by Sharon Sala
“It’s all in the past,” Jonah said. “You’ve given me the use of your truck while I’m working for you. The least I can do is act as chauffeur now and then.”
“Can we go now?” she asked.
Jonah glanced at the clock. “It’s not quite eight o’clock. Do you think Ida Mae will be up this early?”
Bridie grabbed her coat from the back of the kitchen chair and began putting it on as she reached for her purse.
“Oh, yes. Ida Mae is an early riser, just like me. We can have coffee and catch up on some gossip before we get to the quilt.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Jonah said.
He promptly loaded her up and took her right into town and dropped her off at Ida Mae’s house, which was on the edge of town. As soon as Ida Mae opened the door to let Bridie in, she turned and waved him away.
He was still smiling as he drove back through town. The light turned red just as he reached the intersection. As he was waiting for it to change, he saw Deputy Farley standing outside the sheriff’s office, and from what he could tell, it appeared that Farley was being interviewed.
To his dismay, the moment Earl saw him sitting at the light, he waved, then pointed the news crew in his direction. He saw the cameras swing toward him just as the light changed, so he accelerated through the intersection and headed up the mountain as fast as the law would allow.
All morning, as he went through his chores, he kept watching the road, making sure no one had followed him. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about Mark Ahern or his part in the man’s capture.
He finished the chores before tending to a task Bridie had mentioned on their way into town. She had three big pumpkins and a half dozen gourds of all shapes and sizes sitting out on her front porch. Her plan was to add a couple of square bales of hay to use as part of a harvest display.
Tomorrow was Halloween, and even though no one trick-or-treated this far away from town, she still liked to observe the occasion. And, she had claimed, the decor went right into Thanksgiving without changing a thing.
Observing holidays was a luxury Jonah had never had. Yet here he was, unloading hay and stacking her pumpkins. When he finished, he dug through the old toolshed until he found some lumber and a hammer and nails, and loaded up the truck. There were panels in the corral fence that were broken, and one that had rotted through. And so he worked, stopping only to eat the lunch that he’d brought for himself.
It was nearing time to go get Lucia when he heard an odd sound in the distance. Sounds carried in the mountains, and it was difficult to tell exactly what he was hearing or how far away it might be. He had begun dusting the hay from his clothes as he paused to listen, and he heard what sounded like the squeal of brakes and then a terrible noise of shattering tree trunks and crushing metal. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew it wasn’t good. He jumped in the truck and headed down the mountain as fast as he dared.
He sailed past Luce’s cabin without a glance. The closer he got to town, the more anxious he became. He could feel the oppression of pain and fear, and in his mind, he was hearing screams and cries for help. When he topped the next hill and started down, his chest tightened. There was a path of broken trees a few hundred feet ahead that led past the ditch, then into the sloping forest and down the side of the mountain.
When he got closer, he could see rising smoke from somewhere down below. As he slid to a stop and jumped out, the smell of diesel fuel and the scent of burning rubber was thick in the air. Then he heard voices screaming and crying for help, and he ran to the verge, where the trees had been mowed down.
Through the trees and the smoke, he could barely see the rear end of a vehicle, but what he saw stopped his heart. The back door of a yellow school bus was hanging ajar. From where he was standing, he could see one child hanging headfirst out of the back of the bus, while another had been thrown free and was lying near a wheel. He had no way of knowing if the bus had run over the child before it had come to a stop, or if either one of the two was still alive.
Just as he started to go down, a car came around the curve. He stopped, ran back up to the road and waved them down.
The man and woman inside leaned forward as Jonah spoke.
“Do you have a cell phone?”
“Uh…yeah, but what—”
“Call the ambulance. Call the sheriff. Tell them to get all available medical help up here. The school bus went off the side of the mountain.”
The woman suddenly screamed and jumped out of the car before anyone could stop her.
“My child! She’s on that bus! Oh, dear God, she’s on that bus!” Jonah grabbed her by the shoulders. There was no time to waste on protocol as he yelled at the man, “Make those calls! Now!”
The man’s face was colorless and his hands were shaking as he tried to punch in the correct numbers. When Jonah was satisfied that help was on the way, he turned to the woman.
“Stay here. I’ll find your daughter.”
“I’m going down!” she screamed. “She’s my child. You can’t stop me. She’s mine!”
She wrenched out of Jonah’s grasp before he could argue, and down she went, stumbling and falling, then rolling before she could get back to her feet.
Jonah leaped over the side of the mountain and went down behind her, slipping as he ran but managing to stay upright. He passed the woman and kept on going, past shattered tree trunks, jumping over a backpack full of schoolbooks, dodging someone’s Power Ranger lunch box, trying not to think of the children who owned them, or if they were still alive. He just needed to get there.
The inside of the bus was in chaos. Children were crying, some calling for their mothers, others only moaning. There was a little boy named Travis, who was caught between two seats that had been crushed together. He was crying for his mama in between screaming from the pain.
Suddenly he felt hands on his face and heard a man’s deep voice pushing through the panic, ironing out the pain.
“What’s your name, son?” Jonah asked.
“Travis…my name is Travis.”
“Okay, Travis, I’ve got you now. Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right,” Jonah said, and with a surge of adrenaline, pulled the seats far enough apart to get the boy out.
Jonah ran his hands over the boy’s body like a scanner, searching for internal injuries and blood loss. When he determined that the child was not in immediate danger, he picked him up and moved to the open doorway at the back of the bus just as the mother arrived.
“My daughter! My daughter! Her name is Susie. Do you see her? She has red hair, with a green hair ribbon.”
“What’s your name?” Jonah shouted.
The woman stuttered. “Georgia Benton…but—”
“Take this child. Lay him down over there beside the other two, then come back.”
“Susie! I need to find Susie!”
“Take the boy!” Jonah said, and thrust Travis into her arms. “I’ll find your daughter.”
Georgia Benton looked down at the child in her arms, then somehow pulled herself together.
“Well, my goodness, Travis Mize, you’ve gotten yourself all bunged up, haven’t you, son? Don’t cry, sweetie. It’s gonna be all right.”
She carried the boy over to where Jonah had laid the first two he’d found, the ones he’d seen from the road; then she ran back to the bus. As she ran, she saw her husband coming down in much the same way she had and said a silent prayer that he got down in one piece.
By now several cars were gathering up on the roadside, and in the distance, the sounds of approaching sirens could be heard. Jonah worked as fast as he could, assessing the seriousness of the injured against those that had escaped injury and were simply crying from the shock of the wreck.
He moved from seat to seat, helping the ones who weren’t hurt to get out, while making sure that the ones who were still trapped weren’t in immediate danger of dying.
It wasn’t until he got to the front of the bus tha
t he found the first fatality. The driver was dead, and there was nothing Jonah could do about that.
Sick to his stomach, he turned away and began renewing his search for a little red-headed girl named Susie, but she was nowhere to be found.
More rescuers had arrived, and they began piling into the bus with Jonah, asking what needed to be done.
“That girl’s right arm is broken, and she has a cut on her head. Get her out next,” he said, as he pointed to a child who was lying beneath the seats.
Two men quickly knelt to the task as another appeared at the back of the bus.
“Hand one to me!” the man yelled, then took the next child that was pulled free.
“What about Beau?” one of them asked, pointing at the driver.
Jonah shook his head.
The man flinched as if he’d been slapped. “Lord have mercy. He’s my wife’s uncle. This is bad.”
Then Georgia appeared at the back of the bus again.
“Susie! Did you find Susie?”
“No, ma’am. Not yet,” Jonah said.
When she realized there were no more children on the bus, she began to wail.
“Oh Lord, Lord, is she under the bus? Please God, don’t let her be under it.”
Jonah jumped past Georgia as he got out of the bus. He glanced toward the injured children, who had been carried a good distance away from the accident. The rescuers had taken off their own coats and put them over the cold and injured children while waiting for medical help to arrive.
At the moment, everyone there was being cared for. It was the missing child that had Jonah worried. He began to circle the wreck on his hands and knees, trying to see if anyone was trapped beneath. Just when he was beginning to fear the worst, a hawk circling overhead suddenly screeched. The sound echoed down the mountain.
Jonah heard.
He stood abruptly, then looked up just as the hawk screeched again.
Suddenly he turned and began running back up the way they’d come.
“Wait! Wait!” Georgia screamed. “You said you’d find my Susie. You promised me.”
But Jonah wasn’t listening to her. He was following the cry of the hawk leading him to the missing child.
One minute he was holding on to the underbrush in an effort to pull himself up, and the next thing he knew, he was looking down into the face of a little girl with a green hair ribbon in her red hair.
He fell to his knees, then pulled her out from under the mass of broken trees and scrub brush. Her face was a mass of cuts and bruises, and there were long, ugly gashes on her tiny little legs. The blue corduroy jumper she was wearing was black with her own blood.
Jonah’s heart was pounding as he ran his fingers down the side of her neck, searching frantically for a pulse, and when he found it, he went weak with relief. It was faint and thready, but it was there, and it was all he needed. Unaware of the people gathering around him, he laid his hands on her body and closed his eyes.
Within moments, the air began to vibrate, then the trees, then the earth. An aura of white spilled from Jonah’s body, down his arms and into the child, like water going over a falls.
Georgia’s mother was still screaming and climbing, following the Indian who’d promised her a miracle. Then she saw her little girl, lying broken and bloody on the ground. Before she could scream her child’s name, she felt a vibration around her and thought it was an earthquake—or the end of the world. But then she saw the light surround the man and her child, and her heart began to pound. She tried to move and fell to her knees instead. All she could think was that an angel was among them. She began to pray.
A paramedic was coming down the hillside dragging a stretcher, when he came upon the sight. He stopped in midstride as if he’d been nailed to the spot; he stared in disbelief, watching as the cuts on the little girl’s face began to disappear. He saw the gashes on her legs closing, saw her eyelids begin to flutter and her chest begin to rise. He didn’t know he was crying until the tears ran across his lips and he tasted their salt.
One after the other, people saw but didn’t understand—not completely—not until the little girl opened her eyes and saw her mother kneeling a few feet away.
“Mommy…the bus broke.”
Jonah picked up the child and laid her in her mother’s arms. And while Georgia was praising God for the angel, Jonah headed back down the mountain to the other injured children.
An EMT was putting a brace around Travis Mize’s neck when Jonah returned. Jonah knelt beside the medic and then touched his arm. “Please?”
The medic started to order Jonah out of the way, then found himself staring into eyes the color of a hot summer sunset. He felt an odd loss of focus, then rocked back on his heels.
Jonah slid between the man and the child, then laid his hands on the little boy’s chest. “Travis?”
The little boy was wailing.
“Look at me, son. It’s going to be all right.”
Again the air vibrated, the trees quivered and the light enveloped them both. One man fell to his knees and began to pray, while others were convinced they were losing their minds.
After Travis sat up and announced that he’d lost his baseball glove, Jonah moved from him to another child, then another, calming, healing, doing what he’d been born to do. When the last child had been touched, calmed and healed, Jonah stood up, then looked around.
Sheriff Mize was holding Travis.
“Is he yours?” Jonah asked.
Mize couldn’t speak. His face was pale, and his eyes held a wild, frightened expression as he clutched his little boy close to his chest.
“Did we get a head count?” Jonah asked.
Mize shuddered, swallowed twice around the knot in his throat, then took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly before he could pull himself together.
“Ten.”
“Was that counting the driver?”
Mize couldn’t quit staring at the Indian. He’d seen what he’d done with his own eyes and still couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
“Uh…yeah, counting Beau.”
“I’m sorry about him,” Jonah said. “If they’re dead, I can’t help them.” He looked back at the children, taking a mental head count. Eight. Nine counting Susie, who was still above them with her mother. They’d accounted for all of them.
“Then we have them all,” Jonah said.
Mize’s lips went slack. “God Almighty, man. Who are you? What are you?”
Jonah sighed. “You know who I am. I’m going to go now. Lucia will be worrying.”
“Uh, no…someone told her you were here. She hitched a ride with Earl. I think she’s up on the road waiting for you.”
Jonah nodded, then quietly walked away.
As he started back up the incline toward the road, the rescuers stared. One reached out to touch his arm. Another backed away from him, yielding to his presence.
He wouldn’t let himself think about the repercussions of what he’d just done. None of it mattered as long as the children were okay. All he wanted now was to get away from this place and go home.
When Jonah was fifteen minutes late, Luce had started to worry. Then, when a few more minutes came and went and she began to hear sirens, then saw people in cars driving hell-bent for leather out of town toward the mountain, she got scared.
Despite Harold’s arguments, she got her coat and purse, and started walking. Something was wrong. She just needed to make sure Jonah was all right.
Halfway out of town, Deputy Farley saw her walking and picked her up on his way toward the scene. By the time she got there, she knew what had happened to the bus, just not what had happened to Jonah.
When she saw his truck, she panicked. She jumped out of the patrol car before it had stopped rolling and ran to the side of the mountain. When she looked down, all she could see was the back end of the school bus, and people running back and forth, carrying children in their arms.
But when she saw Jonah jump out of t
he back of the bus, she knew what was happening and that he was risking his life to make it happen. By healing the injured children in front of all those people, he was giving himself away.
But there was nothing she would do to change what he was. She sat down on the side of the road to wait. Jonah was doing what he’d been born to do. The rest would have to take care of itself.
A short while later, a couple of news vans pulled up. She saw them setting up cameras and interviewing first one person, then another, trying to piece together what had happened. When they shoved a camera into one weeping parent’s face, she looked away in disgust, having come to the conclusion that reporters descended on tragedy like vultures on carrion.
An hour passed. The sun was only minutes away from setting when Luce saw a man with dark hair coming slowly up the slope.
She stood, willing him to look up, wanting him to know she was waiting. Then he did, and when she saw the look on his face, her breath caught on a sob.
Jonah saw her standing at the edge of the road, waiting—waiting for him. It was all he could do to keep walking, but he knew that if he got to Lucia, everything else would work out.
His mind was exhausted, his body on the verge of collapse. He’d never healed so many at one time, but there had been no choice. It had been all of them—or none of them. No way could he have chosen who should live and who should die.
His face felt stiff, his skin burned from the cold. When he looked down at himself, he realized he was covered in blood and there was a button missing from his shirt. Then he heard Lucia call out his name.
“Jonah.”
He focused on her face and found the strength to keep walking. Somehow he found himself standing before her. She opened her arms.
“My clothes…the blood…I’ll get you all—”
“Hush,” she said softly. “Just come here.”
He took a step forward, letting her arms enfold him—letting the beat of her heart steady his own—and knew he was home.
“I’m sorry about the driver,” she said.
Surprised that she understood the depths of his regret at not being able to save them all, he bit his lip to keep from weeping.
