OK, so a few weeks ago Rick and I went to Lowe’s in Ponca, and came back with a load of 2 X 4s. We had our little 2016 VW Passat, and the lumber started in the back and rode up to the front, in between the chairs.
We were on a 4 lane highway, 70 mph. Rick noticed a semi, an old flat bed carrying a huge tractor, off to the right slowly rolling, and he moved in the the left lane to give him room. Suddenly the semi turned left and slowly moved across the road and moved into one of those little turning lanes. No problem. He had time. We assumed he was going to turn left there, and Rick moved back into the right lane.
I was looking down when suddenly the car locked up, threw me hard against my harness, which locked.
You know how you notice SO MUCH in a split second? Well, I jerked my head up and out of the corner of my eye I saw the 2 X 4’s accelerating toward the windshield. I have no doubt they would have gone through the glass, and I slammed my hand down on them to stop them and at that second my head snapped all the way up.
The windshield was filled with the sight of the huge tractor moving slowly across the road on the flat bed right in front of us. I’m not a screamer. Everything went quiet. I felt Rick trying to throw the car into a slide which the damn anti lock brakes were making difficult. I just….watched, in a disembodied, surreal way. Later he said the brakes were chattering like muskrats in the throws of frantic sex.
Then we were stopped. He almost had it pointed toward the ditch, but not quite. I knew that if he hadn’t gotten it stopped his next move would have been to punch it and throw us into the ditch and on around. But we got stopped, and just watched that fucking semi slowly rumble across the road about 5 feet in front of us.
He pulled off into an parking lot of some old business along the highway.
I looked at Rick, my hand frozen on the 2X4’s, saw his face and realized then that I had another problem. He was enraged. When Rick becomes enraged all thoughts of other people go out of his head. His temper could easily put me, or anyone with him in danger, and I’ve tried to talk to him about it. My thought was, “Jesus! Rick’s going after him! What if the guy has a gun??”
Rick angrily pulled in behind the guy, who had gotten out of his truck and was examining a tire, and started snarling at the guy through the open window.
At first the guy was belligerent, and he said, “I a blow out! I had to get off the highway! I had my hazard lights on! Didn’t you see them?”
Rick said, “No you fucking didn’t!”
The guy bent down to look at me and I wordlessly shook my head. At that his face just fell. He was….just shattered. He looked like he was going to be sick, and I almost felt sorry for him, but Rick wasn’t done with him.
As Rick ranted I took a good look at the truck. It was really old and really dirty. He actually did have his hazards on, but they were so old the lights were barely a dull red glome through the dirt. I could hardly see them even up close. If I was a trucker I’d be ashamed to drive that rig…and somehow I thought that explained a lot. I just had a feeling he’d been black balled in the trucking world, and that was the only kind of rig-gig he could get. Maybe he had a drinking problem.
Well, we’re still here.