What the sheriff chose to do, on the other hand, was to bank on the fact that there wasn’t going to be any oncoming traffic getting around that green monster up ahead, and to take the opportunity to move over into the left lane while bleeding off his speed as fast as he could by holding his brakes down just shy of the point of locking up. And in a maneuver the kids around these parts will be talking about and trying to copy for years to come, instead of braking still harder the way every fiber of his being was demanding, he let off the brakes entirely as he entered the curve and let the car coast, allowing his speed to edge him back across the road and into his own lane. Scraping past the back end of the harvester so closely that he could’ve reached out and touched up the paint job that’d been marred when the pickup clipped it, he came out the other side of the Maw and pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. And, breathing a sigh of relief they could’ve heard downtown, he pulled to a stop just a few feet short of where the truck was sitting. Just in time to watch the utility pole fall.
See, what had happened was that the truck had clipped that pole with its right front bumper and then rolled on ahead several feet, penning the lower end of the upper piece between the side of the truck and the bottom of the bluff. Which for a second or two provided enough support to keep the top half of that pole sitting pretty much upright, though it was teetering back and forth a mite, first one way, then the other. Which was just long enough for the sheriff to arrive. At which time the sheriff heard a sharp crack and looked up in time to see the top half of the pole tear loose and fall over against the crest of the ridge.
Which, as it turned out, was not really a good thing. Because it was just at that point along the crest of the ridge that old Joe Walker Senior had chosen to build his house. Not that the pole hit his house, mind you. But one of those wooden crosspieces that they attach power lines to did just barely graze that big commercial dumpster that was sitting at the top of old Joe Senior’s driveway. The very same dumpster that old Joe had put up on a set of wheels so he could wheel it around all over the place, and that he’d been using to hold all the waterlogged carpet and lumber he’d been pulling out of his back bedroom, which had been ruined when the roof sprung a leak back during those awful spring storms. And, well, when it was hit by that crosspiece, that dumpster just sort of was nudged over the tiniest bit. Which started it rolling down the driveway.
Now, old Joe Senior has a driveway that runs from his house on down to the bottom of the hill, where it connects up to the highway just a little beyond where the pickup had slammed into that pole. And as luck would have it, that dumpster rolled all the way down that hill and out onto the highway. And of all things, it crossed over the center line and into the far lane just as Miss Petula was coming up the highway in that brand new Lincoln she’d gone all the way up to Kansas City to buy for herself on her seventy-third birthday.
Of course Miss Petula did her best to try to avoid that dumpster, and even though she is going on seventy-four, same as the sheriff, she’s not a bad driver. But it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been Joie Chitwood. There just wasn’t time or room. And before the sheriff could move or even yell a warning, she slammed right into the side of that dumpster, which, being filled with waterlogged carpet and lumber and being a pretty fair-sized object to begin with, probably weighed more than that Lincoln did. And it was definitely moving faster. And that Lincoln just sort of lost out in the shoving match that ensued and went careening right off the far side of the road.
Now, curious thing about it is that, while old Joe Walker lives on the bluff off on the south side of the road, Joe Walker Junior lives right across the road on the north side, down in the valley where old Stimson’s Creek used to run before it dried up back when they started diverting the water for agricultural use upstream a few miles. And between the highway and Joe Junior’s place there’s not a thing that would stop a car. Not a ditch or a tree or anything. Just a long clear slope that leads right on down into Joe Junior’s back yard.
So naturally that Lincoln not only went off the road, but plunged right on down that hillside, picking up speed every step of the way. And by the time it got to the bottom of the hill, it was going so fast that it crashed right through that giant privet hedge that forms a fifteen foot high border all around Joe Junior’s yard. In fact, it was going so fast that after it passed through the hedge it plowed right on through the yard and crashed right into the back of Joe Junior’s house.
Joe Junior’s house, unfortunately, was built right on the shaved-off top of a little hillock that overlooks the creekbed. And when that Lincoln crashed into it, the force of the impact just sort of broke that house in two, and the front piece slid off the far side of that hillock and into the creekbed. The back end of the house, once it was no longer anchored in place by the front end, was free to slide right off the back side of the hillock and more or less just sort of swallow up that Lincoln, Miss Petula and all. At the same time, what remained of the roof just sort of collapsed down real gently on to the top of the car, kind of like the top of a souffle falling as ft cools, penning Miss Petula inside.
Well, it shouldn’t come as any big surprise that right about now Sheriff Duncan was starting to feel like he was in a Twilight Zone episode or something, what with such an innocent act as taking a nap leading to such a bizarre and unlikely chain of events. And just to complete the picture, as if things weren’t crazy enough, from out of nowhere appeared both old Joe Senior, who’s been an insurance agent in these parts for probably twenty years, and his son Joe Junior, who for two years now has been working as a photographer for the Crenshaw Weekly while moonlighting taking pictures for his father’s agency. And they began scurrying all around the place, like a pair of mice in a cheese factory, taking measurements and shooting pictures for all the world like they were planning to file an insurance claim right at that very moment, with neither one of them even noticing that Miss Petula was still in the car trapped under that collapsed roof.
Needless to say, when it finally dawned on him what the two of them were doing, the sheriff pretty much just exploded into a fit of apoplexy. After all, there he was worrying about whether Miss Petula was even alive, and maybe wondering a little what he would do if she wasn’t, what with her pretty much being a permanent fixture in his life, not to mention his one and only dominoes partner, throughout these past sixty-odd years, and those two bone-heads were down there taking pictures for an insurance claim for all the world like she wasn’t even there!
Well, after several futile attempts to draw the attention of the Walkers to the plight of Miss Petula by shouting at them, the sheriff abandoned the attempt and began searching for some alternative course of action. And to his everlasting embarrassment and regret, what caught his attention at that very moment was the winch that was attached to the front end of the pickup truck, which was still sitting there next to the bottom of that fallen utility pole.
With the line from the winch securely fastened to the portion of Joe Junior’s roof that was resting on top of Miss Petula’s Lincoln, Sheriff Duncan threw the switch and started reeling it in. And once the change in the whine of the winch told him that it was pulling a load, he crossed the highway and sat down on the shoulder to catch his breath and watch what was happening down below.
And of course, as if old Rod Serling himself was behind the scenes manipulating events, things just proceeded to get stranger and stranger. Because the piece of roof that was sitting on top of that Lincoln lurched forward no more than a couple of feet before it caught on something and stopped. But the winch kept winding away, the pitch of its whine getting higher and higher all the while, until there was a loud, wrenching sound and that truck started to roll forward. And wouldn’t you know it, that old winch just pulled that truck right back across the ditch, up onto and across the highway, and down the hill on the other side, barely missing taking the sheriff with it.