From the story Road Trip

As in:
“So, how many horror movies begin with a group of young, dazzlingly attractive people in a vulnerable position, you know, stranded on the side of the road with a non-functioning car or at an abandoned house in the woods, preferably an old farm, complete with rusty, sharp farm implements?” mused Amanda, as she loitered at the side of the road with Patrick, waiting hopefully for a car to pass, despite the fact that they had seen no current signs of life for well over an hour, outside of the coyote, who had thrown one, curious (Amanda claimed “smug”) glance over his shoulder, as he departed the forlorn scene.

“Dazzlingly?  Is that a word?” Patrick retorted.  “I don’t think so, and I’m pretty advanced on these matters.”??Amanda tied the shirt that had been slung about her waist around her head in a loose turban to keep the burgeoning heat off her hair.

“What’s Elsie doing over there?” Amanda asked, as she glanced over at the hopeless and dilapidated crossover SUV, “I think she’s cooking.”

“No way….in this heat?” came Patrick’s incredulous response.  “Son of a gun, I think she is.  Did she chase down that coyote?”??Sure enough, Elsie was bent over a small flame, stirring a pan of eggs in the cast iron pan that had traveled, unwashed, with the group for the previous several hundred miles.

“Well, geez, leave it to Else to find the redemption in this one.  Must be that persevering Scandinavian nature.  You know those people soak fish in lye for days on end until it’s nothing but quivering, fishy, gelatinous goo and then eat it.”

Amanda smiled.  “Lutefisk….it’s not that bad, really, you know, when covered with butter, and accompanied with three or four stiff drinks.  Whoa, Patrick, what’s this?” she asked, as a red truck appeared a quarter mile down the road.  “Okay, people, look alive,” she barked, slinging her thumb out toward the road.

The approaching truck slowed for the curiously out of place couple.  Three young men were riding shoulder to shoulder in the cab; as the truck stopped, the passenger nearest the hitch-hiking couple rolled down his window and said, with a thick German accent, “Where are you going?”

“Wherever you are,” replied Amanda, already halfway around to the back of the truck, at which point she noticed that six sheep occupied the bed of the truck.

“Ya, they’re friendly,” said the driver, who had gotten out of the truck to meet her at the tailgate.

Patrick’s serene smile conveyed complete surrender to the chaos of the moment, “You know, it could have been pigs,” he offered wryly.

–Jamie Borgan