I heard knocking.
“I’m not ready to go yet, Daddy. I haven’t been able to find out who really killed that man in Mama’s trunk. She’s still sitting in the Himmarshee Jail.’’
Rap. Rap. Rap. The knocking continued.
“Mace!’’ the voice repeated; louder and more insistent. “Are you okay?’’
Masculine features blurred, and then formed into a face, peering at me from above. Worried look. Firm jaw. Full mustache.
“Did you grow that mustache in heaven, Daddy?’’
“Mace! C’mon back to Earth, girl.’’
I could almost feel my synapses struggling to fire all the fog out of my brain. “Where am I, Donnie?’’ I finally asked.
Donnie Bailey, from the jail, stood in water to his waist. He was tapping his flashlight loud against the hood of my Jeep. Cracks branched out across the windshield’s glass like the bare limbs of a dead pine tree.
“You’re sitting in a ditch up to your wheel wells off Highway 98. Are you hurt?’’
I moved my left arm and then my right; lifted and lowered each foot. I was surprised to hear them splash into the water that swirled around the floorboards. When I put my palm to my forehead, I felt something else wet. I dropped my hand and stared at my own blood.
Donnie spoke calmly: “That’s a head wound, Mace. You might have banged it on the steering wheel, or caught some of that barbed wire through your open window.’’ He blinded me, shining his flashlight into my face. “That’ll bleed, but it doesn’t look too deep. Do you think you can undo your seat belt and help me get you out of that Jeep?’’
Barbed wire fencing was draped like Christmas garland across the Jeep’s front half. Donnie used the long handle on the butt-end of his flashlight to move the wire away. Pulling open my door, he leaned awkwardly into the driver’s seat.
“Put your arm around my neck, Mace. I’m gonna slip my hands under your legs and lift. Careful. You’re gonna be shaky.’’
He swung me clear of the door. “Very good,’’ he said. “Now, I’m going to carry you over and set you down on the hood of my squad car where I can get a look at you. Is that okay?’’ He was using that slow, deliberate, ABC-teaching tone.
“I understand you perfectly, Donnie. I’m not going into shock on you. Did I hit the concrete culvert?’’
I could smell the muddy sediment and the grassy scent of water spinach stirring as we moved. I hoped that was all that was stirring in that dark water. Donnie slipped a little climbing up the steep bank. I’m heavier than I look.
“You missed hitting it head-on. Grazed it.’’ He stopped at the top to catch his breath. “There’s a big scratch along the culvert. Then it looks like you flew over that grassy berm, and right into the water.’’
We waited on the bank, as Donnie gathered strength. Mosquitoes hummed in the still air.
“You can put me down. I’m fine.’’ I felt embarrassed that someone whose diapers I’d changed was carrying me like a baby.
“You’re not walking until I know what you’ve hurt.’’ He was still panting a little.
We made it the twenty feet or so to his car. He sat me down on the hood and grabbed a blanket from the trunk to wrap around me. Now, he was checking me over—noting whether my skin was clammy or warm; feeling my pulse. I’d done the same thing myself to injured visitors at Himmarshee Park. After toting me through the water and up a small hill, Donnie’s heart rate was probably worse off than mine.
“Can you feel that? Does that hurt?’’ he asked, pressing first on my midsection and then down my legs. “How ’bout that?’’ he said, moving on to the rest of my body.
My head felt as big as a balloon in the Macy’s parade, and my right knee ached like somebody smashed it with a mallet. “I’m fine, Donnie,’’ I lied. “Just shaken up.’’
“You’re lucky you didn’t wind up top side down in the water,’’ he said, moving aside my new hairdo to see if there were any more cuts. “I’d never have seen you if not for your headlights shining out over the canal. It’s a good thing we’ve had some dry days, or that water would have been higher.’’
He backed up a couple of steps, the better to view all of me at once.
“Looks like you’ll live.’’ He bent down to pick a long stem of hydrilla out of his shoe. I could hear the water dripping as he held up one foot.
“Thanks for coming to my rescue, Donnie. I might have stumbled out of the Jeep, fallen underwater, and never come to. I owe you.’’
“You should still have them look you over at the hospital, though. I’ve already radioed in about your accident.’’
Donnie using that word triggered my recall of the frightening moments before the crash. “It wasn’t an accident,’’ I said quickly. “Somebody deliberately ran me off the road.’’
I told him what happened, describing how the other vehicle had chased me, finally forcing me to lose control. “I’m telling you they bumped me, Donnie. Hard. If you check the Jeep’s rear end once it’s on dry land, you’ll probably find a scrape of paint or something from his car. I’m saying right now, this was on purpose. It was no accident.’’
I could see the skepticism in his eyes. “Why would someone want to do that, Mace?’’
“I’ve been out there all day, asking questions about Jim Albert. So far, all I’m sure of is Mama didn’t murder him. But maybe it’s making somebody nervous that I’m going to find out who did.’’
Donnie swung his flashlight out to the road and then to the ditch. Aside from the bugs he picked up in the beam, we were definitely alone now. “Or maybe it was just you out here. You were tired, and you fell asleep at the wheel. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, Mace. I’ve done it myself.’’
We both got quiet. I can’t speak for Donnie, but I was busy trying to think of a list of suspects who might have wanted me drowned at the bottom of a canal. Frogs croaked. Crickets chirped. I slapped at a mosquito that landed on my neck. In the distance, a siren wailed.
“Don’t tell me that’s an ambulance, Donnie. I don’t like ambulances.’’
“You need to go to the hospital to be evaluated,’’ he said stubbornly. “You could have internal bleeding or swelling in your brain.’’
“I told you: I’m fine. And I’m not riding in the back of an ambulance. They loaded my father into one after his heart attack, and that was the last time any of us saw him. I still remember the sight of those doors closing on Daddy. My sisters and I stood there in the road, watching until that ambulance was no bigger than a dot.’’ My voice trembled.
Donnie pulled at the collar on his shirt and looked down at the ground.