Once out of the ruts the Scout began to skid again at once. This time Henry turned against it, deliberately snowplowing the wheels to deepen the skid, knowing without even thinking about it (there was no time to think) that it was the road-sitter's only chance. And he didn't rate it much of one, at that.
Pete screamed, and from the corner of his eye, Henry saw him raise his hands in front of his face, palms out in a warding-off gesture. The Scout tried to go broadside and now Henry spun the wheel back, trying to control the skid just enough so that the rear end wouldn't smash the road-sitter's face backward into her skull. The wheel spun with greasy, giddy ease under his gloved hands. For perhaps three seconds the Scout shot down the snow-covered Deep Cut Road at a forty-five-degree angle, a thing belonging partly to Henry Devlin and partly to the storm. Snow flew up and around it in a fine spray; the headlights painted the snow-slumped pines on the left side of the road in a pair of moving spots. Three seconds, not long, but just long enough. He saw the figure pass by as if she were moving instead of them, except she never moved, not even when the rusty edge of the Scout's bumper flirted past her with perhaps no more than an inch of snowy air between it and her face.
Missed you! Henry exulted. Missed you, you bitch! Then the last thin thread of control broke and the Scout broached broadside. There was a juddering vibration as the wheels found the ruts again, only crosswise this time. It was still trying to turn all the way around, swapping ends--Frontsies-backsies! they used to cry when in line back in grammar school--and then it hit a buried rock or perhaps a small fallen tree with a terrific thud and rolled over, first on the passenger side, the windows over there disintegrating into glittering crumbs, then over onto the roof. One side of Henry's seatbelt broke, spilling him onto the roof on his left shoulder. His balls thumped against the steering column, producing instant leaden pain. The turnsignal stalk broke off against his thigh and he felt blood begin to run at once, soaking his jeans. The claret, as the old boxing radio announcers used to call it, as in Look out, folks, the claret has begun to flow. Pete was yelling or screaming or both.
For several seconds the overturned Scout's engine continued to run, then gravity did its work and the motor died. Now it was just an overturned hulk in the road, wheels still spinning, lights shining at the snow-loaded trees on the left side of the road. One of them went out, but the other continued to shine.
2
Henry had talked with Jonesy a lot about his accident (listened, really; therapy was creative listening), and he knew that Jonesy had no memory of the actual collision. As far as Henry could tell, he himself never lost consciousness following the Scout's flip, and the chain of recollection remained intact. He remembered fumbling for the seatbelt clasp, wanting to be all the way free of the fucking thing, while Pete bellowed that his leg was broken, his cocksucking leg was broken. He remembered the steady whick-thump, whick-thump of the windshield wipers and the glow of the dashlights, which were now up instead of down. He found the seatbelt clasp, lost it, found it again, and pushed it. The seatbelt's lap-strap released him and he thumped awkwardly against the roof, shattering the domelight's plastic cover.
He flailed with his hand, found the doorhandle, couldn't move it.
"My leg! Oh man, my fucking leg!"
"Shut up about it," Henry said. "Your leg's okay." As if he knew. He found the doorhandle again, yanked, and there was nothing. Then he realized why--he was upside down and yanking the wrong way. He reversed his grip and the domelight's uncovered bulb glared hotly in his eye as the door clicked open. He shoved the door with the back of his hand, sure there would be no real result; the frame was probably bent and he'd be lucky to get six inches.
But the door grated and suddenly he could feel snow swirling coldly around his face and neck. He pushed harder on the door, getting his shoulder into it, and it wasn't until his legs came free of the steering column that he realized they had been hung up. He did half a somersault and was suddenly regarding his own denim-covered crotch at close range, as if he had decided to try and kiss his throbbing balls, make them all well. His diaphragm folded in on itself and it was hard to breathe.
"Henry, help me! I'm caught! I'm fuckin caught!"
"Just a minute." His voice sounded squeezed and high, hardly his own voice at all. Now he could see the upper left leg of his jeans darkening with blood. The wind in the pines sounded like God's own Electrolux.
He grabbed the doorpost, grateful he'd left his gloves on while he was driving, and gave a tremendous yank--he had to get out, had to unfold his diaphragm so he could breathe.
For a moment nothing happened, and then Henry popped out like a cork out of a bottle. He lay where he was for a moment, panting and looking up into a sifting, falling net of snow. There was nothing odd about the sky then; he would have sworn to it in court on a stack of Bibles. Just the low gray bellies of the clouds and the psychedelic downrush of the snow.
Pete was calling his name again and again, with increasing panic.
Henry rolled over, got to his knees, and when that went all right he lurched to his feet. He only stood for a moment, swaying in the wind and waiting to see if his bleeding left leg would buckle and spill him into the snow again. It didn't, and he limped around the back of the overturned Scout to see what he could do about Pete. He spared one glance at the woman who had caused all this fuckarow. She sat as she had, cross-legged in the middle of the road, her thighs and the front of her parka frosted with snow. Her vest snapped and billowed. So did the ribbons attached to her cap. She had not turned to look at them but stared back in the direction of Gosselin's Market just as she had when they came over the rise and saw her. One swooping, curving tire-track in the snow came within a foot of her cocked left leg, and he had no idea, absolutely none at all, how he could have missed her.
"Henry! Henry, help me!"
He hurried on, slipping in the new snow as he rounded the passenger side. Pete's door was stuck, but when Henry got on his knees and yanked with both hands, it came open about halfway. He reached in, grabbed Pete's shoulder, and yanked. Nothing.
"Unbuckle your belt, Pete."
Pete fumbled but couldn't seem to find it even though it was right in front of him. Working carefully, with not the slightest feeling of impatience (he supposed he might be in shock), Henry unclipped the belt and Pete thumped to the roof, his head bending sideways. He screamed in mingled surprise and pain and then came floundering and yanking his way out of the half-open door. Henry grabbed him under his arms and pulled backward. They both went over in the snow and Henry was afflicted with deja vu so strong and so sudden it was like swooning. Hadn't they played just this way as kids? Of course they had. The day they'd taught Duddits how to make snow angels, for one. Someone began to laugh, startling him badly. Then he realized it was him.
Pete sat up, wild-eyed and glowering, the back of him covered with snow. "The fuck are you laughing about? That asshole almost got us killed! I'm gonna strangle the son of a bitch!"
"Not her son but the bitch herself," Henry said. He was laughing harder than ever and thought it quite likely that Pete didn't understand what he was saying--especially with the wind thrown in--but he didn't care. Seldom had he felt so delicious.
Pete flailed to his feet much as Henry had done himself, and Henry was just about to say something wise, something about how Pete was moving pretty well for a guy with a broken leg, when Pete went back down with a cry of pain. Henry went to him and felt Pete's leg, thrust out in front of him. It seemed intact, but who could tell through two layers of clothing?
"It ain't broke after all," Pete said, but he was panting with pain. "Fucker's locked up is all, just like when I was playin football. Where is she? You sure it's a woman?"
"Yes."
Pete got up and hobbled around the front of the car holding his knee. The remaining headlight still shone bravely into the snow. "She better be crippled or blind, that's all I can say," he told Henry. "If she's not, I'm gonna kick her ass all the way back to Goss
elin's."
Henry began to laugh again. It was the mental picture of Pete hopping . . . then kicking. Like some fucked-up Rockette. "Peter, don't you really hurt her!" he shouted, suspecting any severity he might have managed was negated by the fact that he was speaking between gusts of maniacal laughter.
"I won't unless she puts some sass on me," Pete said. The words, carried back to Henry on the wind, had an offended-old-lady quality to them that made him laugh harder than ever. He scooted down his jeans and long underwear and stood there in his Jockeys to see how badly the turnsignal stalk had wounded him.
It was a shallow gash about three inches long on the inside of his thigh. It had bled copiously--was still oozing--but Henry didn't think it was deep.
"What in the hell did you think you were doing?" Pete scolded from the other side of the overturned Scout, whose wipers were still whick-thumping back and forth. And although Pete's tirade was laced with profanity (much of it decidedly Beaverish), his friend still sounded to Henry like an offended old lady schoolteacher, and this got him laughing again as he hauled up his britches.
"Why you sittin out here in the middle of the motherfuckin road in the middle of a motherfuckin snowstorm? You drunk? High on drugs? What kind of dumb doodlyfuck are you? Hey, talk to me! You almost got me n my buddy killed, the least you can do is . . . oww, FUCK-ME-FREDDY!"
Henry came around the wreck just in time to see Pete fall over beside Ms. Buddha. His leg must have locked up again. She never looked at him. The orange ribbons on her hat blew out behind her. Her face was raised into the storm, wide eyes not blinking as the snowflakes whirled into them to melt on their warm living lenses, and Henry felt, in spite of everything, his professional curiosity aroused. Just what had they found here?
3
"Oww, fuck me sideways, shit-a-goddam, don't that fuckin HURT!"
"Are you all right?" Henry asked, and that started him laughing again. What a foolish question.
"Do I sound all right, shrink-boy?" Pete asked waspishly, but when Henry bent toward him, he raised one hand and waved him away. "Nah, I got it, it's lettin go, check Princess Dipshit. She just sits there."
Henry dropped to his knees in front of the woman, wincing at the pain--his legs, yes, but his shoulder also hurt where he had banged it on the roof and his neck was stiffening rapidly--but still chuckling.
This was no dewy damsel in distress. She was forty at least, and heavyset. Although her parka was thick and she was wearing God knew how many layers beneath it, it swelled noticeably in front, indicating the sort of prodigious jugs for which breast-reduction surgery had been made. The hair whipping out from beneath and around the flaps of her cap was cut in no particular style. Like them, she was wearing jeans, but one of her thighs would have made two of Henry's. The first word to occur to him was country-woman--the kind of woman you saw hanging out her wash in the toy-littered yard beside her doublewide trailer while Garth or Shania blared from a radio stuck in an open window . . . or maybe buying a few groceries at Gosselin's. The orange gear suggested that she might have been hunting, but if so, where was her rifle? Already covered in snow? Her wide eyes were dark blue and utterly blank. Henry looked for her tracks and saw none. The wind had erased them, no doubt, but it was still eerie; she might have dropped from the sky.
Henry pulled his glove off and snapped his fingers in front of those staring eyes. They blinked. It wasn't much, but more than he had expected, given the fact that a multi-ton vehicle had just missed her by inches and never a twitch from her.
"Hey!" he shouted in her face. "Hey, come back! Come back!"
He snapped his fingers again and could hardly feel them--when had it turned so cold? We're in a goddam situation here, he thought.
The woman burped. The sound was startlingly loud even with the wind in the trees, and before it was snatched away by the moving air, he got a whiff of something both bitter and pungent--it smelled like medicinal alcohol. The woman shifted and grimaced, then broke wind--a long, purring fart that sounded like ripping cloth. Maybe, Henry thought, it's how the locals say hello. The idea got him laughing again.
"Holy shit," Pete said, almost in his ear. "Sounds like she ripped out the seat of her pants with that one. What you been drinkin, lady, Prestone?" And then, to Henry: "She's been drinkin somethin, by Christ, and if it ain't antifreeze, I'm a monkey."
Henry could smell it, too.
The woman's eyes suddenly shifted, met Henry's own. He was shocked by the pain he saw in them. "Where's Rick?" she asked. "I have to find Rick--he's the only one left." She grimaced, and when her lips peeled back, Henry saw that half her teeth were gone. Those remaining looked like stakes in a dilapidated fence. She belched again, and the smell was strong enough to make his eyes water.
"Aw, holy Christ!" Pete nearly screamed. "What's wrong with her?"
"I don't know," Henry said. The only things he knew for sure were that the woman's eyes had gone blank again and that they were in a goddam situation here. Had he been alone, he might have considered sitting down next to the woman and putting his arm around her--a much more interesting and unique answer to the final problem than the Hemingway Solution. But there was Pete to think about--Pete hadn't even been through his first alcohol rehab yet, although that was undoubtedly in the cards.
And besides, he was curious.
4
Pete was sitting in the snow, working at his knee again with his hands, looking at Henry, waiting for him to do something, which was fair enough, since so often he had been the idea man of their quartet. They hadn't had a leader, but Henry had been the closest thing to it. Even back in junior high school that had been true. The woman, meanwhile, was looking at no one, just staring off into the snow again.
Settle, Henry thought. Just take a deep breath and settle.
He took the breath, held it, and let it out. Better. A little better. All right, what was up with this lady? Never mind where she'd come from, what she was doing here, or why she smelled like diluted antifreeze when she burped. What was up with her right now?
Shock, obviously. Shock so deep it was like a form of catatonia--witness how she had not so much as stirred when the Scout went skidding by her at shaving distance. And yet she hadn't retreated so far inside that only a hypo of something excitable could reach her; she had responded to the snap of his fingers, and she had spoken. Had inquired about someone named Rick.
"Henry--"
"Quiet a minute."
He took off his gloves again, held his hands in front of her face, and clapped them smartly. He thought the sound very small compared to the steady whoosh of the wind in the trees, but she blinked again.
"On your feet!"
Henry took her gloved hands and was encouraged when they closed reflexively around his. He leaned forward, getting into her face, smelling that ethery odor. No one who smelled like that could be very well.
"On your feet, get up! With me! On three! One, two, three!"
He stood, holding her hands. She rose, her knees popping, and burped again. She broke wind again as well. Her hat went askew, dipping over one eye. When she made no move to straighten it, Henry said, "Fix her hat."
"Huh?" Pete had also gotten up, although he didn't look very steady.
"I don't want to let go of her. Fix her hat, get it out of her eye."
Gingerly, Pete reached out and straightened her hat. The woman bent slightly, grimaced, farted.
"Thank you very much," Pete said sourly. "You've been a wonderful audience, good night."
Henry could feel her sagging and tightened his grip.
"Walk!" he shouted, getting into her face again. "Walk with me! On three! One, two, three!"
He began walking backward, toward the front of the Scout. She was looking at him now and he held her gaze. Without glancing at Pete--he didn't want to risk losing her--he said, "Take my belt. Lead me."
"Where?"
"Around the other side of the Scout."
"I'm not sure I can--"
 
; "You have to, Pete, now do it."
For a moment there was nothing, and then he felt Pete's hand slip under his coat, fumble, and catch hold of his belt. They shuffled across the narrow string of road in an awkward conga-line, through the staring yellow spotlight of the Scout's remaining headlamp. On the far side of the overturned vehicle they were at least partly sheltered from the wind, and that was good.
The woman abruptly pulled her hands out of Henry's and leaned forward, mouth opening. Henry stepped back, not wanting to be splattered when she let go . . . but instead of vomiting she belched, the loudest one yet. Then, while still bent over, she broke wind again. The sound was like nothing Henry had ever heard before, and he would have sworn he'd heard everything on the wards in western Massachusetts. She kept her feet, though, breathing through her nose in big horselike snuffles of air.
"Henry," Pete said. His voice was hoarse with terror, awe, or both. "My God, look."
He was staring up at the sky, jaw loose and mouth gaping. Henry followed his gaze and could hardly believe what he was seeing. Bright circles of light, nine or ten of them, cruised slowly across the low-hanging clouds. Henry had to squint to look at them. He thought briefly of spotlights stabbing the night sky at Hollywood film premieres, but of course there were no such lights out here in the woods, and if there had been he would have seen the beams themselves, rising in the snowy air. Whatever was projecting those lights was above or in the clouds, not below them. They ran back and forth, seemingly at random, and Henry felt a sudden atavistic terror invade him . . . except it actually seemed to rise up from inside, somewhere deep inside. All at once his spinal cord felt like a column of ice.
"What is it?" Pete asked, nearly whining. "Christ, Henry, what is it?"
"I don't--"
The woman looked up, saw the dancing lights, and began to shriek. They were amazingly loud, those shrieks, and so full of terror they made Henry feel like shrieking himself.