I grew up four miles south of Wewoka, out in the country. That’s where I learned to play in the barn, fish in the pond, catch crawdads in the creek and ride bikes in the pasture. Four miles south of Wewoka was a great place to grow up.
One summer day, my friend, Wayne, came for a visit. We pretty well did everything we could think of doing when it dawned on me. For some reason, my parents had given me a bow and a handful of arrows. I convinced Wayne that we should take turns shooting those arrows straight up in the air. The winner would be one who could make the arrow disappear into the sky and who would be the last one to run when the arrow came shrieking back to earth. Not getting impaled by an arrow would get you some bonus points. Suffice it to say, neither one of us was the sharpest knife in the drawer. And, no, there were no adults around that day.
It was a great game. We got proficient at shooting the arrow high enough that it would actually go out of sight. But it was a real contest to see which one of us stand his ground trying to dodge the arrow at the last second. If you stood there long enough, you could actually hear the arrows cutting through the wind. Did I mention that there were no adults around?
Because neither of us had been impaled by an arrow, we decided it was time to shoot the arrow a little higher. That’s when it happened. I think it was Wayne who shot the arrow. The reason I say that is I am the one telling the story, and I am not sure about the statute of limitations. So, we will blame Wayne.
For some reason, when Wayne pulled the arrow as far as back as he could, he sort of tilted the bow. When he released the arrow, we both immediately knew it was going toward the road. We kind of froze for a second but decided no one had come down the road in quite a while. So, this was going to be fine. That’s when we heard it.
A vehicle was coming down the road. Even with the limitations of our young minds, both of us just sort of did some geometric and trigonomic calculations. Immediately we knew the arrow was going to hit the vehicle.
It was an ONG gas truck. The man driving was probably thinking about a lot of things. Getting run through with an arrow was probably not on the list. Here came the truck from our left to our right and then the arrow came into sight.
Nope. It didn’t hit the truck. Nobody got killed. But the arrow stuck straight up in the blacktop road right off of the driver’s side fender. The driver immediately took evasive action and swerved to the right and then back to the left. I am not sure if he thought there would be other arrows launched at him. But he came really close to turning the truck over. That would have been his
own fault.
He screeched to a stop. I can’t tell you what happened at that point. I wasn’t there. I took off like an Olympic track star. OK… I took off faster than Wayne did. I made a quick calculation that if one of us was going to get caught it would be better for me if it was Wayne.
I am not sure what the driver of the truck did. I suspect he collected himself and got saved. Life south of Wewoka is a fairly fragile thing. I made Wayne go get the arrow out of the middle of the road. If there wasn’t any evidence, who would believe the story of the man who said he almost got shot with an arrow. But I did stay in the house the rest of the afternoon in the bedroom almost under the bed just in case the sheriff showed up.
A couple of thoughts. One, just like the driver of the truck probably did, you ought to be saved. You never know when your time is coming or what strange way it might show up. Two, everybody needs a good friend you can blame stuff on. Three, aim straight. Misses are messy.
