I put the skunk on the bar and it started walking toward them, just like it was eager to make friends with them.
They took one look and they made foxholes under chairs and tables. Charley grabbed a bottle by the neck and backed into a corner.
“Asa,” he yelled, “you take that thing out of here!”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “It’s a friendly cuss.”
“Friendly or not, get the hell out with it!”
“Get it out!” yelled all the customers.
I was plenty sore at them. Imagine being upset at a friendly skunk!
But I could see I was getting nowhere, so I picked it up and took it out to Betsy. I found a gunny sack and made a nest and told it to stay right there, that I’d be right back.
It took me longer than I had intended, for I had to tell my story and they asked a lot of questions and made a lot of jokes and they wouldn’t let me buy, but kept them set up for me.
When I went out, I had some trouble spotting Betsy and then I had to set a course to reach her. It took a little time, but after tacking back and forth before the wind, I finally got close enough in passing to reach out and grab her.
I had trouble getting in because the door didn’t work the way it should, and when I got in, I couldn’t find the key. When I found it, I dropped it on the floor, and when I reached down to get it, I fell flat upon the seat. It was so comfortable there that I decided it was foolish to get up. I’d just spend the night there.
While I was lying there, Betsy’s engine started and I chuckled. Betsy was disgusted and was going home without me. That’s the kind of car she was. Just like a wife’d act.
She backed out and made a turn and headed for the road. At the road, she stopped and looked for other cars, then went out on the highway, heading straight for home.
I wasn’t worried any. I knew I could trust Betsy. We’d been through a lot together and she was intelligent, although I couldn’t remember she’d ever gone home all by herself before.
I lay there and thought about it and the wonder of it was, I told myself, that it hadn’t happened long before.
A man is as close to no machine as he is to his car. A man gets to understand his car and his car gets to understand him and after a time a real affection must grow up between them. So it seemed absolutely natural to me that the day had to come when a car could be trusted just the way a horse or dog is, and that a good car should be as loyal and faithful as any dog or horse.
I lay there feeling happy and Betsy went head high down the road and turned in at the driveway.
But we had no more than stopped when there was a squeal of brakes and I heard a car door open and someone jump out on the gravel.
I tried to get up, but I was a bit slow about it and someone jerked the door open and reached in and grabbed me by the collar and hauled me out.
The man wore the uniform of a state trooper and there was another trooper just a little ways away and the police car stood there with its red light flashing. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it had been following us and then remembered I’d been lying down.
“Who was driving that car?” barked the cop who holding me.
Before I could answer, the other cop looked inside Betsy and jumped back about a dozen feet.
“Slade!” he yelled. “There’s a skunk in there!”
“Don’t tell me,” said Slade, “that the skunk was drivin’.”
And the other one said, “At least the skunk is sober.”
“You leave that skunk alone!” I told them. “He’s a friend of mine. He isn’t bothering no one.”
I gave a jerk and Slade’s hand slipped from my collar and I lunged for Betsy. My chest hit the seat and I grabbed the steering post and tried to pull myself inside.
Betsy started up with a sudden roar and her wheels spun gravel that hit the police car like machine-gun fire. She lurched forward and crashed through the picket fence, curving for the road. She smashed into the lilac thicket and went through it and I was brushed off.
I lay there, all tangled up with the smashed-down lilac bushes and watched Betsy hit the road and keep on going. She done the best she could, I consoled myself. She had tried to rescue me and it wasn’t her fault that I had failed to hang onto her. Now she had to make a run for it herself. And she seemed to be doing pretty well. She sounded and went like she had an engine off a battleship inside her.
The two state troopers jumped into their car and took off in pursuit and I settled down to figure out how to untangle myself from the lilac thicket.
I finally managed it and went over to the front steps of the shack and sat down. I got to thinking about the fence, and decided it wasn’t worth repairing. I might just as well uproot it and use what was left of it for kindling.
And I wondered about Betsy and what might be happening to her, but I wasn’t really worried. I was pretty sure she could take care of herself.
I was right about that, for in a little while the state troopers came back again and parked in the driveway. They saw me sitting on the steps and came over to me.
“Where’s Betsy?” I asked them.
“Betsy who?” Slade asked.
“Betsy is the car,” I said.
Slade swore. “Got away. Travelling without lights at a hundred miles an hour. It’ll smash into something, sure as hell.”
I shook my head at that. “Not Betsy. She knows all the roads for fifty miles around.”
Slade thought I was being smart. He grabbed me and jerked me to my feet. “You got a lot to explain.” He shoved me at the other trooper and the other trooper caught me. “Toss him in the back seat, Ernie, and let’s get going.”
Ernie didn’t seem to be as sore as Slade. He said: “This way, Pop.”
Once they got me in the car, they didn’t want to talk with me. Ernie rode in back with me and Slade drove. We hadn’t gone a mile when I dozed off.
When I woke up, we were just pulling into the parking area in front of the state police barracks. I got out and tried to walk, but one of them got on each side of me and practically dragged me along.
We went into a sort of office with a desk, some chairs and a bench. A man sat behind the desk.
“What you got there?” he asked.
“Damned if I know,” said Slade, all burned up. “You won’t believe it, Captain.”
Ernie took me over to a chair and sat me down. “I’ll get you some coffee, Pop. We want to talk with you. We have to get you sober.”
I thought that was nice of him.
I drank a lot of coffee and I began to see a little better and things were in straight lines instead of going round in circles—things I could see, that is. It was different when I tried to think. Things that had seemed okay before now seemed mighty queer, like Betsy going home all by herself, for instance.
Finally they took me over to the desk and the captain asked me a lot of questions about who I was and how old I was and where I lived, until eventually we got around to what was on their minds.
I didn’t hold back anything. I told them about the jets and the skunks and the talk I had with the colonel. I told them about the dogs and the friendly skunk and how Betsy had got disgusted with me and gone home by herself.
“Tell me, Mr. Bayles,” said the captain, “are you a mechanic? I know you told me you are a day laborer and work at anything that you can get. But I wonder if you might not tinker around in your spare time, working on your car.”
“Captain,” I told him truthfully, “I wouldn’t know which end of a wrench to grab hold of.”
“You never worked on Betsy, then?”
“Just took good care of her.”
“Has anyone else ever worked on her?”
“I wouldn’t let no one lay a hand on her.”