by Scott Fowler
Everything was quiet for one second. Maybe two. It was like the air had all been sucked out of our bodies. And then everyone drew in a breath and it was real, real loud. I could hear Mom and Georgia and Salem and London in the back, and I think I was yelling “What happened? What happened?” but I’m not sure what I said. What I couldn’t figure out was that it looked like two huge tree trunks had now taken the place of my parents and were sitting in the front seats of the car. I could barely see Mom or Dad. What I mostly saw were those trees. They were pine trees, I could tell, because some of the needles on a few of the branches had actually reached in through the front window. And the car’s dark gray dashboard looked strange, too, like a giant had shoved it straight down into the car. The dashboard actually looked like it had jammed into both of my parents’ stomachs.
The van was old. I don’t know how old, but older than I am. It was made sometime in the 1990s, I know that. My parents had bought it used to carry us around once there were four of us. I knew it didn’t have any airbags, because Mom had told me a few weeks ago that we were going to get a new van that did pretty soon. We just hadn’t gotten around to it yet, she said, because Dad had been working so much and hadn’t had time to look. Plus, they needed to save a little more money first, she had said.
The first thing I did was touch my head, because I was afraid it was bleeding. It wasn’t, but I saw a lot of blood in the front seat and it was coming from somewhere. Then I looked at Georgia, who was still crying her head off but still buckled into her pink car seat, which looked the same as it always does. I could still see her blue helmet. There was a pine needle stuck to it. Then I heard Mom. “Boys?” she said, and it came out almost like a whisper, not like the way she usually talks when she wants to get her attention. “Boys? Are you OK?”
“I’m OK, Mom,” I said. I unbuckled my seat belt and looked back at my brothers. London was crying. Salem looked terrified. “Are you hurt?” I said. And they just looked at me kind of weird and I said again, louder, “Are you hurt?” Salem shook his head, staring at me with eyes that looked as big as those on the deer. London kept crying, but a little softer. I didn’t see anything wrong with either of them.
“Everyone be quiet for a second,” I said. For once they listened to me. “I need to talk to Mom.” Then I turned back toward her.
“I think they’re OK, Mom,” I said, and I tried to make my voice strong, because she sounded sad or hurt. Or both. “And the baby is OK.”
But the car was a mess. I could tell that from where I sat. It’s like the first row of seats had totally disappeared. The hood had buckled. One of the side doors was halfway off, too. There was broken glass everywhere.
“Oh,” Mom said, and it came out kind of like a moan. “OK, honey.” There was a long pause. Then she said “Boys, are you OK?” Like the last few seconds hadn’t even happened.
I started again, “I think…”
But she interrupted me and said some more words. Georgia had stopped crying by then, so I heard her clearly. “I love you all,” she whispered. “Your Dad and I love you all so much.”
“We know,” I said. I don’t like when anyone talks about love. Do people have to say things like that all the time?
“What do we need to do?” I asked her. “Is Dad OK? Will the car go?” There were so many questions I wanted to ask. But she didn’t say anything back. Then her eyes closed.
“Dad,” I said. “Dad?? What do we need to do?”
Dad didn’t say anything, either. I tried to push past the branches of the pine tree and find him in what had been the driver’s seat. And I did, but I wished that I hadn’t. He had blood all over the forehead. His mouth was open. His eyes were closed. I put my hand up to his mouth and felt the breath coming out, but he looked really hurt. I shook him by the shoulder and I patted his cheek, first lightly and then harder. But he didn’t do anything. I couldn’t even see his legs because the pine needles, the trees and the dashboard were messing up everything.
I could see a little more of Mom when I turned to my right. She had blood on her, too, but not quite as much. I took her shoulder and shook her a little and while I was doing that, I had an idea. What about a cell phone? I didn’t have one yet – although a lot of kids in my class did – but both my parents usually carried one. We could call for help on that.
“Mom?” I said. “Mom?” She opened her eyes and looked at me again. At first, she seemed like she was staring at my hair. But then her eyes focused on me, and I could tell she was really looking at me again, and that made me feel happier for a second. She looked at Dad, and then at the smashed front of the car.
“Mom, do you know where your cell phone is?” I asked.
“I didn’t bring it,” she said, and she sounded like she was about to cry. “I left it at home in the charger.”
“What about Dad?” I persisted.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. You can check. He usually keeps it in his front right pocket.”
I snaked my hand around a tree branch and under the dashboard and managed to find the pocket of Dad’s blue jeans. Yes! I could feel the phone in there. I pulled it out quickly – or at least I thought I did. Only half of it came out – the top half. It had broken in two. I pulled out the other half, too, trying to see if somehow the two halves could be taped together or something, but the display screen was totally cracked. The power button didn’t work at all when I mashed it a couple of times.
“Can you wake your Dad up?” Mom said, trying to move her head to see what I was doing.
“No,” I said. “His phone’s broken, and something’s wrong with him.”
“Something’s wrong with me, too,” she said, looking down at where the dashboard jammed into her stomach. “I can’t move one of my legs.”
“Do you want me to get you out?” I said. But when I looked at where she was and all the car parts and branches that had circled around her like a spider’s web, I knew I would need a lot of help.
“Don’t move me,” she said. “I might be really hurt. I think your dad is unconscious. You’re going to need to go get help. All of you.”
“What?” I said. “We’re not leaving you! Someone will come.”
“No,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound that hot, but she did move one of her hands and put it on my cheek. “Look at me, Chapel. That road we’ve been on? Hardly anyone uses it anymore. It’s not even on the maps. Your dad knows about it just because he used to drive on it in college. He never should have driven around that barricade to get on it. No one may come this way for days.”
She took another shuddering breath and looked at me. Her voice sounded sort of desperate.
“You all need to go,” she said. “All of you – even the baby. It was 15 degrees this morning when we left. If it takes awhile to get help, I don’t want any of you freezing to death. You need to get out of this car. You need to move. And you need to go find help. And no matter what you do, stay together.”
CHAPTER 4
I couldn’t imagine us going without Mom and Dad. Then again, I couldn’t imagine us in a wreck. Or us staying beside them and just hoping someone would show up. All of this didn’t seem real. But it was.
“Where would we go?” I asked Mom.
“Go back up to the road,” she said, and she dropped her hand off my cheek, like she couldn’t lift it anymore.
“The road to nowhere?” I said doubtfully.
“There’ll be something on it,” she said. “Somewhere. Just don’t go back the way we came – I don’t think we saw any houses or stores ever since Dad went around the barricade. That was probably 15 miles. Go the same way we were driving before the wreck. There’s got to be something. Wave down any car. Stop at any house. They’ll help.”
“What about you?” I said.
“That old brown blanket in the back,” she said. “Get that. Cover me up. And Dad, too. Leave us some water. We’ll be OK.”
They didn’t look OK. “Mom,” I said. “What if we
don’t see anybody for a long time?”
But she didn’t say anything. Then she closed her eyes again. I shook her once more, but it was like shaking one of Georgia’s dolls. I was trying not to get scared.
“Chapel?” Salem asked from the backseat, and I could tell he was about to cry. “What’s happening?”
I turned back to the backseat. “We’re going to go get help,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. “We’re going to have an adventure.”
“I don’t want to have an adventure,” London said. He was sniffling. “I want to go home. I want Mom and Dad.” I don’t think he even understood we had a wreck yet. I think he was in shock or something.
“Mom and Dad are going to be just fine, but they have to stay here in the car,” I said. “The rest of us are going on a walk. Maybe it will even snow. That’ll be fun, won’t it?”
“Even Georgia?” London said, and he smiled a little. Like all of us, he loved Georgia.
“Even Georgia,” I said. “I’m going to carry her in her backpack.”
Georgia suddenly said: “Backpack!” She loved the backpack. My dad carried her in it all the time, especially when we took a family walk.
“Yes,” Salem said, and suddenly I knew he had turned it around and was going to be a big help on this. He understood what was going on. He knew we were in a mess. The two younger ones hadn’t realized it yet, but he knew. “We’re going on a family walk, Georgia. You’re going to ride in the backpack!”
Then, to me, he said: “Let’s get out all the suitcases, Chapel. We should put on our snow stuff. All of it.”
“How long is our walk?” London said. “I’m going to get hungry soon.” London liked to make sure he told everyone he was going to be hungry in advance.
“That’s a good idea, London,” I said. “We’ll bring snacks.”
“And bottled water, too,” Salem said. “There are a lot of them still in the back.” He was getting into it now – I think he had forgotten for a second about Mom and Dad.
“We’ll bring some of the bottled water and the food,” I said, “but we need to put some of that by Mom and Dad, too. So Mom can reach it, and Dad too if he wakes up.”
“Why is Dad asleep?” London asked, but I pretended not to hear.
I unbuckled Georgia from her car seat and pulled her toward me. Her helmet accidentally bonked me in the head. “Backpack!” she said. We all climbed out the door that had gotten knocked half off the car. Then we opened up the trunk and started digging into everything we could find.
There was an old blanket at the bottom of the trunk, just like Mom had said. I crawled back in the car and draped that around the pine branches and on top of Mom and Dad as best I could. I tucked it in around them. Neither of them moved.
I took some of their extra clothes and their big coats and stuffed those all around their shoulders and their heads, too, sort of like I was making a bed with them inside it. I didn’t want London or Salem doing any of that, so I got them to entertain Georgia for a couple of minutes.
Then I unzipped one suitcase that had all of our snow gear in it, and luckily Mom had done a good packing job. We all had one good snow outfit apiece – most of them hand-me-downs from older cousins – as well as gloves and some boots and hats that fit us and weren’t too hard to get on. We put the hats and gloves in our jacket pockets for later, but we skipped the boots except for Georgia’s pink ones she liked so much. All of us boys preferred walking in our tennis shoes. It wasn’t snowing, so I thought that would be OK.
London even got his snowsuit on mostly by himself, even though whenever Mom or Dad is around, he likes to make them do it. Salem had his school backpack in the car – he had forgotten to take it out after the last day of school before Christmas break. We unpacked all the books and school things he had in it and then repacked it with all the water and snacks it could hold.
We got Georgia into her snow stuff last. The pants were black and the coat was white, with a hood. We didn’t pull up the hood, though, because of her blue helmet, so the hood just flopped back behind her. Then I put her in the backpack and buckled up the straps and loaded her up onto my shoulders. I tried to talk to Mom and Dad one more time, but they both seemed like they were going to be asleep a long time. That’s what I told myself, anyway. They were just asleep under a blanket. That was all – nothing worse than that.
“I want to kiss them before we leave,” Salem said. London said he wanted to also. They had a hard time reaching Mom and Dad’s faces, but they crawled in there and did it. I didn’t want to do that, and no one was there to tell me to, so I didn’t.
“Their cheeks are cold,” London said. He didn’t say anything about the blood, and I didn’t bring it up.
We stood beside the van for a few seconds. I knew I needed to be the leader, but it was hard to think of what to say. Even though I was the oldest, I was used to Mom or Dad being in charge.
Salem actually spoke first once we were out of the van for good. “We should pray to God,” he said.
“OK,” I said. “You do it.”
I thought he would argue, but he didn’t.
“Dear God: Keep Mom and Dad safe until we find help,” Salem said. “Amen.”
“And keep Georgia safe,” London added. “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for this food…”
“Amen,” I said, cutting him off before he started reciting all the prayers he had learned in Bible School last summer. “OK, good. Now listen – do you see these tracks?”
They all looked where I was pointing, at the tracks that ended at our back tires but dug a clear trench through old snow and mud down the hill. We had gone a long way down that hill before banging into the pine trees. It had to be at least half the size of a football field. “We’re going to follow these, and then we’ll get back on the road, and then we’re going to find help for Mom and Dad.”
“Who’s going to help us?” London said.
“Someone will, London,” Salem said, wiping a few leftover cracker crumbs from the corner of Georgia’s mouth. “They will see Georgia and they won’t be able to resist such a cute baby.”
“That’s right,” I said, and started walking up the hill. Now that we were doing this, I wanted to get going. Fast. “Someone will help us – isn’t that right, Georgia?”
“No no no,” Georgia said happily. She had no idea what was happening. She just knew she was out of the car, which was exactly where she had wanted to be.
We followed the tire tracks back up the hill and set off down the road, the same way the car had been heading before the deer came.
CHAPTER 5
We started off fine. The road was paved and easy to find. The tire tracks through the old snow that fell long before we had gotten here made it clear which direction Mom wanted us to go – away from the way we came. Georgia felt light in the backpack. Salem had the school backpack loaded with the drinks and snacks, along with three diapers and a few wipes for Georgia.
“Ugh,” he said when I had put the diapers in there. “Who’s going to change her?”
“I will,” London volunteered. “I can do it. I’ve seen Mom.”
“We’ll see,” I said, which was an old trick of Mom and Dad’s when they weren’t ready to make a decision quite yet. I couldn’t believe London had volunteered before Salem and me, though. Sometimes he surprised me.
We started walking, but I could see from the way Salem was moving that he was getting “his energy going,” as he likes to say.
“Do you think we should run?” Salem said. “Maybe I should run on up ahead a little and see if there are any houses. Then I’ll run right back if there aren’t.”
I went ahead and let him do that, because the road was so straight I could see him the whole way. Salem would run up ahead for about 100 yards, then come back to us. He did it a lot faster than I could have, even if I hadn’t had Georgia strapped to my back.
“Nothing but more woods,” he’d say when he came back. Then he’d
walk for awhile, get antsy and do it again. But after about five times with no luck, he settled down and just walked beside us.
It was like walking in the woods, really. The road cut right through a forest of huge pine and oak trees, a few of which still had their leaves.
We walked right down the middle of the road. It was still late afternoon and we wanted any car that came along to see us.
But there didn’t seem to be any chance of that. I was no Encyclopedia Brown, but it was easy to see that this road was hardly ever used. Mom’s “road to nowhere” nickname for it was pretty appropriate. There was no litter on the side of the road, for one thing. Not a Styrofoam cup. Not a hamburger wrapper. Not a bottle cap for the collection that we keep together in a Ziploc bag at home in a drawer. Nothing. And in places the trees had grown back up really close to the road, almost like they were slowly reclaiming their territory. There were pine needles scattered all over the road. A lot of times it looked like two cars would have trouble passing each other side by side if they were going in different directions.
We fell into a pattern. I went first, with Georgia in the backpack behind me. Salem was second when he wasn’t running ahead to see what was coming next. London was third.
“How long do we have to walk?” Salem said after about half an hour.
I was wondering that myself. But I tried to think about what Dad would say to a question like that. “As long as it takes,” I said.
“No no,” Georgia said, joining the conversation. I sometimes forgot for a few minutes that she was even in the backpack. She was always so content back there that she often just looked at the scenery and wouldn’t say anything as long as she was comfortable.
I had my watch with me, so I knew we had started walking at 3:30 p.m. I had just started wearing one because I wanted to know how much longer it was at school until math class was over. I couldn’t stand math class.
After we had walked about an hour, a light snow began to fall. It cheered us up, because it was so rare to us, and we all tried to catch a few snowflakes on our tongue. Snow hadn’t gotten us out of school for two years. The only time it had snowed in the past two years was on a weekend, and it was only there a couple of hours in the morning before it got hot again. It wasn’t a good snow for snowmen or snowballs, either – it hadn’t packed together right or something. By noon that day, almost all the snow had melted. That had been a total rip-off.