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  “You don’t need to do this, Maude,” Hippie said, appealing to her tender side.

  “I don’t need to, but I sure want to, so I will.” She laughed gruffly as she opened the passenger door and watched Carolyn scramble to the other side.

  “You can’t escape unless you leave the truck,” which was Maude’s intention anyway. There really was no need to hurt Carolyn if she left through the driver’s side and remained away from the truck.

  Maude reached for the smaller woman, but Carolyn still held her ground, if in a bit cowardly manner. Thus, Maude grabbed her and dragged her out of the truck. Carolyn could not thwart her. Maude was just too strong.

  Hippie could watch no longer, so he closed his eyes. Maude would make good on her pretzel threat. He could almost hear the crunching of Carolyn’s body already, and that disgusted him. Perhaps it was better to see the mutilation than to hear it.

  Before opening his eyes, however, he heard a honking sound. At first he thought Carolyn honked the truck horn in desperation, but the horn was coming from a different direction.

  Hippie looked that way and saw that Bearman had returned. The horn was a warning, as his pickup was barreling down on where Maude and Carolyn struggled. Maude immediately let go, and an instant later, the pickup came screeching to a halt.

  “What, are you crazy? You could have gotten us all killed, including your precious soulmate, or whatever you think she is,” Maude yelled after Jim jumped out of his vehicle to escape Maude’s fury.

  When he was a safe distance away, Jim announced, “I’m now clean and smell great! That soap is a wonder! So now the goddess can travel with me!”

  “Good riddance,” replied Maude.

  “Where am I going?” Carolyn asked, recovering from whatever hurt Maude had already inflicted.

  “Why, where Jesus goes, I go. We will follow them.” Bearman was smiling now, but he was serious. Hippie could tell, though, by her obvious disgust, that Carolyn had no intention to go to Jim’s truck at the moment.

  “What?!” Hippie, Maude, and Carolyn yelled at the same time.

  Nevertheless, the soap altercation had led to adding a new person to their improbable posse.

  Chapter 14

  Inside a Jules Verne Novel

  Even when she was a young girl, Jade had always been fascinated with shoes. This fascination had often gotten her into all sorts of trouble. When she was only five, she had played with her mother’s slippers. At first, she just tried them on. Then she became bolder and decided to dance in them. Her tiny feet tapped and pranced but then kicked a slipper right at the dog’s snout. The dog yelped and bit the slipper. Of course, that’s when Mommy walked into the room. Since she still danced in the other slipper, Jade had been caught in the act and had been punished.

  From there, her obsession increased. She couldn’t stop playing with her mother’s shoes. She liked the way they felt or looked or sparkled, so she had to get a closer inspection or try them on. Since she never ended up putting them back where she found them, she continued to get in trouble when Mommy could not find one shoe or another.

  When she reached the age in which she could buy her own shoes, she did so in bulk. Shoe after flip-flop after heel, she bought and bought until she owed too much on credit and couldn’t pay it back. But even this wasn’t enough of an incentive to stop buying them. She had to watch her credit card be cut with scissors by a malevolent manager, who thought it funny to do it in front of other customers when it was confirmed that Jade had gone over her limit. Hence, her credit was poor due to her large shoe collection, many of which she had only worn once or never at all.

  Yet, that still didn’t stop her obsession. Occasionally, a pair of shoes was displayed that she just couldn’t resist. Since she didn’t have the money to pay for the designer shoes, she stole them. The first few times she did this she wasn’t caught, but then her luck ran out when an employee saw her try on the shoes and try to walk out with them on. The store did not take shoplifting lightly, so she ended up in jail for a night. However, she got a break because the judge did not prosecute her further. Still, her obsession continued. Although she had learned her lesson about stealing, she still could not stifle her love for shoes and often still bought on sites, such as ShoeDazzle and Zappos, when she had a little money to spare.

  Even with all those incidences of shoe impropriety, she never would have expected her fascination with shoes to get her into the mess she and her friends were in now. The irony of it, though, was that the mess had started because she had thrown a fantastic pair of sandals at a car. For the first time in her life she had sacrificed her shoes, and bedlam had happened as a result.

  Still shoeless, Jade crawled out of the corn, her home for the night, more tired than a horse pulling a carriage for weeks on end. She felt like slime, she smelt like Sunday morning Amish fertilizer, she positively looked a wreck, which the most elegant of shoes couldn’t fix, she could hear the dirt infesting her very being, and she could taste every one of the aforementioned. In other words, Jade was not a happy woman.

  When she got into one of these moods, the person she would complain to was George, who was usually the one to put her in that mood anyway, come to think of it. No wonder she had broken the relationship off. “It’s your fault,” she said to him even though she couldn’t see him.

  George crawled out of his section of the cornfield. “Whatever you say, Jade,” he acknowledged, even though she really could have been talking to anyone in the group.

  Kenny emerged at about the same time as George. “Did you see that thing last night?”

  “Crop circles?” asked George.

  “Aliens,” declared Jade.

  “Big Foot,” Maria avowed. She was already standing up, dusting herself off. Jade was impressed, for her tresses still lay in a flawless alignment, while Jade’s hair was surely matted and frizzy, looking like it was barbecued by the sun in hell.

  “Yes, Big Foot is an alien who must have been transported to one of those crop circles. Did you hear it howling?” Kenny always thought he saw aliens or the like, so this conversation was hardly a surprise to Jade, which was another, but not the biggest, reason she had broken up with George: oddball friends.

  “I thought it was the Abominable Snowman,” Jade joked, thinking that Kenny would say that they were the same beast.

  “Hardly—he doesn’t exist,” the big goof replied instead. “And if he did, he wouldn’t be living in this warm climate.”

  Jade decided not to press him. She certainly did not want to hear his reasoning of why Big Foot existed while the Abominable Snowman did not. That could only bring on an earful of nonsense.

  She was saved from Kenny explaining his ludicrous theory, because Maria interjected, “Oh yeah, let me hear about it.” When he turned to say more to her, Jade had that moment to escape. Thank you, friend for life, Maria!

  Mr. Kenny Dunz had a plan. Not a good one. Possibly not even a sane one. But he had one nonetheless. And it was a simple three-point plan:

  1) Borrow a cell phone somewhere since his phone had no battery life, call into work, and say that he was taking all his vacation days immediately, especially since there was little to no chance of his getting back to New York City by tomorrow. If his boss didn’t like it, so what? What was the worst that could happen? That he’d get fired from a horrible job? He still had plenty of inventory for his side work of eBay selling anyway.

  2) His journey through America would involve his friends new and old. How hard would it be to convince them? They were in the middle of nowhere with him—very far away from their life back home.

  3) During their remaining time together, he would put on his admittedly goofy charm for the spicy Maria. He was beginning to really like her. A lot! And he sensed that she liked him, too. After all, she had listened to his talk about Big Foot, and he was aware that that discussion was not for everyone.

  The details of his plan were very sketchy at best, except for a piece of luck he had enc
ountered, which the others did not know about. He had unwittingly walked down a different road while hatching up his dynamic plan and had therefore lost his friends temporarily. This was especially stupid on his part because the road was the only turn off they had seen, and he had become lost anyway. So when he came back from his deep thoughts, he was alone, right in front of a car rental place—

  If one could call it that. The place lodged a Chevy Cavalier and a Ford Taurus—both looking like good rentals—and the largest SUV Kenny had ever seen: an old beat-up 1970’s Chevy Suburban. That was it. There were no other cars on the lot. He did see antique gas pumps, but they must not be operational. Plus, the edifice that functioned as the office was a literal shack, a wooden hole in the wall that may have been built in the eighteenth century. He also spotted a dilapidated sign out front that read, “Tom’s Rentals”. He half-expected to see Thomas Jefferson step out at any moment, ready to steer the Chevy Cavalier like a motorized horse on his way to sign the US Constitution, which incidentally, Mr. Jefferson never did sign, a piece of trivia that Kenny was proud to know. Instead, however, an older man with a crappy hairpiece opened the door for Kenny.

  “You, there! Are you real? Haven’t seen anyone this way the whole day. Those racist gun-toting bastards went the other way. Are you one of those asses, wandering around stirring up trouble in these parts?”

  Kenny noticed the rifle at the man’s side but did not dare bring up that irony. “Ah, no,” the normally talkative Kenny said.

  “Then what the hell are you doin’ on my property?”

  “Renting a car?”

  The man laughed like a cough. “Are you dull or something? Why the hell would I rent cars here where no one is? I’ve never rented cars here. That sign is one I’ve kept since 1974, and the pumps are collectibles.”

  “Oh, then sorry to bother you,” Kenny spoke hurriedly trying to leave unceremoniously, as he didn’t want the old man to raise his gun as if he were in the Wild West.

  “You’ve got money?”

  “A little,” Kenny Dunz admitted without thinking.

  “Well, a little will do,” the bald man with the modern headpiece stated as he leaned on his gun.

  ***

  Maria was the first to notice that Kenny was missing. How he had gotten that way was a mystery since they were walking on a barely traveled road with little else, besides farmland and open terrain. Where then could he have gone? She couldn’t help but feel anxious about his whereabouts.

  George, who was the one she’d expect to be missing again, asked, “Kenny, do you have a bottle of water left in your pack?” This was when he noticed that his friend was nowhere in sight.

  Jade and Bobarino walked on, still unaware. Jade was concerned only with her bare scratched-up feet. Bobarino stared into the sky as if he were waiting for something miraculous from heaven to happen.

  Then something far from miraculous did happen: an SUV drove towards them. However, it wasn’t just any SUV: it was the oldest, junkiest, hugest monstrosity Maria had ever seen, short of a monster truck or a gas-guzzling Hummer. It puffed smoke from its exhaust, blew steam from its engine, and sounded like a hyena in heat. When it arrived, she noticed that the paint had been replaced entirely by rust, and the interior had few cushions left to even feign comfort. In other words, it was a step down even from George’s horrific cab. Still, the huge car somehow ran and could fit nine, enough room for all four passengers and a small sofa, which Maria was wishing for about now.

  And to little surprise, she saw who was driving it: Kenny, of course. He yelled out, “Now we have wheels for the rest of our journey across America!”

  Maria had to laugh. She bet that Kenny thought that he had saved the day!

  And why not? At this point, Maria would just go with whatever journey awaited. She suspected that the others would acquiesce to further adventure, maybe even want more craziness. All except for Jade, but she would have no choice but to come along for the bumpy ride.

  As for Maria, she enjoyed the company, and so far, the misadventures had proved harmless. So, let’s let it ride on!

  ***

  Jade knew that there would be more trouble after she heard Bobarino announce, “I was exploring at first light and saw a man with a balloon on the other side of the road.”

  Oh my, what now?

  To Jade’s surprise, Kenny’s “new” Chevy Suburban SUV lasted all the way until they reached a place called Big Sky, Montana, where it stood unable to start up in a parking lot of the latest dive diner where she had just eaten a greasy, fatty hamburger that her stomach could barely digest. The fact that the car had lasted days instead of minutes astounded her. They had stopped along the way to not only eat but also for rest stops, hotels, and to see various sites from Ohio to Montana. Jade had to admit that if not for this spontaneous trip, she may have never been able to see the beginnings of the Old Oregon Trail and the presidential faces of Mount Rushmore and then traveled through the Black Hills and the wondrous Devil’s Tower on the way to Billings, Montana. Afterward, they had traveled to Bozeman where Kenny had wanted to head north to see “scary ghosts at the Old Montana State Prison,” but common sense had prevailed, and they had gone south toward Yellowstone Park instead.

  And yes, she had finally settled on some cheap flats to wear. Her feet had found some reprieve.

  But it had looked like their adventures had come to an end with the demise of Kenny’s SUV. They had already called a mechanic, who had generously said that he would tow it and give Kenny $35 for ownership of the vehicle, which he would salvage for parts with the rest of the “car” completing its rust-off in a junkyard, where it belonged. Kenny had agreed to this sale. After all, he had only paid for it with $72.53, an inexpensive watch, and a PEZ dispenser for the title. He hadn’t even bothered to change the license plates or the registration yet, which was likely illegal, but that would all be taken care of now.

  However, Bobarino offered a possibility for more adventure, one that Jade did not like but was intrigued by, nonetheless. She looked at him, interested but pretending like she was perturbed. “A man holding a balloon, huh. Did you throw a dart at it or something?”

  “You know, the big balloon,” Bobarino lamely explained.

  “Oh, like the ones from the Jules Verne novels?” George asked with excitement. At first, Bobarino looked blankly at him, but then he nodded, so George continued, “Where? Where?”

  Bobarino pointed in a general direction, and George hopped off that way like a frenzied bunny. George was like that: he often acted like a big kid, which to Jade was both an attraction and a turnoff. She liked his innocent and fun demeanor but disliked his naiveté and his tendency to find himself in ridiculous or even dangerous situations; hence, the main reason for all her recent upheaval.

  Of course, the big lug Kenny chased after his friend. When the others followed, Jade reluctantly went as well, although she could feel the terrain beneath her cheap flats as she ran after them.

  “Ow- ow- ow,” Jade grimaced with every stride she took. She walked on grass but seemed to find a pebble or stick with each step. She watched her feet as she walked but still stepped in a place where she felt the pricks. For love of better shoes!

  Because of her discomfort and slow pace, she lagged way behind the others. When Maria waited for her, she was thankful at first. Then she realized that they could no longer see the boneheaded males ahead. That meant that they were likely getting themselves into trouble.

  “Can you go find those clowns?” she asked Maria. “I’ll be all right. These flats do offer a little protection. I will catch up to you. “

  “Are you sure?” Maria asked with concern. She really was a good person with a big heart. If they had to be in constant gargantuan messes, she was glad Maria was with her.

  “Yes. You’ve got to stop whatever idiocy those three bozos are probably getting into as we speak.”

  Maria gave her a knowing laugh. “How did we get here anyway?” The question was rhet
orical, for Maria took off looking for the men without waiting for an answer.

  Jade stopped walking then. Her feet were killing her. She realized that the blisters she attained before acquiring the flats were the main reason for her discomfort. Oh, shoes! Throwing away quality sandals all those days ago. What was I thinking?

  The sun slowly rose in blue skies and beat down on her with ever more strength. After not moving for another moment, she realized she would not be able to stand still too much longer without beginning to feel the heat of the morning. Thus, grimacing, she walked, bearing the pain that came with each blistering step.

  Jade found her friends hovering around a balloon in the distance. A handwritten cardboard sign with large black letters stated that they were at a BALLOON PORT, although there was only one balloon there now.

  What were those asses doing now? Trying to buy the balloon? Jade hoped Maria was talking some sense into those guys.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” she yelped as she ran across rocky terrain. When she reached a grassier area, she purposely stepped into a small puddle for relief from sun and blisters, flats and all, possibly a first for her since she usually went out of her way not to get any shoe she wore from getting wet or dirty.

  Muddied, she kept going until she could finally see what her friends were doing. Unsurprisingly, George and Kenny stood underneath the hot air balloon, holding down the basket while Bobarino and a small mustached man, who could have been Bobarino’s sidekick at a circus, seemed to be guiding them on what to do, from inside the basket. Above his mustache, the pilot donned goggles and gloves. Then he turned on the propane gas and watched as the burner came to life, and the frame remained steady, as the pilot dictated.

  “You guys are insane!” Maria shouted.

  “You got any better ideas?” George replied.

  “How about taking a bus?”

  “Come if you want. We’re going,” George said, and he and Kenny climbed in the basket. Their release of the basket also signified liftoff, for the air balloon rose off the ground.