Grandma Henke

This afternoon I had one of those “This can’t really be happening to me” experiences.  My heart has finally calmed itself down to 92 beats per minute.   It will probably take another day for it to get below that.

Needing a few items for our dinner tonight Lynn and I decided to make a quick trip to Winco.   Little poochie wanted to go along so I tucked my latest paperback by Tami Hoag, (the used book I was lucky enough to get for 50 cents at the last RV park we stayed in).   I love “who done it” fiction and it is easy for me to quickly get lost in the pages and wrapped up in the suspense of one like The Alibi Man a story about a woman who was once a detective and she now finds herself caught in the middle of a murder investigation.

So Lynn is in shopping and Lady and I are sitting together comfortably in the car.   I’m engrossed in my murder mystery and happen to glance up and see the keys dangling from the ignition … and there I am sitting with the windows all the way open so I can feel the gentle breeze.    My mind takes some of the information from the book and my imagination conjures up a scene of my own where some sleezy looking guy comes sidling up to the car and decides to hijack it.    Just for kicks,  I reach over, turn on the key, roll up the windows, lock the doors, and sit back smugly like I’ve just prevented a heist like none you’ve ever seen.

“Well,” says this little voice sitting on my left shoulder, “If he really wanted to take you and your little furry friend for a ride, he would still sidle up to the window but as he did he’d take his right hand from beneath the inside of his leather jacket and point a gun in your face.   Then what would you do?”

I was sitting there thinking about that when out of the corner of my eye I caught movement at the back of the black, sinister Bronco parked just to my left.   I absolutely swear to you that there was this sleezy looking guy back there hunched over and practically wrestling with something inside the  back of his car.    I was seeing this through the mirror that sits just outside the driver’s side window of our car.     I leaned a little closer … not wanting to make myself obvious but trying to see exactly what it is he’s struggling with.

He gave a yank and I saw that he was fighting with … a pair of levi’s.   He was trying to get something out of the leg of a pair of levi’s!   Now that’s really spooky if you ask me.   Being very careful not to let him see me, I focused in just in time to see him pull out the barrel of what is undoubtedly a sawed off shot gun.    He quickly looked around and pushed it back inside and leaned farther into his car where no one could see.  I’m thinking, “Holy crap I couldn’t have seen what I just seen!”   (Pardon my use of the word crap but when you are in a life and death situation you don’t control the words that pop into your mind.)

I kind of slid down into my passenger car seat and continued watching him in the little mirror and saw him reach for something else and then his hands were moving in opposite directions like he’s screwing two pieces of metal together.

“Oh my gosh!   He’s putting a shot gun together!   He’s going to storm into Winco and start shooting everybody!   This can’t really be happening!”

I reached for the cellular phone that was sitting on the dashboard, but he must have seen me for suddenly he slammed the back of his car shut and started walking forward between our two cars.    My hand kind of froze in mid air while my life flashed before my eyes.   I could clearly see he had a shotgun in the leg part of a pair of levis, and although I was grateful I’d locked the car I knew it would be easy for him to bash in my window.

He passed by my car window but when he got to the front of the cars he turned and slowly started to pull the shotgun from it’s case, pointing it toward me.   All I could do is sort of flinch to the side and close my eyes.  I mean there just wasn’t time for any other kind of reaction or even death bed repentence.    I clenched my teeth and waited for the imminent BOOM that would take me out, when I heard a loud, distinct click, which was not what I expected.

“What the heck?” I ask myself. “Is he playing Russian Roulette with me?”

It was another couple of seconds before I realized I wasn’t in a bright tunnel moving toward a distant light.   I opened my eyes to see what he was doing.    That’s when I saw it.  There clenched in both of his menacing hands was the large, table umbrella he’d pulled from its denim case and snapped open.

The not so menacing man was looking at me with a strange expression on his face and I gave him sort of a half of a smile as I put my hand on my pounding heart.

Oh the imagination of an author!