At Least They're Committed

I ran into the house and quickly dropped the groceries and, panicked, did a 180 at 190 mph back out to the truck, but what I saw made my blood run cold and hot all at once and I screamed, “Don’t move! Don’t move!” But he took a step toward the house and I screamed even louder, “NOOOO, STOP! FREEZE!” and he froze in his tracks and I was near tears and Dez, you and your grandpa were looking at me as if I’d finally lost it.

I had buzzed to the grocery store Saturday and snagged a few things for dinner, but I’d forgotten to get D his soda. I was in Dexter, my truck, heading home when this occurred to me, so I quickly pulled into the liquor store because they’d have soda, right? Wrong. Well, they didn’t have Diet Dr. Pepper anyway. So I grab myself a soda and D a couple of 24 oz. Newcastles, figuring that’s more exciting than Dr. Pepper anyway.

As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed Demon Spawn standing in the street chatting with his girlfriend by her car as she prepared to head home. I also noticed he was barefoot.

I parked and stuck the bottles of beer in the grocery bags to make it easier to carry all the stuff into the house, but as I opened the door to the truck, one of the damn bottles leaped out of the bag and no, did not shatter, no, no, much more like exploded onto the cement, shards of glass jettisoning into the yard, lacing into the mulch, skirting across the driveway. “Fuck.”

I ran into the house to drop the groceries and grab the broom but, as I mentioned before, I was too late. When I turned around, there was DS standing barefoot right in the middle of a field of broken glass. He was looking into the truck to see if there was anything else he should grab, and then he heard me scream. He took a step toward the house, leaving the truck door open and I screamed louder. I bolted outside crying out about broken glass and he looked down. He’d had to have taken at least three steps through the glass to get to where he was, and he was at that point surrounded by violent chunks of sharp, jagged glass and the tiniest of shards. I quickly cleared a path for him and he safely got to the house.

There was no reason he should have or could have missed the broken glass, the odds were slim that he could have walked through that field of dangerous debris unscathed. And it occurred to me then that if there was ever a time to be grateful for small miracles, that was a pretty good one.