She turned to him. She was a tall girl, five eight, most of it legs, and in his boots he stood no taller.
I’ll drive you on down to where your phone works, he said. Drive you to your folks, if you want. Or the sheriff. Whatever you want.
And what? she said. Leave him?
He’ll be all right here. Nothing will touch him. The man hung his hands on his belt by the thumbs and gave her a kind of smile. Don’t be afraid, he said, and until that moment she hadn’t been.
I’m not afraid, she said. It just doesn’t make sense. You can drive down until you get reception. Call 911, tell them where we are.
He stood looking at her with the yellow lenses. Maybe you misunderstood me, he said. I’m offering to take you down where you can make a phone call. Heck, I’ll drop you in front of the sheriff’s office if that’s what you want. But if you send me down there alone, well. That’s likely to be the end of it, far as I’m concerned.
Her face, she believed, was a perfect blank. She stopped herself from lifting her phone again. When she spoke, her words sounded to her like stones dropped into sand.
What’s that supposed to mean?
It’s supposed to mean that I hit this kid with my vehicle and I may not feel like getting sued by his daddy.
She crossed her arms and uncrossed them.
You’d really be in trouble then. If you left, she said.
No, he said. I’d just be more careful.
I’ve seen you. I’ve seen your car.
Miss, do you have any idea where you are?
She stared into the yellow lenses. What kind of a woman was waiting for this man? Slept in his bed?
Fine, go. Go down the mountain and go to hell you white piece of shit, we don’t need you.
Please, she said aloud. Please.
The man sighed. Look, he said. Here’s the situation. Stay here with little brother and roll the dice on me making a phone call, and maybe he goes into shock and dies in front of your eyes, okay? Or, after I’m gone, try and run down to where you can make a call yourself. You could ride that bike, but I doubt it, from the looks of it. Or come with me and be down within range in ten minutes. I’ll let you out the second you have a signal, that’s what you want, and the sheriff or daddy can grab you on the way up. Now that’s the deal on the table, miss, you can take it or leave it but you need to decide quicklike. He began patting his
pockets—jeans, khaki shirt—looking for cigarettes or keys or some other misplaced thing. Have yourself a minute to think while I get this vehicle straightened out.
He walked away and she looked up the road and then down the road. Treetops swooning in a high wind. Sunlight spilling bough to bough to reach a random spot on the forest floor. Or not random at all, she thought, but the same boughs, the same spots of floor, day after day, the sun on its fixed course and every bough fixed in its place and nothing random about it but the eyes seeing it from this particular vantage at this particular hour of the day. She saw the face of the Virgin, and the memory of that place—the white aspens, the hard chill of the bench, the smell of chocolate and the sound of his desperate chewing—took hold of her like a memory of girlhood and left her heartsick.
She knelt and touched his shoulder again.
Sean, I have to go. I have to go down where I can get a signal, and then I’ll be right back, with Mom and Dad. With an ambulance. Then we’ll all go back down together. Okay? All you have to do is lie here and I’ll be right back, I promise.
She began to rise, and stopped. He’d said something.
What? she said. Sean?
Don’t, he said.
Don’t what?
Don’t go.
You want me to stay?
No.
What do you want me to do?
His slack, red face. Nothing in his eyelids but the tremblings of dream.
He said something else, hoarsely, weakly, and she leaned closer. What? she said, nearly as weakly, and held her breath, watching his lips.