Wrecked on Table Rock Mountain
by John-Forrest Bamberger
While Jed waited for help, he thought about all the shit he'd gone through lately. He had been laid off from his rather nice job as an engineer at a factory six months ago. He'd been working there for twelve years, then one day, just like that, he came into work and found his desk cleared. They just told him they were making adjustments and planned to move the whole operation to Atlanta. Sorry, that's the way it goes.
He tried to get his job back and even spent a lot of money on a lawyer to try to sue the people. The lawyer finally threw in the towel. The company told him not to give them as a reference. His work history was fucked. He couldn't even get unemployment. He tried to get Social Security on the cause that he was a nervous wreck, but that didn't work out either.
While pursuing these unpalatable tasks, he also job-hunted. And job-hunted. And, boy, did he job-hunt. He looked in the papers. He went to agencies. He went door-to-door. He was even reduced to trying to get work in fast-food places out of sheer need, but they thought he was strange to be applying there. He wrote and re-wrote his resume, attending resume-writing workshops in search of the magic formula that will get employers to take notice of you. He hung out in networking groups where everybody was pretending to be helping one another out, but in reality, they were doing cut-throat competing with one another. Nothing worked.
While he was contemplating the very real prospect of becoming a homeless person and considering investing in some good camping equipment for this eventuality, his girlfriend of three years duration decided to leave him. She left a note which read: "I just can't stand to see you wallow in self-pity. I can't be involved with someone who doesn't have his life together." Later, he discovered she was involved with the factory manager who laid him off. Cripes!
Now, perhaps you can get some sense of what Jed was really crying about that day. This business of losing his car, his only means to transport himself to a potential job, was the last straw.
After what seemed a long time for this was an isolated neck of the wood, the rescue men showed up along with the forest ranger, a state cop, and a hospital ambulance. The rescue men stood around chewing tobacco and spitting it out on the road, good old boys lewdly recounting some of the accidents they'd seen in their time. The hospital attendants insisted that Jed come along peacefully with them; after all, he might be seriously injured. The only way Jed could get them off his back was to sign a release form that he wouldn't be liable if he did turn out to be hurt.
The forest ranger was apparently the primary one who had these premises under his jurisdiction. He looked to be in his forties and had features that suggested he was a Native American, possibly a Cherokee Indian. He hovered near Jed close enough to sniff his breath and said:
"You been drinking anything up there!"
Jed sighed. Of course, they'd suspect that. "No," he replied wearily.
"You been smoking any dope!"
Oh boy, it was a good thing it had been a while since he quit after running out. Stuff was getting too expensive these days. "No," he was able to affirm honestly this time. That would be all he needed, to get busted on top of all this.
The state trooper was black. He just seemed amused, scratching his head as if to say white folks sure are odd these days. He poked around the car to verify there wasn't any illegal going-ons in there, then asked a few pointed questions, etc., etc. He drove away, saying he did all he could here, leaving it in the hands of the forest ranger.
After the car was towed away to its final resting place in a wrecker home, the forest ranger suddenly turned to him and asked him in a friendly way if there was anywhere he could take him. Jed asked him to take him home in Asheville if that wouldn't be too out of his way. The ranger said his home was down that way, so it'd be no problem. The ranger let him in and they drove away.
<back ---------------------------------------- next>
