Piss Hiss

Coming to in a corn field. Still in the driver's seat. One headlight is still working but is blocked by the twisted up bumper, casting indirect light on the corn. You are surrounded by corn. You look at your hands, then your arms. Nothing feels too hurt. You just wrecked your car drunker than hell. You'd pinned the pedal to the floor and don't even know why. You missed your turn and were taking gravel to get back to the blacktop you missed and once you got going down the road a wave of anger rose that caused your foot to go to the floor and ended with this. You unbuckle your seatbelt and look for your phone. Can't find it. You have to act fast to fix this. Part of you just wants to run deeper into the corn.The nearest house is half a mile away. You hop the barbed wire fence (your car must have cleared the fence, because it's unbroken) and start running down the road. When you get to the house it's completely dark. You run up to the front door and knock hard as hell. You're still full of shock and adrenaline. You go around to the side and bang on the sliding glass door on the deck. Nothing. Better move on. You head down the road again. There's no more houses on this gravel road, no more houses until you get to the highway. You try the first one on the highway. Nothing. North or south? You try south first. A car goes by. You stand in the road and wave your arms. They go around you and drive by. Hardly even slow down.You're a man standing in the road at three in the morning with blood running down your face. You decide to go back north, there's more houses that way and a town eventually. You try five more houses. You start to realize that people are probably scared of you. Somebody has definitely heard and seen you and did not want to deal with a bloody stranger showing up at their door in the middle of the night. You had to have had a wild look on your face. As you are coming to the next acreage a truck pulls in the driveway when you're about a quarter mile away. You get up there and knock on the door and it's an old man who steps outside and smiles, a look on his face that says he isn't surprised. He understands before you've told him anything. He says he can go pull it out and stick it in his barn. You tell him all you need is a ride to your cousin's.On the way there you learn his name is Barney and he's a retired Deere's worker. He'd been drinking over in Dumont. He gets you to your cousin's. Your cousin comes out and looks intense. He sees you get out and he's wondering why you brought a stranger there, or why a stranger brought you there. Then he sees your face. You tell him what happened. He goes inside and tells everybody and you all go get in his truck. He stops at the barn and grabs some chains.You hook the chains up and yank the Camry out of the corn, right through that barbed wire fence and up onto the road. It's missing the plates and you still haven't found your wallet. Everybody is walking in the ditch and in the corn on the path of the crash. You can see where the car hit the side of the ditch, then where it bounced in the corn and then where it came to rest. A spot of flattened corn. Littered all over are the remains of your golf clubs and papers that had been floating around your car for months. Somebody found your Bluetooth speaker. It is late July and the corn is deep green and real tall. The car is comically fucked up, but it has all four wheels still on and starts. Your cousin busts the windshield the rest of the way out and starts driving it back. At first he's following behind but there's way too much dust so he calls and has you guys let him pass. The front end and back and roof are all smashed in and there isn't a window left in it. The frame is a little twisted. But it's going on down the road.It made it about five miles before it overheated and was done. The radiator had been smashed up a little too much. Toyota makes some sturdy cars. You realize the airbags did not go off though. You all get out and start pissing on the radiator more just for fun than anything. It hisses and throws up steam. You guys are almost home and man everything seems so funny all of a sudden. Nobody can stop laughing. You have tears running down your face. Can't imagine why it won't start, you say between laughs. You are thinking about how you could have died but only have a couple cuts and bruises (and probably a concussion) and now it seems like everything is going to be okay. It's fine. You found your phone under the back seat earlier. You guys hook up the chains and pull it back slow so the dust isn't too bad for your cousin while he steers the car. You pull it to the back of his place and hide it between the grain bins and the corn field.The next morning your friend who is giving you a ride home swings by where you crashed to see if you can find your wallet or license plates with the sunlight. You pull onto the road and there's two sheriff's cars and a tow truck. The corn had hidden them until you'd already turned off. Your friend won't turn around because he says that would look suspicious. So you cruise by slowly with your cut up face and black eye. He tells you to relax and act normal. The cops wave and you wave back. They're in the ditch looking at the flattened corn and you're wondering why they brought a tow truck to a crash site where there is no car. Like maybe they thought they'd find it deeper in the corn.