by Scott Fowler
“I’m pretty sure it’s still just a little further,” I said.
“Son,” Butch said, “I just don’t think you could have walked that far. Now I’m sure it felt like you went that far, but we don’t have time for wild goose chases. We’ve got to find your parents fast. I’m going to turn the truck around.”
Then I freaked out a little. “No!” I said. “No! I know how far we went! I was out there! I know! Don’t turn around yet! You’ve gotta keep going!”
Butch looked at me, considering things. “OK, son,” he said. “We’ll go a little more.”
He kept the truck pointed straight. But everything looked exactly the same on both sides of the road. Snow and trees. Trees and snow. Over and over.
“I think it’s time to backtrack now,” Butch said after a few more minutes. He slowed down, preparing to put the truck into reverse. This time I wasn’t sure I should argue.
And then I saw a flash of white and brown.
A fawn.
It was standing on the side of the road, staring at the truck. I saw the white spots, blending into the snow. Then, just as quickly, the fawn darted back off into the trees.
“Stop,” I said. “This is it!”
“What?” Butch said, who was in the middle of turning the fire truck’s big steering wheel. “Where?”
“I saw a fawn,” I said. “I think it’s a sign! It was probably the same baby deer we almost ran over! This may be where the fawn lives!”
“There are hundreds of deer in these woods, son,” Butch said. “I can’t imagine….”
But I didn’t listen to the rest. I found the door handle, opened it and scrambled out of the fire truck before Butch could say anything. I knew he would follow me. I hadn’t seen any sign of the van, but I had this feeling…. I just knew it was there. The fawn had reminded me of something. It was like the star the three wise men followed when they were looking for Jesus. The fawn felt like my own personal star.
“Hold up there, son!” Butch said, and I could tell he was irritated. “Chapel! We can’t waste time!”
I was already running down the hill, though. I knew we were almost there. And then, I really knew. I saw the white bark of a small tree that had nearly been sawed in half. And then, just a few steps later, I saw our van – snow covering its roof, mostly hidden in the trees, but definitely our van.
“It’s down here, Butch!” I said. “Hurry!”
I could hear him running behind me, but I didn’t stop. I ran to the passenger side door, afraid of knowing what had happened to Mom and Dad but more afraid of not knowing. I leaped into the side door, where we had all been able to escape. The pine tree branches were still everywhere, almost like trees had grown inside the car. I pushed them out of the way so I could see…
There were Mom and Dad, exactly where we had left them. Their arms were in different positions. Their faces looked pale and their lips almost blue. Their eyes were closed. The blanket and some of the clothes we had piled on them were still covering them up.
“Mom! Dad!” I said. “I’m back. We got help for you!”
The van was silent. I could hear Butch coming down the hill, yelling at me: “Don’t move them, Chapel! Don’t move them!”
I wasn’t going to move them, of course. I just wanted to know… well, you know.
Then Mom stirred. Just a little. I thought I saw a finger move under the blanket we had covered them with. And then her eyes flickered open.
“Chapel?” she said weakly. “Is everyone OK?”
“Everyone is fine,” I said. “The fire department is here. An ambulance is coming.”
“Oh, thank God,” she said, and then she started to cry.
I saw Dad move his head a little. “Is Dad OK?” I said.
“He will be,” Mom said. “He woke up once.”
Butch was there by then. He leaned into the van, brushing aside a snow-covered clump of pine needles.
“Ma’am?” he said. “Can you hear me?”
Mom nodded, blinking back tears.
“You’ve got some very brave children,” Butch said. “You’re not going to believe what they went through. Now the cavalry is coming, OK? It’s not just me. You understand? We’re about to get a whole lot of help. We’ll get you out of there. Everything is going to get better real soon. Now tell me first: Where are you hurt?”
But Mom didn’t answer for a minute. She reached out for me, and I came closer, ducking my head further into the car so she could grab onto me. For once, I didn’t mind being hugged. I felt one of her tears fall on the back of my neck.
“I was afraid we were never going to see you again,” she said. “But you did it.”
“It’s OK, Mom,” I said, burying my head into her and hugging her hard. “We’re all going to be all right.”
They called it “The Christmas Miracle” on TV and in the newspapers. We were big news for awhile – the four kids who had hiked 12 miles, scared off a bear and driven a truck to rescue their parents.
The ambulance arrived soon after Butch radioed exactly where we were. He asked Mom a lot of questions before they moved her – things I knew, like “Who’s the president” and “What day is today?” – and then I saw them use something called “The Jaws of Life” to cut Mom and Dad out of the car. The Jaws of Life looked sort of like a huge pair of pliers, and at first I didn’t think they could cut through a car.
“Can those really cut through metal?” I asked one of the rescue squad guys from the ambulance while he was deciding exactly where to slice into the van.
“Like a hot knife through butter,” the guy said. “Don’t worry – we practice with these on old cars all the time.” And then they worked exactly like he said they would.
I rode back in the ambulance with Mom and Dad. Butch loaned us all of his firefighting gear in the truck to pile on top of them for extra warmth – they both felt ice cold, but the rescue workers said they would be OK. Butch went to go get the rest of the family, as well as Miss Swann, and then took them to the hospital waiting room. He even brought some of his own family out there for a while – he had two teenaged girls who spent most of their time looking down at their cell phones – as well as some of their Christmas dinner. We were glad for the company but gladder about the food.
By Christmas night, when my grandparents had gotten there, both Butch and Miss Swann felt like family.
Mom and Dad both stayed at the hospital for more than a week, but all the doctors said it could have been a lot worse. Mom had a broken leg and a few scrapes. Dad had a broken leg too, along with a concussion, a separated shoulder and three broken ribs. They both had mild cases of frostbite. They were in wheelchairs together for several weeks. Then they hobbled around on crutches and then finally they mended well enough that, eventually, I could almost forget they had been hurt at all.
Our story happened on a slow news day, as Dad said. Christmas is one of those days where not much happens, he said, and every TV station and newspaper is looking for a nice story. At least that’s what he told us, and I guess he knows, since that’s his business. So we didn’t just get in the newspapers. We got on TV, too – several camera crews came out and interviewed all of us, as well as Butch. By then, Georgia had learned how to say “May Rees-ras,” which is all she said in her interview. She meant “Merry Christmas.”
The TV story went national on CNN and a few other places. We got some nice letters from people who said we were an inspiration to kids. What we liked best, though, was an invitation from a place in California we had once heard of but never thought we’d be able to visit – an amusement park called “LegoLand.” They wanted us to all come out there as their guests for a whole week – for free. And, they said we could also pick out anything we wanted from the Lego catalog. Somehow, they had heard in one of our interviews how much we liked Legos – especially me.
So we took them up on that.
We ended up becoming good friends with Miss Swann, too. We go to see her almost every time we go
to see my grandparents now – although we don’t ever take the blocked-off shortcut anymore. We go through Clarksville instead, and then double back. The reason she said she had been “waiting for Georgia” when we first met her, she has told us, is because she had seen a little girl that looked just like Georgia in her dreams. She said she had kept having the same dream once every week or so for three months before we came. In that dream, there was a small girl who suddenly appeared in her house and that Miss Swann knew she was supposed to help.
“Were we in the dream, too?” London asked the first time she told us this.
“You weren’t there, child,” Miss Swann said. “But Georgia was, and she looked exactly like she did the first day I saw her. In the dream, she toddled right into my sitting room one day after Arthur left, and she crawled right up on my lap. I said “What do you need, child?’ And she said just one word. ‘Help.’”
I wouldn’t have believed that a year ago. But I do now. After all, I still believe the same fawn guided me to the wreck that had accidentally helped cause the wreck in the first place. My own personal shining star.
No one can be sure of that, but I know it’s true. I was the first person to see the baby deer, and I was the last person to see the baby deer, and in between we Fowler Four had an adventure we would never forget.
THE END
