"Drunk on you," he slurred, but followed me out onto my small porch.
The snow had started up again, a fluffy inch covering the driveway and more falling fast. His footprints were just vague hollows in the snow now and everything had that quiet, muffled hush. Like everything was holding its breath and waiting to hear Gid's songs. I looked up at the snow swirling down in spirals from the heavens. "Think Gid'll be listening tonight?" I wondered.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jonah
The idea of Gid, sitting up in heaven as an angel with his harp out of tune made me pause. "I hope he likes it," I fretted. The whiskey had softened my reflexes and the sex had made me even blurrier. I was happy that Ruby was driving Ethel for me, but a faint drumbeat of worry was thudding in my head.
Most nights before I show I felt a calm come over me. Centeredness, the only thing in the world the music I was going to play, the job I was going to do.
But tonight I had none of that focus. I was scattered and anxious, every desperate fear of imposter syndrome I'd been fighting for more than twelve years was coming out to fuck with my head. I knew without a doubt that if Ruby wasn't here, I would have done something I've never done before. In my life.
I would have bailed.
"You make me a better person," I told her.
She gave me a fond smile. Probably thought it was the whiskey talking. But it wasn't. In a short time, Ruby had gone from a thorn in my side to my reason for getting up in the morning. She was my moral compass, turning me in a direction I never thought I would be headed, but now I could see the path led me somewhere beautiful, somewhere breathtaking. Somewhere I couldn't imagine leaving now.
It led me to love.
I blinked as my body went stiff with the realization and then immediately settled into the rightness of it. Yes. I loved her. That was clear to me. Clearer than anything in my life thus far.
I looked over at her, ready to say it, then clapped my mouth shut. Her whole body was tense, drawn and leaning forward, a worried tic at her temple. "What's - ?" I started to say then looked out the window to what she was staring at.
The whole world was suddenly white. A snow squall had blown up in a sudden, gusting fury, whipping the snow into a tornado of white blankness. The headlights only showed a path about five feet in front of us, then disappeared against an impenetrable wall of swirling snow. Everything was uniformly white. I had no idea if we were driving down the road or through a field.
Ruby was tense and silent, leaned all the way forward. She had slowed to a crawl, leaning as if hanging over the steering wheel would let her peer more closely into the storm. I could feel the fear rising off of her in waves, the tight lines of her body stretched so taut she shook a little.
Seeing her frightened shook something loose in my head and I instantly sobered. "You're doing just fine," I murmured, not wanting to startle her. "Want me to drive?"
She shook her head without taking her eyes from the road. "You had a bunch to drink," she reminded me.
I was as sober as a judge. "I'm okay," I told her. "I could do it if you're nervous."
"I'm afraid to stop," she said tightly. The car was shuddering underneath us, slipping on the slickness hidden under the snow. It must have been right around freezing now, the melted snow from earlier now refreezing into a solid sheet of ice under our wheels. Ruby hissed and the car went a little faster. I could see the RPMs on the dash pinning, but we were going no more than ten miles an hour. "Jonah," she moaned, fear stretching my name out into nearly a wail.
"Look, there's the farmhouse with the blown down tree, right?" I pointed, trying to assuage some of her fears. "So you're on the road. You're doing beautifully, Ruby. You can do it."
She whimpered a little, but said nothing, giving all her attention to the whiteness swirling around us. "What's that?" she asked.
Lights were appearing out of the gloom. "Plow!" I shouted, right at the moment we both realized she was in the wrong lane.
"Jesus!" she cried, yanking the wheel to the right. We spun out, then caught the groove made by the cars before us, and the plow slid by, its bright lights like some kind of alien mothership in the gloom.
"Everything's gone," she whispered. "I have no idea where we are."
"Somewhere on Whalen Station Road because we haven't crossed the main road yet." I pressed my lips together, unwilling to think about how this was the road Gid had died on.
"Are you sure?"
"No," I had to admit. "That might have been it right back there, when the plow went by."
"That means - " she trailed off, not wanting to say it. Once you crossed the highway, Whalen Station changed over into highway 12, which hugged the creek, following it out of town. Highway 12 was nicknamed Snake Road around here for all the twists and turns. It was fun as hell to ride in the summer time.
In a whiteout it could mean death.
"No," I reassured her. "That wasn't it. We just passed the farmhouse, right?"
"I don't know," she moaned. "And we're climbing a hill now." The whine of the wheels was almost drowning her out, making her shout. "Is there a hill on Whalen Station, Jonah?"
I wracked my brain. "I don't know."
"Course you don't, because you haven't been here long enough to know."
"Ruby, let's not - "
"What? Talk about how you flit in and out?" she yelled hysterically. "Talk about how you're going to be leaving Crown Creek as soon as you find another manager? Talk about how this was just a nice distraction while you got back on your feet?"
"Ruby! Stop!" I shouted.
"For fuck's sake Jonah, where are we?!"
"I don't know!" I bellowed. "But I love you!"
"Fuck!" she yelped as the spinning tires suddenly caught dry pavement and we shot forward. She yanked the wheel over at the last second, saving us from nosediving into the ditch, but the correction sent the back end fishtailing. She steered into the spin like a pro, but the pavement was too slick and with a slow, sickening slide we pitched over into the blinding white.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ruby
When things like this happen, it's supposed to be like it's in slow motion.
But for me it was more like a dream. In dreams you have this calm acceptance. "Oh yes, of course I should be surfing a wave made out of maple syrup and yes it isn't odd at all that my fourth grade teacher is suddenly my surfboard." These things just happen and you watch them with a sense of complete detachment.
This was a dream and I calmly accepted that were suddenly be flying through the air. If course it made perfect sense that the air should be filled with the dust from the airbag. It was absolutely fine that a loud ringing noise should pierce the darkness.
Then Jonah shook me and I realized the ringing noise was my own scream.
"Ruby? Ruby?" He was shaking me but I couldn't stop screaming. It seemed like that would be what I would do forever more. This was my new reality. I screamed.