Can I get there from here?

Can I get there from here? It was a plaintive question. From the tone of voice I could hear he’d been lost for quite some time.
“Can I get there from here?”
She nodded.
“You’ll have to go back the way you came,” she said, counting out change and thumbing through a stack of bills. She handed him his money and a receipt and watched as he sipped nervously at the fresh cup of coffee he held.
He winced.
“How far back?”
“About 40 miles.”
He blew loudly on the hot liquid – more from frustration than to cool it.
“Turn left on 72. That’s if the sign’s still up. If it’s not, it’s where the old Sears store used to be.”
His eyes glazed over and he sighed.
“Another 20 or 30 miles and you should see the interstate from the stop sign.”
He nodded, pocketed his change and left the store.

I stopped him out in the parking lot with a smile.
“Follow me. I’ll show you a short-cut. I drive it every day.”
He looked at me for a minute, then nodded.
“I’ll pull over once we get to the last road.”
I watched him set his coffee in a cup holder, put his seat-belt on and start his car.
He looked at me expectantly and I waved him on.
Off we went. Eight turns, four stop signs and two country roads later he was only five miles from where he needed to be…and only 18 miles out of his way, not 30.

Funny isn’t it? We make the wrong turn, end up miles away from where we hoped we were going and then depend on the kindness and knowledge of strangers to help us find our way back. No matter how well-intentioned they are, their advice may delay us more. It may get us there faster. It’s almost impossible to tell who is really giving us the best directions – so it’s better, I’ve learned, to listen to the ones willing to go all or part of the way with us.

That’s true with just about anything isn’t it?

The stories we tell each other

“It was a UFO,” she said.
“I’ve never seen one before, but I swear that’s what it was.”

She must be at least 80. The dog at her feet is an ankle biter.
The dog has spindly legs, a big belly, bulgy eyes, a pink rhinestone collar and a red nylon leash. Except for the leash and collar part, so does Margaret.
She has stopped me as I dump the week’s trash, bagged and heavy, with a thump on the curb.
“Where?” I look upward.
“There,” a gnarled finger points as the dog sniffs my garbage.
I look.
“It’s gone now.”
She looks at me and back up into the trees, then nods.
Her dog is squatting, leaving an anklebiting size pile of dog feces beside my garbage.
She looks away as if she doesn’t notice. I make a mental note. When I’m 80 I’ll ignore my dog squatting.
A neighbor who has just pulled into her driveway across the street sees us talking and joins us. Me. The crapping dog.
“Hi Margaret,” she says, ignoring the dog.
Margaret nods and continues recounting a movie she saw once about abductions and anal probes. We all look up into the wet, black limbs of the oak tree on the corner and past it into the night sky.
The glare from the street light is all we see.
No aliens here.
Yet another couple stops and looks up with us.
What is it?
“Aliens,” the elderly woman begins her story anew.
We all nod solemly.
And for the next ten minutes we recount our own first UFO sightings. We have bonded over the sharing of a mystery.
We all check the tree once again to ensure the UFO hasn’t returned and become lodged there while we were talking.
The dog is finished and kicking ankle-biting sized pieces of wet grass over his deposit.
“Well,” she sighs, looking first at her dog, then at the tiny pile beside the garbage bag.
“I’ll get it,” I say.
She smiles.
The walking after dinner for the exercise couple laughs and strolls off.
“No aliens tonight,” Margaret says, and totters off.
My neighbor watches her walk away.
“Do you really believe she saw a UFO?” she asks.
“Of course.”
She looks at me for a minute, her eyes narrowing.
“I don’t know if I do or not.”
She crosses the street and gets in her car, backs up and stops for a minute to let the traffic go by before pulling and backing in so she can pull directly into traffic in the morning.
I turn to walk back in when the lights in the sky catch my eye and I stop.
There. And again. I rock back and forth, back and forth.
If you stand just right there are UFO’s – the reflection of the neighbor’s car lights on the windows of the unlit upper story house behind the tree.
The neighbor pulls back out and the lights disappear.
I watch them disappear into the night.
The stories we tell each other.
Oh, the stories we tell each other.

Fantasy

I entered a contest several months ago. Well, sent off my entry fee to the NY Midnight Short Story Competition. At Midnight on Jan. 15 we’re all given a genre and a topic and a week to write a short story about it. My genre is “Fantasy” and my topic is….well, it’s a secret. If I win this first heat, I go into a second and have only 24 hours to write a fantastic piece…first prize? $1,2500. Not bad. Off we go then!