Cold Response

[Trigger: describes death, auto accident]

March, 1967

Gray. Light, yet no shadows and little color. Horizon to horizon, only gray under a ceramic bowl of a sky revealing no clouds and no sun. Light snow flurries falling in the dead-still of frozen air.

The temperature dropped forty degrees the second I opened the door. As the car that had given me a lift drove away, I experienced second thoughts about having chosen this route. The more traveled route through town was almost a five-mile route. Why would anybody pick up an unknown person in the gathering gloom of day’s end? This road around the backside that cut through the forest and over a hill was short, less than two miles. But there were no homes or businesses, only trees. What if nobody uses it today?

A strange week for weather had turned the road into a tunnel. We should have been expecting spring. Instead, we got a brutal arctic storm. By the time it was over, I would learn that we had gotten three storms, one right after another. But to me we it was one very long storm. Snow had been falling for three days, with no letup expected for two more.

Drifts in some places were two stories high. Snow paralyzed the town. Buildings with flat roofs were especially at risk. Their owners sent out requests for volunteers to help shovel tons of snow from their roofs. And people came. I was one of them. Under these conditions, neighbors helped neighbors. Whatever animosities people held could be put on hold until this thing passed.

Snowplows were deployed, of course. But where could they put the snow they removed? Most of the time they just piled it along the sides of the streets or highways, anticipating that it could be removed later … after snow quit falling. The result was that cars–and pedestrians–moved through deep, narrow canyons of snow and ice.

 Shopping malls had a bigger problem—how to remove snow from acres of parking lots. Their plows and blowers scooped snow into enormous piles. That’s why I was walking on this day. You see, I had parked my car next to a light post in the mall parking lot when I went to work, knowing that it would be dark when I got off. But that night, my car wouldn’t start. I managed to get a ride home, shortly before the first blizzard hit … with a fury! 

We awoke the next day to more than two feet of snow. Where cars had been parked there were now little more than gently curved humps in a plane of white to suggest what might be underneath. Snowplows all over town waged a futile battle against the snow that continued to fall heavily, erasing their work even before they had gone a block down the street.

In the mall, plows were busy before daylight. Workers were told to clear the parking lots before nine o’clock, so they worked mightily with their giant blowers and plows to dump the removed snow into small mountains—against light posts!

I shouldn’t hold any anger against the workers. How could they have known my car was under that drift? They were doing what they had been ordered to do. But by the time I was able to get there in the morning, tons of snow and ice were piled twenty feet high against the light pole where only I knew that my car sat slowly being crushed.

So, I was left to trudge on foot that late afternoon.

The passageway on this road was barely big enough for two cars to pass. On either side, nearly vertical walls of ice and snow rose eight feet high or more. The road led up a hill, then curved around the back side through the woods. I walked along the right lane … not on the shoulder, because the shoulders were buried. My feet on the frozen slush made walking on bubble wrap sounds. The temperature was dropping quickly, and the gray of day was dissolving into darkness.

After walking a mile, I had not seen a single car in either direction. Despite boots, overcoat, layers of clothes, and heavy gloves, nothing kept out the cold. My fingertips and toes were starting to feel numb.

I heard the sound of an approaching car a I approached the crest of the hill, so I turned to face it. Despite headlights shining in my face, there was still enough daylight to make out some features of the car. It was a big four-door sedan, made all the more conspicuous by steer horns four feet wide mounted as a hood ornament. It came at about thirty-miles-per-hour up the middle of the icy road. I waved my arms to get the driver’s attention.

He saw me, I was sure of that. But then, to my astonishment, the car veered directly toward me! I panicked. There was no place to go. At the last second, I threw myself as high as I could against the wall of ice! The car passed inches away from me as I peddled desperately to keep from sliding under it. A thick wave of slush slapped across my face and chest—Schlock! Like being hit with a baseball bat. I will never forget the sting of that ice on my face. I spit out the taste of snow and road grit.

The car ricocheted of the bank but never slowed. A few seconds later its taillights disappeared behind the crest of the hill while I slid down the ice slope onto the pavement. My immediate attention was paid to snow in places I never would have imagined—inside my boots, inside my socks, inside my gloves, even inside my underwear! Ice, melting from body heat, trickled all the way down my back to my butt, wiping out any sense of warmth.

I cursed him. “One of these days we’ll meet again.” Of course, it was just an empty threat. I had no clue of what I might do if I ever did actually encounter him.

With no alternative, I resumed my walk, faster now to restore body heat. I followed the road as it curved to the left just past the crest. A two-acre clearing sloped to the right. Snowplows had simply pushed their snow over the shoulder and onto the lower hillside.

The lower branches of trees at the bottom of the clearing seemed to be illuminated. Looking more closely, I saw what at first appeared to be a spotlight shining upward into the trees. Why would anybody do that? But then I realized that it was actually a car headlight, the nose of a car barely visible from behind a snow drift.

Intrigued, I examined more closely the space between me and the unexpected light. A telltale path was barely visible. A car had probably skidded on black ice, gone off the road, and lost all control. It had obviously happened recently, and somebody was probably injured. I needed to help them, perhaps render first aide. But I had to figure out how to get there.

I gingerly followed car tracks through packed debris from the snowplows. In virgin snow, my passage was more difficult. I was not anxious to wade through snow up to my waist. I already had wet socks, but I saw no other choice. In the car’s tracks the snow was slightly shallower and more compressed.

As I got closer, I pieced together what had happened. The car had fishtailed down the hillside, slid sideways, flipped over the top of a huge boulder, and landed upside down with the front of the car pointing upward. One of the headlights was smashed, but the surviving light shown skyward, or treeward, like a beacon.

I clambered over the rock to find that all car doors had popped open. Half-way out of one door lay a body, facing up. I eased my way down the boulder to where I could see the driver’s face, slightly illuminated by the car’s interior light. It was a man, probably in his 50’s. His feet were still in the car, but his body was twisted. His face and chest were bloody, as was the snow around his body. I wasn’t sure he was even alive until he groaned. He saw me and tried to speak, but his voice was a gravely whisper.

“Thank God! … Help me … can’t move … can’t feel … legs …afraid … broken back.”

I didn’t move. I was staring at the steer horns mounted on the hood of that upside-down car. So, we meet again!

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“What?” My question confused him. It clearly was not the response he had expected.

“I said, who are you?”

“Uh, Baines, David Baines.”

“You mean like Baines and Johnson, the real estate company?” I knew that name. They were the owners and managers of the mall where I worked ... the mall where even now my car was being slowly flattened by tons of snow.

“Yes,” he said. I detected a little hope in his voice, perhaps reassured by my having established some line of familiarity.

“You wanna tell me what happened?” Again, he seemed puzzled with this conversation. It was pretty obvious what had happened.

“I … not sure … can’t remember … ice … lost control. Please … need help ... bleeding … freezing. I have … had … blanket … back seat.”

I didn’t move to search for the blanket—or for any other reason. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty cold too, especially after diving into that snowbank when you tried to run over me.”

He was quiet for a moment as he tried to make the connection. Then he said simply, “Oh.” Hope went of his voice.

Neither of us said anything for a couple of minutes. Then he tried again.

“Look, I’m … sorry. If I did … that … didn’t mean to. Please…beg you … need … ambulance.” He reached out beseechingly with one arm. I could see that the movement caused him considerable pain. He left the arm outstretched, braced against the car door.

“Oh yeah, that,” I said. “Well, you don’t happen to be carrying a walkie-talkie with you, do you? ‘Cause there sure aren’t any telephones out here. And it’s a couple mile walk once I get back up the hill to the road. It could be a long time. And I’m kinda tired from walking and dodging cars and all.”

There was another long silence, which I finally broke.

“So, you got a family or anything?

“Yes,” he said. “I do. Wife. Two children … grown.”

“You think they’d be worried about you?”

Another long silence. “Yes.”

“Hmmm,” was all I said. I took off a glove and fumbled in my coat pocket for my lighter and cigarettes. I lit one and took a deep drag, hoping the heat would return some feeling to my fingers.

I sat watching him. A few minutes ago, he had tried to run me off the road. His eyes were closed now. ‘Ain’t life a bitch,’ I thought. No more words were said. I wondered what thoughts he might be having.

I finished my cigarette. I was getting colder by the minute, sitting in the snow on a rock. I wiggled my toes to be sure I could still feel them.

By then Mr. Baines was making strange sounds. His head had rolled back, and his mouth was open. His breathing was getting louder, like a snore. After a while it sounded more like gargling. This went on for several minutes, until the breaths came shorter and farther apart. Eventually the breaths were ten or fifteen seconds apart, then they seemed to stop altogether. After a minute he gave a short gasp. Stiffness left his body, and his eyelids opened halfway.

I sat for another minute, then climbed down, reached into the car, and turned off the headlight. The instant darkness was startling. Nobody would notice this scene for a long time. I left Mr. David Baines then, his outstretched arm still beseeching. Snow was falling heavily now, and quite a bit had already accumulated on his pale face. We expected a foot or more of snowfall by morning. This scene would be invisible by then.

An hour later I sat at the kitchen table, trying to warm my hands and insides with some hot coffee. My toes and fingers had no feeling. My mom looked closely at my face and asked, “What happened to you? Were you in some kind of a fight?”

“Naw,” I said. “Some jerk hit me with a snowball.”

We eventually got two more feet of snow. A week passed before somebody finally discovered Baines’ car buried in the melting snow with Mr. Baines’ frozen body still reaching upward, beseeching.

I felt no guilt about that event, even though I admit it was probably not one of my finest moments. He had tried to kill me; of that I was certain. Besides, I hadn’t killed him. I had just watched him die.

It turns out that Baines had been a significant figure in local charities and politics, so the papers made a big deal out of it for several days. One story said that Baines had a history of seizures. They had found a bottle of seizure medicine in the car, purchased just shortly before the accident. They speculated that Baines may have had a seizure while he was driving.

“I can’t remember,” he’d said.

I had been sure that Baines had seen me, but now… Was he in the middle of a seizure when he nearly ran over me? Or did he lie to get my help? I will never know.

Could I have done something for him? Probably not. He had only a few minutes of life remaining when I got there. Maybe I could have comforted him, but that’s all.

I tell you this, though. To this day, decades later, my fingers and toes still go numb whenever I get cold. And when they do, I always remember that man beseeching my help.

But I will never forget the sting of that ice … hitting … my … face!