You Just Never Know…

By Storm

“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” murmured Chip Morton, XO of the world famous submarine Seaview.

“What?” asked his companion Lee Crane, captain of that same submarine, in abstracted tones.

“A mule on the back of a hearse,” answered Morton with an odd tone in his voice.

Lee Crane paused in mid-stride and gave his XO a wide-eyed look of incomprehension that was instantly followed by a narrow-eyed look of suspicion. “If this is a joke to see if I’m paying attention, it’s not funny.”

Morton pointed a finger down the row of cars in front of the strip mall bookstore they‘d just exited. Crane’s eyes followed.

Halfway down the row, taking up two spaces, was indeed a slightly battered looking blue Cadillac hearse with a gray mule tied with ropes to a platform attached to the back of the car. A life-sized statue of a mule be more precise, but a mule nonetheless. It looked to have at one time been painted in an Appaloosa pattern, but the colors were now faded to a dull gray. It faced away from the back of the car, it’s glassy eyes surveying the scene blankly, seeing where it had been rather than where it was going.

Lee Crane’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe it.”

“I’ve got to admit,” said Morton wryly, “That - that - is as weird as anything we’ve ever seen on the boat.”

The two men stared for a moment more before starting warily down the row of cars, for Lee’s red Shelby Cobra was parked just a few spaces beyond the hearse. As they drew closer, nothing jumped out at them, but they could see two more things - the car had Louisiana tags and a sign in one of the windows that said ‘ALUMINUM MULE FOR SALE’. The two men shared a look.

“I don’t think I even want to know,” muttered Crane as he edged past, giving both the car and mule a mistrustful scowl.

“The Admiral will never believe it,” added Morton. “I wish I had a camera to prove it.”

“Huh,” said Crane as he reached the door of his car and opened it, “I’m not mentioning this to anybody. With or without pictures as proof.”

Morton cocked his head in thought for a moment as he paused briefly on the passenger’s side of the Cobra. “You may have a point there,” he said slowly. He flicked a glance back at the surreal scene and suppressed a shudder before settling into his seat. “Let’s go to the bookstore in Oxnard. We need to stop by and talk to Commander Bixby at the Naval Construction Battalion Center anyway.”

Crane nodded and gave one last glance to the side as he started the little red car. Maybe he’d just seen too much weirdness on Seaview, but the sight of that mule standing stolidly on the back of a hearse was just too much. He was getting as far away from it as he could.

Author’s note: As impossible as this sounds, the hearse with the mule is real. It was indeed parked outside a bookstore in one of the local malls, which is where I saw it. And like Chip, I wish I’d had a camera with me to document it!