Hyperleggera

God Will Protect

Lulled by a Rolls-​Royce far from home, our new Amer­i­can cor­re­spon­dent comes face to face with that most Amer­i­can of garden tools: a rifle.

Words and pic­tures: Nick­o­las Kul­czak

“It’s like find­ing an eagle in a chicken coop,” said the portly trucker to my right, whose name I never learned. We stood in the Rutter’s con­ve­nience store park­ing lot, our noses nearly touch­ing the chain-​link fence at the edge of the prop­erty, as we stared at the truly ironic: thirty yards away, in front of a dilap­i­dated trailer home, perched proudly on flat tires beside a weath­ered Monte Carlo SS, was an 80s vin­tage Rolls-​Royce. It was mis­placed archi­tec­ture, a solid piece of Old World per­ma­nence amid the cor­ro­sion of the New World temporary.

You could almost hear the rust from where I stood.

The trucker shook his head at the scene in dis­gust as I flipped my camera from side to side, trying to cap­ture the grav­ity of the sit­u­a­tion with my lousy point-and-shoot. Behind me hummed my Toyota, the rolling brief­case, remind­ing me that I had about five min­utes to wrap up my reverie and fly my khaki-​clad self to the office to catch shift-​change report. Mean­while, behind the lens, time was slow­ing down.

How could this have hap­pened? Did the owner hit the lotto back in ‘87? Did he gamble him­self from the pent­house to the poor house?

My brain spun with soci­o­log­i­cal night­mares, easily drown­ing out the idling logic behind me with a scream­ing need to know. In that moment I clocked out of real life and acted with­out thought, climb­ing like a pri­mate and land­ing, moments later, on the other side of the fence.

Crouch­ing. Tres­pass­ing in a crooked tie. I approached the object of my fas­ci­na­tion like a paparazzo would approach Brit­ney Spears, look­ing away from the camera only to blank-​stare at the head­lights then to get lost in all that grille. This was celebrity, opu­lence, up close and all wrong. Its flanks were within strik­ing dis­tance of the flap­ping metal of the trailer home! A fear swept over me—a fear that the struc­ture might, at any moment, collapse—and scratch the Rolls. The weather was dis­con­cert­ingly windy. Destruc­tion could be immi­nent. Should I pro­tect the Rolls with my body? Pros­trate myself over the roof in case some cor­ru­gated bad­ness slid toward it?

No, I decided, God him­self would pro­tect the Rolls. Forces beyond my con­trol had put it here, some time ago, and only stronger forces would move it again.

Gath­er­ing my wits, I finally read its front license plate for the first time, and my sense of cosmic wonder dropped right out of my ear, replaced by that of cold injus­tice: the Rolls was owned by a limo com­pany located some­where near the prop­erty, and it had become a glo­ri­fied lawn orna­ment. Who­ever owned it had the twisted cred­i­bil­ity of a jew­eler living in a tent.

He’d have to be a pretty pro­tec­tive fella, I thought, exam­in­ing the grounds for any sign of a secu­rity device.

A few sec­onds later, I remem­bered that “secu­rity device” in the trailer park means “distrustfully-​angry, dis­abled male with a hunt­ing rifle.”

Forty feet away, he gar­gled: “I wanna check you out and I’m gonna take that camera.” The gun pointed toward the ground, dan­gling askew in his right hand as he loped toward me. He was a tall man, about 60, white-​haired and with the com­plex­ion of a foot­ball. His tone was matter-of-fact, if he’d planned to shoot me, he’d have already done so. At this point he wanted an in-​depth expla­na­tion, to know what clan­des­tine gov­ern­ment agenda had placed me on his prop­erty to under­mine him with my wicked lens. I’m sure he fully expected me to be scooped up by a black heli­copter at any moment.

Mean­while, I was faced with the full absur­dity of the sit­u­a­tion. I turned my back to him and got out of sight as quickly as I could with­out vis­i­bily pan­ick­ing, strid­ing around the long fence I’d scaled, then jog­ging to the Toyota and barely shut­ting the door before throw­ing it in reverse and scoot­ing back­ward around the side of the con­ve­nience store. So much for stop­ping at the red­neck Rut­ters for cheap coffee and donuts, I thought, screw­ing the gas pedal to the floor on the way out of town.

Over the next twenty min­utes I had to ask myself what I’d gained through this expe­ri­ence. I should have known before I got closer that no expla­na­tion would have jus­ti­fied what I’d seen through the fence. Logic had failed and I could feel the Car­poca­lypse near­ing. Images of the Rolls haunt me when­ever the wind comes.

And I can still hear the rust.

Nick­o­las Kul­czak is Hyper­leg­gera’s Amer­i­can correspondent.

∞ Published on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

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