Dollar For Your Thoughts, Part 3/14

            Connie turned out to be a good traveling companion. I was warming up to her. I reached into the foot well beside her and snatched up the old bag which formerly contained the lauded Turkey T. She exhaled in dismay, and I thought it was because she had wanted to be the one to do the honors. Crossing my body with my right arm, I executed the ‘Ne’er Do Well’, with the bag out the window and with eyes on the road, not knowing what the right hand was doing. At the speed I was going, everything was pretty much confetti once fully jettisoned. I rolled my eyes up to the rearview mirror and watched the flotsam follow the slipstream well. A salute to the rosy-browed dawn. The trash distributed itself evenly across the width of the lane, a litter-drift for the next car to rush through. Perhaps driven by an itinerant cucumber vendor destined for a fly-by-night shop. Or a good ol’ boy on his way to a short shift at the Imno chair factory up the road in Oak Falls. The trash would be a statement to be plowed up and crushed to surprisingly resilient pulp. Homo Sapien was here. The world now looked lived in. Then I let my gaze go over and down to catch Connie’s envious expression.

            She pursed her lips, at first speaking only visually. Then the sound followed sibilantly.

            “Swine!”

             We switched at the incongruous dawn at an abandoned weigh station near Oak Glen. Connie lingered behind the cinder-block building longer than I thought necessary. But what do I know. She was either spotting horned toads or playing with that colorful whatzit in her jacket pocket. She didn’t seem different after she did that, though. Perhaps it was prescribed, but then, why was she offering it to me? I decided to keep an eye on things on that front, but I did feel a spell coming on. Perhaps Connie unwittingly set me off by saying- “I should drive. Your turn’s next.” Again. So, somewhere between Oak Glen and Twin Oaks I came to with Connie saying- “Dollar for your thoughts,” and me realizing, when she asked what my dream was, that I’d been stuffing envelopes.

            It was a particularly chilly Winter in Iowa. The periodic popcorn snow had stuck on the edge of the highway lane, and we talked about that, along with the subject of horned toad prevalence. Connie was obsessed with them. They were cold, you know. They were only cold-blooded lizards, after all. And then Connie trailed off. We came to a curve on the two-lane highway. No. As I now remember, the road ahead wasn’t very curved, but we weren’t going very straight. My memory of the resulting accident is a blur. I guess it was a moment of halfs. I realized that Connie was only half there. She was taking my Imno 400 (7^th off the line, with that pleasing scent) over the warning washboard onto the soft-squishy shoulder of the road. I looked at her and thought- That’s how I look when I’m in one of my trances. How goofy. I hoped that it wasn’t something contagious and that she’d caught it from me.

            “Connie!”

            Her expression didn’t change. I looked where we were headed. Diagonally through a shallow ditch in front of a farm house.

            “Cah-nie!”

            Looking at her, one would think that she was driving well, and not scooting through a ditch at 25 kph. She held a bemused expression, like she had just heard a very clever joke. But looking where she was looking was a shock. We were heading toward a sturdy picket fence. The car tilted passenger side down as it negotiated the ditch, then I went up, and our bearing changed, to one more oblique relative to the fence. Mud flicked from the ground onto the windshield before Connie’s glazed eyes.

            “Connie!” I cried. “Dollar for your thoughts!”

            I heard a nasal ‘hn?’ to my left. Her face switched to an apologetic ‘dang-it-all’ expression and she jerked the wheel and pumped the brakes. But to no avail. My cherished Imno 400 had become a pinball on a greased table. It was running roughly parallel to the fence now, but not parallel enough, and very rough. We’d slowed, a bit, and I realized that what would happen would be less dangerous and more spectacular. We met the fence at that shallow angle. I faced forward, let out a sigh and held myself limp, understanding that it was all that I could do.

           “Gah!” Connie was disappointed in herself, but it also gave voice to my own dismay at the result.

           One picket slat made it over the windshield, spinning the while. Two others made it onto the hood. A horizontal supporting strut quit the job and tumbled into the yard proper. Other bits and pieces jammed themselves into the grill and just under the nose of the car, and we came to a rest against one of the posts.

            “Shit,” Connie said. “What do I do now?”

            I rolled my window down, pulled a card from my breast pocket, and put it in a crack in the top of one of the posts still standing.

            “Let’s get outta here.”

            “Good by me.” Connie worked us out of the ditch and onto the shoulder of the highway.

            “Have you been taking pills?”

            “No!”

            “What’s in that thing in your jacket, then?”

            “Candy! Oh mi Ghod! I’m not pill-popping. Are you sure that we can just leave?”

            This was a bit hard on Connie, but I was intent on fleeing.

            “Of course we can! Non injury accident, and we’re platinum.” I saw a boy running across the large grassy lawn to inspect the damage. Connie’s response was firm.

            “Speak for yourself.”

            “Aren’t you platinum? Doesn’t matter, I am! Go!”

            I didn’t want to be caught up in a tete-a-tete with the locals there. They could be quite class-conscious in the rural areas. Connie looked back down the road, then tore down the highway.

            “There was a boy running across the lawn.”

            “I saw him. You had a seizure like mine!”

            “No shit!” Connie shouted, head poking turtle-like furtive from the collar of her jacket. “They’re coming quicker. Otherwise, this wouldn’t have happened.”

            The cab had been filling with chill air and road-mist. I rolled the window back up and cranked the heater. Through cloud-cover, it was turning afternoon. A reminder of sleep lost.

            “What do we have?” I asked her. “Is it contagious? I mean, did I give it to you?”

            Connie laughed.

            “I don’t know what it is, but I’ve had it for two weeks.”

            “Oh.”

            She turned and laughed again. Then she saw my expression and tempered it for my benefit.

            “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Your turn’s next.”

            I wasn’t worried. Much. Anymore. I looked in relief at the stubbly fields awhile, but I was still digesting the incident. I told Connie to disregard the speed limit through the next town, it was the county seat and the county border was just north of that. Connie relaxed at the wheel and accelerated. A sign of an experienced major.

            “I thought you said we weren’t on the lam.”

            “Well, there are always shades of grey.”

            Then, at first, I thought she was sobbing. Then she unloosed a high peal, which terminated in a chuckle.

            “Well,” she boomed, “I wouldn’t want to wear out my welcome.”

            I had worked with many ordinates on missions, and then we went our own way. Connie was working her way up on the list of those that I would miss. Discretion was our watchword, but I had to know. Connie took us swiftly through Oak Bluff.

            “You’re from Imno East Region, then.” I said. I thought I’d nailed the accent. I settled back in my seat as we met traffic. One or two other vehicles.

            “Yes?” she said, wary.

            I turned to her and she gave me a schoolmarm glance. After a moment she twisted her laminated badge, on its lanyard, toward me. On it was her name, a dollar sign, a major’s cluster, and the Tenger crest.

           Should I say that that was the moment that I knew Connie was from Tenger? If I put it that way, I would be telling quite a tale on myself.

            So, that was the moment that I knew Connie was from Tenger. It wasn’t a moment that she chose for me to know, so much. She was from our Conglomerate Neighbor, and our relations were a bit strained with them. Let’s just say that she chose that moment to point out that I had made a mistake. Who she was was right there on her identification badge. That’s what they’re there for.

            But little changed for us as she took my treasured, dented, Imno 400 slipping beneath the scudding clouds. And little was said, since I slipped into a trance soon after.

            Front grille replacement: 900

            Replacement of headlight: (1) 500

            Hood work: 500

            Windshield crack repair: 100

            Side panel replacement: 500