When the Smoke Clears

Early adulthood is a time for testing limits. Those limits should not always have a safety net. A young adult needs the chance to screw up, to fail, to find out they are mortal. It is one of the things I most worry about with the latest generation: we have taken away so many of the standard risks and overly insulated them that they do not have the chance to truly test themselves until well into adulthood, at which time the mistakes can be substantial and affect a fair number of people.

Often there seems to be a luck that young adults who do get to test themselves fall into. Or maybe it isn’t so much luck as it is a plan. I won’t say “Guardian Angels” but I do have experiences with something I can only describe as a guardian. Here are three of them:

One night a large number of my friends from High School were headed to a party down in an old vacation house in the middle of nowhere along the Savannah River. Directions were photocopied and handed out and most everyone was to leave in one of several convoys. I couldn’t go with any of the groups as I was working at a store and had to close that evening, but I would join them later.

With the door locked and alarm activated, I headed into my ‘76 Malibu classic and started the long drive. It was over 2 hours away. The directions were wrong. I found out later that a couple of groups gave up on finding the place and that the party had been cancelled anyway due to parental discoveries, but without ubiquitous cell phones, it was impossible to contact everyone.

Eventually bouncing along dirt roads leading into the bogs, I noted everything was dark in all directions. At one point in the labyrinth I decided to turn around, but apparently did not have enough clearance. I managed to get my big boat of a car stuck in some soft-sand embankment along the newly plowed road. After a few minutes of struggling without progress, I knew it was time for the very long walk to find a telephone.Within a half an hour I was approaching the main paved road when I saw the lights from a large 2-storey farmhouse. I know the lights were not on earlier when I drove by. The yard appeared to have been cleaned too. I remembered the house looked old and abandoned with shutters falling off, but it was dark, so perhaps I saw things wrong.

Walking up to the screen door, I cautiously knocked, the door making the familiar metallic rattles. Back screen doors always lead into a kitchen and I could smell bacon. A man, late 20s, appeared, big and angry looking in red flannel and dirty jeans, toothpick hanging from his mouth.

“I’m sorry to bother you, sir. I did something stupid and got my car stuck a ways back. May I use your phone or ask you to call my dad and let him know I need some help?”

He looked me up and down, then said, “Don’t gotta phone here. Hang on a sec.” He left for the heart of the house and I heard some rattling. When he came back into the kitchen area I saw he had a length of heavy rusted chain… and a shotgun.

Intellectually my brain knew the danger of the situation, but for some reason my alarm instinct didn’t go off at all.

“Don’t know you,” he said as he nodded toward the shotgun. “Get in the truck.” He unhooked the latch on the screen door, handed me the chain and pointed to an old Ford pickup. There was nothing said other than my pointing to the turns on the roads to get to my car. The whole time, he kept the gun barrel pointed at my legs, one hand on the wheel, one near the trigger.

Once at the car he told me hook the chain up from my rear bumper to the front of his truck. He left the work for me, shotgun aimed towards my chest while he kept looking around for anything or anyone else who might be there. Once done, one good tug from his truck and the tires on my car again found traction on the road. Without being told I crawled back under the car and truck to unhook and retrieve his chain. I also tried to thank him, that I really appreciated it, but he never said anything else to me. He hopped back in his truck and drove off, I quickly followed.

Just before the last bend up to the highway, I lost sight of his taillights. Moments later I was passing the house, which again was dark, old, looking abandoned. No truck in the yard, the gate we passed through closed. I was spooked enough so I kept going, considering the night a bust.

A few years later I was speeding home from college, traveling on a two-lane interstate after midnight when the roads were clear and I was always my most alert. The music was jamming, I was enjoying the night when suddenly just outside my car window to my right a lighter flicked on and I swear I saw the face and familiar flannel shirt of the man from the abandoned house. It was so sudden I hit my brakes and moved into the left lane, worried that I might have hurt someone. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the light flicker a bit longer, someone still standing there, then go out.

Within less than a quarter of a mile I passed signs that had recently been placed. The bridge immediately ahead was under construction and one side was missing. Had I not slowed down I would probably have driven through the sign and into the creek.

Several years later my girlfriend and I went to get some food at a breakfast place in Miami. She wanted pancakes. As we sat down I looked over towards the bar seating area and he was there again, same dirty workboots on the foot-ring. I felt a chill. He looked at me and gave a very slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head “no.”

“Patty, we have to go.” She didn’t understand but left with me anyway. We heard on the radio a little while later two men had entered that restaurant and shot and killed a waitress, the cook and two of the customers. At that point, Patty insisted I tell her ALL my stories about him.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS