“Hang on,” I said to Rayna. “I’m looking for a cell phone. And Bitty. She might be . . . be under the car. So I’m going to duck down and look, okay? Don’t make any quick moves or you might end up toppling this thing back over on me.”
“I won’t.” Rayna sounded so faint I could barely hear her. Or maybe I was still deaf from Bitty firing a cannon right beside my head. Whichever, it spurred me to greater effort.
It smelled awful under the SUV, like burned motor oil and grease—and gas. That last gave me pause, but I had to make sure Bitty wasn’t trapped. There was so much kudzu everywhere. I swear the vines had already started to grow around the car. If we didn’t get Rayna out of it, she would probably be covered up by the next day.
Broken tree branches, brambles, nettles, and every other unpleasant botanical nightmare you can think of was tangled up in the SUV’s undercarriage. I saw that the driver’s side was hooked pretty firmly on some kind of tree trunk that had snapped in two and held it fast. That might keep the vehicle from rolling the rest of the way down the hill if we were lucky.
A glance down the hill was not at all comforting. It ended in a creek that wasn’t very deep, but was far away. Those red banks could wash away pretty fast during flash floods.
Crouched down, I studied the undercarriage and the stout tree that held the SUV in place. It looked like it would hold, so I worked up my courage and crawled under the SUV looking for sign of Bitty. I couldn’t go far, so I took a broken limb and poked it into any spot that looked like it might harbor a person. No yell greeted my pokes, but I didn’t find any lifeless body, either. Satisfied at last that Bitty was at least not under the SUV, I started backing slowly out from under it.
“Are you
sleeping
under there?” a voice right behind me demanded, startling me so badly that I shrieked and tried to leap up.
Not a good idea. Not only did I bang my head against the undercarriage of the car—contrary to popular opinion, manufacturers do use materials harder than plastic in today’s autos—but I forgot about my right arm being useless. It collapsed under my weight and I shrieked again, landing face first in what was probably poison ivy. Spitting dead leaves, debris, and green stems from my mouth, I rolled over and looked up.
Bitty stared down at me. “You’re having a seizure?”
“No,” I said more calmly than I felt, “I’m pitching a hissy fit. Where have you been?”
She held up her cell phone. “I couldn’t get a signal down here. I had to climb up to the road while you two slept.”
Exasperation and relief make an odd combination, but that is just how I felt. I didn’t know whether to kick or kiss her, so I did neither one. I just held up my good hand.
“Help me stand.”
“Good lord, you must be kidding. You’ve got at least fifty pounds on me,” Bitty said, but since she leaned down to take my hand as she spoke I didn’t say anything really nasty to her. Not until I was on my own feet again, anyway.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, and she shook her head. That figured. The only one not wearing a seat belt was the only one unharmed. But seeing as how it was Bitty, it made perfect sense. She’s always unscathed by disasters. “Good,” I said. “You only weigh a few pounds less than me. Twenty at the most.”
“
Twenty
pounds? You’re dreaming!”
No. I was lying through my teeth. But why let her know that? She’d scared the hell out of me. She deserved to be irritated at least a little bit.
“Suck it up, cupcake.”
“Why do you sound like Elmer Fudd? And your face is a mess. You’ve got dirt all over you.”
“That’s blood,” I said, and since my ears were still a little stopped up I could tell I was lisping so that it sounded more like
That’th bluth
. “My mouth ith blithink,” I heard myself say next .
Really, I was so relieved we were all alive and reasonably unharmed that I didn’t care who I sounded like, or that I apparently had so much blood on my face it looked like dirt. Now Bitty looked concerned. She peered at me more closely.
“Oh my! It is blood! Give me your shirt.”
“Wha’?”
She motioned impatiently. “Your shirt. Take it off and give it to me. I’ll make you a tourniquet or something.”
Since I had no desire to take off my shirt or have it ripped into shreds to use as a tourniquet around my neck, I politely declined. “Hell no.”
Bitty threw her hands up into the air. “Try to help some people—”
“Rayna,” I said in my interesting Fudd-voice, “let’s help Rayna.”
“Is she still in the car? Why on earth didn’t she get out?”
Bitty had already started picking her way to the side of the SUV to look inside. I noticed she was barefoot as I followed along behind her. That meant she’d climbed that steep hill to the road to use her cell phone, then came back down again to find us without her shoes. Her feet were probably a mess. And suddenly I thought how wonderful she was to do that without complaint. My earlier irritation disappeared.
“Rayna,” Bitty called, “why are you still in the car?”
I couldn’t hear exactly what Rayna replied, but guessed from Bitty’s reaction that she had said she was stuck.
“Oh, I can get you out; give me a minute. Do you see my shoes by the way? They should be in the back seat. I don’t know where my gun went. I dropped it—ah, there it is.”
“Bitty,” I asked as she reached inside the vehicle, “who did you call to come get us?”
“Jackson Lee.”
I’ve had experience with Bitty’s emergency phone calls. She tends to leave out important details. “What did you say to him?”
She looked over her shoulder at me. “I
thaid
we’d been run off the road by a maniac and fallen over a cliff close to Highway 311. He said he would come right away.”
“Did you tell him what road we’re on?”
Bitty seemed startled by the question. “No. Should I?”
I sighed. “It would help speed things up.”
“Well, I’ll walk back up the hill and see if he can’t
thpeed thingth
up, then.”
“You’re gonna hurt my feelings if you keep mocking me.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “If your
feelingth
aren’t hurt by now, you’re used to me.”
That was true. I changed the subject.
“Can you really get Rayna out of the car?”
“Yes, I think so. Why?”
I held out my hand. “Give me your cell phone. I’ll call Daddy and see if he can get someone to pull Rayna's car out of this gully.”
“I know you’re just checking up on me,” Bitty said, but she put the cell phone in my hand anyway. “Boost me up into the car before you go. I’ll get Rayna unstuck while you call the Mounties.”
At first I didn’t know how to give Bitty a boost. For one thing, my right arm was near useless, and for another, it’s not as if she’s light as a feather, no matter what she claims to weigh. Finally I ended up bending over with my good hand braced on my knee, and let her use my back as a stepping stool. It worked.
“Find your shoes while you’re in there,” I said. “And give me my shoe. It should be in the back seat.”
It turned out that Bitty’s shoes were in the back seat and my shoe had wound up under Rayna's feet. Go figure. The cause and effect of aerodynamics has never been my strong suit.
“Here’s your
thew
,” Bitty said as she handed me my tennis shoe, and only the sight of her cut-up bare feet kept me from bonking her on the head with it. She still hadn’t complained. I was pretty sure she was saving that for later.
Climbing back up that steep hill was a lot harder than it should have been. I may have shoes on, but trying to grab hold of a tree or vine to pull myself up was awkward. I slid back down a few times before I figured out that if I planted my feet firmly, then got a good hold on a limb or vine and pulled slowly, it would get me up a bit farther. I angled across instead of straight up, and finally, after a lot of sweating, swearing, and sobbing, I got to the road. Since by that time I was practically on my knees and crawling, I just sat there for a minute to catch my breath.
My useless right arm hurt like the very devil. It felt like flaming needles went the entire length of it. I hoped for a sprain instead of a break. I’m an awful patient. Mama and Daddy just have so many years left, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want to hear me whine through their final decade.
Sunlight beat down with a vengeance, and I had to close my eyes against it. I felt a bit dizzy, no doubt from climbing Mount Kudzu. I waited for it to pass, and after a few moments, opened my eyes. Spots swam in front of me. They were very pretty, purple centers with yellow rings around them, and shaped a bit like Pac-man. My ears rang, my eyesight faltered, and I could barely see the cell phone I pulled from my shirt pocket. I had to squint to see the numbers. Why had I thought I would be better at this? I have a terrible tendency to overestimate my abilities, it seems.
Holding the phone in my left hand, I managed to press the 9 with my thumb, then the 1, and then the last 1. It took a lot more effort than it should have. For some reason my entire body was shaking like I was cold. That was ridiculous. It was hot as blazes out there. Why was I shivering? Would any cell tower relay this call?
Bitty’s cell phone probably has its own satellite, so after a half dozen rings, I heard an impersonal voice say, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency, please?”
All I could say was, “Help.”
Then I keeled over on the gravel shoulder like roadkill.
****
They told me later that the operator was able to help the rescue team find us by our satellite coordinates. Since Bitty probably has a 600 volt battery in her phone, it led them straight to us. While I don’t understand all the technicalities, I was just glad others knew what the heck they were doing. I don’t remember a whole lot about the rest of the day. Images come back occasionally but are disjointed, like in a dream. All three of us were loaded up into ambulances and taken to the hospital in Desoto County. It’s the largest facility within fifty or so miles, and apparently we made it there pretty quick once they got us on board. I would have loved to have been awake for that trip.
None of us were badly hurt. Bitty had the fewest injuries: bruises, aches, and bad cuts on her feet. Rayna suffered a broken collarbone and sprained left wrist as well as the same bruises, aches, and pains. I ended up with a broken right arm and concussion. My teeth had bitten my lower lip pretty badly, but no long-term damage. The SUV, however, was a total loss.
After an overnight stay at the hospital, Rob came to take Rayna home, Jackson Lee and the twins came for Bitty, and Mama, Daddy, and Kit came to take me home. We were all just one big happy family in three separate vehicles.
Kit sat in the back seat of Mama’s big old Lincoln with me, and Daddy drove. He went more slowly down the congested main road than all the other cars, until finally Mama said, “For heaven’s sake, Eddie, if I’d known you were going to go this slow, I would have packed us a lunch.”
Daddy sped up some after that, but I could see him watching me in the rearview mirror as if to check and see if I’d broken yet. Actually, it made me feel special. I was still Daddy’s Little Girl, even if I weighed nearly as much as he did.
“Did they find out who ran us off the road?” I asked when we were finally on 78 Highway headed to Holly Springs. “It should be pretty easy. Just look for a black truck with cannon ball holes in it.”
Kit grinned at me. “Did Bitty really shoot out Rayna's back window?”
“Afraid so. My hearing will never be the same.”
Mama looked at me over the front seat. “She’s pretty proud of herself about that.”
“So I hear. She’ll be insufferable now. Too bad she didn’t hit the guy chasing us. I wouldn’t feel a bit bad about it if she had.”
“Road rage?” Mama asked. “Do you think that was it?”
I thought about it a minute. “I don’t see how,” I said finally. “We didn’t even see the guy until he rammed us. We were talking. It just came out of the blue.”
“People these days are crazy,” said Daddy. “It’s all those different drugs they take.”
“You don’t mean Viagra makes—”
“No, no, Anna,” Daddy cut Mama off. “Nothing like that. It’s all the other drugs like Valium and cocaine. You know. Street drugs.”
At last the secret of my parents’ newfound libidos was out. I didn’t want to think about it. So I said, “Valium isn’t necessarily a street drug. I don’t know why people take it when there’s a liquor store on practically every corner. A glass of wine works just as well and is better for your heart.”
Kit laughed. “Yeah, and there are people who take that too far as well.”
My head lay on the back of the massive rear seat, and I turned to look at him. “I hope you aren’t referring to me as one of those people.”
Since he had his arm around my shoulders, he gave me a slight squeeze, not enough to hurt, just enough to reassure. “Nope. Not at all. You don’t drink yourself into oblivion.”
“Unfortunately, no. I must give it a try sometime, though. Oblivion sounds pretty good right now.”
“You in pain, sugar?”
I just love southern men. They call you “sugar” and “honey” and “baby’, and you know they know your name so they’re just doing it as a form of endearment. Except the construction guys on the street when you pass them. It’s been a while since it’s happened to me, but those guys are the same everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Washington State, California, Pennsylvania, Indiana, or Georgia. They’re going to shout, whistle, call you “HeyBabyLookin’Good” and other appreciative names. I never minded it so much, but I’ve known women who find it offensive. Now I’m just glad they don’t do the flip-side of that and shout unkind things like “WideLoadComin’Through”. It would really hurt my feelings.
“Not really hurting,” I said to Kit, “just a little uncomfortable.”
The doctors had set my arm and put it in a cast. Now I had a baby sling, but not one that looked anything like those Bitty used for Chitling. It was bright blue and black, colors not especially appealing, but very appropriate for the rest of me. I was bruised from head to toe, my slight concussion was nothing to worry about, and my dehydration had been fixed up with a few bags of IV fluids. I asked for wine instead, but the nurse only laughed. She had no idea I was serious.