Things Stupid Kids Do: Episode 2, Part III (The Journey Ends)

 

Things Stupid Kids Do: Episode 2, Part I (The Journey Begins)

Things Stupid Kids Do: Episode 2, Part II (The Journey Meanders)

Let me begin this ending with the victorious cry, “WE BEAT THE TOLL!”

Ok, well, by that I mean, at least WE didn’t have to pay the toll when my parents drove up to rescue us.

Where did I leave off? Something about a blue helicopter and a plume of black smoke? Yeah…

My friend and I were still practicing how to be lazy canoers… Ok, wait…

You know what? Let’s just get this out of the way now… the fact that the river was flowing in the direction we wanted to go was actually a big selling point of this trip to begin with. We could both imagine drifting toward home while napping the miles away.

As I was saying, we were hungry and thirsty and sunburned and bug-bit and slightly mad at each other for doing this stupid trip and frustrated at how slowly we seemed to be getting it over with. Paddling didn’t seem to move us noticeably faster. At least, not faster enough to make our aching arms want to keep rowing. So, we drifted slowly down-river. There wasn’t much else to do except watch as that plume of black smoke got closer. Eventually a blue helicopter appeared and circled the dark plume of foreshadowing like moths flutter around porch lightbulbs. We weren’t really talking (probably spending the silence doing mental blame-calculations, “It was at least 51% his idea to do this.”). However, we were curious about what could be the source of all that smoke. As far as we could recall, no other billowing thick plume of black smoke had passed us by on our trip to date. We wordlessly “beached” the canoe at the closest place to observe the thick blackness rising into the sky we could find. I used quotes on “beached” because it was more like “hilled” the canoe. The right side of the river had been a nearly vertical wall of mud for a while now.

Once the canoe was “hilled” we climbed the mud-wall, and I quickly envied my friend’s decision to leave his footwear behind because my sneakers were getting caked in mud. Not the clean kind of mud, either.

We eventually reached the top of the riverbank, and it was nice and grassy with trees and shrubs in abundance. The ground sloped gently downward, away from the river toward a dirt path that seemed to roughly parallel the river. On this path we could see what looked to us like a fancy new black Cadillac limousine all aflame! Fire under the hood, flashing orange here and there underneath the car, windows either open already or popped out by the heat, and the never-ending spew of black smoke coming from the interior of the car.

Now a few things happened almost simultaneously at this point. The flaming smoking spectacle was our main focus, of course. But once we had absorbed what was going on, we kinda entered, “Huh” mode as we tried to work backwards as to why this organized crime type of vehicle would be in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere. And as some fanciful and witness relocation sorts of ideas began to form we noticed that there was a red jeep parked a ways ahead of the crime scene and a guy was just standing there watching (hopefully just) the car burn.

Seeing this fellow witness produced another “Huh” event in our minds. Apparently, our minds were loud because he suddenly jerked his head to look at us and RAN to the back door of his jeep, reached in and started to pull something out of the back seat.

I can honestly say that I am not 100% confident of what he was removing from his vehicle in such a hurry. This is because I turned to my friend and yelled “RUN!” Which we did. Why would I yell something like that? Two reasons. First, I didn’t actually know I was yelling it until after I did – so I sorta feel like I don’t need to provide a conscious reason. Second, I didn’t wait to see what the suspect was yanking out of his jeep in such a hurry, but the WAY he was removing the item was the way you would pull a rifle off of the back seat. Yes, yes, I know. It’s possible that maybe he was removing a very large French baguette, but my paranoid subconscious was in charge of interpreting the situation, not my stomach. Ok, sure, maybe it was a… what, a US flag? A US flag to wave a patriotic hello to us with? Maybe a fishing pole because he thought that two strangers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time might hog all the best fishin’ spots before he could set up? Yeah. There are plenty of things that could have emerged in his arms. I guess that I didn’t want to chance it. How embarrassing to have been shot and have my dying words be, “I thought he wanted to share a 6-ft Subway Sandwich with us…”

Now then. Where to run? Consider: Our primary getaway vehicle was a hilled canoe. If we went for the canoe, then our getaway route would have been a slowly moving open spaced river. My only real hiding spot would have been behind my friend. But how long would that be a safe place to hide from a sniper’s bullet? Instead, we abandoned our canoe and made use of our feet to continue down river. To give some cover (in case it wasn’t a flagpole the killer was drawing from his car), we slipped about halfway down the riverbank first and then moved as fast as we could downriver. There were some obstacles along our route which helped fuel our adrenaline. It felt as if we would be hearing (or feeling) rifle shots from above at any second, so we maneuvered around as many trees and fallen logs as we could to decrease any shooter’s chances for accuracy. It was pretty easy to run on the fallen wood because I was wearing sensible footwear. My friend, on the other hand, had foolishly left his shoes in the hilled canoe. I bet he envied my decision to keep them on. (Was that call-back too far removed?)

We maintained a pretty good pace until the adrenaline wore off and I started to think about how the assassin could actually have made better time following the dirt path to get ahead of us and just wait for his targets to appear. So, we changed our strategy and started to swim across the river to where we had spotted a half-destroyed bridge. It looked like it had become a popular parking spot for the local high schoolers and skunks, apparently, judging by the smell. I’m not sure (can’t remember) what swimming style my friend selected, but I went on my back facing the slowly receding riverbank, eyes locked on the top of the hill waiting to see the hunter emerge. It’s surprising how fast it can feel like you are swimming when it looks like you are barely moving.

After about 16 days of swimming, we finally made it across the river and bonus (!): BOTH of us arrived with fewer than 1 bullet holes each. With that relief slowly growing in our souls, I scrambled up the side of the collapsed overpass and casually sauntered over to the group of about five teens sitting around some giant concrete blocks. It was a long walk made longer by their quiet non-moving stares. It was handy that they were quiet because only one of my sneakers was making a squish noise when I stepped on it: Squish, - - -, squish, - - -, squish, - - - (you get the idea). I lifted a sheepish hand into a chest-high wave and said, “Hi.”

It should occur to you here that there is suddenly a lot of “I” and “me” in my narration. What happened to my friend? Let me start by saying that he was (still is) a good bit taller than me (who isn’t?) and he was very thin (but not anymore) and gangly (um..). The kids all shifted their gaze behind me, and so I turned as well to see my friend clawing his way to the roadway and then walking Frankenstein-like toward us. WTF?! Turns out his bare feet were absolutely jam-packed with splinters from the old wood we had messed with during our adrenaline race. I honestly have wondered even today (i.e., decades later) if he still finds a stray splinter in a foot now and then.

Although the kids were a bit focused on my friend, I asked if one of them could drive us to a phone (yes, it was THAT long ago). My memory is that they continued to watch my friend, never moving their eyes from him, and answered my every question without dropping their gaze. Surely that’s just a false memory.

When the adrenaline starts flowing, my paranoia gets… growing. Rather than relate our version of “the most dangerous game” (look it up if you need to), we just went with the “our canoe flipped over” story. Maybe the whole town was in on this mafia hit gone wrong? One of the guys volunteered to take us to the nearby gas-mart. So, after a brief walk, we got to his old shockless gold 1970 Lincoln Continental with rusty accents which, after three tries to start the engine, we got to bouncing and rolling for about a mile through the forest and out to a main road. We arrived at the store in no time. I don’t recall whether he took off then or followed us inside, but we straight away asked the cashier to call the police for us, which she did once we told her about our canoe mishap.

The cops showed up and what we wanted was to hurry the hell up and get into their car so we could tell them about the serial killer on the loose without letting the gas-mart cashier hear. Again, let me just defend myself and remind you that when my arousal levels are high (via caffeine or adrenaline) my paranoia levels get even higher. PLUS, you know how those things go in the horror movies?! All it was going to take was for the cashier to listen in and then jump on the gossip network and you know this is where the killer/monster finds out we are going to the police station and that’s where the horrible massacres end up happening. Really, I was just trying to keep the local constabulary safe.

The two officers (let’s call one Judge and the other Jury) stroll into the store and look at these two damp and scrawny kids (one was barefoot, remember). No doubt we were deemed harmless “city boys who don’t know a lick a shit about country goings on” a notion that we no doubt pleasured with our made-up canoe-tipping story. Judge had to ask, “Why would you be trying to canoe down that river, anyway?” We got to use our “to avoid the toll” joke yet again. Judge laughed but Jury pshawed with, “Toll ain’t that bad.” While shaking his head and not smiling ever.

Our outward appearances were probably easy-going to those watching us, but our insides were excruciating. Those of you who celebrated Christmas as youngsters might remember the night before the opening-of-gifts where you just wanted to go to bed around 6:00 pm so the next morning would come more quickly? SMART parents don’t let that happen because a 6:00 pm bedtime would mean a 2:00 am wakeup. No. Way. So, they find ways for everyone to stay up as late as possible so the parental units can HOPE to get at least a sample-sized portion of quality shuteye. Us kids had to endure the agony of every slow beat of the clock. Sometimes it felt like the clock was taking back every third second. But this was exactly how things were feeling with everyone just hanging the hell around in the store shit-chatting about the stupid college student follies.

FINALLY we were escorted to the cruiser and once inside came clean with the cops. Was I a little afraid that one or more of the police might have been in on it? Well, actually… yeah. But I was so tired and hungry and emotionally burned out that I would have been ok with whatever horrific scenario wanted to play out at this point.

We got to the station and they actually had a pretty good idea of who the guy was with the red jeep. We had at least an hour to waste before my parents were going to be able to pick us up, and during that time the police brought Mr. Redjeep in for questioning. Get this… he claimed he was just getting a shovel out of his vehicle to throw dirt onto the flaming car! YYyyyeeeaaaahhhh right! WHO drives a jeep to a burning car so he can just stand and watch it burn only to notice two people looking on and then suddenly remember about a shovel he urgently needs to grab from the back seat?!

My parents arrived, we somehow got the hilled canoe and then we went home for some dinner. All total, I doubt we got more than 20 miles down the Pemi. (I’m not so good with endings, huh?)