Hedgerow: A Drive With A Ghost.

Tonight's Episode Sponsored by Vaporware Sim Earth Tournament.  Now available in Abandonware on the Google Play store.  Impress your friends, take on everyone and everything.  Sim Earth.  And now tonight's presentation: 

1987 Mercury Topaz, some half-ass attempt at Garnet, but you could tell: it was amateur hour.  The thing was more back row, back lot, than glitter and gleam, the kind of piece of junk that gets high ratings on "initial quality", but the turd soon loses the gleam, ya know?

Girl in the back seat with a baby, a blonde woman with a dark haired little urchin, and a granny driving, some old flea market lady, momma or grandma, one didn't know cause the livin was so difficult on them; she had been long ago baked crispy in the tobacco fields.

They stopped for him, the hitch-hiker, them like 75 feet ahead, and him breaking into a trot, just happy someone was stupid enough to pick him up.

Clyde got in the car and said jubilantly, "hey!"

The radio was going through busted stuff, the kind of felt paper ripped-up around the stereo speaker magnets in the dash and doorpanels.  "in the shuffling madness...."

There was kind of a sweet smell in the car, like a trash can on a summer's day, and he almost expected bees or yellow jackets to be swarming, stuff like old chocolate milk cartons, that sweet kind of stink.

"Hey there big boy. Ya going far?" said the old woman, and he could see pallid grey mare teeth, bigger than you'd expect, like she had never took a nipple or a sip-cup.

"Hoping for a bus top to make the nearest national air port" said clyde, pawing at the upholstery on the upper part of the door, the door panel.

Cardboard bullsh*t, that.

"Well, we're getting off the main road in a piece.  We live down a dirt trail."

"Guess I'll get out there." 

"Say hello to my grand girl; that's her back there."

An 150 sped by, around on double yellow lines.  

Speeding to go set a spell somewhere, as it were, to hurry up and then sit for hours, hurry up and sit, hurry up and sit, as it would always be, to hurry up and be on his own time, a white quad cab, squib of plastic fishing pole peeping over the edge of the bed.

The old dried-up little thing pulled a piece of deep-fried chicken out of a carton on the console between the two front seats.  On the radio: "He opens a Gideon Bible.  Turns to page one. Old Charley stole the handle, and the train that watched her go, you know it won't slow down."

Clyde rubbed his stomach, as if he were some kind of faux Buddha of the western world, of a sudden.  "I'll suck on your gamey toes for a bite of those chicken tenders."

The old woman cackled like a dream about witchery and devilment.  "hee hee hee!"

"Lord!" said the young lady in the back holding the baby.  "Iffen he aint hankering for a mouthful...."

"Don't you know it" said the old woman.  She run her old lizard tongue across old red lips.  "Four dollars and you can have the taters.  I done finished all the tenders and the cinnamon sweet bread hush puppies."

---Dreamtime----

They pushed the key combination, something ALT CNTRL Page Up or something, and there was Clyde again, his gray shirt, on the Google ERF console, walking.

---Back in the car, Clyde now gone----

"You know who that wheret?" said the Old Woman.

"Sure don't" said the younger lady, adjusting a tee shirt strap on her shoulder, while still holding the baby.

"Coulda been Dale Earnhardt with his mustache shaved off, like incognito, or the ghost of Hank Williams."

"Or Charles Manson."

"Hee hee hee" cackled the old woman, contorting, and slapping the ugly burgundy steering wheel.