Visions of You

On a rare (for Alaska), warm sunny day in August, me and my little sisters, Lisa and Mandy, were out by the road picking wild raspberries which grew all over the place. We picked there because the berries are easier to get to due to the efficiency of the summer highway crews who cut the thick brush back about four feet along each side of the roadways. This allowed the raspberry bushes to branch out, growing thicker and lower, making them easier to reach without fighting through thick willow and Devil’s Club. For those of you who don’t know what Devil’s Club is – it’s as bad as it sounds. Anyway, we were about 200 yards from the house, shielded from view by the trees and brush that grew thick between the road and the front yard. Our two husky mix dogs Sasha and King, along with his highness, miniature wiener-dog, Fritz were milling about as was their usual practice. Whenever we were outside they were too, hot on our heels. I kept a close eye on my sisters as I pulled juicy berries off their stems, letting them drop with a soft plop into my bucket, as I daydreamed about a Hollywood producer driving down the road, noticing me and, fascinated by what he saw, deciding he just had to put me in a movie. Even better, maybe space aliens would come down from the sky, deciding to take my whole family on a space adventure just like on the TV show Lost in Space, one of my favorites from when I was a kid - or maybe Scottie from my current favorite Star Trek would beam us all aboard for some fun on the Enterprise. Right in the middle of my daydreams of fame and adventure, I picked up the sound of a car coming down the hill. I looked up from where I was crawling around in the weeds to determine the location of the two munchkins and the dogs, making sure nobody was too close to the road. The dogs stopped milling about, pricking up their ears, turning to look towards the car. Baby sister Mandy was crouched down almost hidden from view among the bushes several feet from the road, Lisa standing upright just to her left also several feet from the gravel shoulder. As the car coasted down the hill it began to slow – a dirty brown sedan with a large dent in the rear quarter panel - the driver’s side window rolled down. The driver stuck his head out of the open window, looking toward where Lisa was standing, picking berries, completely oblivious. His hair and eyebrows were thick and dark and even from a distance I got the major willies as I noticed the way he stared at my sister. He had this look on his face that could only be described as predatory, eyes seeming to glitter as he glared at Lisa while his car slowed almost to a stop. Hit in the gut with a feeling of overwhelming dread, I jumped up from behind the bushes yelling, “Leese!” At the same time all three dogs began a cacophony of barking with King, the biggest and most intimdating of the three dogs, moving towards the car, teeth bared, hackles up. The man, startled, jerked his head in my direction for a moment before turning his attention in the direction of the big, snarling dog barreling towards the open window of his car. He was shocked. He must’ve thought my sister was out there by the road all alone until I stood upright and surprised the crap out of him. King was almost upon him when he stomped on the gas taking off with a chirp of tires and a puff of exhaust down the hill and around the corner at the bottom. He was gone. Lisa looked up, “What’s the matter, Shelby?”, as I thrashed my way through the pricker bushes to get to my sister. “Get over here, now!” I hollered at the big dog, busy looking from me to the car, determining if he should give chase. “You too, King!” He turned and trotted away from the road. Lisa looked at me like I was a Looney Tune, puzzled since she hadn’t even noticed the guy in the car. She’d had no idea that he’d been sizing her up for...something. The dogs were still all worked up and barking and I was fighting panic thinking that the guy might turn around and come back. “Lisa! Mandy! We need to get home!” I yelled as I reached Lisa and turned toward Mandy. “Come on! King, Sasha, Fritz, come!” Both sisters were too startled to argue, my agitation and the barking dogs being enough to scare the crap out of them, they grabbed their berry buckets and we got the heck out of there without argument. We ran back towards the house as though we had demons on our tails, me and the dogs bringing up the rear. I didn’t know what I’d do if the man came back, but he wasn’t getting his hands on either of my sisters if I could help it. I figured I could at least smack him in the head with my berry bucket and sic the dogs on him. All the way to the house, I had that dreadful feeling in the pit of my gut; you know the one that rolls up out of the depths of your core. It’s the sensation you get when you’re in a dark place, you know you’re all alone, but still you sense something sinister creeping up behind you in the blackness, your breath catches in your throat and you can almost fell the bony fingers brushing your back as you run... We reached the house without incident - well not entirely without incident. I tripped over Fritz and fell down, skinning my knees and one hand in the process. Raspberries spewed out of my bucket, bouncing all over the gravel. This was pretty much normal procedure for me and the dog wasn’t hurt so I just dusted myself off and kept going, leaving the berries for the birds. We reached the house in a ragged line, banging through the front door one after the other, elbows, knees, and berry buckets amidst a swirling mass of barking fur. “MOM!” I hollered. Our mom, Lainie, came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel, the house smelled like fresh baked bread. “What in the world is going on? What’s the matter?” she asked, voice raised above the commotion, noting our huge saucer eyes and my scraped up knees. “Did you fall?” She didn’t say ‘again’, but it was implied. “Yeah...’ I brushed some dirt off my knees shrugging off my crash and burn as I continued. “We were picking berries up by the road...” and I proceeded to give her the unedited version of what happened. The dread feeling in the pit of my stomach refused to go away even though I knew my sisters and I were safe. We had a family discussion about the incident later around the dinner table after Dad got home from work. Mom and Dad reassured us saying we’d done all the right things, they were proud of us for our quick reactions in a scary situation: proud of Lisa and Mandy for listening and obeying without question, proud of me for having been observant, keeping everyone safe by remaining calm, and coming directly home. Later that night after we went to bed, I lay there listening to my parents talking quietly in the living room, discussing the evening news reports of two missing girls in Anchorage. They decided that Mom would call the State Troopers in the morning and tell them about the man driving the brown car.