Reckless: Shades of a Vampire(43)

Just before Emma pulls away from the window, her hand connects with the latch and she turns it, freeing the panes. She asks David a question as the latch is turns to muffle the noise.

“How long have you lived here?” Emma says.

“Long as I can remember,” says David.

“It’s nice,” Emma says.

“Really,” says David, surprised. “I’m glad you like it.”





14.



A Driver’s Education


A hopeful heart doesn’t rest easy. The mind focuses on where it wants to go rather than where it is at the moment. The rest of the evening at David’s house is a non-event that doesn’t even register with Emma since she is hoping to see Michael before sunrise the next day. She gets in the bed soon after the dinner and David brings her home. She lies still, fully clothed, not even trying to go to sleep.

Emma doesn’t want to sleep. She wants to see Michael while he is in town.

She listens to activity in the house, hearing her mother and father turn out the lights and get in the bed. They turn in earlier than usual on Saturday nights, since her father has two sermons to give on Sunday and the added calm from knowing their daughter is closer now to marrying a Pentecostal preacher man.

Praise be to God.

Emma watches the ceiling for hours, with thoughts of Michael working on the Denton farm prancing in her head. She sees him pitching hay. She sees him driving the tractor. She sees him walking the fencerow with pliers. She sees him opening his mouth to clutch hers.

Emma opens her bedroom curtain to see that the moon is resting at about the midnight hour. Her time has arrived, and she stirs with an energy that feels like she just woke up.

Emma gets out of the bed, slips on her black dress, some shoes and a jacket, and tiptoes up the hallway, past her parent’s door, into the parlor and out the front door, making nary a sound.

In the night, Emma bounds across the parsonage yard and pasture, crosses the highway, hops the fence to the Denton farm, slips down to the rustic roadway that leads to Josh’s truck, reaches the truck, pries the door open, slips in through the tight crack, and sits there, huffing and puffing and catching her breath.

“Whew,” she says aloud to herself, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “Okay. Now. What would David do?”

Emma puts her right hand on the key in the truck’s ignition. She pushes her right foot into the brake, just as she has watched David do. She puts her left hand at the 10 o’clock position on the steering wheel.

She turns the key.

Ur-ur-ur-vroooom.

The engine starts.

“Oh my,” Emma says.

The radio is on. A country station is blaring an Alan Jackson song.

“Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee…never knew how much that muddy water meant to me…”

She’s never heard it before. She smiles.

Emma puts her right hand on the gear stick on the steering column, keeping her foot on the brake as she’s seen David do. She clutches the gear stick, and pulls it back to the “R” position. She eases her foot off the break. The truck tries to move, according to her commands, but the thick brush holds it back.

Emma looks down at the gas peddle. She puts her foot on it, trying to ease into it for more gas. The truck’s engine gains pace, but it still doesn’t move. She shoves her foot farther into the pedal.

Vrrroooooom.

“Ahhh!” Emma shouts as the truck jumps.

The truck races backwards, out of the brush.

Emma moves her foot from the gas pedal to the brake, thrusting her foot into it – wham.

The truck stops in its tracks, and Emma’s head snaps against the back window with a thud.

She is thrown back forward, where her arms hit the horn.

Hooooonk.

Emma sits upright, pulling her arms off the horn. She rubs the back of her head. She looks around.

The truck is free from the brush, sideways in the road. Emma searches for the lights, finds the switch, and turns them on. Slowly, she creeps the truck forward and backward until she’s straight in the road, facing the highway.

Now, she is creeping the truck up toward the highway, without a foot on the gas or the brake. She stops at the end of the farm road with a brake, brake, hard STOP. Emma finds the blinker stick. Pulls it down to indicate a right turn, and eases the truck into the highway in the dark of the night.

Driving down the middle of the roadway -- neither hedging to the left or to the right -- Emma winds the truck across the Sand Mountain plateau toward Ider, traveling at about 35 miles per hour. She has her hands at ten and two positions on the wheel, and her eyes are fixated on the road.

Near Ider, a car is coming her way. They flash their lights on bright, and she clutches the steering wheel tighter and eases off the gas pedal while slowly moving the truck to the right so that she’s running partially on the shoulder as the car passes by.