"Blue Ford Pickup"

 by John Gotheborg

Imagine you are driving to the home of some friends.

A sign half-blocks the road up ahead. It reads:

NO THRU TRAFFIC

You’re not sure if the construction is blocking the road to your friends' house, but you decide to go around the sign.

Seeing this, a man in a beat-up, blue Ford pickup bolts to attention.  He revs the engine and charges the Bronco towards you, screaming unintelligibly and waving his arms like mad.  You slam on the brakes and pull your car to the side of the road before he can ram into it.  The man then climbs over to the passenger seat, rolls down the window, and leans his head out.

"There's no thru traffic," he spits at you.

"Well, I'm just going to see my friends... They live on this street."

"I said there's no thru traffic! What are you, an idiot!?"

It's pretty clear that this man can't be reasoned with, so you get the hell out of there, as politely as possible.  Driving farther towards the house, you see the blue pickup. You can't tell if it's following you or just lurking down the road.

At your friends' house, the main topic of conversation is the man in the blue Ford pickup.

"He came out of nowhere," you tell your friends. "He screamed at me like a maniac. Then he called me an idiot for no reason...."

"I can hear you," says a voice outside the window.

"Oh my God," you say.  "He's listening to us."

"What should we do?"

From outside the window comes an ominous threat:  "I'm going to killfile you!"

You duck behind the arm of the chair, putting your hands on it for security. It's really strange that this man is still trying to talk to you.  He must be crazy.  What if he's really dangerous?

"Uh! We were just talking about somebody else," you call out.

There is no response.

The evening seems to be ruined.  No matter how hard you try, all you and your friends can talk about is this strange man.  He seems to have disappeared, yet his presence still affects the group.

Several hours later, everyone turns in.  Most of the people in the group seem to live there, but you have to make the long drive home.  You wonder if the strange man will appear, but he seems to be gone for good.

At the traffic light before the highway, you notice the tank is a little low.  You're going to have to stop for gas.

You pull up to the last pump and notice a sign:

MUST PAY FIRST AFTER DARK

It is quite dark out.

For a moment, you think that maybe the man in the blue Ford pickup will appear and make some incoherent comment about the sign.

He does not appear.

You walk into the store and search through the useless junk you always carry, and then you find your credit card.

"20 on pump six."

The clerk, a 19-year old woman with a dark tan, seems to study the card for an unusually long time.  Eventually, she looks up at you and yells, "You're a fucking moron!"

#

AFTERWORD

[I had rewritten "Blue Ford Pickup" in first person and pasted it here, with the following text below it.]

Quite a startling event, that was. It troubled me for some time. Only days later did I find out who the man was, and why that young woman yelled at me. An acquaintance who was at that same party, a clinical psychiatrist who wishes to remain anonymous, informed me that the man was the ex-husband of his wife, who also would very much like to remain anonymous.

It seems the man, John Gotheborg, had been stalking the poor woman for years. She tried a restraining order several times, but the man made such a scene that she felt it wasn’t worth the embarrassment. It seems Mr. Gotheborg is quite popular on conspiracy radio such as The Jeff Rense Program and The Art Bell Show. He also hosted a weekly Christian Radio show called God’s True Patriot Hour, and had written numerous books which he sold out of the trunk of his car. A major theme in all his work has been the “fact” that his ex-wife is a Bride of Satan and Devourer of Male Life. More ominous still, the man often slandered me, due to my passing acquaintance with his ex-wife. He called me a “sick pig-fucker moron” and hosted a picture on his website of me with devil horns and a forked tongue.

I also learned that the darkly-tanned girl at the gas station was a student in the man’s youth ministry. It seems Gotheborg has chapters all over Minnesota, and perhaps even still in Montana and San Francisco, where he’d lived with his ex-wife.

Other details came only years later, as I listened to his ranting on the radio, read his deranged Usenet rants, and browsed the miraculous photographs on his website.

My friend told me about Gotheborg’s son Kevin, a brilliant and strange boy with a near-fetishistic respect for the G.I. Joe figure Snake Eyes. It seems years of emotional abuse at the hands of his biological father had permanently skewed Kevin’s perception of reality. Nonetheless, my friend loved his adopted son as his own. During the Gulf War, my friend was heartbroken as Kevin joined the Army to please his father.

Then, in 2003, I purchased the first John Gotheborg novel ever to appear in paperback on store shelves: The Adventures of Young Jesus. I hadn’t talked to my friend the psychiatrist in years, but I called him up on a lark.

Imagine my surprise when he told me that John Gotheborg is now a regular patient of his. It seems the man’s ex-wife had recommended her new husband to him. My friend could tell me little else, due to doctor-patient confidentiality regulations; but he did say that he had long considered using Gotheborg as a case study in paranoid schizophrenia.

“The man is a rare and beautiful find,” he said. “I have never met a more articulate, brilliant, fascinating psychopath.”

“Isn’t that breaking confidentiality?” I chided.

“No, not at all. That’s just common knowledge. Anyway, I’m afraid I’ve missed my shot at the book. John’s decided to write his own autobiography, and it’s been optioned by a major publisher.”

“Jesus Loves Books?” I sarcastically asked.

“No, a much bigger one. He’s asked me not to tell anyone, but he wants you to write the foreword. Believe it or not, he’s a huge fan of your writing.”

“Wow... I’m honored, I guess.”

“You should be. This autobiographical novel will be of inestimable value to the field of psychiatry for decades to come!”

“John?”