Daisy

               Central Idaho

 

     On the third of July, Parks and I left our cow camp along the Payette River and drank our way to Elk City, Idaho. A buddy of ours represented the Idaho County Sheriff's Department as the sole deputy in Elk City. We wanted to see how he handled an entire town full of two-fisted sawmill workers on a holiday when it was un-American to be caught without a beer in your hand.
     I provided the transportation. My ride at the time was Daisy, a pistachio-green early-sixties Chevrolet Nova. The car had lived too long on logging roads and goat trails. 
     A sixpack beyond Grangeville, Daisy had an asthma attack and coughed to a stop. I unwired her hood, propped it up with a limb, twisted off her air cleaner, set it on a stump, found a rock, and whacked her alongside the float bowl. She grunted, wheezed, woke up, and we zigzagged on our merry way. A couple of cold ones later I remembered that the air cleaner was back there on the stump. What the hell, it would be there tomorrow on our way back.
     Our pal the deputy wasn't too pleased to have in his jurisdiction a couple more rowdies smelling of horse manure and stale beer, but our brotherhood went way back to wintering together in the high country, thirty miles off the road. He knew we'd never give him genuine trouble, so he tolerated our presence with the stipulation that we not drive an inch farther until the next morning.
     He was charged with keeping the peace in Elk City, with stopping whiskey disputes from escalating into battery. He worked to prevent a midnight drive back to log camp from becoming suicide or vehicular manslaughter. He was well equipped for this job, the size of a bunk of plywood with a smile four lanes wide, and he had been a military policeman in Viet Nam, so he was adept at the use of numchuks. 
     When the fights broke out in the joints that night, Stewart walked through the bar doors smiling, numchuks whipping and clicking around his elbows and shoulders like a hybrid between Bruce Lee and a baton twirler. The sound of that spinning teakwood stopped all activity in the saloon. Without slowing the whirling, the deputy explained that he didn't want anyone to get hurt in Elk City, and that he would appreciate it folks would stop hitting each other, then he flicked one of the numchuks within a cigarette paper of the nose of the fellow picking the fight. It worked.  Loggers know what it is like to get smacked in the schnoz with a limb. I was proud of him.
    At daylight on the Fourth, Parks and I woke in the dirt alongside Daisy, sore and grungy, partied out, so we decided to head back to cow camp. Fifty miles of gravel later, Daisy sneezed once on the streets of Grangeville, just enough to remind me that I had driven past her air cleaner. I'd find another one somewhere.
    It was hot in the Salmon River canyon that day. By the time we hit the edge of Riggins, Parks and I had sweated out the party, were cottonmouth parched and ready for any kind of liquid besides beer. I nudged Daisy into a strip of shade on the north side of a one-horse drive-in calling itself "The Home of the Savageburger."
    There were thirsty folks at the take-out window. While Parks and I waited our turn, beating the dust out of our hats, looking like a pair of escapees from the O. K. Corral drunk tank, a family station wagon with Minnesota plates pulled into the lot. The driver, decked out in Madras plaid Bermuda shorts, took his place in line behind us. When it came our turn to order, we asked for the biggest cup of lemonade on the premises, please, the fifty-five gallon size if possible.
    We paid for our drinks and were walking back into the shade to administer the dosage, when I heard the pale fellow tell the high school girl behind the sliding screen that he wanted two orders of french fries, and the biggest cup of lemonade on the premises, the fifty-five gallon size if possible.
     Our drinks went down just fine and we'd live to see our cattle again, but Daisy suffered from the heat. When I tried to start her, she puked a thimbleful of gasoline out of her naked carbureator onto the exhaust manifold and flames began shooting from the corners of her ratty hood. By the time I had the haywire latch untwisted and the hood popped I could tell I had to do something or we were going to be in big trouble in a short time.
     Just then, around the corner of the building, the Minnesotan was taking delivery on his order. Without explaining myself, I ran over to the little ledge in front of the take-out window, grabbed his big cup of lemonade, ran back around to Daisy, jerked up her hood, and with one lucky splash doused her fire. Whew.
     The Minnesotan, however, was positive he had been the victim of an Idaho lemonade snatching. He came scooting around the corner of the building, spotted me with his empty cup, and began to pummel me with big, civilized words about how he wanted my name, right now, so he could notify the proper authorities of my exceedingly inappropriate actions, and how there was a good chance I would be hearing from his attorney regarding certain civil damages, blah, blah, blah.
     Parks wanted to squish him. I finally got Parks backed off and the little dude jacked down far enough to explain that I had acted in an emergency, and how, bless him, his good taste in beverages had saved my car, the French fry factory, and the greater part of central Idaho from a horrible, smoky death. I considered him to be a true hero and I would gladly pay for anything that he and the members of his family wished to order from the establishment.
    As Daisy limped back onto the highway, the vacationing accountant, his wife, and two young sons were hunkered in their air-conditioned ride, nibbling on Savageburgers and sipping large lemonades. One of the boys waved a little American flag at us.