Black [& Crimson] Ice

“Anger gets you into trouble. Ego keeps you in trouble.”

It was a pitch dark January night in Southern Indiana. A hilly place where things and people go to disappear. Or be disappeared as the whole of the geography seemed to leap the impenetrable shark of time and space through some hellish, midwestern voodoo.

The snow came down harder as our Taurus hit a patch of black ice, quickly cut off a snow plow, & headed further down the road. We were presumably heading home as the screech of the plow’s massive blade pushed the car into a “Road Closed” ditch. Its lights blinded the three of us kids in the car.

The portly driver got out of the feral metal beast. He was wearing a John Deere trucker hat, & dirty flannel shirt bursting at the buttons & barely held on by weakened suspenders. You could smell his great, unwashed beard from a country mile away.

He mumbled something under the beard and tapped my window with a .44 Colt.

That’s when my heart leapt out of my chest.

Mom (in her infinite wisdom) rapidly pulled her SIG Sauer from her handbag and put two through the window and into the driver’s fat head.

“Damn,” was all I could say to the State Trooper when he arrived.

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