"My god is that thing real?"
I got out of my car and walked to the front, a small crowd had gathered at my grill. I glanced, screamed and looked away.
I love gross stuff. At horror movies, I'm rewinding in slow-mo just so I see the guts, car wrecks, I'm the jerk that slows everyone down. My profession if I didn't do horses? Coroner. In podiatry school, I was the one voulenteering to discet the cadaver legs, to put my finger in the tendons, or smush some never-before seen tumor. Here, at the front of my car, at ten in the morning, was something so gross I had to look away.
I assume I hit Goliath, that's what I named him for the brief seconds I allowed myself to look, last night. I flew in from St.Louis the day before, and I had to work overtime trying to catch up on my customers here in Virginia. It was nine at night when I left the barn, and as I was driving in the thunderstorm that hinted it might just be the end of the world, something jumped out of the grassy median and hit my car. It was a loud "slam!"
"Was that a frog?" I asked, then shook my head, there was no way a frog could have jumped that high or made a sound that loud.
I was wrong.
At ten in the morning, exhausted from the night before, I looked at what appeared to be a hick hood ornament. It was the biggest frog I have ever seen. It was something that should have plagued Egypt in biblical times, it was something that should have hopped out of Chernobyl, not something that should be hanging from the chrome of my BMW.
Seeing the thing hanging there, the size of a small child, activated some girl-y part of my brain, that part that makes you jump on chairs when you see mice, or run screaming from spiders, the very same part that I thought was missing from my tom-boy brain had been activated and I could not bring myself to look at it.
"There is a dead frog hanging form the car!" I screamed into the phone. "You have to come get it off!"
"Where are you?" My husband sighed.
"Warrenton."
"Near Culpepper?"
"I dunno, I just do what the GPS tells me. I'm about an hour and a half from the house."
"I am not driving two hours to pull frog off your car."
"It's HUGE!"
"I'll pull it off when I get home."
I should have thanked him anyway, I should have said sorry for calling him at work. I should have said 'I love you.' because I was going to be calling a lot more in a few hours.
"Can we climb those rocks?" Beeps, my five year old asks every single time we drive past a hill on the side of a major four lane highway, having spent her entire life in the country has no concept of traffic or danger.
"No honey, we're not allowed to stop on the side of the interstate, it's dangerous."
"How about that hill."
"No honey."
"Why?"
"What did I just say?"
"Humph." she puffs and crosses her arms.
I think the kid has magical powers, and her hate broke my car. First the radio flashed, on and off in the middle of a good song. Then all the dash lights came on. Husband time. I whip out my phone, "All the lights are on in the car!" I skip hello and I love you and go right for the newest emergency.
"Pull over, pull the key out, put it back in and try that."
I found a safe place, turned and parked.
"Ya!!!!" Beeps screamed from the back. The safe place I chose to park was next to the giant hill. "An adventure!"
Oh, how right she was.
I pulled the key out, put it back in, and then turned it. Nothing. Not even that click click sound cars make when the battery is dead. The lights were on, but mama wasn't driving home.
My husband sighed, "I'm on my way."
My legs are weak, I'm exhausted, I haven't had a day off in weeks, I trimmed 10 horses the night before, two horses this morning, and here I am, on the side of the road with a 5 year old and a husband 2 hours away.
"Let's climb the hill!"
"Go ahead, mommy's tired."
"You're always tired. And grumpy." Beeps said, scaling weed and rock mountain. At the top she squealed and waved her arms, "I can't get down!"
Weed mountain was steep. 90 degree angle steep. I scaled past the rocks and crushed plastic bottles and decaying plastic bags and reached the summit that gave you an amazing few of eight lanes of highway, and way off in the distance, a little town.
"Look! A castle!"
"Ohh," I said. The same "Ohh" mom's use when you get the thousandth weed flower that you must put behind your ear, even though the sap of said weed flower gives you a rash for a week. "That's nice" I said of the decaying church steeple. "It sure looks like a castle."
"I want to go there."
"You have to cross 8 lanes of traffic."
"I want to go there!"
"No."
My husband called, "It's going to take a little longer, I don't have jumper cables, I'm going to have to go by the house."
My wait just turned to 2 1/2 hours.
"Lets go to the castle." I said.
I was hoping not to be some redneck trucker's strange ornament on the front of his Peterbuilt. "Where'd you git that thar girl hangin' from yer grill Travis?"
"I dunno, I think she done got 'er leg stuck and just hung there."
8 lanes of traffic, one 5 year old girl, and an exhausted mommy all came together for a rousing game of Frogger. Before battling the asphalt and the truckers who didn't think to slow down, just wave and honk, we stopped for a little game of lets see how many rocks we can throw in the sewer grate. Beeps is naturally scared of the sewer grating, ever since she almost got sucked into one. I thought it would be cool to show her were rainwater goes at the Pizza Hut one stormy afternoon. After dinner we walk out into the rain and I point into the street. "Look the water comes down the street, through the ditch into this hole right here, and. . ." And then there was the screaming. The ground gave way and Beeps entire leg went into a sink hole. She was in no real danger of getting sucked down the drain, but tell that to a kid whose entire bottom half is sinking into dirt. No mother of the year award for me on that one. . .
We played it safe with this storm drain, and stood a safe distance and hurled rocks, until she threw one large enough to splash me with sewer water. "That's enough of that." I said.
We walked to the edge of the road with the honking, waving people who found anyone walking in a city to be a complete spectacle that must be scrutinized.
I grabbed Beeps in my arms and said "Go!" I said this mostly for encouragement to myself, because my body was saying "Stop, lay down and have a small nap! Right here is good!" I ran, all forty pounds of Beeps flailing and shouting for joy "Run mommy run!"
I cleared the 8 lanes and ended safely on the other side.
"I want to go that way." Beeps pointed to a little side road.
"But the castle is on the other way."
"I want to have an adventure! Let's go this way!"
I had hours to kill, and she needed to run off all the sugar from the 12 inch Rice Crispy treat I gave her earlier. We walked less then ten feet and there was a mobile mechanic working on a car. I sighed with relief and walked up to him and asked if he he had jumper cables.
He stood, pushed his hat off his eyes, ran his greasy towel over his brow and sighed. "Nope, got some at home though." he pointed to a building behind us."Eddie's Auto and Trailer Repair."
"Go over there and ask Eddie, he might got some."
We were saved. I called my husband with the update. "I think it's all going to be okay, I'm just gonna go over there and buy a battery." With a satisfied sigh I turned to Beeps, "You are smarter than mommy." I shook my head. "If it wasn't for you, we would have never found the mechanic."
"I know." she said.
"Eddie just went to lunch." The frizzy headed woman said, her voice sounded like she was attempting to gargle with a mouth full of rocks. She leaned on the counter, grease stained and slick. The room smelled like every mechanic shop in the world, a strange mix of man stink and diesel fuel. "We're two guys short, and the other went to lunch."
"Well, do you sell batteries?"
"We'd have to order it."
"How about jumper cables?"
"Eddie's got some, on his truck. But he just went to lunch. Go across the street, and ask Roy. He's a short fella with a bald head. He might have some."
The town seemed to sag somehow. Like it just heaved a big sigh and was ready to give up. The real-estate here had to have been amazing, a parking space was probably worth $500,000 so close to the interstate and near a big town, but nobody seemed to notice. The houses were gray and empty, their windows gaping, the glass like teeth in a big black decaying mouth. The diner was peeling, great white sheets of paint flaking off like scales on an elderly dragon. Across the road was a building that seemed to be pieced together by three different kids playing with Lego's, combining their talents to make a giant, Lego empire. Windows were an afterthought, the doors were haphazard.
The sign said "Roy's Wrecker and Towing, Paint and Body and Used Tires!"
"Used Tires" had an exclamation point, as if old rubber was worth yelling about, maybe it was. The place was the centerpiece of town.
Around the side a boy was sanding Bondo from a bumper of a Dodge Neon with chrome rims as tall as beeps and as bright green as a fresh Skittle.
Beeps pointed, "Mommy, he looks like me, his pants don't fit either." She grabbed the waist of her jeans and hiked up her pants that were constantly sliding down and showing her butt.
The boy looked down for a moment and then back at me.
"Do you have any jumper cables?"
"Yep." He reached behind the door and handed them to me.
"Do you have anyone that can go with them to jump my car?"
"Sure, I'll get Roy."
Roy was a three hundred pound black man with a bald head and tattoos. He had dragons, and hearts, dice and dogs. He lumbered forward. "Yep, you can ride with me."
I was scared when he walked to his car. I wasn't scared of the man, his massive hands or his scary tattoos, people like him actually comfort me. It's the snooty rich people I find frightening.
I got stared down at the gas station just an hour earlier by a woman who scowled at me when I explained the 'five second rule' to Beeps. "That fry is still good, it was on the ground two seconds, tops." She crossed her arms and looked away, probably wondering if she could Purell her eyeballs.
I looked down at her feet, they were shoved in a pair of expensive ballet flats, on the top of her foot, nearly hidden by her Ralph Lauren hemmed trousers, was a giant tattoo of an angel. No grandmother with a new foot tattoo and two hundred dollar slacks can be trusted.
I feel safer with society's misfits, people who aren't afraid to show their scars. It was not Roy I feared, but the roof of his Chevy Blazer. Tied in carefully to the roof rack were three pink sparkle Barbie fishing poles. I recognized them immediately because Beeps has one. They come equipped with a light up reel and pink fishing line.
He shoved himself in behind the precariously loose steering wheel, looked up through the sun roof with a slight shrug and an embarrassed smile, and motioned to the boy with the saggy pants sanding the Dodge, "Me and the boys are goin' fishing after work."
"Oh." I said as we crossed the 8 lanes of traffic back to my car. Wordlessly, he hooked up the jumper cables, made sure the car started, and waved his hand when I offered to pay him for his trouble.
"I just like to help folks out." he said waving as he pulled away, the sun glinting off his pink sparkly poles.
"Thank you!" Beeps called out, eyeing the fishing reels covetously. "I like those." she whispered.
I called my husband, saying "hello" this time and told him to go back home, the car was fixed. "Maybe I should head out there just in case."
"No, it's fine, really." I insisted. "We're almost out of the city, and it'll be all nice country back roads the rest of the way home." for some reason this calmed me. I felt much safer in the middle of nowhere than ensconced in traffic. I never thought about the lack of gas stations, cell service or help.
"Okay, if you're sure." he said.
"We'll be fine!" I swore.
And we were, as soon as civilization was well behind us, and the fields were green and the cows dotted the landscape like a Norman Rockwell painting. It was perfect, until the Speedometer needle began to flop wildly. Then the temperature gauge, and then the RPM thingy started waving their little needles like a college kid at a concert. All the lights began to flash and the car sputtered. I made it to the driveway of a scary looking double-wide with crank windows that made the thing look like a giant fish with gills wide open, gaping for air.
The gravel crunched as the car rolled to a stop. "Ya!!!" Beeps clapped her hands together. "An adventure!"
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