MOM, I SAVED THE CAR (Chapter 1)

This was the five year old’s first white-knuckle ride. What if he wrecked the car? What would Mom say? We were just playing….
His eyes darted to the pedals far down on the floorboards. If only he could stop the car like Dad. Yikes, here comes a tree! With a jerk he steered left, missing a small hackberry...almost. Branches screeched along the right side, scratching the black paint from fender to fender.
With a jolt and more chafing, the car rocked and tipped side to side across some two-foot high buckbrush. With a drawn-out scrunch, it slowed for a bit, and then headed for a big red and gray boulder. That rock, pushed there by a melting glacier eons ago seemed bigger than a wheat shock and dwarfed the weeds and brush. Hitting it meant curtains.
Straining, Freddy muscled the car around the granite mound. Missed it, he thought, with a deep breath. A half-hearted smile of cockiness crossed his face, though it soon faded when the car picked up speed again. Now near the bottom of the slope, a big oak tree loomed and he veered right, only to find the car heading for the huge tin granary with the summer's precious wheat inside. At the last instant the bouncing car—as if by itself—moved away from the tin tower. Freddy gasped. Where was his smile now?
Though the slope had flattened out, the speeding car rolled on and on. Would the thing ever stop? In desperation, Freddy steered toward a five-foot high wild plum thicket off to the right. Crunchhhh…thunk, thunk, thunk! The Chevy slowed and came to rest atop the mashed-down trees. It rocked back and forth, then up and down, at last settling motionless, with the thumping shower of ripened wild plums the only sound.
Freddy, still standing on the seat, stared ahead and then sighed. That was some ride, he thought. Man oh man that was something. Then his smile returned. "Mom will be so glad. Mom will be so glad I saved the car!"