A good man is not hard to find

Chasing birds on the border with my son ends in a mucky situation

I was in sixth grade when my teacher had our class act out the entirety of Flannery O’Connor’s terrifying story A Good Man is Hard to Find about a family road trip in the South that goes awry when they get into car trouble on a desolate country road and inadvertently cross paths with an escaped convict. The grandmother is the main character, and she has the habit of talking and pushing and going, even when her decisions aren’t always the right ones. Let’s just say the wrong turn is her fault and her mouth gets them all in a heap of trouble as the horror builds and—spoiler—each member of the family is isolated and picked off one by one.

It was only a few months later that my own mother took our family down a similar mountain road looking for adventure, and we found ourselves in almost the exact same predicament in the form of wheels stuck in the mud. I have vivid memories of jamming cardboard under the wheels of my mom’s maroon station wagon as little creatures crawled in the muck. Every leaf that fell or twig that cracked, I imagined the bad guy in O’Conner’s story (the Misfit) lurking, ready to rape, pillage, and murder my mother, my two sisters, and me. As the day faded, I became more and more convinced my (still) favorite short story was going to come to life before my eyes in the North Carolina mountains.

Eventually, we did get the car out, and I do wish this was the only time my mother took us off-road for the sake of a good time, but alas… (listen here). It was only one of dozens of times my mother threw her better judgment out the window and drove my sisters and me headlong into a dangerous situation. That’s what my mother was spectacular at—creating situations out of nothing. Crazy adventures that involved spontaneous encounters with all sorts of people, places, and things. I have similar impulses to throw caution to the wind and fling myself headlong into scenarios that might be a tad risky, but thankfully, I have a sane husband who can massage me down to earth. His rational mind was probably what saved us recently from getting our car wedged between two walls on some narrow medieval street in Europe while I screamed “Come on, man, you can make that” into his ear.

Unfortunately, my Jiminy Cricket was not there to save me from myself this past weekend. I’ve already been feeling a bit squeamish about driving since the wreck. My first run-in with a high-speed collision has me suspicious of every man in a pick-up truck, and looking both ways five or six times before I pull in front of anyone who seems even remotely too close or going too fast. So when my son wanted to drive down to the Texas/Mexico border in search of birds, I was gun-shy but game, but by the morning of the second day, I was feeling my oats and having a grand time. We’d seen all sorts of things he hadn’t yet collected on his iNaturalist profile, like the chachalaca, the kiskadee, and the groove-billed ani. We were sweating bullets, but we still managed to spot turkeys, javalina, and a bobcat. All this naturing was intermediately interrupted by border patrol in ATV, truck, and the occasional circling helicopter, but regardless of the political intrusions, we were having fun.

In addition to the border patrol-pocked state parks, my son’s internet research suggested an isolated dirt road about 30 miles long that promised various birds of prey, and more specifically, the coveted Aplomado Falcon. These birds love lonely roads lined with tall electrical poles without a ton of people—ideal circumstances for hunting, and it seemed like if there was any place we were going to spy this falcon, this would be it. Everyone was having a gay-ole-time as, fifteen minutes in, we’d already spotted five Harris hawks and had only come across a handful of potholes in what appeared to be desert. We sang and laughed, and my son took lots of photographs while I regaled him with driving tales of Europe, bragging about all the times I urged my stressed husband to take the narrow road because—in my words—“if we can get in, we can get out.”

That’s when we hit what at first looked like a smallish puddle. My son and I were both pretty excited about the day, feeling like things were going well. Despite having driven the car for less than a week, we collectively decided the water was no match for my Subaru’s all-wheel drive. We headed in, and almost immediately knew we’d made a big mistake. We got halfway across the “puddle” before the car refused to go any further. I moved a few inches forward, put it in reverse, and then moved a few inches back, but the distance was still only inches, which was far less than the five feet or more that was needed. I asked my son to get out and push, and when he opened the door and water flooded in, I knew we’d fucked up big time. His shoes were immediately sucked off his feet in the muck, and waist deep in mud and sea water (that’s right, sea water because as soon as a crab climbed up my son’s leg we realized we were in not a desert at all but wetlands on both sides that in this particular spot had decided to merge), my son—bless his heart—attempted to push the car out.

Flashing back to my time in the woods with my mom, I had him search for things to put under the wheels. First, my good man tried a wood plank, then a pillow, and that’s when I glimpsed the top of a chandelier poking out of the water and understood this sinkhole was also a place for people to dump garbage and unwanted things. Realizing my 20-year-old child was barefoot in all that potentially hazardous refuse, I sent him for the shore before he cut an artery and dialed 911. The cops transferred me to a tow service, and when they asked me to get a photo of the situation, I attempted to open my door, but more water rushed in.

My son ultimately took this picture of my humiliated ass adrift.

The car was still running even though the exhaust pipe was underwater, and the tow operator urged me to keep the engine revving, lest it flood. So, for 30 minutes, I sat, pressing the gas, and with each bubbling outburst, I prayed that the car would stay on, lest my husband have to drive four hours down to the valley to rescue us. I could already hear the disappointment in his voice, and I knew this would an I-told-you-so moment for him—payback for the time(s) in Europe when I almost got us stranded. Helpless, I watched as my son paced up and down the road. I knew he was feeling guilty thinking that all of it was his fault, his pale arms burning in the sun. Our lack of impulse control is one of the things that makes us the most fun as a team, but this time, I felt the anxiety bubbling in both of us. I was the adult in this situation I created. I was owning this moment. When we finally saw the metal from the wrecker glinting down the road, it was a huge relief, even if the 15 minutes it took for them to make their way to us was excruciating.

The car was still running when the tow truck operator slapped on his rubber waders and dove in to attach my car to the wench. His 6-year-old son filmed the whole embarrassing episode on a camera phone.

I jokingly pleaded to him from the car window, “Please don’t post this on YouTube.”

The drive out covered in mud as a lesson in humility. The car wash cleaned off the gunk, but the shame stuck around a while longer. After taking showers and washing the memory of the moment out of our shoes and toenails, we spent the rest of the day in bed—licking our wounds, watching Swiss Family Robinson, and eating Doordash.

Three trips to the car wash, five cleans with the wet vac, and four dehumidifying bags later, my car still reeks of the marsh and feels like a sauna when I get in, but we made it out.

I am 53 years old. Lest I end up like the grandmother in my favorite short story, it's time to hand in my “I can do anything” badge. Her story ends when the nihilistic bad guy sums her up in sentence.

“She would have been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

It turns out, even when you can get in, you can’t always get out.