Side Roads and Dandelions

by W.H. Harrod

  ~~ Chapter Six

  An occasional glance in the rear-view mirror revealed the beginning of a new day catching up with the VW bus as it journeyed towards the west. In front of the bus, the blackness of night prevailed, but not for long. Allison felt relieved, because for her the loneliest time of a day occurred during the period right before sunrise. Ernest had said little following their brief conversation. She hoped she hadn’t put a damper on his enthusiasm with her questions regarding his motivation for getting involved in the bay area insanity in ‘69. They would have sufficient cause to visit more about their previous experiences as things progressed. Allison decided not to worry about it.

  A road sign informed her that their planned exit point from the interstate was just ahead. They had made good time, so far. After a stop at a well-lit truck plaza located a short distance from the off ramp to gas up the bus and refresh themselves, they could expect to get back on the road and arrive at Bobby’s by no later than 7:30 a.m. “Are you ready for a pit stop?” she asked, ending an extended period of silence.

  Ernest aroused himself in preparation for the much anticipated restroom-refreshment break. The only comment made in the last hour related to his observation that Allison could drive farther without a potty-break than any female he had ever known. Needless to say, once the bus came to a stop with the engine turned off, Ernest exited the vehicle without any attempt to coordinate a plan of action. He obviously had other things on his mind. Gas, oil, food, coffee, or whatever could be discussed later.

  As Allison watched her companion scamper towards the sign directing customers to the lavatories, she caught sight of a group of men standing off to the side of their pickup trucks staring intently in her direction. Before she could begin to feel flattered by their attention, she realized their interest lie in the exterior of the VW bus. Both she and Ernest were accustomed to the less than professional multi-color rainbow paint job along with the large golden sunflowers and peace signs that adorned the exterior of the bus since before they had fled Berkeley in 1969. She hadn’t stopped to think that the sight of an original 1965 hippie VW bus operated by two aging children of the sixties, one white and one black, sitting at a rural truck stop in 2003 less than thirty miles from Muskogee, Oklahoma, the same Muskogee the Okies were proud to be from, might be of particular interest to certain individuals who flaunted their atavistic tendencies. The watchers looked harmless enough to Allison if potbellies and bib-overalls could be considered a fair indicator of docility. Still, she would just as soon Ernest return from his pit stop and refreshment run and finish filling up the tank so she could do the same thing he was now doing. Until then, she intended to stand defiantly and return the stare of the ogling group of observers.

  Ernest eventually came dawdling out of the truck stop smiling and whistling a tune. He carried a plastic bag full of goodies that he professed to have purchased for both of their benefit. Just the usual stuff he told her when pressed to describe the bag’s contents: six powdered donuts, two jelly rolls, a snickers bar, a honey bun, and a large strawberry slurpie. He topped off this feast by providing for her drinking pleasure, either a can of cherry cola or a diet Fresca. He looked sincerely pleased with his effort.

  Not prepared to bring him to justice right at that moment given the amount of interest their presence created for the local gawkers, Allison simply asked him to stay by their vehicle while she took care of her business inside, which included getting her own breakfast of hot coffee and an apple. Before she departed she did, however, subtly indicate to Ernest that something of interest was taking place off to the side of the lot.

  Glancing in the direction of their audience as she exited the station a short while later, she noticed that the smiling dispositions of the local lookers had changed to something more akin to scowls. What’s happened? she asked herself as she hurried towards the bus. She got her answer as she neared the vehicle and spied a large belligerent looking black man wearing a black beret and dark sunglasses sitting in the driver’s seat staring straight at the crowd.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Do you think you’re going to scare anyone with that look?” asked an incredulous Allison standing outside the passenger side of the bus with the door open.

  “Why don’t you ask them,” said Ernest as he started the engine. “Which way to the highway?”

  “Go right, for the next twenty miles, I think,” answered Allison as she climbed in and glanced one last time at their enraptured roadside audience. She flashed the universal two finger peace sign of the sixties and displayed her warmest smile as they drove past the idlers. What she received in return for her effort was the bewildered look of earthlings having seen a flying saucer land and take off again. They would probably be retelling this tale for years, even to their children’s children.

  “Oh, my God!” said Allison in disbelief as she turned back to look at her laughing companion. “You are going to be in such trouble when I tell Rosa Lee. Now hand over that bag of junk food you bought back there. Here’s an apple to go with that Fresca.”

  The earlier scowl that Ernest had offered up to the men at the truck stop flashed in Allison’s direction from time to time as the bus headed across Oklahoma towards Bobby’s last known residence. A single bite of the apple washed down with the tangy diet beverage he thought he had secured for his traveling companion brought a look of disgust to his face. “This is going to make me sick,” he whined. “Is that what you want? Do you want to make me sick? I will if I don’t get something to eat. I know about this stuff. I’m a doctor!”

  Allison ignored him as she scanned a map of the countryside they now traversed. “I think all we need to do is take a left at the next intersection, about five or six miles ahead, and then go for another ten miles or so, and we should be there.”

  Ernest acted as if he hadn’t heard a word she said. “How about giving me the rest of that jelly roll I started on. I swear that’s all I’m going to ask you for.”

  Allison could see she wasn’t going to get his full attention until she gave him something, so she conceded to this one request. “Okay, but the rest of these are going to be parceled out slowly. Starting this afternoon when we stop for lunch we’re both going to have a big summer salad with a vinaigrette dressing. You heard me promise Rosa Lee I would see that you got at least one decent meal a day, didn’t you? Well, I am going to keep my promise.”

  Ernest reached for the partially eaten jellyroll and wolfed it down in a couple of bites. He actually seemed pacified for a moment until he took a swig of his diet soda. That’s when another look of agony covered his face.

  Silently observing his theatrics, Allison made a suggestion. “There’s always the cherry cola if you would rather have that.”

  Ernest spent the rest of the short drive to Bobby’s shaking his head from side to side and talking silently to himself. Allison, on the other hand, busied herself by looking for anything that might be familiar to her from her visit here many years earlier. She was still looking when the bus sped past a large sign just off the road that read Owens Straightbred Angus Cattle.

  “That’s it,” yelled Allison, “that’s it! I remember that sign. Turn around and go back.”

  “Oh, really? You want me to go back?” remarked Ernest sarcastically, obviously still sore over losing his stash of goodies. “You don’t want me to go straight ahead and drive around the world until we come back to this spot?”

  Allison ignored his poor excuse at humor while Ernest found a wide spot to turn the bus around. After turning onto an entrance road just past the sign, the road wandered up a long gradual slope flanked on both sides by fields that during her earlier visit held hundreds of head of cattle. Allison spotted the farmhouse a quarter mile away. She couldn’t remember most of what she saw during her first visit, but something told her that things had changed. There was no sign of activity anywhere: no cattle, no crops in the fields, no fields being readied for spring planting, nothing. Something was wrong. She didn’t k
now what it was, but everything looked wrong to her.

  “Look sharp Ernest, something’s wrong, I know it,” said Allison.

  Ernest did not bother to respond, but instead allowed the professional lifesaver inside of him take the lead. He joined Allison in scanning every building, every field, and anything else that might conceal a live person or a critter. Not a living creature appeared anywhere.

  “Looks abandoned to me,” said Ernest as they drove closer to the main house. Gates to empty fields stood wide open as did barn doors and out buildings. Not a piece of farm equipment could be seen. Whatever occurred here had not happened recently. The lack of tire tracks or footprints in the soft soil indicated traffic had not gone into the fields or stock pens in a long time.

  “Keep driving around to the back of the house, that’s where I remember Bobby kept his truck. No one ever uses the front doors on farmhouses. If you want to go inside you usually have to go through the kitchen,” said Allison, continuing to scan everything in sight.

  Turning a corner flanked by a row of tall cedars placed there as a wind break, both Allison and Ernest spied an empty pickup truck parked askew, its front fender up against the wire fence that surrounded the house protecting it from roaming critters. They noticed as they moved closer that the driver’s side door stood wide open. Allison began to have a queasy feeling in her stomach. Something was wrong.

  Ernest brought the bus to a halt, and Allison exited towards the gate that allowed passage to the back door of the residence. “You check out the barn and the sheds. I’ll check the house.”

  Again, Ernest followed instructions, looking as if he, too, feared that something was amiss. Meanwhile, his partner banged loudly on the back door to the house. If they were wrong and someone was home, they might be more than a little puzzled by their visitors’ actions, especially if Bobby didn’t live here anymore.

  Allison, tired of waiting for a response to her loud knocks, opened the unlocked door and yelled inside. “Hello! Anyone home? Bobby, it’s me, Allison, and I’ve got Ernest with me. Is anyone here?” Receiving no answer she decided to search inside the house. As she made her first step inside the door, Allison heard Ernest calling her name.

  “Allison! Allison! He’s out here behind the barn. Bring my kit from the bus, hurry!”

  Allison grabbed the kit and ran to Ernest’s side. A frightening sight stopped her in her tracks as soon as she turned the corner. Ernest was leaning over Bobby who was unconscious and flat on his back on the ground. Ernest finished his examination for signs of obstructions in the breathing passageway and started checking the body for wounds or broken bones. Only after he was certain that Bobby would not incur further trauma from being moved did he ask Allison to help him move their unconscious friend.

  Where Bobby laid caught Allison’s attention. In a ditch! She recalled the time when it was the other way around, and Bobby saved her from a terrible fate as she lay in a ditch, beaten and bloody. There beside him in the ditch was a large handgun.

  “Hurry, Allison! Although he didn’t shoot himself with that gun, I still don’t know what’s happened to him.” Ernest’s strong voice got her going again, and they lifted Bobby from the ditch to higher ground. Allison said nothing as Ernest performed an emergency evaluation. Bobby had not moved a muscle. He was out cold.

  Finally, Allison couldn’t help herself. She needed to know what was going on. “What’s wrong with him? Was it a heart attack? Did he fall and hit his head?”

  Ernest did not respond so Allison asked again. “Please tell me what has happened. Is he going to be all right?”

  “Here’s the culprit, I believe,” said Ernest as he reached his hand inside of Bobby’s work jacket and pulled out a near empty bottle of Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. He handed it to Allison as he stood up. “He’s drunk, very, very drunk.”

  Allison unscrewed the top and put the bottle up to her nose. The harsh smell of the strong whiskey caused her to jerk her head away. “Oh my lord, that is so foul. He drank this much already?”

  Ernest laughed at her comment. “No, I don’t mean he’s drank that much. I mean he’s drank ten times that much. His heart sounds okay, and he seems okay otherwise except for that big bump on his head, but it’s going to take him some time to get over this binge.” After thinking about it a while longer as Allison stood there wondering what to do next, Ernest spoke again. “I don’t see how he can go with us, Allison, even if he wants to.”

  This news hurt Allison to the core. She had counted so much on Bobby going along. The distinct possibility that he would not be able to grieved her deeply. “Can we get him inside the house? We can’t leave him out here.”

  Ernest, being a practical man and knowing how difficult it was to carry dead weight, which is exactly what they had at the moment, looked around for help. He spotted an implement that fit their needs to the letter, a heavy wheelbarrow leaning on the side of a small shed thirty yards away. He retrieved the implement without stopping to explain to Allison, pushed it up alongside Bobby, and then asked her to give him a hand loading Bobby into it. Her common sense told her this was a good idea.

  “We’ll take him straight into the bathroom and put him into the tub, if he has one, clothes and all,” said Ernest as he and Allison labored to get their passenger into the wheelbarrow and then to the house. With a lot of grunting and a lot more dragging, they accomplished their mission. Inside the house, they found an old cast iron bathtub in the large first floor bathroom. They removed Bobby’s boots and jacket and his wallet from his back pocket before they turned the cold water on to fill the tub with Bobby already in it.

  While Ernest watched over Bobby, Allison went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. She wouldn’t give up this easily. She had to try something. When she returned to the bathroom with a steaming hot cup of coffee for Bobby, Ernest took it from her and started to drink it himself. She stared at him, wondering why he drank the coffee they needed to be putting into Bobby, but Ernest paid her no attention as he sipped the fresh brew.

  The cold water began to have an effect on their patient if moaning and jerking qualified as progress. “As soon as he awakens and we can get some caffeine into him, we will refill the tub with hot water. That will sweat the impurities out of his system faster. Then we can start to work on him. I know you’re not going to leave here without doing everything we possibly can to get him on his feet. Get me a notepad so I can make a list of items we will need from the nearest store if they’re not here in the house,” said Ernest without looking up to see the beginnings of a smile on his partner’s face. Allison wasted no time complying with his request. By the time she returned, Bobby’s movements were more pronounced than before. Maybe there is reason to have hope.

  Allison checked the house to make sure the items on the list were not present. In short order, she had the bus on the road heading towards the junction they went through ten or twelve miles back where they had spotted a small market. She reviewed the list once again. One liter of regular cola, honey, aspirin, bananas, probably for the potassium she thought. Peanut butter, white bread and finally, a bottle of vitamin C tablets. Not exactly her idea of advanced medicine, but then she wasn’t the doctor.

  Within thirty minutes she was racing back along the same road with most of the items on the list having been located on the shelves of the well-stocked little market. The only item the store didn’t have were the vitamin C tablets and the loaf of whole wheat bread she requested instead of the white bread which she was simply loathe to buy for any reason. It turned out this was white bread country, and she had to take what she could get. Allison glanced at her watch. It read straight up 9 a.m. They would need to get moving if they wanted to get back on the road by no later than noon. A go, no go, decision needed to be made regarding Bobby fairly soon.

  She pressed on the gas pedal anxious to get back to the farm and see if Ernest had made any progress in getting Bobby awake. As she finished the thought, she sighted the large sign that announced
the turnoff to Bobby’s house. Absent-mindedly she expressed her sentiments out loud, “If anybody is listening we could use a little help right now. It’s for a good cause.” That was it. Allison wasn’t real big in the area of formal prayer. Although she subscribed to the existence of an all knowing, essentially benevolent, creative energy, she had a hard time believing this force played an active roll in the every day lives of the wee creatures that inhabited this speck of sand located in the far corner of one of the billions of star systems located in one of the billions of galaxies that made up the known universe.

  She came to a stop behind Bobby’s house. Hurrying from the bus, she entered the back door to the welcomed sound of Bobby’s loud voice wailing that he was being roasted alive in the hot water Ernest had him sitting in. Not bothering to see whether Bobby was clothed or naked, she went straight to the bathroom to see for herself if their subject’s condition had improved.

  To her relief, he was still clothed in the jeans and shirt he had on when they started, and for the first time, she got a good look at Bobby’s weathered face. He looked as if he had not spent ten minutes out of the elements in the last thirty years as lines and cracks ran in every direction. His face was as haggard looking as a piece of old leather. He looked to be a hard seventy years old if he looked a day. He’s three years younger than me, calculated Allison.

  Allison went right to the important questions. “What do you think? Can we do it? Can we get him straightened out so we can take him with us?”

  Ernest didn’t bother to answer her questions as he kept busy holding Bobby in the tub. “Come over here and hold him in here until I can mix up the items you have there and try to get him to ingest something.” Ernest arose from beside the tub and exposed the drenched clothing he now wore. Allison could see that she was about to get wet. No matter, she thought as Ernest’s earlier beret and sunglasses caper had given her an idea. The khaki pants and designer sweatshirt she wore with the quilted lettering across the chest proclaiming her proud position in the family hierarchy as Grandma seemed out of place. She had brought along other clothing better suited to their mission.

  An hour later, the situation was only marginally better. Bobby regained consciousness to the point that he partly recognized his old friends. Ernest got a half pot of coffee with honey down him by this time and persistently engaged Bobby in conversation about anything and everything. Allison rummaged around the home and located a change of clothing for their patient, assuming he would be able to stand up at some point in the near future and put them on. Things didn’t look good at the moment. It was already past 10 a.m., and Bobby couldn’t stand up by himself. Ernest seemed content to encourage Bobby to drink the sobering liquids as well as keep him talking. Allison, meanwhile, investigated the property, inside and out.

  Allison saw everything she needed to see and headed back to the bathroom where she found Ernest finishing the chore of getting Bobby out of the tub and dressed. Even with clean clothes on, Bobby still looked anything but capable of functioning on his own, but he certainly looked much better than he did in the ditch.

  “What’s the prognosis?” asked Allison tersely. “Any hope?”

  Not taking his eyes off his patient, Ernest allowed the professional physician in him to respond. “Given time he’ll make it if he chooses to. He’s malnourished, probably because all he does is drink. If he could stay off the booze it would help, but by the looks of this place with the empty whiskey bottles that seems doubtful. Essentially, his vitals, while reacting as one would expect to the alcohol he’s ingested, are fairly strong. He simply needs to stop drinking. Where is his family? What’s going on?”

  “It looks as if his wife has left him. There are divorce papers on the dining room table. It’s not final yet, apparently. I don’t know where his son, Fogerty, is. It looks like he’s been alone for quite awhile. I also checked outside. The place is empty of everything -- no equipment, no farm animals, nothing. I also saw a notice from the bank that they intend to foreclose on the outstanding loans they hold on the farm. From the looks of this house, it hasn’t been cleaned in months. This place is a dump.” Allison watched Bobby as he tried to take a drink from the cup of liquid Ernest held up to his mouth. What has happened here?

  Ernest turned to Allison for the first time while assisting Bobby in his effort to sit erect in the straight-backed chair. “I don’t know what to tell you, Allison. I doubt it would be wise to walk away and leave him like this, but I don’t know if he could handle riding -”

  Allison, not ordinarily one to cut people off, interrupted him before he could finish. “Here’s something I found on the dining table.” She showed him a pad of lined paper displaying a short note scrawled on it. Well, looks like I’ve screwed things up pretty good this time. Sorry for the mess. Tell our son I’m truly sorry for being such a bad father. Please forgive me, Bobby.

  Ernest read the note. He looked at the handgun that Allison held in her hand, and then back to Bobby. “Pack him a bag and find his wallet. He’s going with us,” said Ernest in a tone of voice that left no doubt that this was not an arguable point.

  “That’s already been done.” Allison pointed to a bag setting outside the doorway.

  “Of course it has,” said Ernest smiling. “I should have known. One more thing though, I want you to bring along the gun and when we go by the pond on the way out, I want you to throw that ugly thing right out in the middle of it.”

  Now there were three of the Dandelions together again. “You’re the doctor,” said Allison from behind a smile. “Let’s go to California!”