Next day, outside of Louisville, Paula Morton began to feel better. Meadow Falls was a long way behind her. For the first time she felt she might clear out all the jumbled furniture in her mind. She slowed her pace to drift along, and when she saw a hitchhiker up ahead she decided on impulse to stop. It was not a Paula-like act, so it fit her mood of doing things differently.
He was a young man who said his name was "Verne". With his big shoulders, his thick hair and his powerful body, he made her nervous for a few minutes, but then she saw his dreamy eyes and relaxed.
"You can sum up my recent life in three words," he said: "They are: divorced, fired, and broke." He'd been in New York City, trying to make his way as an artist but everything had gone wrong for him. Like Paula he fled failure, but he moved towards his roots not away from them. He came from a small town in Kentucky and was on his way back there.
"I used to work for a railroad there," he told her. "It's a small town but it's a division point. Maybe I can get my old job back and relax and float and figure out how I went wrong."
For people in distress other people's distress is a fine antidote. Paula found herself chatting busily with him, enjoying relief from her own problems. When they came to the turnoff point she decided to leave the main highway and take Verne Hollinger to his small town. He was friendly and polite, not pushy. Best of all, he asked her no questions about herself. She liked that in the young people of today-they didn't immediately dig for information to catalog a person.
Once they left the main highway they meandered over narrow country roads and she enjoyed the relaxation of it.
"Pardon me, Paula. Are you being followed?" he asked. That brought her up sharp; yet when she peered at the car he indicated, she knew it wasn't Switzer's, or any other one she recognized. She relaxed.
"I don't think so, Verne." She'd left in such a hurry that she was sure Roy hadn't had time to catch on.
The town was a pretty little place, located along a railroad track, but set between two green hills with rolling meadows and rich farmlands all around it.
"Might as well head for the Blue Grass Diner." said Verne. "I can buy your lunch for going out of your way to deliver me. It's right across the street from the railroad tracks, not much to look at, but the best food you can get here."
As soon as they got out of the car, a slouching figure in the typical dress of a railroader hailed Verne. Verne called "Excuse me" to Paula and leaped forward to greet his old friend. Not wanting to interrupt the reunion, Paula got out of the Mercedes and drifted towards the diner.
That was when she came face to face with Roy Switzer and Amy, her sister. The car that had seemed to follow her sat right there, obviously a rental job, and Roy and Amy sat in the front seat grinning at her, like a couple of ghouls, tendermeated fish in the ocean, hooked by evil fishermen. The more she fled, the more she was trapped. She stood frozen, her heart beating painfully in her chest, shocked and stunned jerked back to the tragedy and outrage of Meadow Falls.
She reacted instinctively. She turned to run. She ran right between to buildings and started away from the railroad tracks, giving no thought to where she went. She just wanted to get away, get away, get away.
It seemed as if the fates assisted her. Suddenly there was a shattering sound, a thousand times louder than thunder. It stunned her hearing closed off her mind. The force of the explosion lifted her right off the ground and carried her through the air as if she'd acquired the ability to fly. It happened too fast for her to be frightened. She floated for a few seconds in the air and then saw a big stand of bushes coming up to greet her. Then she was in the tangle of branches and leaves, feeling the abrasions of the twigs and the soft shrubbery give way The five railroad cars, filled with propane, exploded and decimated the downtown area of the small town. People and objects were flung away from the explosion's center as if by hurricane. Buildings went down. Fires began to blaze.
To Verne, standing behind a boulder commemorating the town's war dead, it seemed like the huge stone, weighing several tons, just took off and tried to push him through the diner. The explosion actually moved it six feet. His friend, not protected by the stone, disappeared.
When he staggred free and looked around, it seemed as if an atom bomb had hit the town. Everything was burning rubble. Paula was gone; the silver mercedes a pile of junk. The car that had parked behind them had vanished completely. There was a pile of rags that the stunned Verne investigated. He recognized the railroader's overalls but not the mass of flesh that was the body of the friend he'd talked to.
The aftermath had already started. Groans and screams of the injured, excited voices, sirens beginning to wail, and someone in distress cursing "Shit, shit, shit."
It was half hour before Verne found Paula. Dazed and sickened, he still helped the rescue workers as much as he could. A temporary first aid station had been set up, and that was the center of activity. Someone brought Paula in. She looked dazed and there was blood coming from one of her ears. She had some light scratches but seemed to be all right. He fell on her and hugged her as if she were a long-lost friend.
"Paula, my God, I thought you were dead."
"Richard, Richard, I knew you'd come back."
So glad was he to see her that it took him several minutes before he realized that she wasn't quite right in the head. He pushed her forward for one of the doctor's to examine. The doctor checked her out.
"Perfectly okay."
"But she's off her rocker. She thinks I'm somebody else."
"Temporary amnesia. Take her away."
"But, doctor-"
"Son, get the hell out of here with your wife. I've got real serious cases up to my ass. People dying. Your woman is perfectly okay physically. Her mind'll come back when the shock wears off."
He wandered out of the first aid station with Paula on his arms. The woman babbled about the lake and fishing and how glad she was that the news of his death was false.
A sheriffs deputy stopped him. "That your Mercedes, son?"
"No, uh, yes, I mean it belongs to this woman."
"You and your woman better get your stuff outa that wreck and git. The railroad says there's more cars that could blow up. Everybody out of the area."
Paula floated in heaven. She'd had a bad dream that Richard had died in an accident, fishing on a lake. That an evil man had stolen money from his bank and blamed it on him. That was all false. Richard, looking younger, had taken her on that second honeymoon they'd always talked about. There was some trouble about the car and getting their things out, but at last they were in the motel and she flowed into his arms.
"Richard, let's go to bed. I'm so tired, and I need to be loved. Come on, honey."
He looked at her strangely, returned her hug and then eased her, fully clothed, on the bed.
"Okay, Paula. You rest for a minute. I've got to-got to-uh, take a shower."
There were two rooms in the motel. He went into the other room and she sighed in contentment and stripped and curled up on the bed…
Verne Hollister, in the next room, examined the dark packages of heavy plastic he'd found when he gathered Paula's stuff from the wreck. There was more money here than he'd ever seen in his life. Thousands, all in small bills. It had been hidden in the rocker panels of the Mercedes, and it shook him up as much as the explosion. The beautiful, classy woman, the expensive car, and all this money. Was she a dealer, or the girlfriend of one? My God, it was a young fortune.
He could take what he needed and leave right now. The woman was still out of her head, and it wouldn't be like taking all of her money. There was much more than fifty thousand here. He had nothing to hold him here, no family any more, no interests. He'd done his part in helping out in the tragic explosion. It blared on the TV, and outside help had rushed in. The story had put the small town on the map, nationally. In the confusion, he could slip away without being noticed. The only man who'd seen him was dead…