Men do not often get the opportunity to come to the aid of damsels in distress. To man's detriment may I add. We might get to change a flat at the side of the highway once every several years. Half the time the motherfucker with the flat turns out to be a guy. Sometimes there's fist fights just to get to see who gets to help when the distressed damsel shows the least resemblance to Pamela Anderson.
So today on my way home from the evil sawmill I took the chance to come to a damsel's aid. Woman was bawling out of her car window as I exited a sharp curve in the hills of the Steepleton greenlands. I had been forced off the highway by yet another bloody crash of steel, plastic, precious fuel and bodies. She was telling me, "I hit something! I don't know what it was! I think I might have killed something! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" She was crying like a dog left home when it was expecting a car ride or something.
My gut told me this was for real. Sometimes men get lured out of their cars in the hills of Steepleton and are never heard from again. I got out of my car and had a quick look in the ditches behind her shiny Japanese car. Nothing big was in the ditches I could see so I had a look at the front of her car where I found no scratches or blood. That was when I began to think maybe my instincts had been wrong.
That too was when I saw a man wearing a ball cap near the end of his drive a little closer to the bend in the road than we were. He met me as we strode towards one another and asked, "What's the commotion all about?"
I told him, "Bitch thinks she hit something coming round bend yonder." I thought if I tried to talk like the hillbilly motherfucker maybe they would take it easy on me. Did not hork a booger onto the asphalt though. Did not want to overdo it.
"I did see my neighbour's dog just go by in some kind of hurry. Didn't look hurt none." He told me helpfully.
That was when the damsel who hit something's blonde friend pulled up and stopped. The blonde and her dog hitting friend joined us at the side of the road. The dog hitter was still fucking hysterical. "Did you see something? Did you see something?" You could see how some people are never the same after they hit a kid or separate an old lady from her Hudson's Bay shopping bag in a sidewalk.
The dude took the pair of damsels to go check on his neighbour's dog. Fuck if I was going with them. The neighbour's place was set well back from the road at the edge of the woods.
I walked back to my car but before I got there two grow-op dogs attacked me. A mastiff and a mongrel. The owner was yelling at them. "You two fuckers get back here. Mitzy! Gaynor! Get back in your yard!" I was a paper boy in Sliverville for too long to have a fear of dogs, no matter their demeanor. Dogs named Mitzy are the worst. They sniffed me and ran through the ditch looking for bodies. The dog the damsel thought she hit was not the first dog to lock horns with a car on that corner.
The damsel's car was still running so I hung out with the two attack dogs and their good looking owner waiting to see if there was any dying that had happened so we would have something noteworthy to talk about with our families when we later ate Friday steak, baked potatoes and fresh picked corn on the cob.
Turned out the dog was unhurt or not hurt enough to let on any how. Everybody was happy. I gunned the accelerator like a man and went home to my beer.
9 comments:
Today, I was at the top of a hill, looking at a line of slow moving traffic that went over the next two hills and then over the horizon. My lane was not moving. Then, at the bottom of the hill, I saw a young man get out of his car and start walking around it. because some people are wonderful, even when other people are shits, someone on the right actually let me move over. As we crept down the hill I saw the young man get back in the car and a young woman get out of the passenger side. The young woman walked over to the driver's side, opened the driver's door and started punching the driver. He sort of put his hands up, but mostly just took it.
I lost sight of them when we topped the next hill, but the last I saw she was still standing there punching him and he was still waving his arms around and getting punched.
I called dispatch and reported a stall and fistfight in the number one lane.
Bukowski was right. If you want to see what people are really like, watch them in traffic. Above all else, we are distracted.
To get into town from the flats where I stay you have to negotiate some busy 40mph roads. I always have my son walk on my left so as if anything keeps on coming through a stop light I'll be the first to get hit. My son thinks this foolish, not without good reason.
"Won't be much good to me, if you're dead, dad," he'll say.
There is no left turn onto the first road we have to cross, so on occasion it's easy to get complacent. One time as we crossed on the "green man" - the "walk" light - some fucker made the left turn regardless and would've kept on going had I not walked in front of his truck and stood my ground. Since all the other traffic was at a standstill I waved my son over onto the other side of the road. The guy in the cab gave a surly, disdainful look. He was in the middle of gesticulating when I walked around and pulled open the door to where he sat up high inside like a tobacco lord of old.
"Sorry, pal", he said. "I saw you there. I wouldn't have hit you or anything."
"That's a no turn, you fucking dick," I said. "I have my son with me too."
"I know. I know," he said, sounding more anxious than he cared to admit. "I stopped, pal. Didn't I ? I saw you here, as plain as day. Are we cool ?"
Now I knew I had him. My chest puffed ou over my belly. "This time," I told him, "We're cool."
Fucking John Wayne. If it had been a female driver in there, you can bet it would have been a different story.
As I recall the roads you speak of in Britain are as unsafe to spend time near as Afghanistan. The road I was on is not a busy one but I was surprised how many cars rubbernecked their way by as I was stopped. No one else stopped, not even when three of us were taking up half the road with our hazard lights on.
Well, the roads are bad certainly. Nobody takes speed limits seriously, and vehicles all too often drift through lights with not so much as a token attempt to reduce speed. Nobody pays much attention and reckless drivers are dealt with leniently in the courts. Culpable homicide might get you three years at most, time reduced by pleading guilty, and a five year driving ban - perhaps - at most.
Rubberneckers are a strange breed. There were a few that day, too, sitting waiting for the lights to change and lazily watching the impromptu show while maybe picking their noses. The barrier of glass and steel separates them from humanity.
Our roads are where you can best see how our increasing remoteness from how to get along without laws is causing great harm. Most people still innately understand Anarchy is Order but others think of nothing but the odds of getting caught and how much the lawyer's fees will curb their enthusiastic life style.
There is something genuinely scary about a man in $300 shoes in a 4 wheel drive with kangaroo bars in the middle of a city.
Kangaroo bars is a term new to me. We call them bush bars here. Highway lorries have moose catchers.
After a million and a half miles, I'm convinced that driving is an absolutely evil business. Everyone has a conspiracy theory but almost no one questions that the entire man made world is built around the automobile. That just "happened" because cars are so "convenient". Uggh. That fucking creeps me out. On the other hand, I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A MOOSE CATCHER ON THE FRONT OF MY BUS!!!.
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