Chapter Twelve

“Help me watch for our exits as we go through town, Jake”, Sam asked. “It gets a little tricky around the Watterson Expressway.”

Sam had been here many times before and he knew his way around town well, including the byzantine maze that passed for the beltlines that looped around the city. On most days he wouldn’t have needed or have asked for any help from Jake. But it served a purpose to help make conversation that wasn’t contentious. Besides, the traffic was getting heavy and there was a lot of construction and Sam was getting a little on edge. The “cutters” were bothering him. They were the drivers saw the signs early on that the lanes were merging for construction, but insisted on driving in the closing line right up to the choke point instead of getting over early and then expected to be let in by the drivers who had patiently done the right thing. Sam was muttering under his breath and started driving a little aggressively every time he saw one. It wasn’t often that Jake saw his brother exasperated and he was enjoying the show.

With a little wear and tear on their pshyces, they eventually made it around metropolitan Louisville and set off in a southeasterly direction for Boone Hollow. As promised, Sam found the gas station that he was looking for and stopped to let fill up and let Jake find relief. Jake had started having that urgent feeling and would not have made it very much longer and was grateful for the pit stop. He rummaged around a little bit through the candy aisle, but managed to exert some willpower and skip the sweets. He needed to be awake and alert today and high blood sugar usually laid him out for a nap. A couple of tubes of peanuts, two for a dollar, would make a nice substitute and would take the edge off of his growing hunger a little bit. Out of habit, he bought a copy of USA Today newspaper so that he could read the news and the life sections as they drove. He almost never read the sports or the business sections and always felt like he should get a fifty percent discount. On a whim he threw a copy of the wildest tabloid on the rack on the counter for the clerk to ring up as well. It was an old trick from some years back when he used to make field service calls with a partner. The partner would drive and Jake would read the more outlandish stories about alien babies and philandering celebrities out loud with gusto to keep them awake as they drove through the countryside. He wasn’t quite sure if Sam would be up for the game though.

Sam gave some thought briefly to calling home and checking on Marie. Normally, he did not check in very often when he was on the road. They had a close bond and trusted that each other would be okay and he did not feel a need to verify that constantly by phone. But Marie had not been feeling well lately and Sam was a little uneasy about traveling today away from her. She would understand him calling today. But his basically stoic nature overcame the nagging voice in his head and he let the moment pass. “Just keep on track and on time and get home to her”, he thought as he topped off his coffee and paid the man at the counter. He found Jake back out at the van on his cell phone talking to Ronnie to get an update on the meeting out at the plant. Jake was gesturing wildly with his hands and pacing up and down alongside the van, seemingly agitated.

“Wrap it up, little brother. We’ve got to hit it if we’re going to get there on time.”

Jake didn’t want to have this discussion in the van within earshot of Sam, so he gave Ronnie some quick instructions and signed off.” Jake made a quick decision to do something he rarely did and he turned the phone off, unclipped the holder from his belt, and stashed the whole thing in his briefcase. He would be offline for the rest of the day, hopefully with no consequences.

“Okay, you win. It’s off. I’m officially incognito for the duration”, Jake said. He wasn’t totally sure that he could live up to that and go cold turkey for that many hours, but his heart was not into it today anyway. He tucked his laptop and project folders all back into his briefcase and threw them in the backseat as Sam pulled out of the gas station lot and started them on the final leg.

“We’re in the homestretch now, Jake. I’m guessing about an hour or so maximum and we’ll be there. We should have time to visit with everyone before the service starts. You can lean back and relax some if you want.”

Jake made an attempt to read the newspaper for a while as they drove. There was a presidential election coming up and the front section was filled with articles on both candidates. Ronnie would have seen all of these stories already on the internet and would have been giving his spin at length, if he was here with them, about who was guilty of what and about what the mainstream media was covering up that the bloggers were catching them on. He was passionate about it, Jake thought. You have to give him that. Jake had decided early on as to who he would be voting on and he didn’t need to read a lot of articles about other people’s opinion on the candidates. He had tuned it all out and was anxious to just get the voting over with already. He made a mental note to go in and vote absentee, since he travelled on ocassion and may not be in town on that given Tuesday. That would end it for him. He quickly scanned the stories about war and disasters and the various tidbits from each of the states – he always checked Illinois and Alaska out of habit and today he decided to check the news for Kentucky as well. He read the stories, but they weren’t registering and he moved on to the “Life” section of the paper. Normally, he enjoyed reading the entertainment news of the comings and goings of the rich and famous. But today they just annoyed him and he gave up trying. He reclined his seat back, folded his arms across his chest, and closed his eyes to rest them.

“Have you ever told anyone about almost going over Jackson Falls on that trip?”, Jake asked Sam.

“Well, well, well. What’s up with you today. Taking a little trip down memory lane are we? That’s not like you, brother.”

“Give me a break. I’m serious. Have you?”

“Oh, I imagine I have a time or two. I haven’t given it much thought in a long time.”

“I was just thinking about it, back there on the road before we stopped for gas. I had a mental picture of Dad running up and down the shore waving his hands at us and Mom crying hysterically.”

“Well, we did give them a pretty good scare on that one. It’s amazing that kids survive to be adults sometimes. We probably shouldn’t have.”

“I’ve told a few people that story over the years, mostly on long road trips when I’m telling all of my stories. Sometimes I wonder if I’m remembering it accurately or if I am embellishing it any.”
“Jake, it would be had to embellish that story much. We got stupid. We almost got a long vertical swim and bought the farm. The end.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s that straightforward.”

“As I remember, you managed to almost croak yourself off several times growing up. You kept Mom in a permanent state of worry and I think the emergency room technicians had a permanent file on you.”

Jake had been rather, how would you say, “injury prone” growing up. Of course, he had his share of cuts and bruises. But he pushed it much farther than that. There was the time that he fell off of a rope swing over a gravel pit and landed hard on some broken concrete chunks and had cracked his skull open. And another when a friend didn’t see him standing behind him and cracked his eyebrows open with a strong swing of his new baseball bat. He got six fresh stitches to close that wound and another twelve when he sliced his foot open on jagged metal that he ran over in the backyard. He still had some faint scars on his back from the day that he fell off of his skateboard riding down a steep street and had slid on his bare back on gravel all of the way to the bottom.

And the collar bones – how could he forget the collar bones. Broken. Four times altogether with each side getting broken twice in alternating incidents of rugged street football. Collar bone breaks are particularly painful injuries with a difficult recovery period. It’s hard to find a comfortable position while you are healing and he had to visit the doctor for frequent painful “adjustments” of the brace that supposedly held his shoulders immobile. The break was pretty jarring the first time that it happened. After that he learned to just clamp his forearm to his stomache and go find his mother to tell her in a calm voice “Mom, I’ve broken my collar bone again” and sit patiently until she could get him to the doctor and the X-ray machine. Somewhere there was a morbid collection of padded figure eight braces and arm slings that he had earned the hard way. Jake had racked up all of those injuries before he was out of sixth grade, and Lucille had a slightly grayer head of hair by then because of it.

And then, of course, came the camping trip.