Take This Job and Shovel It

For several afternoons, there has been an old truck parked on our gravel road down by the creek. When we stop at the row of mailboxes after school, I am cautious. You never know when some Jame Gumb type of dude might be waiting to grab him a full-figured gal with the intent of eventually making her the skin he's in.

The truck is an older model dark blue Dodge with a club cab with a homemade wooden door leading from the cab to the truck bed. Oh, and it's two colors of blue. Navy and cornflower. Not a factory paint job. A dude sits in the truck, and gives us the pointy-finger, thumb-up, semi-gun-hand wave as we pass by. I return it, of course. Anything else would be considered rude.

Dude has a long wiry beard, graying. It's half the length of a ZZ Top beard, and not quite as pointy. His hair is unkempt, black, with gray at the temples. His eyes are blue, and his cheeks are ruddy. I point this out partially to give you a mental image, and partially as a description for the police. Dude wears a blue, white, and black plaid flannel shirt, and overalls. Today he was not in his two-blue pickup truck. He was walking down the middle of the gravel road towards us, carrying a shovel.

This is probably where you should cue the psycho music.

Last week I asked Hick if this truck belonged in our outer Backroads community. One of our gravel roads is an unofficial three-mile shortcut between two blacktops. It's good to keep an eye on one's surroundings. To know who's coming and going. Hick assured me that Dude does, indeed, belong here. And also left the impression that Dude is a little bit off. Which is saying something, considering how Hick looks at the world.

Dude moved to the side of the road so I could pass. He had a shovel full of mud, carrying it out in front of his body like a pole vaulter carries his pole down the approach. The closest mud access point was about fifty yards up, where there's a tiny offshoot from the road that allows a four-wheeler access to a flat-rock, foot-high waterfall the width of the creek. Dude strode like a man on a mission. Who may or may not have been a pole-vaulter. I put down my window and stopped the Tahoe. Isn't that what you would have done?

"I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate what you've done here." Because I do. It seems that Dude is that invisible pothole fairy who has been filling the myriad of spring thaw potholes with mud. And sometimes gravel that washes out along the side of the road. We had assumed it was the old guy who threatened to shoot Hick, but now blades our driveway when the mood strikes him. Shooter has been seen cruising the gravel roads in a golf cart with a bucket. The only character we're missing is a fellow called Nub who rolls around in a red wagon.

Dude stood with his shovel full of mud. He nodded. He looked embarrassed. Or afraid. "You're welcome. Something needed to be done."

"Yes. It really helps. Thank you. We can tell a difference." The conversation seemed to have played itself out, so I rolled up the window and proceeded. Dude went about his shovel business.

A Sisyphean task. I'm glad I stopped short of calling him Sisyphus.