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Peter really should be wearing a helmet. Sandra slowed the sled down at this thought.
“He’s getting away!” Peter cried so loudly that it hurt her ear.
They knew no such thing, of course. They had no idea where Otis was. They didn’t even know where they were. The trail had sprawled into a dozen branches since they’d started this escapade, and Sandra was certain they’d lost him. It had snowed less here than it had up in the mountains, and it was difficult to distinguish fresh tracks from old ones. She slowed to a stop and turned to look at her son. “We should go back!” she hollered over the engine.
“What? Why?”
The engine sputtered, and she gave it enough gas to keep it alive. “Because we’ve lost him, and I don’t want to run out of gas in the wilderness.” She didn’t think she needed to list her other reasons. That she didn’t want her son to get frostbite or hypothermia. That winter had just started and there really wasn’t enough snow yet for snowmobiling, so these trails were in horrible condition. That her back had never hurt so badly in her life, and she was worried that she’d broken it. That she couldn’t feel her face.
Peter dropped his head, but he didn’t argue.
She wondered how to turn the sled around in the narrow trail, pretty sure the old girl didn’t have reverse. After too much time debating her next move, she realized she had to creep ahead until she found a spot big enough to allow a turnaround. She tried to push the realistic worry that such a spot might not exist out of her mind.
Her frozen thumb pressed the throttle. She was dismayed at how tired the ancient lever made her thumb. She was currently suffering from her first-ever thumb cramp. She crept around a corner and it was a good thing she was creeping, or she would have flattened the angel standing in the middle of the trail.
“We have a problem,” Bob announced.
“Just one?”
A normal person wouldn’t have been able to hear her over the sled’s engine, but it appeared that Bob did. “Otis has fallen through the ice. I can get him out, but I need your help. Follow this trail. I’ll meet you there.” He was gone again.
Sandra sat there with her jaw slack until the cold made her teeth hurt. Then she sat there with her mouth clamped shut.
“Come on!” Peter urged from behind.
But Sandra was still processing. He’d fallen through the ice? As in on a pond or lake? He’d been stupid enough to drive out onto the ice when it was only mid-December? It hadn’t been cold enough for long enough to make that safe. Was he insane? She pressed the accelerator, glad she hadn’t turned around yet; it was bad enough trying to do the impossible once. Maybe Otis hadn’t known he was driving out onto the ice. Maybe he’d just thought it was a field. But he’d known the woods well enough to find a tree stand, a hunting camp, and a snowmobile, so he probably knew where the lake was.
Before she knew it, she had picked up a scary amount of speed. It didn’t matter if the man was crazy or if he had killed Treasure—if Bob thought they could save him from an icy death, then she would do her best. So, she sped along, wondering if the skin on her face was going to survive this, when suddenly she didn’t understand what she was looking at.
The trail seemed to end. She applied the brakes, and too late realized that this wasn’t the trail’s end—it was a hairpin turn to the left. She yanked the sled hard to port and gave the brake all she had.
It wasn’t enough. The sled did slow, and it did turn, but before it could find the trail again, her right front track slammed into a tree, sending them toward the ground with dizzying speed. Peter let out a small cry that sounded too far away and then the left side of Sandra’s body was slammed into the snow, which didn’t offer as much cushion as she hoped. The engine spluttered to a stop, plunging the woods into a silence so complete it was eerie. A horrendous pain spread warmth through Sandra’s left leg, which was pinned beneath the snowmobile. Not good. I need that leg for soccer. She took inventory of the rest of her body, thanked God that everything else seemed to be in order, and then asked that Peter would be okay as well. Where was Peter? Why was he being so quiet? She called out his name.
No answer. Her chest tightened, and it seemed as though her blood itself went cold. She lay her head down in the snow and took a few deep breaths, trying not to panic. Then she called out his name again, and she heard a cry, but it sounded too weak and again, too far away. She had to get to him.
She tried to pull her leg out from under the sled, but it was stuck. “Bob!” she screamed at the sky with a volume she’d never managed before. “Bob!” she screamed again, hardly giving him a chance to answer her first call. Then she realized it might be more effective to just call his boss. So she said, “God, please send Bob, or anyone else, to get this machine off my leg.” She waited one second, two, and three, and no one appeared. But she did sense that something was different about her leg. It hurt less. Was it her imagination? Or was she just losing feeling in it? Again she tried to pull her leg out from under the sled, and this time it easily slid free, as if it had never been pinned in the first place.
But she knew that it had. So what had just happened? She slowly pulled herself to her feet. Surely Bob hadn’t come to shift the sled a few inches and not paused to say hello? Had God sent someone else? Or had God done it himself? The leg still hurt, but even that was subsiding. She turned around and called out to Peter, who didn’t answer. She reached to her pocket for her phone, but it wasn’t there. She needed it for its light, but she didn’t want to take the time to crawl around on the ground feeling for it. She wanted to find Peter. She headed off the trail and into the trees, calling his name.