Jake pointed to what looked like mist rising from the grass that bordered the east side of the road up ahead. “There’s a roadside hot spring. We’ll stop, and I’ll give you a tour. We could even take a dip if you want.”
“Swim on the same day we drive through a snow squall?”
He shrugged. “Why not? There’s a little cement pool at the far end, and the water isn’t as hot there. It’d be perfect. You’ll love it.”
He glanced in the rear view mirror. “That’s odd. Someone’s coming up mighty fast behind us.”
“You mean faster than we’re travelling?” she asked.
“I’m not kidding. Maybe he’s going to Fields store for a milkshake and burger and is afraid they’ll sell out before he arrives.”
Fiona turned around in time to see the driver swing out and around to pass, take the swing too wide, and plane off the gravel by the side of the road. Stones shot everywhere. The small car lurched side to side, did an impressive three sixty, then skidded sideways some distance before it bounced down an embankment to the left and crashed through a barbed wire fence. Jake swerved to miss the careening vehicle, forcing them into an upward sloping embankment on the right side of the road. They slammed to a stop, but not before digging up a nose full of rabbit brush.
“Are you okay?” Jake asked, leaning toward her and putting a hand on her shoulder.
They looked at each other bug-eyed, blinking. Present time tried to catch up to the surreal time lapse of the accident.
Fiona checked them over. “I don’t see any blood.” She held up her hand. “I’m a bit shaky but in one piece. I’m glad we had our seat belts on.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jake said, as he looked her over.
Fiona nodded. “I think so. Where did that car go?”
Jake released his seat belt and banged on the door to open it. “That’s what I’m going to find out. Looks like he ended up in the hot spring. You wait here.”
Fiona never listened to well-intentioned advice. Her door was against a wall of crushed rabbit brush, so she climbed over the console and followed Jake out his door. On the ground she had to steady herself against the truck door until the ground stopped spinning. It had all happened so fast she was disoriented and a little dizzy.
Jake crossed the road and looked around, assessing the situation. Fiona saw the problem as soon as she joined him. The car had landed with its rear end in a pool of hot spring water. The front end of the car was facing up the embankment.
“I think I can make out two heads in the front seat,” Jake said. “Wait here. I mean it. Don’t follow me down the bank. I don’t know how deep the water is, and it is scalding along here. You wouldn’t want to accidently fall in.”
“I hope whoever is in the car isn’t par-boiled.”
“They’re lucky. I don’t think they hit the water. The way the car is situated, it looks like only the rear end slid into the water.”
Jake picked his way down the steep embankment to the wreck, holding onto brush as he went. Fiona was more than happy to take orders this time and hoped there wouldn’t be any blood. The sight of it made her faint. She couldn’t see any movement in the front seat. The slow moving muddy water eddied around the back of the car and wound through stands of grass. Fiona could see rocks and slimy looking stuff through the clear sections of the water upstream a little ways. Jake reached the car and made his way around to the driver’s side. Fiona looked up and down the road. She could see a long way in the distance. No help appeared along that forsaken stretch of gravel road.
Jake called to her. “A man is slumped over the wheel. He isn’t in water,” he said. “Looks like there’s a child with him. Neither is moving. Call 911.”
“Right.” She dug her cell phone out of her pants pocket and opened the phone.
“There’s no signal.”
“Walk around till you find one. Go up on that rise.”
The rise was to the west of the road where their truck had ended up. She trudged up the hill through rock and rabbit brush, the sun burning into her shoulders. Two bars on the phone finally lit up. She dialed 911.
“Your name and location, please,” said a pleasant female voice.
“Steens Mountains, I think, at a hot spring.”
“I can barely hear you ma’am. Which side of the Steens?
“East side.”
What is the nature of the call?”
“A car wreck. Driver is slumped over the wheel and there appears to be a child with him. They aren’t moving. The rear end of the car is sitting in the hot spring.” She gave the particulars including Jake’s name.
The dispatcher said, “I know Jake. He’ll know what to do. Stand-by.”
Fiona waited, watching Jake rap on the car windows, trying to rouse the passengers. He seemed to be having trouble getting the driver’s door open. Sound carried amazing distances where there was only the wind and crackle of sun shine to intrude upon the scene. Jake called to the passengers to open the door.
The dispatcher came back on. “We’ll dispatch first responders from Fields. They’ll be there as fast as they can. I can’t pinpoint a time when they’ll arrive, since the responders we have down there are ranchers, and it might take them a while depending on where they are and what they are doing. Can you make out a license number?”
“Jake, what’s the license number?” Fiona called from her vantage point on the rise.
He moved to the front of the car and called out the Oregon license number. She relayed the number to the dispatcher.
“Stay with the vehicle, please, until help arrives,” said the dispatcher. “And stay on the line.”
“I can’t. I have to help and there’s no phone signal down there.” Fiona closed the connection so she didn’t have to get into an argument with the dispatcher who was only doing her job. She trotted back to the edge of the road and gave Jake the news. She searched the horizon to the north and south for motion of any kind. Nothing.
Jake worked trying to open the driver’s door but had a tough time since the doors appeared to be locked as well as jammed. Fiona felt useless and racked her brain for something in Jake’s truck that could help him out. Bailing twine. Jake had regaled her with the many uses of bailing twine and said he always carried a supply in his tool box.
“Jake, what about bailing twine?”
He looked up. “Chain,” he yelled. “The child is moving. I can’t get the door open. See if you can get a chain from my tool box in the rig. I need something heavy. I may have to break a window.”
She rushed back to the truck, managed to get to the tool box in the bed and drag out a chain that weighed almost as much as she did. There was a stash of loose blue bailing twine, and she tucked a length into her belt just in case. She threw the chain on the ground and dragged it over. She scanned the horizon again for a vehicle. Any vehicle. Nothing. Since this was the only road on this side of the Steens, it would be hard not to find them. At the top of the embankment, she looked down. “Jake, I can’t throw this chain. Maybe I can slide it down to you, if you can come over here.”
He came up the bank as she tried to push the chain down to him.
“Do you recognize them?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not them or the car. They must be from out of town. Must be tourists who don’t know how to drive these roads.”
She looked around. She could have sworn she heard the hum of a motor. Jake looked up, too.
“Do you hear that?” she asked. “It sounds like a vehicle. Where’s it coming from?”
Jake pointed up the side of the mountain. “That’d be the Easton brothers in their old Chevy.”