It would have to do. I plugged away for another fifteen paragraphs, banged out a five-paragraph sidebar on the storm forcing the jury to be corralled in the motel for a long weekend, gave both pieces a final read and sent it to Portland. My watch said it was twenty past two. Time to get going. It’s one thing to drive in a snowstorm in the daylight, quite another at dusk.
Another three inches had fallen while I was inside—more than an inch an hour, as predicted. I started the engine and gave the Subaru an extra-vigorous going over with the snow brush. May as well start out with clear visibility, not that it would last long.
While the engine warmed, I made my calls. First to Christie, who was taking a bath, Theo told me. I considered starting my promised chat with him, but decided it wasn’t the time. I asked him to tell her I was on my way home, and that I’d call as soon as I was back in Riverside.
I called Leah to say I’d filed two stories and was about to hit the road, so wouldn’t have consistent cell phone reception for the next couple of hours.
She told me the storm was pounding Portland. “It’s wild out there, and coming your way. Sure you don’t want to stay in Machias tonight and head home in the morning?”
“Nope, I’m coming home. Don’t worry about me. I’m a champ at winter driving. I’ll be fine.”
Driving south on Route One, a couple of good skids in the first five miles convinced me to keep my speed below forty-five if I wanted decent traction on the road. The wind roared across the blueberry barrens at the university-operated agricultural station south of Machias, sending my car lurching sideways as I crested the ridge. That’s when it sunk in that I was in for a long drive.
As I pulled into the snowy parking lot of a big gas station with an attached store the radio announcer told me it was three o’clock. After filling my tank, I reached into the back seat for my Maine Atlas. Route 193, which I could pick up in Cherryfield, appeared to be the ticket. It was a back road through the woods and the blueberry barrens, but after about twenty miles I’d reach Route 9. Dubbed “the Airline,” it’s the road favored by truckers who haul goods between Bangor and Canada. For that reason, it was likely to be well-plowed, and from Bangor I could pick up Interstate 95 and coast on home.
My stomach was growling, so I went inside to look for something edible to sustain me. As I stood in front of a display of rolling hot dogs, wondering how long they’d been twirling in their puddles of grease, a big state plow pulled into the parking lot. A lanky young guy climbed down from the cab. Leaving the engine running, he hurried into the store and greeted the woman behind the counter.
“Hey, Phil,” she said. “Getting bad out there, is it? Heard on the scanner there’s a bunch of vehicles piled up on 193, about halfway to Deblois.”
Phil went to the cooler and pulled out two large bottles of Mountain Dew. “They’ve got the road closed down till the wreckers sort it out. Hell of a mess.”
“Shit,” I said out loud, causing both of them to look my way. “I was about to head out 193 to pick up Route 9.”
“You won’t be able to get out to the Airline for a while, at least not that way,” Phil said. “No friggin’ visibility, and at least ten cars are spread all over the road out there, maybe more by now. You heading to Bangor?”
“More or less.” I was unwilling to admit I actually planned to drive all the way to Portland.
“You’re better off taking the Black Woods Road to Ellsworth and picking up the Bangor Road there,” Phil said. “It’s the long way around but probably the best bet. Route 9 will be hairy today. The wind whips the snow around out there to where you can’t see the road.”
After thanking him for his advice, I forked two hot dogs into rolls and added mustard and relish. I fixed myself an extra-large coffee, and grabbed a couple of Snickers bars for good measure. I carried this ersatz meal to my car and ate the dogs before starting the engine. As I was swallowing the last bite, Phil reemerged from the store and climbed into his big plow rig. When he pulled out of the parking lot, I fell in right behind him.
Chapter Fifteen
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Finding a highway plow to follow on a snow-blind afternoon was a stroke of good fortune. For the seven-mile stretch to Cherryfield, I stayed on his tail, hanging back far enough to stay out of the swirl of snow generated by the plow itself. My car skidded on the steep hill leading down to the town center, but the tires caught when I eased up on the gas.
You can plow my path all the way through the Black Woods, Phil. I’ll be right here behind you, like a dinghy following a yacht.
A mile later the plow swung into a U-turn and headed back toward Cherryfield. I swore, but gave Phil a wave when he passed.
Driving was a challenge without a plow to lead the way. I slowed to the safe but monotonous pace of thirty-five miles an hour. Any faster and I wouldn’t be able see far enough ahead to be confident I wasn’t about to run into a ditch.
My mind wandered to Emma as I plodded along. No two ways about it, I was into her. She was bright and serious about her work, but also had a playful way about her. Megan was like that, and while Megan herself was irreplaceable, it made perfect sense to look for someone with more or less the same combination of qualities. Like Megan, Emma was beautiful, and I’m a sucker for a pretty face as much as any other guy. But as much as I was drawn to her fiery hair, green eyes and amazing smile, I also liked her brains and our easy back-and-forth.
A sudden movement shook me out of my reverie. A broad-winged hawk blasted like a bullet out of the snow-laden spruce trees that guarded the road to my right. It soared past my windshield, gaining altitude with each beat of its powerful wings. As the hawk disappeared into the driving snow, I rounded a bend and almost piled into a station wagon that was jammed into a four-foot-high snow bank. There was no place for me to stop and check if anyone needed help, so I kept on going. I pulled my cell phone out of my parka pocket, thinking I’d call 911 to report it. If someone was inside, they were in trouble. If the car had been abandoned, anyone skidding around the corner would smash right into it.
The display on my phone showed no cell service, so I let go of my Good Samaritan impulse and kept my car moving through the snow. The wind was pummeling my car, and the visibility was getting worse. I flicked on the radio, hoping to find a weather update. Instead I landed on a country music station broadcasting from God knows where. Another sharp curve tugged my attention back to driving. I leaned forward in my seat and left the setting where it was, considering myself lucky to have noise to keep me company other than the high-speed thwak of the windshield wipers.
I glanced at my left wrist to reassure myself that the car’s clock wasn’t any more incorrect than usual. It was three thirty, so it shouldn’t have felt like the verge of nightfall. But the thin afternoon light was blotted up by the low clouds and erased by the blowing snow. Stretching my shoulders and relaxing my hands on the wheel, I wondered how long it would take me to get to Ellsworth at this pace. Another hour? Hour and a half? From there, the going would have to be easier. At least there’d be other people around. I hadn’t met a car coming from the opposite direction for at least five minutes, and a glance in my rearview mirror didn’t reveal anyone behind me. It was almost spooky.
Moments later, after crawling down a hill and around a series of S-curves, a big vehicle materialized out of nowhere, coming up from behind. I tapped my brakes several times. My silver car wouldn’t be easy to spot in the driving snow, even with its lights on. I wanted to give the driver fair warning that I was lumbering along as fast as I dared, breaking trail for him.
Despite my signal, he kept on coming, until I could make out an oval Ford logo on his snow-spattered chrome grille. It was a big pickup truck, either black or dark blue.
The wind slammed my car, causing me to stop flicking my eyes at the mirror, but I couldn’t stop wondering why the
truck was crawling up my tail. Pretty soon, I thought, the big Ford would either pass me or back off. Remembering my drive to Machias, I knew there was no place to pull off on this stretch, and that the road offered few passing opportunities. But the heavy-footed guy in the Ford made me feel so crowded I decided to invite him to leave me behind. Reducing my speed, I began steering toward the right snowbank. Instead of pulling out around me, the Ford tapped my rear bumper.
“Hey!” I yelled, as if he could hear me. “What the hell are you doing?”
Then he hit me again.
The second bump was harder than the first, causing my head to snap forward and back, and the car to skew toward the middle of the road. I wrestled the wheel to get back to what I guessed was the westbound travel lane and resumed my steady pace. He dropped back about twenty feet, not enough to give me comfort.
“Cool off, asshole,” I hollered.
We dropped over a rise and swung into a sharp bend to the right. I glanced at the speedometer and saw that my speed had increased to forty-five. But the instinct to speed up wasn’t self-preservation in this circumstance. Trying to outrun him was out of the question, and there was no way I was going to stop and tell some maniac to stop rear-ending me.
A shape loomed ahead and to my right, moving toward my car. It turned out to be a beat-up panel truck, heading east without headlights. I steered as far to the right as I dared, flicking my headlights on and off twice, trying to signal the driver that he was almost invisible in the snow without his lights on. I don’t know if he appreciated the gesture, but the guy in the Ford took it as an invitation to climb up my bumper once again.
He didn’t slam into me this time, just sort of kissed my back end. But he didn’t back off. Heat surged through my body when I realized the big truck was pushing my car. I fought the impulse to hit the brakes, aware if I did he’d run right over me. Leaning forward in my seat, I strained to see the road ahead, fighting the sense of panic welling up in my gut. The air in my car felt close. I fumbled for the window controls and hit a button. The passenger side window slid down, causing snow to blow inside the car. I took a few deep, steadying breaths before powering it back up.
The snow under my wheels was heavy and thick, forcing me to wrestle with the steering wheel. The physical effort and my raw fear was a bad combination. Another glance at the dash confirmed that my speed was picking up, even though my foot was steady on the accelerator. We were going more than fifty miles an hour—me and the guy jammed up against my bumper—like a two-man luge barreling for the finish. The worst part was that I couldn’t slow down even if I wanted to. The realization of my utter lack of control brought on intense claustrophobia.
Headlights from the other direction warned of another car heading my way, and it fishtailed as it passed us, its driver no doubt wondering why a big truck was stuck fast to my little wagon, like a St. Bernard mounting a beagle. Sweat trickled from my armpits down my sides. There was no escape from my bulky parka, so I reached for the sliding knob that controlled the level of heat.
A Deadman’s Curve reared up in front of me, a hard left I knew I couldn’t make. The guy driving the Ford knew it too, because he eased off my bumper the moment before my car plowed through the bank of snow that divided the roadway from what was beyond.
It was like every half-baked slo-mo scene in every bad crime flick I’d ever seen: dense snow crunching against the underside of the car, then pitching over a steep bank, into the snow and the spruce trees. Unlike those B-movies, the car didn’t tumble end over end. Instead, all forward motion came to an abrupt halt. I was braced for impact but it never came. The heavy snow swallowed my car instead, like a giant vat of marshmallow.
“Shit!” I yelled. “Shit, shit, shit!”
My car was canted forward, but was on its four wheels. I turned off the engine and stuffed the keys in my parka pocket, then scrabbled with the seatbelt buckle. At first the door seemed jammed shut, but one adrenaline-fueled heave of my left shoulder and I was out. I crawled free of the car and staggered to my feet, reaching out my bare hands, feeling for something to steady me. The winter’s accumulation of snow reached my thighs, which made for heavy wading. After fifteen or twenty steps I reached a big spruce, and threw myself down behind its heavy skirt. I was guessing the guy in the Ford was still out there, and he wasn’t done with me.
It took less than a minute for my hunch to be confirmed.
“Joe Gale!” A man’s voice bellowed from the direction of the road, where I could see headlights that I guessed were the Ford’s. There was no engine noise, only a voice audible over the wind, a voice that knew my name. I said nothing.
I wondered if he could see my car through the driving snow, its driver’s door hanging open, my footprints marking the snow. I was less than thirty feet from the far side of the car, my breathing ragged, crouched in the shadow of the spruce, hoping like hell I wasn’t going to have to start running through the woods.
“Joe Gale!” the voice said again. “I got a message for ya.”
There was a pause.
“Stop. Being. An. Asshole.”
Another pause, and then an eerie laugh.
“Ya got that, Gale?” the voice hollered. “Simple message. Easy to follow. Stop. Being. An. Asshole.”
I wondered if he was armed, if I should be making tracks into the forest. But before I could start moving, I heard over the wind the rumble of a diesel engine and the blare of a horn, then I was alone in the blizzard as day headed toward night.
I’d be stupid to be unprepared for him if he came back. Bounding through the snow like a crazed dog, I crawled back through the driver’s door to look for my cell phone. I’d set it down on the passenger seat when I couldn’t get a signal after trying to call 911 to report the car in the snowbank. Now that a nut who knew my name had run me off the road and into a ditch, I needed to find the fucking phone. My right hand finally located it on the floor, half hidden under the mat. A quick jab of the “on” button brought bad news. Still no service, not one damned bar.
Snow was packed against the back doors. There was no way I’d be able to dig enough snow away barehanded to wrench them open. I wormed my way back inside and hooked my arm through the front seats, digging out my hat and gloves and verifying that my laptop was still where I’d stowed it, wedged behind the big duffel on the rear seat. Slogging around to the back of the car, I pawed enough snow away to open the rear hatch and felt around until I found a flashlight and the tire iron. Ready for action, I clambered up the bank to the side of the snow-covered Black Woods Road.
The wind felt stronger on the roadside. My hand in front of my face was visible to me, but not much else. Stomping my feet to knock snow off my pants, I listened to the wind howling through the spruces. Before I could consider my next move, I heard the growl of an engine coming from the west. Tracks in the snow showed the driver of the Ford had executed a rough three-point turn and driven off in the other direction, back the way we’d come. Unless he’d circled around, this wasn’t him. I edged toward the side of the road and held the tire iron flat against my pant leg until the car came into view. My heartbeat calmed when I saw it was a Toyota pickup. When I waved the flashlight it skidded to a stop. The driver was a guy about my age with a full beard and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” He had to yell to be heard over the wind.
I gestured at the snowbank the Ford had rammed me through. “Went off the road into the ditch. Know anyone with a wrecker?”
“Yup,” the guy said. Leaving his engine running, he stepped out onto the snow-covered road to take a look. We walked together to the break in the snowbank where we gazed down on my half-buried car.
“You got it wedged down there pretty good,” he said.
“I know.”
He looked me up and down. “You hurt?”
“Not a scratch. The snow slowed me down quite a bit.”
“Bad day to be driving fast.”
I shrugged and walked with him back to his truck. He motioned me to climb in the passenger door. I had to push some tools aside in order to sit.
“You’re in luck,” he said. “If you’ve got some cash to pay me, I’ve got a wrecker in my garage, which is less than two miles up the road.”
“You drive a wrecker?”
“Yup, and I’ll be out all night in this mess. If you’ve got the bucks, I’ll let you be my first call.”
“I’ve got money, but I’m not sure my car’s drivable. If it’s not, what’ll it cost for you to haul it out of the ditch and take me and it to the Subaru dealer in Ellsworth?”
He wrinkled his nose and pursed his mouth, like he was doing calculations in his head. “A hundred fifty bucks.”
“If there’s an ATM somewhere between here and there, I’ll pay you in cash.”
“That’s good.” He smiled. “I only take cash.”
Chapter Sixteen
Thursday, January 8, 2015
His name was Roger and it turned out he was damned good at what he did. I rode with him to his house—a cabin, really—overshadowed by a giant vinyl-sided garage that protected his tow truck from the weather. We wasted no time changing vehicles, and soon were back at my car. He followed me down the embankment and handed me a shovel. I dug dense snow away from the back and underside while Roger stood by, smoking another cigarette. Once I’d made a considerable dent, he shimmied partway underneath and found a place to hook the cable, then returned to the wrecker and ran the winch slow and steady. In ten minutes my car was on the roadway.
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