The Rescue

The Rescue

In the dark of a November morning in Markle City, a thunderstorm capsized a milk truck on the Number 17 Route. Stranded and in trouble, the buxom milkmaid Holly and her assistant sent out a call for help over the truck's CB radio.

The call came in and the city aldermen went at once into a closed-door meeting, where they worked long into the night to discuss ways to blame the mishap on the mayor, who represented another political party and was coming up for re-election. The next afternoon, they called a press conference that no one came to (except for a reporter from the Washington Post, who thought someone had mentioned free beer) and asked for a volunteer to risk life and limb to save the buxom milkmaid Holly.

All eyes swiveled on the hapless reporter.

Cursed by his misfortune at being the only attendee, the newly commissioned Rescuer of the Hapless (yet Buxom) Milkmaid Holly and her precious cargo jumped into his car and in a tizzy lurched around the town square, knocking down one newsstand after another that sold The New York Times.

After the reporter had driven off in the general direction of the Number 17 Route, the people of Markle City began their long, anxious wait — for the stores to open. Christmas was only forty-five days away, and the stores had not opened yet that morning for them to finish their Christmas shopping. What was worse, the lack of fresh milk had driven the local coffee shop cappuccino clientele into a caffeine-junkie rage that threatened to leave the lower part of the city in flames.

An hour later, the reporter from the Washington Post returned, screeching his car into the scattered remains of the newsstand that had once sold The Miami Herald, sending grocery fliers and tattered copies of Cosmopolitan flying.

The cheering people ran to greet the reporter and the buxom milkmaid Holly, who emerged from the fogged-up car, breathing rather heavily. Falling exhausted on the ground, the reporter announced that there hadn't been any room in the back seat for them to bring both the buxom milkmaid Holly AND her assistant, who had made the ultimate sacrifice by being left behind.

"We never would have made it past first base otherwise," the reporter explained, a little off-balance. "I mean, trying to hit one out of the park – wait, no, a line drive into left field… no no no, I mean, well, um, I would have struck out," he finished, thumping himself doltishly on the forehead when he realized he would never get a Pulitzer for this slew of commentary.

Not much into baseball after the recent "blink and you missed it" World Series, the city aldermen held another emergency meeting in order to determine how the mayor once again had been at fault. But as they spoke in guarded whispers and charted out their strategies on the white board, 36-year-old Smirkov Grinn took another look at the flushed and radiant buxom milkmaid Holly, smiled determinedly, and stepped forward.

His mother grabbed his arm, pleading, "Please don't go! Your father died in a freak milking accident ten years ago and your younger brother Jocko has been lost ever since you took him to Wal-Mart this past June. Smirkov, you cannot go, you are all I have left!"

With a steely glint in his eye, Smirkov replied, "Ma, I have to go. What if everyone in this town said, 'I can't go, let someone else do it?' I cannot help but do my duty. When the call for service comes, we all must take our turn and let the chips fall where they may."

Extracting himself from her iron grip, Smirkov leapt into the station wagon before she could refasten herself, simultaneously rolled up the windows and locked the doors in an amazing display of dexterity that could have only resulted from countless years of practice, and breathed a sigh of heavy relief. As his mother threw herself in front of the car to stop him, he threw the car into reverse and prepared for the rescue by driving to a neighboring town where he knew there was a coffee shop with a full stock of steamed milk.

An hour passed, and then another, and another, leaving the town aldermen wondering how to blame this new predicament on the mayor, as they were not nearly as creative as they were politically ambitious.

Finally a single headlight pierced the fog, and the old station wagon sputtered to a stop. Smirkov's head was sticking out the driver's window because he had never bothered to refill the washer fluid and the windshield was now creased with road salt.

Cupping his hands, the chief alderman asked, "Hoy, there, did you find the buxom milkmaid Holly's assistant?"

"Yeah." Smirkov grumbled with the growl of a man who has been sorely disillusioned. "Yeah, tell my mum I found the bum. It was Jocko."

Their mother was so overjoyed that she blubbered uncontrollably while the brass section of the marching band played one song, the woodwinds played a second, and slide whistles commandeered the third.

Jocko looked overwhelmed and uncomfortable. Smirkov wore a gigantic smile on his face — but whether it was the grin of someone truly as pleased as punch at finding his brother or of a frustrated postal worker with a handgun in his mail bag, no one knew for certain.

"Guess you're happy now, Ma, right?" Smirkov said at last, trying to make the best of things.

The stare their mother gave Smirkov was withering. "As if that even matters to you! Running off like that, risking your life on a fool's errand, without a thought for how it would affect your poor old mother! Didn't it occur to you that I'd be sick with worry at the thought of losing my second son as well?"

"Uh …well…"

"No, I don't suppose you did!" she said harshly. "Ever since you were born, the only one you've ever cared about has been yourself!

"And YOU!"

She rounded now on Jocko, who had survived his harrowing ordeal alongside the road by drinking skim milk and eating the foam padding in his seat.

"The nerve you have! Where have you been for the last five months?! Don't you know that I love the two of you so much that I would rip my legs off and feed them to crocodiles if I merely thought it would make you happy, and you can't even bother to call me or send me a lousy card on my birthday!"

And then Ma bobbled away.

"Well," Jocko said at last, as their sobbing mother receded in the distance. "Glad to see I didn't miss a thing."

Moral: If you dump your mother to rescue another, and it's your brother... don't bother.

The Pit of Shame
Copyright laws prevent us from sharing the original inspirational story that serves as the basis for today's mailing. Fortunately, lots of people on the Internet have posted stories like "Rescue at Sea" illegally for just such an emergency.