Too much happiness_ stories - Alice Munro [102]
It takes a long time. But he pulls himself onto level ground at last, and through the trees ahead and the falling snow he can see the truck. The truck, the old red Mazda, a faithful old friend, miraculously waiting. Being on the level raises his expectations of himself again and he gets onto his knees, going easy, easy on the bad leg, rises shakily onto his good leg, dragging the other, swaying like a drunk. He tries a sort of hop. No good—he’d lose his balance that way. He tries a little weight on the bad leg, just gently, and realizes that the pain could make him black out. He sinks back to the old position and crawls. But instead of crawling through the trees towards the truck he turns at right angles and makes for where he knows the track to be. When he gets there he begins to make better time, crawling over the hard ruts, the mud that has thawed in the daylight but is now starting to freeze again. It’s cruel on the knee and his palms but otherwise so much easier than the route he had to take before that he feels almost light-headed. He can see the truck ahead. Looking at him, waiting for him.
He’ll be able to drive. So lucky the damage is to the left leg. Now that the worst is over a lot of vexing questions come at him, along with his relief. Who will go and get the saw and the ax for him, how can he explain to anybody just where to find them? How soon will the snow cover them up? When will he be able to walk?
No use. He pushes all that away, raises his head to get another encouraging look at the truck. He stops again to rest and warm his hands. He could put his gloves on now, but why ruin them?
A large bird rises out of the bush to one side of him and he cranes his neck to see what it is. He thinks it’s a hawk, but it could be a buzzard. If it’s a buzzard will it have its eye on him, thinking it’s in luck now, seeing he’s hurt?
He waits to see it circle back, so he can tell what it is by the manner of its flight, and its wings.
And while he’s doing that, while he’s waiting, and taking note of the bird’s wings—it is a buzzard—he is also getting a drastically new idea about the story that has preoccupied him for the last twenty-four hours.
The truck is moving. When did it start? When he was watching the bird? At first just a little movement, a wobble in the ruts—it could almost be a hallucination. But he can hear the engine. It’s going. Did somebody just get into it while he was distracted, or was somebody waiting in it all the time? Surely he locked it, and he has the keys with him. He feels his zipped pocket again. Someone stealing the truck in front of his eyes and without the keys. He hollers and waves, from his crouched position—as if that would do any good. But the truck isn’t backing into the turnaround to drive out; it’s bumping along the track straight at him, and now the person driving it is honking the horn, not in a warning but a greeting way, and slowing down.
He sees who it is.
The only person who has the other set of keys. The only person it could be. Lea.
He struggles to get his weight onto the one leg. She jumps out of the truck and runs to him and supports him.
“I just went down,” he tells her, panting. “It was the dumbest damn thing I ever did in my life.” Then he thinks to ask how she got here.
“Well, I didn’t fly,” she says.
She came in the car, she says—she speaks just as if she’d never given up driving at all—she came in the car but she left it back at the road.
“It’s way too light for this track,” she says. “And I thought I might get stuck. But I wouldn’t’ve, the mud’s froze hard.
“I could see the truck,” she says. “So I just walked in and when I got to it I unlocked it and got in and sat there.