'No. I suppose I wouldn't.' Her mind was somewhere else already. 'Do you know, Fred, you moved awful fast in there. You were quite a hero.'
'Nuts,' he said.
'Maybe you saved his life.'
'Look,' he said, 'if you see something's going to faU on somebody unless you push them, you push them. It's a reflex.'
'A what?'
'What the hell?' Fred said. Alice wiggled herself back in the seat as they drifted gently down the hilL
'How do we go? Over that pit?'
'Yup. Have to, to get on number six.'
'I hope we go over it faster than we came.' Alice shivered.
The car answered her, picking up speed. Ogaunee street lights were few and far between, and dim at that. They turned left, away from Main Street, where they had never yet been. Innes was a limp bimdle behind them. Alice felt a pricking of her nerves and a wish to get over the pit and on the highway, settled into their pace and done with Ogaunee. She scarcely saw what they were passing. She was listening for the hum of power, trying to recapture the mood for distance and the free feeling of being on the way to somewhere else.
Fred's arm went across in front of her like an iron bar.
'Watchit!' With his other hand he spun the wheel. The car's nose turned and tilted. They were headed for the stars. The brakes screamed. Only Fred's arm kept Alice out of the windshield. The car stalled, shivered. Something hit Alice on the back of her head. She heard a crash, like an echo, without any sense of pressure. Then the night was still, for a moment.
People's voices. Feet running. Weight on her back. Fred was swearing monotonously. Alice reahzed that she wasn't hurt, that the weight on her back was Innes, flung like a sack over the back of the front seat. He had been lying limp, and the sudden stop had flung him forward like a stone out of a sling. Fred was lifting him away.
Somehow or other Alice found herself kneeling on the tilted floor of the tonneau, wiping a trickle of blood from
Innes's chin. His eyes were open, but he didn't speak and seemed nearly unconscious. People had come out of the quiet town like worms out of the ground after a rain. They were milling around the car. Out of all their voices Alice heard one thread of talk, loud and clear, as if the audible equivalent of a spotlight were on it
A man said, 'How'd they miss the turn? Musta missed the turn, didn't they?'
'Say, you shouldn't come down here, driver. This road's been closed off.'
Fred's angry voice: 'Why in hell don't you put up a sign, then?'
'Whatdya mean? There's a sawhorse across the end.'
'There is, eh?'
'Detour. That's what it says.'
'Yeah?'
''This road goes off into the pit.'
Fred said sarcastically, 'That's why I stopped, bud.'
'Good thing you stopped,' somebody said.
'Show me that sign.'
A woman said in Alice's ear, 'Is he hurt, dear? Are you hurt, dear? The doctor's coming. How do you feel dear?' Alice shook her head. The voice receded.
Some man said in an excited way, 'Say, the sawhorse ain't across the road now.'
'Where is it?'
'It's across the main road!'
'What? What did he say?'
'Somebody moved the sign.'
'The detour sign?'
'Yeah, moved it. Put it across the main road.'
'For God's sake! Who done that?'
'Some fool kids ...'
'Say, that's dangerous!'
'Who'd do a thing like that?'
'They mighta been killed!'
'Yessir, that's dangerous.'
'Might have gone right over.'
'He don't know the road.'
