May Johnston was rounding a sharp
turn on Habersham Road when she heard and felt the rear tire explode. Of all
the luck! The interstate was only minutes away. The thought of it had been
foremost in her mind, an expanse of concrete drawing her minute by minute,
capable of speeding her to the safety of the Birmingham airport and flight from
Beatrice.
The car came
to rest on the shoulder of the road, and she was grateful that it had not slid
over the crest into the deepening ravine. She had never changed a tire by
herself. There had only been one other
time in her life she experienced a flat tire, and that was the day Frank Littlejohn
stopped to help her before leaving town for good.
She pushed
the trunk release from inside and the trunk lid sprang open. Climbing out, she
angrily slammed the door, remembering just as it latched that the automatic
lock was engaged and her keys were still in the ignition.
Her thoughts
raced. She could change the tire and then break the glass in the door. At this
point it didn’t matter. She would have to hurry. She rushed around the car, and
discovered that it was her right rear that had been punctured. She hurriedly
looked into the trunk, and dug out what she knew to be the jack. She spotted
the replacement in the tire well. What was this? It certainly didn’t look the same as the one
she’d used years ago. That tire had been real. This looked like it would
collapse from the weight of the car.
She loosened
the bolts that held the spare in place and broke several nails. As she lifted
the spare from the trunk, the wind increased and a few drops of rain whipped
against her face. She dropped the spare to the ground by the flattened culprit,
and the rain increased to a deluge. The small excuse for a spare tire shuddered
on the edge of the ditch, now incredibly filling with water, and plunged down
the red clay wall into its depths.
May stared
at it, caught on the edge of a protruding rock, and made her choice. The
footing was treacherous. Before long she plummeted several feet into the
churning water. Drenched and covered with red mud, she grabbed the tire and
crawled back up the bank. Just as she surfaced from the trench, she thought she
heard a car door slam, and rapid footsteps approaching her. Through the
escalating downpour, a hand extended, and, she quickly grabbed it as her feet gave
way beneath her.
The man
pulled her from the ditch, and she glanced through the down pour to see who he
might be. She shook violently. This was terribly reminiscent of her other flat
tire experience, from the bad weather to the rescue from a muddy ditch. It was
almost as if Frank was standing there.
Mike, however, stood beneath a large
stadium umbrella and regarded the woman who had appeared from the ravine.
“Going somewhere,
May?” he asked solicitously, his umbrella covering both of them.
