than his own daughter but Allan felt drawn to her as if the lifeless girl in the car was his own child. He felt a deep emotion rise up inside of him and in that moment he would have given everything just to hold Samantha and to know if she was safe. He felt tears swell up in his eyes and beside him he saw Jennifer raise a hand to her face to wipe her own eyes. They walked closer and Allan looked at the little girl’s white dress and he noticed how it wasn’t quite as pure white as he had first seen it. It was then that he realized that it wasn’t the brightness of the little girl’s dress that caught their eyes, but the fact that the girl reminded them of Samantha that caused their minds to pick her out from all the rest of the wreckage.

  “This is too much.” Jennifer said.

  “I agree.” Allan replied and he took her hand in his and they walked across the grassy area between the road and onto a side street that would take them out of sight and away from the horrible scene.