From all up and down the line the responses and assurances came crackling back at him. And then, loud and clear, one that made his blood run cold:
“Oh, Lordy, looks like she’s got one in the oven, and from the looks of ‘er, she’s ’bout to pop, too.
“I’m on it,” Jimmy Joe said grimly into the mike as he checked his mirrors once more and then turned on his four-way flashers. “Hey, yellow truck-J.B. Hunt, that you on mah back door?”
The answer came back-a woman’s voice, calm and confident. “I got you, Big Blue. You got lotsa room…go for it. Ten-foh.”
“Thank ya kindly… ’Preciate it.” He hung up the mike as the word was being passed back up the line.
A strange calm settled over him, the way it did sometimes when his way, though difficult, seemed clear and certain. Outside his windows the white crept by, yard by yard, while inside the cab he counted off the seconds with his own heartbeat and the chatter on the radio faded into a tense and waiting silence. In his mirrors he could see the J.B. Hunt truck’s headlights dropping back. How much longer? he wondered. A mile past Adrian-that would make it ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Seemed like an hour already…
At last he saw her, a tiny figure standing hunched and forlorn beside her disabled car, too dispirited now to even wave. There was no mistaking the silver Lexus or that red hair, either, although the rest of her didn’t bear much resemblance to the Mirabella he’d come to know. Nothing very uppity about her now, that was for sure. Not a trace left of that know-it-all tilt to her chin. She looked cold and scared, plumb done in and all alone.
Carefully manipulating brakes and gears, he eased his truck to a gentle stop. Behind him, in an unbroken line that stretched clear back to New Mexico, one by one the other drivers did the same. Then, while a thousand rigs sat idling on the icy interstate, Jimmy Joe set his brake, opened the door and stepped out into the teeth of that freezing wind. It just about took his breath away.
He made his way around the front of the Kenworth, holding on to the bumper and slipping and sliding on the unevenly packed ice. When he got around to the other side, Mirabella was just struggling through the ridge of filthy black snow thrown off by all the truck tires. She was bent over, half crouching, with both hands held out to keep her balanced, and through the wind-whipped ribbons of her hair her eyes reached for him like prayers. In all that whiteness, the palest thing he could see was her face.
“Jimmy…Joe,” she gasped, clutching at him. “I have to…get to…” And now he could hear what he couldn’t before. She was sobbing.
“Easy…easy, now,” he said, soothing her the way he did J.J. when he’d had a bad dream. “It’s okay…I gotcha. You just hold on now… Here, put your arms around my neck.”
She did as she was told, her big, scared eyes never leaving his face, and somehow he got his arms under her and lifted her up like a baby. Praying that the Lord would guide his feet because he sure couldn’t see where to put ’em, he carried her through the rocklike frozen sludge to his truck, set her down on the first step while he got the door open, then braced himself and levered her up and into the cab.
“Stay there,” he told her-unnecessarily, for sure-as he slammed the door shut. Plowing back through the snow to the Lexus, he got the keys out of the ignition and her pocketbook from the front seat, then popped the trunk. After he’d locked up the car again, he grabbed what looked to him like an overnight case out of the trunk, slammed it shut on a mountain of Christmas presents and ran for his truck, thinking he might just about make it there before he plumb froze to death.
Back in the Kenworth’s nice warm cab, he found Mirabella still sitting in the passenger seat where he’d left her, shivering so hard he could just about hear her bones rattle. “Hey there, Marybell,” he said with forced cheerfulness as he heaved her luggage into the sleeper, “aren’t you s’posed to be in Florida?”
Her big, terrified eyes followed him. “I have…to get… to the…ha-ha-” But the shudders racked her and she couldn’t get the words out.
“Come on back here-let’s get you warm.” He took her by the shoulders and gently eased her around and then to her feet, guiding her like a sleepwalker.
He knew he didn’t have much time, that he had to get the rig rolling again, but he couldn’t very well leave her the way she was, either. Silently asking his brother and sister drivers for patience, he began to talk to her in an easy, soothing voice while he shucked off her worthless coat and sat her down on the bed, then knelt down and took off her ruined shoes. The thin, calf-high stockings she was wearing were soaking wet too, so he hiked up her pant legs and peeled them off. Then he opened up his locker and got out a pair of his nice thick winter socks.
“Here ya go,” he said gruffly. “Put these on-get those feet warmed up.” But she just looked at him.
After a moment it became clear to him that she wasn’t up to putting the socks on alone, so once again he skinned up her damp pant legs and did it himself. He couldn’t help but notice how cold her feet were, and how small and defenseless they looked. The socks came clear up to her knees. He told himself it wasn’t all that different from helping J.J. get dressed on those winter mornings when the boy didn’t feel like waking up and going out in the cold to catch the school bus. But as small as her feet were, they weren’t a little boy’s feet. They were a woman’s. And the way he felt when he touched them wasn’t anything at all like he felt when he was dressing J.J.
He got her eased down on the bed and the blankets tucked in nice and snug around her, then left her and slipped back into the driver’s seat. For a moment he sat and listened to the living, breathing, waiting silence coming over the CB radio. Then he picked up the mike, thumbed it on and drawled, “Uh…this potty stop was brought to you by the Big Blue Starr. Hope y’all enjoyed it… Ten-foh.”
He grinned as the radio erupted with whoops and hollers and crackling static, with everybody within earshot trying to talk at once. A few nearby drivers cut loose with blasts from their airhorns. Then he hung up his mike and put the Kenworth in gear, and slowly, slowly the line began to move again.
When he was pretty sure things were going along okay, nobody taking any unscheduled side trips into the median, he glanced around and called hopefully, “Hey, you doin’ okay back there?”
He thought he heard her whisper, “Fine…” But through the open door of the sleeper he could see that she was still curled up on her side with the blankets cuddled close, and that her eyes were closed. She was still shivering, too. He turned up the heat another notch and went back to concentrating on keeping his rig on the road, but worry was beginning to gnaw at his insides.
The channel 19 airwaves were pretty much back to the normal chatter, drivers bitching and moaning and looking out for one another, just generally doing what they could to keep their spirits up. Jimmy Joe listened to it while another couple of miles crawled by, then once again picked up his mike. He thought a minute, then thumbed it on.
“Uh…anybody seen any bears lately? Come on…”
That got him some guffaws and some rude remarks.
Jimmy Joe let a breath out, taking his time about it. It was pretty much what he’d expected, but he didn’t like it. After thinking about it another minute or two, he punched the mike button again. “Breaker…this is Big Blue Starr again. I’m gon’ be switchin’ channels here for a while, gon’ try and raise somebody over on nine. Uh…I could use a little help. Got a lady here in need of transportation right quick, that’s ’bout the…twenty-four-mile yardstick. If you got any bears in your neighborhood, I’d appreciate it if somebody’d flag ’em down. Ten-foh.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. When he had channel 9, the emergency channel, tuned in, he listened to nothing for a few seconds, then thumbed on his mike once more. He spoke in a low voice with only a trace of his trucker’s drawl.
“Mayday… Mayday… This is Blue Starr Transport. I’m eastbound on 1-40, about three miles east of Adrian…got an emergency situation here. Repeat-this is an emergency. Come back…” He listened hopefully, then tried once more. “Mayday, Mayday…anybody out there listenin’?”
There was only silence.
“Jimmy Joe?”
