The crash didn’t come. There were no sounds of metal hitting metal, of fenders denting or glass breaking. When the car came to a stop, the only thing filling the air was Bing Crosby’s voice coming from the Packard’s radio speaker.
Opening his eyes, George Hall stared out the windshield. The gravel truck was directly in front of him; he was staring at the large dual axle’s twin wheels just under the truck’s dump bucket, but those wheels weren’t turning. Somehow the driver had gotten the truck and its thousands of pounds of cargo to stop. George’s car had stopped as well. It was sitting in the middle of Highway 150, its motor idling and its chrome bumper just inches from the truck’s now stationary load. This was impossible! George had been driving long enough to know that cars couldn’t go from fifty to zero in that short a distance. It just couldn’t happen. And yet it had.
After sliding the transmission into neutral, George looked toward his wife and child. Carole was still praying, and Rose was still sleeping. Yet they were fine. Except for Carole’s purse sliding off the seat and onto the floorboard, everything was just as it had been a few moments before.
After setting the parking brake, he reached over and placed his hand on his wife’s arm. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “George, I thought we were going to die for sure.”
“So did I,” he replied. “And she just slept through the whole thing.” Bathed in an overwhelming sense of relief, he gently rubbed Rose’s forehead. As he did, her eyes popped open and she grinned.
“You all right?” someone yelled.
The truck driver’s voice pulled George back to the situation at hand. Grabbing the driver’s door handle, he pushed it down and stepped out. As he straightened his six-foot form, the other man leaped from his cab and hurried over to the car.
“I thought I’d killed you,” he blurted out. “My mind was wandering, and I forgot where I was. And I am so sorry!”
“We’re fine,” George assured him. He glanced behind their car to the highway. From the skid marks, he could tell the exact spot he stepped on the brakes. Turning back to the driver, he quipped, “Except for leaving some rubber on the concrete, it seems our car is all right, too.”
“You’re lucky you have such a fine car,” the truck driver breathlessly noted. “If you’d been driving something else, something that didn’t have those big brakes, you’d’ve plowed right into me. I’d have been carrying that guilt for the rest of my life, too.”
The man walked over to the yellow car and lightly tapped on the hood. “Some piece of engineering.” After running his hand along the fender, he said, “I’m Ben Larson. Kind of figured you might want to know the name of the guy who almost killed you.”
His knees still a bit rubbery, George stuck out his hand. “George Hall. And the important thing, Mr. Larson, is that you didn’t kill me or my wife or our baby. We’re all fine. Just one of those lucky things we got stopped in time.”
“Mr. Hall, you can call it lucky if you want,” the man shot back, “but luck didn’t have a thing to do with it. It was your Packard’s brakes.”
A honking horn from an approaching motorist caused both men to whirl and look to the east. The almost-wreck was blocking the U.S. highway, and it seemed the oncoming motorist was not in a patient mood.
“Looks like we have the whole road blocked,” Larson noted. “Guess we need to get moving.”
“Guess we do,” George agreed.
“Sorry about this,” the truck driver said.
“No problem,” George assured him as he slid back into the car.
As they waited for Larson to move his truck, Carole leaned closer and patted her husband’s arm. “I overheard what he said. We wouldn’t have had a chance in our old Chevy, would we?”
“No, honey, we’d have slammed right into the side of his truck. Probably would have taken our heads off.”
“So,” she sighed, “in this case there are now three people whose lives were saved by the Packard. As I see it, that kind of evens things up.”
“So,” he asked, “does this mean we keep the car?”
“I’m not giving away anything that saved my daughter’s life,” she assured him. “I don’t care if people are scared of this old car. I know better.”
As the truck moved forward, George eased the Packard back into first and continued his trip toward Danville. He’d make sure the story of what happened was told all around town. He would make sure that everyone knew the curse had been broken.