Long country roads are rarely as boring as you might expect. Tranquil rivers are rarely as shallow as you might expect. And a quiet long walk is rarely as quiet as you might expect. She Who Sees and her beloved walked along the now well worn and familiar country road towards the little town. They had walked it many times over the past weeks. Past the same farms, the same horses, the same sheep and cattle dogs, baby cows and hawks. They walked along the same river that enchanted them every time with slow and strangely blue-green currents flowing over large and ancient cypress tree roots.
Today had been oddly uneventful for the first four miles or so. Blissful in their conversation and moderate of pace, they came across a place where the river is most visible from the road. Steep sloping sides drop ten feet or so through brush and brambles into deeper than obvious thick waters of the most beautiful color.
It took a full three seconds, if you count them out, for them to realize the full truth of what they saw. One. Two. Three…. There is a van IN the river! Submerged! Only the roof was above water like some misplaced floating dock. The back doors of the plain, unmarked, white work van were wide open, welcoming the river in like a long lost cousin.
It was clear that, if there had been anyone in there, they were not there now. Skid marks on the road led to the steep bank where brush and brambles were crushed by the tumbling steel frame, tossing out random bits of personal effects on its way down to the river. But where was the driver? The scene was eerily calm and serene. No distraught driver sitting on the bank, taking stock of life. No rescuers. No owner. Nobody. Just a couple on a walk and a van, seemingly perfectly placed, parallel in the river.
When the reality really hit, the woman called 911. Within minutes, a town police officer and a man in a construction truck approached. The man said it was his van. She asked if the driver was OK. He said the driver was his son, and he had gotten a ride from a friend after the incident. He was shooken up but OK. To both the woman and her husband, the scene didn’t quite add up. It looked an awful lot like the driver fled the scene as fast as he could. Think about it. The driver had the ability to make a call and he called… a ride out of there. There was clearly more to this story than was being told.
The look on the police officer’s face might have suggested the same suspicions, if it weren’t so busy expressing relief. This scene was just outside the city lines and therefore not his jurisdiction. He was a little too excited to not have to deal with it all. A state trooper was in route.
While the woman and her husband prepared to move along in their walk into town, the officer teased them that they had not thought to bring a tow truck in their backpacks. Trying to join the fun, the woman said, “Right? We could have at least brought…” she meant to say snacks and in her mind she pleaded with herself not to say donuts…,”DONUTS.” There it was. She had said it, and with quite a bit of emphasis, too. The police officer laughed in that uneasy way when it shouldn’t be funny, but you know it’s true. The couple moved out smartly along their way, laughing at the whole ridiculous scene and how the wrong words always come out at the wrong time. They laughed at and reveled in their own humanity.
Not half a mile later, the bemused pair of walking lovebirds passed a pair of equally bemused grandmothers out for their regular best friends walk. They stopped the woman and her husband and asked, “Did you see the white truck that went speeding down the road there?,” pointing to where the van had gone into the river. The couple had to admit that they had not seen a white truck at all, but there was a van in the river. The ladies looked at each other knowingly. “Meth dealers, all of them,” they concluded. Just then a rather boring and completely average looking, boxy black car drove through between them all. The couple remembered that car. They had seen it many times on this road. “Meth dealer, that one,” the grandmothers said, happy to educate the hapless couple in the underworld of their small town.
The woman and her husband started to wonder if everyone in town was a meth dealer, or perhaps everyone in town was quite ordinary and the grandmothers were just hoping for some excitement. The strange circumstances around the van in the river offered just enough doubt to lean towards some nefarious dealings, for certain. What, exactly, they would never fully know.
The woman and her husband were starting to think this day could not get any more strange. They looked forward to walking past their favorite house in town; the one with the private menagerie. The house was small, but heavily decorated in all manner of plants and baubles, chimes and other hanging pretty things. In the yard were chickens, several cages of exotic birds, two tortoises (one large and one small-ish), and three sheep who were convinced that anyone who passed might have snacks. The woman loved to see the animals. And today’s strangeness called for the joyous sight of all of these fantastic creatures coexisting peacefully in the sunny yard.
They were friends, she thought. Maybe too good of friends. As they approached, they heard a strange sound and saw the larger tortoise seeming to be stuck on something and struggling to get off of it. Wait… no… that is the smaller tortoise under there. Well, if they hadn’t ever witnessed tortoise love before, this was their big opportunity. It was a comical sight. Slow, as you might expect, but it seemed a great deal of effort for the male. The three sheep were so enthralled in the event, they didn’t even notice the woman and her husband walk by. The couple giggled and left them all to their business.
They walked on to their standard terminus – their favorite coffee shop. The barista greeted the couple in that low key way that suggests he is not easily shocked, despite his young age. The couple entertained the barista with the details of today’s adventure: the van in the river, the grandmothers suspicious of everyone, the tortoises in love… The barista was amused. He had already heard about the van. Being a small town, information travels faster than you can run it across the boards in Times Square. He knew of the grandmothers too, but reserved his opinion. The tortoises made him look down, giggle and crack a smile that he tried to hide just as quickly, so as not to lose his sense of coolness behind all that curly, loosely man-bunned hair. The couple thanked the barista for their coffees and sat outside to enjoy them with a snack in the sunny day. They laughed about the day, wondering what might await them on the way back home.
