Steer

We lived on a rural highway, a key leg in a shortcut between intersecting interstates for truck drivers trying to avoid weigh stations or construction. They tore it up badly and often, and the absence of patrolmen left drivers little reason to obey the 55 speed limit. Our parents tried to keep us away from the road, but they both worked in the daytime and didn't have the heart to forbid us from visiting our best friend, Buddy, who lived a couple of minutes up by bike, or a few by foot. We were lectured to stay well off the road and travel alongside it whenever possible, and to always look both ways before crossing, which was unavoidable because Buddy's grandpa lived between us and had some barns and fields across the road full of hay bale mountains and lofts, rickety wooden ladders, stray cats tending litters, exotic machines and tools caked with grease and dust, salt licks, horse stables, and hog troughs. At first I was only allowed to go to or from Buddy's house with my brother, Cliff, or with Buddy (they were both older than me), and was forbidden to cross the road without their permission. This was a particularly troublesome point, because Buddy's grandpa lived right at the crest of a rise in the road that produced a blind spot from both directions.

One day, the three of us were headed from Buddy's house to ours for dinner. Buddy's mother had sent a pie for my mother as thanks for babysitting Buddy that weekend, and even though the brown paper grocery sack it was in was more than half my size, I was stuck carrying it because Cliff and Buddy had recently learned to ride bikes. Buddy talked incessantly about the new steer his grandpa had corralled in the bottom level of his biggest barn. When we reached the midway point of our trip, Cliff instructed me to stay put as he and Buddy crossed the road and disappeared behind the buildings. I cried as I stood alone with my arms aching from holding the pie; I badly wanted to see the steer with Cliff and Buddy and couldn't understand why they had left me behind.

After a couple of minutes, they appeared from around the corner of the roadside barn. Buddy waved to me. I stopped crying and took off running to join them. Just as I set foot on the road, a dump truck sped over the crest of the rise. I froze and stared into the driver's bulging eyes. He jerked the wheel hard left. The truck ruffled my clothes and hair as it barreled past me into the left lane, ramped over the roadside ditch, and landed with a thud in an unmowed field, clearing two wide tire tracks in the weeds as it braked to a stop near the woods across from Buddy's house. “Get out of the road!” Cliff yelled. I obeyed. We watched in silence, mouths agape, as the dump truck sat and breathed. At last it turned toward the road, crawled down into the ditch, stopped to look both ways, and climbed up to resume its course.

Cliff lectured Buddy for waving me over from where the road could not be seen and Buddy lectured me for misinterpreting his wave and not looking. As they escorted me across the road and led me the rest of the way home, they argued about whether or not to tell our parents, because they could not stop me from crying. We entered the house to the smell of spaghetti sauce. When I handed my mother the pie, she kissed me on the forehead and asked me what was wrong.

Dave Yakubik was born and raised in Southeastern Ohio and received his BA with majors in English and Theatre at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. He has been writing fiction for more than a decade but has focused on drama during the last several years. He has spent most of 2008 completing a collection of short stories, of which "Steer" is one. Another was recently published in Emprise Review.

Email: Dave Yakubik

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