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CHAPTER 1
WHERE WAS HIS REAR END GOING? THE HIGHWAY HAD NOT visibly changed, but the back end of his car was suddenly way off to the side, swinging out there like a big ass in an airplane aisle bumping passengers in the head.
"Big ass!" he shouted. He tried correcting for the skid by steering into it, but the adjustment threw him the other way, and he had to correct for that. Back and forth he went. His ass was really sashaying down the aisle now, knocking hats off passengers.
"Hog on ice!" he cried out, but as soon as he named this stage it ended with a complete reversal, and now he faced the drivers following him. He waved, hoping they could see him through the blowing snow, but they did not return the greeting. No matter, because it was time to say goodbye. The car made a slow, graceful sweep forward, so frictionless that he seemed to be in a dream of flying. He wanted to end the dream, but the tires did not respond to the steering wheel. He was like a kid with pretend controls while Daddy did the real driving.
"Toy wheel!" he shouted, and he knew it would come to this: he skidded off the road into the median, sliding into it at a weird diagonal. He tried not to notice that the median sloped.
"Out of my hands!" he yelled, even as his hands furiously worked that toy wheel. The median gulped him. He felt a bump and some confusion about his orientation. Several more jolts turned him into a stuck Jack-in-the-box pounded on the floor by a demented boy.
And then it was over. The car sat upright but tilted to the left side, the door pinned against something. He unbuckled his seat belt and squirmed uphill, but the other front door was sealed shut. Scrambling like a claustrophobic astronaut, he squeezed between the two front seats and lunged at the uphill rear door. It opened so easily that his exit felt commonplace, as if he were stepping out to go shopping.
He looked at his limbs and patted his body in self-examination. He felt terrific. He stretched his arms out and twirled, stopping to face the wind and the light snow that danced through the air and sparked his cheeks. People had stopped their cars on the shoulder and were hurrying to him. Hurrying! To him! He threw out his arms and cried, "Welcome to my crash site!"
But in a way it was disappointing. Denny wanted to chat, and everyone else wanted to talk about what to do with him as if he weren't even there. Get him inside where it's warm, one man said. Another argued for laying him down with his feet propped up. All the while, someone was pressing on his scalp just above his forehead. A woman! He winked at her. She said, "I'm trying to stanch the bleeding. Could you take over? I'm having trouble reaching it." He was sad to lose the contact, but he lifted a hand up and pressed on the bandage, which was actually a thick winter glove.
"My head is bloody, but unbowed," he declared to the crowd. No one had anything to say to that.
Denny felt an arm slip around his waist. "Come along, big boy." The voice and encircling arm belonged to a stooped grandpa, his lips hidden under a tangle of gray beard. He nestled in on the side where Denny's hand reached up to his head wound, and the man's skinny neck jutted forward, rooster-like, below Denny's armpit. He wore a faded orange jumpsuit. "You get him, too, Walt," the man said, and Denny felt an embrace from his other side. The second man was a twin of Grandpa, but a generation younger, his beard black, his jumpsuit brighter orange.
They helped him forward. They were small but strong. Wiry. He was safely in the grip of wiry men. He wanted them to take him to their hearth and home. Surely they had a spare room where he could stay. He relaxed, and the three of them almost went down on the snowy hillside.
"You'll have to contribute more than that," Grandpa said.
"Sorry," said Denny.
When they reached the shoulder, Grandpa and the one named Walt eased him into the back seat of a large car on the opposite side of the median from where Denny had lost control. Grandpa told him to take off his shoes and socks — a capital idea since they were caked with snow — and suggested he stretch out on the seat. They had left the engine running, and Denny felt as if he were settling into a deep bath. Grandpa slid in behind the wheel, grabbed a half-eaten apple sitting on the console, and took a bite out of it. Gusts of wind rocked the car to and fro. Denny could have been in a sleeper, swaying on train rails. He wanted the three of them to stay like this forever.
But he heard a window being lowered. Something from the outside was about to change everything. A Vermont state trooper appeared at Grandpa's window, glanced at Denny, and began to talk quietly with Grandpa. Denny and cops were a bad match. They didn't like him — he could never figure out why. He had already had a little encounter that morning with the police in a burg called Waterbury, and it hadn't gone well. He sat up a bit, but he wasn't able to see the gun on the trooper's hip. What would he have to do to make the trooper draw it? How bad did you have to be, how threatening? It was interesting to think about.
The trooper opened the rear door at Denny's feet and bent down. His round hat was tilted forward so far that he had to cock his head back to see past it. He should have a tiny window in the brim, Denny thought. "How are you doing?" the trooper said.
"Outstanding. How about you?"
"Are you in pain? Anything broken?"
"I'm in the pink." Denny smiled and waggled his bare feet right in front of the trooper. He knew what was next, so he heaved his pelvis up and reached for his ass-smashed wallet in his back pocket. He handed the whole thing to the trooper because he wanted the man to get to know him by going through his cards and photos. The trooper didn't ask him to take out the license, but unfortunately he found it himself right away. He was a smart one. Denny tried to remember the last time anyone had held his wallet — such a personal object. He decided never. It had never happened before.
The trooper examined the license, his eyes going back and forth between the photo and Denny's face. Denny could have told him he was heavier now than when the photo was taken, but it was more interesting to let the trooper puzzle over it. Or maybe the trooper had looked at the birth date and wanted to tell Denny that he looked younger than forty-two. Anything was possible. Socially, the sky was the limit.
The trooper handed the wallet back to Denny. "When you run off the road," he said, "it's not the road's fault."
"Beg pardon?" said Denny.
"How fast would you say you were going?"
"No idea," Denny said. "No idea."
"Some folks here said you were driving at a high rate of speed."
"They're wrong. I saw a deer and I hit the brakes."
"A deer?"
"That's right." Denny looked at Grandpa and Walt. They faced forward as if other things were on their mind, but he knew they were listening.
"I talked to some witnesses," the trooper said.
Denny waited. "And?" He loved to say that.
"No one mentioned a deer."
"Maybe no one else saw it. I happen to have twenty-ten vision."
The trooper pulled away and looked toward Denny's car, as if the deer under discussion might be mingling with the crowd gathered there. He leaned in again. "Pretty windy."
"And?"
"Deer don't like to be out in the wind."
"I guess it was an unusual deer. A real individual."
The trooper nodded as if this might actually be possible. Denny was pleased so far. Sometimes he made things up so that the conversation would be more interesting for him. One regret though: after saying, "A real individual," he should have added, "Like me!"
"You hit the brakes," the trooper said. "Then what?"
Denny described the accident. As he spoke, he realized that this was his first telling of it. There would be many more tellings. Knowing that was like having a freezer full of ice cream.
"Were you talking on a cell phone?"
The interruption confused Denny. He hadn't even reached the part where he was sliding backwards. "No," he said.
"Someone here said you were. He said he saw your mouth moving when you passed him. Talking hands-free, sounds like."
"That seems very doubtful."
"But you were passing someone when you lost control, correct?"
Denny had no idea. "Not correct. Not correct."
"Oh? A lotta folks here said you were. They said you were going wicked fast. One fella said you made a sudden cut from the left lane back into the right lane, and that's when you lost it."
Denny swung an arm out. "When do I meet my accusers?" The sentence had popped into his head, and he loved it. Was it from the Bible? He noticed that Grandpa was leaning slightly to one side so that he could see Denny's face in the rearview mirror. Walt had shifted, too, but probably because Denny had accidentally clipped him in the back of the head when he had swung his arm out.
The trooper looked him up and down. "Were you wearing your seat belt?"
"You're asking me that because of my size, aren't you? Driving while chubby — is that a crime?"
The trooper stood up straight. He turned and looked down the highway in one direction, then in the other. He came back to Denny, this time squatting at the open door instead of leaning in. "EMS is on the way. They'll check you out."
"I've got a plane to catch."
The trooper bounced lightly on his haunches, up and down, as if exercising. Denny could never do that. "I don't think you're going to make that plane."
"Fine. But I want to get going."
The trooper stopped bouncing. "Are you refusing medical treatment?"
Denny liked the sound of that. "Yes. I'm refusing medical treatment. Does that make me an asshole?"
"No, sir." The trooper paused. He paused for quite a while. And then he said, "That doesn't make you an asshole."
Denny had to hand it to him. The pause had been good, of professional caliber, really. He looked from the trooper to the men in the front seat. Without moving or making a sound, they were chuckling. The amusement was contained, effectively sealed from view, but there could be no mistake. The Yankees were laughing at him.
CHAPTER 2
DESPITE HIS HEROIC STAND, DENNY RECEIVED MEDICAL TREATMENT after all. Or at least he received a swabbing of his head and neck with something smelly. He had bled not only from his scalp but also from a cut below his Adam's apple, and his left shoulder was chafed from the shoulder harness. Those were his only injuries. He took advantage of the occasion to ask the paramedics about his persistent anal itch, but they seemed reluctant to engage with the subject. And they called themselves medical professionals!
He signed some papers without reading them and stepped away from the ambulance, flagrantly picking his ass as he left. He looked down at his rental car, tilted and jammed against a tall rock — a blue- green outcrop rising from the snow like a huge axe head. One of the rear wheels was splayed. Several people still gathered around the wreck pointed and talked about it, oblivious to the wind and blowing snow. April in Vermont, Denny thought. They were welcome to it. A flatbed tow truck had parked at the edge of the median, and its driver was hauling a cable down to the car. Now and then the cable stuck, jerking the man back and making him swear.
Denny was wondering what to do next when Walt grabbed his arm and took him back to the car, which Denny now recognized as an old gray Mercedes-Benz. Walt had put Denny's suitcase and laptop in the trunk. He said someone had taken them from the back seat of Denny's car, but they had been unable to open his trunk lid. Was there anything in there? Denny wondered if he should say yes even though there wasn't. He finally said no and crawled back into his original position in the back seat. Everything was just as before, warm and quiet. Grandpa's apple, gnawed to the core, sat on the console.
But the trooper ruined everything again. He opened the door and began to blah-blah about speed on the highway and how lucky Denny was that he didn't hit that rock hard. People often lectured Denny about this and that, and he had a way of looking off in the distance when they did. The trooper described an accident scene he had worked where "another speed demon" was pierced through the chest by a guardrail. Denny said that must have made it hard for him to drive, which got the trooper all agitated, and Grandpa had to walk him away from the car. When Grandpa came back, he gave Denny the ticket that the trooper had written. He actually threw it into the back seat, but Denny knew he was just joking around.
Walt told Denny that he and his father planned to get off the interstate in Montpelier, and they could drop him off at a hotel before they went on to their farm. Denny would need a room since he probably wouldn't get a flight until the next day. A back haul, Denny thought, since he remembered passing the Montpelier exit before he ran off the road. He agreed to everything, though he was frankly surprised not to get that invitation to their home. As Grandpa pulled onto the highway, Denny looked back at his rental car being pulled up to the flatbed. He wondered what would happen to it.
In the warm, silent Mercedes, Denny fought off sleep because the men would probably want to chat. What brings you to Vermont? After a few miles, he wondered why it wasn't happening. They just sat there. Then — get this — the two men started talking to each other. It was as if Denny wasn't even in the car! They weren't talking so much as arguing. Denny had seen them as companionable kinfolk, but now they were really going at it. Denny joined in the argument, after his own fashion: he hummed along privately whenever one of them spoke, his soft tune riding the contours of their speech.
Across a snowy field, railroad tracks paralleled the freeway. Denny couldn't actually see the tracks, but he knew they were there. Tired of the men's jabber, he closed his eyes and pictured his Hiawatha Streamliner layout. When he got home, he would add to it. First, he would insert a tall sliver of blue-green stone on the side of the road next to the westbound track. He wished he had chipped a piece off the block next to his car and put it in his pocket. Second, he would add these Mercedes-driving backwoodsmen to the layout, probably at the depot. He had a couple of figures in mind that he could beard with a little paint. Grandpa would go up in the switching tower. Denny could see his hand placing him there, could feel it happening already. He would give Walt an outdoors job, far away from Grandpa. He didn't want the two of them filling up his rec room with their arguments.
Denny woke up slowly. He was lying flat on the back seat with his knees up. He normally didn't nap. Did that mean he had had a concussion? He hoped so. Walt was leaning in through the open car door, his black beard floating directly overhead. Denny gave him a dreamy smile, but Walt just urged him out with a jerk of his head. Denny sat up and stretched. Grandpa was giving him the old rearview- mirror scrutiny. Denny thanked him for the ride.
"You'll want to clean up," Grandpa said.
Denny distractedly agreed and climbed out of the car. The hotel, in imitation of big-city style, sported a portico with fake columns leading from the curb to the front door. Walt led Denny inside to the unoccupied front desk. He set Denny's suitcase and laptop on the floor and called out, "Got a live one for you, Betsy."
Denny heard an "Ooh" from the rear, behind a partition of dark wood that hid everything from view. "Is that Walter? What are you doin' in this neck of the woods?"
"Got to run."
"Hold on now." A chair scraped on a bare floor behind the partition.
"He's all yours." Walt hurried away, leaving Denny to puzzle over his sudden departure. After being friendly, had Walt turned sour on him? It was always hard to tell.
And where was the desk clerk? Denny heard a soft exchange of words between a man and a woman, followed by the sound of a chair scooting again. It sounded domestic, as if they had been having a snack back there. The woman who finally appeared was white-haired, with an expectant face so pale that it looked as if it had been lightly dusted with flour. She swept her eyes around the lobby as she approached the counter, which Denny rapped with authority.
"My name is Dennis Braintree, and I would like a room for the night."
The woman pressed her lips together. Strangely, she took no action. She didn't consult any records or look at the computer screen in front of her. Instead, she seemed to perform some sort of mental computation. When she finally spoke, her voice had a dying fall. "I don't have any rooms."
"What?"
"I have nothing," she said simply.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "From Away"
by .
Copyright © 2010 David Carkeet.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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