"Your pet's name is Shorty?"
"My cousin's pet," I corrected her. "Did she pick up Shorty today? Her name is Ella Kate Timmons. She's kind of elderly and she's not supposed to be driving-"
"Ma'am?" The woman's voice was slow and annoyingly syrupy. "Could you slow down? You're breaking up and I'm not sure what it is you want me to tell you."
"Ella. Kate. Timmons." I enunciated each word slowly and loudly. "She's eighty. Did she pick up her dog today? The dog is named Shorty."
"Ma'am? I'm not at the hospital, so I'm not sure which pets got picked up. I can tell you that we closed early, because of the storm."
"You closed?" I was on the verge of tears again. "How can an animal hospital close? I thought you were like an emergency room. Emergency rooms don't close."
"Ma'am? Dr. Shoemaker had to go out on a call to a barn fire in Jackson. We've got six burned horses we're treating, and the vet techs are both with her. We called as many clients as we could to tell them about the closing, but with the storm and all, we're doing the best we can. All the pets at the hospital are fine, and we should be open in the morning, if the roads are all right and Dr. Shoemaker can get back."
A horn honked outside. "Never mind!" I shouted, and I disconnected.
I grabbed my ski parka from the hall closet, and at the last minute stuffed a heavy, metal, army-surplus-looking flashlight in the pocket. I ran out the front door and was only two feet from the edge of the porch when I slipped on a patch of ice and fell flat on my butt.
The floor was so slick I couldn't gain any footing to stand back up. Instead I butt-walked forward until I was able to pull myself up on the wooden stair-rail. The front walkway looked just as dangerous, so I cut through the lawn, planting each boot firmly in the ice-crusted grass.
It was a relief to haul my frozen wet ass onto the red leather upholstery of Carter Berryhill's Mercedes.
"You okay?" Tee asked sympathetically. "That was a nasty fall you took."
I grimaced and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "Mostly just my ego is bruised."
He caught my hand. "You're cut," he said evenly.
The palm of my right hand had a nasty red gash that was seeping blood. "I'm okay," I repeated. "I can't even feel it, I'm so cold."
Tee reached across me and opened the glove box. "Dig around in there," he instructed. "Dad usually has Band-Aids or at least a fast-food napkin."
I found a yellow paper napkin and blotted my hand with it.
"Where to?" Tee asked.
"Toward Macon," I said. "I called the animal hospital where Shorty's being treated, but they closed early today because of the storm, so they couldn't even tell me if Ella Kate made it in to get him."
I directed Tee to follow the route Ella Kate and I had taken two days earlier. He drove as fast as he could, dodging downed trees, and in a couple of places, power lines. The Mercedes's radio was tuned to an all-news station, reporting the path of destruction the ice storm had taken.
"I-75 is closed down all the way to the Florida border," Tee told me. I can't ever remember an ice storm as bad as this one-and as late as it is."
"She's out here somewhere," I muttered, swinging my head from one side of the road to the other. "She's gotta be."
"Maybe not," Tee offered. "Maybe she picked up Shorty and decided to go off on a junket or something. You said the weather was still all right when she left the house."
"But she would have had plenty of time to get there and back, unless something happened," I said. "And anyway, she wouldn't just go off and take Shorty on some kind of pleasure trip. He had surgery yesterday. She's been worried sick about him."
He glanced over at me. "Why did Shorty need surgery?"
I looked out the window, not daring to meet his eyes. "He...ate a pair of my panties."
I heard the strangled sound of laughter.
"Not funny," I said dully. "He could have died. He almost did. Because of me."
"Sorry," Tee said sheepishly. We'd come to a fork in the road. "To the left?"
"Yes," I told him. "To the left, and then a quick right."
"How far is the hospital?" he asked.
"Maybe...forty miles from Guthrie?"
The trip that had taken forty-five minutes one day ago now took an hour and a half. Three times we had to stop, get out of the car, and drag tree limbs from the roadway. Finally, we got to the veterinary clinic. The parking lot was empty, the neon sign turned off.
"Now what?" Tee said, turning in the seat to face me.
"I don't know," I said, biting back another onslaught of tears. It was nearly ten o'clock. Ella Kate had been gone for more than six hours. She could be anywhere-or nowhere.
"Hang in there, kid," Tee said, giving me a crooked smile.
I fished my cell phone out of my jacket pocket. "I'm going to start calling hospitals," I told him.
"Check the jails too," Tee advised. "If somebody got between that old lady and her dog, no telling what she might have done. Let's just backtrack. Maybe we overlooked something. A motel or something, where she might have pulled in to wait out the storm."
I called all the Macon-area hospitals Tee suggested, but none of them had any record of admitting a mean old lady named Ella Kate Timmons-or her equally testy cocker spaniel. And I called three different sheriff's departments to see if any of them had worked a wreck involving a bulldog-red Crown Victoria driven by a feisty old lady. Nobody had seen Ella Kate Timmons.
The icy rain had finally subsided, but the roads were so treacherous that we literally inched along at slightly over five miles an hour. Fortunately, most of the citizenry of middle Georgia had decided to take the weatherman's advice and stay off the roads.
When we got to the fork in the road where we'd turned from Guthrie, I had an idea. "Turn the other way," I told Tee.
"But that's the wrong way," he protested. "That'll take you to Pecan Springs."
"Ella Kate hasn't driven in nearly a year. It was rainy and windy, and she'd only been to the vet clinic once before, and that was with me driving," I said. "She was probably scared and confused. Maybe she just took a wrong turn."
He nodded agreement. "No harm in checking it out."
We'd gone only a couple of miles when I spotted a darkened roadside restaurant, surrounded by a large asphalt parking lot. The place had once been called the Cozy Cabin, but a large for sale sign was tacked to the parking-lot billboard.
"Turn in!" I told Tee, pointing to the far edge of the lot. There, half hidden under the splayed-out branches of a fallen pine tree, was the Catfish.
I was out of the car before Tee could turn off the ignition. The Mercedes's headlights illuminated the damage in sickening detail. The tree trunk rested squarely on top of the hood of the red Crown Vic. I could see the sparkle of glass from the shattered windshield scattered on the asphalt. The Catfish's roof was caved in, and the pine branches obstructed my view into the car's interior. My gut twisted. If Ella Kate was in the car...
I ran over to the driver's-side door, and tried to push the branches aside. "Ella Kate," I screamed. "Are you there? Ella Kate?"
Tee was beside me now, yanking at the tree limb. "Can you see anything? Is she in there?"
I pulled the flashlight out of my pocket and aimed it at the door. A long smear of red trailed down the driver's-side window.
"Oh my God," I said breathlessly, my hands shaking so badly I dropped the light.
Tee picked up the light and held it aloft. When I looked again, I could see a woman's head, gray hair covered with a faded blue scarf, slumped against the door. And suddenly, a small brown-and-white head, bobbing up and down inside the car, barking furiously, pawing at the blood-streaked window.
"Shorty!" I cried. "We're here, buddy. We're right here."
42.
"We've got to get her out of there," I said, trying to shove the branches out of the way to get to the door handle. But it was no use. A thick limb rested on the side of the door. Tee grasped the limb and yanked, but it barely moved. I ran around to the passenger side of the door, but another limb had it wedged shut.
I ran back to the Mercedes for my cell phone. "I'm calling 911," I told Tee. "We'll never be able to move that tree with just the two of us."
"Ask them to bring a chain saw," Tee called.
"Nine-one-one. Do you have an emergency?"
"It's my cousin," I said breathlessly. "A tree fell on her car, and we can't get her out."
"Is she conscious?"
"No. I mean, I don't know. We can see her inside the car, but she's not moving. And there's blood. And she's elderly. Please hurry!"
"Do you know how long she's been unconscious?"
"No! She left Guthrie around four P.M., and we just found her. She's probably been here for hours. Can you get somebody out here with a saw or something? We've got to get her out of that car."
"Ma'am? What's your location?"
I looked around for a mile marker or street sign, but in the darkness, all I could see were Tee's headlights, trained on the wrecked Catfish. There were no street signs and no mile markers.
"We're in the parking lot at an old restaurant called the Cozy Cabin, on the road to Pecan Springs."
I could hear the tapping of a computer keyboard, and the 911 operator's soft breathing.
"Got it," she said a moment later. "Georgia 501, at Bobolink Crossing, does that sound right?"
"Don't know," I said. "Wait. Yeah. Georgia 501. I remember the road sign. How long? We can't even tell if she's breathing."
"Hang on, hon," the dispatcher said softly. "We've got units scattered all over the county. I'll get somebody there as soon as I can."
I flipped the phone shut and ran back over to Tee, who was now using what looked like a steak knife, hacking ineffectively at the branch wedged against the Catfish's driver-side door. "I got 911, but they've got wrecks all over the place tonight," I told him. "No telling how long it'll be till they get here."
"This was all I could find in Dad's trunk," he said apologetically, his breath forming little white puffs in the chilled air. "If we had some rope or something, we could tie it to the tree and try to drag it off the car, but the only other things in the trunk are a set of jumper cables and this."
He held up an old-fashioned-looking white metal box with a large red cross emblazoned on the side. "I think this is left over from Dad's Boy Scout days," he said apologetically.
I peered through the branches, trying to catch a better view of Ella Kate. "It'll be good to have anyway if we can get her out."
"Is she breathing?" Tee asked, pushing at the branches.
"Can't tell," I said. "But one way or another, we've got to get her out of this damned car. She could freeze to death in this weather."
"I'm open to suggestions," Tee said, looking around the parking lot. My eyes went to the glass shards scattered on the asphalt.
"The back window," I said, running around to the rear of the Catfish. "We can't get in the front because the tree trunk's blocking it, but if we could break out the back window-"
"The jack!" Tee cried. He pulled it out of the Mercedes's trunk. "I completely overlooked it."
Several smaller tree limbs partially obscured the rear window of the Crown Vic. He clambered onto the trunk. "Back away a little," Tee said, lifting the jack over his head.
He swung the jack with a loud grunt, and landed a blow squarely in the middle of the window. I heard the soft crunch of the safety glass. He lifted the jack and took another swing, and then another. I climbed up onto the trunk to get a better look. The glass was shattered, but clumps of it still clung to the window frame.
Tee took the end of the jack and punched in the remaining glass.
From inside the car, Shorty started barking.
Tee started to climb into the backseat. "No, let me do it," I begged. "If I can let the driver's seat down, maybe I can pull her backward into the backseat, and then you can pull her out."
He nodded agreement, and held aside the tree branches so I could climb inside the Catfish.
As soon as I was inside the car, Shorty started to whine. "I'm coming, buddy," I said softly. I reached over the headrest and felt for Ella Kate. Her hair was damp with blood, but when I touched the side of her face, and felt that it was clammy, but not completely cold, I could have wept with relief.
"I think maybe she's in shock," I called to Tee. I swung a leg over the seat and awkwardly climbed into the front.
Ella Kate's face was ashen and streaked with blood. I touched a patch of withered skin under her jaw, and could feel her thready pulse. I grabbed one of her arms, stick thin beneath the thin cotton of her housedress, and rubbed vigorously.
Shorty whined again. I picked him up and cradled him in my arms. "Okay, guy," I crooned. "We got ya. You're okay. You're goin' home." Tee reached through the open back window, and I handed the quivering dog over to him.
"I'm gonna put him in the Mercedes, and start the engine to try to keep him warm," Tee called. "Be right back."
As gently as I could, I laid Ella Kate down across the front seat, and then, straddling her, began working the lever to lower her seat back. When the driver's-seat back was nearly prone, I put her back into position in the seat, and climbed into the backseat.
"Got her?" I asked, as Tee, kneeling outside the open window, reached in with both arms.
"Yup," he said. I pushed, and Tee pulled, and within seconds, we'd worked Ella Kate out through the back window of the Crown Victoria.
He picked her up like a rag doll, and carried her to the Mercedes, laying her across the backseat. As I jumped down from the trunk of the Catfish, I had an idea. I crawled back inside the car and grabbed the keys from the ignition.
Once I was outside again, I managed to pry the trunk lid open a few inches, and feel around inside, grabbing a rough hunk of fabric.
"Here," I said, running over to Tee's side. "One of Uncle Norbert's army blankets."