Then he looked at me.
“Jack.”
“Aaron.”
He looked at the car owner.
“Sir, is this your vehicle?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Colin Barrett.”
So he wasn’t Kevin after all.
Though Kevin would have fit.
Aaron gestured toward the sign.
“Did you see that when you parked?”
Colin looked at it.
“I’m parked on the road.”
“You’re on the agricultural shoulder and blocking the access.”
“I have every right to park on a public highway.”
“You don’t have a right to obstruct a posted farm entrance.”
Colin pointed at me.
“He threatened to drive through my car.”
Aaron looked at me.
“Did you?”
“I told him I needed the gate and that heavy equipment was coming.”
“He said he was coming through whether I moved or not.”
Aaron gave me a look.
I nodded.
“That part is true.”
Colin smiled triumphantly.
Aaron looked back at him.
“Okay. Move your car.”
The smile disappeared.
“What?”
“Move your car.”
“I’m taking pictures.”
“Not here anymore.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“You’ve got a combine blocking half the roadway because it cannot enter the field.”
“Then arrest him for blocking traffic.”
Aaron stared at him.
There are moments when patience physically leaves a man’s face.
That was one.
“Sir, the combine is here because your car is blocking the designated agricultural entrance.”
Colin folded his arms.
“My car isn’t going into that gravel.”
“Drive fifty yards west. There’s a paved pull-off.”
“The light is wrong.”
Aaron blinked.
“What?”
“The sunset.”
I watched him decide whether he had heard correctly.
Colin pointed toward the field.
“I’m shooting content. I need the background.”
Aaron looked toward the horizon.
Then at the storm clouds.
Then at me.
Finally:
“Sir, I am ordering you to move the vehicle.”
Colin’s entire posture changed.
He was no longer talking to a farmer.
Now he was talking to a uniform.
Amazing how quickly some people find manners when consequences put on a badge.
“All right,” he muttered.
He walked toward the driver’s side.
Then stopped.
Pulled out his phone.
And began filming.
“Just so everybody knows,” he said toward his camera, “I’m being forced to move a four-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar vehicle onto unsafe ground because some local farmer apparently owns the road.”
Aaron raised his voice.
“You are not being told to drive onto unsafe ground.”
Colin kept filming.
“There’s literally a ditch.”
“Use the paved turnout.”
Colin ignored him.
That decision cost him more than anything I did.
Instead of moving fifty yards west like Aaron ordered, Colin got into the car and tried to perform a tight three-point turn directly in front of the gate.
He did not want to lose the sunset angle.
He was trying to reposition, not leave.
I knew it immediately.
Aaron did too.
“Keep going west!” he shouted.
Colin reversed.
The red car’s rear wheels crossed from pavement onto loose gravel.
He stopped.
Pulled forward.
Reversed again.
One tire reached the very edge of the shoulder.
I got on the radio.
“Matt, stay put.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Being himself.”
Colin accelerated slightly.
The rear tires spun.
Gravel sprayed.
Then the car moved backward faster than he intended.
Everybody saw it.
The shoulder dropped steeply into a drainage ditch.
Colin hit the brakes.
Too late.
The right rear wheel slipped over the edge.
The car tilted.
Stopped.
For about two seconds, nothing happened.
Colin opened the driver’s door.
Aaron shouted:
“Stay in the vehicle!”
Colin looked toward him.
Then gravity made the decision.
The loose gravel beneath the rear tire collapsed.
The entire car slid sideways.
Not fast.
Slowly enough that Colin understood every inch of what was happening.
The rear dropped first.
Then the passenger side.
The red sports car rotated and slid into the ditch with a wet grinding sound.
Mud exploded upward.
Cattails folded beneath the body.
The car came to rest at an ugly angle, nose high, rear buried in black water.
The engine died.
Silence.
Then Colin screamed.
Not because he was hurt.
Because he looked through the windshield and saw where his car was.
Aaron was moving before the shouting finished.
“Sir, are you injured?”
“No! No! My car!”
“Can you get out?”
Colin shoved the door.
It opened against the slope only halfway.
Aaron and Matt helped him climb through.
His white shoes landed directly in ditch mud.
I will admit something.
That detail nearly broke me.