Eleanor by Jason Gurley Read Free Book Online Page A

ambulance, call an ambulance!”
    Agnes turns and looks at the pickup driver and tries to ask him how anybody will call for an ambulance, but the words come out funny, and she doesn’t know what she has actually asked him.
    “There’s a call box just up the hill,” he says.
    So she must have made sense.  
    The driver leans back into the car and looks closely at Eleanor, who appears to be unconscious again. “She okay?” he asks, and Agnes turns to look at Eleanor, then back at the driver.  
    “I’m unsure,” she says, the first clear words she’s spoken since the collision. They feel strange in her mouth, oddly formal.  
    “A woman went back to call,” the man says, but then he trails off, distracted again.  
    It’s getting difficult to hold herself upright. Gravity pulls at her, trying to draw her forward, toward the steering wheel. Agnes can’t figure out why. In the rearview mirror, she sees a tilted world—the rear window, glass cracked and buckled inward, the top of the moving van, dense fog beyond, the ghostly shapes of trees along the edge of the highway.  
    “Lady,” the pickup driver says, his voice wary.
    Agnes turns in her seat and looks toward the rear window. She doesn’t understand the angle of things. “Tilted?” she asks. “Are we tilted?”
    “Lady,” the driver says again.
    Agnes turns to the driver and sees him staring at the windshield, and so she looks at the windshield, too, and sees the gaping hole there, the broken safety glass scattered across the dashboard and the hood beyond, and then something moves and she sees a matted hank of red hair snagged in the broken glass, a few errant strands fluttering wet and heavy in the breeze. Blood clogs the hair like paint in the bristles of a brush, is streaked across the hood of the car, thinning in the rain.
    She stares at this for a long time, and then looks at Eleanor, who is stirring again, coughing, and then she looks at the driver, who says, “Lady, was there someone else—” and Agnes turns and looks at the empty back seat of the Subaru and feels that chewing sensation inside her turn ravenous, chasing the terrible wail out of her mouth and into the air where it hangs and haunts her dreams forever.

Captain Mark finally and somewhat reluctantly pushes back from the bar. He’s flying deadhead back to Boston, he explains, and doesn’t have the luxury of an unexpected overnight stay in Portland, and so must get back into the sky. He shakes Paul’s hand, then warmly says, “I’m sure everything will be just fine. Things usually are.”
    Paul nods and smiles and raises his glass in a small gesture of thanks, but when Captain Mark disappears around the corner, he turns back to his glass and downs the last bit of warmed-over beer and exhales in a rush. He climbs down from the stool, perfectly steady, and grabs his bag.  
    “Thanks,” the airport bartender says, cheerless in his green vest and golden bow tie.  
    Paul nods and falls into the throng of arriving passengers on the concourse. By now Agnes and the girls are more than an hour late. He’s called the house and gotten the machine—“Hey, it’s the Witts, leave us a message,” followed by the girls singing in unison, “So we can delete it!”—and his several trips to the window looking out upon the arrivals ramp have been fruitless. No sign of the car, no sign of the girls. No Agnes.  
    He was angry at first. He’s tired, it’s been a long trip. There’s a two-hour drive ahead. All he wants to do is fall asleep early in the bed he and Agnes share, then maybe wake up in the middle of the night, when everyone else is asleep, and work a little on his latest model, or maybe nudge Agnes into a bit of sleepy sex.  
    But he isn’t angry anymore. He’s worried, and thinking about the hours ahead. They won’t involve retiring early, or making love to his wife, or working in the attic. The world has tilted underneath him. Even if everything is fine—even if it