“All right, okay, all right, ” Slim Jim’s voice sounded, and if there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was hearing a woman with The Cramps and then having to brace himself for the rotten moods and mean-ass behavior that were sure to follow. “Pull over and you make it quick and don’t talk to nobody or do nothing to ‘tract attention!”
Macovich was intently watching Hooter as he drove beside her. Clearly, she had been injured and needed to be rushed to the hospital, and Macovich was beginning to panic. How did he know one of the inmates hadn’t stabbed her with a shank and she was bleeding to death right before his eyes?
“Sir, excuse me, ” Moses raised his voice to the governor.
“What?” the governor asked, waking up.
“That little horse’s got his hoof on my foot and I can’t move it, ” Moses said, trying not to cause an inconvenience, but he feared his foot might be broken and he was in terrible pain.
Regina tried to remember where she’d put her list of commands and realized she had left it at the mansion. She knew there was a command for picking up a hoof, and she searched her memory. What was it?
“Closer, ” she said to Trip.
Trip responded by moving a foot closer to his handler, who in this case, was the governor.
“Ahhhh!” Moses yelled when the minihorse knocked against the cast on his arm and then stepped on his other foot. “I don’t mean to complain, but I’m getting as banged up back here as I was at the hospital!”
“Right!” Regina began to panic and all of the commands she had glanced at tumbled together in her head. “I’m sorry. ”
Trip turned right and banged Moses’s bandaged head against the window. He screamed and begged for someone to let him out of the car.
“I’ll just get me a cab and go on home to bed, ” he said as he tried to push the minihorse away.
“Can you pull over?” Regina yelled to Macovich as she tugged on her denim skirt, which was a bit snug and tended to creep up her enormous thighs. “Mister Custer’s not feeling well and needs to go!”
“Needs to go where?” Macovich said as he crept along with the minivan.
“Back, ” Regina shouted, and Trip stepped back and rested all of his weight on both of Moses’s feet this time.
“Ayyyyyyy!” he shrieked.
“Ohhhhhh, ” Hooter moaned as Barbie finally, at long last, turned into the Hess station, and the governor’s motorcade pulled in right behind her.
Other race fans who also had decided to take advantage of a pit stop stared in amazement at the lead limousine with flashing blue lights and the other three black stretches that followed. Shiny black doors opened and the governor, a fat girl with awful hair and bizarre taste in clothes, and what looked like a hospital patient, in addition to a tiny red horse, and plainclothes drivers who had guns under their jackets, and the rest of the First Family, climbed out to get a little fresh air.
The governor grabbed Trip’s harness and took a few uncertain steps as Macovich rushed toward the minivan just as Hooter climbed out and began to wave her arms and yell.
“We’ve been abducted by convicts!” she shouted, and immediately, every NASCAR fan who had stopped to buy beer, and relieve himself from beer already consumed, began to cheer.
Slim Jim, Stick, Cruz Morales, Trader, Cat, and the reverend boiled out from the back floor and scattered. Two of them were tackled by Bubba Loving. Macovich snatched Cruz and Stick up by the backs of their shirts, and Cat zigzagged and dodged and ran straight at the governor, whom he intended to hold hostage. Regina, remembering that she was still a police intern, decided it was up to her to control the situation and yelled at Trip, “Sic him!”
The minihorse was unfamiliar with the command and did nothing as Cat ran past, and the governor squinted about in confusion and patted for his magnifying glass. Regina, who as a child had annoyed and injured mansion staff and family by butting them in tender places, lowered her NASCOIFED helmet-head and pawed the ground with her red patent-leather high tops, building up steam as she suffered a violent atavistic throwback to her primitive programming. She rushed the inmate and butted him in the groin, knocking him off his feet and sending him sailing through the air and body-slamming into Trader. Then she pounced on both of them, sprawled across their chests, and hollered as she banged their heads together and strangled them. Hooter hurried over to assist, while cheering NASCAR fans encouraged the fat girl to slam into them again and stomp their pedals to the metal and blow their asses off the track.