Dry ground was only a couple of yards off and soon they were standing on it, kicking out first one foot, then the other, like old-timers recalling their days in the chorus line. Frank smiled broadly and pointed to the west. “Town is that way. And what a lovely night for a walk!” With a look of despair, Lucy trudged in the direction he was pointing, on the small marginal road that went off into the woods. There was a ribbon of stars overhead and Frank was hoping that his head would begin to clear. He took Lucy’s hand in his own and she sort of threw it off. He let it flop on his hip as though he weren’t doing anything with it anyway.
It wasn’t long before they came to a clearing where several pieces of heavy equipment were parked, including a big articulated log skidder. Frank stopped and looked at it for a long moment. He knew the answer to his troubles lay in technology.
“Lucy, if I can get that thing started, I can get our truck out of the mud in a heartbeat.”
“Forget it.”
“And accept defeat? Not this boy.”
With the skills of his youth, Frank lay upside down under the dashboard of the skidder and cut the ignition wires with his pocketknife. Touching them together, he felt the diesel lurch. He sat up, pushed in the fuel cut-off, set the throttle, crawled underneath again and hot-wired it. The diesel chugged steady, caught and ran. The hinged cap on the exhaust stack fluttered with pressure and neat puffs of smoke arose and disappeared against the starlight. He twisted the wires apart and let them hang.
“Climb aboard,” Frank called. Lucy considered it, then struggled up beside him. They were far from the ground. The skidder seemed as big as a locomotive, with a powerful hydraulic forklift in front of it. When Frank put it in gear, steering by hitting first one wheel brake and then the other, the great machine crawled forward on a serpentine course, flattening everything in its way. Lucy seemed almost fascinated, though she must have known things were out of control. And Frank had fixed upon the bogged-down pickup truck as an emblem of everything preventing him going on with his life.
He got the skidder turning off one way and couldn’t quite get it back on line until a blizzard of saplings went down before them, leaving the air filled with the rupture of small trunks and descending clouds of leaves. This grand machine made its own road, and with their seats high above the destruction, they could feel some of the detached power that intoxicates those at war with the earth. They were back on their road and could make out the strip of sky overhead, which was a better navigation tool than the dark road ahead of them.
“Where do you suppose those fellows are?” Lucy asked over the engine noise.
“Long gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“They’re back in town by now.”
“To do what? Get the sheriff?”
Frank felt a shiver go through himself. He didn’t want to think about implications. He still had a wonderful feeling of living in his own dream. Everything seemed loose and guileless and free. He thought about the rumble of the big diesel going up through Lucy’s butt, making her a real part of his assault on reason.
“Sunup can’t be that far away,” said Lucy.
“Oh, don’t say it,” he said, looking back to see if the long yellow shape of the skidder was following him, under control. I’m unbelievably good at this, he thought. He felt he made a handsome picture atop this ten-ton machine, throwing shadows of its combustion through his companion’s interior.
He had a plan beyond simply keeping up appearances. He would ease the skidder up to the truck, place the forks underneath it, hydraulically lift the truck back onto the road and drive quietly back to town. He thought about explaining it to Lucy but realized she might not care. She was watching to see how this would turn out. To Frank, she had the detached clarity of real despair. She was a goner. Her head bobbed with the movement of the lurching machine. Her mouth hung open.
He found the truck again without any trouble. He had to turn off the road to get sideways to it. The skidder crawled down off the crown like a big weasel. By flattening a wide swath of brush, Frank was able to get perpendicular to the pickup. He stopped a moment to experiment with the forklift. It was simple: a hydraulic valve lever raised and lowered it smoothly and powerfully. Now he eased forward to the truck. The forks were almost on a correct line to go underneath it, but the muddy bank stopped him several feet short. He backed up and tried it again. This time he might have been even shorter. Once more, and the same result: there was a slick berm that wouldn’t let him crawl up next to the truck.
He was going to have to use some power. He backed up and revved the diesel. “What are you going to do?” asked Lucy sharply over the roar of the engine. Frank engaged the gearbox and they leapt forward, up over the berm, and speared the truck with the steel forks. “Oh, no,” Frank said. He took it out of gear. The forks were buried clear to the hilt in the lower part of the door. He was sure some lever would get him out of this. He yanked back on the hydraulics and the truck began to rise, streaming mud and water from its undercarriage. Lucy let out a noise of despair as it lifted over them. By the time the skidder stopped lifting the truck, it was possible to see the chassis, the muffler and exhaust pipe. Lucy was still letting out an awful noise.
“This baby could end up in our laps,” Frank explained. He had to change the emphasis fast. He knelt on the floorboards and thrust his head up under Lucy’s dress. This usually gets them, he thought, and buried his face in her crotch. It was pure magic. Her dress seemed to light up around him. He could make out its flower pattern in a thrilling illumination. He could hear her voice, “Frank! Frank! Frank!” and felt her fingernails dig into his scalp. She wasn’t enjoying this. The thrashing got worse. Better have a look. He sat back on his haunches and threw the dress back over his head.
They had him in their high beams, Sheriff Hykema, Darryl and Darryl’s friend from the bar. Frank looked around like a blind possum, trying to process all this information. Lucy was pushing her dress between her knees as she sat on the tractor seat of the skidder. High overhead, Darryl’s pickup dropped clods of watery mud onto the engine-heated hood of the skidder. Frank stood slowly, held his hands up and surrendered.
It wasn’t until they reached town at sunrise, in all its harrowing colors, that Frank realized that Lucy too would be booked and jailed. Darryl followed them to town in his truck, which they had carried to dry ground with the skidder. When they reached the courthouse, Frank immediately began to bargain with Darryl. He would like to have kept this secret from the bland and somehow alarming sheriff, but it wasn’t possible. Darryl didn’t want to speak to him at all. Frank knew he’d have to go quickly to a viable offer. They wouldn’t even have had this moment if the sheriff had realized that a bargain was in the offing.
They were sitting in a room where Frank remembered taking a written test for his driver’s license. There was still an eye chart on the wall.
“Darryl, there’s no sense in my apologizing. Things just got away from us there, a man-versus-machine deal fueled by alcohol. I see this doesn’t strike you as funny. But … how many miles your outfit got on it?”
“Sixty-one thou.”
“You do take good care of it.”
“I did.”
Frank saw that he was touching a deep issue here. “Well, look here. Can’t I just take your truck and buy you a new one?”
Darryl looked over, right into his eyes. Welcome to the twilight world of prostitution yawning before you, thought Frank.
“New?”
“New.”
“And what do I have to do?”