There were no clouds in the sky to provide respite from the hot August sun. No traffic sounds, only the lazy buzzing of bees in the bergamot along the ditches in the sleepy little town.
Daniel climbed out of his SUV and jumped into the dusty parking lot. His long legs taking few strikes into the gas station/convenience store. He had in mind a big tall bottle of coke and maybe a bottle of water. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast but he had smoked nearly a whole pack of cigarettes and talked on the phone for more than and hour. And the combination had made his throat raw and his voice scratchy. .The door swung open to the nearly empty store.
An amorous young couple was leaning against each other and into a chip package rack. At the counter two eight year olds were turning their pockets out looking for a nickel. They each had a handful of licorice. Daniel watched and thought that if the kids didn’t find the nickel, he would donate one to them so that they wouldn’t have to put the candy back in the jar. Their grubby little fingers matched their grubby little toes that were shoeless on the filthy linoleum.
The Asian clerk leaned over the glass counter urging them to find the change and admonished them in his Urdu accent to stop antagonizing him and begin behaving themselves and to be responsible for having the right money before they came into his store and chose the candy again.
They finally fished out a nickel covered in fuzz and placed it on the counter. They looked up at the clerk and he waved them away and told them not to come back until they were prepared to be responsible and considerate. Their look said that they didn’t know what that could possibly mean. The little boy opened the door and they went outside and sat on the curb. The cool store air followed them out but soon evaporated in the heat.
Daniel walked over to the cold soft drink fridge and found a coke. He snapped off the plastic lid and drank the whole bottle in one go. He reached into the fridge again and this time pulled out a bottle of water. Now that his thirst was slaked he thought that he would have been smarter to have had the water first and then savoured the coke for the road.
The sound of a deisel engine approaching followed a huge cloud of dust in front of the store.
Daniel handed the clerk a five dollar bill and as the clerk turned to open the till, a woman ran up to the door, she jerked it open putting her head inside, she screamed. “Some come quick please, come quick.” She wailed. “Oh God, my husband is dead. He’s in there. She pointed to the running motor home with its driver door open.
Daniel left his water and change on the counter and followed her out. She was screaming hysterically and pointing to the motor home that was still running and parked under the gas pump canopy.
‘What? Daniel said. “Where is he?” he spun his head from side to side as if to see the dead man anywhere but the motor home.
“Up there,” the woman pointed “just go up and look”. Daniel leaped up into the motor home’s driver seat. Peering between the seats he saw the woman’s husband lying on the floor, the man’s eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling. Daniel squeezed himself through the gap between the seats and bent down beside the man. He placed his ear on the husband’s chest and listened. He thought he could hear a faint rasping noise, as if the man’s lungs were trying to expand and yet there was no rise and fall of his chest. Daniel put his hands together in the CPR rescue position and finding the man’s sternum he leaned heavily onto his chest. Again and again he leaned forward putting more pressure into the action with each movement. Suddenly something flew out of the man’s mouth and past Daniel’s ear hitting the window behind him. Simultaneously the motor home’s door flew open and there stood the hysterically crying woman, the two dirty children behind her and the amorous couple entwined together.
In his heavy accent the store clerk, with a phone in his hand and was running across the parking lot. “911, 911” he screamed, “You must come now, you must come now. A man is dying in front of my store and that will chase away customers. This man needs to be attended to with haste. Do not dally,’” he admonished. “Do not dilly-dally!”
Daniel returned his attention to the man. Still lying on his back the man began to cough and flutter his eyes. Daniel rolled him to his side and the man, now quite red in the face, grabbed Daniel’s hand and held it tight. ‘Thank you.” He croaked. “Thank you.”
His wife hoisted herself up the steps. Holding the door frame for balance and leverage she swung herself into the motor home and bent down to peer into her husband’s face. “What happened? Did you have a heart attack? Are you having a stroke?” she asked as she caressed his face.
Daniel looked around the motor home; he reached over and picked something up off the floor under the window. “No, I don’t think your husband had either one of those things,” he said, handing her the slimy piece of carrot. “I think he choked on this.”
The woman stared open mouthed at her husband. “You choked? You choked on a carrot? I thought you were dead; you scared the hell out of me. I nearly drove off the road when I heard you fall and saw you writhing on the floor. You bastard! You nearly killed me with worry. You son of a bitch, on a god damn carrot!” She began to pummel him with her fists, she pounded his shoulders and he held his arms up in front of his face to protect himself.
His wife was weeping by now. “How dare you! That is so typical, that is so mean.”
“I’m okay now.” The man said. The wail of sirens could be heard drawing closer. “I just choked on a carrot, its not he end of the world”
“Not the end of the world!” She screamed and began to pound him again. She was red faced with anger. Do you know what it would mean if you died? Have you any idea?
“I’m so sorry my love,. I just wanted to make some lunch” The man licked his lips and pleaded with his wife, “Can I have a drink of water?”
“Not yet I am afraid.” A voice came from behind. ”Move aside please,” a burly woman in a paramedic uniform came up the steps, through the side door of the motor home and squatted down beside the red faced man.
She put her fingers on his eye lids and pulled them up. Speaking to her partner who stood beside the open ambulance door she shouted. “Pupils are normal, not dilated, moving.” She placed her gloved fingers on the man’s carotid artery for a pulse.
Everyone inside and outside the motor home began speaking at once. A cloud of dust arose and gravel flew as a patrol car jammed on its brakes and stopped a few feet from the little crowd. “Stand aside everyone, stand aside.” A police officer leapt from the car and began moving up the motor home steps. He reached across the medic and placed his hand on the motor home woman’s shoulder. “What’s all the fuss here, what is happening? Step out side ma’am.”
The door way was plugged by the paramedic’s backside and rescue kit. “I can’t.” the woman said, “I can’t get out”
“Yes, you can. Step aside please?” He bullied the paramedic to one side and, grabbing the motor home woman’s arm, he pulled her down the steps.
“What is going on here?” he demanded. Why are you punching that man?
The motor home lady looked down at her shins, which by now, had begun to bleed from the scraping they had received as she was dragged down the metal steps of the vehicle.
“My husband,” she sobbed, “My husband, I thought he was dead, and he, he, he, “she swallowed and sobbed, “he was just choking.”
“You were choking him?” The officer asked, as he reached behind his back to find his hand cuffs. He pushed her towards the patrol car and as they moved he bent her arms behind her and snapped on the cuffs.
The hubbub inside the motor home rose to a crescendo as the other paramedic rolled up a stretcher and began undoing the straps that held the oxygen tank to the bed.
The paramedic inside the motor home snapped a mask onto the motor home man’s face and spinning him around, she grabbed him under the arms and hoisted him up and over the steps and onto the stretcher. She attached the oxygen hose and tucked the blanket around the man. She strapped him down and began to roll him towards the ambulance.
Inside the motor home, Daniel watched the circus unfold. He had been squashed up against the sink and was unable to get to either the side door or the driver’s door.
“Wait a minute,” he said, “I think you have all misread this situation. I just saved the guy from choking, that’s all. He choked on a carrot.”
As the doorway cleared, Daniel jumped down the steps and followed the stretcher to the ambulance.
The police officer by now had the motor home woman up against the fender of the patrol car and was running his hands up and down the sides of her cargo pants.
“Turn out your pockets ma’am.” He barked.
“I can’t, I am handcuffed.” She sobbed. Tears had streaked her face with mascara and she was gasping for breath.
“I will help you” announced the store clerk, “Let me open the pocket flaps and find what is stored inside. These are just the sort of pants that the young people wear when they come into my store and they fill them full of my inventory. They steal from me right and left, right and left”. He began to look inside the woman’s pockets as if he would find the motherlode of stolen gum cards, chocolate bars, phone cards and cigarettes.
“Stop it!” yelled Daniel. “Everyone just stop. The situation is under control, there is not need to arrest anyone, or take anyone away in an ambulance. This is crazy.”
The handcuffs, which had only just been removed from the woman’s wrists were quickly snapped onto Daniel’s wrists.
“What?” he managed to gasp as the officer placed his hand on Daniel’s head and bent him into the back seat of the police cruiser.
“What are you doing?”
“Interfering with an arresting officer? Is that your game?” The officer slammed the door.
The lights were on and flashing blue and red, and the siren screaming as the car sped down the highway with Daniel alone in the back.
Twenty minutes later the motor home woman, still shaking, and the motor home man sat on the steps of the motor home. He still had the ECG sticky tabs on his chest and she with rivulets of dried blood on her shins.
A friggin carrot? This is all about a friggin carrot she held her head in her hands and sobbed.
On a patch of grass in the dark shade of the storage shed behind the store the two grubby little kids opened the wallet they had picked up off the ground when the man had been hoisted onto the gurney.
“Wow!” they said in unison. “Five hundred bucks!” They looked at each other with their mouths open. They took the bills and spread them out on the ground and tossed the wallet aside.
The amorous teenagers waited until the kids had gone before they went behind the store to their usual hiding place where no one would see them. Looking down, they discovered the wallet in the grass. They thumbed through the wallet and found several credit cards and slipped them into their back pockets.
They swayed off down the road with their arms wrapped around each other, their hands in each other’s back pockets, where they fingered the credit cards.
The broken asphalt road crunched beneath their feet as the children walked down Hollywood Boulevard towards home. Dried grass stuck in the cracks where seeds had caught and were promised life earlier in the summer, cigarette wrappers whipped back and forth where they were woven into the standing grass. The wind blew a metal sign back and forth, creaking and squawking over head. Although the pink and green paint was peeling and chipped the sign still clearly spelled out Aloha Pines Holiday and Trailer Park. A long ago dream of swaying palms and gentle ocean breezes had been eroded and rusted away by the relentless desert wind of southern Idaho.
The children turned down Maui Lane, past the broken concrete of the deserted trailer pads until they came to their grandmother’s home. The blue green leaves of the plastic plants that lined the driveway led the way to the pink and grey singlewide trailer. The clothes line which was tied to the closest pine tree, dipped low to the dusty ground was full of drying blue jeans and men’s shirts and blocked the curious visitor’s view of the front door.
“Where you kids been? I sent you to the store for my cigarettes over an hour ago”. The voice came from in the trailer and over the sound of Dr Phil on the TV. “Didn’t that little bastard give you any cigarettes? Cheap little bastard, I told him I’ll settle up my credit next week when the cheque comes.
ttle hand. 
.JPG)
