“Get outta the car, Mabel. It’s goin’ over the cliff.”
“Now, why do you want to do that, Wompus. It’s a perfectly good SUV.”
“It ain’t gonna be in ‘bout three minutes. Everybody who watches teevee and the Internet has seen this car and are pointin’ at us in ever’ town we been to on our vacation and I’m tired of being a laughing stock of the whole nation.”
Mabel started laughing. She sat in the passenger seat and laughed so hard she had to bury her mouth in her hands and breathe through her nose. Wompus was standing outside the branded SUV holding her door open, trying to get her to exit the vehicle so he could release the emergency brake and send it over the bank of a dirt road in South Dakota into a steep canyon clustered with bur oak.
“Oh, no. Not you, too, Mabel. Not from you.”
Mabel wiped the snot and tears off the backs of her fingers onto Wompus’s trouser leg. He’d held it out for her. “What do you expect, you durn fool,” she said. “All this is your fault. Pickin’ that bison calf up and puttin’ in the car and takin’ it to the Yellowstone ranger station. I told you it was a dumb idea before you went and did it.”
Wompus wiped his right hand down over his face, pausing to pinch the inner crevices of his tightly squeezed eyes. His hand continued firmly down over his lips and chin until he had his fingers wrapped tightly around his own throat.
He began to squeeze mightily. “I swear, woman,’ he gasped. “If I could, I’d choke myself to death right now, that’s how humiliated I am. I told ya, I thought he was cold and lonely. He was standin’ on the edge of the highway like he was lookin’ fer help.”
Mabel shook her head in wonder. She looked up into the panicked eyes of her husband of 28 years, and saw the same simple-minded, stubborn, good-hearted, shirt-off-his-back man she married so long ago in that hot clapboard church in Quebec, Louisiana.
“That’s what bison do, you goofball.” She swatted at him and missed. “They stand around in fields along the roads. It’s a park. You don’t think wild animals figured out how to survive winter until you came along? If you’d just listen to me once in a while, Wompus, you wouldn’t make such a durn fool a yourself.”
Wompus let loose of the door and began pacing, wringing his hands. “I listen to you plenty, all day every day fer 38 years. You’re trying to run me like a machine or treat me like a seven-year old. Man’s gotta think fer himself once in a while. I’ve seen things. I know things. I get around. Ain’t nothing gets by me.”
He turned and stepped up to Mabel. He lay his hand gently on her shoulder. With the other hand he jabbed himself in the right temple with his forefinger. “Can’t you once in a while ferget about this thick bone head o’ mine and instead look down here.” He jabbed at his chest. “Look at my intentions, Mabel. I did it because I care about other ignorant creatures. I saw danger everywhere.”
Mabel reached up at patted his hand on her shoulder. Her face softened. She closed her eyes and said, “I know, Wompus. You got a good heart. Like the time you netted all those wild salmon and drove them 40 miles upstream to help them out, because of the rapids. They all died, Wompus, in the back of your truck. Just like that little bison baby that the rangers had to euthanize. Why do you do these things?”
“The bag tore,” he said.
“How about that time you tried to help build a dam for that three-legged beaver? You remember what happened? You put latches on the doors and the beaver drowned.”
“The river current kept swinging them open.”
“Wompus, beaver dams don’t have doors. You ain’t no beaver, and no beaver is ever gonna come by and help you cut down trees. You gotta trust that even dumb creatures can figure out how to stay alive.”
“I was only trying to help. Now I gotta go see a judge. What am I gonna tell him?”
Mabel swung her legs out of the vehicle and planted them firmly on the ground. She kept ahold of Wompus’s left hand and stood to face him nose to nose. With her left hand she grabbed gentle hold of his upper right arm and slowly turned the two of them until Wompus’s wompus was pointing toward the passenger seat. She firmly helped him to sit down, and gently assisted as he swung in his legs. She handed him the seatbelt, shut the door, and moved to the driver’s seat.
“What are you doin’, woman?”
“I’m taking the wheel, Wompus. Listen to me now. You walk into that court room with your checkbook and you say everything to that judge that you said to me. Then you throw yourself on the mercy of the court.”
She started the engine and popped into reverse. “And this machine is not going over any cliff. It’s going into the nearest town for a wash and a wax. Then we are going home. Now buckle up.”
Wompus did what he was told, as Mabel turned south. “But, but, but…” he began in protest.
“But what? What is your big but?”
“Aren’t we going to the Trump rally?”
“No.”

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