the love life of joel hoagland (page 8)

That Sinking Feeling

I look back, down my outstretched arm, at the pale, cold and delicate hand of The Girl, and feel an ache inside. She clutches closed her black wool overcoat with her other hand, haphazardly concealing the satin nightgown underneath. Her winter boots beat their own otherworldly un-rhythm on this field of rutted, frozen muck; at eight months pregnant, she moves laboriously through a curtain of oversized, cumulus snowflakes.

I lift my eyes momentarily, contemptuously to the SUV fading into the snowfall some 50 yards back. It’s front tires are sunken into the mire up to the axles. The muck which lay warm and hidden beneath a thin layer of frozen ground has laid claim to my mother-in-law’s brand-new silver Chevy Blazer. The soggy embrace of Indiana mud does not care for our four wheel drive’s astonishing capabilities. This fine vehicle, which could traverse steep, boulder strewn mountain trails is confounded by a farmer’s fallow field.

The Girl is angry, which increases my unease. She usually does everything she can to be angry at anything but me. She usually excuses my foibles and mistakes, but stumbling through a frozen field in a night gown while great with child is not part of the Deal. Her anger is justified; I can’t blame her. This is my fault. It was I who mounted the stairs two and three at a time, rapt with the beauty of the approaching snow storm, and eager to share with my pretty young wife the splendor of a country afternoon washed grey with falling snow. We had spent several minutes parked on the earthen dam at the end of the new pond, before she reluctantly admitted that it was time for her to return home to use the little ladies room. On our way back, I turned into an open area of low-lying ground, and we were stuck.

When we finally crossed the field, and crossed the road, and crossed the snowy yard and arrived home, I set about the task of recruiting help. My prospective helpers were a bevy of men whom I didn’t consider my friends. These were men from our church. It was the church of The Girl’s youth, and we didn’t like the church of her youth. We didn’t really like those men. But I had no other men, no other friends, and I desperately wanted to retrieve my mother-in-law’s SUV before she and my father-in-law flew back home in a couple days.

I called around and got various excuses. First off, nobody wanted to help me unless everybody else was going to help me. I cranked up the plaintiveness in my voice, explaining I really wanted to attempt to pull the truck out before nightfall. The SUV had turned up the mud around it, removing the insulating blanket of snow, so the cooling night air would have it’s way with the exposed muck. I thought of wooly mammoths, found buried in the permafrost, with undigested flowers in their stomachs. I thought of mammoth steaks served in Anchorage restaurants. I didn’t want to wait. But the men said they were busy, and would come help me later that evening.

I joined them in the darkened field at around 6:30pm. The sun was down, and they were in a jovial, wreckless mood. One fellow careened his truck around behind the SUV, skidding and fishtailing in the snow, and then promptly got his pickup stuck in the same muck. A few moments later a second heedless friend enmired his vehicle also. I had hitched a ride with this second driver, and he got stuck despite my cautions about where not to drive. He just didn’t listen.

It was my wife’s brother-in-law who began to turn the tide. I will always consider this man a true friend. But this miserable field was actually his property. It was his new pond which lay just a couple hundred yards away. This was his muck, and he drove his 4×4 pickup carefully, slowly around it. He first set about freeing the first two trucks. He succeeded with one, the other would have to wait until morning. Despite his caution, his expertise, and his powerful truck, he was not able to remove my mother-in-law’s SUV from the muck.

Another of the other lot of “friends indeed” was an employee of the biggest Chevy dealer from the nearby town. He was a great believer in the company product. He decided that since this was a four wheel drive vehicle, and since the muck had frozen solid, the SUV should be able to remove itself. He hopped behind the wheel, threw it into reverse, and gunned the engine. Someone pointed out it was in rear-wheel only mode. He shifted to 4×4-low, and gunned it again. I stood outside the SUV, a few feet from the left-front fender. As he gunned the engine again, I noticed that the front tires were not rotating at all. He gunned it even harder as I raised a shout and gave a throat cutting motion. Suddenly there was a loud crack, followed by a ratchet sound. The engine no longer sounded like it was straining. The front torque coupling had broken, and the SUV was a rear-wheel only vehicle again.

The next day the city backhoe arrived and very nearly got stuck. Eventually this mighty backhoe hauled the towing chain hard enough to pull the SUV out of the earth’s death grip, pulling a massive 10 foot diameter disk of frozen mud with it, still securely attached to the axle and undercarriage of the SUV. The backhoe operator hauled the Blazer to higher ground, and we set about hacking off the frozen muck, until the truck was finally able move under its own power. The backhoe then hauled out the remaining bogged pickup, and we retired the field in late afternoon. The guy who broke the front torque coupling took the SUV to the Chevy dealer’s car wash bay, and donning dirty coveralls, crawled under the SUV with a pressure washer. It was a filthy, lengthy job, but eventually he had the whole vehicle spotless again. He then arranged to have the SUV sent to the dealership’s garage, and verified the repair would be covered by the vehicle’s warranty.

In the end it was clear that my new friends were trying very hard to give me the luxury of never telling my mother-in-law what happened. But the vehicle wasn’t back from the dealership by the time she returned, so she had to know. I was out of the house when she got back, and so it was my sister-in-law (wife of the competent guy who owned the property) who told her the whole story. I always felt I was robbed of a confession. By the time I got home, my mother-in-law knew the story, and didn’t seem to want to talk about it. It must have been upsetting to learn of the abuse of her new Blazer. But she hastened to assure me it was no problem, at least everything turned out ok. Beyond that, she didn’t seem to want to hear me talk about it.

Y’all know the drill. Or do you? If you’re new to the Joel Hoagland series, the idea is to pick “G” and make up some stuff.

A) Tamara says, “Whoa, wait a sec, you’re married?”

B) Joel says, “I know that was a wierd story, but I figured it would help get us on the same page.”

C) Fid says, “I think you mispelled ‘weird’.”

D) Joel mutters, “Wierd. Weird. Wierd. Weird…hey, Fid, you’re right. I did mispell weird. Thanks!”

E) The waitress, who was apparently hovering nearby and listening, pipes in and says, “not a bad story, but it needs more action.”

F) The only other patron (who is an oversized praying mantis) says, “Yeah, that was sappy. Where’s the violence? Where’s the bloodspray?”