Chew
----

Every second of the long trip, the driver chewed tobacco and spat, 
sometimes hitting, usually missing, a paper McDonalds drink cup, which
was alarmingly full of the brown sludge. The smell pervaded everything.
A thick, gooey, pasty stench, that oozed into Dr. Hostaedler's nose and
mouth. It was all he could do to hold down the meager lunch he had
grabbed at a rest stop a few hours earlier.

As they wove along the windy road, the cup would slosh its contents
almost over the top, and he was sure that any moment he'd have a lap
full of the stuff, and would lose that lunch all over his delightful
travel companions.

He was stuck between the tow truck driver, whose name he had not caught,
and his aromatic assistant, whose name was, he though, Bo. He focused on
his own private joke that he was in an episode of The Dukes of Hazard
gone terribly wrong, and tried to keep from hurling.

The driver was prattling on about something - deep sea fishing, it
seemed, but Dr. Hostaedler stared at the road ahead, willing the trip to
be over, and grunted "yes" and "no" at what appeared to be the
appropriate times.

He cursed his decision to vacation in this god-forsaken spot, his
misguided whim to rent a car from the no-name agency that was $20
cheaper, and the state roads commission for leaving that pothole in that
exact spot, putting him at the mercy of Cooter and Bo here. He craned
around in his seat, and watched the car lurch precariously on the
flat-bed of the truck, but the thought that it would go careening down
the hillside any moment didn't help his stomach any, and he turned back
around.

"Just a few more miles," he thought. "Surely it can't be more than
that." He was going to abandon the vacation, get a cab, go straight back
to the airport, and be whisked back to his quiet office where he could
contemplate the mysteries of medieval literature in peace. The driver
spat a particularly large glob into the cup, which splashed onto Dr.
Hostaedler's pants. Dr. Hostaedler focused very hard on a passing
billboard as he fought the upwelling of his guts.

Bo was saying something, and Dr. Hostaedler had to ask him to repeat it
twice before he could drag meaning out of the words.

"I said, here we are, sir. We'll contact the rental company and they'll
come pick it up. Can we give you a ride somewhere?"

"No, thanks, I'll get a taxi."

----------------------------------------

After the tourist was gone, Harold snorted in disgust. "Barbarian."

"Oh, don't be so hard on him, Harold. He'd had a hard day, and, besides,
not everyone agrees with your thesis that 'Old Man and The Sea' is a
metaphor for life. Maybe it's just a story about a fishing trip."