One Christmas Knight

He was lucky. On the only clear station in that part of New Mexico he caught Brenda Lee just finishing up “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and right after that Elvis started in with “Blue Christmas.” He left it there and turned the volume up loud so he wouldn’t have to listen to all the talk coming in on the CB about the mess waiting for him up ahead in Texas.

For one of the few-the very few-times in her life, Mirabella was feeling uncertain; she would never admit to being afraid. But as she clung to the wheel of her Lexus and doggedly followed the taillights of the big rig in front of her, she felt a chill. that had nothing to do with the snow blowing past her windshield.

Everything had been fine until about ten miles into Texas, when all of a sudden both lanes of traffic on the interstate had slowed to a crawl. A few miles farther on she’d come to know why. Snow-not from the threatening black clouds overhead, but blown by the wind across that flat, unbroken plain-had reduced visibility to nearly zero. Packed down by the tires of hundreds of eighteen-wheelers, it had turned the road surface into a narrow track of bumpy, rutted ice. The double line of trucks became one, an endless train creeping fitfully eastward at a pace slower than a man could walk. With very good reason. If Mirabella needed more dramatic evidence of the need for caution, there were the dozens of cars stuck in roadside drifts and even a few big rigs jackknifed on the median to remind her.

Oh, God, she thought as she crept past yet another disabled vehicle, what if I…

No. Ice trickled down her spine, and she shivered. No, she wouldn’t even think of such a possibility. It wouldn’t happen to her; she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t an idiot; she knew enough not to make stupid mistakes. She knew the rules: Don’t brake or accelerate suddenly. Always turn into a skid. She would be okay if she kept her head. She wouldn’t panic. Of course not- Mirabella never panicked.

Oh, but how long could this go on? It was only fifty miles to Amarillo, but at this rate, that would take hours. Ten hours. It would be dark in three. And-oh, God, she had to go to the bathroom now. How was she ever going to be able to wait that long?

She knew the answer, of course. She would simply have to. Because there was absolutely no way she could stop, even if there had been a place to do so in that vast, unending whiteness.

To make matters worse, the Tylenol she’d taken this morning at breakfast had worn off, and now she couldn’t even reach for her purse to get some more. She didn’t dare take a hand from the wheel, not for an instant. But, oh, how her back hurt. The pressure was worse than ever, too. She felt as if she were being squeezed in a giant vise.

In fact, Mirabella was absolutely certain she had never been so miserable in her life, and that things couldn’t get much worse than they were right now.

A few minutes later she knew how wrong she was.

Suddenly there was a soft pop, and she felt a flood of warmth and wetness, a simultaneous release of pressure. She gasped. No-she felt as if the air were being sucked from her lungs.

For the first time in her life her mind went completely blank, as if someone had pushed a button and instantly wiped her data banks clean of every rational thought and all common sense. In short, she panicked.

And then she hit the brakes.

The next thing she knew she was clinging uselessly to the steering wheel while the world outside her windows passed by in a dizzying white blur. There were horrifying lurches and teeth-jarring crunches and explosive popping sounds and things flying at her from all sides. Air bags! Thank God-she was engulfed-all but smothered-in air bags. Then there was stillness…and silence, except for a soft whimpering, which Mirabella realized with utter horror was coming from her.

She was no longer uncertain. Nor was she afraid. Now she was positively terrified.

She knew what had happened. The impossible. The unthinkable. Her water had broken. And it had shocked her so badly she’d done just what she knew she shouldn’t have, which was tromp on the brake, and as a result her car had skidded off the icy road and was now stuck in a snowbank, like those of all the other poor souls she’d passed and pitied. And now she and her baby were in big trouble. Desperate trouble.

Oh, God, she thought, what am I going to do?

Get ahold of yourself, Bella. Don’t panic.

All right, it was a little late for that last bit of advice. But she did need to get ahold of herself, stay calm, and think.

Okay. The first thing she had to do was get help. Please-somebody help me!

But she couldn’t just sit here and wait for someone to come along. There was no telling how long that might be, and she had to get to a hospital now. So there wasn’t any way around it; she was going to have to get out of the car and try to flag someone down. Someone… someone in one of the endless caravan of trucks that continued to growl slowly by, only a few yards and a whole world away.

Jimmy Joe had lost the New Mexico radio station, which was just as well. He had no business listening to the likes of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” when he had enough to do just to keep his rig on the road. The CB was really cracklin’, too, what with a few hundred drivers all stuck in the same place and all trying their best to relieve the tedium and tension.

“Eastbound, you got a four-wheeler on the side at mile marker…”

“Yeah, you got two more down here… ”

“Hell, you got ‘em everywhere! I quit countin’.”

“Federated, you okay down there?”

“Yeah…think I got me a little problem…

“Man, I mean, this is criminal. ”

“Can you believe an interstate in this condition?”

“Anybody got any idea what it’s like in Amarillo?”

“S’pose it’s like this all the way to Oklahoma?”

“Oh, man, I sure do need to?ee. ”

“Well, you better open up the door, then, ’cause you ain’t gonna find no bushes out here!”

“Uh…eastbound. on that four-wheeler on the side…looks like you got somebody out of the car, trying to wave somebody down. Ah, hell…looks like a lady-you believe that? What’s she doin’ out here, anyway?”

When he heard those words Jimmy Joe felt a jolt that went right through his insides. What’s she doing out here? Wasn’t that just what he’d said to himself the first time he’d set eyes on that crazy red-haired pregnant lady from California? The one he hadn’t been able to get his mind off since.

A four-wheeler on the side and a woman trying to flag somebody down-he sure didn’t like the sound of that. How many women could there be, out here all alone in conditions like this? He picked up his mike, thumbed the Talk button and growled, “Uh, what’s the twenty on that four-wheeler with the lady wavin’? Come on…”

He waited through some crackling and muttering, counting his own heartbeats, before the answer came back. “Uh…cain’t see the mile sticks… Make it ’bout a mile past the grain elevators at the Adrian exit. That’d be…what, twenny-two?”

Jimmy Joe watched the grain elevators at the Adrian exit crawl past his windows and swore out loud, which was something he didn’t do often, having had his mouth washed out with soap more than once in years past for that offense. He did so now because he knew it was a good twelve miles to the next exit, which at this pace was going to take him more than two hours, and that meant there wasn’t going to be any way he could get off the interstate. And there sure wasn’t any place to pull over to the side. So it looked like, if he was going to stop and pick the lady up, he was going to have to do it the hard way, which was to stop the whole blamed line of traffic.

Picking up his mike again, he thumbed it on and growled, “Breaker…this is the Big Blue Starr. I’m gonna be slowin’ down here in a little bit. Gon’ try an’ pick up the lady. Just don’t want anybody crawlin’ up my back door…”