DON'T TOUCH
Zachary Drear
Published by Zachary Drear
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Zachary Drear
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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I've heard various versions of this tale over the years. They are usually so unlike each other that it's hard to recognize the story until near the end, and they always differ in the details. Still, I cannot help but think that there must be some common root from which they all sprang...
~ZD
DON'T TOUCH
CORN fields. In every direction. For as far as he could see.
Billy knew that he’d blown it. Everyone always told him to put his phone in a zip-lock baggie to keep it dry. They usually mentioned the sweat that soaked into his cycling jersey, but apparently it applied equally to a hard downpour of rain.
Another thing he’d blown was not letting someone know which route he was planning to take. Or, rather, he’d blown taking the route he’d let everyone know he was taking. Of course, he usually didn’t stick to his plan exactly, but he usually was in the general vicinity.
He’d also blown the cardinal rule of always carrying a spare tube. Of course, he usually did follow this basic practice. He’d learned the hard way to always have a spare with; today he was learning that it was vital to replace the spare after it had been used.
The main thing he’d blown, however, was his rear tire. Out in the middle of nowhere. Without a working phone. Without much hope of anyone looking for him out here, considering he was about fifty miles from where he said he’d be. On a stretch of road where a car hadn’t passed him in an hour.
At dark.
He had thought he’d see a lot of stars out in the country, but the sky was still overcast. He looked off to the south and could see a faint glow, probably the light pollution of town. It looked a long ways away.
As he looked, something caught his attention off to his left.
What he at first thought was a star down low near the horizon was, he realized after a moment, actually a light in a window of a big farm house. Though hard to make out in the dark, there was a small farm on a hill some ways back from the road. He looked down the road and saw that there was a driveway a couple of hundred yards ahead.
It took a couple of minutes to reach the point where the driveway met the road. It was a narrow gravel roadway, barely wide enough for a single vehicle. Grass grew along the middle, and what Billy could tell that it didn’t see a lot of traffic.
He looked up at the farm again. It was a good quarter mile or more back from the road. He could barely make out a small cluster of buildings in addition to the house, and he noticed that there wasn’t any sort of yard light or other illumination except for the one light in one upper-floor window.
He looked up and down the road, hoping to see approaching headlights.
Nothing.
After a few minutes deliberation, he decided he didn’t really have any choice but to go up there and ask to use the phone. He hoped they didn’t have a dog. Or shoot trespassers first and ask questions later. He’d heard that some of the rural types did that.
He debated whether or not to take his bike up the driveway. On the one hand, he was sick of pushing the thing and would get up there a lot more quickly if he just stashed it in the ditch. On the other hand, it was a thousand dollar bike with two five hundred dollar rims and he was already going to be in trouble for ruining a phone that had been free with a two-year service contract.
He decided to push it.
The trip up the driveway didn’t take too long, and he was relieved that no wild barks or warning shots greeted his approach.
The house was an old-fashioned two-story affair with a front porch. The light was in a window on the upper floor; it appeared to be the glow of a lamp, not the bluish flickering of a television. Maybe the farmer was reading in bed or something; Billy had no idea what time farmers went to bed. Probably early, because they had to get up and milk the cows or something. He looked around the yard, realizing that, except for typical night sounds of insects, it was eerily quiet. If it hadn’t been for the light in the window, he would have thought the place was uninhabited.
He leaned his bike against a tree in front of the house and walked up to the porch. Taking a deep breath and going over what he planned to say to whomever answered the door, he went up the three steps, his bike shoes clicking loudly on the rough wood with each footfall.
There was no doorbell, so he knocked on the door’s faded paint.