Trouble was, the woods all looked so…woodsy. And similar. And the signs at the occasional forks were oblique, with the vertical road names instead of horizontal. And the posts were slanting from the mud and rain and the exhaustion of holding up that vertical information. As though they were intended to confuse instead of enlighten. So I made it back to the clutch of mailboxes and thought I’d veer the other direction at the fork.
Only now, I wasn’t clear which fork I’d taken in the first place, so I ended up at my dead-end road again. Did the 12-point U-turn maneuver again. Only now the road wasn’t pristine. It had been tainted and turned – by me. And I was starting to sweat. And I had to go the bathroom. And I may have started driving a bit faster because I was frazzled. And my palms were sweaty and I might have lost control of the wheel just a tiny bit and fishtailed into a tree. Once. Or twice. Clipped the end of a branch in the road that flew up into the air and hit the windshield.
I decided to be a girl about it and ask for help.
I took the first gravel road I found, relieved to be driving on solid, man-made substance. It was a long, uphill driveway (why would it be otherwise?), and when I reached the little hump at the top and started to drive toward the house, my front fender came smack upon a parked car. I braked quickly not to hit it and, as I heard my brakes screech, noticed a redwood table nearby with six people sitting round it.
Manson family, was my immediate thought. Who else wears overalls with no shirts underneath and trucker caps (half the men) or wife-beaters and cutoffs and Crocs (the other half of the men and all the women)? I sensed I could count all of their combined teeth on one hand. (Go ahead, say it. I’m a hillbillyist.)
And they could have all just been sitting outside on a summer afternoon smoking cigarettes and playing gin rummy, but my writer’s keen skills of observation told me otherwise. They were cleaning their guns and getting ready to hunt them down some city slicker. Right after they smoked all their crack.
When I stepped of the car, all the little birdies in the forest stopped singing. Twelve eyes were aimed at me. The car door slammed shut behind me. I jumped.
Now, I never say Howdy unless it’s followed by Doody, but I said it anyway. “Howdy.”
No one replied. One of them, a gum chewer, blew a bubble and snapped it.
“Anyone know where Big Tree is?” I asked.
The gum chewer did her thing again. “Nope,” she said.
“Okay, well. Sorry to disturb. Thank you very much.”
There was a loud, old-car groan when I opened the car door that I hadn’t noticed before. Shit! I must have bashed it when I was banging into all those trees. I settled into the driver’s seat, and went to put the keys in the ignition.
Only the ignition already was full of keys.
My brain blew a little fuse, until I realized I had gotten into their car. Mine was parked just behind it.
I stepped out of the car and waved.
The gum chewer smiled and waved back..
