Free Riding The Whirlwind by Darrel Bird

Part One
     
    Paul Gilford was a failure. He was shy so he
failed to make friends with girls, he failed to make his Dad proud
and so he never heard the words ‘I love you’ from his Dad, he
dropped out of high school, he failed at that, he did get his
G.E.D, join the service and manage to get an honorable discharge
after three full years and go to college, but he knew in his heart
he had really failed at that too. Paul Gilford got good at failing,
if he wasn’t good at anything else, he was good at that.
     
    He got married and had children, and tried to
start a start a T.V. business following college, but he failed at
that too when he got down in his back and couldn’t open the store.
He failed at jobs, not because he couldn’t do anything he put his
mind too, but because he was driven to fail, so he would quit them
and move on.
     
    Finally he moved his family to a quaint
little community near Oregon’s Columbia River.
    It was a beautiful little community with
friendly neighbors, surrounded with forest, mountains and water, a
little slice of heaven that was the very ends of the world for Paul
Gilford, because Paul Gilford was a failure. He had skills a
plenty, but there was no work for Paul Gilford in or near the small
town of Mist, Oregon.
    The black filthy clouds of depression would
roll in like a sudden thunderstorm and they would roll over him and
roll him under, suddenly, and without mercy, with the stunning
force of a locomotive, disemboweling him, gutting him, raping
him.
     
    Paul kept failing and backing up, lunging at
life again and again, until Mist was where he had backed too, A
tiny town with a two churches, a filling station and a half assed
grocery store.
    He had ‘Got saved’ a few years back, but he
figured there weren’t no way he would succeed at that, he did the
best he could, but he figured he would fail God too, after all, if
he couldn’t please his Dad, he sure as hell couldn’t please God now
could he?
     
    The church had gotten to selling ©Amway to
each other and some folks talked him into going to a sales meeting
in Astoria. He drove his Ford clunker down there chasing after some
tiny bit of hope and before the meeting was over he saw the
blankness in the eyes of the believer and knew they didn’t have
squat, but a bunch of hot air, there just weren’t no money in
it.
     
    On his way back depression hit him like a ton
of bricks, he ripped his tie off and the buttons of his suit coat
and that fueled the rage that was building. The clouds of
depression kindled a rage and frustration and out of the core of
that, a rage began at him self so complete in its destroying power
that it became blacker than the inside of hell and hate and self
loathing consumed him in its entirety.
     
    There was a long straight stretch of road
that ended in a curve with a rock face falling down to the road and
he decided to end it all on that rock face. He gave the old Ford
the gas when he hit the straight stretch, but all the old Ford
would get up to was ninety, he ran it up all she would go and his
plan was to just jerk the wheel which would take him head on into
the rock face… done. When he got to the rock face his hand would
not steer that car at that rock cliff, a power greater than his
rage kept the car going straight and he could not bend that wheel!
For three seconds he did not own his own two hands. He went
squealing around the turn not doing anything except take a few
dollars worth of rubber off the tires.

    He pulled into a turn out and killed the
engine and there he cried out his frustration, he beat his head on
the steering wheel because he couldn’t even kill himself.
    He drove the old Ford on home and walked in
the door of the two story rented house, his suit coat torn open and
a scratch across his chest from his own finger nails, his white
shirt stained with blood, he said nothing to his wife as he climbed
the stairs to bed, and she knew better to question him. When he got
that way it was best