Chopping Spree

length. Maybe I had passed out.

I eased back onto the dirt and tried to clear the mental fog. My body lay crumpled between two dirt ridges. A severe aching sensation swept from my shoulders to my legs, slowly at first, then with more depth and speed. I groaned and elbowed up again to a half-sitting position. I gazed vacantly at the nearly lethal path the truck had taken. What had that been about? I had no idea.

Doing my best to ignore the pain, I took stock of myself. Not only were my legs, arms, and face filthy, my caterer’s outfit was streaked beyond recognition. The remains of several shrimp rolls clung to my jacket. Looking around, I realized that the truck had squashed my box and sent the contents flying.

How much food had been lost? Would we be able to do the event?

Why had Barry yelled I knew it?

I brushed off my formerly white, formerly crisp caterer’s jacket. Shimmering dust rose from the jacket as food strands showered the dirt. I sneezed violently.

Two yards away, Barry rubbed his face and hacked for breath. He had landed in a deep puddle, and his once-khaki pants were now the color of cafe au lait. His formerly green shirt clung to his torso like a mossy towel. Julian, his wet clothes stuck to his body, trotted toward us. He was shouting again, this time at the construction crew, something along the lines of getting their asses up here so they could help us.

Barry looked at me and blinked, then blinked again. He slid sideways in the puddle and reached in my direction.

“Goldy! Did you see the driver?”

“No. Whoever it was ran away.” I didn’t state the obvious: that whoever the driver was, he’d seemed intent on mowing us down.

“Do you know who it was?” I tried but didn’t succeed in keeping the accusatory tone from my voice.

Barry shook his head and turned away from me. Why was his muttered “No” so unconvincing?

I studied the dump truck wedged in the embankment. Along Doughnut Drive, lines of cars had stopped. Honking and yelling rose above the throngs of curious drivers who’d left their vehicles and were hustling rapidly along the road. Why else? They were trying to get a better look at the accident.

We needed state patrol and the sheriff’s department, I decided, and quick. With any luck, one of those drivers was using a cell phone to call for help right now.

And speaking of cell phones… I usually kept mine in my apron pocket. But I hadn’t yet put on my apron, so I didn’t have it. I sighed.

I was having a great day.

Barry was staring at the errant truck. There was blood on his forehead. Julian’s words were finally discernible: Are you all right? I yelled back that we were fine. How are you doing? I wanted to know. Julian hollered that he was fine, then raced down to the construction area and called to more workers. Oh, to be young and able to run around in wet clothes.

I hauled myself to my feet, then offered a hand to Barry, still stuck in the puddle. He groaned and splattered mud as he righted himself. His hands were icy, his face pale. Once free of the ditch water, he shivered, grasped the back of his left thigh, and cried out in pain.

Victor Wilson, still wearing his orange hat, raced up the parking lot. Five workers jogged along behind him. The crew did not appear to be paying much attention to Victor’s bellowed orders, commands that were liberally sprinkled with curses. With his red ponytail flapping, Victor swerved away from Barry and me and toward the truck, but not before I’d squinted at the boldly printed words on his sweatshirt. We Got Dirt. No kidding, I thought. Lots and lots of dirt.

Barry hobbled up beside me and we both spoke at once. What happened, Who could have done such a thing, Are you badly hurt, Do you have a cell phone? Without waiting for my reply, Barry wiped the trickle of blood from his scraped forehead and gazed at Victor, who was now climbing into the truck.

“No, no!” I yelled. “You shouldn’t be doing that!” Ten minutes ago, the crazed driver of that vehicle had tried to kill us. Or at least it sure had seemed that way. Nobody should be touching anything until the cops arrived.

Disregarding my protest, Victor tried to start the truck anyway. The engine groaned, clicked, and refused to turn over. With another cascade of curses, he finally got the engine going. The behemoth truck revved and erupted into an insistent beep beep beep as it growled back from the embankment and swerved to miss the mountains of displaced berm dirt. The gaggle of spectators standing on Doughnut Drive moved aside en masse.

Julian, still sopping, sprinted over to us. He assessed me, then Barry, and asked if we needed to go to the hospital. We both said no. Just call the cops, I told him. Julian replied that he was calling the cops and an ambulance to have us looked at.

“No!” screamed Barry. “No cops! They’ll drive away shoppers.” He looked at me and swallowed. “Important saying in our business, Goldy. Nothing clears a mall like a security threat. We simply cannot afford to lose shoppers.”

“Look, Barry.” I raised my voice to match his. “More shoppers would avoid this place if somebody actually had been killed a few moments ago.”

Barry groaned as he watched the line of cars along Doughnut Drive grow. The honking and shouting intensified.

Julian tersely ordered us to stay put. He was going to the Rover for some supplies. When I asked if he’d been able to make out who was driving the truck—man, woman, race, build—he shook his head. The first thing he’d seen was the truck’s backside as it catapulted out of the muddy lake and careened toward us.

When Julian roared up in the Rover a few minutes later, he had already changed into a spare sweatshirt and pants. He leaped out and retrieved a battered first-aid kit, a roll of paper towels, and his own cell phone. I noted the smooth, peculiar-to-Julian ability to do two things at once with complete calm. He punched in 911, cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, and pumped disinfectant onto his hands. Then he instructed Barry—in the low, soothing voice Julian always assumed in a crisis—to lie down. He had to get off his injured leg, Julian explained.

Barry protested. He’d be just fine if he could get into some clean clothes and make a few calls. “And you, Goldy,” Barry said, his scraped face wracked with pain. “I’m hoping you can just go inside and get going. The mall really, really needs to have this event go off smoothly.”

“Mr. Dean, please.” Julian spoke in a low voice. “You’ll be much better off if you just let me help you. For a few minutes. Come on.”

Barry’s insistence that we all needed to get the hell out of here subsided. Groaning, the mall manager lay down as bidden.

Julian smoothed disinfectant onto Barry’s face and arms, wiped away blood and muck with clean towels, and gently touched Barry’s injured thigh. All the while, he murmured into his cell phone, telling the emergency operator what he’d seen happen. When Julian told the operator where in Westside Mall’s parking lot we were, Barry abruptly wrenched away from my assistant’s ministering hands. He struggled to a standing position, snarling that he didn’t want any help from the cops, he just needed to get back to his office.

What was it with Barry Dean? First he wanted to talk to me privately and urgently. Then, after we’d nearly been run down by a truck, he’d submitted reluctantly to Julian’s care, and told me to go inside and work on the event. Now he was back to yelping that he needed to get back to work.

While Julian walked after the hobbling Barry, trying to convince him not to leave, that he needed to be seen by a medic, I took stock of my own injuries. I’d had the misfortune to land on my kneecaps, which burned when I whisked off the tiny stones that had embedded themselves there. Blood spurted through a network of dirty scratches. My support hose, of course, were ripped and filthy. Other than my knees, I seemed to have emerged with some arm pain that would no doubt turn into a disgusting bruise. Still, no matter what the intentions of the truck driver, I had survived.

So now, I thought as I continued to massage my kneecaps, I only had to clean up, change outfits, figure out how much food we’d lost, and get on with the event. I knew the party would take place; Barry was determined. Thank God I had learned to keep an emergency pack of catering clothes in my van. I tentatively put one foot in front of the other, immediately registered acute pain in my back and hips, and sternly ordered myself to block it out. I had work to do.