dontravis.com blog post #550
Image courtesy of en.bideax.info
Thanks to Don Morgan for last week’s guest post. Good luck with your novel, Miasma, Don.
This
week, a short story that’s too long for flash fiction and too short for a
genuine short story. Hope you like it.
****
DILBY
It promised to be a lazy Sunday
afternoon with high, thin clouds cutting the worst of the sun’s heat, until I
changed from church duds to overalls and hauled out the toolbox to tackle my
’59 Ford Galaxie coupe. Needed a minor tune-up, and now was as good as ever.
Except, I wish I hadn’t eaten that extra piece of fried chicken from dinner. Or
maybe it was the second gob of peach cobbler. But whatever it was, it sure made
leaning over the fender to reach the engine compartment uncomfortable.
I’d probably been at it for an
hour before I glanced up to see a young fella staggering down the street, his
left arm hanging straight down in an unnatural sort of way. Hurt, he was. That
was plain.
“Pa,” I yelled as I swiped my
hands on a rag, “Come runnin’!”
“What is it?” my dad said, barreling
out the front door in a rush.
I nodded to where the stranger
stood at the gate. He was younger’n me, and I’m nineteen. His white shirt was
smeared with blood, as was his hair.
“You need help, young fellow?”
my dad called. Folks considered him a standoffish kinda guy, but I knew that
wasn’t the case. If somebody needed help, he’d break his back to lend a hand,
and it looked like this fella needed help.
“Wreck,” the kid said in a
voice that didn’t have any wind behind it.
I stood at my old man’s side.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Probably in shock.” My dad
lifted his voice. “What’s your name, son?”
“Dilby.” Just a cold echo of a
word.
“You hurt? You need help?”
The kid looked back down the
road. “My mother… sister. Deer ran in front. Car crashed. Turned over. They
need help.”
“Where?”
Dilby nodded south down the
road. “Where the bridge crosses the stream.”
My dad nodded at me. “Collin’s
Branch.” He yelled over his shoulder. “Mama, call the sheriff and tell him there’s
a bad wreck at Collin’s Branch where it crosses the highway. Need ambulance.”
He turned back to the figure
swaying before our gate. “Son… Dilby, you need help. Come on and let us fix you
up.”
The youth backed into the
highway and turned south. “Mother. Sister. Need help.”
“So do you, son. Come let….”
He gave up as Dilby staggered
on down the road. “We gotta catch him. We’ll use your car—”
“It’s all torn apart. We’ll
have to use yours.”
“Damnation,” he grunted. “Go
get the biggest pry bar you can find in the garage. If that car rolled, might
have to pry them out. I gotta put air in the back tire before I can move the
truck.”
I rummaged around in the barn
and came up with two sizeable levers, one for each of us. Also grabbed the
first aid kit we keep out there, although it was only good for treating cuts
and bruises, not car wrecks. Still….
Eventually, we maneuvered
around my Ford in the driveway and turned out onto the highway.
“Damn!” Dad exclaimed.
“Where’d the kid go?”
“Dunno. Maybe he took off
running.”
“If he did, he won’t get far.
Keep an eye on the barrow ditch in case he fell. He looked to be on his last
legs to me.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
But as the bridge approached,
there was no sign of Dilby. As soon as we saw the deep gouges in the earth
where the car had left the highway, we forgot about finding the kid and baled
out to go help the two he’d said were trapped in the car.
The blue Dodge four-door we
found at the bottom of the creek bank, resting halfway in the water, had rolled
at least twice and came to rest right-side-up. The roof was crushed in, so it
was obvious we’d need the pry bars we’d brought. I reached the wrecked car
first.
“A woman, Dad. I don’t know if
she’s alive or—” I about jumped outa my skin when she groaned and moved.”
“Check the other side for the
girl,” Dad said, putting the bigger of the two levers to the crumpled door.
I went around the front of the
car and waded cold creek water to reach the passenger’s side. Sure enough, there
was a girl passed out in the seat with a bloody gash on her forehead. Thank
goodness she’d been strapped in by a seat belt. Lucky they all were, I guess.
Else they’d have been toast.
I felt the girl’s wrist and
found a strong pulse, so Dad had me help him wrestle with the car door. We’d
just gotten it open when I heard sirens.
“My son… my girl?’ a weak
voice asked. It took me a second to figure out it was the woman speaking. “Are…
are they all right?”
“Daughter’s unconscious, but
Daryl… that’s my boy… he says she has a strong pulse.”
“My son?”
“He’s the one who came got us.
She’s around somewhere. Now you just lay back and try to relax. We don’t dare
move you until the medics get here, and they’re pulling up now.”
We acknowledged the sheriff when
he half slid down the incline. Thirty seconds later, the place was swarming
with deputies and paramedics. We backed away to let them do their thing,
watching as they used boards to slide the woman and the girl out of the car. From
the talk going back and forth among the medics and the deputies, we gathered
the injuries were nothing to sneeze at but not life threatening.
The sheriff stopped beside us
to watch as they were loaded into an ambulance.
“Lucky you guys chanced on
them. You know what happened?”
“Deer ran across the road,” I
said.
Sheriff Denton glanced back up
the road toward our house at the edge of town. “You see it from there?”
“Naw,” Dad said. “We wouldn’t a
known nothing about it if the kid hadn’t come asking for help.”
“Kid? What kid?”
“Dilby,” he said his name
was,” I volunteered. “He was the son. Kid about seventeen-eighteen.”
“He came to your house and
knocked on your door?
“No. I was in the driveway
working on my car when I saw him staggering up the road. I called my dad, and
he had Mom call you while we got in the truck and drove down to where Dilby
said it happened.”
“He told you a deer ran across
the road?”
I nodded. “Yeah, why?”
“And he rode back with you to
the wreck?”
“No,” my dad said. “Funny
thing, we tried to get him to come in and let us treat his wounds, but he ran
off to his mom and sister.”
“Wilbur,” the sheriff said to
my dad. “Come here.”
He led us a short distance upstream
to where two EMTs hovered over something. My gut fell away when they stood.
That kid… Dilby… lay on the creek bank.
“That’s him! That’s Dilby,” I
gasped. “He’s the kid who came and told us his mom and sister were hurt.”
Sam Jenkins, one of the two
EMTs, turned and looked me square in the eye. “This kid didn’t walk anywhere.
He was dead the minute he got thrown from the car. Neck’s broken. One knee’s
shattered. Arm’s broken. I’m willing to be he’s the only one in the car who
wasn’t wearing a seat belt. And he paid for it.”
I watched the blood drain out
of my father’s face. I’m not sure what he saw looking at me, but without a word
from either of us, we walked straight to Dad’s truck, crawled in, and drove
home. I expected to have nightmares that night.
But I didn’t. I merely saw
Dilby standing in front of the house nodding his thanks.
*****
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Don
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