Underground Man Part 8

The Oklahoma Incident

The Oklahoma panhandle in a blizzard is what I imagine purgatory would look like if Dante had been a trucker strung out on 5 Hour Energy and gas station hot dogs. There’s nothing but bleak darkness, freezing winds, and a two-lane road narrower than my margin of error. I’d been coasting on my confidence for too many miles, the Kratom¹ buzzing warmly in my blood, the host of Sword and Scale narrating someone’s brutal demise, a tragic but fitting soundtrack to my own godforsaken deployment.

It was one A.M. The temperature had dropped to an insulting 22 degrees, and the snow had thickened. The road before me was being erased. Eighteen-wheelers sailed past me in the opposite direction, their wake slamming into the sides of my rickety SUV like a hazing ritual. Each time I felt the vehicle skid, my attention snapped back to what had become a meditation on death.

I was running on fumes—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The road, my great quest, had become a dragon. It still thrilled me, still whispered sweet promises of gold, but now it was spitting fire, threatening to eat me. My eyes burned, veins straining with that peculiar Kratom-fueled fatigue that feels like an invisible hand is pressing down on your eyelids.

And then I saw it. A glint on the road. It came too fast, just a shiny, malicious dot in the beam of my headlights. I swerved, of course, which only guaranteed that whatever demonic statue lay there would catch me head-on. The impact was an explosion of sound—metal screamed, the wheel yanked from my grip, and I heard myself utter a raw, animal shriek. The SUV bucked angrily. I fought it like I was trying to wrestle a gorilla into warrior pose, but I lost. I veered off the road, crunching onto a strip of gravel and prairie grass. That’s when all motion ceased.

I was alive, probably in shock, and the SUV, an unwieldy tank that had somehow managed to survive more than its share of my bad decisions, was still upright. I exhaled in short, jagged, gasps. I thought I heard another, distant thud. A semi must have hit whatever I did. Good. At least I wasn’t alone in this frosted tornado.

I got out, and the cold dealt me an icy pimp slap. Sleet raked me sideways, and the wind gusts tugged at my coat like it was trying to disrobe me for a fight. The front driver’s side tire was sitting on its rim, the backside of which had flayed open like some scavenged can of tuna. “Fuck!” I shouted, but the wind devoured the sound. The universe was unmoved by my plight.

A big-bearded trucker, lit by the blinding glow of his own headlights, pulled up beside me, engine growling. He kicked open his passenger door and called, “Hey, ma’am, are you okay?” He squinted through the storm and then corrected himself, “Oh shit, sorry, sir.”

“Yeah, just hit a—” I stopped. I had no answers.

“Bottle jack,” he hollered back. “Some asshole left it. Right in the middle of the lane.”

Of course. Why not? I waved him off and muttered something about having a nice night. He slammed the door and vanished, taillights like dying embers.

I wrestled the donut from the undercarriage. The rubber was brittle and flaking in spots. Without feeling in my fingers, my heart rattling like dice in a cup, I managed to jack the car up and swap out the exploded rim. But when I got back in to leave, I turned the key and nothing happened. Not a whine, not a sigh. Just a mute obstinacy that confirmed the universe’s infinite contempt.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I knuckled the steering wheel. I was so tired of desperation. I called Natasha with what little phone battery I had left, my voice breaking in the frost-filled cabin. I explained in half-panicked sentences that I was stranded, and it was getting colder by the second. Roadside assistance might as well have been a fairy tale; the lady on the phone cheerily assured me someone was coming, but “someone” could be either a tow truck driver or a state trooper, depending on who was closer. Either way, they were hours away. A state trooper?!? How do avoid alarming the person you just petitioned for help, that in light of new information, you’ve changed your mind? I thought.

The SUV turned into a cryogenic chamber. I wrapped myself in two sleeping bags, listening to the ice tapping a death knell on the windshield. My thoughts started that slow spiral that comes when you know you might have royally screwed yourself for the last time. Should I toss the product? What if there was barbed wire out there? What if the snow melted and some farmer found it before I could come back? Panic seized my gut. I lay there, every breath condensing on the glass, waiting for lights to pull up behind me—either the orange glow of salvation or the flashing red, white, and blue of trouble.

When the flashlight knock finally came, I nearly pissed myself. A tow truck driver stood there, haloed by his own floodlights, and with a grunt and a jump, he had the car humming again. I was back on the road, four and a half hours of ice-bound limbo stretching between me and safety, my cracked nerves buzzing with electricity.

When I finally made it to Arkansas, I sat on my friend’s couch and wept. I knew I’d just dodged a bullet that I fired years ago.

1. substance, often sold in powder form (green), that gives users opioid and stimulant effects depending on dosage amounts.