Chapter Seventeen
THE FIRST PART OF THE trip was a breeze. Fifteen minutes of smooth driving and beautiful weather had my windows down and my voice soaring out into the wind. Walking On Sunshine came on the radio, and I yelled the lyrics as loud as I could, rejoicing in the seratonin that was bleeding into my brain. Life is good! Life is awesome! I was on the road to traveling towards my lifeplan again! I pictured myself on the plane with my signed annulment papers in my lap and a smile on my face. There was even a cocktail on my tray in this vision of glory. Maybe I’d even upgrade to first class.
Just as my song was finishing, the man-bear-pig, a.k.a Boog turned off the two-lane paved road and onto one with only a single-lane of dirt. Calling it a road was generous, though. It was more like a path than anything else. It made me happy I was driving a clown car when I saw his big tires going off into the weeds on both sides.
That happiness faded quicker than I would have thought possible. My life went from smooth-sailing to Nightmare on Elm Street in five seconds flat. Literally flat. Like, flat-tire flat. I was so busy trying to see Boog through the cloud of dust his giant truck was kicking up, I didn’t see the huge pothole in the road. My tire fell into it and then didn’t want to come out. The whole vehicle was sitting off-kilter, the passenger-side lower than the driver-side.
I pressed on the gas pedal and the car rocked a little, but then nothing but the sound of spinning wheels greeted my ears. The clown car and I were done.
Looking up, I saw Boog’s truck getting smaller and smaller in the distance. He didn’t seem to consider the craters in the road a reason to go any slower than he’d been traveling on the highway. I pressed on the clown car’s honky-horn several times to get his attention, but he didn’t seem to hear it. He soon disappeared in a cloud of dust.
I got out of the car and walked around to the other side of it. The front tire was flat and resting deep in the hole. “What the hell!” I screamed, kicking it and hurting my toe in the process. “Ow-ow-ow-ow-OW!” I yelled, hopping around on one foot, now worried that I’d broken not only the car but a toe, too. I was jumping around like a lunatic yelling cuss words when a horse and rider appeared out of the nearby trees and bushes.