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This is the sixth chapter of a Seven Part Series.

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Late in the fall of 1960, the trips to Mexico to retrieve shipments of bananas were two, sometimes three times a week.  The Piggly Wiggly in Fort Stockton, the Winn-Dixie in Mason, and the Hinkey Dinkey in Marfa all placed standing orders.  The Dairy Twin was selling more banana splits than they could keep up with.  Russet and Julienne were raking in the dough, providing the funds to expand into banana bread, banana pudding, and banana muffins that she would make in the expanded kitchen at home and he would deliver to stores with the weekly banana deliveries.

In addition to the bread and muffins, there was something else in the oven.  A bun.  Julienne was expecting their first child.  They both looked forward with anticipation to the birth of their first born.  As Julienne got further along in her pregnancy it became harder and harder for Russet to be gone on the long trips to Mexico to get the weekly shipments of product for resale.  They contemplated hiring someone to drive those trips, but didn’t want to take on the added expense of an employee when they were about to also have the expense of a baby.

It was while lost in thought about the upcoming birth of his first child, the growth of the business he shared with his wife, and the long drive back to Fort Stockton with the full load of bananas in the back of his ‘52 GMC truck that Russet rounded the corner of the old gravel road and came face to face with a scantily clad 18 year old girl standing next to a broken down and disheveled old Ford truck.  She appeared to have possibly been injured, as Russet could tell there was a random smattering of blood on the girl.  She looked frightened and in shock, as though there had been an accident, but there were no other vehicles or people around.

Lorena frantically flagged him down as he slowly passed by.  He slowed down the GMC and pulled over to the side of the road.  Before the truck even stopped all the way, she had grabbed the handle, opened the door and jumped in.  She was as distraught as she was scantily clad.

“He estado cautivo de un narcotraficante durante los últimos cinco años.  Sospecho que ha matado a mi familia.  Me ha hecho cosas indescriptibles.  Acabo de escapar.  Si me atrapan y me devuelven, moriré por lo que he hecho.  ¡te lo ruego, por favor ayúdame!  Por amor de Dios, por favor alejame de aquí.  ¡Debemos ir rápido!” Lorena yelled.

Russet spoke no Spanish.  Lorena spoke no English.  He assumed she had been in an accident, but she seemed to be indicating there may be some other type of danger involved.  As there was no other vehicle, and nobody other than the girl was injured, he assumed the best course of action would be to get her to the nearest hospital and let the local authorities take it from there.  Putting the GMC in gear and pulling back out onto the road, he attempted to communicate his plan to the panicked girl.

“I take you to hospital.  Leave you there so you get help,” he said, speaking loudly, as though that helped, his arms and hands waving in the air to help convey the message, which in reality did no good.  “ I go back to Texas with my bananas.”  He pointed to the load of fruit in the back of the truck.  Lorena understood none of it, but wished he would drive faster.  The gringo seemed nice enough and willing to help, but drove the truck like a grandmother with a load of fresh eggs.

The drive from Chihuahua, Mexico back to Fort Stockton was normally five hours, without stops and if everything went well.  He assumed the chances of everything going well were fairly remote at this point.  Lorena kept looking behind her.  He figured she was not admiring his bananas.  When they pulled into the first village and it was apparent he was looking for someplace to stop, Lorena panicked.

“¡Estúpido hombre blanco!  ¿Qué estás haciendo?  No podemos parar.  Debemos alejarnos de aquí.  ¡Lo antes posible!  ¡Golpea el acelerador o seguro que te unirás a mí en un infierno que no puedes imaginar antes de que te corten las bolas y te las cosan en la boca!”  she could not have been any more animated.

He thought he understood something about having to get away quickly, but Juliette was always the one who dealt with the ordering, so it was she who knew Spanish well.  However, he could almost swear that she referred to something about his balls being cut off and sewn into his mouth if they were caught.  It was either that, or a reference to the Yankees having a heck of a year in ‘61.  But he didn’t think so.  She looked nothing like a typical Yankee’s fan. Or a baseball fan in general, for that matter.

It was then that it dawned on Russet the type of trouble she could have been involved in.  He’d heard about drug lords living in and around the plantations where bananas were grown.  He had been made to understand not to get involved with any of them under any circumstances.  And here he was with a beautiful young girl, barely dressed, possibly wounded, and perhaps on the run for some reason.  Russet pushed his size 11 Red Wing Iron Ranger down on the accelerator till it hit the floor.  The 228 cubic inch inline-six wheezed and belched and did all it could to respond to the call of duty, but the actual response was anemic.

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Within minutes, Lorena hit the floorboard and curled up into a ball.  She’d been looking out the back window and spotted the Mexican police cars approaching at rapid speed.  Russet slowed and gave the right away, but didn’t pull all the way over or come to a full stop.  All three continued on, only giving Russet and his bananas a cursory glance.  He realized they had dodged a bullet, but feared what would happen if the police turned around and came back.  Having never had a single encounter with the law in all his trips across the border, nor any sort of trouble, Russet couldn’t believe that his attempt at being a Good Samaritan could possibly keep him from ever seeing his unborn child.

They waited till they got across the border to stop, though they each needed to relieve themselves and the GMC’s tank was nearly on EMPTY.  Russet figured they were safe.  He filled the truck with gas and signaled for Lorena to go to the toilet.  She feared he would leave her if she left his sight, but took the chance.  She was relieved and grateful to find him waiting for her at the side of the green and yellow truck.

He signaled for her to get into the cab, and then wrapped an old wool Pendleton camp blanket around her.  It was getting cold and Lorena had barely anything on.  Russet kept the blanket behind the seat of the truck for just such occasions, the heater on the old truck being dicey at best.  The two would occasionally attempt to communicate, but would only grow frustrated that each could not understand the other.  The last two hours before they neared Fort Stockton were spent in silence.  Lorna fell asleep against the passenger door.

Less than ten miles outside of town, Russet glanced over at the sleeping young woman.  The Pendleton had fallen down from around her shoulders and the thin cotton nightgown underneath gaped open.  He willed himself not to look.  But he was weak. The attractiveness of Lorena’s ample bosom called out to him like a moth to a flame.  His glance became a gaze, the gaze turned into a stare.  It was only the sound of a blaring horn that made him look up and see he crossed the center dividing line of the highway and was headed straight for a black Ford Falcon.

Overcompensating, Russet grabbed the wheel and turned it hard to the right.  Too hard.  The truck, with its high center of gravity and heavy load of bananas, veered off the highway and landed on its side in the bar ditch.  Inside the Falcon, Mabel hit the accelerator rather than the brake in a panic, and turned the wheel to the right much harder than she needed to.  The combination of rapid acceleration, oversteer, and the bananas covering the road provided the perfect storm of conditions for disaster.  The little Falcon rolled completely over once before coming to a stop in the bar ditch on the opposite side of the highway as Russet’s truck.

Heck Haskel rolled up onto the scene in his wrecker before the Fort Stockton police even arrived.  He brought his 1953 Ford F500 Marmon-Herrington 4×4 Wrecker to a stop midway between the two vehicles on either side of the highway.  Heck scratched his head as he surveyed the scene, attempting to determine what had taken place.  The front end of each vehicle had not sustained damage, as though there had been a head on collision.  Yet both were on opposite sides of the highway, one on its side, the other with the roof nearly crushed.  Walking as carefully as he could back to the F500 to avoid slipping on the bananas, Heck got on the radio and called for additional assistance.  “Gonna need another wrecker out here.  At least one ambulance.  Maybe two.  We got us a real mess here.”

Heck turned off the key on the dash and the 239 cubic inch flathead V8 fell silent.  Hopping out of the bright red cab, he grabbed his knee high rubber boots off the back deck of the wrecker, hoping to get traction through the conglomeration of sacrificed fruit covering the scene and make his way to the first vehicle.  He tried to gird himself for what might be awaiting him.

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