“Oh…my…God…”, Lee said. He slowly moved his arms and legs and wiggled his toes; everything was working. And nothing felt broken – but what about cuts? Am I bleeding?, he wondered as he mentally took note of his skin; no burning, no hot spots, no liquidy feel.
He was in one piece. One upside down piece, but still he was whole, and he knew he could walk -- if of course he could just get out of the car.
The Saturn came to rest at an angle as it fell across the railroad track. The dash lights were still on, and the heater, which had been cranking at full speed moments ago, was now blowing powdered snow throughout the car. With a stretch and a long groan, Lee reached out and turned off the fan, and the headlights, and with one more reach – the key in the ignition; thinking for some reason that he’d need the battery for something as the night wore on.
After a moment of silence, the winter wind came roaring back and a cold blast of air shot through the broken windshield, causing Lee to turn his head and close his eyes. The icy air burned his lips and nose. The temperature he thought must have dropped dramatically in the past few hours. Did they say minus 5 tonight? As his head cleared he wondered how long someone could last in these conditions. 30 minutes? Maybe an hour?
He had to get out of the car, and he needed to find shelter quickly.
As he wrestled with his seat belt he thought about how quickly things had changed....an hour to live!?...one moment he was comfortably crawling along in a heated, enclosed car, and the next he was fully exposed, and on the verge of death. How crazy is this whole illusion of security?, Lee wondered. When we climb on an airplane; or ride in a boat on the ocean; or drive our car on a frigid night somewhere in a corn field? One crack in the outer shell; one weld that dissolves at 40,000 ft.; one hunting coyote that darts in front of you in the night and suddenly you’re hanging upside down – as vulnerable as a fawn in a lion’s den.
And it was the hanging upside down that was the most troubling at the moment. The belt lock was stuck because of the downward pressure of Lee’s body and he tried rocking back and forth, pulling on the different seat belt straps hoping to jar something loose. But the lock wouldn’t budge. He increased his effort…pulling and pushing - but it only served to increase his heart rate, which only increased the amount of blood surging into his upside down upper body. His head throbbed and for a moment Lee felt he would pass out. We can’t let that happen, pal or it’s all over…we’ll freeze to death…oh God no I don’t want my kids have that story to tell when they ask ‘what happened to your daddy!”
His next, and perhaps final, idea was to put his hands over head and push up, hoping to remove some of his weight off the straps and hopefully the belt latch. He carefully placed his hands over his head, which was now hovering a few inches from the Saturn’s roof, and pushed upward. It was like trying to do a handstand in cement; the weight was incredible. He couldn’t move himself at all. After a few more tries, he had the idea of putting one hand on top of the other and focusing the thrust in one place. Maybe this would work to move his body an inch or two. It’s all I need, just an inch or two. Of course he realized he would still have to get one hand free to undo the latch, but he’d worry about when the time came.
So with a big inhale, he put one hand on top of the other and thrust with all his might. He moved, and then dropped back. He did it again, and this time he brought his legs and feet into the act scrambling to latch onto the ledge under the steering wheel. He banged his shins hard on something under the dash, but the pain didn’t matter. He had to hold his body up long enough to free one hand and undo the latch.
With one final shove and leg grab, he quickly reached around with one hand and hit the button -- Snap! The fastener opened, and Lee fell to the car roof, his head twisting to the side and pinching against his shoulder.
He scrambled to flatten out as best he could and crawled toward the open space where the windshield used to be. Once out, he continued to crawl until he had cleared the engine compartment and then stood and slowly stretched upright.
“Ahhhhhh….”, he groaned, as he stretched his torso from side to side, stumbling a bit on the snow and the rocky terrain beneath.
At least he was out of the car, but he knew he was far from out of trouble. He would have to walk to get help, or at least shelter, and he wasn’t dressed for an arctic expedition. In addition to his business attire of slacks, shirt, tie, and a sport coat, he had a long winter coat and good gloves. The problem however was what he had up top and down below -- no hat and nothing on his feet but his two-year old Johnson & Murphy leather dress shoes. The hat he didn’t worry about; he could find something to wrap around his head. It was his feet that concerned him, particularly his toes. His brother Mike has lost two toes to frostbite years ago when he and a friend had gotten lost on a snowmobile trip in northern
Lee had to get moving. He looked at his car and thought of anything he might have in there that could help: he did a quick mental inventory -- a tire-iron, a spare tire, some extra anti-freeze, an ice scraper…what ELSE?. Kaley’s Cheerios! And Ty’s Sponge Bob blanket…thank you Sponge Bob. With that he dropped to his knees and reached in through the broken window in back. The cup of Cheerios and blanket luckily where together and right near the opening of the window. He threw the cup in his coat pocket and tied the blanket around his head like a big scarf. The smell of his child in the blanket made him feel both sad and determined. He was not going to die out here, not without a fight.
And there was his cell phone, it was probably worthless, but maybe it miraculously had one more call in it, or had some strange tracking device in there that only the AT&T people knew about? He hurried around to the other side of the car and found the cell phone in it’s leather case sitting underneath the fallen floormat.
Lee stood and did a 360 look around. Other than his overturned car, and the underpass he just drove off of, there was no shelter in sight. The underpass might work to break the wind, but it wouldn’t do anything to stop the cold and the snow, which was falling harder than ever.
“Should I build a snow cave?” Lee asked himself. It was good to hear his own voice. “Yeah pal, that’s great if you have a sub zero sleeping bag and dehydrated food…I could be buried in a foot of snow till spring time.”
He had to try finding something, anything he could climb into away from the cold and wind.
He looked at the open fields all around and up at the road he’d been on before the fall. He knew he couldn’t just wander into a field; snow blindness would have him turned around and dead in about 20 minutes. What the hell am I going find out there anyway? He looked back up at the road; it was elevated and exposed, and the wind was swooshing white clouds of snow off in angry blasts. He was getting lost driving on those roads, walking around in circles would surely be deadly.
What can I do? This is crazy that I’m going to die in this damn field, right on this blessed rail road track…
Suddenly an idea: the rail road track! I can walk between the rails of the track and not get lost…at least not wander around blindly, he thought. And it has to go somewhere doesn’t it? Doesn’t every railroad track eventually go by a house, or a shack, or something? Yeah, but where? There might not be a house or barn for three miles in this Godforsaken place…
“I’ve got to try”, he said has he synched up his coat and Sponge Bob blanket. He glanced at his shoes as he stepped up between the rails of the track. “Well…you’re going to have to carry us out of here…”
Now the question became – which way to go? He peered into the driving snow to his left then right. His eyes watered as he tried to make out something, anything that could give him a clue as to the best direction to turn.
This could mean life or death right here. Yeah…sudden death…just like a coin toss in a football game…heads I stumble onto a warm and cozy farm house…tails I walk for forty minutes and a sheriff and a pastor are consoling Meghan and the kids once they find my body next Monday.
Lee was not an overly religious man, but he suddenly found the need to ask God for help.
“Dear Lord…God…I have no right to ask you for any favors…you know I haven’t done much at church outside of getting the kids baptized and Christmas and Easter….but I’m going to ask you anyway…which way should we go here?” his breath coming in white blasts that were quickly blown away. “I’m…uh…really not sure…what I should do…”
He closed his eyes and tried to blank everything out. He could smell his child’s smell on the blanket as he breathed in and out, waiting for some sort of voice, some sign, some direction.
A thought emerged from somewhere deep inside, or maybe it was close by he couldn’t tell.
Walk forward.
Was it the voice of God, or just his gut instinct? He didn’t know, and the not knowing is what scared him. If it was his gut instinct, it would probably get him killed; after all it was his gut instinct that caused him to drive out of town onto back country roads, skirting the law like a moonshiner running white lightning to the city folk.
IT said walk forward…so let’s go.
He started walking, keeping his head down to follow the path of the tracks. The snow had accumulated about 4 to 6” and he couldn’t see his shoes as they searched beneath the white blanket for the wood beams. One step after another, he walked close to one of the rails, kicking a foot sideways every few feet to touch the hard iron.
Lee walked this way for 20 minutes; searching every few steps for a sign of something to provide shelter. He knew he had to get very lucky very quickly, or face the unbelievable reality that he may not make it out of here. He lowered his head and kept moving.
After 10 more minutes of shuffling along Lee made a move that, in looking back on it later, probably saved his life: He turned around and began walking backwards. While it provided an immediate break from the howling wind, and his heels could start taking the first brunt of the cold steps along the track, these weren’t the things that saved him -- it was what he saw out of the corner of his eye when he wasn’t having to stare into the driving snow…he saw a light.
The light was bright yellow and seemed to be about 200 yards away up on a small hill. I walked right BY IT and would have kept on walking, he thought. Thank you God for turning me around!
He stood on the tracks and stared at the light. With light there was electricity, and with electricity perhaps a warm farmhouse? Lee was hopeful, but he also knew that a light could be attached to anything in the open country. It could even be attached to nothing more than a windmill and a cattle trough, which of course would still be located miles from anywhere. But at this point, he had to chance it. He had to believe and act on the fact that the light was indeed attached to some sort of shelter, if not a house, then a barn, a stable, hell even a chicken coop: Anything to get out of this storm!
With little hesitation Lee stepped out of the space between the iron rails and began trudging toward the light on the hill.
He stumbled down a small embankment next to the tracks, and then climbed the small hill on the other side. As he walked he had to pull his knees up high to get his feet out of the clutching snow pack, which was deeper in some places than others. Up…down…up…down. He lurched along, feeling strangely like someone overdramatically emphasizing sneaking up on an unsuspecting victim. The image made him smile, and smiling somehow made him more determined.
At one point he snagged some hidden barbed wire fence and fell forward. He couldn’t free his gloved hand out of his long winter coat fast enough to brake the fall and ended up falling chest first on an exposed rock. He landed with a thud, balanced there for a moment, then slowly rolled onto his back.
He rested quietly in the powdered bed, hands still jammed in his coat pocket. He blinked away the moisture and stared up at the dark gray sky, the snow now crossing his vision from left to right, then right to left as the wind shifted in a menacing way. Here he was lying in a field in driving a blizzard with his head wrapped in a Sponge Bob blanket staring up into nothing. All he could think to do was to laugh. He laughed at his ridiculous situation. At his woefully unprepared self, at his mess of a life back on heated planet earth. What would they all think if they could see him now? Just mere hours after plodding amongst them, here was Lee with soaked, frozen feet near death in a field. He wondered what VP Gerry and his assistant would say if they could see this…or Johnson and Mack Carmadee…or even better yet - Cindy Hoyt, who would no doubt “tisk tisk” away as more childish behavior from what is supposed to be a “senior” account executive.
After he regained his footing, Lee climbed up one small hill then another, always keeping the light in his sight as his compass. When he lost sight of the light, he panicked a bit, but just kept moving one foot after another, hoping it was the right direction. As he came over the top of the largest of the rolling hills, and after about a minute of not seeing the light, he came over the crest and saw one of the most beautiful sights he’d ever seen -- the light, and it was shining brightly on a roof below. He was going to live.
All he could see through the snow was that the roof was on a small building, maybe a small house, or an out building, or work shed. In the distance he could see more house, more buildings and what looked like small stables and a barn.
As he slipped and tripped his way to the door he thought about who might be in the house, or if there was even anyone home. And if someone was there, would let him in? Surely the most hardened of hard-asses would at least let him curl up in a closet to keep him from dying on their doorstep, right? Right? Either way he knew he was getting into that house whether someone was there or not and whether or not they felt like giving him a cup of hot chocolate.
The door had no screen and no small window or peep hole. Lee reached out and tried the knob, it was locked. He cleared away a small drift in front of the door and pounded as hard as his gloved hand would allow. The sound couldn’t even be described as a knock, let alone a pound. With his waning strength and a half-frozen hand it was more like the sound of a ball of dough falling into powdered sugar. Paaafff…paaaffff…paaaffff…
There was no answer, no sound coming from inside.
He tried again but with an open palm PAAAfff…pAAAffff…pAAAffff…and again, nothing. Lee looked around for something to strike against the door, he saw shapes of things around the place but it was all covered in snow. He dusted off an overturned wheel barrel, a chest of drawers, and old wash barrel. Nothing he could move or pick up. So he went back to the door and found his own battering ram, his knee, which he thrust forward at the cold door-- Konk…konk…konk…
He pressed his ear to the door…there was sound! It appeared to be a metal kitchen chair scooting quickly back on a linoleum floor, then footsteps approaching the door.
“Help…help me!,” Lee called not waiting for the person to even reach the door.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice called back. It sounded like an old man, hopefully a friendly old man Lee thought.
“I need help…I’ve crashed my car and I’m freezing…please, I need to get warm”, Lee said looking as if he were pleading with the door itself.
“Hold on...hold on, let me move some things back here…” the man said. Lee could hear sounds of things sliding and being moved rapidly out of the way. “I just have to… clear…a few…boxes out of the way….there, there…okay”
“Please hurry, my feet…my feet” Lee said as he danced gingerly back and forth on his two frozen blocks of ice.
The door suddenly sprang open and Lee tripped inside and collapsed on the floor. The man inside was indeed old and also appeared friendly. He quickly stooped down and helped pull Lee’s frozen legs inside, swinging him around on the smooth floor like a swivel. Once cleared, the old man pushed with both hands to close the door against the strong wind. Wooosh!
Lee was lying on his side. He slowly reached up with one gloved hand and said, “Thank you…thank you…oh I’ve never been so happy to be inside any building in my life.”
The old man who was little more than a silhouette from Lee’s vantage point reached out his hand and took hold of Lee. “Okay…okay…you don’t have to say anything right now… let’s just get you up and next to the fireplace.”
“Thank you…thank you”, Lee kept muttering as he slowly rolled over on hands and knees and looked into the house and at one of the largest fireplace mantles he’d ever seen. Inside, a large fire was crackling as it danced in the air streams that escaped down the chute.
The old man kneeled down to help him up. “Welcome stranger…you are safe here now.”
