I’m Fixin’ To Play Dead (Part 41)
While I considered the misery and struggles I had endured since I had been playing dead, the motion and the warmth of the luxury car Louise and Sissy had rescued me in from that damp and weedy ditch lulled me into a semi-comatose state, during which I kept attempting to convince myself that I had been right last night when I had been contemplating forgetting it all and just go back.
Yes, I thought, I’ll have a nice hot meal, a long hot shower; then get these nice ladies to take me to a bus station. Or better yet, call myself a taxi and go back to Atlanta. I could be a celebrity, returning from the dead, claiming amnesia and get on about my life, forgetting the craziness which had been surrounding me ever since I walked away from that plane crash in Birmingham.
I noticed that Sissy had gotten off Interstate 65 and was heading east on 85 toward Atlanta. We passed through downtown Montgomery, went underneath East Boulevard before she slowed down and took the next exit, Taylor Road. I figured it wouldn’t be long now before we pulled into a trailer park and I would be back into another frowzy trailer.
A few moments and a few traffic lights later she turned into a subdivision where upper-class brick homes with manicured lawns and trimmed hedges lined the street. After another block, she pulled into the driveway of one of them, punched the remote button above the visor and a double garage door began to rumble upward. She pulled the Lexus into it and parked next to a red Jeep Cherokee. Then she turned, looked back at me, smiled at me showing perfectly white teeth shaped like Chiclets and said, “We’re home. Are you awake?”
I was not only awake, I was stunned. Louise helped me get settled into a lovely bedroom. A steaming hot shower washed all the cold and misery from my bones. Although my clothes were a little rumpled, I managed to find a clean pair of Levis and a polo shirt. I had just gotten them on when Louise knocked on my door. And when she opened it a wonderful aroma came wafting from towards the kitchen reminding me how ravenously hungry I was.
Louise wanted to know how I felt, and I told her, “I feel exceptionally well for someone who slept in a cold ditch.”
She smiled and said, “Listen, that’s a bunch of crap about Sissy fixing a big breakfast every morning, I think she’s doing it just for you. Come on and let’s go eat.”
After consuming piles of scrambled eggs, grits, sausage, and toast with strawberry and fig jam, I was helping myself to a second cup of coffee when Sissy excused herself saying she had to get some sleep. After she left the room I gave Louise a questioning look and she said, “Sissy works at night and sleeps during the day.”
Louise kept talking while she prepared herself more coffee, “On the way to pick you up I talked to Sissy about getting you some fake ID documents and she said it wouldn’t be a problem because her boss has a State Department of Motor Vehicles employee, a driver’s license examiner, on his payroll. He makes fake drivers license and social security cards for illegal immigrants—Mexicans, you know. He’s like a broker between them and the examiner, so he’ll just mix yours in there with them.
Before she goes back to work tonight she’ll snap a picture of you and in a couple of days you’ll be a new person. You want some more cream and sugar, Sonny Boy?”
While we sipped our coffee Louise continued, “Besides Sonny Boy, Leon called you Ralph something-or-other, and according to the newspaper your name is Todd Prescott. So what’s your new name going to be?”
It didn’t take me but a couple of seconds to make up my mind. “From now on I’ll be Ralph Cooper. I went to high school with him and I know for a fact that he is dead, but I also remember that he had a social security card.”
“I’ll write that name down for Sissy,” she said. Then after her last swallow of coffee she yawned and said, “I’m going to get myself a little nap. I didn’t sleep too good myself last night.” On her way out of the kitchen she leaned down, gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “I ‘spect you might want to do the same thing.”
Back in my bedroom I welcomed the feel of the cool and smooth sheets as I slid between them, wondering at the sudden advantageous change in my circumstances. Something way back in a shadowy recess of my mind was telling me to lookout, but I pushed it away, and just before I drifted into a deep sleep I knew that I had made up my mind that I wasn’t fixin’ to go back to being alive.