STUCK

                                                                  


    The other day, my older brother called.  I was relaxing on the couch when my wife yelled at me to answer the phone.  I rarely answer, because most of the time it’s not for me, and even if it is, I’m rarely in the mood to talk.  Stretching, I rolled off the couch and picked up the phone.
    “Hello.”
    “Hey man, it‘s Jarrett.  What‘s happening?!”
    “Oh, just sitting around not being stuck.” 
      Occasionally he would call for various reasons, but the tone of his voice was a mixture of excitement and curiosity, which made me wonder if he was calling in an attempt to convince me to go someplace with him and get stuck.  We’d spent all of our youth and most of adulthood stuck.  He’d always had good intentions in the beginning, but somehow we would always wind up pushing and digging, trying to dislodge our vehicle from whatever predicament had befallen it.   The two of us had been stuck in mud, snow,  ponds and streams, and  in about any other place imaginable.  Sometimes we’d get unstuck, and he would simply get us restuck a short distance from the spot where we had originally been stuck.  The word ‘stuck’ cannot be overstated when it comes to riding someplace with my brother.  Stuck, stuck, stuck.  Sometimes he liked to go back to a spot where we‘d been stuck before, and of course, we would wind up stuck again.  According to the many CSI programs I’ve watched, it has been concluded that he perpetrator always returns to the scene of his misdeeds.  Once, after an especially harrowing episode of being stuck, I wondered if he was TRYING to get stuck.  He had decided to take a shortcut out of the snowy mountains we were riding through by crossing a raging creek.  Almost immediately, his truck was lifted by the water and began a whirling, bouncing trip downstream.  Luckily, we came to rest on a silt bar, and he simply looked at me and said, “Whew we!  My butt just sucked up a yard of seat cushion!  How ‘bout yours?”  I didn’t give an immediate reply due to my muscles, bones and eyeballs being in a frozen, locked state, and my feet were immobilized by the cold water that had seeped through the door.  The seat cushion was the least of my worries.  Another time, I had to call my boss and advise him that he’d be a man short  that day.
    “Where are you?” the old crotchety boss growled.
     I regretfully told him the truth, “Oh, I’m stuck in the middle of a pond,”  I groaned.  Of course he didn’t believe me, but then again, he’d never been anywhere with my brother.
     Now, back to the phone call.  Jarrett  got straight to the point.  “Well, I’ve got a little inside tip that they’re stocking trout in the Maury tomorrow morning.  I thought maybe you’d be interested in riding over there with me to try our luck,” he continued.  The Maury River is a few miles away, and we’d fished there for years.  Immediately, a sense of nervousness swept over my body.   As far as he and fishing were concerned, there was no luck.  He was a fish whisperer, an expert angler, and he certainly didn’t need any luck.  I, on the other hand rarely caught anything.  Winding up stuck was my primary concern though.
    “Can you promise me that we won’t get stuck?” I asked, knowing that he’d make the promise, but most likely wouldn’t keep his word.  I based my thoughts on his many broken promises of guaranteeing he wouldn’t try to traverse some remote mountainside in his truck.  I also wondered if he was inviting me just to have the whole river to himself after I’d scared the other fishermen away.  Not only was I psychologically scarred from all the heart pounding, white knuckle rides I’d taken with him before, I also had the amazing ability to repel fish and fishermen up and down the river.
    “Oh, we’re not getting stuck this time.  Besides, when have I ever made a promise I didn’t keep?” he answered. Evidently, he must have thought that I'd suddenly been stricken with amnesia.  “Heck, you might even catch one.  Come on, let’s give it a shot,” he continued, trying to give me hope at both  fishing and not getting stuck.  Nothing’s worse that leaving the riverbank empty handed and then spending the rest of the evening trying to dig out of a mud pit that our vehicle had become buried in.
    “Maybe I’ll just meet you there.  Besides, I scare the fish away,” I said, in one last attempt to reason with him.
    “Nah, I’ll pick you up at eight sharp.  Tell the wife that you‘ll be home by noon.”
    “Oh, alright!” I whined, as my eyes began twitching.
    Immediately I began to prepare.  I would need enough food and water for at least an overnight stay, and I would certainly take a flare gun, and maybe my old military survival kit.  Blankets and possibly a tent would be something to consider carrying along too.  As I was gathering all my gear in the garage, my wife entered and stood looking at me in amazement.
    “What on Earth are you going to do with all that stuff?” she asked, staring at the pile of equipment lying in the floor.
    “I’m going fishing with Jarrett in the morning.”
    “Ohhhhhh good gracious!  I’ll run to the store and get more supplies, do you have a first aid kit?  Plenty of batteries?  A flashlight?  How about water?  You’ll need plenty of water!  Is there cell phone service where you’re going?  Make sure you take a shovel, and be sure to spend plenty of time with the kids tonight, and tell them that you love them!”  she screeched, while dancing around and flailing her hands and arms.  My  last adventure with my brother was still fresh in her mind.  We’d set off on a brief trip to pick morels and didn’t show up at home until the next morning.  My wife was livid and relieved at the same time.
    “Where on Earth have you been!?” she growled with her hands on her hips.
    “We got stuck.”
    My brother showed up the next morning at 8:45 not so sharp.  I began loading all of my gear onto the back of his truck while he stared at me in disbelief, unable to comprehend  that I was taking so much stuff for a morning fishing trip.  “What’s with all the stuff?” he inquired, leaning on the bed of his old truck.  “Are you planning on spending the night or something?”
    “Oh, you never know what can happen,” I replied, while trying to hoist my dome tent over the tailgate. 
    “You’ve got enough food to feed an army.  Didn’t you eat breakfast?  Is that a flare gun!?”
    “Yeah, I ate breakfast, but you never know,” I said, finishing up my load by swinging a cooler full of provisions onto the truck, and ignoring the question about the flare gun.  I noticed that the only fishing gear he’d brought along was his rod and reel.  I didn’t even see a lure on his line, just a plain bare hook.  Maybe he’d lost his touch, I thought, as I hopped into the passenger’s side.
    We arrived at our fishing spot along the winding river after riding for just over an hour.  The weather was simply gorgeous, and the water in the rocky river was flowing nicely, and very few people were standing along the banks fishing.  Maybe he did have the inside scoop on the stocking schedule, I thought.
    I found a suitable place to begin repelling fish, and he ambled on down the riverside until he was out of sight.  As usual, I fished and fished, without even a bite.  I would be more aptly called a caster and reeler  than a fisherman, since my outings consisted of casting and reeling and had absolutely nothing to do with fish.  I tried everything in my tackle box and then some, until I simply gave up.  My streak was alive and well, but not all was lost.  The afternoon sun was especially comforting, and the sound of the bubbling water made me feel at ease.  At least I could take in the beautiful day, while lounging comfortably on a smooth rock.
    Within a few minutes, a shadow blocked the sunlight that was warming my face.  I had almost gone to sleep.  “Have any luck?”  Jarrett said, standing over me.
    “Nope.  Not even a nibble,” I answered with my eyes still closed.  “How about you?”
    “I caught my limit, but I only kept the big ones.  I threw the rest back.”
    “You know, I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t bring your tackle box or much else for that matter.  What kind of bait did  you catch them with?” I said, raising up and looking at his stringer full of  rainbow trout.
    “Cigarette butts  mostly.  This big one here, I got him on a little berry I found in those weeds over there, and this one, I landed him with a tab from a pop can,”  he said proudly,  pointing at the last fish dangling at his side.  Cigarette butts! Berries! Pop can tabs!, I thought.  I’d gone through every lure I owned  and he comes along and catches his limit on an assortment of litter he’d found along the river bank!   The fishing gods continued to loathe me for some reason.
    “Nice job, lets go,” I mumbled, in a huff.  We put the trout in my cooler, and set off for home.
    We made small talk on the way home, and I couldn’t help but think that maybe I had gone just a bit overboard with all the provisions I’d brought along, when we suddenly screeched to a stop  beside a flagman in the middle of the road.  Apparently the highway department decided to resurface the road sometime after we’d traveled that way earlier in the day.
    I looked over at my brother, who had begun to  impatiently tap his finger on the steering wheel.  “I ain’t going to sit here all day!”  he said, as I stared straight ahead.  “There’s another way, you know.”
    “Oh hell no! No way, no how!” I barked.  “We’re going to sit here until he waves us through,” I said, as Jarrett had already  begun to back the truck up and turn around.
    “There’s an old logging road back here a little ways we can cut through.  It’s in pretty good shape.  I was just on it during deer season.”
    He drove a short distance on the paved road when he slowed and drove off into the forest.  The old truck clanked and hopped along the rugged trail, while I anxiously stared at the sky, praying and confessing my sins.  Suddenly, the ‘road’ turned into a winding, meandering pig path that disappeared up a steep mountainside.  “What deer season were you referring to?” I asked, as my head bounced off the cab of the truck, and I began ducking tree branches that were slapping me in the face through my open window.  He didn’t answer.  I assumed that he was concentrating on keeping us from being launched over the mountainside like an Evel Kneivel impersonator.  Suddenly the truck reached the summit and began the slow crawl down the other side.  We were moving faster, and I could see that his confidence had returned, since now the cliff was on my side.  The bottom of the mountain was in sight and I breathed a sigh of relief when suddenly, the truck dipped to the right and slid sideways in the trail.  The tires began to spin, to no avail.  We were stuck.
    “We’re stuck, and she ain’t going any further.  I’m hung up on something,” Jarrett said as he exited the truck to survey the situation.  I slid out his side and stood, looking at the calamity that had unfolded in mere seconds.  The weight of the vehicle had caused the soft embankment to cave in, burying the front axle.  “I’ve got an idea,” he said.  Unfortunately, I had  been in on many of his ideas.  Several times I’d called out to Jesus to save me from his ideas, and thankfully, up until then he had heard my prayers.
    “What is it then?”  I asked, unsure of what was about to transpire.
    “I noticed that you brought a rope.  If I tie the rope to that tree over there, and then tie the other end to the front bumper, and then lock in the four wheel drive, I think I can get it out.  The rope will keep the truck from going over the side. You’ll need to push though.”
    I opened the cooler and began to peruse the provisions my wife had packed for just such an occasion, and turned toward Jarrett and said,  “We can try that, but let’s eat first.  I’d rather to die with a full stomach.  I‘ve got beanie weenies and Vienna sausages, and here‘s some chips.  Coke or Pepsi?”
    We sat on the edge of  the dusty embankment and ate, all the while staring at the lopsided truck in front of us.  I couldn’t believe that log trucks had scaled such a sorry excuse for a road.  Those guys are just plain nuts, I thought, as I gulped down the last of my Pepsi.
    “Alright, lets try this!” my brother exclaimed as he unraveled the rope and began tying it to the tree and the bumper.  “Now, I’m going to get in and give her all she’s got, and you push like never before,” he continued.  I stared down the embankment and was slightly relieved that we could possibly survive a trip down if we were lucky.  We were near the bottom, so there was indeed a chance at living to regret my decision to go fishing with him.  He gunned he engine, and the tires began to spin the dry, powdery soil into the air.  I pushed on the tailgate with all my might, and suddenly the truck began to move side to side and slide precariously toward the wrong side of he road.  Suddenly, the rope snapped and whistled past my head like a bullwhip as the truck began sliding even faster down the embankment.  “Jump into the back!” he barked, as the truck continued its ominous skid over the edge.  Jump in the back? I thought.  I would have preferred to watch from high above, but like a good brother does, I went for it.  I was able to get one foot onto the bumper when the truck took the final plunge.  I tried desperately to hoist myself into the bed of the truck.  At long last, I dove over the tailgate and into the bed of the truck.  We must have looked like a drunken bobsled team for sure, except we were trying to stop rather that go faster.  The old machine jumped and lurched, mowing over saplings and bushes along the way.  I held on and screamed a prayer, hoping Jesus would hear me one last time.  My dome tent flew over the edge of the cab like a cannon ball, and my hat came off, spiraling into the brush.  The contents of my cooler rolled wildly from side to side, as the trout were launched into the air.   I felt like a ball bouncing around inside of a lotto machine, and  I hung on for dear life.
    “Hang on, we’re almost at the bottom!” Jarrett yelled.  Finally, we rolled to a stop, amid a jungle of weeds, trees and brush.  A cloud of dust enveloped us, as I quietly laid in the bed of the truck.  My heart was racing and I thanked the Lord for saving me again.  My eyeballs were locked in a wide open position and I couldn’t blink.  The slimy fish were scattered among the few contents that hadn’t been violently hurled into the brush.  My mouth was stuck in a full open position, but I was unable to make a sound.  My throat was sore for some reason, and my hands were still gripping the bed rails. I attempted to release  my death grip, but my brain and muscles didn‘t seem to be communicating.  The trout were flopping wildly among the other contents in the bed of the truck, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them.  One minute they were enjoying a leisurely swim in a beautiful stream, and the next minute, they’re on a death spiral down a mountainside with a screaming, squealing madman.   The creaky door of the truck swung open and in an instant my brother was standing over me, surely trying to determine if I’d been hurt.  “Did we lose any of the trout!?  My truck looks fine, so that’s a plus.  Get up and let’s get out of here.  It’s smooth sailing from here on out,”  he bellowed, while staring proudly at the steep embankment.  I pried my hand from its death  grip on the bed rail and wobbled, rubber kneed, into the cab of the truck, still unable to speak.  I didn’t bother latching my seat belt.  I decided that if any other near death experiences were to come my way, I would certainly need a quick egress. 
    We made it the rest of the way to my house without further incident.  Finally, Jarrett turned his old truck into my driveway and stopped.  We sat quietly for a few seconds, when he turned and looked at me.  “I heard they’re stocking Elkhorn next week.  You up?”
    “Only if you promise not to get stuck.”