The Great American Ryan Rescue Mission-part1

The Ryan Rescue mission

With a rapier action that left gusts of air up to my face, Tammy pointed out my passenger side window.

Pointing into the blackest Alabama night, she proclaimed "I bet a colony of serial killers live over there!"

Trying to get into the spirit of diverting us from the endless detour we'd been following aimlessly, I offered "Then next, we'll run out of gas."

"Don't SAY that." Tammy scowled "It scares me!"

"Oh...serial killers don't scare you."

"No but, running out of gas is like something that could really happen."

I closed my mouth.  The last salvo she offered was as though she believed

that serial killers were "mythical beasts" , like trolls or unicorns.

An odd perspective (if you ask me) for someone who puts on ID channel to sleep by.

In another of the many ironic things that would occur on this trip, it happened that the road on which we were traveling  sort of looped around to Talladega prison, which meant that a colony of serial killers, murderers, rapists, thieves and probably one poor soul guilty of some con artist sceme, actually were habitating in the direction Tammy had pointed.

The "ghetto Garmin" (as Tammy affectionately calls it) had faithfully lead us up Florida, around Jacksonville, around Atlanta and into Alabama. Only to fall completely usellessly into nothingness when we needed to take a detour on State Road 21. We would later learn that the detour was due to a huge sink hole.

  Deep breaths fortified us as we pulled over to a sort of "Shop-N-Go" which Tammy deduced was in a not so savory part of town. However, when we went in, and I came back from the ladies room, a very nice woman at the register was writing down directions for Tammy. It turned out to be excellent guidance, which was substantiated by our (now) yelping Garmin to the Days in hotel we were guided to stay at, in Lincoln, Alabama.

 Six months prior, Ryan had received a call from his mother, she was terminally ill and wanted him to come to her.  To quote the song "things got bad, then things got worse", as Tammy heard from him when he arrived in Alabama and then....no more phone calls. Not only that, but he didn't return her phone calls.  Then other breaches of security involving her Sams account and  Verizon phone, left Tammy despondent and angry.

Then, in September, Tammy and I were having lunch at Steak-N-Shake, and she received a voice mail from Ryan. His mother had died. Tammy has an unfaltering sense of loyalty to family. She returned his call. After a rather acidic back and forth, Tammy was crying in the booth, only to receive another phone call...not from Ryan. This call was from Janice, the woman with whom he was living. Janice was a woman that Ryan had lived with, and with whom he had had a relationship for 25 years, prior to his coming to Florida to be with Tammy (a year before).

Ryan told Tammy that the relationship with Janice had ended 10 months prior to Tammy and him reuniting in Florida. No (apparent)Contact from Janice (and related family) for the year Tammy and Ryan were journeying through their relationship, seemed to speak that the relationship was, in fact, kaput.

--Back to the present:

The next day, after the lunch on the precipice of hell (which, surprisingly to me, happens to be in a specific booth in Steak-n-shake) Tammy approached me with some observations and concerns.

She was regretting the way she spoke to Ryan and had called and asked Janice to call her back.

I listened intently to her sad regret. But then she said something else. Her blue eyes rimmed with bitter tears, she said, "I think something's wrong there. There's something in the tone of his voice in the message he left me. I think, somehow he's stuck and can't get out.".