“Watch it, boys!” Skeeter shouted. “I felt it start to shift.”
“Get that tractor in here,” said the fire chief. “We need to get a chain or something on this car.”
Robert backed his big John Deere down through the bushes at the water’s edge. There was a winch above the drawbar and someone grabbed the hook and waded into the water with it. Robert let the cable feed out slowly as the man hauled the hook over toward the car where other hands reached for it. There was a confused splashing around the end of the car and several strangled coughs as men came up gasping for air before the hook was securely attached to the back undercarriage.
There were also enough strangled curses to make me glad I was a woman on the shore instead of a man out there in the middle of a muddy, moccasin-infested creek. (We may be technically equal these days but that doesn’t mean we jump into every activity with equal enthusiasm.)
Finally, a vaguely familiar voice called, “Put some tension on it, but for God’s sake, go easy!”
That’s when I recognized that the man who’d carried the hook out to the car was Jason Bullock. I’d heard that he’d joined a lot of civic organizations like the volunteer fire department, but this was the first time I’d seen him since the night of our post-game pizza over in Dobbs.
With the tractor in its lowest gear and half a dozen men doing what they could to support the car upright, Robert kept the cable taut as he slowly pulled until the Honda was on solid ground. Water was still waist-high where the men now stood on what was normally the creekbank, but at least there was no immediate danger of losing the car and the person inside. A lightweight molded plastic stretcher board was passed from the rescue truck and soon they had a recumbent form strapped onto it.
When they came ashore, I saw that it was indeed Clara Freeman, unconscious and with all her vital signs erratic, but alive.
Dwight had arrived by then. As they loaded Mrs. Freeman into the ambulance, he turned to me with a lopsided smile. “Sometimes I’m glad I listen to you. If she’d spent the night out there . . .”
“Another two inches and her nose would have been in the water,” said a dripping Jason Bullock as we watched the ambulance speed away with lights flashing and siren wailing. “Anybody call her husband yet? He ought to be told.”
My heart went out to him in his empathy for Ralph Freeman and I knew he was probably remembering his own tense hours of worry before Dwight came and told him the worst a husband can hear.
“The dispatcher’s calling him right now,” Dwight said. “She’ll tell him to meet the ambulance at Dobbs Memorial.”
I put out my hand to Jason and told him how sorry I was for his own loss. He thanked me, then looked at Dwight. “I’ve tried not to bug you, Bryant, but do you have anything yet?”
“Sorry. We have a few leads, but nothing solid. But maybe you could come by the office tomorrow and let’s talk again? Go over a few possibilities?”
“Sure.”
We stood there on the side of the road and watched as the excitement wound down and the volunteers packed it in. The fire truck trundled across the bridge, back toward Cotton Grove, the extra patrol cars headed off to their usual sectors, and the remaining deputy showed Dwight the sketch he’d made to explain how Clara Freeman wound up in Possum Creek.
“We’ll check again tomorrow in the daylight, but we couldn’t see skid marks. Looks like she came flying down the slope, misjudged the curve and drove straight off the road without touching the brakes, going so fast, she just sailed into the creek.”
I was craning over Dwight’s shoulder, but Jason stared back up the slope that was now washed in light by Robert’s tractor lights.
“You reckon she might’ve blacked out? Or the gas pedal stuck?”
“With a stuck accelerator, she’d have been standing on her brakes,” said Dwight.
“And if she was blacked out,” said the deputy, “she wouldn’t’ve been going fast enough to skip the bank.”
“Hey, Deb’rah,” Andrew called. “You ready to go?”
It was getting late and he had a couple of bulk barns loaded with curing tobacco to see to.
“Go on ahead,” I called back. “I’ll ride with Robert.”
All this time, local traffic had come and gone sporadically on this back road. When we first arrived, it was one- lane, directed by a trooper who kept the rubberneckers moving. This late, long past midnight, in a community that was still mostly farmers and early-rising blue-collar workers, the road was practically deserted. Nevertheless, an occasional car came by and slowed to ask whether everything was under control. If they knew Dwight or recognized Robert’s tractor, the driver would even get out of his vehicle and come over to gawk at Clara Freeman’s drowned car.
My brother Robert had finished pulling it up onto the shoulder of the road and water streamed from the open doors. I walked over to have a look myself while Dwight and his deputy finished conferring and Jason was right behind me when an oncoming car slowed, stopped, and a man came toward us.
“Evening, Judge,” said Millard King. “That’s not your car, is it? You all right?”
I sensed Jason Bullock stiffening behind me and I knew that King hadn’t immediately realized who was standing there with me. In the half-light cast by reflected headlights, I saw recognition spread across his face when he came closer.
“Bullock.” His voice was neutral as he nodded to Jason.
“King.” Jason’s voice was equally neutral, but I finally had an answer to whether or not he knew his wife had been sleeping around.
And with whom.
