BAM! BAM!
I slammed on the brakes of my two-year-old Honda CRV and jumped out. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" I screamed as I looked at the two blown tires. I looked behind my SUV and saw the huge hole that caused the blowouts. "What else can go wrong today?" I screamed. But no one was around to hear me.
It was pitch dark. I was on a one-lane dirt road someplace in southern West Virginia. Or maybe even in Kentucky. At this point, I didn't have a clue. My Honda didn't have a built in GPS, and I had left my damn phone in a restaurant several hours ago. I was hopelessly lost. I sat in my crippled SUV and cried. How could this trip have gone so wrong?
I suppose I should start at the beginning. My name is Brianna, but my friends call me Bri. I graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelors and a masters in nursing when I was 24 years old and was married to Jackson Carter two years later. The first three years of our marriage were wonderful, and the last three years were horrible. Our divorce was final four weeks ago a week after I turned 32.
I decided to change my life and leave the city, so I quit my job and hit the road two weeks ago. I aimlessly wandered the eastern seaboard of the country visiting places I had never been. I spent time in Florida, Virginia Beach, Washington D.C., and had just treated myself to a very expensive night at the resort in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia. I put on a pair of mid-thigh length shorts and a button up top, had breakfast at the resort's famous restaurant and then got my car.
I wanted to drive through the beautiful mountainous back country of West Virginia so I got off the main roads and was having a good time touring the places that most people never see. I stopped at a local restaurant, and apparently left my phone on the table when I left.
By the time I realized my phone was missing, I had no idea how to get back to that restaurant. I kept driving, in hopes of finding a larger town, but all I saw was hills, dirt roads, trailers, closed mines and shacks. And I ended up on this one-lane dirt road at 10:00 at night with two flat tires, no phone and no idea where I was. So, I had a good cry.
I don't know how long I sat there until I saw a flickering light off in the woods. It wasn't a natural sight so I got out of my car and started walking through the woods towards the light. When I was about 100 feet away, I saw a couple small fires and three men working around something that appeared to be a big pole.
"That's fer enough!" the voice said as I felt something pushing on my back. "Lift them hands."
I lifted my hands into the air. "Please! Please help me," I whimpered. "I'm . . . I'm l-lost and I . . . "
"Shut up," the voice said. "Walk for ward and keep yer hands up."
When I stepped into the clearing, the three men turned and walked towards me, and the man behind me walked around to my front. As I was looking at the three older men and one young man, I heard one of them say, "Well looky here. Looks like we caught ourselves a little nigger girlie. What chu doin way out here, girlie?"
The three older men were looking at me like I had just shot their favorite hound dog. The younger man had more of a puzzled sympathetic look on his face. I immediately knew that this was the guy I needed to get on my side. He was bigger than the others; maybe 6'3" tall, and looked to weigh well over 200 pounds. He had freckles on his face and his arms were muscular. He wasn't a bad looking man, for a redneck. All he had on was a pair of coveralls and a pair of boots. I guessed that the older men were in their 60s and the younger man was probably early 20s.
"Please," I begged. "My car broke down and I need . . . "
"Shut up," one of the older men said. He looked at one of the other older men and said, "Well, Herb. What do yaw anna do with this here nigger girl?"
The one called Herb looked at me for a few seconds and said, "Donny, we can't let her go. She's seen our operation."
I finally looked away from the men at the big pole they had been working on and realized that it was holding a big piece of netting. When I looked below the netting, the light from the flickering fire supplied just enough light for me to recognize some healthy five-foot-tall marijuana plants. "Oh shit," I thought to myself. I stumbled on a bunch of redneck idiots growing weed."
AS I turned my head back to the men, I saw that the three older ones had moved closer together and were whispering back-and-forth. The younger man had moved closer to me and was only about four feet away. "What's yer name?" He asked.
"Bri-Brianna."
He smiled. "Nice name. I'm Iggy. How old are you Brianna?"
"I . . . I'm 32," I squeaked out.
He walked closer and looked down at me. He said, "You ain't very big, are ya?"
I looked up at this man who was at least a foot taller than me, and I began to tremble. "N-no, I'm not very big. I'm j-j-just 5'2" tall and I weigh 98 pounds."
He laughed and said, "Sheee-it! I weigh more-n-twice that."