Everybody and dog locked out
"See you boys later," Casey McCormick called out of his truck window, and with a diesel rumble, he pulled smoothly away amidst a cloud of dust.
"That was a good hunt," I said to the boys as I unloaded my shotgun.
"That's the way quail hunting should be," Doc said. "It reminded me of the old days."
"The only problem is that we had to pay a day lease to Casey for just one hunt," Wrong Willie said, sighing. "I wish we had a good lease with quail and deer that was all our own. I really didn't want to stop."
"You could hunt three more hours and not fill your limit," Woodrow said, laughing as he watched Doc's Brittany Spaniel make friends with a nearby cactus.
Everybody joined in, laughing at the joke. Willie took it in stride, grinning at Woodrow.
Jerry Wayne walked to the back of Doc's dog trailer and started to open a door to load the first dog.
"It's locked," he said, tugging on the handle. "Where are the keys?"
Doc slapped his pants pocket, paused, then laughed.
"I forgot. We're in Rev's truck. I think this is the first time I've ever hooked that dog trailer to anyone's truck but mine."
He looked at me.
"Rev, throw him the keys."
"I don't have them," I said.
"Sure you do. I locked the box up and then pitched the keys to you just before we started hunting."
"Is that what flew past my head?" I asked.
"You idiot," Doc said. "Of course it was. I said 'Rev, here' and then pitched the keys to you to lock up in the truck."
I looked in the general direction of West Texas.
"Well, they're probably somewhere in all that prickly pear," I said.
Jerry Wayne poked at the grass and brush for a second.
"Well, we'll never find them," he said. "Let's just unscrew the door hasps, put the dogs in and then screw them back shut. That's the same lock we all use. We all have a 2105 at home."
"Don't need it," I said, realizing I had a 2105 lock on my own key ring. "I forgot that was the padlock Doc uses."
I reached into the left-hand pocket of my brush pants, but the key wasn't there. None of the keys were.
Doc stood beside me with his hand out, and I watched the smile slip off his face.
"I don't have my keys," I said.
"So we're locked out of the pickup, too?" Doc asked.
"Looks like it."
"Are they in Casey's truck?" Woodrow asked. "We can call him on the cell. He'll come back. Who has a phone?"
The guys checked pockets, but no one had a phone.
"Now what?" Jerry Wayne asked, staring around us at miles and miles of West Texas nothing.
I looked through the truck window. There were no keys hanging in the ignition. Sensing danger, the dogs settled down in a sunny patch of sand and went to sleep.
With over 150 years of public education and problem-solving experience between us, the guys put their minds to work. We stood in the chill breeze and thought deep thoughts.
We came up with nothing.
Well, that isn't true. The first suggestion was deep if a little extreme.
"Knock out the vent glass," Jerry Wayne said. "That one doesn't cost as much to replace."
"They don't put vent windows in trucks any more," Doc reminded him.
"We can pry the window away with a screwdriver and slip a coat hanger down to catch the lock," Willie thought out loud.
"No screwdriver," I reminded him. "The toolbox is locked, also. And besides, where are we going to get a coat hanger?"
"We can pry the window open with a knife," Woodrow suggested.
"And then what?" I asked. "None of us can slip an arm through a crack far enough to unlock the door."
Doc produced a small pocketknife. "I guess this one is too small, anyway."
And then it suddenly occurred to me.
"Wait, guys. I have a spare key in a magnetic box under the front bumper."
"Huzzah!" they shouted.
Then we screamed in horror at the sight of the truck buried to the front tires in a thick mass of prickly pear. We tried kicking the massive plant out of the way, and everyone succeeded in filling their pants full of thorns and tiny, hair-like stickers.
With most of the prickly vegetation out of the way, the boys muttered to themselves and picked stickers out of their socks, boots, pants and very, very white legs. I knelt gingerly on the ground and, holding onto the front bumper for dear life, swung my upper body down to reach for the keys.
The Wondrous Magnetic Key Holder was nowhere to be found. It had apparently been dragged off in the brush somewhere.
Despite my caution, I had one leg covered in stickers. Luckily, the brush pants over my jeans turned most of them. As I took them off, my hand bumped the right-hand pocket of my jeans, and I felt something.
My keys.
"Hey, guys," I said. "I forgot I was wearing jeans under my brush pants, and I never put my keys in the right-hand pocket, but here they--"
My sentence was interrupted by the crash of glass as an extremely frustrated Doc knocked out the driver's side window with a rock. When I turned, I beheld four monstrously upset hunters standing pantless beside the truck, and I decided not to bring up the issue of a broken window.
It didn't seem right, somehow.
• Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is r.wortham@tx.rr.com.
Share this story:
Google
Yahoo
digg
del.icio.us
facebook
Slashdot
