Eleanor by Jason Gurley Read Free Book Online

and climbs out of his truck through the passenger door and tumbles onto the asphalt. The impact of the Subaru has pushed the truck forward and sideways, and its damaged bed now hangs into traffic like a broken limb.  
    Agnes is dimly aware of these things, and can see the man heaving himself into the bed of his pickup. He’s dressed like an engineer, in khakis and a short-sleeved white shirt buttoned to the throat, but he becomes a gorilla. He steps up onto the rim of the pickup’s bed, then hops onto the hood of the Subaru. The hood is mangled and covered in broken glass and bits of concrete, but the man hurries across it and drops into the tight gap between the station wagon and the broken highway divider, and then he is there at Agnes’s window.
    The glass is splintered but intact, and Agnes wants to understand why, but then the man is shouting at her. She can’t understand him—the world sounds muffled and distant to her—and then he repeats himself loudly, waving his hand, and she sees that he’s trying to tell her to lean back. He scuffles with the door, but it isn’t opening, and he acts without thinking, caught up in the rush of what has just happened, and he puts his elbow through the window. It doesn’t shatter, just sort of buckles, so he does it again, then again, and Agnes flinches with every impact. The man seems unaware that he has cut himself—his forearm is smeared with blood now—and then the glass creaks and comes apart.  
    “Cover your face,” he says from his faraway place, and Agnes’s hands feel as if they weigh hundreds of pounds, but she puts them over her face. She can hear the man striking the glass out of the door frame, and then he says, “Okay, are you all right? Lady?” and Agnes takes her hands down to see that his face is right there , that he’s leaning into the car.  
    She shakes her head, disoriented, and then the man’s eyes focus past her and he says, “Oh, Jesus,” and Agnes is confused, but then she follows the man’s gaze and sees Eleanor there, leaning forward, supported by a drawn-tight seatbelt. Eleanor’s bright red hair has fallen over her face, and her head dangles forward, and Agnes feels something sharp chew its way through her belly and right into her heart.  
    “Little girl!” the driver says, reaching through the window and toward Eleanor. He can’t quite reach her—his fingers stop short of her shoulder—and he waves them comically in the air. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
    A rush of heat subsumes Agnes, and she breaks out in a sweat. She grabs Eleanor’s hand, roughly.  
    “Eleanor, Eleanor,” she says, shaking her daughter’s arm like a rubber band.
    “Careful, lady,” the driver says, still wearing his look of horror. “Careful, she could be—”
    “Eleanor!” Agnes shouts. She slaps the back of her daughter’s hand, and then bursts into tears when Eleanor stirs.  
    Eleanor lifts her head and her hair falls away from her face, and it’s immediately obvious that her nose is broken. Her lips and chin are red with blood, and her eyes are foggy, but she’s alive.  
    “Ellie,” Agnes says, her voice choked.
    Eleanor just blinks at her, then leans forward again and vomits on the floor. When she’s finished, she coughs and heaves, and then she closes her eyes and relaxes against the seat belt again.
    “Ezzz,” Eleanor croaks.  
    “Eleanor, sweetie,” Agnes pleads, squeezing her daughter’s hand. “Come on, Ellie. Wake up. Wake up, Ellie.”
    “We have to get an ambulance,” the pickup driver says. He extricates himself from the Subaru’s window and looks around wildly. The driver of the U-Haul hasn’t emerged, so there’s no telling if he’s alive or even okay. The rear end of the Subaru obscures the pickup driver’s view. A woman peeks around the back corner of the moving van then, and the pickup driver almost jumps in place. He waves his hand next to his ear like a telephone and shouts, “We need an