Bart knew he had to get away. He’d made a big mistake marrying Edith two years ago. She’d turned out to be not only endlessly crabby but a major slug. As far as he could tell she lived on bologna and American cheese sandwiches—his dinner three times a week.
He took off on his ten speed, hoping to burn up some of his frustration and anger while also clearing his head. The bike trial led through the woods and down a hill toward a field dotted with cows. He’d never been this far, and the trail was beginning to fade into a grassy meadow full of spring dandelions.
Suddenly his front tire hit a rock the size of a softball, throwing Bart over the handlebars onto his back. He lay there staring up at the sky, trying to catch his breath.
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Bullets were flying everywhere and I flattened myself on the ground. What is going on? Are they after me or bicycle dung dude? And why are my hands and face starting to burn and itch?
Two carbon fibre ropes dropped from the helicopt, and dangled in the whirling eddies of air. The voice boomed again, “Nobody move!” But a pair of black squirrels couldn’t stand the tension, and they made a break for freedom, down the trail.
“Freeze?” Criminy, I’m already frozen from huddling in these damn bushes all night waiting for dung dude to get up and out of here. No way to freeze any more. Man, that rotor wash is going to expose me.
As the early morning sunlight broke between the long blades of grass, casting alternating shadows and light on Bart’s eyelids, he reached up to push the cow away; it’s drooled saliva draped across his right cheek. Suddenly, however, she stormed away, and Bart felt the thrumming beat of a heavy helicopter as it approached his patch of farm field.
“What the…?”
“Freeze!” The voice from above was emphatic.
The guy lying in dung and dandelions hasn’t moved in a long time. Maybe he’s dead. He hit his head pretty hard.
Should I sneak off or check him out? I really need to get out of here, but… well, maybe there’s some bit of a Good Samaritan left
in me, despite everything that’s happened. Darn!
No one in sight but dandelion and dung dude. Here I go.
Hurry up, Jeff. My knees won’t take this crouching much longer. I’ll need help getting up, but I don’t want to reveal my presence.
And then he passed out.
When he came to, it was night. He stared at the heavens, the stars, and the moon. “Oh, no,” he cried.
The moon was a huge slice of baloney. The stars, twinkling chunks of American cheese. The Milky Way a huge smear of mayo. Certainly he had died, he thought, and had gone straight to hell. He closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep enjoying the chirping of the crickets instead of his wife’s snoring as well as the rural aroma of cows and their droppings instead of Edith’s flatulent discharges. Hell, he thought, isn’t bad with his eyes closed.
With the coming of dawn, Bart stirred to the sensation of Edith’s morning slobbery kisses. He refused to open his eyes. “Not this morning, Edith,” he implored and waved her off.
The only reply was a long and low sounding “Moooooo.”
Excellent idea! Do. It!
I thought I posted a response but I don’t see it. Am i laying on my back, dazed, in a field somewhere, or is it hung up in the system?
I don’t see it either, Jeff. I guess you’re out standing in your field. Try it again!
Bart rubbed his eyes and blinked. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “For a minute I thought I saw…. Sorry. Never mind. Is this your field of dandelions?” Bart began to search for his copper coloured spectacles, with splayed fingers moving slowly through the long blades of grass, and dandelion stems. His head ached with icey throbbing pain.
Who the heck is Edith, I wondered as I crouched in the dense bushes. Don’t tell me there’s someone else around here–another possible witness who might have to be…well, “dealt” with.
“Edith!” gasped Bart. “Do you have a sandwich?”
Neither was I. In fact, not to belittle Bart’s conundrum as he lay in the cow dung wondering if he could get up, I watched from the nearby brush as Bart struggled to believe what he was seeing. I was close enough to see his lips forming the words “no,no, no” that would soon become a scream. And for me, that was entirely too close.
After a moment his mind became clear, and he smelled cow dung. He rolled his head to one side feeling a piercing pain in his neck, and saw the rock which had tossed his bike in the air. It was broken into pieces, but it was not a rock.