I Was Preparing to be Violently Handcuffed by an Angry Trooper in a Hurry to Book Me Before His Shift Ended...

Part 20: We Were Living Hard & Fast, & When Things Got Tough, We Picked Up Stakes & Moved On...

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Sitting shotgun and waiting in the Cutlass while Moose was being interrogated in the back seat of the cruiser seemed like an eternity. Lots of things raced through my mind, none of which didn't include a lengthy incarceration…

Moose and I were just a couple of crazy kids who hadn't given much thought to the consequences of our actions. Now it appeared that we were gonna have to pay the piper with our freedom…

I waited impatiently, fully expecting a second cruiser to arrive at any moment. I was preparing to be violently handcuffed by an angry trooper in a hurry to book me before his shift ended. 

Then, all of a sudden, Moose stepped out of the cruiser and began walking toward the Cutlass, paperwork in hand. As he approached, I turned and saw that he had an all too familiar smile on his face, one that normally meant he had gotten away with something…

He got in the car and turned and looked at me, still smiling, but didn't say a word. “What the fuck happened?" I asked in a demanding tone.

"Well," he responded, taking his sweet time to explain. "The trooper said… the plate on the U-Haul trailer expired… but, if we send the ticket to U-Haul, they'll pay it… It's only five bucks…" Then he started laughing hysterically and proceeded to start the Cutlass, put it in drive, and we immediately got back on the road so we wouldn't lose any more time…

Funny, when you get away with something like that, you should be grateful, but that wasn't the case with us. We continued on our way, confident we could get away with just about anything. We cracked a couple of cold ones, lit a joint, and cranked up the tunes, oblivious to just how close we came to being arrested…

Leaving South Florida was a difficult decision for me. When Moose's parents sold their house six months prior, and Moose had no place to live, my mother let him stay in my sister's old room. He didn't even pay room and board. He was my sister’s good friend, and despite him being four years older than me, he and I started hanging out together and eventually became partners in crime. 

When my parents sold their house and I had no place to go, Moose and I suddenly had a lot more in common than just our love of booze, weed, girls, and Fleetwood Mac. We were both about to become homeless.

Sure, I could've gone to Florida with my parents, but I was 19, and I thought doing that would be a step backward. I had a taste of independence in college before I dropped out, and I didn't want to surrender it. Besides, my relationship with my father began deteriorating shortly after he moved us from Connecticut back to Massachusetts when I was 15. I felt following him to Florida would've been me making the same mistake again.

So, I did what I thought was the next best thing. I moved to South Florida with Moose, and that kept me close to my parents and still gave me the independence I needed. I was hoping my father and I could repair our fractured relationship. It was really the main reason I decided to go to South Florida in the first place. It never happened. In fact, when we picked up the U-Haul at his warehouse, there were no well wishes. Sadly, we wouldn't speak again until almost a year later…

The remainder of the ride was uneventful. We made the trip back in just over 24 hours despite being pulled over in Maryland. All the speed we swallowed was out of our system, and we were at once exhausted. We went to Moose's older brother's house first and dropped off his stuff. Then we went to my Uncle's house in Needham to drop off my stuff. 

I told Moose there was a road nearby, Dover Road, that was heavily wooded and lightly traveled and that we could dump the U-Haul trailer there without being seen. 

With the trailer empty, we drove to Dover Road just after dusk and found an isolated spot, unhooked the trailer, tossed the hitch in the back, rolled it into the woods, and then gave it one big push. It went down the slight incline like a junk car in neutral and came to an immediate stop when it hit the base of a mature oak tree some thirty feet away. That’s when Moose and I high-fived each other and laughed out loud.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a car fast approaching and bright headlights coming around the bend…                               

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To be continued…

*All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…