Saving Cecil

by Lee Mims

  It’s said your life passes before your eyes when you’re about to die. Mine didn’t. My thoughts: Dang, this is going to hurt! And I sure hope Tulip survives. Pitiful, I know. No grand thoughts of family or friends, just my own personal pain and a fleeting thought for my dog. Then we hit the creek.

  Now Pocket Creek, a tributary of the Deep River, is not some little babbling brook. In places, it’s ten to fifteen feet wide, deep and dangerous. It is especially treacherous if the water is high from runoff, which, as luck would have it, it was.

  We landed nose first, tilted to the passenger side. There was a sudden stop, a crashing blow to my body, seemingly from everywhere, and the deafening sound of bending metal and splintering fiberglass. Being fall, the windows were up, thankfully. The creek was high so that was a good thing, I guess. Maybe the water cushioned the impact. I don’t know.

  I might have been knocked out for a few seconds. The first thing I remember was pushing away from the windshield with both hands, feeling water trickling in through its myriad of cracks. We were still wheels down, but the passenger side was definitely taking on water faster. The tilt suddenly became alarming. Then I heard Tulip barking. That was a good thing! I tried to push the buzzing fog from my head and get to her. In our current situation two things were certain: The Jeep was in the creek and the creek was coming inside. We needed to exit. Pronto!

  Naturally I tried to lower the driver’s side window but since the doors were buckled, that was a non-starter. I gathered my feet under me—grateful everything was still working—and prepared to kick out the weakened windshield, but I didn’t have to. About that time, my optional hard top, my pride and joy, shelter for Tulip for lo these many years, detached from its clips along the roll bar. A giant gush of water flushed us from the Jeep like so much flotsam.

  We drug ourselves onto the nearby bank. Tulip kept licking me as I tried to examine her. Unbelievably, she didn’t have so much as a scratch that I could see, although I could tell she was tender to the touch in places. I prayed there was no internal damage. I, on the other hand, hadn’t fared so well.

  Both lips were swollen, the bottom having a cut inside, probably made by my teeth. Horrified they might be broken, I ran my tongue over them. No jagged edges and they felt tight so a trip to the prosthodontist wouldn’t be required. There were a variety of minor cuts and bruises scattered about my body, including a goose egg forming at my hairline right above a scar I’d gotten last summer, but nothing life threatening.

  My Jeep, however, was another matter altogether. It was a gonner for sure. I walked to where it had floated, then settled into shallow water not far away and surveyed the damage. The frame was definitely bent and I’d had some experience with water flowing through an engine. They tend not to work very good afterward.

  Suddenly I felt shaky, so I found a piece of deadfall on the bank and flopped down on it. Tulip huddled beside me. While we watched, the Jeep rolled on its side and began to hog in, settling into the rocky bottom. It was going to be a bitch to haul out. Finally, the fog of near catastrophe cleared from my mind and a thought that had occurred to me way too many times in the past found its way front and center. What the hell happened and why does it always happen to me?

  Soon, as is my way, I’d had enough of feeling sorry for myself—although I was planning on spending some quality time with a bottle of Jack when I got home. I stood stiffly, waded to the wreckage, and got on with the job of saving what I could of my possessions, starting with my Beretta. My tote, my purse, and any gear that wasn’t underwater were next. I gave a cursory glance about for my phone, but suffice it to say, wherever it was, it was underwater and that meant bye-bye phone.

  I spent the better part of an hour dragging salvageable equipment from the Jeep to the bank and dumping it into what was left of the hardtop. I’d managed to drag it back upstream from where it had caught on the snag. My plan was to retrieve it when I came back to get the Jeep out of the creek. How I was going to accomplish that I wasn’t sure yet. I thought about going back to the site for help, but Jackie had his hands full getting the well back on track. Plus, if I pulled a crew off station, the bill from Greenlite and Schmid and Medlin would be a darn site heftier than that of a local wrecker service.

  “Come on, girl,” I called to Tulip and crammed my baby nine and soggy purse into my dripping tote and draped it over my shoulder. “I expect the Lauderbach house is the best place to get help.”

  Scrambling and clawing our way back up an embankment so steep that, at times, I didn’t think I was going to make it, we finally reached the road. I was gasping for breath. The possibility that a little shock was starting to set in was enough to make me take a minute to sit down on the shoulder of the road. As soon as my lungs had filled again, I considered myself recovered. I checked my watch. Mickey had taken quite a licking over the years, but he was still ticking. It was past two.

  “Funny how time flies when you’re having fun, huh, girl?” I said to Tulip who had been resting beside me, but now had moved to stand behind me, a low growl bubbling deep in her chest.

  “It’s not funny?” I said, turning to see what she was upset about. The world’s largest Jersey bull—and the reason for a gate as well as a cattle guard—was standing about ten feet from us. Now I happen to know a few things about bulls. This isn’t the first dairy farm I’ve prospected so I’ve picked up a little cow knowledge over the years. One important fact came quickly to mind. Of all the different breeds available to cross with Holstein cows—the black and white ones—Jerseys are the most desired. They are also, with absolutely zero dissent amongst dairymen, the most dangerous, most cantankerous, most nasty-tempered bulls in the world.

  No one knows why exactly, but it might have something to do with their extreme masculinity. Masculinity equals testosterone, which equals aggressiveness along with a desire to bonk every cow in sight. Anyway, those high reproductive rates are why dairymen take the risk. Their female offspring also produce award-winning milk with a low-fat content, but those silly factoids weren’t important right now, considering the angry bovine now glaring at me.

  In fact, he looked like he might be trying out for an award of a different sort—Bad Ass Bull of the Year. He didn’t have to bellow and paw at the ground but one time for us to get his message: get outta my face!

  Tulip and I fell all over each other trying to get back over the edge of the embankment. We’d tumbled and rolled about fifteen feet straight downhill, stopped only by a stand of young pines. “Shit!” I yelled. “This day just keeps getting better ‘n better!” As soon as I was sure the copse of spindly little trees was going to hold us, I stood and looked back up the embankment.

  All I could see was El Torro’s head. He didn’t have horns, but he didn’t need them. He was at least 1800 pounds and every bit of it fighting-mad beef. I pulled my Beretta from my tote, then thought better of firing it over his head. Bullets that go up come down and might hit someone accidentally. I shoved it under my waistband behind my back, then remembered another fact I’d learned: Bovine are creatures of habit. He was bound to go back to his barn at feeding time. We just needed to wait him out.

  After what seemed like hours, but in truth was probably only about thirty minutes, I heard the sound of a tractor approaching. It stopped right above us and I heard a deep male voice command, “Git on, Boss! Git on up now!” Tulip growled and trembled. I held her tight and waited until the voice boomed again. “You okay down there?”

  “Yeah!” I called back. “But you better look out, there’s a bull up there!”

  “Dat’s okay. I’ve got him under control. You can come on up.”

  Easy for you to say. Still, not having any better offers lately, Tulip and I struggled back to the top again and peered over the edge. Before doing so, however, I placed my Beretta back in my tote. No sense scaring someone nice enough to rescue me. A tall, heavyset black man with an electric cattle prod in one h
and stood above us. El Torro stood a respectable distance away on the far side of a very large tractor, the kind big enough to have a cab. “You okay, now. Come on up,” he said.

  “Thanks so much,” I said, allowing him to give me a hand.

  “You just lucky I come along,” said the man, who introduced himself as Luther Green, dairy manager and husband to Ruby Green, the Lauderbach’s housekeeper. “Dis is Boss’s field and dis time of the day, he’s usually under his favorite tree over yonder in the corner. When I didn’t see him, I come looking and that’s when I seen he was up to no good. How come you out here anyway? Where’s you car? Ain’t you the lady that finds gas?”

  “Well, something like that,” I said. “I’m Cleo Cooper and I work for the people who are drilling a gas exploration well for the Lauderbachs.” Then I explained how I came to be in Boss’s field.

  “Lawd God! And here I am going on and on. I’s wondering why you was so wet. Let me get you up to the house,” he said, opening the door to the cab of the bright red Massey Ferguson. I squeezed in beside Luther. Tulip balled up in my lap and Boss looked on ominously. “My Ruby can take care of them cuts and bruises and I’ll come back and see to your car. I speck we gonna need a wrecker though. That’s a good little ways down to the creek.” Luther gave me the once over with a more critical eye now that he realized I’d been in a car accident. “You damn lucky you ain’t dead!”

  “I’ll say.”

  EIGHT

  Hours and hours later, after Ruby had patched me up, my beloved Jeep was hauled out of Pocket Creek by a wrecker and taken to a graveyard for dead cars in Sanford. I didn’t call my insurance company. No point. The Jeep was totaled, it had over two hundred thousand miles on it and it was a 1986 model. In short, it wasn’t worth anything to anyone but me. I’d also answered questions from a sympathetic highway patrolman who’d been nice enough to drive out to the Lauderbach farm to see me.

  While I was on private property, the road itself was maintained by the state. Hence the patrolman. Following his visit, Luther had driven me to the junkyard where my Jeep had been taken.

  Standing in the office of Dexter Jenkins, owner of Jenkins Junkyard, I negotiated with him for the price of the salvageable parts on the Jeep.

  “All four of those tires are brand-new,” I said. “They’re BF Good-

  rich, top of the line, all-terrains.”

  “Well, that may be,” Dexter replied, totaling the items he was willing to pay me for on a grimy plastic calculator. “But I can’t give you anything for one of them ‘cause it’s got a hole shot through it.”

  “A hole?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, tightening the rubber band on his mullet. He took a giant swig of Mello Yello. “I know a bullet hole when I see one. Must’ve been a stray shot from a hunter … ”

  “Miss Cooper!” Detective Chris Bryant interrupted from the open office doorway. “I heard about your wreck. You alright?”

  “Yes,” I said, a little annoyed at being interrupted mid-deal. Plus, it was late, I was continuing to stiffen up and now my head was pounding too. “How’d you hear about my wreck?”

  He pulled aside the bottom of his windbreaker to reveal the detective badge clipped to his belt. “Detective … remember?”

  “Whatever,” I said as Luther Green stuck his head in the office too. “It’s getting close to feeding time. I’m going to need to get back to the barn soon. You can borrow one of Mr. Lauderbach’s farm trucks to get home tonight.” Before I could respond, Chris chimed in. “No need for that. I’ll see to it that Miss Cooper gets wherever she needs to go.”

  “Thanks,” I said, grateful I wasn’t going to have to create further disruption on Mr. Lauderbach’s farm. “I appreciate that. But are you sure you don’t mind? I live in Raleigh.”

  “No problem.”

  After I thanked Luther again for all he’d done and assured him I didn’t need any more help, he left.

  “What a nice fellow,” I said to Chris as I waved to the departing farm manager. “And you’re very kind, as well, checking to see if I’m alright and offering to take me home. I really appreciate it, but I’m glad you’re here for another reason too.”

  “What’s that?” Chris asked.

  “This gentlemen says one of the tires on my Jeep was shot out. Care to join me in checking it out?”

  Chris’s eyes grew round. “Lead on,” he said.

  “I’ve already had it hauled down to the bottom field,” Dexter said, handing us a scrap of paper. “You’ll have to take that golf cart out front to get to it. Here’s the row and space number.”

  With the sun setting behind the trees that bordered the far western edge of the immense junkyard, we zipped past row upon row of junked cars and trucks. I shivered as we navigated the neatly mowed paths between them until we reached row “F” and headed to the end, and my Jeep. Chris let out a slow, low whistle. “You must have a guardian angel,” he said, looking at the mangled remains. I could hardly bring myself to look at it; I just hopped out and started checking the tires. Chris went to the opposite side and did the same. Shortly, he called out, “Here it is!”

  “Let me see that,” I said, squatting beside him.

  “Can you tell if that’s a bullet hole?” I asked, an eerie feeling forming in the pit of my stomach.

  “Yep. It’s a bullet hole, alright. No doubt about it,” he said, standing and brushing dry grass from his jeans. “Tell me what happened.”

  Dutifully, I did my best to give him details.

  “So you were driving along that dirt road that runs along the ridge above Pocket Creek. It’s what...fifty, sixty feet down to the creek bed?”

  “Something like that,” I said, surprised that he knew that much about the lay of the land.

  “I’m a hunter,” he said, reading my mind. “Did you hear anything before you lost control?”

  “Yes!” I said, suddenly remembering. “I’d forgotten, but there was a noise. It all happened so fast, but there was a loud bang, then the wheel jerked out of my hand and next thing I knew I was airborne. Actually, my immediate thought was I’d lost control because I was … er … ”

  “Texting?”

  “Heavens, no,” I snipped indignantly.

  “Talking on the phone?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “I was only looking at the phone! Trying to pull up … oh, nevermind! I was on a dirt road after all … with no traffic and … ” I started to add that I wasn’t going very fast, but thought better of a lie that big.

  “Okay, so you weren’t holding the wheel firmly and what?”

  “Well, I thought I’d hit a hole or something because there was a loud noise, then the wheel jerked violently and my phone went flying. I guess that was when my tire was shot and I ran off the shoulder of the road and headed down the ridge.”

  “I’ll get out there tomorrow and investigate the area where it happened,” Chris said, heading back to the golf cart.

  I gave the magic Jeep one last look, then climbed into the cart. Chris gave me a curious look and I realized a big sigh had unconsciously escaped me. “You know, they only made 127 of those Jeeps,” I explained. “I guess now there are only 126 left.”

  “Tough luck,” he said. “But if you had to suspect someone as the shooter, who would it be?”

  “Who do you think?”

  He gave me another look. This one incredulous. “You really think the sheriff shot your tire?”

  “Well, this morning Jackie, the site manager, and I rode over to Chatham County to pick up a part. Jackie saw him watching us from the road when we left the guy’s shop.”

  “In Chatham County? Our sheriff?”

  “Yep.”

  “Jesus,” Chris said, stopping the golf cart beside his Crown Vic. Painfully, I unfolded myself, limped over, and climbed in wit
h him.

  As we exited the junkyard and headed for Raleigh, forty minutes away, he continued, “What kind of feud do you have going on with him?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, but we have to use the ‘way-back machine,’” I said, referring to reruns of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, another of my favorite cartoons as a kid. “We have to go back to 1987 … ”

  “I know what the ‘way-back machine’ is,” he laughed.

  “Okay, then. Waaay back, when you were just a little bitty boy, about six years old, I was finishing my master’s thesis at UNC.” Another incredulous look so I clarified. “Mind you, I skipped several grades and was still … very young.”

  “How young?”

  “Very young. Do you want to hear this story or not?”

  “By all means, continue.”

  “At that time,” I said. “The first exploratory gas wells were being sunk into the Triassic Basin, right in the general area where we’re drilling now, and the energy company doing the drilling was allowing me to observe and help log samples. My dad owned a well-drilling company and he’d been contracted to drill a water well out there since there was no other available source of water nearby.”

  “I know a little about drilling,” he said as he accelerated up the ramp onto US 1. “How you have to have water to cool the bit and all that.”

  “Very good,” I said. “There was a young man who worked for my dad on this rig. His name was Francis Gary Wayne. One morning he didn’t show up for work.” I had to pause. I hadn’t told the story in many years, so I was a little disappointed in myself that it still took my breath to recall it. “I found his body in a hog pen not far from our rig.”

  “Aw, man,” Chris said, with a sigh. “I’m sorry you had to experience something like that. It must have been hard on you.”

  “Yes, it was,” I said sincerely. “We were working the back side of the landowner’s property, far from any houses or stores and I’d gone into the woods to find a secluded place to tinkle. That’s where I stumbled upon a hog pen. I’ve always been curious so I climbed the split-rail fence to see the pigs. But there weren’t any, just loads of very deep, stinky mud and Wayne’s body. At first I didn’t even realize I was looking at a body, it was so caked in muck and mangled by the hogs.”