Nut, Part 2

He was gripped instantly by an overwhelming shiver in his brain. The muscles in his legs locked. His hands rubbed each other fiercely and his jaw grinded against his upper teeth. He was having a panic attack. Trying to calm himself with a mantra picked out of the air, he repeated, “It’s just, it’s just, it’s just . . .,” trying to find reason enough to know what it was just. After a five minute blackout, he remembered his deep breathing exercises. He was almost out of it. Feeling beaten, George reversed his steps, turned round and walked back to the Huddle House. His mind still buzzed.George, feeling exposed by the light of the moody streetlamp glow, tried to correct his composure and straighten his shirt. He tucked it back in. He put his chin to his chest and revolved his head to his right shoulder, his back and on to his left shoulder when a nail of a pain was driven into his neck. He saw a blinding flash of light.------------Little squirrel Nut was in a parking lot. He noticed tall pine trees as he jumped to face the rear. He jumped again toward a lightpole tree and scampered toward a big truck and hid under it. There was plenty of room down there, but Nut sure didn’t like the smell of chemicals and the gases some of them made. He escaped to the front of the truck and when a person came giggling out of the Huddle House, Nut hopped, and leaped to the top of the truck. He was frozen again with time. The truck made a jerk and a grinding noise and, before Nut could leap off, he was moving with the truck. Then, climbing into a warm vent he found without looking for it, he closed his eyes and prayed for the best. He thought about what a wonderful day he had, and how fun it was to do cartwheels, and about his favoritest tree. “Oh my,” he tried not to dream, “Oh my oh my.”George held onto the CB antenna on the top of the truck. His eyes were closed so tightly that he was getting yet another headache. He wondered how many miles he had been. He thought he felt, or saw in his closing mind, a dimly fading in of daylight. The wind was barely cool all over him, and was soothed by a beam of warm air from a vent just beyond the antenna he clasped like a vice. Then he could swear the truck was slowing. It was slowing and turning into a convenience store. It was stopping, by God, right under the blaring lights above the gas pumps.George listened carefully for the footsteps of the driver to enter the store. When he was sure the man was gone, George rumbled nervously down the front of the truck and ran to the street. He was in the grass shoulder of Georgia State Highway 78. The driver must’ve headed back towards Ponce de Leon and swept north on the way to Athens or somewhere, and stopped halfway to Stone Mountain. George was miles from home. Wherever he was, he thought he knew he was never lost. He paused a moment, turned around, and sauntered south, back to Atlanta.----------The Presley Trucking Company appreciated the dedication of its Number One driver, Fernie Hickens. Hickens was hired by Mr. Presley himself, back in 1982. He had logged more miles than any other driver and had never had a complaint about any of his deliveries. He was even put in charge of the account for The Georgia Board of Education, Presley’s supreme client. He was a crew of One, bringing new schoolbooks to the students and faculties of several West Georgia schools of all grades. Now he was aimed for the University of Georgia, the Home of the Georgia Bulldogs. Since this first delivery was on this particular Friday night, he thought he might stay overnight in an Athens hotel and go to the game against Alabama the next day. That was his plan. After all, he was his own man. His only obligation, the only one he had to answer to, was The Presley. He even liked the sound of that. “The Presley,” he often ended his flights of thought, speaking the name aloud as if it were an Amen to a prayer.Fernie got his Nesquick Reduced Fat Double Chocolate drink, and was opening his new box of Marlboro Reds, and mounted his truck cabin like John Wayne and was off to Athens. He was going to make his infamous, all-important delivery before morning. He was not going to make it to the game.George saw the Mac truck he had ridden in a haze, and turned away as it passed him, going the other way. He knew the driver probably wouldn’t even see him, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Turning around to watch the truck out of sight, he saw the headlights of the truck empty their beam onto a road sign reading, “South,” and inside a white silhouette of Georgia, black numbers, “78.” George was going the wrong way. The truck entered the expressway in a round loop and went north toward them Bulldogs. George crossed the quiet highway and walked on, this time for sure, to Atlanta and home.Down the grassy shoulder of the highway Nut skipped and turned cartwheels. The sun was coming up again, and he didn’t have a care. He didn’t retain the trauma of his ride. He was glad to be alive, and even more glad he was a squirrelly little squirrel. “That’s me!”, he hollered, “Nut the Squirrel. The squirreliestist squirrel there is!” And he skipped on and on and on as the sunny sun lit his way.Meanwhile, Fernie had a flat. He was scratching his bald head and staring at the ruined tire. He finally reached for the cell phone hanging on his belt and called the office. Amy, Presley’s eighteen-year old daughter answered the phone, “Presley Truckin’ Cumpnee.” Fernie lusted after Amy a bit, but mindlessly ignored his lust for the Sake of The Company.  “Amy, it’s Fernie,” he said, while cars whizzed by beside him.“Hello, Mister Fernie,” Amy smacked wildly on a sour apple gumball.“Got a bad tire here,” Fernie grunted, adjusting his belt, “I’ll be getting a ride to the stop in Convent, then I’ll be back and on my way. I needyou to call the college and tell ‘em I’ll be there in, whoa, three hours.”“Okay, Mister Fernie, I’ll call right away. You be careful, now.”“Will do, and you, too,” he finished, and hung up, looking both ways.Fernie ran across the expressway and waved down the first car that approached him. He didn’t look to see who was driving as he got in and closed the passenger door. “Where ya headed?,” drawled the casually dressed drag queen driving the lime green circa 1974 Valiant, dolled up as drag as the driver. Shifting about on the fake angora seat cover, Fernie said, “There’s a truck stop right off the expressway at Convert.” “I’m going right BY there.”, she reported, “Shoot, that’s just about nothin’” “’Preciate it,” Fernie finalized the conversation, still wriggling in his seat.George was humming “Hank and Joe and Me,” a Johnny Cash tune about a man left in the desert to die of dehydration. Hank and Joe knew he was a dyin’ man, so they left him there to let him die. They couldn’t stand to hear him cry for water. A sign about a mile back let him know he was now about thirty miles from Atlanta. He pulled his shirttail from his pants and looked to the sky. He could almost see the buzzards circling way above the trees waiting for him to fall. The noon sun created phosphene in his eyes. Mister Fernie wasn’t watching much anyway except the grass. “As long as I stay on the grass,” he thought.Our favorite squirrel was getting anxious about the cars and trucks whizzing by. As he rested on a bridge he saw a pole, a streetlight, just like the ones at the park. He leaped legs by legs until he had crossed the bridge, thinking he could walk the wires all the way to something familiar. Halfway up the pole he stopped – looked around – and clawed his way to the top as quickly as he could. He cleaned his paws and stepped lightly onto the telephone wire that ran forever into the distance. Scoot scoot, across the wire he went, but he held on, upside down and shaking, when a big truck passed just by his ears. He swung side to side in the backdraft wind.----------Fernie and his new friend pulled into Fain’s Truck Stop, commandeered by Amos Fain, the largest man in Georgia, which is the biggest state east of the Mississippi – he’s that big. Fernie got out and Thursday, the driver, waved buhbye, closing her hand a finger at a time. Fernie waved back, smiling, and turned to run into the restroom.George Zacker was still stomping his way to the big city. The arms that swung from his shoulders were pulling his mind toward the earth’s core. A hot wet heat bombarded him from the sun above, and from the sweltering, churning earth below his sleepy magnetic fingertips. Daydreaming, he craved the taste of wood, some salted pecans, that’s it. And a cold draft beer. Oh yeah.It was Margie’s day off, so Thursday pulled into her driveway and sashayed to the door of Margie’s Beauty Salon in a trailer just outside Convent in Darma. “You’re just a ‘Darma bum’,” she liked to say, knowing Margie had no idea what one was. Margie was in the shampoo chair watching Montel on a small battery-powered black-and-white TV. “Well, garl fren, let’s light ‘em up,” Margie chuckled. They sat and smoked Thursday’s dynamite pot from a fancy chrome and jade pipe she had bought in New York during her last visit to Wigstock. That was the year she performed lip-syncing Millie Jackson’s “Butt-A-Cize.” It was the first year Wigstock , the gigantic celebration of Love, Music and Wigs, was held in Central Park. Thursday switched the channel to the last thirty minutes of “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and they laughed until they almost asphyxiated.Mrs. Zacker was about to have a heart attack. Beth and Sandy were feeding her cheddar cheese and filling her with iced tea. The police had come and gone twice. They said the best thing Mrs. Zacker could do was calm down and stay by the phone. George was sure to call. She yelled for Beth to get her some “meddy meddy one-two-three-four-seven.” Beth went from object to object saying, “Is it this? Is this what you want?” She didn’t want a shoe or a brush, or a tacky costume watch which had dead batteries in it for over three years. Beth found the plastic basket of drugs. She instinctively asked, “Tylenol?” “Yes yes yes,” cried George’s mother. Sandy was in the kitchen making more tea, thinking of substances within arm’s reach that could be used to poison George. She was silently livid. Beth’s name and number were still listed on the phone list glued to the wall facing the refrigerator, under thick black Sharpie-scrawled letters saying “IF EMERGENCY!” The oxygen generator rattled so loud that no one could even hear the television. Beth was stuffing towels between a wall and the generator, bracing it tightly against them trying to stop the noise. George knew how to stop it by taking one wheel off so it slanted into the wall where he stuffed two pot holders. He would stretch the oxygen tube all the way out so he could do all this in the other room. It wasn’t likely that George would ever do this ritual again. This is exactly what Beth wasn’t thinking when the phone rang. She ran to answer, lifted the kitchen wall phone receiver bumping into Sandy, dropped the phone and they both bent over to pick it up, knocked their heads together, and were snuffing out their laughter shushing each other. Beth had the receiver at her ear and heard the answer machine blasting, “This is the Zacker residence. We’re not (a crackling sound distorted a few words) – eez leave a message at the beep.”. In the silence after the beep Beth was saying, “George? George. . .”. She heard several clicks. The sound of a phone ringing, or purring, was heard on the end of the line. A BellSouth lady answered in a recorded voice, “If you’d to make a call, please hang up and try again.” Beth hung up and said, “Shit.”Fernie was making the fourth phone call to his mechanic in Convert when Nut was testing the next long telephone wire to the next pole. At this moment, the same moment Beth was hanging up, Thursday was still laughing, after two gin fizzes and all the marijuana she could handle. She fell against her Valiant with an “Oh, God.” She revved up her engine and was on the expressway, not remembering how she got there. Nut almost scooched like a monkey to the midpoint between poles and was suddenly swinging upside down again. A trailer full of cows, about five of them being pulled behind a souped-up Ford F150 swerved to miss a big leaf. The driver’s big cigar was burning a hole between his legs as he blasted to the fire, “ OH Lord, oh Lord oh lord oh God.” Thursday, following too close behind him swung the steering wheel left aiming her across the other side and into the ditch, but she righted herself left and was weaving in the direction of a telephone pole. She missed the pole, but heard a simultaneous thump and whack. A squirrel had fallen from the sky and had landed head-first into Thursday’s windshield right in front of her face. She pulled over to the shoulder, waited for traffic to clear and got out. She turned away from the horror of the incident in solid anguish. “Oh LORD! Oh God oh lord oh my God,” she spewed.