Secret Vows

Metal hit metal, somewhere out past the wipers. Three, fast, one on the heels of the last.

There had been nothing out there but wind and the engine for hours. Then there wasn't.

The truck braked. His dad ran it loaded, and a load that size keeps going. It went forward hard onto its springs and then it stopped anyway, and Trey came off the bunk into the back of the seat.

Vinyl, diesel, wet coats hanging. Cold working in around the door. He got an elbow under himself, pushed up, and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

"Dad?"

His dad was already turning around in the passenger seat, one boot on. "Something's wrong up there."

"Wreck," Cody said. "There's cars in it."

The wipers went across and came back. Past the hood, in the dark, red lights were coming on in a line, and one pair of lights sat high on one side, where no lights sat.

His dad got his other boot on.

"Trey. Stay in the truck."

"Okay."

He opened the door and was gone, and the cold came in and the door shut on it.

"What is it?" Trey said.

"There's a wreck up front." Cody shut the engine off and set the brake. The wipers died in the middle of the glass. He reached back over the seat for his coat. "Don't get out. I'm going to look."

"I'm not getting out."

Cody got out. Both doors shut, the headlights stayed on, two white holes in the rain, and the two of them walked out past the end of the light and got small and stayed small.

He sat and listened. Somebody's horn was stuck on up there and stayed on until it wore down to a hum. Water came off the roof in a line. He was awake, all the way awake, and there was nothing to do with it.

They told him and he did it. They always told him and he always did it. He stayed.

He put his coat on over the shirt he'd slept in and did all the buttons, because it was cold back on the bunk, where the blankets had slid off. Then his jeans, out from under the blanket, one leg and then the other, sitting on the edge of the bunk. His boots were down on the floor where he'd kicked them off, and cold. He'd get them if he needed them.

He got the better part of two minutes.

The bang came up through the frame first. Then it was in the air, and the cab rocked on its springs, and the window by his head shivered in the frame and held.

He got up over the seat and put his face to the windshield. Fire was standing up over the road where the cars were. It was taller than the truck, and it lit the rain on the windshield and the inside of the cab.

He was on the floor with his boots before he knew he'd moved. He got them on, found the handle, shoved the door open, and climbed down hanging onto it. The cold came at him all at once and shook him. Rain in his face, the lane running under the truck. He pushed the door shut and went.

He went up the shoulder with his head down, past the first car and the second car, people getting out of both of them, and past the third, and there the fire was close enough to feel on his face.

A trailer lay on its side across the lane. Under the trailer were two cars, and the only way he knew they were cars was the wheels. Behind the trailer the cars had gone into each other, one into the next, and he counted them because he couldn't stop counting. Six. The one up against the trailer was the one that had made the bang: burning, black up its side, fire coming out of the windows and bending off in the wind.

Ahead of him, somebody was yelling to get the doors open and get people out. Men ran past him with their arms over their heads. Trey stood and looked until the yelling got into him, and then he ran too.

"Hey—"

"Kid—"

"Kid, get back—"

He put his head down and went along the edge of the lane and stopped at the second car from the back, and the reason he stopped was the hand on the door.

It was out through the window, through the hole where the glass had gone, and it was red: fingers, the back of it, down to the wrist. It tried the handle, slipped off it, tried again.

Trey swallowed. He looked in through the hole. He couldn't find a face in there. What he could find was a shoulder, and the shoulder was dark green, so dark it was nearly brown, and it was the same color down as far as the window would show him.

"...Kid."

It wasn't loud. It came out of the car like it cost something to say.

"...Help. Help me."

His hand was on the handle before he'd decided anything. He pulled with one hand, then got both on and set his feet in the water and pulled again. The handle moved. The door didn't.

"It's stuck," he said. "I can't— it's stuck."

Breathing in there. Then: "Can you get somebody? Can you get somebody to help me?"

"...Okay."

He turned and ran and got two steps.

He hit something and stopped. It was a man, a big one, and Trey's hands already had a fistful of his coat and were hauling him back the way he'd come.

"There's somebody in the car—"

The man came. At the car, Trey let go of the coat and put both hands back on the handle, like that would do anything.

"It's jammed," he said. "The door's jammed—"

Then he turned and looked up, and kept looking up, and when he got as far as the man's face he had no word for it.

He was a kid. He had the words kids have. Nice, mean, old, ugly. None of them fit.

Years later, a few at a time, he would come up with better ones. Hard. Angular. And handsome, which was a word he'd had no use for yet.

He looked at the red hand on the handle and pulled at the front of the man's coat again.

"Mister. Help him."

The man bent down with his face close to the hole in the glass and looked in there and stayed looking. Then he reached back without any hurry and moved Trey off the lane, past the rear bumper of the car. "Stay put."

Trey nodded.

The man stood up. He set his feet, turned his shoulder, and put his elbow through the window. The glass went all at once and the noise of it went off down the road.

He took his arm back out of the hole he'd made and put it in again, elbow-deep, and reached down along the inside of the door.

Trey stood where he'd been put.