My Heart Is a Drunken Compass by Domingo Martinez

Author:Domingo Martinez
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493015979
Publisher: Lyons Press

Somehow, I think because I was older than everyone else, I automatically slipped into sergeant major status and began barking orders as soon as I emerged from the Jeep. And cars continued whipping around that corner with no warning, the acoustics on that mountaintop that night giving no indication of the danger coming at us at seventy-five miles an hour.

They just appeared ... and then they were gone—showing up with nothing nearing the indication that they’d even noticed the clusterfuck of cars on the blind side of that corner before they raced off into the dark of the night.

Even eighteen-wheeled rigs came out of nowhere: The Doppler effect was on their side, not ours. It was just a matter of time before someone was going to die.

“You two! Get the fuck off the back of that car!”

Voooooooooooooofff!

“What?” they yelled back.

“Off the fucking car! Get this one out of the way; the Jeep has a tow hitch. Does anyone have a chain or towrope?”

“We ... we have some hiking rope!” I heard someone else yell, from the other side of the Pontiac.

Inside the vehicle, the girl was still roaring her engine, and her front tires spun without purchase in the ditch, which was well lit with her headlights.

Then another trailer came around with a horrifying noise.

“Goddammit!” I yelled, because I was looking the other way. Even out here, you couldn’t hear if someone was coming around that corner, and thus you had no chance to react.

“You!” I yelled to some bearded guy standing across the road with his hands in his pockets, trying to keep warm, and then I noticed he’d been talking to the kid who had been holding the dying dog.

“Get across the road and tell us when there’s another car coming! You hear me?! Warn us when there’s someone coming!” I pointed to a triangulated place where he’d be able to see down the road and still be able to yell at us, where he’d have a line of sight to an oncoming car. He nodded with exaggeration and gave me the thumbs-up signal. Fine.

I banged on the top of the car and told the girl to stop with the roaring and then directed the owner of the Hyundai that was parked between the Pontiac and the Jeep to get it out of the way; the Jeep had the hitch and the power to pull this car out of the ditch.

“Move it over to the side of the—”

“CAR!” the kid over on the side of the road yelled, and sure enough, ZZOOOM!!

This car seemed to slow down, and I saw brake lights over my shoulder, but I ignored them and focused on what was in front of me.

“Fuck,” I said. “All right, get your—”

And here I was handed the hiking rope, which looked like threaded plastic, and the guy who owned it was now under the elevated back of the car—

“CAR!”

And there was nothing I could do but hope that—

ZZZOOOOM!

FUCK.

“Get out from under there!” I yelled at the kid, who was heroically looping the thin cord around a brake line.

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