5 December 2019

Trigger challenge: Objects

Red XKE Jag model car, 1 left mans walking shoe,1 right woman’ grey leather flat, Engraving of an old church, Mans brown leather belt

The Red Jag

Lauren’s slender right foot wrapped in a grey leather driving shoe, stabbed at the brakes. A quick push with the left foot on the clutch was accompanied by the right flipping the accelerator as she downshifted the red E-type into the oncoming corner. She was late.

She was always late. It gave her the excuse to thrash around the country roads in her beloved and well preserved classic. But this time she was too late. As she cut the curve she was now well into the center of the road and it was too late to see the man, draped in overcoats, with a backpack and walking stick, coming along the road toward her.

In a panic stop, Lauren stomped the brake pedal while downshifting but that only threw the long nosed sports car into a spin, whipping her around and ultimately off the road, nose down an incline into a field. Luckily, the right rear wheel had caught just enough pavement to keep the car from tumbling over.

First there was shock. The motor was still running. The head lights were reflecting back up at her from the ditch of water that bordered the field. Her brain began, quite slowly, to reengage.

OK, am I Ok?

Did I hit someone?

Did I kill someone?

Must get out of the car.

The Jag was at a 45 degree angle down off the side off the road. She reached with her left hand to pull the hand brake as tight as she could and made sure the shift lever was in first gear.

She turned off the engine and the head lamps, leaving just the signal lamp blinking. Very slowly she began to lift her driving pump from the brake pedal. After a bit of settle, the car remained where it was.

E-types’ have very long doors. Due to the angle of the car, the weight of the door pushed down heavily against her. In the end, Lauren had to turn sideways and push up with her leather shod shoes at the end of her long legs, to allow her to open the door and escape the car.

Scrambling up the embankment to reach the road, she looked back down at the car and then around to the other side. There seemed to be no marks whatsoever on the body. The paintwork shown bright in the settling sun.

Looking back toward the curve, she saw the skid marks left behind, tracing the arc of her spins. In the end she had been very lucky. Just a bit more speed and she would have gone tumbling over the steep embankment, destroying the car, and her too most likely.

Now her thoughts shifted to the person that had so suddenly appeared in the road. It was pretty easy to see where that had happened. She just had to follow the skid marks. The Jag’s boot was sticking up in the air and she opened it to pull out a warning reflector and flashlight, turned, and headed back up the road.

After positioning the warning reflector , Lauren walked into the road to where her tracks had begun. It clearly showed that while she had cut the corner, she was still mostly on her side of the road. Her jerking of the wheel to the right to avoid the figure is what threw her rear wheels into the skid. That was all shown on the road in front of her.

She looked around her. There was no sign of anyone. Looking down at the road, there was no liquid or debris of any kind, then as she looked toward the side of the road, there was a shoe, a walking shoe. A man’s left walking shoe. The laces were tied. It was in good shape though used. It had not been left out on the road for a long time as it was completely dry and it had rained late in the afternoon.

Lauren flashed the light onto the grass and scrub growing along the country road . There was no sign of it having been crushed by a body or even a foot. There were no indentations anywhere. There were no other signs of anything other than what was normal to be seen on a country road in the dimming light.

Now her mind began to spin, caught in a mental cul de sac. “I’m sure I saw someone and spun the car to avoid them. But where are they? Other than the shoe, there is no sign of anything.” After making one more search of the road around where the spin had begun, she walked slowly back to her blinking Jag. She took out her cellphone. No bars. She was deep in the countryside.

“OK. Someone will come along. Or I can walk, the nearest village was the one I passed with the old church, maybe 5 kilometers back. But I hate to leave the car. And I cant chance getting back into the car to sleep as it might disturb it and send it all the way down the embankment. However, I dont fancy walking along this road in the dark in these shoes. Decision made. For the moment I’m going to stay here and hope someone comes along. ”

Once more into the boot and a rumble through a suitcase, a heavier coat, retrieval of her purse and documents and a few items and her jewelry, all thrown into a brown carryall with a wide brown leather strap. With the strap crossed over her shoulder, she locked the car and waited.

She could hear the car coming before she could see it. Actually, it wasn’t a car but a small van truck like thing all the farmers drive. Another reason she could not see it was due to the amount of smoke it put out in the swirling plume that surrounded it.

The truck had slowed at the sight of the emergency reflector and proceeded carefully along the road as its lights shown on Lauren and the Red E Jag, rear end sticking up from the side of the road. She stood watching as he opened the door and stood up behind it.

“Are you OK?” he asked in a deep voice.

“Yes, I’m fine but unfortunately my car is fallen down into this ditch and I’m stuck here without a phone. “

The man was of above average size, wearing several wool flannel shirts layered over each other and flapping outside his original levi’s jeans. “Let me have a look, do you mind?” he said as he walked around the door and over to where the Jag was pointing down. He slid down the gully and looked under the nose of the car.

“You really got lucky lady”, he said as he crabbed back up the incline “You ain,t touching anything down here. All you gotta do is just pull the car back up onto the road and you’ll be good to go.”

He then pointed to the underside of the Jag’s rear bumper. “See that hook there, its made for pulling this car.”

“Can you do it.?”

“Shure, just not with my old truck here. Oh sorry, I’m Phil. I lave a farm not far from here. I have a tractor there that can get you out in no time.”

Lauren looked closely at Phil. He was ruggedly handsome. For a farmer he was also very clean, his hands not too worn at all. And he did have a nice smile.

He continued. “Look, you been out here a while, Why don’t you ride up to the house with me and you can freshen up a bit while I get the tractor going and come down here and pull the car out.”

It was now getting dusk. There had been no other cars along the road. She decided. “May I use your phone?” she asked. “My cell doesn’t seem to work here.”

“Not a problem” he laughed. There’s no mobile service out here, or internet either. I still use dial up and a land line. But it works, mostly. Sometime the old systems are the best. That includes my old truck here. It just keeps running. Sorry for the smoke though.

They went a small way along the road before Phil turned onto a dirt path. “My place is at the end of this road, not too much further.”

Lauren was looking around at the farmland and forest. It was quite lovely and wild and… deserted. As the truck bounced along the rutted road, she felt something bump against her leg. Lauren looked down in the wheel well. There, perched on her grey driving shoe was one walking shoe. A man’s walking shoe . A walking shoe for the right foot. It was the match to the one she found along the road at the site of her spin, now locked in the Jag’s trunk.

As panic began to rise from her solar plexus to her brain, she looked over at Phil. He was grinning as he accelerated, the grey smoke obliterating them from view.