Continued from Part One in which our hapless hermit was about to become a sledding bug on the frozen windshield of rural life….
I covered the distance, post by post, closer to the cabin, my white-knuckled grip of the steering wheel the full extent of any control of my fate. Beyond this, my body consisted of no extra parts or forces beyond tension in my shoulders and whatever muscles and glands put the furrows of worry and cold sweat onto one's brow.
But these tensions all melted away like April snow when at last the truck, like a drunken ice skater, careened sideways onto the edge of my driveway. I breathed a prolonged sigh of relief as I sat in place, gathering my wits.
After this grateful pause, I grabbed up my briefcase and a small bag of groceries that would become my dinner tomorrow night. Already I was thinking about the big crockpot of vegetable soup I had turned on that morning before work. It waited for me inside the dark, fragrant and welcoming inside the dark, cold little shack.
I paused one last time, stirring up my courage, to thank God for the angels in ice crampons that had managed to keep me out of two miles of frozen ditch. But it turned out that I was counting my blessings a bit too soon.
During the drive from Floyd, the doors of the truck had iced shut. I turned sideways in the seat and kicked against the door while awkwardly using my long arm to hold the door handle open with one hand. The door finally crunched and creaked and stiffly opened.
Free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last! I could almost smell the salty fragrance of soup simmering in the crockpot; I could feel the relaxing heat radiating from the soapstone wood stove, with me curled up, cat in lap, contentedly watching Seinfeld in a mere half hour!
I grabbed my things and started to the house, and it was at this point that The Bard’s words came to me: “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men Gang aft agley.” I would most certainly be ganging agley. And I would go there right quickly and on my ruddy rump in the almost-dark.
The truck had come to rest at the fork of two graveled branches at the top of the driveway; one fork went downhill a hundred feet to the snowy woods beyond the garden. The other was level for fifty feet and ended under the deck at the house. My intention, of course, was to reach the cabin with all haste.
Stepping out, my feet flew out from under me after a very few steps, and thereafter, inertia and freedom from friction quickly deposited myself temporarily motionless and prostrate at the top of the road less traveled–-the path down toward the garden and into the forest, dark and deep.
And here in a moment of absolute and total helplessness, I might as well have had my skeleton removed–like one of Gary Larsen’s boneless chickens. My motions to stand were pitifully pointless, sprawled and writhing there at the top of the driveway. Alone.
I had fallen and was flat on my ice. I could not purchase a grip to save my life. What was worse was that, if I started to slide downhill at this point, I would most certainly build speed all the way down the garden path, ending up jolting to a sudden nauseating stop, straddling a tree, thereafter singing soprano in the heavenly choir.
The friction of each attempt to come up on my knees just smoothed the ice under me. In the end, I relinquished all intention of control. Like the drunk asleep in the crushed car who escapes injury by virtue of his utterly relaxed condition, I resolved to just go limp and let gravity and fate carry me where they would. A sledding bug on the windshield of life.
I lost my grip on my canvas satchel which preceded me down the luge run. I watched it zip past the fruit trees and into the forest as I had taken my first taste of the ice a few agonizing moments earlier. That was not a good omen.
It wasn’t but a few writing moments later when–as you might have anticipated–- I followed the exact same path, thankfully coming to rest without the tree twixt my frozen legs. I had briskly body-surfed on the ice to a stop 100 feet below the cabin.
The late-evening sky was barely visible behind the silhouette of trees. Night was falling fast, while the boneless chicken could not find enough traction to do more than founder like a turtle on his back, if you’ll pardon my mixed creaturely metaphors.
Mercifully, I was giddy from fatigue and able to gaze down as Another from up the corner of this scene–the detached and dispassionate watcher. I was able momentarily to see the humor in all of this.
I even laughed out loud in a nonchalant, macho, dismissive kind of way. Maybe the cat heard me; there was no one else for miles to hear me laugh–false courage in the face of peril.
Soon, the fading but still corporeal Fred regained full possession of his wet and cold, hungry, slightly bruised body that was undeniably and totally out of control. This was really not so very funny after all, he thought quietly to himself.
… tune in tomorrow for the third and final installment.