Follow Your Intuition

           The windshield wipers waged a losing battle against the thick white flakes of snow that seemed to fall more quickly than they could be wiped away on that unforgettable January evening. I'd received a letter from Forestry Professionals earlier in the month. Apparently, property I owned was adjacent to the Estate of Eleanor Hazleton, and Mr. Craig Sheldonier of Forestry Professionals had written to ask whether I might be interested in acquisition of the Hazleton property. I wasn't, or wouldn't have been, except for the fact that I'm such an avid reader.

           What I mean to say is that I wouldn't have been interested in purchasing the property but for a book that I'd read recently, "The Universe's Secrets to Success," which had exhorted me to "follow my intuition." According to the book, the Universe held secrets for me, and if I followed my intuition the Universe would reward me with whatever I desired "or something better." So, after some reflection, I realized that I didn't believe I had an intuition to follow. Consequently, I found myself following my whim instead. At the time of opening the letter, following my whim meant at least investigating the Hazleton property, which was in an old coal mining town some thirty miles from home. I'd regretted the decision almost instantly.

           Mr. Sheldonier had made arrangements for someone, likely one of his foresters, to come and pick me up in his truck, a little Toyota that careened like a doe on roller skates on the snow-covered roads. The driver introduced himself as "Henry." We started off poorly when he asked me whether I was the owner’s secretary. I was not at my best. I'd had a harrowing day to begin with. I am a handler for a politician. "Handler" is the word I use. "Administrative assistant" is the official title, which I avoid because it erases my law degree and magically turns me into a secretary.  I’d had to field innumerable phone calls about a gaffe that had occurred over the weekend. There was a speaking engagement and dinner the following week that I’d had to organize, and my own life was beginning to dwindle away, being overtaken by the burgeoning behemoth that my job became each time I helped the politician to successfully navigate an event.

           “I’m an administrative assistant,” I quipped.

           Henry smiled at me. “Work for the big boss, then?”

           “Something like that. I take care of the details, if you know what I mean.”

           He chuckled. “How’d you get picked for a job like this, stomping out in the snow to look at investment property?”

           “I do whatever it takes,” I said. “No, wait a minute, I was following my own intuition,” I said. “You know, if you follow your intuition, you find what that the Universe has your back . . . Well, that or something better.” I was having fun, playing up the flaky secretary, and I could tell that he was buying it. I wondered how much I could get away with. “Well, what about you, Hank? How’d you get to be driving truck?”

           “Me?” I saw his face redden. Now that he was the one answering questions, he seemed to struggle for words. “I do whatever it takes, too. It doesn’t bother me to drive some young lady out to see property that might amount to something if properly timbered. Some of this property can be worth plenty of money if only the right investor comes along. But maybe I should talk to the big boss about that.”

           I thought I detected a little smirk at the end of the last sentence, and I found myself becoming quite annoyed. I thought that my years of diplomacy had ironed away any ire that I might experience in such situations. Apparently not. I suddenly heard myself saying, “well, the property I’m involved with has quite a few gas leases already, they generate a good bit of money, but the big boss doesn’t really like it when I talk about it.” This was a bald-faced lie. The property I owned housed my father’s hunting camp, which was a fortified cabin. It generated no income, and worse, sucked away in CERCLA fines, any value in the property itself. For years, the locals had dumped debris and trash into the nearby creek, and I’d not yet persuaded the government that liability for the mess was not mine.

           Silence fell over the truck. 

           The next moments are a mixture between vivid memory and total blackout for me. I recall seeing a deer, hearing the squeal of brakes and the grating pumping of an anti-lock braking system engaging. I remember slowly rotating, around and around, not once, but twice, or was it three times? My eyes and Henry’s locked, and I saw the “Forestry Professionals” hat fly from his head. My purse flew, my distinctive bright red business cards were ejected from my bag and fluttered around our heads like a flock of mad, red butterflies.   When I awoke, what seemed like hours later, I saw that the windshield was starred, and we were teetering, over the brink of a mountainside, held fast only by a rock outcrop on which some part of the Toyota appeared to be balanced.

           I felt my head. I wasn’t bleeding. Henry wasn’t either. We must have hit the deer.

           “Henry!”

           “Huh?”

           “Are you OK?”

           “I’m OK. Are you?”

           “Yes. I think so.”

           “Henry?”

           “What?”

           “You’re a shitty driver,” I said.

           He groaned.

           If we tipped over the rock, we would surely die. The mountainside was steep and seemed endless. 

           “We are going to die,” he said.

           “No, we aren’t,” I said, irritated.

           “That property?” he said. “I’m coming clean. I don’t know what it’s worth. Probably nothing.”

           Now I was really angry. The nerve! It had been a harrowing day. We wouldn’t die. We wouldn’t, would we? I glanced out of the window and the car listed ever so slightly.

           “Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to lean!”

           “We’re dying. We’ll roll right over that hill and die.”

           “Can you reach my cell?” I asked. Henry would have to lean toward the mountain side, the safe side, to grasp it. It lay, taunting us, close to the console, but ever so slightly towards the mountain side of the vehicle.”

           He leaned. The truck remained still. In the process, he picked up one of the red business cards and turned it over in his hand. “You’re a lawyer?”

           “Yes, what?”

           “Well, you said you were a secretary.”

           “You said that. I told you the truth, I’m an administrative assistant.”

           He rolled his eyes. “And you’re also a lawyer.”

           “You know, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions about people.”

            “Yeah? Well, neither should you! There’s a reason I’m a shitty driver. I don’t do this usually. I’m on a wager that I could sell the property for three times more than it’s worth. I’m an executive in the company.”

           Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Hand me the phone, will you?”

           He handed me the phone, and I telephoned the only person I knew who could get me out of a jam, day or night, no matter the location. It was Dusty, the politician’s handy man.

           “Dusty, we’re stuck,” I pleaded.

           An hour later, I was drinking coffee with Henry and Dusty at a little German restaurant, just off the road. The truck had been pulled off the edge of the mountain with a heavy chain, and we were all recovering our nerves, drinking strong coffee from little cups in a rough-hewn ski chalet cum restaurant that still had boughs of evergreen and Christmas lights.

           “What I want to know is, why’d you even bother to come look at the property—I mean, if your property is adjacent, and you’re a lawyer, you know how to find out the value, right? I know for damn sure that you don’t have a gas lease.”

           Now that I’d recovered my nerves, I laughed. “I was following my intuition,” I said. “And you can’t blame me for inflating my property’s value if you were inflating yours.”

           “Oh God,” said Henry. “Remind me never to follow your intuition.”

           Dusty sipped his coffee slowly. “Hey, those properties you all are talking about? Aren’t the next to the Frye Farm?”

           “They surround it,” Henry said, Frye Farm’s like a bull’s eye with my property as the donut, and hers as the lot next to mine and next to the highway.”

           “Hm,” Dusty said. 

           “You interested?” Henry said.

           “Maybe,” Dusty said. 

           “Frye Farm has no value, either. It’s the same land as ours,” I said.

           “Well, not today, it doesn’t. But it’s turning into a casino if only old man Frye can find someone to give him a right of egress to the highway.”

           Henry smiled. I smiled. Dusty smiled. 

           “You know,” Dusty said, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”