Country Roads

    Hey, everyone. This is the road I live on. In the terminology of the South, it would just be called a country road. Not much different than a thousand others. Flat roads and straight roads are about as common as giraffes around here. Country roads are handy for a lot of things. Things as simple as berry picking and other things that are a bit more sinister.
    I remember one night when I was coming home from work in the wee hours. It was probably about 3 o'clock in the morning. I was coming up a steep place on the road to the top of the mountain. About half way up I came around a curve and there was a car, stopped in the middle of the road, about 50 feet ahead of me. I often stop to help people but I could see this guy's exhaust (winter) and I had that feeling on the back of my neck. You know, that feeling that you get if you have been raised on the street and you know something is wrong in a situation.
     Not to be melodramatic but there have been times that I have bet my life on the way I feel about a situation. This was not one of those times. I didn't pull over, slow down or speed up. I merely eased over enough to get by the car and drove on up the mountain. Immediately the car swung over behind me and got right on my bumper.
    I didn't change speeds. I drove just like I always do. The guy was acting pretty frantic. Moving side to side, putting his lights on bright, all that juvenile stuff. For whatever reason, I was not particularly upset. I toyed with the idea of stopping in the middle of the road and walking back to ask him what he wanted. I was about 10 miles from the nearest town and I was tired. I just wanted to go home. So, I just let things ride for a little longer.
    When I came to a wide spot where 2 gravel roads came together, the weirdo spun his vehicle around and zoomed away in a cloud of dust, back toward town. I continued home, not particularly worried or overly curious.
     One never knows what life is going to offer up. It's good if you don't sit down at a table where you don't have the stakes necessary to play. The man in the car may have been a meth head or a jealous husband who mistook me for someone else. I hope he didn't think I was a pilgrim, because I'm not. No one was hurt, which is good. I still drive the same road and I drive it without fear. Hopefully we'll not cross paths again, on country roads.
    From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.