The Man Who Diked Logs

The rain pounding on the roof of Beigey's car sounded like a bad jazz drummer on his twelfth bump of coke; it was loud, arrhythmic and annoying. Of course, the mood he was in, Beigey would probably be annoyed if the spirit of Abraham Lincoln came by with a warm apple pie and a pint of twelve-year-old scotch.

Beigey was sitting in his car in a growing puddle, water still running off of him though he'd been out of the rain for a good five minutes. There was a full half-inch of water in his shoes and his pant legs were clinging to him like a Republican senator clings to his "values voters".

To top it off, the low profile he was meant to be keeping as he snooped on his client's wife meant that running the engine--and thus the heater--was a non-starter. So Beigey sat there shivering, cursing his non-water-resistant shoes and deeply regretting the choices that had lead to his career taking pictures of 42-year-old soon-to-be-divorcees giving sloppy blow jobs in trailer parks.

Speaking of said giver of blow jobs, as Beigey wiped the condensation from the inside of his windshield, he noticed her emerging from the double-wide across the road, a newspaper shielding her hair from the downpour. She ran to her car, opened the door, turned around and blew a kiss at the cro magnon man filling the trailer's doorway. Then she hopped in her car and pulled out. Beigey turned his key, counted to ten, hit the wipers and followed.

With the amount of rain hitting his windshield, Beigey might have had a malevolent toddler standing on the roof of his car, aiming a water cannon straight down. "It's a fucking cruel irony," Beigey thought, "that you only ever really think about the fact that you need to get new wipers when it's raining." The passenger-side wiper had split and was whipping one thin piece of rubber around like the world's worst rhythmic gymnast doing her shittiest floor show.

The rain was coming down thicker than 70s porn bush. Beigey couldn't see twenty feet in front of him. His target's tail-lights had been just ahead of him a moment ago; now, she could be anywhere.

The wheel jerked in Beigey's hand as he hit a large puddle. He kept the car going more or less straight, but decided to slow it down. Just as his foot hit the brake, the front wheel sank into another puddle, this one roughly the size of Lake Champlain. The car lurched like Beigey's stomach after consuming a liver and rocky-road sundae. In the time it took for him to ponder whether you're meant to steer into a skid or out of it, the car had left the road and slid down a hill, stopping only when it found a tree it liked and wrapped itself around it like cheese that you wrap around a raw hot dog and then you eat it because sometimes people get desperate, okay?

It took him a moment, but Beigey regained his senses and began taking stock of his situation. He couldn't move his leg; it appeared to be pinned. Water was now pouring into the car through the shattered windows. It was now getting deep enough to cover his ankle. He was going to drown in this piece of shit Datsun.

Unless. Unless he could tear enough branches off the wrecked tree to dam the water up. He gritted his teeth. "Good thing I've got crazy-good Lincoln Log experience," he thought.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!