Maria noticed her knee shaking through her tattered nylons and quickly took inventory of her body. Everything was painful, but nothing excruciating.
"We're gonna get out of this," he said.
Wham! A bullet from a high-powered rifle slammed into the car. There was a creak as the metal stretched.
"God, no," she heard herself saying.
She froze. She looked at his face and found him appraising her.
"I'm OK," she muttered.
Another bang shuddered the car. Neither said anything, waiting, feeling the agony of their own mortality.
Looking down at the gray rocks and green river below, with the twisted metal groaning, Maria imagined the long free fall superimposed over the sound of her pounding heart.
"Please let them stop shooting," she prayed.
"We gotta get out of here. Any second this thing could bust free of the tree."
But they waited, in the coolness of the wind, their minds searching for a way to free them from the anticipation of being about to fall and yet not falling. Two or three minutes seemed like ten. The leaves were life green; the sky was a hopeful blue; the ants on the luxuriant bark looked busy, unaffected. The chill-was it death or was it a morning's invigoration? In just moments she would know.
"Come on," he said, snaking his right arm around her small waist even as she felt his fingers fumbling for the latch on her seat belt.
"Wait, be careful, I'm liable to fall right out of here." Immediately in front of her, there was a gaping hole through what used to be the front windshield and beyond that, the abyss. Somehow his right arm wasn't enough. By putting out both arms and both feet against the jagged metal, she secured herself.
"OK," she said.
At that moment a third bullet slammed the underside of the car, just missing Maria and punching a hole in the roof.
For all of five minutes they waited in near silence. His arm remained around her and her right hand had found its way to his, down at her waist where he still gripped her. There were no more shots.
"Ok, I'm going to release your belt."
The belt came away and she rolled toward him. On his side the opening was smaller and she realized the roof in front of the driver's seat was sunk in, whereas on the passenger side it was torn open by the branch.
Shattered glass was everywhere.
"Wait, let me," she said when she saw him about to crawl out the driver's-side window. "I'm a climber. I can do this." Despite her dread of further shooting, she crawled over the top of him and stuck her head outside. The front of the car was hanging free about two feet above the L-shaped main trunk of the tree. There was nothing to grab. The branch that had punctured the front windshield and exited the rear window was large and smooth and moss-covered like the main trunk. It was without any hand- or toehold for a sufficient distance, so it would be difficult to climb. Ripples went down the side of the fender, some angular enough that they might make a foothold.
"Maybe we can climb down the side of the car to the trunk of the tree and then try and scale the cliff. It's either that or wait and hope somebody finds us."
"We aren't waiting," he said.
"I've hung off cliffs. It's pleasant. This isn't." She wondered how he would react to the high climbing.
"Let's go."
"They may start shooting again," she said.
"They may. The wind may blow a little harder and the car may plunge."
She nodded her assent. Holding out her hand to him, she shook his and looked in his eye.
''If I fall, tell my father I loved him. My mother knows."
"You aren't gonna die today. You should tell him yourself." He smiled. "Industry won't be that lucky."
She began pulling herself through the window.
"How can you be almost dead and still joking?" she asked, trying to get a firm toehold on a small branch held tight against the crushed fender. It was a long stretch as she tried to hold herself with her hands.
"Same way you can be almost dead and arguing about it. Here," he said, holding out his hands. "I won't let go."
They locked their hands on each other's forearms. She could feel his fingers biting into her flesh. With her body fully extended, and Dan hanging out the window, her feet were within inches of the tree trunk; yet she wouldn't hit it square. Even a small slip could have her sliding off the tree and into space.
"Let go, I'll drop," she said.
"You're sure?"
"Do it."
He let go and she dropped, tried to balance by squatting. Both feet slid off the tree and she grabbed.
She groaned when her chest hit the tree trunk. She lay barely draped across it, most of her body hanging in space, digging her fingers into the wood, while she struggled to stay alive. Her feet hung down one side of the log while her arms reached over the top to the other side. Her chin sat on the log's crest.
"Hang on," he said.
"I'll make it," she groaned. But she couldn't think. Her mind was full with spinning, falling fear. Any second her fingers would give way. Slowly she raised her foot until she found a rough gouge in the bark where her toe could get a purchase. She pushed but was able to move her belly up the tree trunk only a fraction of an inch. Again she tried and moved a little farther.
"Hold on, I'm gonna jump," Dan said. He was crawling out the window. A man his size in a free fall would come right off the log, she was certain.
"No! You'll fall."
"I'm coming."
In the split second before he let go, she realized he had kicked off his shoes.
Dropping much farther than she had, he felt his bare feet hit the wood with a loud slap. The pain was a mind-sharpener.
He teetered crazily, arms gyrating. In a squat he hovered over Maria and dropped his hands to the moss-slick bark. His seat-stiffened joints could barely tolerate the maneuver.
Remembering days of football and workouts, of agility and stamina, he tried to get his body to follow his memories. Still draped over a horizontal section of the trunk, Maria moved herself up farther now and was about to push again. He grabbed her armpits and pulled, moving her belly six inches higher up on the log.
"Hold," he said. He did it again and she was able to spring up.
They moved down the trunk to a small shale ledge just big enough for them to stand together. ''Well, you potentially saved my life," she said, her eyes searching his. "But you could have killed yourself. And I was making it." She paused. "Anyway, thanks."
"No thanks until we get up there," he said, nodding at the cliff.
Each of Dan's back pockets held a shoe that he now removed to slip on his feet. She began climbing, clinging like a spider, Dan staying just below her. They were using roots and stems from sparse vegetation and gouges in the face of the rock to support their body weight.
"It's dangerous for you just below me."
"Nah. I'll catch you," he said. He thought about stopping to rest but she wasn't, so he forced himself to keep moving.
After another ten minutes of hard climbing, several near-slips, and two short rests, they finally made it to the forest and eventually the road. There was no sign of the thieves or their car. They backtracked at a crisp jog until they came to a gravel driveway.
"There's a house down here, I think," Dan said, noticing her regular breaths. He wasn't used to women who could keep up with him. "I'll find a car and try to track them again. You go back to town."
"Oh no. That was our money," she said, jogging right after him. "If you go, I go."
3
They had come to a farmhouse. White, with peeling paint that revealed weather-grayed siding, the single-story house looked as if it were slowly dissolving. Moss-clad gutters appeared useless, and brush and tall grasses had taken over the area around the building. A Ford half-ton pickup truck was parked in a carport to the side. In front of the house was a tired Buick with a visible rust spot near the back window.