Turn Around When Possible

TURN AROUND WHEN POSSIBLE

 

 

 

The first sign that anything was amiss was when “Samantha,” their aging GPS system, interrupted their stony silence with her computer-accented, female voice—“In two miles, take the Harris Road exit, Exit 140.” After a pause, she repeated her instructions a second time. Robert had no idea this innocuous statement foreshadowed the tragedy to come.

He had purchased the Tom-Tom GPS system over five years ago when their children, Elizabeth and David, still lived at home. It was a lifesaver on their two-week vacation to Florida that year. They all pooled their ideas and came up with the name Samantha—Sam for short—for the techno routing tool. This technological wonder came with a computer hook-up so it could receive the latest changes in routes and addresses directly from the company’s website. Unfortunately, Robert lost the cord soon after they moved from Albuquerque to Rio Rancho, and Samantha had never received any of this new information. Still, in all the time since her purchase, she had only failed them twice, both when she could not locate addresses of buildings that hadn’t existed before her manufacture. Considering its age, he should have just bought a new one.

Robert glanced over at his wife, Cindy. She was still looking out the side window and hadn’t acknowledged the new instructions. He figured she was upset over their last discussion. Maybe discussion wasn’t the right word; argument better defined their last go-round, the frequencies of which had exploded over the previous year.

Samantha broke the silence again. “Get in the right lane. Take the Harris Road exit, Exit 140. Then turn right.” She echoed her clear, simple instructions a second time.

Robert signaled and steered the car into the right lane, a feeling of unease fluttering through him. He never brought maps with them on their trips, instead relying solely on their GPS, another sore point with Cindy. But Robert had perused their road atlas a couple of times before leaving just to get a feeling for the geography of their trip to Montana and Idaho. He was trying to picture the map in his mind…

They were almost to the Montana/Idaho border. When he’d last checked Samantha’s readout, they had about a hundred miles to go before reaching Coeur d’Alene, a large city in northern Idaho. It was a straight shot on I-90, then another sixty miles north to their destination of Sandpoint on Lake Pend Oreille. But now Sam said he needed to exit. All he could figure was that Samantha had recalculated another route. Robert had opted for the gadget’s alternate program to find the fastest instead of the shortest route, and she had obviously found a quicker shortcut. If he remembered correctly, there was a mountain range, the Cabinet Mountains, somewhere to the northeast of them.

The Kia Sportage SUV’s cruise control was set at 75 mph, and he tapped the brake pedal to disengage it as they approached the Harris Road exit. Samantha droned on with her instructions. “Exit now, Exit 140, Harris Road. Then turn right.”

Cindy finally roused herself from her scenery, staring and looking at him with a blank expression. “Why are we getting off here?”

“I think Samantha found us a shortcut,” he said.

His wife of twenty-four years glanced around at the changing landscape and lapsed back into silence.

They had traveled almost two miles down the rural road, passing lush green fields, heavily treed areas, and several farms, when Samantha spoke again. “Turn left on Twelve Mile Road.” After repeating, several seconds elapsed before she resumed, “In 500 feet, turn left. Turn left on Twelve Mile Road.”

Sure enough, an opening appeared in the trees to their left as predicted. Robert turned onto the road, his level of unease rising another notch. The pavement ended after a quarter-mile, and Robert slowed to a stop. A sign indicated another dirt road to the left led to a campground. The road ahead of them rose upward, but the most disturbing thing was the posted warning, Road Not County Maintained.

Cindy was staring at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This can’t be right.” She peered through the windshield at the desolate-looking, winding road. She pursed her lips. “You must have made a wrong turn somewhere.”

Robert glared ahead at the rising, forest-lined road and handed the palm-sized GPS to Cindy. “You tell me if it says if we’re on the right road or not. Besides, she’d tell us if we weren’t following her directions.”

She peered at the map on the small screen for several seconds. “It says we’re on Twelve Mile Road, the arrow points in this direction, and we have 13.5 miles to go.” She clenched her teeth and put the small technological marvel back in its holder on the console. “You want the time, speed and ETA too? I can’t believe you didn’t bring a map with us. Especially on this God-forsaken trip,” she muttered.

Robert bit his lip and said nothing. His choice of vacation was another sore point between them. Cindy’s blonde head was again turned away from him, looking out the window. She would have preferred a week on the beach in Florida or California, not in the northern reaches of Idaho, near the Canadian border. He hit the gas and headed up the road.

At first, the road was navigable, narrow but often widening with shallow pull-offs. A cliff-like mountainside soared upon their right, partially hidden by tall pines, with more trees and scrub to their left. The pull-offs soon disappeared, the road narrowed, and ruts and potholes became more numerous. Robert slowed his speed as he tried to weave around the worst of the winter’s erosion. The roadway was wet from the spring thaw, and as they progressed higher, patches of snow appeared on the shoulders to the right, in the lee of the larger rocks and trees. There was even a good-sized drift hugging the bend of one S-curve.

It would be impossible for two cars to pass each other on what was quickly becoming only a rutted cow path. Robert wondered what would happen should they meet an oncoming vehicle. But then, they had not seen a living soul since they had begun their climb up the mountainous shortcut, let alone another car.

Cindy was nervous. She glanced around, especially to the left, where the trees and scrub had partially given way to a too near—for Cindy’s liking—rocky and steep dropoff down the mountainside. The dwindling roadway seemed even narrower with the soaring cliff wall to the right and the open air drop opposite. And there were no guard rails to deter cars from going over the edge.

Cindy gifted her husband a piercing glare as he maneuvered their SUV around a fallen tree limb. “This is ridiculous. This can’t be right. Things must have really changed since Samantha was created. Is your macho ego ready to admit we’d better turn around and go back? It’s one thing to refuse to ask for directions; it’s another to continue driving up a desolate mountain in the middle of nowhere on an oversized cow path with no idea….”

Robert tuned out her tirade as best he could as they continued their upward climb, the terrain becoming more overgrown and wild. It seemed as if the interminable climb would never end. Finally, Samantha interrupted with new advice. “In 200 feet, turn right on Knox Creek Road. In 200 feet, turn right on Knox Creek Road.”

But it was questionable advice. Robert didn’t see any road. Their route had opened, and the rocky mountain face had given way to an open area, heavily treed; the opposite side—with the threatening dropoff—had also retreated from the roadway, with grassy spots and scrub oak between them and the drop. Robert glanced at the GPS screen showing the intersecting road. He slowed even more on their upward trajectory, and then, there it was, what must have been Knox Creek Road.

He stopped at the intersection. Samantha’s suggested new heading was no better than the road they were on—an overgrown, one-lane trail with faint indentations where vehicle tires had once made their way. Knox Creek sloped downward and disappeared around a bend about a hundred yards from their location. Several small tree limbs lay jumbled across the road.

Robert looked at Samantha’s GPS readout. The screen’s arrow pointed down the new route. It indicated they had 4.5 miles to go, meaning they had managed nine miles already on their new adventure. It would be a shame to give up now. “Let’s take a walk and see how bad it is,” he said.

Cindy gave him a withering stare. “No, thank you,” she hissed. “I’ll wait, just hurry up and get this over with.”

Robert got out and walked down to the bend in the road. It was cold out, especially in the shade of the trees. Although it was the first week of June, summer came a little later this far north, and their altitude didn’t help, which he estimated to be between 7,000 and 8,000 feet. He wondered how long the large patches of snow—still clinging stubbornly in the shaded areas—would last before relinquishing their tenuous connections to a winter now past.

He surveyed the downward-sloping landscape and the barely discernible path through the trees and brush. Their trusty Kia was a small SUV and could probably make it if he took it easy and there were no major obstructions. Robert wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of, the new, unknown route or the seething woman waiting for him in the car. He decided discretion was the better part of valor and opted to deal with something that at least he was familiar with—his wife. Robert walked back up and was almost to their car when he noticed the two posts near the intersection. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen them before now. The wood posts, painted dark brown and about six feet high, had stick-figure images of hikers carved and painted in the wood at the top, one inscribed with Trail #31 and pointed towards ‘Knox Creek,’ and the other, #30, directing hikers continuing up Twelve Mile. There were, of course, no road signs. They were at the intersection of two hiking trails.

Cindy’s head was barely peeking above the dashboard, her petite 5’2” frame slumped down in the passenger seat, arms crossed, eyes staring straight ahead. The contrast between her brightly colored yellow sundress and the dark upholstery made him think of an angry yellow jacket. He got back in the car. “I think I know what happened,” he said.

She pushed herself back up in the seat, glancing at him. “Okay, so why in the hell are we up here? I’m freezing.”

Robert wisely skipped the “I told you so” concerning her failure to wear something warmer. Instead, “I think prior to five years ago, these two roads were county maintained. Somewhere along the line, for whatever reason—maybe for lack of traffic or lack of money—they discontinued the maintenance, let the roads become overgrown and allowed them to morph into what they are now: glorified hiking trails. Because Samantha hasn’t been updated since we bought her, she wouldn’t have any way of knowing they weren’t county roads anymore and—”

“Whose fault was that?”

“Okay, okay, you’re right. I should have replaced the computer cord long ago.” Robert gritted his teeth and tried to reign in his rising temper. He was relieved to have found a logical explanation for their little unplanned outing, but he was getting a bit tired of his wife’s constant nagging. “Let’s get turned around and head back down the mountain,” he muttered.

Using the wider area of the intersection, it was only a couple of back-and-forth maneuvers before Robert had the Kia pointed back the way they had come. He hit the gas, and the SUV shot forward.

Cindy grabbed the overhead hand grip and tensed. “Hey, cool it! This isn’t the Indy 500, and you’re no Parnelli Jones. Take it easy. Let’s not pile up on the way back.”

In response, Robert increased his speed even more.

Cindy ignored him and was even smiling now that the mystery and uncertainty were resolved. She unsnapped her seatbelt. “I’ll get us a couple of granola bars and bottles of water from the back—”

It was Samantha’s turn to interject. “Turn around when possible. Turn around when possible. Then turn right on Knox Creek Road,” she intoned, trying to correct their route. They both grinned at her admonishment. “Turn around when possible” was her standard line whenever they missed a turn or went the wrong way. This was one time they intended to ignore her.

Robert retraced their route downward, zigging and sagging around muddy potholes, ruts and the detritus Mother Nature had scattered along the roadway. What happened next was one of those imponderable events that leave mathematicians scrambling to calculate the odds.

For tens of thousands of years, erosion had been working its slow magic on the mountainside. Rain, wind, and the cycles of freezing and thawing had been breaking down the rock formations over the millennia. On this date, a massive chunk of the mountain face finally succumbed to gravity, gave up its tenuous hold a hundred feet above and began its long fall to the ground.

The boulder hit at the base of the cliff and broke into three pieces, one of which careened through the trees and onto the roadway toward their vehicle. Robert saw it coming and instinctively jerked the steering wheel to the right. Too late to avoid it, the huge stone chunk struck the SUV in the left rear, knocking it into a sickening windmill spin and off the roadway.

They might still have averted disaster had they missed the large erosion-caused depressions along the side of the road with their patinas of melted snow. But panic was now the emotion in charge as Robert spun the steering wheel first to the left, then the right, in a vain attempt to regain control. The steel-belted radials failed to gain traction on the water-slicked clay, and the Kia continued to slue towards the mountainous dropoff, knifing between the trees, failing to strike anything that might stop their spinning slide.

A detached part of his mind could hear Cindy screaming next to him. Another part was taking in the now incomprehensible, whirling green scenery around him. Arms rigid and elbows locked, Robert had a two-handed, vise-like grip on the steering wheel, his right foot crushing the brake pedal with all the weight he could muster from his 210-pound frame.

He still had a straight-armed death grip on the wheel, and the brakes locked when the Kia’s rear end slid out over the precipice. If Robert had hit the gas, the front-wheel-drive Kia might have pulled them forward to safety. As it was, he was frozen in shock and fear, no more responsive than the cliff face opposite them on the other side of the roadway, a roadway a million miles away from them…

For a second, the vehicle seemed to balance like a teeter-totter. Framed by their windshield, the trees and mountainside before them skewed downward, then disappeared, replaced by the growing, azure blue sky as the Kia listed farther and farther over the edge until the cloudless view was all they could see. With a long, drawn-out groan of metal against rock, the SUV gave up the fight and began its plunge downward. The Kia’s undercarriage continued its metallic screeching, now joined by the screams of the car’s occupants.

The car bowled down the mountainside like the metal ball in an old pinball machine, ricocheting downhill through the treed and rock-strewn terrain. Rolling, careening and flipping end over end, the seemingly endless sounds of metallic crashes, grinding metal and breaking glass melded with Robert’s own roaring screams in a deafening cacophony.

The seat belt locked, cinching his stomach, chest, and shoulder in a painful, vise-like grip. The next to go was the side airbags as they rolled into the first tree, then the front airbags as they dove into and over an outcropping, the airbag delivering a solid punch to his upper body and head. Suitcases and other loose items in the car became projectiles, assaulting him into semi-consciousness, his head whipped back and forth from the violent gyrations. The vehicle went airborne yet again, soaring and spinning awkwardly through the air in slow motion—a giant metal coffin—before succumbing to gravity and crashing grill first into a slab of rock with a thunderous roar of buckling metal.

The Kia had all the latest safety features, including a reinforced passenger compartment and a metal “cage” meant to protect the occupants, even if an accident reduced the rest of the car to scrap metal. It was also engineered with a “dropout” engine. Should the vehicle become involved in a violent front-end collision—pushing the engine back towards the passenger compartment—the chassis was designed for the engine to drop downward, preventing it from entering the occupant area. But the forward velocity was so great and the impact so overwhelming this feature was defeated, and the engine block crushed its way through the front firewall and into Robert’s legs, rigidly braced against the floor. His guttural screams of fear and pain turned to shrill shrieks of agony.

With a final groan of twisting metal, the car came to a rest in an upright position, braced against a large slab of rock in the partial shade of a stunted pine nearby. The once stylish SUV crossover now resembled a crumpled piece of aluminum foil cast onto the wooded and rocky mountainside by an indifferent giant’s hand. As the cloud of dust settled, only the faint, ticking sound of heated metal cooling, the cawing of crows returning in curiosity, and the wind sighing down the mountainside, disturbed the silence of the remote area.

 

The pain in his legs was dull and throbbing, the smell of dust and antifreeze strong. The taste of blood was on his lips. A cool breeze wafted through the driver’s side window, chilling the sweat on his face and the blood in his hair. A weight was pressing against him; he could hear low crying as Cindy pulled away the large suitcase wedged against him.

“Robert, are you okay?” She sobbed.

He squinted in the bright afternoon sunlight streaming through the opening where the windshield once had been, refocused, then looked at his wife next to him with a sigh of relief. Not having her seat belt on must have saved her. Robert guessed that her slight frame had been thrown to the floor behind the passenger seat, the back of which had broken—as he could readily see—and had fallen over her, protecting her like a cocoon. Her hair was mussed and wild, her smudged face tear-streaked, mascara smeared, and her sundress rumpled, but she otherwise appeared unscathed.

“Are you okay, Cindy…?” he wheezed.

His wife had a dazed and bewildered expression. “Robert, I told you to slow down!” Then, she felt her head and looked at her hand with a vague look. “My head, my back… everything hurts… and I think I might have a few loose teeth,” she said, with a tentative lick of her lips. “Other than that, I seem okay.” Frantic, her look of bewilderment only appeared to grow as she rubbernecked between his face to her surroundings. “Oh, my God, how is this… where am I…?”

Robert didn’t know if the tears in her eyes were from pain, anger or anguish. He wondered if she was going into shock.

He inventoried the surrounding space with more than a little confusion and apprehension. Their passenger compartment had shrunk, the sides pushed in, and the roof crushed lower. The glass in all the windows had disappeared. Now he could detect another odor. “I smell gas. Let’s get out of here!” He tried to move his legs and let out a shriek of pain, gasping. “I can’t move my legs,” he screeched.

“Stop, wait, don’t move; let me look!” It took several yanks, but Cindy’s trembling fingers pried the glove compartment open and retrieved a small, two-cell flashlight. She scooted back against the buckled passenger door as best she could, lay on her stomach and tried to see under the collapsed dashboard, which was now much closer to the vehicle’s floor. Robert’s legs disappeared beneath it, just above the knees.

Robert stared through the glassless windshield at the Kia’s hood. It resembled an accordion in its closed position, the hood only a third of its original length. He was lucky the engine block wasn’t sitting in his lap. He felt nauseated and lightheaded. A chill ran through him as Cindy continued to scrabble beneath the crushed dashboard with the flashlight. If he didn’t move, the feeling in his legs wasn’t too bad, not much feeling at all, really. Maybe, if he just closed his eyes, this would all go away…

Cindy’s head jerked back up, and she began to fumble with the belt on her yellow sundress, sliding the strap out of the loops. Her fair complexion was several shades paler, her blue eyes wide, her hand covered in blood.

That got his attention. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he said.

“Bobby, your right leg is the worst; it’s bleeding pretty good. Don’t try to move your legs anymore.” She quickly but gently slid the belt under, then around his thigh above his knee. With a grunt and a grimace, she yanked the belt tight, right up to the second-to-last notch and secured it. She looked at his ashen face, felt his clammy skin and peered into his dilated pupils. “It’s a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. You’re going into shock, but I will not let that happen. You will stay awake, you ornery son-of-a-bitch, or else I will kick your sorry ass the rest of the way down the mountain!” Her voice had the sharp edge of hysteria in it.

The broken bucket seatback on the passenger side was lying almost flat. Cindy clambered over it and rummaged through the scattered items in the rear seat, then in the storage area behind that. She returned with one of her t-shirts and two bottles of water. Cindy soaked the shirt from one bottle and swabbed it over his face before draping it around the back of his neck. She took the other bottle and made him drink.

His eyes finally cleared. “How bad is it?” he asked. Cindy had been a nurse’s aide when they first met and married. She’d continued working through her pregnancy with Elizabeth and for another three years afterward. But when David was born, she decided enough was enough and opted to hang it up and become a full-time mother.

“I think the tourniquet will stop the bleeding, but we’ll have to loosen it every fifteen minutes or so to restore a little circulation and try to prevent infection from—”

“You mean gangrene?” he interrupted.

The threat of hysteria had passed. Cindy smiled, but her look was grim. “Well, Bobby, I sure can’t slip anything by you, can I? What about the rest of your sorry ass? Anything broke or bleeding?”

Robert had taken inventory of himself as best he could. He didn’t think anything else was busted up and told her so.

“What about you?” he said

“Whiplash, I guess, a humongous headache and a killer backache,” she replied. “Oh, yeah, and it feels like Rocky Balboa punched me in the mouth.”

It was Samantha’s turn. “Turn around when possible. Turn around when possible,” she repeated in her innocuous computer accent. He picked up the GPS and looked at it; the power cord had become disconnected from the dash and was now running on the battery. The navigational arrow was in the middle of a blank, green screen, no roads indicated anywhere.

He looked back at Cindy and managed a weak smile. “Well, we’d better call someone and tell them we decided to take a shortcut and drove off a cliff.”

“We’ll have to use your phone; mine disappeared out the back with my purse and most of our stuff.” She nodded towards the back of the car.

Robert craned his head around without too much pain. The rear hatch had popped open on the way down and was half torn off from all the vehicle’s rolling and somersaulting. “Hon, get mine out; it’s in my right front pocket,” he said.

She favored him with an arched eyebrow. “Hon? You haven’t called me that in years.” She wiggled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket.

“And you haven’t called me Bobby in forever. We must be in shock from the accident.” His budding smile froze on his face when he saw her expression. She was staring emotionless at the cell phone screen. “Let me guess,” he said. “No bars.”

Cindy flipped the phone shut and leaned back against the passenger door. “No bars, no service.” Quietly, without expression, she laid the phone down on the seat, scrunched down and loosened the tourniquet on Robert’s leg. As the blood started to re-circulate, the pain was immediate and sharp. He let out a yelp.

“Sorry, just for a few seconds.” She waited for about fifteen seconds, then re-cinched the belt. She brushed his thinning hair back from his forehead. “You okay?”

Robert looked at his pinned legs. “I’m not going anywhere. You’ll have to go for help.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said. “Besides, they’ll start looking for us when we don’t show up.”

He managed a smile. “Cindy, David and Elizabeth and a few of our friends know we’re going to Sandpoint in Idaho. But nobody knows we took this shortcut through these mountains; I bet this route isn’t even on any of the maps anymore.”

She looked out the broken windows at the lengthening afternoon shadows creeping up the mountainside. “There’s only an hour or so of daylight left. Let me do a little reconnaissance and see if there’s a way I can hike out of here. But first…” She rummaged around in the glove compartment and found the pocket knife they kept there for emergencies, their son David’s Boy Scout knife from his youth.

Cindy took the two empty plastic water bottles and cut off the top quarter of each.

“These were our only water. But there are still patches of snow on the north sides of some trees and rocks. I’ll pack these bottles with snow for you.”

“Can you get out of the car?” he asked.

She smirked. “You’re kidding. I’m still only 5’2’ and 105 pounds; I can squeeze through any of these windows. Besides, I won’t have to; even you could get through the busted tailgate.”

She glanced at his leg, then at her silver Merona watch with its diamond chips at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 numerals, a tenth-anniversary gift from Robert. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

He ran his hand down his leg to the belt tourniquet. “It’s okay. Take your time; I can loosen this.”

Cindy stared at him, gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, scrambled over the seats and disappeared out the back.

“Turn around when—” He pushed Samantha’s off switch.

Cindy was back in less than half an hour. The sun was almost setting, the car was in shadow, and the temperature was dropping. She held the two snow-filled bottles in front of her and clambered through the crumpled rear end of the car and over the seats to Robert. She wedged the bottles on the cockeyed dashboard and wiggled back underneath with several t-shirts she had retrieved from somewhere, stuffing them tightly around his damaged leg as best she could.

With a gasp, he jerked out of his doze at the sudden pain.

“Sorry, Bobby, I just wanted to do everything I could think of to stop the bleeding; then maybe we could tighten the tourniquet less often—”

“It’s okay; you surprised me, was all. So, what’s the verdict on our surroundings? Are you going to be able to hike out of here and get help?”

She frowned, her face in the shadow cast by the setting sun. “I don’t think so, Bobby; we’re about halfway down the mountain. It’s rough looking going down from here. There seems to be a narrow ravine between this and the next mountain range, but it looks pretty barren even if I could do it. I climbed a ways back up and could get to a ridge, fifty feet or so from the edge where we went over, but no farther. I don’t know how far I could go to the left or right, but it didn’t look promising.” She leaned back against the buckled passenger door and closed her eyes. “Besides, my neck and back are killing me, and I need to stay here with you.”

“You can’t, Cindy. You have to at least try. It may be our only chance.”

“But it’s possible a hiker will see the tire tracks, the skid marks, look over the edge, see the wreckage and check,” she said. “I mean, those old roads are official hiking trails now.”

“What were the odds, Cindy? What were the odds of that rock falling while we were driving by, the odds we’d even be on this mountain at that precise time, let alone at that exact spot? We haven’t seen any cars or anyone on foot since we started up the mountain. What are the chances that anybody will happen to be hiking those particular trails right now and just happen to stop and take a peek down the mountain at this particular spot?”

Cindy frowned before breaking into a grin. “Despite your being a pain in the ass and ruining our ‘vacation,’ I still have to take care of your leg, get your snow water and keep you warm.”

Robert just stared at her, letting reason and logic run its course. Even with her dirty face, smeared mascara, dried blood in her hair, and torn and dirty sundress, he still thought Cindy beautiful. How had they drifted so far apart over the years of their marriage? When had they stopped talking about anything more important than trivial day-to-day minutia?

Her eyes blurred with tears. “Okay, I’ll try again tomorrow; it’s too dark now.”

The sun had disappeared behind the opposing mountains, details of the surrounding landscape vanishing in the shroud of the encroaching night. An eerie, darkening twilight cast the interior of the destroyed vehicle in the gloom, and a cold night wind wafted in through the broken windows. Cindy rummaged through the only suitcase that had survived the tumble down the mountain and retrieved several sweatshirts, pants, jeans, and blouses. She tied them all together in the silence of the encroaching night, creating a makeshift blanket. She covered Robert.

He smiled at her as she handed him two granola bars scavenged from the floor of the vehicle, along with a bottle of half-melted snow. She attempted her own smile but knew she was failing miserably. “Not exactly a gourmet dinner. It’s the best I could whip up on the spur of the moment,” she offered

He was uncontrollably shivering as he reached for the bars. “Looks scrumptious, Hon. I’m famished.”

She felt his head; he was burning up with fever. She rummaged through the ransacked suitcase in the back seat and sighed with relief when she came up with a bottle of aspirin. A little more foraging, and she found her Midol and her sleeping pills. Thank God she had packed the medications in that suitcase. She dosed out a few of each and handed them to Robert. “Here, Bobby, take these—doctor’s orders.”

Despite his trembling hands, he managed to get the pills down without dropping any. “I wish I could move or change positions,” he said. “With my legs pinned liked this, I can hardly move anything, and everything is cramping and aching.”

Cindy crawled into the back seat, rearranged things and got behind Robert. “Lean forward a little.” She massaged his neck and shoulders, her small but strong hands kneading his knotted muscles. “What do you think David and Elizabeth are doing?”

“Well, David is taking a couple of summer courses at Marist, and knowing him, he’s probably hitting the books about now. Unless, of course, his roommates are leading him astray. I just wish he would’ve picked a college closer to home; New York is so far away.” He groaned in pained contentment as Cindy worked on an overly tense muscle. “And Elizabeth and George have only been married for three months, so I’d take a wild guess they are… well, I imagine your guess might be the same as mine. At least they only live a couple of states away—”

“Bobby, why did you start calling me Hon again?” she interrupted.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I began thinking about how it used to be when we were dating in college and the first few years after we were married. We used to talk about everything, our hopes, dreams, our goals. We did things together. Remember all the scrapbooks and photograph albums? I think they’re stored in the attic now. And it wasn’t just a matter of David and Elizabeth coming along and child-rearing taking up all of our spare time; we have a ton of wonderful family memorabilia to disprove that. I think in the midst of jobs and family, we just forgot about ourselves. We let things get mired in a rut, the routine of our daily lives. We let life bury things that were once important and special to us. Then, when David and Elizabeth moved on and out with their own lives—making us the proverbial ‘empty-nesters’—we couldn’t remember how to get back to the days of ‘Hon’ and ‘Bobby.’ We were just kind of lost….”

Robert’s voice had become soft and blurred around the edges as the pills took effect. Cindy moved back to the front seat and undid, then redid, the tourniquet. She snuggled up against him as best she could to add a little more warmth against the encroaching night; the temperature was zeroing in on the forty-degree range. Her husband’s voice had drifted off, and several seconds passed in silence. She thought he had dozed off.

Robert’s voice, weak but clear in the silence, pushed that thought from her mind. “I love you, Cindy.”

His voice quivered as his tears flowed. “I’m sorry, Cindy, I’ve made such a horrible mess of everything, always trying to run the show, doing things my way, ignoring your needs and wants.” The words continued in an avalanche, his voice hitching with emotion. “I made you come on this vacation when you didn’t want to go; I’m stubborn, pigheaded and… and all our years together… I haven’t loved you as you deserve… I… please forgive me, Cindy. I’m so sorry for everything—”

She put her fingertips to his lips, stopping him. “Shhhhh… Bobby, it’s okay. I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, too.” She pulled the makeshift clothing blanket up to his chin and tucked it around him. “I can be and have been, just as stubborn and pigheaded as you. You’re no sorrier than I am about everything. I love you, Bobby, I always have, and I always will.” Cindy whispered in his ear, “I just wish you were a better driver,” she quipped.

Robert took in a shuddering breath but couldn’t help but smile. “Maybe Samantha has the right idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whenever we go the wrong way or miss a turn, she always comes back with her stock expression, ‘turn around when possible.’ Maybe we should have done the same over the years when we made our mistakes. The ‘turning around’ thing….”

They talked for another hour about their days gone past, of things regretted and enjoyed, until Robert fell into a fitful and feverish doze. His mind never registered that Cindy was still wearing only her thin sundress, the chill wind blowing in through the open windshield, occasionally ruffling the lightweight fabric. She religiously worked the tourniquet on his leg throughout the night, waiting for the morning light.

 

Robert woke with a start, a sharp stab of pain shooting down his leg as Cindy cinched the belt tightly once again. The sun was peeking over the ridgeline behind them, warming the chill morning air and casting the ravine below and the mountains opposite in bright sunlight.

His wife glanced at her watch, 10:45 a.m., and looked at his pale face, pinched with pain. “Bobby, even with the tourniquet and all the pressure packing I’ve done around your leg, you’ve lost a lot of blood. I have to get going. I refilled the two bottles with snow and found one more granola bar. I’ll put the meds on the console here. Take a dose every four hours.” She picked up the GPS. “I’m going to take Samantha with me.”

Weak and lightheaded, Robert tried to clear the fog clouding his mind. “Why… why are you taking Sam?”

“Just a wild idea I had; maybe she can talk for me.” Cindy leaned forward and kissed his hot, feverish forehead. “I’ll find somebody; we’ll get you out somehow.” Before he could respond, she had disappeared out the rear of the SUV and vanished into the brilliant sunlight.

Robert listened to her go, confused, scared, and sad. He took a sip of melted snow, pressed the cold bottle against his forehead, and closed his eyes.

Cindy made her way slowly upward through the rocks and trees, arriving about fifty feet below the ridgeline leading to the road. She stopped, her expression grim as she surveyed the terrain.

On another day in another time, Cindy could have zigzagged up through the hardscrabble and stunted trees and scrub to the top. But this day and time were different. Very different. She could go no farther up, just as she had found it impossible to descend below the wreckage to the ravine the day before. Her temporary world had been circumscribed by providence. Cindy finally understood.

She took Samantha out of the pocket of her sundress and turned it on. The small screen glowed to life. She was close enough for Twelve Mile and Knox Creek Roads to show on the map readout. Samantha chimed in, “Turn around when possible. Turn around when possible. Then, turn right on Knox Creek Road.” Cindy drew her arm back and hurled it as hard and as far as she could….

 

“How you doing, Tina?” Brian stopped and turned around while adjusting the shoulder straps on his day pack. Tina had halted about ten feet back on the trail and was taking a swig from her water bottle.

The svelte, brown-eyed brunette finished drinking, capped her bottle and gave him a look. “Slow down, Brian. We’ve been going uphill ever since the Knox Creek trailhead. What’s the rush?”

Brian grinned, admiring his girlfriend’s legs showcased in the walking shorts and hiking shoes. “Sorry, babe, just got carried away with the hike.”

She laughed, shouldered her day pack and caught up with him. “It’s a good thing I love you. You have me hiking in the mountains the first week away from classes. We could have gone to the lake, or at least something a little more romantic. How far before the gang picks us up for the ride back to camp?”

He checked his watch and the GPS. “We’re about four-and-a-half miles into the hike. The old Twelve Mile Road should be up ahead, then it’s nine miles to Harris Road, all downhill, I might add.” He gave her a hug. “Jimmy will pick us up there. We’ll meet the others at the cabin for the weekend, and then, my fair lady, I’ll give you a big dose of romance all weekend long. We have the whole summer now. No more Boise State until the end of August.”

Five minutes later, they spotted the hiking posts and arrows, double-checked their GPS, and headed downhill. They’d gone no more than a hundred yards when Tina grabbed his hand.

“What was that?”

“What was what?”

“I heard a voice, someone talking.”

“I don’t hear anything except birds and the wind.”

They had stopped, and Tina was looking around in all directions. “I know I heard something,” she insisted.

They stood frozen on the hiking path, the wind sighing through the surrounding pines. Tina glanced down at the ground. “A car has been up here; see the tire tracks? And they look fresh.”

“Who, in their right mind, would drive up a hiking trail?” Brian asked.

Tina punched him in the arm. “It used to be a county road, dummy.”

They had only taken a few more steps before a faint voice sounded to their right again. “Turn around when possible. Turn around when possible. Then, turn right on Knox Creek Road.”

They both heard it this time. “It’s coming from over there,” Brian said, pointing in the general direction to their right. They walked through several yards of scrub, grass, and a few trees nearer the edge of the mountainside.

They waited in silence as the seconds dragged on. The toneless, innocuous message came again. “Turn around when possible.” They located the source in the grass near the edge of the dropoff.

Brian picked up the object, staring at the screen. “It’s an old Tom-Tom GPS. See the thickness and the old screen graphics. Still, it couldn’t have been here very long; these old things had an internal battery life of only a couple hours. The battery indicator says it should be dead. A hiker must have lost it, but we would have run into them if they turned around like it says.”

Tina had walked a little farther, following a set of tire tracks in the soft earth towards the rim. Nearer the edge, the grass was dug up, scrub uprooted, and a small sapling snapped in half. “Oh, my God, Brian, I think a car may have gone over the side,” she yelled.

Seconds later, they were both looking down the treed and rock-strewn slope. Tina spoke, worry evident in her voice. “I don’t see anything, but there are a lot of rock outcroppings and trees. Maybe we should hike down and have a look around,” Tina suggested.

“Or maybe we just hike back double-time, report this and get the authorities up here ASAP,” Brian said.

“But what if somebody’s hurt?”

“And what are we—”

Tina grabbed his arm and pointed. “Over there to the right, about fifty feet down by that small outcropping, near the crooked pine.”

Brian shaded his eyes, squinting. “I don’t see anything; there isn’t a wreck or...” He paused, his eyes catching the twinkling of something shiny by a large rock edge. “… you mean the sun reflecting off a piece of glass or something?”

Tina was already clambering over the side, half walking, half sliding down the loose rock towards the glinting object. “Let’s check it out. It’s not that far away.”

“Geez, babe, it’s probably just a broken bottle or something.” But Brian dropped the old GPS and bounded out after her, trailing in her wake. “Slow down, Tina, wait up.”

They found the body of the dead woman partially hidden behind a large rock. The twisted and broken figure was on its back, one out-flung arm and hand stretched above her, the sun catching and reflecting sunlight off a silver wristwatch.

“Oh, my God,” Tina whispered, her words muffled as her hands covered her mouth in shock.

Brian gaped at the gruesome scene before them. The body was not bloated or decayed, so he didn’t think it had been there too long. But it was hard to tell; it appeared that the insects and animals had already discovered the body.

“How the hell did she get all the way down here?” Brian’s voice sounded high-pitched when he managed to get the words out. “And she looks all busted up like a giant hand threw her.”

“Oh, my God,” Tina repeated, finally tearing her eyes away from the body. As she did, she spied something farther down the mountainside. Shading her eyes with her hand, Tina stared for several seconds. “Brian, I think there’s a car down there,” she yelled.

Brian scurried to her side, his eyes thankfully averted from the broken body before him. From their vantage point, they could see the sunlight glinting off the crumpled wreckage of what might have been a vehicle several hundred yards farther down.

“Let’s go,” Brian said

Tina nodded.

In silence, and as quickly as the terrain allowed, the two scrambled downward over rocks and around trees, soon arriving at the remains of an SUV. Within seconds they had found an injured man trapped inside, feverish and delirious.

The opportunity to take action helped them overcome the shock of their discoveries. Brian shed his day pack and handed it to Tina. “Get some water down him and try to get him to eat a Nutri-Bar, trail mix or something.” He gave her a quick kiss. “All the jogging, hiking and intramural basketball I’ve done will finally come in handy. I’ll run back to the highway for help or to wherever I can at least get cell phone service.” Turning, he headed back up the mountainside.

Tina gently took back the almost empty water bottle she had given the injured man—she didn’t want him to upchuck. “Hey, slow down on the water; there’s plenty of it.” She looked in alarm at the grey pallor of his face and grimaced in distaste at the smell of urine and the coppery odor of blood inside the vehicle. “How long have you been trapped in this car?”

“A couple of days, I guess. My wife, Cindy, kept me alive. She put the tourniquet on my leg to stop the bleeding, got snow for me to drink, found granola bars to eat, medicine to take and kept me warm when it got cold. She even made me this blanket out of our clothes.” He was grinning now. “She must have found you. What are the odds of that? Where is she?”

Tina looked away, biting her lip. She took a breath and­ turned back. “She’s resting up near the top. It was actually the GPS that got our attention. We heard it giving directions near the hiking trail.”

The man shook his head. “Another miracle, the battery on Sam should’ve been dead.”

He continued droning on about his wife, delirious and oblivious to the obvious. Tina turned away again; she didn’t want the injured man to see the tears brimming in her eyes.

The image of the dead woman would always be etched in Tina’s memory, her bloody body bent and broken, splayed on the rough landscape. She had obviously been violently ejected from the vehicle during the crash. The only consolation Tina could think of was that her death had been swift and painless, without suffering. As for her husband: thank God the GPS was functioning, and sunlight had reflected off the woman’s wristwatch.

The man, who’d said his name was Robert, was still rambling on about his wife, Cindy. He was saying something about the tourniquet; “Cindy said I’m supposed to loosen this every so often to keep a little circulation in the leg. She’s pretty smart. Not only did she tie together clothes to make a blanket and cut the tops off bottles to collect snow, but she also used the belt from her sundress for the tourniquet.” Eyes bright with fever, the man was staring with pride at his bound leg.

Tina jerked around and gaped at the belt tourniquet, the image of the dead woman stark in her mind. The woman had been slim and petite and wearing a yellow sundress, the kind that used a belt to accent a narrow waist. Tina remembered the dress loops. The belt had been missing….

High above, Samantha lay half-buried in leaves and grass. Her monotone broke the silence once more, “Turn around when possible...”

Her screen faded and darkened for the final time.

 

 

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Impressum

Texte: John C. Laird
Bildmaterialien: Alexandra Laird
Lektorat: Valerie Fee, Alexandra Laird
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.10.2012

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