The Hardest Journey

I don’t know how I could have been so stupid.  I guess I was tired and ready to be home.  That’s the best I can come up with when I turn the whole sorry series of events over in my mind.  I was driving cross country to get back to my family.  I could tell from the map that I would be crossing a whole lot of nowhere. I thought I was smart and filled up at the last gas station and I had a 6 pack of water in the car.  Of course, I was stupid and decided to drive all night to get home sooner.

At 3 am, I was nodding at the wheel and I had enough sense to pull over.  It was a hot night, so I left the windows down a few inches.  The next thing I knew I was awakened a cold gun barrel pressed to my left temple.  I don’t know how many guys there were since it was pitch dark.  I was pulled out of the car, beaten and kicked unmercifully.  They wanted my car and some fun.  The fun was beating the crap out of me.  By the end, I was curled in a ball, semiconscious with blood pouring from my broken nose.  I hoped if I just lay very still they would go away, but they weren’t done yet. 

They decided to take all of my clothes.  Ha, Ha boys.  What a great joke.  Leave the bloody, beaten man naked on the side of the highway.   Not quite naked, they left on my soiled red boxers. You guys must be a riot at parties. They kicked me half on the shoulder of the road and half into the dry sharp grass and they split up into two groups and drove away.  I squinted and strained trying to make out the license plate number of their vehicle in the red glow of the tailights before they pulled away.  The truck was a battered, light-colored Ford but dust flying and violent blows to my head made it too hard to focus. 

I spent the next hour or so coming up with new curse words to describe the carjackers and myself. They had my cell phone, my water.  I had pretended to be unable to move to stop the beating but began to think that if I didn’t start moving that might turn out to be true.  I could tell what my pulse rate was because my battered body throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I rolled onto my hands and knees and tried to get up.  The road in front of me disappeared in perfect art class perspective.  Right smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Lovely.  I struggled to my feet and found that the pain in my gut wouldn’t let me straighten.  What was in that region of my middle? Liver, spleen, appendix? I had been feeling hopeful because I’d managed to get out alive and now fear was sharper than any physical pain.  What if I was bleeding internally? 

I tried to remember any Boy Scout type survival knowledge I might have picked up in my life.  I remembered my first aid—how to staunch the flow of blood and set broken bones but both of those things would require some materials to work with and all I had was a pair of soiled red boxers.  I couldn't bring myself to strip off my one piece of protection.

The sun was rising and I could tell it was going to be a scorcher.   At least I was walking west instead of east.  No sunglasses, no sunblock. I mentally added to the list of things I needed and had lost.  More curse words ensued.  No shoes either but at least the  pavement wasn’t the burning skillet it would be later.  The grass beside the road was littered here and there with broken glass.  My one bit of luck was that I hadn’t fallen on something like that. 

I walked along hunched over for at least an hour.  Stumbled would be a better description really because when I looked back I could still see the patch of crushed, stained grass where I had lain after the attack.  I rethought my strategy.  I was making little progress and using  up what little energy I had.  Wouldn’t it be better to sit down until and wait for a car or a semi to drive by and then wave and get someone to stop and help?  I looked around the immediate area and found a spot of grass that seemed clear of glass and short enough that I thought no snakes could be hidden in it.  I walked the required distance and slumped down with my knees drawn up so I could rest my aching head on them.

I sat like that for a long time. At least bowing my head made it possible for me to shield my eyes from the blazing sun but it left my neck exposed.  I dozed off and on or maybe I was coming in and out of consciousness.  When I jerked myself awake, I realized that it must be about noon and there was no escape from the burning brightness.  Damn that flat treeless nothing.  No water. How I desperately longed for water.  I thought of the umbrella Sandy had run to the car to give me as I was pulling away.  “Don’t forget this.  I wouldn’t want you to get that new suit wet.”  What I would have given for that umbrella just to keep the sun off of my hot, pink back.  Or better yet, if it were turned upside down and filled with water to ease my throat.  I looked down at the strip of pale skin on my left hand.  They’d even taken my wedding ring.

My head had sunken back down onto my knees when I heard the sound of a car.  It was a nice car too—a Lexus.  It blew by me and left a tornado of hot wind and grit to cover me.  I wasted precious moisture spitting out the dirt that had whipped into my mouth. I’ll admit I cried then.  All my hopes had been pinned on the belief that the first motorist would see me and stop.  I had waited for hours and had my hopes dashed.  I could feel my strength draining away.  The pain in my middle had been growing steadily and I knew I probably couldn't stand now. 

In an effort to ease the cramps in my muscles and the pain in my gut, I rolled over to my side. In some sort of weak attempt to be visible, I tried to position myself so that as much of my bright red shorts were facing the road as possible.  I dozed or lost consciousness again.

I heard the hiss of car tires on the shoulder behind me.   I tried to turn but found out that I didn't have the strength.  No doors opened but the windows must have been rolled down.  I heard voices and tried to focus on what they were saying.

“I can’t believe there’s a body on the side of this road.  What kind of people would do something like that?!”

“Well, don’t you think we should do something?  Call for help?”

“ Oh damn, my phone’s dead.  How about yours?”

“You told me not to bring mine, remember?  You didn’t want the office to be able to find me."

"I guess we’ll stop at the next town and call 911.”

“Don’t you think we should do something now?  Do you know what to do?”

“No, are you crazy? If he’s dead we don’t want to disturb the evidence.  Look at all that blood.  I don’t want AIDS.  No, we should call for help.”

The car moved away, passing me slowly to get a better look no doubt.  I didn’t have any more tears.  There was no more water left in me.  My ears strained for the sound until I was surrounded by silence.

I drifted in and out of consciousness again until the sound of a van door sliding opened my eyes a painful centimeter.  My lips were cracked at the corners and my face was now so burned that any change of expression was agonizing. 

“Wow, what a story!  Battered Body Found!” 

“Jim, what’s the best camera angle for this?”

“Ugh, not this side—we’ll get calls.”

“I’ve got an idea.  Take about 3 minutes of footage and I’ll do the voiceover in the studio.  I’m thinking there’s a way to work politics into this.  Hey, it’s an election year.  There's politics in every story."

I saw a shimmer through my slitted eyes and realized that the reporter was taking a swig of his water bottle.  I wanted so badly to beg for a drop but my tongue was stuck in my mouth and I couldn’t even summon the strength to groan.  I heard his satisfied swallow and I broke completely under such torture.

“Come on, we’ve got to go.  We’ve got that interview in 10 minutes.  I’ll call this in from the truck.”

They were gone. I hadn’t prayed in years but the Sunday school words came back to my mind and I prayed with an intensity I’d never had.  I begged, mostly for death.  If the attackers had come back with a gun, I would have been grateful.  At least then it would be over.  But what about my little snaggled toothed Megan?  Sandy and Megan.  They wouldn’t even miss me until tonight when I didn’t call them for our nightly chat.  By then I would probably be dead.  I couldn’t kid myself about that.

I felt like a Great Dane had crawled onto my chest and gone to sleep.  Ever breath was a struggle to raise my ribs under the crushing weight.  I wondered dazedly what the headlines would be on the news story and what political purpose my dying would serve.  How would they even know it was me?  No ID, no identifying marks.  I wondered if even dental records would help now. My poor dad.--All of that work to pay for my braces and all of it undone with a well placed kick.

I heard a sound like thunder and I felt the earth vibrate.  My right ear was on the ground like an Indian in a western and I wouldn’t have been very surprised, in my state, if a gigantic herd of buffalo had appeared on the horizon. With huge effort I moved my neck enough that my head rolled back limply.  Now I saw the scene upside down. Instead of buffalo, I caught sight of a semi truck with a grill so shiny that the reflection was blinding.  It slid to a stop about 20 feet away and the door popped open with so much energy that it half closed again on the large man getting out of the cab. 

I tried to watch him come toward me, but he kept going out of focus and shimmering like a heat mirage.  Then a shadow covered me like a blessing and blocked out the blazing heat of the sun.  I heard him exclaim, “Oh God” in a deep and tender voice. Then a hand was cupping my head and a water bottle was touching my lips and wetting them.  I couldn’t even open my mouth wide enough for the water to enter but he seemed to sense my problem and gently tilted my head so that the water trickled down my desperate throat.

“Son, I don’t know who did this to you but you’re gonna be all right.  I’ll take care of you and get you to a hospital double quick.  I got a bed behind the cab.  I’m just gonna pick you up and put you in there.  It’s probably gonna hurt you even more than you’re hurtin’ now.  I’ll be as gentle as your own mother.  Hang on.”

With that, the burly trucker lifted me into his arms, and I smelled the same Old Spice I used to buy my father when I was a kid.  I was no small weight but he handled me as surely and gently as he could.  The first movement sent pain shooting through my body like an electrical charge but I clenched my jaw and held on.  Hope had come.

The journey to the hospital was a blur but I heard his constant stream of encouragement to me.  As I sit recovering in this hospital bed, I'm amazed with this man and his goodness to me.  Mack never left me in the hours until my wife could fly down.  He just sat beside me reading to me or holding my hand silently, head bowed.  When Sandy arrived, he found her a place to stay with an old couple he knows so that she didn’t have to run up a big bill in motels.  He had to leave the third day to finish the trip he’d started when my red boxers caught his eye.  It wasn’t until he left that I realized that I had never found out his last name.

Sandy's head lay on the white sheet of my bed in a rosy patch of late afternoon light as she dozed with in a chair pulled close.  She was holding my hand.  I drank in the sight of her face, tired and beautiful and half hidden in a cloud of dark hair.  It was a luxury I never thought I'd have again.  As she moved a small dark rectangle on the floor caught my eye.  She opened her eyes and looked at me, puzzled and anxious.

“Sandy, what’s that beside the chair?”

She looked around and then reached down.  “It’s Mack’s Bible.”

As she picked it up, a white envelope fell out.  It was stuffed with 10’s and 20’s.  A note inside read, “Here’s a little something to keep you going until you’re on your feet.   Mack”

I reached out and Sandy put the Bible in my waiting hand.  With a sense of wonder, I opened it.

Janna O.

copyright 2007