A Life Wasted

Another Close Call

Late the next day I was driving down an interstate in Arkansas when I spotted what was clearly an unmarked police car on the opposite side of the interstate. The cop looked at me and he looked at me hard. He reacted as if he'd been looking for me. On his side of the interstate traffic had been narrowed to one lane for construction so he was limited by that. I wasn't limited so when he looked at me my foot pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor. It was a conditioned reaction, not something I thought about. I had gained about two miles on him before he was able to turn around and I watched him turn around in my mirror.

There was a slight curve in the interstate and an exit on that curve. I didn't think I would fool him by taking the first exit, but it was my only shot. There was no way I could out run him on the smooth interstate. As I'd learned nearly two years earlier in Pennsylvania, a truck had an advantage over a car built for speed on a rough back road. Unfortunately, the road I had taken was as smooth as the interstate.

I got the old truck up to its top speed and kept looking in the mirror. The truck and the mirror were vibrating so bad I couldn't tell if the cop was behind me, but I had to assume he was. I passed a cross road too fast to make the turn, so I quit looking behind me and paid attention to what was in front of me. I needed a rough road to turn on to. I found that road on a left hand curve and I was glad it was there. The road I was on made such a severe curve that I wasn't going to make it at the speed I was driving. Fortunately, a secondary road, a turn off, went nearly straight through the curve, so I took it. I think I would have had to drive straight into the field had the road not been there, so it worked out pretty well.

The road then curved to the right towards some woods, but I was in view of the main road longer than I would have liked. I was going too fast to look behind me so I didn't know if that police car had seen me or not. I drove two miles down the road then turned onto a jeep trail down a power line. I drove down it for several hundred yards then turned into the woods. There I jumped out of the truck and ran into the woods. Well, I sort of stumbled as I tried to run. I fell twice, hurting myself the second time. Realizing I couldn't run if my life depended on it I just laid there and listened. I did hear a car pass on the road. It had a big engine and was going at a fair clip, but I couldn't tell if it was a police car or not. So I stayed where I was for another ten minutes and waited.

When I finally walked back to the truck, another pickup truck pulled up behind mine. The guy driving it looked to be about seventy. Even from a distance he looked mean. Because I was already on the passenger side I walked up to that window, which he rolled down. The first thing I noticed was the cannon size revolver sitting on the seat beside him. He asked me what I was doing on his property. He was aggressively angry with his first words and it went downhill from there. I came up with a story about looking for a place to hunt. He asked why a guy from Illinois would want to hunt in Arkansas. He pointed at my licenses plate as he said this. I said I had friends in Little Rock and we hunted somewhere around here last year. Even to my own ears my story sounded weak. This old guy wasn't buying it, which he explained to me as he picked up the hand cannon. I used the gun as an excuse to get out of the conversation. I stepped back like I was scared of the gun, which wasn't too hard to fake. He laid the gun back down and picked up a pen and paper. He wrote down the Ford's license plate and said, "Something ain't right here. I'm going to call the Sheriff and see if he can figure it out."

Great. So with that he left. I was right behind him. Amazingly I got away.

I drove down to southern Louisiana where it was warm, but never made it to the beach. That southern Sun felt mighty good on me so I stripped down to get a good look at my injuries. I was shocked at what I saw. There was no doubt that I had been hurt badly from the frostbite. My feet and toes were black. The fingers on both hands were black, as was my entire right hand. I was a mess.