Once we arrived at the end of this trail,
we all got out of the vehicle for a short walk through the woods. All of
us, that is, except the young bride, who seemed to be getting a headache,
and who decided she would just wait in the Jeep.
It was spring-time, just a little later
in the year than it is now, and since this particular property didn’t
really have much going for it except a lot of woods, Clarence apparently
had decided that the thing to do was to show the kid a LOT of it, probably
because the typical city-dweller is always amazed to learn how large a
plot of just a few acres really is.
I guess we wandered as much as a hundred
yards through the woods, just out of sight of the Jeep really, when our
conversation was interrupted by frantic horn-honking emanating from whence
we had come. Not just your little toot-toot, “C’mon-it’s-BORing-out-here”
sort of call, but a more frantic, panicked
beeb-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEPP (!).
Obviously, the girl was in some sort of
dire distress. Perhaps she had rolled up the power windows with her
head outside. Maybe she’d accidentally stabbed herself in the
jugular with a nail-file and was spurting blood. Conceivably
she had decided to change one of the tires for practice, and accidentally
knocked the jack over so that the car was sitting atop her as she bent her
leg double reaching up from under the vehicle and through the window to
honk the horn with her toes.
Our minds raced through all these
possibilities and more as we three ran back through the branches and
brambles as fast as we could.
When we got there, we found her… alone,
just as we’d left her, except now, instead of sitting resignedly by the
open window of the vehicle rolling her eyes in boredom, she had rolled up
all the windows against the threat that a rabid maple might launch an
attack on the vehicle. Also, she was sitting in the middle of the car so
she didn’t touch either door in case some bit of god-awful Nature, perhaps
a human-hating Hoary Puccoon, might seep through the closed windows by
osmosis and suck the blood from her innocent veins. Maybe she was worried
that a Giant Anaconda might… but you get the idea.
I guess the good news is that she didn’t
seem to be bored anymore.
I would characterize her demeanor as
more like a combination of hysteria, unbridled terror and, of course, the
sort of all-encompassing fury that only a healthy young woman is capable
of.
In short, she seemed quite invigorated.
I recall thinking that for the last few
moments, this young woman had probably been in about as safe an
environment as she’d ever known in her twenty-odd years, but I’m proud to
say that I kept my opinions to myself. I felt that this was someone
else’s problem, praise the Lord, and that it was not my place to interrupt
the avalanche of tears, insults, curses and threats that she was leveling
against the new groom and, less directly, at all of us for leaving her
alone and defenseless in this thicket of blood-thirsty Post-Oaks.
They didn’t buy the property.
I have thought about this on numerous
occasions since then. Despite that memory, however, I once stopped by our
Misty Spring subdivision, a nice quiet little place between Springfield
and Branson, while I was in the company of a woman that I was dating at
the time.
There were some gentlemen there that I
had hired to run a water-line under a roadway and in the course of
discussing the work with these fellows, they wanted me to take a look at
an area just out of sight of our car around a curve.
I knew it wasn’t terribly polite, but a
man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. In my defense, I did go to the
effort to notice that my companion had brought a book, and since she was
holding it right-side-up, I supposed that she knew how to use it, so I
felt that she would not be just terribly bored if I were gone for only a
moment, even though there was nothing around to buy, even at full price.
I walked down the road and spent maybe
five minutes out of her sight.
As you’ve probably already guessed, by
the time I returned, she was absolutely livid. As I quietly endured the
subsequent tongue-lashing, I was remembering the Bride from Philadelphia,
although I don’t believe that, on this occasion I was ever to learn
exactly what the problem was, but I assumed it was Fear of the Devil
Vegetation again.
