There had been some close calls in the desert as well. Some of his
buddies had made their trip home on the same plane as him but they had
been laying in a flag covered coffin. He had only a few bullet hole
scars and some small pieces of metal in his leg that still hurt at times.
Now he sat here on the beach into his fifth day wondering about B. L.
Mcshane.
His wondering were interrupted by the sound coming toward him. Actually
it was already in his general vicinity, on the highway. He had enjoyed
mostly peace and quiet and this sound didn’t seem good to him for some
reason. Now he recognized the sound of a deep breathing muscle car that
was moving fast on the highway. It was coming in his direction from the
south and it was moving very, very fast. When it came into view he could
tell, it was a deep dark blue, had a lot of power, looked like an older
model of a GTO and the driver wasn’t going to stop and chat. In less
than 30 seconds the whole show was over. After staring at the point on
the highway, where he had last seen the car, for a few more seconds, B.
L. Mcshane returned to his thinking. Where had he stopped in his thought
process? Oh yes, it came to him. Why had they started calling B. L.? He
wasn’t really Bad Luck. All of his luck hadn’t been bad for his whole
life or he wouldn’t be sitting here on this beautiful clean beach
watching one of the most glorious sunsets he had ever seen and besides,
the morning sun had been even more red and bright. He thought it through
and decided he would just never be able to figure people out.
Out on the highway, miles away, the driver of the GTO was still trying
to decide if he had really seen what he thought he had seen. He had been
traveling 95 miles per hour when something had caught his attention as
he blew by it. Was that a tent or just something left piled up after a
high tide? He chose to believe it was just a pile of driftwood because
if he chose to believe it was someone camped out there on the beach, he
would lose too much time turning around to go talk with them.
After all, it wasn’t his fault if someone was dumb enough to go camping
on that beach with the biggest hurricane in years forming in the Gulf.
The weather folks were expecting it to hit land all up and down the
beach area he was trying to get past. Nobody could have missed all the
warnings on the TV, radio, and in the newspapers for the last three days.
Back on the beach, as B. L. watched the waves start to get larger and
hit the beach faster, he was thinking, things are going to be different.
When that bus pulls up in a few days, I will go back to being Chris
Mcshane and have a better life, where I am going, while Bad Luck Mcshane
will be dead and gone. Having settled that issue, he frowned at the
darkening sky and wondered if it was going to rain.
