Clay died with his cowboy boots on.
The first rescuer to arrive tripped over one of his legs. The wind team decided to lower me from the turbine to the ground rather than take me down the tower ladder.
They opened a small trapdoor on the chamber bottom and assured me they’d practiced this once before. Fastening a harness around my chest, they clipped a cable to the front. Slowly, they lowered me down to a crew on the ground. I closed my eyes tight until my feet hit dirt. Even then, I was too shaken to stand.
Word had spread from farm to farm that I was trapped on top of a turbine, so a crowd waited. So did Channel 3’s camera. When Malik dropped the lens from his shoulder, his face looked pale. The close-up video of me ended up being too grisly to broadcast.
But repulsion didn’t stop my parents from rushing to my side. Mom got there first, because of Dad’s bad knees. She was crying. He was crying. I think I was crying, too. I didn’t care anymore whether or not adult children should cry in front of their parents.
Vibrant splotches of red now decorated my mom’s blouse from holding me, and I thought of Edgar Allan Poe, whose mother, dying of tuberculosis, continually coughed up blood when she held him as a child. Maybe that parental horror inspired his literary genius. I prayed that something good would happen to me. Was there anything I could take from this bloody experience that could strengthen instead of shatter me?
Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow moved. I jerked back, bracing myself for one more terror, but a closer look revealed Nick Garnett, holding one of my shoes. My throat got all choky. And I knew he had answered my call for help.
At that moment, I was stalwart enough to tell him I loved him, out loud, in front of a throng of people. But I also knew that wasn’t what he needed to hear just then.
“Mom, Dad, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
Garnett swooped me up and it was like that final scene from An Officer and a Gentleman with Richard Gere and Debra Winger, only instead of Debra Winger, picture Sissy Spacek as Carrie, covered in pig’s blood.
The farm crowd even cheered, like the sweatshop workers in the movie. I thought if the director could just roll the credits then, happily-ever-after would be mine.