Accident Prone: A Novel Page 3

don’t know how many times I told her not to drink and drive, but you know how women are. Once they get a thought in their head, come hell or high water, there ain’t nothing a man can do to stop ’em from acting on it.”

  The Duke knew he had gone too far when he saw the sneer on the officer’s face. God damn why couldn’t he have been an older cop? Someone who understood how accident prone a woman could be, especially if they didn’t listen. The Duke had forgotten that this generation had been brainwashed by a bunch of women’s lib horseshit. A woman will never respect a man that doesn’t smack her around a little. Any sane man knew that. Saint John Wayne knew it. It even says it right there in the Bible, so it's a gospel fact.

  Still, there ain’t never been a man he couldn’t jaw with.

  “Yep,” the Duke began. That was his standard comment when he was trying to think of something else to say. The Duke settled on the truth, well part of it anyway. It wouldn’t hurt none, and a fine sob story might be just the thing. Truth be told, the Duke was just itching to tell someone what he was doing, and seeing as he had something of a captive audience, at the moment, it might as well be some beano cop.

  “Well I going to see my kids for Thanksgiving you know,” the Duke said. Once he got started there wasn’t much in this world that could stop him. “They live all the way up in Alaska. Can you believe it? Guess you might say I’m taking the long way around. Yep.”

  The Duke shook his head for dramatic effect, and then he continued: “Going up to sort them out, really. The boy, well he turned out all right— made his old daddy proud. The girl, though, has always been a problem. Sick, you know, up here.”

  The Duke tapped the side of his head.

  “Yep, reckon I’ll drive up to Washington and then me and this old truck will hop on a ferry for the rest of the way. Be good to see my family again. This has been a long time coming.”

  The cop’s features soften. The Duke had read him right.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the cop said.

  The Duke nodded in acknowledgement. The Duke thought he had won. All he needed was for this little pussy to give him back his license and registration, and both of them could be on their way. But the cop surprised him.

  “Sir, I’m going to need you to step out of your vehicle.”

  A flash of anger spread across the Duke’s face.

  “Why!” The Duke screamed.

  “So I can conduct a field sobriety test,” came the answer.

  The Duke was furious. Did this Commie bastard know who he was dealing with? With supreme effort, the Duke righted himself. The Duke did not suffer fools gladly, and he was a firm believer in making people pay. Fella gets you angry, well that fella better watch his back. But, from time to time, the Duke knew that it was better to play the game. Let some fool think they have an advantage over you, and then make them pay later.

  “Yep,” he said as he chewed on his lip. He was going to need a whopper of an idea, and soon. The cop was growing impatient but the Duke let him stew. And then, by the grace of God, the Duke suddenly knew what he was going to do.

  “Let me ask you something, officer,” the Duke began. “You got an hour to kill?”

  The cop looked at him dumbfounded.

  “Cause, I reckon it’s going to take me at least half hour to get out of this here truck, and another half hour to get back in.”

  The cop started to speak, but the Duke cut him off.

  “You see, I hurt my back. I’m on the disability. Fell at work, you know.

  The cop looked at him in disbelief. The Duke relished the moment, and then decided to put a little cherry on the top.

  “Reckon that all the pain meds I’m on are going to mess up your little breathalyzer test too. So unless you want an old man like me crawling around on his hands and knees out there on the highway, I figure we’re done here— right?”

  The officer thought it over some and then reluctantly handed the Duke back his license and registration.

  “Much obliged,” the Duke said.

  “Drive the speed limit or I’ll pull you over again, and I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll make you walk the line.

  “Will do, son.” The Duke answered, and then touched the brim of his ten gallon hat as a parting shot.

  The officer stormed back to his patrol car.

  The Duke smiled and waited for the cop to pull away. But, the cop, probably still fuming, remained where he was.

  “Faggot!” The Duke screamed. The Duke was still screaming when he started the engine and roared into traffic. This time the Duke drove like a bat out of hell.

  It wasn’t long before he saw the faggot cop pull up next to him and then speed off down the highway.

  Once the cop was out of sight, the Duke pulled over to the side of the road. Then he fished out the vodka bottle from beneath the seat. After he unscrewed the cap, the Duke pulled back into traffic. This time, he deliberately drove as slow as humanly possible.

  He took a drink, to celebrate his victory. Once again, a real American had gotten one over on those Commie bastards.

  Article III: “Same as it ever was...”

  Marion returned home defeated.

  She stripped off her work clothes, and began to fill the kitchen sink with cold water, and baking soda. When the sink was halfway full, she dumped her white shirt into the mess. She scrubbed, hoping the coffee stains would come out. This was her only good work shirt. When she got paid she planned to go to the Salvation Army, and buy some more work clothes, but that didn’t do her any good now.

  At first she had been enthusiastic about her job. It was her first real job, after all.

  The work itself was essentially mindless, consisted of typing up forms from the handwritten copies. That part she liked. The fact that there were no angry customers screaming at her on a daily basis was also a great bonus.

  The only part that really scared her was eventually having to use the clunky IBM that sat in a dust covered corner of her desk.

  To her, computers were the stuff of TV and the movies.

  Like the Star Trek reruns she watched religiously every Sunday, or the Star Wars movies that she and her brother saw when they still lived down in Washington. The thought that she would actually have to use one was completely surreal. Still, Gail said it worked pretty much like the portable typewriter that sat on her desk now. The only difference being that there was a computer screen you looked at instead of a sheet of paper. Gail was becoming quite a friend as it turned out, and that frightened her. Gail was good with people and made friends easy. For Marion, friendships came rarely because she was always worried she would disappoint. Nine times out of ten she was right about that. She did disappoint. She felt weird and uncomfortable around people, and they felt weird and uncomfortable around her. She made enemies with ease, and friendships generally were of the fair-weather kind. And in Alaska, fair-weather friends are useless, because it’s always raining.

  The problem was trouble always found her. No matter what she did, no matter how much she tried to hide, no matter where she went, trouble always found her. At some point someone would take offense that she wasn’t Little Miss Gregarious, everyone’s friend and confident, the person who always knew what to say and when to say it. Marion was glad that everyone else had had such wonderful childhoods with loving parents who treated them just right and allowed them to grow up so confident and strong, but, that wasn’t her and never would be.

  And, like some sort of curse, trouble had found her again.

  She had been typing up physician reports, which Gail explained were the doctor’s notes for a client on Workers’ Comp. A condition for being on Workers’ Compensation in Alaska was that a client had to make routine visits to a doctor to determine if the condition had improved enough to return to work.

  So, Marion sat at her desk trying her best to decipher doctor’s handwriting when out of nowhere a little old woman appeared and dumped coffee all over her reports.

  “Oh, sorry
,” the old woman said, “it must have slipped.”

  Marion was ready to bite the old woman’s head off, but when she looked up, the woman staring down at her couldn’t have been more than 25. What had fooled her was the woman wore large thick glasses that really didn’t fit her tiny frame and made the woman look old beyond her years.

  “It’s all right,” Marion answered. It really wasn’t alright, as the coffee started to flood other parts of the desk. She sprang into action and made her way to the bathroom in search of paper towels. Something in the back of her mind told Marion that this was not an accident.

  When she returned to her desk all her reports were gone. She saw the young woman with the large glasses talking to Gail. The woman talked loud enough so that everyone in the office could hear.

  “Look what the new girl did. She spilled coffee all over these reports. They’re ruined. Now, we’re going to have to get copies from the adjusters, and that’s going to take at least two weeks.”

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, Valerie,” Gail answered.

  “You don’t, huh. And what am I supposed to do? We’re going to have a backlog on filing, and that looks bad on me.”

  “Accidents happen,” Gail said. “If they didn’t we’d be out of a job.”

  “Well maybe you should have hired someone who isn’t so accident prone.”

  Marion forced herself to stop listening after that. It took her a good 20 minutes (and at least two more trips to the bathroom) before the spill was