Article: 178947 of talk.bizarre
From: crisper@armory.com (Crisper Than Thou)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: The Journey of the Little Pylon, part 2
Date: 2 Dec 1994 01:51:42 GMT
Organization: <a href="http://www.armory.com/~crisper/">The Crisper Mind</a>
Lines: 99
Message-ID: <3bluje$jvd@nic.scruz.net>
Status: O

The rain was coming down in sheets as the little pylon dragged himself under
 a patch of trees on the hillside. He was sniffling a little bit, trying not
 to cry, but he felt very miserable and it was hard to keep his courage up.

He had rolled along all afternoon, whistling to himself and watching the people
 zoom by in their cars. He'd always liked watching cars shoot past him as
 their team had worked. Sometimes he imagined what it would be like to ride
 in one, with the wind whipping past him and the roar of the engine all
 around.

Thinking of it now made the tears come on even stronger. Now, he would have
 liked to have been in a car just to get out of the rain. He'd been rained
 on before, of course, but that had been when the others were there-- they
 had been doing their job, and they'd toughed it out by distracting each
 other with stories of the road.

But now he was cold and alone, lost, wandering in the dark, and it was all
 starting to look rather hopeless.

He peered out between the trees at the road and watched as the cars went
 shooting past, throwing up wakes of wet spray behind them. As he watched,
 there was a sudden flash of metal and a loud clattering noise as one
 car went by. The little pylon inched up to the roadside, careful to stay
 off the road itself. And there, down the hill a bit, he could see a little
 huddled metal figure: a dented hubcab resting against the concrete barrier.

He approached carefully. He'd heard stories of hubcaps thrown from cars;
 he'd never really understood it, though. Did the humans throw disobedient
 hubcaps away, abandoning them to the random fate of the highway? Or were the
 hubcaps fleeing their human masters?

The little pylon realized, then, that this was his chance to find out, so
 he made his way down to the still, quiet form of the hubcap.

"Um, excuse me?" he said when he was standing next to it.

"Leave me alone," came a sad, hollow voice.

"Are you okay?" asked the pylon. "Are you hurt?"

"I was just thrown from a moving car," said the hubcap, not looking at him,
 lying still. "What do you think?"

The pylon thought for a moment. "I think you could probably use some help,"
 he finally decided. The hubcap moved for the first time since being thrown
 from the car, rolling over to look at the pylon. The pylon tried to smile,
 to show a brave face, because the hubcap looked even more miserable than
 he did.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" the hubcap asked.

"I'm looking for my work crew," said the pylon. "They lost track of me and
 I'm going to find them again."

They stood there in the rain a bit, not saying anything, and then the hubcap
 looked off into the darkness under the trees. "Guess we should get out
 of this rain, huh?" he said.

The little pylon smiled. "Yeah, I don't think it's going to let up for a
 while."

So they hustled their way off the shoulder of the highway, into the somewhat
 drier comfort of the forest. And as the night passed over them, they
 huddled in a dry recess and spoke of the things they'd seen. The hubcap
 seemed curious about the many machines the little pylon had seen-- the
 backhoes and bulldozers, the dump trucks and cranes, the jackhammers and
 piledrivers. He listened as the pylon told of splitters and hammers and
 levelers, of asphalt and (occasionally) dynamite.

And the little pylon was absolutely astounded by the tales the hubcap
 had, of the places he'd been to and the things he'd seen. "I was on a
 '65 Mustang," he said with pride, "and we went all over the country."
 The little pylon was rapt with attention as he heard about desert canyons
 and snow-covered mountains, blue-green lakes and cities of neon as far
 as the eye could see.

They talked long into the night and finally drifted off as the sheetsof
 rain slowly lessened, becoming a sprinkle, then an occasional patter,
 and finally ended, leaving only the sound of dripping water from leaves
 and branches, and the passing cars in the distance.

In the morning, the hubcap asked if he could come along with the pylon.
 "You're going in the direction my master lives," he said, "and I know
 that area better than you do. If you're going to find your crew over
 there, you're going to need all the help you can get."

So they set out up the hill together, picking up their conversation where it
 had left off the night before.

And that is how the little pylon came to have a traveling companion and,
 perhaps, found the first real friend of his entire life.

	--The Elder Dan
	(amiably crisper)


-- 
"Dop DWEEEEEE, dop-dop-dop DWEE-dah!" -- Animated Tick theme lyrics
<a href="http://www.armory.com/~crisper/"> crisper@armory.com </a>