Chapter Eighteen

It was late afternoon and the caravan winded it way through the mountains. From his seat atop the gazebo, Ben breathed in the fresh mountain air and enjoyed the beautiful sight of thin, wispy clouds puffing through the mountain ridges. He was reading his new poem, The Fire of Flowers, over the CB radio.
Derrick squirmed around uncomfortably in his seat. He reached for the CB radio, but Ben pulled it away.
“I’m in the middle of reciting a poem!”
“Tell them to pull over.” Derrick said. “I have to go again.”
Elizabeth sighed. “We just stopped twenty minutes ago. We should have been at the next town by now. There’re people there who don’t realize how beautiful life is and they need to see some flowers. They can’t wait forever.”
“Neither can I!” Derrick wriggled in his seat. “I drank twenty cups of coffee back at the last truck stop!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have done that. You took advantage of their generous offer of free refills. They had to brew seven pots just for you. We’re not stopping. You’ll just have to wait.”
“Fine.” Derrick unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up, and walked shakily over to the side of the gazebo, holding his arms out like a tight-rope walker. He unzipped, and hoisted himself up to he could get it over the railing.
“Don’t make any hairpin turns,” he said and let loose with a powerful stream. The wind blew his stream onto the windshield of the truck behind the gazebo, the one that carried the roses. The rose-truck’s windshield wipers turned on.
“This is Rattlesnake,” came over the CB radio. Johnny Richler (whose handle was Rattlesnake) drove the rose truck directly behind them. He was a thin, nervous man with a curly red beard. He always blinked way more than was necessary. At the moment, his voice was surprisingly calm. “Would you care to explain why Mosquito Boy is relieving himself on my windshield? Over.”
“Grey Goose here,” said Elizabeth nervously. “Take it easy Rattlesnake. Just squirt some windshield wiper fluid on there. Over.”
Ben saw the blue fluid squirt onto the windshield of the rose-truck and the windshield wipers wiping at it.
Derrick had finished, zipped up, and returned to his seat.
“Here.” Elizabeth handed the CB to Derrick. “Apologize to Rattlesnake.”
Derrick pressed the button and spoke into it.
“This is Derrick, the original Toby here. Don’t worry. I drank so much coffee that what came out was clear. Purer than bottled water.”
Rattlesnake’s windshield wipers were still whipping back and forth, but now they had sped up; they were at their fastest setting.
“You don’t need to have them on that fast,” Derrick said. “There’s no monsoon.”
“No!” screamed Rattlesnake’s squeaky, gravelly voice through the CB. “Don’t you tell me how to clean my windshields! You’re no one to give advice on how to clean windows!”
The rose-truck started to speed up. It was closing the gap between itself and the gazebo-truck.
“Give it to me.” Elizabeth grabbed the CB radio from Derrick. “Rattlesnake, this is Grey Goose. Stop tailgating us. Over.”
But Rattlesnake didn’t stop tailgating. He continued to close the distance between the two trucks. Derrick tightened his seatbelt and assumed a crash position, his head tucked between his knees. Ben did the same, half expecting an oxygen mask to drop from the gazebo ceiling.
The gazebo lurched sharply. The chest strap on Ben’s seatbelt crushed the wind out of him. Ben heard a crunching noise and looked back. The front grill of the rose-truck drove right into the gazebo steps hanging off the back of the truck, and splintered the steps onto the road behind them. Rattlesnake continued to grind into the back of their truck and chip away at the stairs.
“I think I have whiplash,” said Derrick.
Ben couldn’t believe it: he was going to die and it was a workingman, one of the people he wanted to represent, who was going to kill him. He supposed that the wild apes must have mauled Dian Fossey a few times before they accepted her.
Larry Shoemaker, who drove the gazebo-truck, tried to speed up, but Rattlesnake continued tearing away at the back stairs.
“I should have known this would happen,” Elizabeth scolded herself. “I never should have given him a second chance.”
“Second chance?” Ben looked up at her from his crash position. “What do you mean, ‘second chance?’?”
“Rattlesnake was the old gardener. He’s the one who killed the flowers with a riding lawn mower.”
Ben sat up straight and stared at her.
“And you hired him back after that?”
“Everyone deserves a second chance. He said he got some counseling. I don’t know, maybe I’m too nice.”
“Yeah, real nice,” Derrick said from his crash position. “You won’t even stop so I can go to the bathroom.”
Elizabeth ignored him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know what to do.”
Ben asked, “You want our suggestions first?”
She shook her head. “There’s no time for that now. Ben, you’re going to have to use your poetry to calm him down.” She held out the CB radio for him to take.
“But my poetry doesn’t make people calm. It agitates against the status quo. It’s supposed to get people mad.”
“Oh, I’ll do it,” Derrick said. He grabbed the CB and pressed the button. “We got a great big convoy, ain’t she a beautiful sight! We got a great big convoy, rockin’ through the night!”
The enormous front tires of the rose-truck caught hold on the gazebo platform and climbed up into the gazebo itself. The front cabin of the rose-truck flew up, smashing through the two back columns supporting the roof, and landed on the gazebo floor, cracking its surface. Derrick dropped the CB receiver as the front of the rose truck sped at their faces. It was only inches from them when the load it was hauling pulled it back. The rose-truck’s front cabin slid off the back of the gazebo and dropped to the highway with a smash. The weight of the roses had saved them. Tire marks were burned into the floor of the gazebo and the wood was cracked in several places.
It didn’t slow Rattlesnake down, however. He continued to pursue them along the narrow mountain pass.
“Don’t worry,” Elizabeth said. We’ll just keep driving. We just need to stay ahead of him until he cools down.”
“That’s a great idea,” Derrick said. “Just keep the high speed chase going. Brilliant.”
Ben picked the CB radio up off the ground. Derrick was right: a high speed chase on this narrow mountain path was too dangerous. Especially at the speed they were going; way above the posted speed limit. Ben didn’t want to sell out, but he had no choice. He improvised a soothing poem to calm Rattlesnake down. The most boring, sedate, and cliché poem he could think of. Cumulonimbus clouds drifting lazily along the tranquil river of sky. Slumbering willow trees fluttering in the mist. (He was tempted to throw something in their about third-world children’s tiny hands mangled in the machinery of oppression, but he managed to restrain himself.) Dandelion fluff flittering on a ray of sunlight.
He couldn’t tell if the poem was having any effect. The rose-truck continued to speed after them and there was no one talking on the CB.
“Try telling him to pull over,” Elizabeth suggested.
“Rattlesnake,” Ben said in his most soothing voice. “Why don’t you pull over? Let’s take a break.”
Ben waited for a response. After a tense few moments, Rattlesnake’s gravelly voice came squeaking through the radio.
“Throw me the Mosquito Boy and I’ll stop.”
Elizabeth looked at Derrick like she was giving Rattlesnake’s offer serious consideration.
“No,” Ben said. “Rattlesnake, we’re not throwing him to you. You won’t be able to divide us. If you want one of us, you’ll have to get past all of us.”
Suddenly, Derrick unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up, and started walking tightrope-style to the back of the gazebo.
“Derrick! NO!!!” Ben quickly unbuckled his own seatbelt. “Don’t do it. Don’t be a hero!”
“Sit down, Ben,” Derrick said. “I had seven pots of coffee. I have to go again. What do you think? I’m going to jump off the gazebo?”
Derrick stood up against the side of the gazebo, unzipped, and hoisted himself up.
“Aim away from Rattlesnake!” Elizabeth yelled. “You’ll just make him madder if you hit him again.”
“How could he get any madder?” Derrick asked, stumbling and grasping onto the banister for support. “He’s already trying to kill us. Maybe this’ll cool him off.”
Derrick let loose and the wind once again blew it towards the road behind them. Rattlesnake backed off a bit so that the stream fell harmlessly to the road. As soon as Derrick trickled to a stop, Rattlesnake put the petal to the floor, screeching forward at the gazebo.
Derrick hurried back to his seat while zipping up, but before he could sit down, buckle up, and assume a crash position, the rose-truck smashed them. It felt like an earthquake striking. Derrick tumbled down, tried to grasp onto the ground where the rose-truck’s tires had cracked it, but he lost his grip, slid and tumbled backwards, past the demolished stairs, off the back of the gazebo.
“DERRICK!!!”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, waiting for the bone-crunching crack of tires pulverizing Derrick, but no sound came. Ben slowly opened his eyes, looked back, and was shocked by what he saw. The rose-truck was now several car-lengths behind them and was no longer tail-gating them. Derrick was hanging onto its front hood, his chest pressed tightly against the front grill, his legs swinging freely underneath between the two enormous front tires, and his sneakers scraping against the concrete.
“Rattlesnake!” Elizabeth called into the CB. “Stop at once!”
“No!” Ben shouted at her. “Don’t say stop! If he stops, the momentum will throw Derrick off and he’ll go flying. He has to slow down gradually.”
“I meant for him to stop what he’s doing: the craziness. Not literally to stop the truck all at once. I’m sure he understood.”
“Well maybe he didn’t. I think you should clarify.”
“Oh, all right.” She pressed the button on the radio. “Rattlesnake, you should slow down the truck gradually and then come to a complete stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop suddenly. Then Derrick might go…”
Ben snatched the CB transmitter out of her hand. “What are you doing?! Don’t give him ideas!”
“You said to tell him to slow down.”
“Yeah, but don’t tell him why.”
Instead of slowing down, Rattlesnake sped up. He was closing the gap; it seemed that the flower-truck’s top speed was faster than the gazebo-truck’s. The jagged spiky remains of the gazebo stairs were about to impale Derrick.
“Go faster, Larry Shoemaker! Faster!” Elizabeth screamed frantically into the CB.
“I’m going as fast as I can go!” Larry Shoemaker said. “Lay offa me, willya?”
Derrick’s arms strained to support his body weight; the veins pressed out of his arms, ready to pop.
Just a moment before the rose-truck smashed into the gnarled mess of splintered spear-like planks, Derrick pulled himself onto the front hood, and a jagged lance of wood tore the back of his shirt. He collapsed against the front window, staring through it into Rattlesnake’s mad eyes.
The rose-truck swerved back and forth, but Derrick held on tightly with one hand in the crevice between the front hood and the window. With his free hand, he grabbed a wooden plank that had broken off the gazebo and started to sledgehammer the front windshield. Small cracks sprouted on the glass and broke out into rivulets.
Rattlesnake turned on the windshield wipers (at their fastest setting.) They swatted Derrick’s plank of wood and it fell to the side of the road. Derrick lost his balance, tumbled, and slid headfirst on his stomach down the hood. He managed to grasp onto the hood ornament and hang on. His legs fell down and his sneakers scraped on the pavement. He was right back where he started.
Ben couldn’t recite a calming poem over the CB; he couldn’t make himself heard through the cacophony of other driver’s voices urging Rattlesnake to take it easy and not lower himself to Derrick’s level.
Ben knew he had to do something. He unbuckled his seatbelt and looked around for a rope or something to throw to Derrick. There was nothing.
Rattlesnake swerved sharply to the shoulder of the road and one of the huge man-eater tires almost swallowed Derrick up. It managed to tear his shoe off his foot, and squish it, turning it into a flip-flop.
Ben carefully approached the back of the gazebo in a crouch position. When Rattlesnake tried to impale Derrick on the spears of wood, Ben would reach down and try to grab him.
“Ben!” Elizabeth unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up. “LOOKOUT!”
The two remaining gazebo posts begin to creak and splinter. The shadow cast by the gazebo’s roof started to shift. The weight of the roof was too much for the two remaining posts to handle and the heavy dome was falling down. Ben’s life didn’t flash before his eyes. He just had a moment of regret that he wouldn’t get to become a world-famous poet.
Then his eyes caught onto the duct tape which marked the center of the gazebo. He grabbed Elizabeth and leapt with her down to the spot of duct tape on the ground. The gazebo roof crashed down around them, but the high apex of the center of the dome stopped before hitting them. Duct tape saved their lives. Duct tape could do anything. It was Ghetto Traveler in solid form.
They were in complete darkness. The gazebo dome blocked out the setting sun and muffled the sounds of engines in overdrive and the mountain wind whipping past. It would have been somewhat peaceful, except Ben was lying there with his arm around Elizabeth, and she was really old. And she was wearing way too much perfume.
A ray of light burst in from the back corner and quickly grew. Ben saw the splintered remains of the stairs and the faded yellow line on the faded gray road racing by underneath them. The dark wall pushed them towards the blurred road. The gazebo’s dome was sliding back and trying to push them off onto the blurring road underneath.
Then the dome’s wall (the one pushing them) lifted up into the air. Ben and Elizabeth scrambled under it towards their seats. The weight of the other side of the dome hanging over nothingness pulled it down to the road, see-sawing the front part up into the air.
Ben grabbed onto the back of his seat and felt a moment of relief flood him until he realized that the gazebo dome was going to smack into Derrick.
THWACK!!!
The gazebo dome crashed into the front grill of the rose-truck with an ear-splitting crunch. Ben forced himself to turn around and look, expecting to see pieces of Derrick splattered all over the road. Instead, he saw Derrick sitting in the upside-down gazebo dome, sliding along the shoulder of the road, parallel to the rose-truck. It looked like he was riding a bobsled. No. A luge. He was all alone so it was a luge. Derrick’s face looked terribly lonely and frightened. It would be terrible to die on the luge. Much better to die in a horrible bobsled accident. At least you weren’t alone.
The upside-down gazebo dome luge was splintering rapidly, leaving a trail of sawdust. There was no snow to cut the friction. Rattlesnake turned into the shoulder of the road, smashed into the upside-down gazebo roof and knocked Derrick off the shoulder of the road. Derrick started sliding down the steep slope. The luge picked up speed as it whipped through and knocked down little pine trees that grew on the side of the mountain.
The steep slope became steeper and Derrick picked up speed. Finally, it became so steep it was no longer a slope. It was a cliff. Derrick went flying right off it and into the abyss.
***
ד' באב תשס''ז
ירושלים
August 18, 2007
Jerusalem