draft 3

Lucky

After a night of shooting pool down at a local bowling alley, James and I left our friends behind in order to make my midnight curfew. Crude goodbyes of a high school nature are flung at each other like monkeys flinging crap. Pushing aside books and papers with my feet I make room on the floorboards for my feet, I get in and buckle my seatbelt. Giving him directions to my house because he wasn’t used to driving there at night, we discussed the new Modest Mouse album. Cruising down the road at a cool sixty miles an hour in a posted forty-five, it was raining. It was raining hard. Despite God having promised Noah that he wouldn’t flood the earth again, we still thought about breaking out the paddles and pushing the boat button hidden under the steering wheel. However we didn’t have enough room for many animals in the bed of the truck, all we thought we could fit was barely enough girls for the each of us if we were to repopulate the planet. But that would require effort and magic, so we continued driving. James had been the first to get his drivers license and a car, or truck in his case. A bright red stick shift Chevy S-10, complete with a black plastic bed liner and silver metal craftsman tool chest just behind the rear window. With my knees inside the glove box and James sitting comfortably behind the steering wheel we changed the topic of conversation to our upcoming graduation and college. Caught up in the discussion of him leaving to go up to NAU, and my staying in Tucson to attend the U of A, I noticed we were nearing a turn we needed to take to get to my house.
Coming up on the turn that led to my neighborhood and realizing that he didn’t know to turn there, I mentioned that we needed to make the next left, thinking James would blaze on by and we would stop and turn around. I thought wrong. Realizing that he has no intention of slowing down, my heart starts to pump and adrenaline begins to course through my veins. Every passing moment comes in to fine detail and slows down. James downshifts into third from fifth, taps the breaks and wails on the steering wheel turning left, moving hand over hand as if they were racing to grab the next part of the steering wheel. I grab the passenger handle above his door and look straight ahead. Water shedding off the window in great arcs, the windshield wipers beat slower than my heart, tires squealing on the water-wrecked road, utter silence in the vehicle. As we hydroplane across the pavement James shifts into second and then neutral. I see the yellow lines of the pavement getting farther away from me, and the white lines on the edge of the road are underneath the middle of the truck. Bouncing up and down like bull riders we left the road and headed for desert country. Instead of stopping on what should have been dry land any other night, we zip through the mud like motocross riders. The once pristine red truck now mucked with mud more than a pig fresh out of the pen. I look through my window to glimpse our sure to be oncoming demise and I see an electric box the size of small car and a telephone pole taller and stouter than any oak. We careen through the gap between the two with mere inches to spare as we come to a halt. And not too soon do we slide to a stop, the person whose property is just off the road had placed large boulders on the edge of their property line to keep vehicles from driving on their land. At our current course we would have slammed into them passenger side first, leaving the car and I infused into a bionic dead organism. Silence.
Silence.
Neither of us looking at each other we sat in silence staring out the windshield, appreciating just how lucky we were, and how the chances of our surviving that incident unharmed had been slim. Lightning flashing in the distance and the thunder rolling in after breaks us out of our stupor. “Man…we just had a blues brothers moment,” I casually mention breaking the silence. Nervous laughter ensued, the kind of laughter that lasts longer than it should. Foot still on the break James pushes the clutch in and shifts out of idle into first gear, “All right Elwood, lets get out of here.”