Changes of Heart (20 page)

“I’ve got a couple of things to say before we go out,” Danny said, “but here’s what we all need to keep in our minds every second we’re outside: don’t, for any reason, run
or exert yourself so that you have to draw deep breath. The radio said the temperature is right around twenty-five to thirty below. Sucking in that air will burn your lungs—mess them up for the rest of your life.”

“Breathe through your noses,” Sarah added. “That’ll warm the air slightly before it reaches your chest. Keep scarves over your mouths and noses. And keep your heads covered—it’ll conserve body heat.”

“I’m pretty confident my truck will go over or through anything in our way,” Danny said, “but if it gets hung up somehow, we can’t spend time or energy wrestling with it. We have to start walking back here right away—slowly. OK?”

“One thing I have to tell you now,” Maggie said. “If we make it to my place, I won’t be coming back here. Until the storm is over and the temperature rises, I’m going to have to walk the horses in the barn—keep them moving as much as possible to keep their body temperatures as safe as I can.”

“I thought about that,” Danny said. “I’ll stay with the horses. After we get Sunday, you and Ian drop me at your place and go on back here.”

Maggie shook her head. “That won’t work. Neither Ian nor I can handle that four-wheeler the way you can. We’d never make it.”

“Suppose I stay with Maggie and you come back here, Danny? That would—”

“No,” Danny said quickly. A surprised silence followed. Danny lowered his voice, face flushing. “What I meant
was that we all... I don’t know,” he concluded lamely. “Look—the storm isn’t over. The Weather Bureau said it could go another two full days.”

“I won’t negotiate on this,” Maggie said. “There’s food and a big fire all laid out in my fireplace. I have lots of wood a few feet from my back door. I’ve already run a line between my house and the barn. I have candles and a good radio. The horses need me, and I’m going to stay with them.” She added, “I’ll be just as well off there as I’d be here, except solo Monopoly isn’t much fun.”

Tessa took a step to the side to face the others. “I’ll go with you, Maggie. If you’re going to be walking the horses, you need help. There are five of them and one of you, and Dancer doesn’t lead terribly well.”

“Oh, honey, you can’t—” Maggie began.

“No, Tess,” Sarah said, interrupting Maggie.

Tessa’s eyes narrowed, and her face became hard. Her voice was flinty, with a tone in it Maggie had never before heard from the girl.

“I don’t need two arms to lead a horse or a couple of horses up and down an aisle in a barn,” she said. “We’re not talking about hanging wallpaper here. I can do this—and I will do this.”

After a moment, Ian broke an uncomfortable silence. “Actually, Tessa makes good sense. She’ll be in no more danger at Maggie’s place than she would be here, and she’s right about the horses. If they need to be led up and down, it’s at least a two-person job, right? The aisle isn’t wide
enough for someone to walk more than two horses, and that’d mean the others would be in their stalls.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “But you’re assuming we’ll get to Maggie’s. I don’t doubt that Tess and Maggie will do fine once they’re there. We have absolutely no guarantee that’ll happen. Suppose we get stuck or I go off the road and can’t get the truck out? What then?”

“As you said earlier—we walk back here,” Tessa said. “Slowly, breathing through our noses.”

“But Sarah will be here alone,” Maggie said.

“We brought in enough wood for a full day and a half—maybe two days,” Ian said. “Sarah would be in no more danger alone than if all of us were here.”

All eyes swung to Sarah. Maggie noticed fear in her friend’s eyes for the first time since the whole horrid episode had begun.

Sarah sighed. “Go get dressed, honey. Grab a couple of my sweaters and a pair of my jeans to go over yours. Grab one of those big mittens of mine with the fur inside. And please, honey...”

“I’ll be careful, Mom. We all will. I promise.” Tessa turned to leave the kitchen, but Ian’s voice stopped her.

“We forgot something,” he said. He looked from face to face. “Let’s pray.”

They stood outside the back door in a knot for a long moment, easing the transition from warmth and safety to a desolate and hostile tundra. They stood close to one another
through instinct, like young children huddling together in the face of danger. The wind swept about them, jagged-edged and biting, flapping loose ends of scarves, finding and numbing exposed flesh.

Maggie’s truck, now a mound of snow, stood a couple of feet behind the back of Danny’s truck, another mound. The separate garage that housed Sarah’s Rolls was covered by a towering wave of snow. Ian’s compact car looked enough like a Hostess Sno Ball that the image appeared in each of their minds. “Makes me want a glass of milk,” Ian observed.

They moved forward, snow squeaking under their boots as if they were stepping on very vocal mice. The depth varied according to the whimsy of the wind and the storm—in places a yard deep and tightly packed, in others a foot of softly granular accumulation that offered almost no resistance to their strides.

Maggie’s truck, doorless on the driver’s side, was solidly packed with snow.

“How are you going to get out, Danny?” Tessa asked. “There’s no room to maneuver.”

“I’ll push Maggie’s rig out of the way—it should move fairly easily on the snow.”

“If your truck starts,” Ian worried aloud.

“It better. I paid a hundred and twenty dollars for a heavy-duty battery. Let’s clear my windows as well as we can. Remember—work and move slowly.”

Danny pressed a small red button on his key case. The chirp and click of the doors unlocking was all but lost to the
weather. “Electronic entry,” he said, smiling. “Guaranteed not to freeze.”

“Is this a General Motors infomercial?” Maggie asked.

“Order up some hot chocolate from your onboard Snack Facility, Danny,” Ian suggested. “Then let’s see what’s on TV in your optional GMC Family Recreation Center.”

“I want to spend a little time in the available-at-extracost-from-your-dealer Teen Fun Arcade. Wanna play some video games, Maggie?” Tessa said, tucking her head close to her friend’s to be heard.

Maggie laughed, just as her three friends did. But the laughter had an artificial quality to it, one that pulled a phrase her father often used into her mind: whistling in the graveyard at midnight.

Danny opened the driver’s door, and Ian stood in front of it, using his body weight to keep it from being wrenched off by the wind. The veterinarian tried to slide the key into the ignition and then eased the key back out and put it into his mouth. “Moisture frozen in the cylinder,” he said. After an interminable few minutes, he tried the fit again, this time exerting more pressure. The key mated. He turned it. The starter motor complained for several seconds, sounding ready to surrender to the cold—and then the big V-8 fired, stuttered for a heartbeat, and boomed into life.

Danny sat tensely at the wheel, his toe playing with the gas pedal, teasing the engine until the idle found its rhythm and became smooth. He attempted to engage the four-wheel-drive lever and found that the shift lever felt like it was encased in cement. “Let’s finish getting the snow off
the windows,” Danny said. “The truck has to run awhile and warm the gear lubricant before I can do anything with it.”

The engine chugged on, like a strong horse carrying a beloved rider where it was necessary to go. Danny had the defrost fan blasting at its highest speed, and it began erasing the thick crust of ice from the windshield. After a dozen or so minutes, fingers of actual heat began to blow through the vents, stroking the stinging faces of the four people who’d clambered into the vehicle.

Danny tried the floor-mounted shift lever. There was a slight clash from under the rig as he found reverse. He moved the stick back to neutral. “Few more minutes is all,” he said. “No sense jamming gears when a little time will let them work like they should.”

Maggie, in the front passenger bucket, watched Danny’s face closely as he watched his dashboard gauges, unaware of her scrutiny. He touched the shift lever again with his fingertips, moved it the slightest bit, and then withdrew his hand.

He’s even kind to machines. It’s not that he’s afraid it’ll stall now—he simply doesn’t want to ask too much from it, to hurt it
.

Danny revved the engine and slid the gearshift into reverse. He released the clutch in increments, easing his foot upward very slowly. The knobby tires chewed snow for a few seconds and then found purchase. There was a light thud as the rear bumper tagged the front bumper of Maggie’s truck. Then Danny’s vehicle began to move backward, with
Maggie’s truck sliding over the ice and snow like a sled. Danny flipped on the emergency rack lights over the cab and swung away from Maggie’s Ford like a majestic cruise ship leaving behind a tugboat.

“Wow,” Tessa breathed.

“You betcha, girl,” Danny said with a grin.

The truck crept forward at a couple of miles per hour. The tires argued for traction every so often, and the chunky treads bit through inches of ice and smoked for moments until they hit the concrete of the driveway and then caught, hurling the truck forward, parting drifts higher than the vehicle itself.

“This thing is amazing,” Ian admitted.

Danny didn’t respond. He squinted through the curtains of snow, tense, at times biting his lower lip. His left hand had a death grip on the steering wheel; his right hovered over the console of shift levers next to him. “There’s a wire down here,” he said. “See it, there to the right? I don’t know which way the pole fell. We don’t want to get hung up on it if it’s across the road.”

The truck stopped so suddenly that all of the passengers slammed into their shoulder harnesses. “There’s that pole,” Danny said. He shifted to reverse, backed a few feet, and fed gas to the engine. The tires squealed as the truck rammed forward—and then they felt another impact, and the truck stopped, just as suddenly as it had a moment before.

Danny touched a toggle switch set into the dash near the shift levers. “This is kinda illegal,” he said. “It cuts out the entire exhaust and catalytic converter systems and gives
me a bunch more horsepower. Remember the old Corvettes with the outside pipes? It’s the same idea. Hold on.”

The engine escalated from its grumble to a feral roar, and the truck surged ahead, tires screaming. Danny wrestled the steering wheel when the impact took place, and then they were over the downed pole, again plowing through huge drifts of snow.

Maggie reached over to Danny and put her mittened hand on his arm. “Whadda guy,” she said, and she wasn’t at all sure that she was joking.

The power poles were the only reference points they had as to orientation on the road. On all sides of them was an endless, pale tableau that was frightening in its utter sameness, its lack of landmarks or detail. The truck crunched, plowed, and forced its way ahead at little better than walking speed. The heater began to channel more warmth, and the crusted ice began to melt on the inside of the windows.

“There’s Sheila Ingram’s farm,” Maggie said. “That means we’re a bit more than halfway to my place.” A surge of excitement—of anticipation—struck her. “We’re going to make it—we’re really going to make it!” Her optimism spread to the others as infectiously as a giggle in a kindergarten class. Danny grinned with his friends.

Ian leaned toward Maggie from the seat directly behind her. “This is all going to work out fine, Maggie. I know it is.”

Danny shifted into second gear and applied power. “Maggie’s farm comin’ up,” he shouted. For the briefest bit of a second the wind parted the snow like a curtain, and Maggie’s
house appeared a quarter mile ahead, standing forlornly in a desert of white. Danny powered around a drift that was much taller than his truck and shifted back into first gear. The curtain closed as quickly as it had opened, but the peek at one of their goals filled the truck with urgency.

Maggie’s driveway was impassable. A long, seemingly meandering shelf of snow perhaps nine or ten feet high ran most of its length. Danny wheeled toward the front lawn, the rain gully between the road and the grass giving the truck a brief battle. He swung wide of the house, the side of which was banked with snow to the second-story windows. The barn hulked ahead, but very little of it was visible from the front; the accumulated snow was easily ten feet high at the large front door.

“Back door, Danny—it’s out of the wind. Or you can leave the truck here.”

Danny’s response was to step on the gas pedal. The GMC’s tires churned and the rig lumbered ahead, hugging the side of the barn. When he shut down the engine, the whining of the wind was almost quiet by contrast. Everyone was out in a moment, with their scarves tugged over their faces as they scrambled to the barn. The slight grade leading to the rear door for drainage had become an apron of glare ice covered by a couple of feet of snow. Maggie was the first down when her boots found no purchase on the ice. Since she was protected by layers of clothing and the soft texture of the snow, the impact felt much like falling onto a featherbed. Tessa’s feet flipped out in front of her, and she landed on her seat, whooshing snow into the air as
she laughed. Danny did his best to drag Tessa back to her feet, but he crashed down next to her.