"Beg pardon?" his mother said.
"It was still turning," he told her. "The wheel he saw."
"Mercy, Andrew," she whispered.
"Hahh!" her husband exclaimed, almost inaudibly.
"He got out right away and hurried down there. The auto was upside down and Jay…"
Although he did not feel that he was near weeping he found that for a moment he could not speak. Finally he said, "He was just lying there on the ground beside it, on his back, about a foot away from it. His clothes were hardly even rumpled."
Again he found that he could not speak. After a moment he managed to force himself to.
"The man said somehow he was sure he was-dead-the minute he saw him. He doesn't know how. Just some special kind of stillness. He lighted matches though, of course, to try and make sure. Listened for his heartbeat and tried to feel for his pulse. He moved his auto around so he could see by the headlights. He couldn't find anything wrong except a little cut, exactly on the point of his chin. The windshield of Jay's car was broken and he even took a piece of it and used it like a mirror, to see if there was any breath. After that he just waited a few minutes until he heard an auto coming and stopped them and told them to get help as soon as possible."
"Did they get a doctor?" Mary asked.
"Mary says, 'Did they get a doctor.' " Andrew said to his mother. "Yes, he told them to and they did. And other people. Including-Brannick, Papa," he said; "that blacksmith you know. It turns out he lives quite near there."
"Huh!" said Joel.
"The doctor said the man was right," Andrew said. "He said he must have been killed instantly. They found who he was, by papers in his pocket, and that was when he phoned you, Mary.
"He asked me if I'd please tell you how dreadful he felt to give you such a message, leaving you uncertain all this time. He just couldn't stand to be the one to tell you the whole thing-least of all just bang like that, over a phone. He thought it ought to be somebody in the family."
"That's what I imagined," Mary said.
"He was right," Hannah said; and Joel and Mary nodded and said, "Yes."
"By the time Walter and I got there, they'd moved him," Andrew said. "He was at the blacksmith shop. They'd even brought in the auto. You know, they say it ran perfectly. Except for the top, and the windshield, it was hardly even damaged."
Joel asked, "Do they have any idea what happened?"
Andrew said to his mother, "Papa says, 'Do they have any idea how it happened?' " She nodded, and smiled her thanks, and tilted her trumpet nearer his mouth.
"Yes, some idea," Andrew said. "They showed me. They found that a cotter pin had worked loose-that is, it had fallen all the way out-this cotter pin had fallen out, that held the steering mechanism together."
"Hahh?"
"Like this, Mama-look," he said sharply, thrusting his hands under her nose.
"Oh excuse me," she said.
"See here," he said; he had locked a bent knuckle between two bent knuckles of the other hand. "As if it were to hold these knuckles together-see?"
"Yes."
"There would be a hole right through the knuckles and that's where the cotter pin goes. It's sort of like a very heavy hairpin. When you have it all the way through, you open the two ends flat-spread them-like this…" he showed her his thumb and forefinger, together, then spread them as wide and flat as he could. "You understand?"
"No matter."
"Let it go, son," his father said.
"It's all right, Mama," Andrew said. "It's just something that holds two parts together-in this case, his steering gear-what he guided the auto with. Th…"
"I understand," she said impatiently.
"Good, Mama. Well this cotter pin, that held the steering mechanism together down underneath the auto, where there was no chance of seeing it, had fallen out. They couldn't find it anywhere, though they looked all over the place where it happened and went over the road for a couple of hundred yards with a fine-tooth comb. So they think it may have worked loose and fallen out quite a distance back-it could be, even miles, though probably not so far. Because they showed me," again he put his knuckles where she could see, "even without the pin, those two parts might hang together," he twisted them, "you might even steer with them. and not have the slightest suspicion there was anything wrong, if you were on fairly smooth road, or didn't have to wrench the wheel, but if you hit a sharp bump or a rut or a loose rock, or had to twist the wheel very hard very suddenly, they'd come apart, and you'd have no control over anything."
Mary put her hands over her face.
"What they think is that he must have hit a loose rock with one of the front wheels, and that gave everything a jolt and a terrific wrench at the same time. Because they found a rock, oh, half the size of my head, down in the ditch, very badly scraped and with tire marks on it. They showed me. They think it must have wrenched the wheel right out of his hands and thrown him forward very hard so that he struck his chin, just one sharp blow against the steering wheel. And that must have killed him on the spot. Because he was thrown absolutely clear of the car as it ran off the road-they showed me. I never saw anything to equal it. Do you know what happened? That auto threw him out on the ground as it careened down into that sort of flat, wide ditch, about five feet down from the road; then it went straight on up an eight-foot embankment. They showed me the marks where it went, almost to the top, and then toppled backward and fell bottom side up right beside him, without even grazing him!"
"Gracious," Mary whispered. "Tst," Hannah clucked.
"How are they so sure it was-instant, Andrew?" Hannah asked.
"Because if he'd been conscious they're sure he wouldn't have been thrown out of the auto, for one thing. He'd have grabbed the wheel, or the emergency brake, still trying to control it. There wasn't time for that. There wasn't any time at all. At the most there must have been just the tiniest fraction of a second when he felt the jolt and the wheel was twisted out of his hand, and he was thrown forward. The doctor says he probably never even knew what hit him-hardly even felt the impact, it was so hard and quick."
"He may have just been unconscious," Mary groaned through her hands. "Or conscious and-paralyzed; unable to speak or even seem to breathe. If only there'd been a doctor, right there, mayb…"
Andrew reached across his mother and touched her knees. "No, Mary," he said. "I have the doctor's word for that. He says the only thing that could have caused death was concussion of the brain. He says that when that-happens to kill, it-does so instantly, or else takes days or weeks. I asked him about it very particularly because-I knew you'd want to be sure just how it was. Of course I wondered the same thing. He said it couldn't have been even a few seconds of unconsciousness, and then death, because nothing more happened, after that one blow, that could have added to what it did. He said it's even more sudden than electrocution. Just an enormous shock to the brain. The quickest death there is." He returned to his mother. "I'm sorry, Mama," he said. "Mary was saying, perhaps he was only unconscious. That maybe if the doctor had been there right on the spot, he could have been saved. I was telling her, no. Because I asked the doctor everything I could think to, about that. And he said no. He says that when a concussion of the brain-is fatal-it's the quickest death there is."
He looked at each of them in turn. In a light, vindictive voice he told them, "He says it was just a chance in a million."
"Good God, Andrew," his father said.
"Just that one tiny area, at just a certain angle, and just a certain sharpness of impact. If it had been even a half an inch to one side, he'd be alive this minute."
"Shut up, Andrew," his father said harshly; for with the last few words that Andrew spoke, a sort of dilation had seized Mary, so that she had almost risen from her place, seeming larger than herself, and then had collapsed into a shattering of tears.