How frugal Daddy had been, they’d teased him, reluctant to part with old things like this flashlight — decades old.
She would climb out of the capsized car, get help on the road. Yet in the next instant she was overcome by drowsiness, sleep — there was some confusion about time, between the moment when she’d realized the car was skidding out of control on a curve (but it hadn’t been her fault, she would insist to the insurance company it had been the wind, gale-force winds, that seemed to lift her car and fling it off the road as a vengeful giant might have done) and the moment she forced her eyelids open, in a stab of panic realizing I will die if I sleep here: I will freeze to death.
Maybe she was in a state of shock. Things came to her oddly, in broken pieces. Comprehending the cold, for instance. The car’s motor had died, the heater was dead. Already her breath steamed, thinly. Her body temperature was dropping — was it? Before leaving her parents’ house she’d walked guiltily through the downstairs rooms a final time and paused to stare out the kitchen window at the rusted thermometer beside the wild bird feeder. Seeing with a shudder that it was –12° F. And now with the ferocious wind it might have been as cold as –30° F.
So unfair! She could have wept with hurt, disappointment, rage, except she had no time. She was grunting, struggling to get the car door open. A wedge of snow, obscuring most of the window, surprisingly heavy for newly fallen powdery snow. Her chest throbbed with pain, a network of flashing pain, her heartbeat was quickened and erratic, yet by desperate force she managed to get the door open a few inches, push herself through the narrow space, and out — into more snow, swirling snow, icy stinging particles of snow like buckshot. She was gripping the flashlight. It was all she could carry from the car, her belongings would have to be left behind temporarily, even her expensive Japanese camera, her handbag with numerous airline tickets.
At least it was good luck: her mother’s lightweight, compact car had listed toward its right side, leaving the driver’s side relatively clear of snow. Otherwise she might have perished in the freezing dark.
But she was safe. Stumbling in the snow like a drunken woman, limping, waving the flashlight and calling, “Help? Help me?”—though there were no headlights in sight, no lights of any kind. The beam of light was stronger than she’d dared hope. With luck it would penetrate the near-opaque wall of falling snow. If there’s anyone to see it. Anyone for miles. She seemed to know she wasn’t behaving altogether rationally but she wasn’t sure what was wrong. Cupping a hand to her mouth, calling, “Help! I’m here! I’ve been injured!” But where exactly was the road? Her mother’s car had skidded, slid into a drainage ditch that must have been four feet deep at least, when not drifted with snow, but which direction had it come from? She blinked, wiped at her eyes — all was white, faded white, a white of shadows, drifting driving snow like sand. She was in the Sahara during a sandstorm. She was lost in the Himalayas, in a sudden unexpected blizzard. But no: she was on the Cuttler’s Mill Road only a few miles from the shut-up house. There was a farm not far away — in which direction? The Cosgroves’ farm. Or was it the Proctors’? If she tried to walk to it she might get lost, wander in circles, become desperate, panic. For she had no seed to drop in her wake, to mark her path, and if she had, falling snow would cover it within minutes. She would collapse, perish in the bitter cold. Every winter in Maine there were such tales of motorists freezing to death in fields, wandered from their cars; or fallen within a few yards of a house, their frozen corpses discovered beneath drifts of snow.
She was very cold. Shivering. Trembling. Her teeth chattering. The blood on her face had frozen, like a mask. She was wearing a black wool coat, a scarf wound around her head, not a very warm coat by Maine standards. Why hadn’t she taken her mother’s quilted goose-down coat, which had a hood, newly purchased before her mother had taken ill, her mother had given it to her, or tried to—Wear it. It’s warm. It’s no use to me now, dear. But she hadn’t wanted such a coat. A coat from Sears. Though her father’s old Goodyear flashlight, purchased probably at Sears as well, was precious to her, it would save her life. She held it at chest-level as headlights appeared at last in the near distance, moving with maddening slowness. Someone was coming! “Here! Help me—” She waved the flashlight wildly but the vehicle veered off to the left, and was gone. Dim red taillights that vanished too, within seconds. She’d stumbled toward the headlights, fell heavily, flailing in the snow, pushed herself with difficulty to her feet, panting, sobbing. “Come back! I’m here! I’ve had an accident! Help me!”—I’m alone, I’m injured. Don’t leave me here to die. But now at least she had a clearer sense of where the road was, and it wasn’t where she’d have thought, perpendicular to her and then veering away. She switched off the flashlight, to save the battery. There was sure to be another vehicle along soon, if she was lucky a snowplow, a tow truck. She was only about five miles from Skowhegan, though not on a highway. Still she wanted to believe that Cuttler’s Mill Road was important enough to plow out in the midst of a blizzard that had only just begun. Stamping her feet which were going numb, bringing her fists together. In a sudden panic she realized that her eyelashes would freeze together, she’d be blinded if she didn’t stop crying. God help me. God, please forgive me. Why did I stay away so long? She had the uneasy feeling that she was being punished, there was a plan to this, as in a children’s story of punishment out of all proportion to blame. Once upon a time … A woman cousin had invited her to spend the night at her house in Skowhegan, near the airport, but she’d declined for she wanted to be alone on her last night in the old house, she’d had more work, more packing, more thinking to do, and possibly that had been a mistake for her cousin had wished to befriend her, and now of course she’d be in Skowhegan and safe except how could her decision have been a mistake unless her entire life had been a mistake and this possibility I refuse to accept.
She waited. She would be patient. For impatience, fear, panic would not save her. Standing in what she believed to be the road, waiting. How long, she could not gauge. It was too much of an effort for her to push back her coat sleeve and check her wristwatch for the time. Or perhaps she was fearful of knowing the time. How long she’d been stranded here on the Cuttler’s Mill Road. Minutes were passing, the wind tore at her face, her thin wool scarf, snow encrusted her hair, eyelashes, she must resemble a snow-sculpture by this time, it was such effort to keep moving, stamping her feet, shaking her head, how sleepy she was, how powerful the urge to lie down in the snow blanketing the earth, how sweet, her eyelids heavy, closing — and just at that instant she saw, or seemed to see, another pair of headlights. This time she’d be rescued! She knew. She fumbled to switch on the flashlight. At first nothing happened, there was no light, she shook the flashlight and the light came on, though in a reduced, feeble beam. But she was stumbling toward the headlights anyway, really she didn’t need the flashlight, she was crying, “Here! Help! I had an accident!” This time the vehicle came to a stop. A man’s voice called, in surprise, “Hello? Is someone there?” and she was sobbing with relief, waving desperately in the blinding headlights, “Yes! Here! Help me.”
She must have collapsed. Though with no memory of falling to the ground. A man was stooping over her, his breath steaming. His face was familiar but she didn’t know his name. She could not have spoken his name. That creased adult face like a mask upon a boy’s face, subtly disfiguring it. Yet she recognized the eyes. Her rescuer was talking to her, comforting her, his voice booming yet difficult to decipher. Yet it was her own language he spoke — the flattened nasal accent of inland Maine. He was calling her by name: he knew her! For he, too, lived on the Cuttler’s Mill Road. He would drive her to Skowhegan, to the hospital. He stooped to shove his arms beneath her, lifting her with care, like a man accustomed to such emergencies, the sensation of being lifted, carried, like a child, was unnerving to her, yet wonderful — she was whimpering, sobbing with relief, gratitude. “Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, you’ve saved my life.” Inside the cab of his pickup truck it was warm, astonishingly warm, she’d forgotten what warmth was, the heater was on full blast. Deftly, explaining he’d had some paramedic training, he was a volunteer fireman, he yanked off her tight stylish leather boots and rubbed her numb toes, until sensation, sharp stabs of pain that made her wince, returned. He rubbed her hands, too, briskly, and laid the flat of his warm, broad palms against her cheeks which had begun to freeze. In her weakened condition she didn’t even feel embarrassment or self-consciousness as always she felt when a man touched her for the first time.