You are either moving forward or you’re standing still. They were standing still.
They had made heroic efforts that the old man was randomly proud of and their engineered patchwork would last for awhile, certainly making it worth discussing, but in the end, he would stand out on the edge of the road and will another human to stop and give em’ a lift. In the end, their self-reliance would require someone to step in and lend them a hand.
A severed accelerator cable did not seem capable of stopping them in their remote desert tracks. But it did. With no way forward, and back a distant memory, they had a beer. The old man paced, the brothers thought, and the sun beat down on the crippled RV alongside the quiet simmering blacktop.
However, ingenuity prevailed and the older and oldest brothers walked back to town and returned hours later with duct tape, pliers, copper tubing, and a twelve-pack. The old man paced.
Within an hour or so they fired up the RV and configured an accelerator handle like a stick shift on a school bus. They attached it to the large rubber exercise band that was so continually poked fun of for most of the trip, and created a sort of “cruise control,” that made the three of them very proud. The old man paced, and then sat down to see if it worked. Away they went… all smiles…..for a while.
All the mechanical concerns left them and they enjoyed the next couple days with little concern and much adventure. Eventually though, as you may be suspecting, the rig broke down for good, about sixty miles from the airport.
Driving along in the back of the pickup truck, he watched the Mexican family in the cab talking and laughing, as families do. Then he looked at his father hunkered down against the biting wind, and his brothers laughing at their misfortune and good-fortune, and relishing in the adventure, as brothers do.
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