Cry Hard, Cry Fast

by John D. MacDonald

  2. It is recommended that the bad accident signs set out by converging patrol cars be placed at an angle between the middle and left lane of three-lane divided highways so as to aid in keeping the left lane clear.

  3. It is recommended that some form of official letter or commendation be given to Mr. Daniel Blue, address on file at Station Eight, for his assistance in the rescue operations.

  “You’ve got to give him a good talking to, George. I told him he had to stay in his room until you got home and we had a chance to talk about it. He was on his way back to school after lunch when that terrible accident happened down there on the highway. He and that Schwartz boy turned around and ran all the way back to the accident. My goodness, you could hear it all over the place. The first thing I thought was the chimney at the pipe plant had fallen down. Anyway, they had to hang around there, looking bug-eyed at all the blood and gore and dead people until the last dog was hung.

  “I don’t suppose that’s too unnatural for kids, but they picked up this camera. See, it isn’t a very good one, but they shouldn’t have taken it. He says the Schwartz boy found it in the grass and it was thrown out of one of those cars and probably belonged to one of those poor people. He seems to think it’s some kind of souvenir or something and I can’t get it through his head that it’s no different than stealing. They didn’t go back to school at all, and I guess there were plenty others who didn’t. I walked down to see what happened, but it made me feel sick and the crowd was so big I didn’t see the boys there.

  “You’ve got to give him a talking to, George, and you’ve got to take this camera somewhere, to the police or somebody.”

  chapter 9

  THE blue convertible was bounding, lifting, turning. The seat tilted at an unreal angle, down toward the empty passenger’s seat. Centrifugal force of the spin was thrusting him away from the wheel.

  He sensed a strange helpless dreaminess. It was like being asleep and sensing that you are asleep. Through the fuzziness of mind came the shrill knowledge: This is bad! This is deadly! This can kill you! Kill meant death and death meant Gina, and that knowledge muted terror before it began.

  There was even time to wonder at the strange slowness of this disaster that was happening at seventy miles an hour. And time to almost believe that the floating car would touch the other dream cars and rebound lightly, like balloons on a New Year’s ceiling.

  The sharp shock against the rear of the big car distorted its pattern of flight. The shock ripped Devlin Jamison’s hands from the wheel and he was thrown headlong into the air. The car had been traveling straight. When the front right corner dug into the earth in the center strip, the car had been wrenched toward the left and, rebounding, began to tip over. The hundred and eighty pounds that was Devlin Jamison was a mass that tried to continue on in the line of original flight, so that when his hands were torn free, the paths of car and man diverged.

  He flew in a long breathless airless moment—in a bright still place in time, the last slipping grip of his fingers imparting a slow spin to his body, so that in the deafened silence the unheard jangle of the highway wheeled slowly around him, opposed by the silent blue sky. The great crash of collision awakened all the stilled sounds, all the screaming of tires, and he sucked his heart small in readiness for the brute smash against man-made stone.

  He struck flat on his side, on arm, shoulder, head, hip, thigh, calf, struck at a long flat angle against the earth of the center strip so that his body rebounded, struck again, slid, and rolled over and over out onto the concrete of the east-bound lane, limp hands flailing and slapping the stone, coming to rest with one leg canted up against the curbing of the center strip. He lay on his back, one arm across his throat. He put his hand down and felt the wetness of his fingers against the rough warmth of the concrete.

  He got up with a stumbling, sick-legged eagerness. He took two steps and his toes hit the curbing and he fell face down on the grass. He opened his eyes. He could see the sun and shadow in among the grass roots. He remembered when he was little, stretching out in just this way, adjusting to the tiny grass world until an ant was as big as he was, and the stems were the smooth green trunks of tropical trees. There was a small red ribbon in the grass. He looked at it for a long time before he realized, quite suddenly, that it was one of those strips of red cellophane from the top of a pack of cigarettes.

  He wished there were something else to look at and wonder about. He wanted to puzzle over some small thing. Then he would not have to begin to think of his body and how his body felt. And he would not have to think of what he would see in the highway.

  He lay there and listened to the world around him. There were far-off traffic sounds, but no sounds near by. There was an undertone of low voices. A man shouted. There was a siren, which died close by. Car doors thudded. There was a crackling sound, and a smell of greasy burning. There was a sharp tinkle as a last piece of glass fell to stone.

  Bert Scholl saw the blue car in the lunging, driving fall that took it at an angle across his path. He saw the driver thrown. The car had turned toward him so that in a vivid moment before he smashed into it, he could see into the open convertible, see the wheel and upholstery. One of the girls, thrown forward by his savage jab at the brakes, pressed hard against his head and shoulders.

  He saw that he would hit the car right about at the windshield. It seemed a funny damn place to smash into a car. He had a clear sharp moment of anger. Damn fool in his big car, bouncing all over the damn highway.

  There was a fractional second of bitter regret for the vacation spoiled, the car smashed. No Whiteface Mountain, no North Pole, no Frontier Town, no Ausable Chasm, no Streamline Ferry.

  The bitter regret had just begun to change, in the incredible microseconds of the mind, to fear when the two cars struck with the greatest sound in all the world.

  He was braced for impact. He willed the powerful arms and wrists to resist impact. But impact did not come to him as a great blow. There seemed a softness about it. He watched a tiny blazing white figure set against deep blackness. He saw that the little figure was himself, sitting, hands held as though he grasped a wheel. It moved away from him, still in that same position, going further and further away, getting smaller and brighter. It was like the little glowing spot that shrinks when you turn the television off. It went so far away he could not see it any more.

  Cherrik felt the shock as the wheels folded back and then the frame chunked into the wall and hammered the great slab of wall loose. He felt the sickening drop and in the moment of falling, he was aware of all the tons behind him, falling with him. The tractor struck and canted up and he was jammed forward into darkness.

  He opened his eyes. He could hear voices. The cab was tipped over toward the left and it had a crazy look. The angles were all wrong. The windshield was tilted forward so that all he could see through it was the red top of the hood. The glass was cracked in a thousand crazy directions, and bulged so that some jigsaw pieces had fallen out of it. He was all jammed up into the front left corner of the cab, his nose a few inches from the shattered glass. He could look down toward his left and see raw ripped earth about a foot below the open side window. He could turn his head a little bit. He turned it toward the right and saw that the other window just wasn’t there. The cab had been squeezed shut on that side. He could hear faraway voices. He kept trying to remember what he was carrying, where he had been going, how a thing like this had happened.

  Breathing bothered him. He could take little short breaths, high up in his lungs. The weight against his back and the weight against his chest kept him from breathing. He tried to cough but it was a sick little “kih-kih” sound.

  He tried to move his left arm. It was clamped down somehow between his side and the door. He could wiggle his fingers but that was all. He could move his right arm, but it hurt. It hurt like nothing he had ever felt before. He moistened his lips. He wondered what the voices were talking about. They ought to quit the chatter and get him ou
t of here. He wondered about his legs. He tried to move them and couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t even tell what position they were in. Panic began to rise within him, but he pressed it back. Hell, he was just being squeezed so tight his legs had gone numb. Perfectly natural.

  There was a smooth hard thing under his chin. He rubbed his chin against it and realized it was the upper edge of the steering wheel. He wished he could remember where he had been headed. It was funny to have something like this happen and not know anything about it. Not even remember if there’d been a helper along when… He felt weak and sick. If a helper had been asleep back there, he wouldn’t have had a chance. Not the way the cab was buckled and squeezed nearly shut.

  He heard a clink of metal near by. He decided to yell. It was a discouragingly feeble effort. He couldn’t make a breath last long enough to yell the way he wanted to. He tried three times. Suddenly a face appeared right beside him, upside down against the raw torn dirt. It was a stranger.

  “Look, we’re trying to get the load off your back, Pop. How you feel? I was down here before and you were taking a nap.”

  “It’s awful damn… tight in… here.”

  “Here’s the picture. Your trailer is hanging by a whisker. There’s two tow trucks getting lines on it so it won’t slip. We get that anchored, and we’ll take torches and cut you out of here. Just sit tight. Don’t go away, Pop.”

  “Wait… wait a minute. What happened?”

  “A guy that saw it says you took the ditch when a car got knocked right in front of you. It was just a hell of a big ditch, Pop. Look, I’ll see if I can get one of those medics to crawl down in here and have another look. They don’t like the look of it down here much.”

  “I’m… okay. Just… hurry up and… get the load off me.”

  “Sure thing.” The face was gone.

  He remembered how it had happened. He remembered the load, the schedule, the destination. He wished he’d asked the young fellow how the passenger car made out. He remembered the girl’s face. Just a glance, but a nice face. Scared, too. He hoped she and her boy friend made out all right.

  There was another metallic sound and he heard the thin grind of a winch. They knew what they were doing out there. He felt a faint tremor in his shoulders as the load shifted a fraction of an inch.

  Hell of a thing. The tractor was junk. Probably the trailer too. First rig he’d ever washed out. He’d chopped one up pretty bad, years ago. Hydraulic line broke on a steep grade, went out so fast he hadn’t had time to work her down through the gears. Town at the foot of the hill. So he’d waited until there was a gap in the guard railing on the right. He’d wheeled it into the gap and straightened it out. The truck had busted off damn near a hundred reinforced concrete posts, and wadded up a big bale of steel cable underneath before it had come to a reluctant stop. They hadn’t classified that as an accident. The old man had given him a bonus for that.

  Anyway, it was good to know he’d been alone on this run. And then he suddenly couldn’t remember where he had been headed. He moistened his lips and tried to think. Funny thing to be so light-headed. He wished he could feel his legs. The way he was jammed up in the corner, they might be broken all to hell. They might be bleeding and he’d never know it.

  They were yelling orders up there somewhere. And somebody yelled, “Watch it!”

  The winch was whining again. The load trembled again. He heard a crumpling, tearing sound. He was scared. He wanted to be home. He bit at his mouth and started to cry. The load trembled. A tow truck was pulled sideways a few inches. The load slid forward a full twelve inches and came to rest again.

  When it was safe to check, the young man went down again, sliding down on his back on the moist earth. He looked and then worked his way out. He stood up and looked at the sky and then suddenly hammered his fist against the metal skin of the trailer.

  The girl had been bored and restless. It had seemed like fun, just taking off when Charlie asked her. Jeanie would be sore. She would have been able to come too, if this Jim type had been fun, like Charlie. She wished Charlie would wake up. Jim talked funny. They seemed to have plenty of money. It was a nice car. But the way Jim talked, it could be stolen. That would be a hell of a note. There hadn’t been much liquor, and now it was gone. If Jim didn’t pick a place to stop pretty soon, she was going to bust.

  This was beginning to look as if it had been a pretty tired idea. If the law wanted them and grabbed them, it could be a real mess.

  Maybe when Charlie woke up it would be fun again. Charlie did and said funny things. He just didn’t seem to give a damn about anything. This Jim acted as if he was better than other people. Anyway, it was better than not going anyplace. This would have been a day like any other. Sleep late and fool around in the cabin washing out stuff and mending stuff, then go over on the beach at the lake in the afternoon and see who was there, and wind up at Red’s with the same old faces.

  She yawned and stretched. Then she folded her arms on the back of the front seat again, maliciously keeping her elbow firmly against Jim’s shoulder. She looked down. Charlie certainly looked dead to the world. He looked younger with his eyes closed. Like a kid.

  She watched drowsily ahead as they came up behind a new Ford in the center lane, hung there while a brown Chrysler went by on their left, and then swung out. Jim could certainly handle a car. It had been nice last night, in the back seat with Charlie while Jim drove so smoothly through the darkness.

  The brown Chrysler ahead of them jammed on the brakes. Jim hit the brakes too, so hard that she banged forward against the back of the front seat, hurting her breasts. The Chrysler banged the Ford which had caught up with it again and she began to scream as she saw that they were going to pile into the back end of the Chrysler. Jim swung around the Chrysler, bouncing high and hard on the curbing. She saw another car in the way, coming at them, and saw a man fly toward them, going right over the top of the car. She was still screaming when they hit. Jim had dropped down below the seat somewhere. They hit and she felt the hard lunge of her body and saw the rear vision mirror swooping right up toward her eyes. The last thing she saw was her own round wide blue staring eyes before…

  Suzie Scholl had been lost in a distant daydream, unaware of the traffic, of her family—dimly conscious of the fact that she was riding in a car. The quick shock of the brakes slammed her forward so that she lifted out of the seat and banged her arm against her father’s shoulders, her head against the back of his neck. The force of deceleration kept her pinned there, unable to push herself back. She could smell the stuff he used on his hair. She saw her mother braced against the dashboard, and saw Connie more than halfway over into the front seat, thin legs waving. She could not see ahead. The car swerved and she heard the bang as it hit something on the right.

  Then the force eased a bit. Just for a fraction of a second. They hit. It was a great smashing thud that drove her father forward, drove her forward with him, scraping her forcibly over the top of the seat so that she slid off his shoulder banging the top of her head against the dashboard and sliding down onto the floor, face down, legs up and back. It felt as if the whole world had jumped up into the air and fallen with a broken crash. There was a thing in her mind like a black shade. Something had hold of it and kept pulling it almost all the way down, leaving only a crack to see out of. She would push it up. It was very heavy. They would pull it down again. Things made hot crinkling sounds and there was a smell of hot oil. Something hot was flowing along her loins, running down the slant of her body.

  She held the black shade away and opened her eyes. Her shoulders were against the car floor, her head twisted to the side, the brake pedal digging into her cheek below her eye. She could look up at her father. She could not see his face; it was too far forward, beyond the curve of the dash. The steering wheel was down around the steering post. The steering post disappeared into his body. Blood ran down along the steering post. The heel of her right foot was over the top of the seat. She could
see her round bare thigh. There was a long open cut in it.

  The black shade was pulled all the way down and she waited behind it. She waited in dark patience. Something dripped in the darkness. Hands took her and pain flashed before the darkness became thicker and softer.

  Then her eyes hurt. She squinted her eyes open. She turned her head. There was a thing beside her. Where the pattern was caked dark, she could see the design of Connie’s blouse. Little blue thistles on a white field. It wore Connie’s blouse. But where the head should have been there was a thing as big as a head, but it looked like a raw joint torn from the hip of an animal. The shape was wrong. There were grainings of white.

  Suzie tried to sit up. Hands forced her back down and a voice murmured something. After a long time she was moved carefully onto something and lifted. She opened her eyes. A lot of people were standing staring at her. She tried to smile at them. She was slid into darkness, and doors were closed. A man held her wrist. He wore a white coat. They went fast and a siren followed them. She realized after a time that it was their siren. They took her into a narrow place where there were a lot of people talking. A man watched while a nurse cut her clothing off. The man put a needle in her arm. The black shade came down hard.

  As the crash came and Frazier was slammed forward against the fire wall, he had the horrid feeling that the motor was going to be driven back through to crush him. The car swung up and over. It swung and banged and circled. It felt to him as though something had picked it up to shake it. He tried to stay in place, but the motion hurled him out from under the dash. He banged on the roof and on the dash and on the side. The car turned, sighed, sagged and settled down. He was on his knees, arms cradling his head, a weight on his back. He took his arms away. He realized he was on his knees on the left rear door. He braced his arms and stood up and the weight fell away from him.