by Elliot Siemon

Created on: July 10, 2009

A STAB IN THE DARK

It seemed the car was drawn to the right by some invisible hand. A slight hint of what he thought was a distant rumble of thunder, then the steering wheel began to vibrate with a regular beat a moment before the front right side settled low into the sand on the right. Simply marked 42, it was a little more than a trail at that point, nearly straight, shimmering off into the distance among heat waves, sand devils and flanked by cacti and tumble weed. His heart sank along with the flat tire into the right shoulder sand, a sinking feeling of dread, of being totally alone, drifting eastward with the final cloud of dust.

A few minutes before, the steering had became less responsive, but it wasn't a red flag. Handling, on sand or gravel was always 'wishi-washi' and 42 was little more than a trail across hard-pack and sand that had seen little recent use.

Boris had wondered about the pits that he thought were un-natural, and what resembled ditches cut across the road about a quarter mile from where it split from a curve going off on an oblique angle from the smooth blacktop of Route 39, 20 miles back. He had hit the breaks just in time and picked his way around the deep groves, along the shoulder and literally off the road at one point. It almost said, don't use this road, but car rental lady said it was the shortest route to An-kara, where he was to meet up with the director and film crew. And the locals usually know.

He sat for a moments bathing in the cool stream of AC directed at his face and chest. Still, a still moment of truth before the dreaded truth of facing the 110 + degrees of scorching Arizona heat. A water bottle was wrestled from his knapsack. It was still cool and it felt so good going down, along with the realization he was more dehydrated than he felt. He drank some more, and more, compulsive avoidance behavior of the task he needed to do.

Automatically thinking in engineering terms, he thought of the donut spare and how it would affect the handling. On a front wheel drive car especially on such a road, it might be better to switch one of the rear tires to the front and put the donut tire on the rear. But that would require two jacks and it was clear that a rental car would not have that. His Jeep, waiting for him in Denver, was packed with two jacks, foot pump and a tire plug kit, spare oil and water, along with a tightly rolled blanket should he ever be stranded in the winter - tools of an experienced

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