Pinball (17 page)

He sat for a moment, thinking about the Stephen King question again. He went to his bookshelf and scanned the spines of the hundred or more books stored there.
Ah, there it is.
He flipped through his copy of
On Writing
until he found what he was looking for:
The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What-if question…

Chapter 53

Lynne Denver sat at her desk, trying without much luck to restrain the pent-up energy of her twenty-three wound-up third graders as the minute hand of the clock crept slowly toward the 12. Nearly three o’clock, and the children knew it. Finally the bell rang and the kids flooded out of the classroom, roaring toward the school bus loading area like water streaming through a raging rapids.

She leaned back and stretched, her back dully aching, and expressed thanks for the fact that it was Friday. She graded an assignment from earlier that day, did some paperwork on one of her students who had been out of class with the flu for a week, and began to gather her things to get ready to go.

A sort of chill went up her spine, the kind they say you feel when a goose walks over your grave. Lynne wasn’t the superstitious sort, but she thought to herself,
What’s up with that?
She hoped it wasn’t an indication that she was coming down with something.

Lynne walked down the hall to the classroom where her friend Nancy Leonard taught second grade. Nancy’s car had broken down the day before, so Lynne had given her a ride to work and now would take her home. “Hey, Nance,” she said as she walked into the classroom, “You about ready?”

Nancy smiled at Lynne and said, “Sure, let me finish grading these last two papers and we’re outta here.” She was a tall woman with short brown hair and a cheerful disposition. She skimmed through the answers on the last test paper, stacked them neatly and gathered her things. Putting on her coat, she said, “What are you making for dinner?”

Lynne’s brows knit together, thinking. “I’m not sure. It’s a week before payday and the cupboard is pretty much bare. If I had my druthers, I’d make Steve take us all to the Iron Horse, but that’s not gonna happen for a week or two.”

Chapter 54

As Steven’s mp3 player began to pump out Men At Work singing
Who Can It Be Now?
, the doorbell rang. For a moment he sat in amazement at this synchronicity, and then the bell rang again, breaking him out of his mental prison.

He opened the front door, but no one was there. He looked down to see that someone had left a basket on the doorstep, with a bundle of blankets wrapped up in it. Puzzled, he picked up the basket — it was surprisingly heavy — and carried it into the house.
Oh, my god,
he thought,
someone has left us a baby in a basket.
But when he unwrapped the blankets, there was no baby, only a twelve pound smoked ham.

He was puzzled, but grateful. He couldn’t make a sandwich out of an infant, after all.
At least not legally,
he grinned.

He was too busy to take the time to eat now, though. He still had 3300 words to write to catch up to his quota for the two days.

Chapter 55

Lynne and Nancy walked out to the parking lot, greeting other faculty members who were also on their way home. They got into Lynne’s Jeep Cherokee, pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on US 287. Nancy needed to stop and pick up a loaf of bread and a few other things, so Lynne pulled in to the Town Pump truck stop, which had a well-stocked convenience store where the prices weren’t much higher than the full service grocer in town.

Chapter 56

Melvin Settlemoir had been driving west on Interstate 90 since before daylight. He’d spent the night curled up in the sleeper cab of his semi-truck in the parking lot of a truck stop in Murdo, South Dakota. He’d fallen asleep, disappointed in his lack of success in locating female companionship, but he was hauling a load of roofing materials to a building supply in Spokane, Washington where he was scheduled to arrive tonight, and he was sure he’d have better luck there.
Wang, dang, sweet poontang,
he thought.

After a long day of driving, he’d hit something in the road near the exit for Buffalo Jump Road, just past Logan, Montana. It blew one of the trailer’s tires with a bang, and he could hear it shredding as he drove.
Better find someplace to get it fixed before dark,
he thought, and began watching for a likely oasis. He saw a billboard for the Town Pump Truck Stop in Three Forks and decided to pull off on US 287 and see if they had repair services.

Chapter 57

Lynne sat in her Cherokee and waited patiently as Nancy ran in to the grocery and picked up what she needed. She thought of going in herself, but their checking account was perilously low and she and Steve had agreed to be more careful of avoiding overdraft charges.

Chapter 58

As Settlemoir pulled his truck off the Interstate, he saw the sign for the Town Pump a few hundred yards away. It didn’t look big enough to have the setup to change a semi tire, but you never knew. Wouldn’t hurt to stop and check. He turned south onto US 287.

Chapter 59

Nancy emerged from the Town Pump carrying a grocery bag in one hand and her purse in another. She got into the Jeep and released a frustrated sigh. “This little bag of stuff cost me $37,” she moaned. “It’s just ridiculous.”

“I know,” said Lynne, “Steve is always telling me it’s a racket that the food distributors have going. Jack the prices up because we live on the backside of nowhere, and count on us not being willing to drive thirty miles to Bozeman when we need just a few things.”

“Well, it may be a racket,” said Nancy, “but it apparently works.”

Lynne started the Jeep and backed out of her parking space. She and Nancy were catching up on the news of the day, the upcoming flu vaccination clinic that the school was planning, and who would be the first player to go home on
Survivor.
She steered the Cherokee toward the exit that led back to US 287.

Chapter 60

As Settlemoir came to the entrance to the Town Pump’s lot, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to find the services he needed.
Hell,
he thought,
I’m starving. I’ll stop anyhow and get a burger and a Coke.
He began to turn in to the entrance.

Just then, he saw a splash of turquoise in his peripheral vision and started to turn his head, realizing too late that it was an SUV of some kind, an Explorer or a Cherokee, heading out of the same entrance. He slammed his foot on the brakes and heard the hiss of the pneumatics, but he felt them lock up, and the weight of the trailer insisted on obeying the law of inertia. He felt the cab shift around him as the trailer began to jackknife.

Chapter 61

Lynne and Nancy both saw the semi at the same moment. Nancy’s mouth opened, but all that came out before the impact was “Ly —”

Nancy had seen truck tires up close before. Her ex-husband, Roger, had been a trucker for more years than she knew how to count. She knew that they were huge.

This tire, however, the one that seemed to fill her field of vision, the one that was demanding in no uncertain terms that she give it her full attention, was monstrous, like the alien spacecraft in
Independence Day.
It filled the windshield. It filled the sky. It
was
the sky.   

The tire, attached to a silver semi-trailer, struck the hood of the Cherokee and crumpled it like a sheet of discarded tinfoil torn off the top of a frozen dinner.

It was all in slow motion now. Nancy wanted to turn her head and look at Lynne, to see the face of her best friend before she died, but although the tire was in slow motion, so was she, and there was no time. No time at all.

The tire rode up over the mangled hood and Nancy saw the windshield disintegrate into a thousand shards of glass, which exploded like shrapnel from a grenade. Nancy threw her arms up in an attempt to protect her face, her eyes.

The passenger side roof pylon crumpled, striking her right forearm. She felt no pain as she was thrown forward against her seat belt and her radius and ulna snapped.

In the driver’s seat, Lynne gripped the steering wheel in a panic as she saw the semi. She had the flash of a thought that said to GET OUT OF THE WAY, whether by steering or braking, but her nervous system was utterly incapable of delivering information to her voluntary muscles fast enough to respond to a situation such as this. Quick as nervous impulses may seem, the panicked command had not yet left her brain’s command center when the impact came.  

Lynne had neglected to fasten her seat belt, having been distracted by the good company of her best friend. Her body slammed forward into the steering wheel as the airbag of the aging vehicle failed to inflate. Her rib cage was compressed, and two of the ribs on her right side splintered, the shards tearing through the pleural cavity and into her right lung. Her head pitched forward, slamming into the steering wheel and the remains of the shattered windshield, as blood splattered across the dashboard, the crushed windshield, Nancy’s left arm and her face. Nancy’s screams could be heard echoing across the parking lot.

Chapter 62

Steven sat in front of the blank computer screen, willing an idea to come into his head, but his mind remained obstinately blank.

Just then, the kids arrived home and the noise level increased by 35 or 40 decibels as they told him about what had happened that day at school. Normally he didn’t mind taking time out to spend with them, but today they were simply more distractions from the serious business of writing. They ran off to the kitchen to find an after-school snack while Steven went through the mail, which Nikki had brought in. Bills, bills, free sample of doggie treats, bills. Oh, well. No one sent him a large check today to change his life. Perhaps tomorrow.

Then the phone rang. He sighed at yet another interruption and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Mr. Denver?”

“Yes, this is Steven Denver.”

“Mr. Denver, this is Sergeant Robbins at the County Sheriff’s office. Sir, I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

Chapter 63

Steven arrived at the truck stop seventeen minutes later, frantic with worry and fear. He saw the bulk of the semi lying on its side with the front part of their turquoise Jeep Cherokee beneath the front of the trailer. He could see that the driver’s door was detached from the rest of the Jeep and was lying on the pavement nearby. Two sheriff’s vehicles and an ambulance were parked nearby, their lights turning the darkening parking lot into a red and blue kaleidoscope.

The ambulance is still here,
Steven thought.
Maybe she’s not hurt badly.
One look at the Jeep, however, left him unable to believe that. He began to shake. Looking at the back of the ambulance, he saw the form of a woman sitting on the edge of the bumper, wrapped in a blanket. A paramedic stood next to her, tending to her injuries.

His heart leapt.
Lynne!

He ran to her. She looked up at him, her eyes red rimmed and overflowing with tears.

It wasn’t Lynne. It was Nancy.

She saw Steven and began sobbing. “Steve… oh, Steve…”

The paramedic looked at him and said, “Are you Mr. Denver?” He nodded. She looked grim and said, “Please wait here one moment, sir.”

She approached one of the sheriff’s deputies that stood nearby. He walked over to Steven and said, “Mr. Denver?” Steven nodded once again. “Mr. Denver,” the officer said sadly, “I regret to inform you that your wife passed away a short time ago from injuries that she suffered in this accident.”

Steven stood speechless for a long moment. The paramedic took him into the back of the ambulance, where Lynne’s body lay on a stretcher covered with a sheet. They allowed him to see her face, which was battered and bruised, her right eye swollen like a prizefighter’s. There were bits of glass in her hair as well as embedded in the skin of her forehead and right cheek. Steven brushed the glass away as best he could, his touch tender against her cold skin. Blood was congealed where it had run down the side of her face from a gash in her right temple.

Steven’s world was ripping apart, everything forgotten but the overwhelming grief. Suddenly the faces of the children exploded into his mind. Oh, Jesus, how would he break the news to the children?

He stepped back down out of the ambulance and sat next to Nancy. They held each other, careful not to hurt her right arm, which was in a splint, and they both wept.

Chapter 64

Lynne’s funeral was held three days later. They laid her to rest at the Headwaters Cemetery not far from town. The children stood by the grave, dressed in somber black, their eyes rimmed with tears.

The faculty and staff of the school were in attendance, as were many of the children. Nancy was seated next to the family, her arm in a cast, the pale green sling out of place against her black dress and coat.

The minister, Rev. Simon Scott from the First Church of the Redeemer, delivered a rather generic but well-meaning eulogy that extolled Lynne as a wonderful wife, mother and teacher. Nikki had suggested him because she’d once been in his class at a Vacation Bible School years ago; the Denver family had no other religious affiliation. Steven had shrugged and agreed, in part because he was still in shock over Lynne’s death.

Each of the children dropped a red rose into the grave atop the turquoise steel casket. Turquoise had been Lynne’s favorite color, but now it only tormented Steven, reminding him of the Jeep Cherokee in which she had met her death.
I’ll never own anything that color again,
he thought.