Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [163]
“You need help?” I asked, realizing that I’d gone from a scene of public cacophony to one of utmost intimacy, just the two of us in this echoing cubicle. My God, she had beautiful eyes.
“Yes, I need help.”
“You hurt?”
“No.”
“That blood on your knees?”
She looked down at her jeans and said, “I’m okay. There must be people who’re really hurt. Anybody killed?”
“No.”
“Thank God for that.”
“You driving this rig?”
“Yes.”
“You got an MSDS?”
She handed me the Material Safety Data Sheet. There was nothing dangerous on board.
When I got closer, she stuck out her hand and said, “Holly Riggs.”
“Jim Swope.” As we shook hands, our eyes met in the quivering light from our respective flashlights. I was wearing heavy firefighting gloves; hers were made of goatskin. Still, there was something provocative, almost sensual, about the handshake.
Holly Riggs had short strawberry-blond hair, an upturned nose with a wash of freckles across it, sparkly eyes she enhanced with green contacts, and a tiny waist that accentuated what Chief Newcastle later called her childbearing hips. At five-two, she was more than a foot shorter than me.
“I suppose you’re going to take her out and ruin her life,” Newcastle joked that night at the accident site, when he found out I’d gotten her phone number.
“I’ve never ruined anyone’s life,” I said. “Besides, I’m not even sure I’ll call. It just happened after we started talking that we have a lot in common.”
“I just bet you do,” Newcastle joked. “Have a lot in common. You have a lot in common with every good-looking woman you’ve ever met.” Newcastle laughed until he was sick with it. Sometimes I thought he was going to have a heart attack laughing at me. Nobody liked a joke more than Harry Newcastle. I didn’t mind the ribbing. I really didn’t.
He was wrong about me, though. To tell you the truth, I had the worst luck when it came to women. Think about this—three years ago my wife cleaned out our bank account and ran away with the mayor. To make it worse, everybody in town knew about it before I did.
3. A BRIEF AFFAIR OF ALMOST NO CONSEQUENCE
It took almost two hours that night to get traffic rolling.
Ambulances and extra aid units came from Issaquah and Bellevue, respectively fifteen miles and twenty miles up the icebound highway. We ended up with thirteen volunteers and four paid guys, seven ambulances, two aid cars, four tow trucks, six State Patrol vehicles, dozens of road flares, and two miles of irate drivers backed up toward Snoqualmie Pass. It was almost twelve-thirty before the last of the injured were on their way home or to a local hospital. I took Holly aside and bandaged her knees, rolling her pant legs up and taping four-by-fours neatly in place. She said the way I worked reminded her of her sister, who was a doctor.
Toward the end, I got the brilliant idea that when we finished with our patients we might all hop in the back of Holly’s truck and help straighten it out.
Shuffled into the mix of comic books, Bibles, Levi’s, and Coca-Cola canisters we found the occasional escaped or liberated fryer. Six of us assisted in the cleanup: myself, Stan Beebe, Chief Newcastle, Jackie Feldbaum, Karrie Haston, and Joel McCain.
Afterward I was surprised when Holly agreed to have coffee with me in a nearby Truck Town restaurant while the wreckers righted her truck. But I guess I’m always surprised when an attractive woman agrees to spend time with me.
As we walked across the frozen field toward my pickup, I couldn’t help thinking this was almost like a date, the two of us walking hand in hand, the moonlight, the crunch of snow under our boots, the dentist-drill sound of tires spinning on the icy highway behind us.
We tried to ignore all the dead or dying chickens, some already flattened in the eastbound lanes.
Holly was as pleasant as a tropical breeze. She was twenty-eight,