Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [67]
My car snaked through the traffic jam. I drove along the breakdown lane, passing vehicles until I pulled behind two semis. Everything halted. Those big trucks in front of me had slowed to a squat, blocked by a Crown Vic highway patrol cruiser that had suddenly lurched across the road.
I jumped out of the Pathfinder and approached the cruiser to ask how long this delay might last. Two troopers sat in the front seat of the Ford, a cardboard takeout tray containing three cups of coffee fresh from some diner perched between them.
I drew closer. The cruiser’s coffee-steamed window silently glided down. I could see the driver was one of those hard cases. He looked as pale and hollow-cheeked as a cadaver with dark, Dennis Hopper eyes: a no-nonsense squint tinged with the mania of someone peaking after a forty-eight-hour caffeine binge. One look at him sent shudders deep through my soul. I thought I had uncovered the whereabouts of that third gunman from Dealey Plaza. “What the hell do you want sneaking over here like that,” he asked in a drill instructor’s emphatic cadence.
I had seen his sort before in army boot camp, bullet-happy bastards who got their jollies firing live ammo over the heads of raw recruits shitting their pants as they crawled through the parade ground mud. The slight heft to his right shoulder indicated that the fingers of his gun hand had already coiled around the butt end of a pistol. All that good police training had left this trooper leery of surprise. I raised my hands chest high so he could see I traveled unarmed and answered, “Well, to tell you the truth, I wondered if you had any plans for that extra cup of java?”
That witty repartee—the best I could do considering the late hour and the inclement conditions—dropped his jaw. He bristled, “Oh, yeah, wiseass? And just who the hell do you think you are?”
“My name is Bill Lee, and I live in Craftsbury. Can you tell me how quickly you can get these lanes cleared? I have to catch a flight in Montreal.”
His partner perked up at the mention of my name. This was just a kid, the eternal sidekick, so porcine he resembled a rump roast with a mouth slit under a button nose and a pair of Mr. Potato Head eyes. The outline of a meager goatee and the slick oily sheen on his cheeks indicated that his hormones were still Mexican jumping beans slamdancing to some insatiable carnal rhythm. I even detected a hint of Bazooka bubble gum on his breath when he leaned over to scrutinize my face.
“Dear god,” he told his grim partner, “that really is Bill Lee.” Ah, a stroke of luck. This member of Vermont’s finest had rooted for the Red Sox since he had worn diapers. As soon as I explained my situation, the troopers got out to wave both trucks to the side of the road. In a country obsessed with all things famous, even semicelebrity retained its perks.
With the lane cleared, I prepared to gun the Pathfinder and vamoose. But Trooper Drill Sergeant warned me not to move. “You’re asking for trouble if you leave now,” he said while pointing up the steep highway leading to the road home. “There are cars and trucks jackknifed all along that incline. A snowplow will be here in a few minutes. You can follow him up. It will be a lot safer.”
Fifteen minutes passed. I nudged my ears into that frigid wind, hoping to hear the snowplow’s comforting rumble in the distance. Nothing but wind whistling. Now I began to feel antsy. The two officers sat back in the cruiser, still sipping their coffee. It occurred to me that if they believed the road too dangerous to travel until the snowplows did their work, neither of them would be eager to follow if I just took off. Which is exactly what I did.
I shifted into third gear and stayed there to keep the weight of the Pathfinder bearing down on the front wheels. This created just enough torque to scramble up the highway grade.