Interior Decorating

My mom was in the car business all her adult life, beginning her career as a salesman then moving to finance. For many years after she left my father and moved to Houston she remained single, as was the tendency of all my father's ex-wives. As a result, many of the men she introduced me to wore polyester pants, ten gallon cowboy hats, alligator skin boots, had voices slick as Texas tea and were always trying to charm my mother's only son as a tactical maneuver towards the bedroom.

I lived with my dad all my life, and would visit mom on summer vacation. When I turned seventeen, my dad got me a beat up, navy blue Chevy Nova, the most welcomed and amazing gift I had ever received. It was quirky, and developed rust holes in the floorboards through which you could put your feet and drive Flintstones style. It had an awful backfire; if you let off the gas too quickly it sounded off like a firing squad, or the finale of a fourth of July celebration. But there weren't too many cars in town that could outrun it; she could do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.

Mom came to see my high school graduation, bless her heart. It must have been some shock to come from the land of consumerism, big houses and new cars to no-man's-land Alaska and take up guest accommodations in our shanty trailer. My car must have been the deal breaker, because when I started at college, she told me to get myself down to Houston, because she was sending me home in a new car.

It was a Chevy Cavalier, replete with a strange odor that I had never experienced without a fancy air freshener: new car smell. But that as it turned out would be fleeting.

I gathered a couple of my friends for the road trip back to Washington where I was attending college. We rolled a few joints for the trip and agreed to take shifts and drive straight through. I drove to College Station, home of the Aggies, to pick them up. On the way, a little rock flew into my windshield and created a spider web crack, my first ding, and I cursed the heavens, steaming all the way.

We set out for Washington and I drove for as long as I could take it, and turned the wheel over to Alan, or Tex as everybody called him. I met him in Alaska, and it was by sheerest coincidence that he moved near my mother in Texas. His accent was thick, which earned him his incredibly inventive nickname, and aside from being unemployed, he had every bit of the car salesman personality. He had long blonde hair and fair, feminine features, and was smash hit with the ladies, a great ice breaker at parties.

I decided to get some sleep, so I showed him the map and told him where to go, and he said, "Yeah yeah," in a dismissive tone. When I woke up, we were on a farm road a distance north of where we should have been, and nearly ran into a cow sleeping in the road. I had to get out and shoo him away.

Tex pulled out one of our joints, and after a few pulls, the mood was once again serene as we flew down the highway, once again on track, somewhere in the middle of rural Texas.

"Look," said Tex, pointing ahead to the side of the road, "a deer."

Most people would have slowed down, but he kept on going, happy as you please at eight five. As we approached, the deer decided that it needed to be on the other side of the highway, and shot in front of us in a single bound, and there was nothing we could do. It was in the midst of a jump when we collided, which pushed it's legs forward, spinning the deer a three quarter rotation before it shattered our windshield; it exploded like a water balloon and double layered the interior and everything in it with blood, excrement and liquid the color of wheat grass, and fell into a formless heap onto Tex's lap.

He screamed like a B movie actress and forgot to drive the car, which flew in auto pilot, thankfully straight.

"Tex!" I panicked. "Do not panic! Step on the brake and stop the car."

He looked at me uncomprehendingly and yelled, "What?!"

"Stop the car!"

"Oh my god! I can't hear anything." He put his fingers to his ears and pulled out clumps of green, undigested grass. His face was starting to bleed from a hundred tiny glass cuts, but his eyes registered relief as he realized that he was not deaf after all. He looked at the deer and his panic heightened again.

"Tex just stop the car god dammit," but he picked up the deer instead with two hands and threw it in my lap. I recoiled in disgust and kicked it into the floor boards and jumped up on my seat, every bit as panicked as he was moments before. Tex got control of the car and brought it to a stop.

We realized that the deers head and right front leg had been severed, so out of morbid curiosity I walked back the surprisingly short distance to where the rest was laying alongside the road. It's jaws were lying beside the mouth like a set of dentures.

Eventually an elderly couple stopped to give us a hand. The car had a new interior and a gaping wound through the windshield on the drivers side. They had a large supply of water, as they were coming back from a camping trip, so we each took turns washing the glass and body juices off us. They also gave us three or four old sheets to cover the seats with.

We drove the car to the nearest town and found a Chevy dealership. By now the car smelled like a slaughter house. The head mechanic, with a white patch on his breast that said 'Earl', sporting a lump of Copenhagen between his cheek and gum, took a long appraising look at the damage.

He turned to one of his men and laughed sadistically, "Better call in Billy on this one, he's low man on the totem pole."