“Boy, that sure was some party!” Gene said from the passenger seat of the old pickup truck as they drove down the bumpy dirt road. The construction of the new highway seemed to be taking forever.
“It sure was,” Johny agreed while struggling to keep the old truck on the road in his current condition. “Too bad they ran outa beer!” he laughed loudly.
“They would have had plenty if we hadn’t shown up,” Gene said with a laugh. “I almost feel bad drinking them dry!” Gene paused for a moment, “Naaa!” he laughed, “I don’t.” As he laughed, he looked out the window of the truck at the neatly parked rows of earth-moving equipment. The bulldozer called to him, it was a giant. “Hey, hey, hey, pull over for a minute.”
Johny gently applied the brakes and pulled to the side as carefully as he could. “What’s the matter? You gotta throw up?” he asked.
“Naa, naa, nothing like that. Look at that machine,” Gene said with the sound of awe in his voice.
“The dozer?” he asked, squinting to see it through his alcohol-induced haze.
“Yeah,” Gene said with a wistful gleam in his eye. “I always wanted to drive one of those.”
“Let’s go,” Johny said, turning off the truck and getting out.
“Now yer talking,” Gene said with an ear to ear grin and exiting the vehicle. Johny had a good head start on him by the time he stumbled out of the truck. “You better not drive off without me!” he yelled jokingly.
Johny was standing next to the hulking beast when Gene caught up with him. The light from the moon was just bright enough to see the lettering behind the cab, Cat D8K.
“Well,” Johny chided him, “get in there!”
Gene drunkenly climbed on the track and up into the cab. Once inside, he was a bit overwhelmed. “Do you know how to start one of these?” he called down to Johny.
“I’ve never been in one,” Johny admitted, “but Butch has,” he remembered.
Gene looked the controls over one more time, “Yeah, we better get Butch,” he conceded and began to climb down. “Think he’s awake?”
“It’s only around one am, he’s probably just getting started,” Johny said as he caught Gene who had fallen the last few feet.
“You want me to do what!” Butch exclaimed after having listened to the rambling explanation that Gene gave.
“We want you to start the bulldozer that the State has parked down near the highway expansion,” Johny said. “Gene wants to drive it.”
Butch finished his beer and grabbed another. He drank half of that on the first sip. “Leave your truck here, you guys are too drunk to drive,” he said and finished his beer on the next chug. He grabbed another, “I’ll drive,” he said as he cracked it open.
The big diesel engine roared to life, and Gene howled with delight. “Wooooo!”
“Clutch, brake, and accelerator,” Butch yelled as he pointed. “This lever will keep the RPM’s up if you pull it. It overrides the accelerator pedal.” He put it in gear and let the clutch out. The dozer didn’t move. “The new ones have a torque converter, it will not move until you give it some fuel.” To demonstrate, he jabbed the pedal, and the beast moved forward a few inches. “Use these levers to steer.”
Butch jumped down and waved as he ran back to his truck. He figured he’d have to bail them out of jail in the morning, but he knew you couldn’t stop Gene once he got an idea in his head. Even before he could start his truck, the lights came on, and the engine of the dozer began to rev up.
Once Butch jumped down, Johny climbed up. “Now what,” he called to Gene. He wasn’t even in the cab, and the engine suddenly sped up, and the dozer began to move forward. “Damn it, Gene! You’re gonna kill me one of these days!” Johny yelled as he held on for dear life and tried to find a spot that would be comfortable to ride on.
Gene experimented with the steering while they were on relatively flat ground. He found the lever for lifting the blade, which had begun to push a pile in front of them. He laughed. “They’ll have to fix that tomorrow,” he called back to Johny.
Gene shifted into a higher gear now that he was getting used to the mechanisms and floored the accelerator. “Let’s see what she’s got!” He wasn’t impressed with its speed but took it up where they had been working on the highway.
“Where we going?” Johny called out to Gene, sounding like he was shivering despite the moderate spring temperature. The ride was not very smooth.
“She’s not fast, let’s see what she has for power,” Gene said with a grin and pulled on the right lever. The machine turned sharply and pointed to the woods nearby. The machine didn’t even slow when it hit the first few trees. They were only small ones at four or five inches in diameter. The first one snapped and fell to the side of the cab, which rattled Gene a little, so he let off of the accelerator some. The next tree they took down slowed the machine a bit, but the tracks dug in, and the eight-inch trunk and it’s roots ripped from the ground and fell over in front of them. The engine slowed as the debris collected in front of them, and Gene remembered he had it in third gear.
He moved it to second, and it took a moment for the beast to get moving again with the pile it had accumulated. Gene lifted the blade a bit, and the pile slowly passed under them.
The woods parted in front of them. On the other side of the yard they were driving through, Silver street was in front of them. With the diesel engine roaring, they drove across the lawn between them and the road. A loud crunching noise could be heard above the engine and the clanking of the tracks. (later they found out that they had run over the man’s well and crushed the top tiles)
“What the hell was that?” Johny yelled into the cab.
“I don’t know, but we got bigger problems,” Gene said, pointing. In the distance, you could see blue lights flashing. Gene got them back out on the road.
“We can’t outrun them,” Johny pointed out the obvious with a scream.
“Maybe we can,” Gene said, inspired. He dropped the blade into the dirt road a little bit and began collecting dirt in front of them. He swerved back and forth a few times before rapidly lifting the blade. The tracks climbed the pile that the blade left behind and rocked forward rapidly when it reached the top.
Thinking they had escaped, the pair of dozer thieves continued up the road for a while. The police cars had stopped at the mounds that Gene had left on the road. Gene turned off of the road again and began thrashing any tree that dared stand in front of them. He saw a huge oak up ahead and, well, he had to try to knock it down. He lowered the blade as they arrived at the base of the tree, and the dozer slowed to a standstill as the tracks dug in and sought traction. The tree began to give way and tilted back slowly. As soon as it tipped back at about a forty-five-degree angle, the blade slipped, and the dozer began crawling up the trunk of the tree.
It was funny at first until they realized that the tree had stopped falling, and they were gaining altitude. Gene let off of the accelerator with every intention of backing off of the tree. As the engine idled down, they heard an eery sound.
Rooo, rooo, rooo, rooo, yip rooo. Johny looked at Gene, “Bloodhounds!” he yelled. Johny wasn’t happy being so high up in a tree, and bloodhounds spooked him to no end. Johny jumped from the dozer into the darkness below.
“Ya damn fool, you okay?” Gene called down to Johny.
“I’m okay,” Johny’s voice came up to him.
Gene picked his way along the track of the dozer and jumped onto the tree trunk. He left the idling dozer where it sat on the tree. Once he made it to Johny, he said, “I know where we are, hold onto my belt and shield your eyes. We’re going to have to run for it.” Gene had sobered up quite a bit since the police had shown up. He began running and picking his way through the woods. Some of the ground foliage had sprouted, and others were still dry and sharp from the winter. They rushed their way through the ice-cold water of the swampy area that the beavers had created in the last few years. After an hour-plus of running, they could no longer hear the dogs behind them, and they had made it to their destination. They calmed themselves and brushed off before quietly entering Gene’s parent’s home, where they hunkered down for the night.
The boys spent the next day wondering if the police would figure out who had taken the joy ride on the dozer. They kept their escapade to themselves, and as the week wore on, they relaxed a bit.
That following weekend there was another party. At the party, one young man told of the bizarre chase that had happened the previous Saturday night. Gene and Johny listened in carefully when they realized that the guy was a police officer. “We don’t know who it was, yet,” he said, “but we almost had them.”
“Yeah, rigghhhtt,” Gene thought and laughed to himself.