“Hey that’s pretty good,” he decided.
***
“Mike, I could sure use your help right about now!” A much younger and somewhat skinnier version of Paul echoed his older self. Paul was pinned tight in his smoldering car, the steering column nearly crushing his sternum. The thickening smoke was making vision difficult, but it was not so dense that he could not tell what happened to his missing shotgun seat passenger. That and the hole in the windshield left little doubt.
I need to check on him, Paul thought. Where’s Dennis? Paul’s mind raced, trying to locate their third friend who had also gone to the Cheech and Chong Drive-In festival. Paul could not turn his neck far enough to look into the back seat of his 1970 Buick Century and determine the fate of his friend.
“Help!” Paul thought he shouted, but the weight on his chest and the choking smoke might have seriously hampered any volume. Someone must have heard it as the passenger door opened and Mike peered in.
“Paulie, you alright?”
“Yah, except for the broken ribs and potential barbecuing, I’m doing dandy,” Paul wheezed.
“Paul, I’m going to get Dennis out first,” Mike said.
Paul figured Dennis was either not quite as stuck as him or in worse shape, so either way, it made sense that Mike would try to get him out first. Paul, however, was not looking forward to burning alive. He had read once that it was the most painful way to die although, whoever had done the study and who were the test subjects, he just wasn’t sure.
“Dude, just hurry! Barb’s (Paul’s mother) gonna be pissed if I ruin this new shirt she bought me.” Paul tried to laugh at his poor attempt at humor, but it came out more as a grunt.
“Dude, save your strength. I’m going to need your help when I get to that steering wheel,” Mike said, lifting his broken arm up with some difficulty.
“I didn’t know you were double jointed.” Paul swooned a little at the sight of the broken, bent appendage, but would later remember it as smoke inhalation poisoning.
Paul sat for time un-recordable as the heat in the car began to turn up. The back door opened and Paul could crane far enough to see Mike climbing into the backseat. Mike’s heavy grunting dominated all. It was even louder than the crackle of vinyl seating on fire. When Paul heard the heavy thudding off to his left, he figured Mike had extracted Dennis.
Paul watched a line of flame traveling closer and closer, as if seeking him out. “Umm Mike, it’s my turn, buddy,” Paul said, pissed at himself that he was letting fear put a quaver in his voice, but he’d take that over frying in his car any day.
“Mike?” Paul asked. No answer. “Dennis? Guys? Come on, man, what the fuck?” Paul pressed up against the steering column, but his fractured ribs prevented him from giving the thrust he needed to escape his fiery prison.
Paul turned to his left as far as he could. He could just see two sets of legs on the ground. Mike must have passed out. “Mike! Wake up! Mike! Help!” His crying out was as much for his rescue as for his friend’s. He thought that Mike and possibly Dennis were suffering from more grievous injuries than he knew.
Paul started to make his peace with God, and was doing fine just up until he caught on fire and then all bets were off. “Talbot! Get up!” Paul screamed in a last ditch effort to get some assistance.
Paul finally heard some rustling on the ground. “Thank you, God,” he whispered.
Paul turned as Mike stuck his head back in the car door. “Paul, I just want to get him clear.”
Paul understood the necessity of the act, but he wanted to be clear of the burn zone too. Self-preservation is a powerful instinct. It’s not called friend-preservation for a reason. “Hurry up,” Paul ground out. Mike did not hear it as he was already dragging their friend to safety.
“Paul, I’m going to need your help,” Mike said as he climbed back into the car, quickly slapping out the flames that had crawled onto Paul’s leg.
“Mike, I don’t have much left.” Paul was mad with himself that he felt defeated, but the smoke, fire and pain in his chest were quickly draining him of fight and life.
“Bud, use whatever you got, because we either both get out of here, or we’re both going to be on the school lunch menu tomorrow.”
Paul didn’t think this was the right time for a joke, if that was even what it was, but it had the desired effect.
“Fuck that,” Paul croaked, thanking anyone that would listen that he hadn’t started coughing when he pulled in a particularly nasty influx of polluted smoke. Although we’d probably be the tastiest things they’ve had in a few years, Paul thought. He wanted to tell his friend the joke, but the pain was too intense and he didn’t think he could afford to inhale any more noxious gases.
“When I say three.”
What about three? Paul thought. Consciousness was becoming as elusive as a Vaseline-coated eel.
“Three!” Mike said.
Where was one and two? Paul wondered.
Air seemed to rush into Paul’s lungs as Mike pushed up on the steering column, and lucid thought came back in a hurry. Paul began to fight back for the life that Death was in such a hurry to get its greedy hands on. The steering column moved by minute fractions of an inch. What made the rescue attempt even more infuriating, was that as the column moved up, so did Paul’s compressed chest. For all their straining, it did not appear that they were making any headway. Death had parked its ass on top of the steering wheel, its sightless eyes peering deeply into Paul’s face. Paul could just see Death’s silhouette and the light that shone through it and beyond it.
“I’m not ready for you,” Paul told Death.
“Most aren’t,” it answered back.
Paul hadn’t been expecting a response. Now he knew how close he truly was, and with every last ounce he had left, he pushed up.
“Dude, this isn’t going to feel good.”
“What?” Paul asked, not sure who he was asking the question to, and why Death would hurt him?
And then blissful sweet air! Paul’s chest heaved with the glory of it. The cold of the night was exhilarating on his heated skin. Paul glanced over and back to the car. Death was becoming a phantom shadow once again. Paul let loose a scream that Jamie Lee Curtis would have been proud of as Mike dragged him further away from the pops and cracks of his car while it went through its death throes. Paul looked one more time into the car before he passed out. Death flared brightly for a moment and then was gone.
“Did you see that?” Paul asked. But Mike was looking in the other direction and Paul had the feeling he might have already blacked out.
When he awoke three hours later in the hospital, he was hooked up to a variety of machines, each with its own distinctive trills and beeps. Mike was asleep in the bed next to him and Dennis was nowhere in sight.
“Mike? You awake?” Paul asked, barely above a whisper. His chest hurt, but it wasn’t the all-consuming pain that it had been in the car.
“Dude, they gave me Diadlin. If I open my eyes, the room spins like a top on a playing record,” Mike said.
“Is it any good?” Paul asked.
“It’s unreal, I’ve tripped with less intensity.”
“Where’s Dennis?” Paul asked, concerned that possibly their friend hadn’t made it.
“I think he went to get some potato chips.”
“Huh?”
“He’s fine. Got a knot on his head; that’s about it. I think he’s going home tomorrow.”
“What about you?”
“Compound fracture on my left arm, no baseball for me this spring. But if they keep giving me this shit, I won’t really care.”