Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Our family had a scare last Friday evening. Our daughter, Malika, was jumping on our trampoline. It’s the round kind that is sold at stores like Sam’s. I was working in the garage when I heard Mollie calling for me. I went to the trampoline, where she was lying. She could barely move. She said she had tried to do a knee flip and had hurt her neck. I helped her off the trampoline and walked her to her bed. She walked stiffly. Her neck hurt so bad that she wanted to go to bed at 8 on a Friday night. That worried me. I went back outside. My wife, Cindy, was on her way home from Minneapolis, so I was on my own. My mind was working on a couple things. One thing was the fact that I tend not to take injuries seriously. Like last December when Mollie chipped a bone in her ankle while skating. Or when she had an appendicitis a month ago. So I was thinking, “Maybe she isn’t really hurt. But maybe she is.” The second thing was WHERE she was hurt. A neck injury while ...

David Heiller We arrived in Laurel Springs at about 6:30 Wednesday night. Our handy-dandy guide book said there were three bed and breakfasts there. Any town with three B-and-B’s must be wo rt h a visit, Cindy reasoned. She is usually right about these things, and this time was no exception. The first thing we noticed about Laurel Springs was that there was no Laurel Springs. We drove down the road for three miles, in the gathering darkness, until I looked at the map and realized that Laurel Springs was two miles behind us. David in North Carolina, 1999. We turned around (it wasn’t the first time, nor the last) and realized that the crossroads of Highways 113 and 88 was pretty much Laurel Springs. Or so we thought. We pulled into the yard of a big farm house, which happened to be a bed and breakfast, and asked if they had a room. You don’t just drop into a B & B at 6:30 p.m. and ask for a bed. It’s not the same as going to the Bronco Motel. And the B and B didn’t ...