Kill Switch

“I must have fallen asleep,” I say.

The car is in a small ditch, with nothing but field visible for miles. It is a monotonous two-lane nothing of a road splitting farms that have corn growing like natural skyscrapers all along the right view, and some hip-high rag balls of common green whatever covering all the land to the left. It is the most boring scape of any land anywhere, and if it does not put you to sleep, then you are some kind of indefatigable driving machine.

Anyway, it’s not as if there was any other consciousness in the car to help keep me alert at the time.

“See, I told you this boy was going to be your undoing,” Da says as Jarrod climbs down to check the situation because it is after all his stolen car.

“What did he have to do with it?”

“Subarus suck” is Da’s logic.

“It doesn’t look like anything’s broken,” Jarrod says, lying right down in the muck to look underneath. The pouring rain has stopped and been replaced by moderate rain that feels like many tiny knuckles rapping on my skull.

The right front wheel has lost contact with earth where I tried to jerk the wheel back up in the direction of the road at the last second. The other three are in touch. There is reason to believe two of us may be horsepower enough to get the thing righted while a third one navigates the vessel onto the pavement.

“Da,” I say, shaking my head as I say it, “with your hip and all you’ll be no good pushing, so you’ll need to drive.”

“I love to drive,” he says, clapping once and crab-walking down the short embankment to the car.

“Yeah.” I sigh. “I’m aware.”

I make my own way down the slope to the rear of the car, where Jarrod waits, his entire front now lacquered in rich farming mud.

“Feeling strong?” I ask, as the wind picks up and starts blowing sideways into our ears.

“No,” he says.

But we all do what we have to do. I explain to Jarrod the concept of rocking a car out of a predicament, rather than plowing it out. I try and coordinate with Da by shouting at him because he is old.

“Da,” I say. “On the count of-”

Revvv-revv-revvv.

The man loves to drive.

“Da!” A little louder. “We are going to try rocking-”

Revvv-rev-revv.

“Aw, hell, put it in gear!”

He lets the clutch out, and drops it into first, and Jarrod and I start plowing with all our might.

“Rock, Jarrod, don’t plow.”

He tries rocking; we rock in opposite rhythm. I adjust, and so does he, so we rock in opposite rhythm. I believe I hear Da making revving noises with his mouth as the wheels throw ever more mud over Jarrod and me. He is enjoying himself so much, I don’t think he cares one way or the other whether we get back on the asphalt.

I feel the wheels catch, grab, we fall back.

“This hurts!” Jarrod says.

“Rock, Jarrod.”

Jarrod rocks. We push, back off, push, back off.

Revvv-revvv-revv, and ka-fump, the car flops up there and rubber hits road.

And keeps going.

Jarrod and I are lying on the lip of the road, where we flopped with the last heave. We watch as Da lights out for the great unknown and his next adventure without a backward glance.

“Isn’t he turning around?” Jarrod asks, as we stand up and watch. There is no brake light activity yet.

“It does not appear he is,” I say. “And I don’t like the way the car’s looking, either.”

The Subaru is doing a fast-motion little shimmy action all the way down the highway, like a very happy, motorized springer spaniel.

The stretch of road between the farms is long and flat and straight, so we have a good long look at the end of this particular endeavor as Da leaves us definitively behind, in the rain.

Until he hits what is probably a nice wide slick of water-oil mix, hydroplanes left to right clear across the road, down the ditch, and into the corn. It looked to go quite smoothly, as these things go.

“Come on,” I say, starting at a full gallop.

“That is a long, long way,” Jarrod moans, but follows.

A few seconds later, we see this small figure, out of the corn fields, up on the embankment, and waving at us to come.

I slow to a stroll.

“Oh, look, he decided he missed us,” I say to Jarrod.

“You think he did?” he says. “I bet he did.”

I still feel bad for what I did to him before, so in a way he’s lucky now because a certain level of stupidity has to be punishable.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Danny? Are you gonna do it again?”

I put an arm around him and knock his head with mine.

It feels like one day and two weather systems have passed by the time we reach Da. The sun is shining, and he’s smoking a cigarette and waving us in the last hundred yards like we’re in a marathon. A pickup truck has pulled over-after running right past us-and the driver is smoking and joking with my grandfather when Jarrod and I finally troop in.

“Sorry, boys,” the man says, waving in a way that says feel free to not shake my hand. “I would have picked you up, but to be honest, you don’t look quite as pick-uppable as the elder gentleman here. Fact, there is an air of prison-break about your appearance just now.”

“It’s okay, no problem. But I’ll tell you, you could really give us a hand by maybe towing our car up out of the ditch there.” It is strictly not in the ditch. It’s gone through the ditch and with some force into the field. The corn crop looks like a perfect door has been cut into it.

“Well, um, no. But I tell you what, I could get my gun and go shoot it for you. Because, fellas, she’s gone to the great Japanese auto plant in the sky.”

“Told them buy American,” Da says sadly.

“Ah-huh,” the man says, nodding, nodding.

He doesn’t even look countrified at all, like with the overalls and the chaw and the gun rack? In fact, he looks like one of those lunatic country club golfers with the pom-pom hat and the grape pants. Because that’s what he is wearing. And there are golf clubs in the back. Oh, and actually there is a gun rack in the rear window.

“The frame is snapped, right in half.”

I turn to Jarrod. “You said it looked fine underneath.”

“I’m not a mechanic, Danny.”

“It is in two pieces,” the man says, supremely amused. “Only thing holding front and back of that machine together is the transmission and the carpeting.”

Da has begun walking in the direction we came from.

“Go get him,” I tell Jarrod.

Jarrod goes and I speak to the man, up close and personal.

“Listen, I am sorry, but-”

“Whoa there, death breath,” he says, and takes two steps back.

And I realize how much further we have drifted from what I thought of as civilization just days ago. I haven’t brushed my teeth. As of this moment I don’t even think I technically own a toothbrush. We need some money. We need things.

We need to get where we are going.

“Can you possibly give us a lift?” I ask.

My comrades have joined us now.