Where Everybody Looks The Same Jan 15 '07 (Updated Jan 16 '07)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Rick Bragg - Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg From $6 260 Drum Machine Patterns From $8 The Bottom Line Entry #2 in "Southern Livin': Pyfr-style" Driving a car is tricky business, as Mary Ann was about to learn. Not only do you have to keep your eyes on the speedometer, the signs, the map, and the road ahead, but you ought to at least cast an occasional glance at what the fuel gauge might be trying to say. So preoccupied was Mary Ann’s mind with other business that she plumb forgot to fill up before crossing the state line into Arkansas, where gas always seemed to cost a whole lot more than it did in other places. That got her thinking about Sarah Joe, she of the disintegrating marriage, stranded in the sticks and waiting for her older sis to show up and rescue her from the cruel man everybody told her to stay away from in the first place. Sarah’s decision to wed the first unworthy scoundrel to cross her field of vision resulted in a family-wide journey to a part of the country that no one had any particular desire to visit. As far as the Myers clan was concerned, Mary included, people living that far south had more in common with rats than they did with a decent northerner, and so her sense of sisterly duty brought Mary back once again into that low-lying land of rice fields, trailer parks, and hare-brained folks uniformly ugly in appearance. Once she got her safely in the car, Mary swore to give Sarah a verbal thrashing the entire way back to Millardville. She’d just started working out all the hurtful things she’d say to her empty-headed sibling when a town loomed into view, another of those hopelessly podunk affairs that seem to crop up anywhere a road and rail decide to intersect. This one called itself Groven, a fact that failed to interest Mary half as much as the prospect of seeing its grim profile fade to nothing in the rearview mirror. No sooner had she noticed the utter emptiness of Groven’s streets than a man stepped out into the middle of the road, nearly forcing Mary Ann onto the sidewalk to avoid obliterating him with the car. She let out a scream as she swerved past, for it was plainly apparent that the face of the careless pedestrian was as smooth and white and featureless as an egg that’s yet to hatch. Not caring to stop and inquire on the matter, Mary Ann gunned the accelerator and left behind the town of Groven. With her thoughts in disarray and her mind teetering on the brink of insanity on account of what she’d seen, Mary forgot all about the diminishing fuel situation. She hadn’t gone but two miles beyond the point of her terrible encounter when the engine began to cough and sputter before finally calling it quits altogether. Mary frantically exited the car and took off on foot down an adjacent dirt road that wound its way between two fields before ending at the front porch of an old two story house. Having covered half the distance to what she hoped would be a place of refuge, Mary Ann looked back and was stunned to see that the terrifying figure she passed in Groven was less than thirty yards behind her and rapidly closing the gap in between. He had somehow found the time to swap the overalls he’d been wearing only minutes ago for a flannel shirt and dirty jeans, as well as a tattered straw hat with which to keep the sun out of his nonexistent eyes. Running faster than ever, Mary reached the front door and beat upon it hysterically, pleading for someone, anyone within to save her from whatever manner of hellhound was nearly at her heels. When it slowly swung open, all she saw at first was the gray bun of an elderly woman, whose lack of facial features registered in Mary Ann’s mind only seconds before she screamed herself into unconsciousness. Copyright 2007 Abner http://www.epinions.com/content_4937785476

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