Alligator - Lisa Moore [56]
Is it true their first child was conceived under a thatched roof in the fairytale cottage lost in the enchanted forest? It is true.
COLLEEN
SHE HAD NEARLY been killed on the way back from sabotaging the bulldozers in the clear-cut. After almost an entire day of waiting on the side of the road a man had finally picked her up. It was already getting dark and she was soaking wet from the rain. As soon as she got into the van the man’s cellphone rang.
He said, Russell here. He glanced over at Colleen wearily and he reached to turn up the heat and the phone fell down the neck of his coat. He scrabbled to catch it, making the van swerve. He listened and pressed his hand to his forehead and said, Sandra, Sandra. Then he put the cellphone on his leg. Colleen could hear a shrill voice rattling away into his thigh.
What do you think you’re doing? he asked Colleen. Do you know how dangerous hitchhiking is?
Then he picked up the cellphone and said, Sandra, let me explain. He listened.
He said, Let me say something here. Let me speak. You were told. I already told you. Just let me. Talk, for Jesus’ sake.
He glanced at Colleen. The woman continued, there was crying now. Then he quietly folded the cellphone and dropped it in his pocket.
Nice night, he said. The cellphone rang and rang in his pocket.
I’m getting your seat soaking wet, Colleen said.
Do you have any idea how dangerous hitchhiking is? I said to myself, Don’t lecture.
The phone rang and they listened to it ring for a long time then it stopped ringing. When they were certain it wouldn’t ring any more the man said, I didn’t get your name.
Then the phone started again and he answered it.
I’m with someone, Sandra, he said. A hitchhiker. A young girl. She was hitchhiking. Yes, a hitchhiking girl. Yes, I told her. I said, it’s not safe. I said, Girls your age. Sandra, I said all that. He looked at Colleen and rolled his eyes. The weeping on the cellphone started again. Colleen could hear it clearly, a breathy, snot-slickened crying, alternating with a high whine, a unique calibrated chuffing of breath.
Tell me this much, he said.
The woman began to outright bawl.
Sandra, Sandra, he said. And he hung up once more. Then, in the blooming quiet that followed the static and bawling on the phone, the windshield made a fist of itself. A fist of glass lined with silver wrinkles and cracks, and the fist punched Colleen in the face. The van had tipped over on its side, the passenger door scraping the pavement leaving a burst of orange sparks, her cheek against the window, and then it tipped again and they were upside down and the van slid over an embankment on its roof, a curtain of gravel and weeds racing over the smashed windshield.
They came to a stop, upside down, and nose first in a shallow pond, the roof of the van burbling with black water smelling of muck.
Colleen was hanging by her seat belt and the airbag was jammed under her chin and there was a dust floating in the air, which she guessed was a flame retardant and it coated her tongue and tasted like metal filings and talcum.
The guy, Russell, it took her a full moment to realize, was speaking to her as if from a great distance.
Wake up, he said. They heard two vehicles zoom past on the highway above them, then three or four more.
I never got your name, he said. She felt her nose spread with homesickness.
Whatever was going on with her nose, it felt like acute grief.
But she couldn’t remember what she was sad about. She had enough time to realize that whatever it was she was sad about was a tremendous weight she had been dragging around for a long time and whatever it was it was a relief not to remember.
She wanted not to remember for as long as she could because it was a tremendous relief.