Page 2 of Tumbleweed Temptation
God, the water. So much water. And the bus was still on its side, so the seats were below him, making it hard to walk. He tried to walk above them, tried to walk on the windows, half walking and half swimming. Behind him, he heard the girls screaming, and he hoped Javi and Con could get them up and out, because that would be their best chance. But he had to get his mom out.
He could barely see her head above the back of her seat, but at least he could see her. He tried to shout her name, but he couldn't get enough air in his lungs.
He used the seats to push himself forward, finally able to grab the back of the driver’s seat to pull himself forward.
God. Oh, God.
The roof of the bus was caved in above her. Her head lolled to the side, beneath the water line. He cupped his head under her hand and lifted it above the water, but the water kept rising, and God. God, blood ran down the side of her face.
She was buckled in. She was buckled in and he couldn't get her out until he could loosen the seatbelt, and then—well, he’d figure out what to do then. But he couldn't leave her buckled in.
He reached below the water for the clasp, wondering if he’d put his knife back in his pocket after cutting Lacey free from her backpack.
But no, he didn't need it, he found the button and freed her, got the strap from over her head, which wasn't easy because he was trying to keep her head above the water. He tried to wrap her arms around him, but she was unconscious and he had to do this on his own.
“Mom, Mom, Mom, come on,” he said, and Jesus, how was he going to get her out of here? He didn't think Con and Javi could pull her up, not when she was dead weight.
He was on his own.
He watched the water churn past the windshield and, hey, the windshield was cracked. That would be the fastest way to get them out. Holding onto his mom, he threw his weight against the window, again,, and again, as more water poured into the bus, until they only had about a foot of air above their heads, and it was so hard to hold onto her, to hold her up there in that foot of space. They had to get out. They had to get out. They would die in here.
The back of the bus collided with something else—tree, bank, he had no idea, but he lost his grip on his mother, and had to grab her again, pull her up against him, and his arms were getting weaker and weaker. He couldn't hold her, couldn't hold himself. His footing was precarious, and the only exit was about ten feet away.
It may as well have been ten miles.
He was so cold. She was so cold.
And then he saw it, the baseball bat floating on top of the water, like Divine Intervention. He didn't think twice about it, propped his mother against where the roof had buckled, near the radio—the radio, would that even work after being submerged? No, the priority was to get out. He wouldn’t even know where to tell anyone to come and find them, where to come and rescue them.
He took the baseball bat and instead of swinging, used it like a ram. The windshield cracked more and bowed out, but not enough. Not enough. He rammed it again and again, against the water that rushed in at him, and the foot of air above their heads dwindled to inches.
And then he smashed the window free, more water pouring in as water poured out at the same time. He wrapped his arms around his mother and, using his feet on the backs of one of the seats, pushed them free.
*****
HE DIDN'T REMEMBERmuch after that. He didn't remember where they ended up, who found them. They told him his mother was still in his arms when they pulled him from the creek. They told him she’d died from a blow to the head, that she’d probably already been dead when he freed her from the seatbelt. That all his efforts had been for naught.
They told him that. And even if it was true, he wouldn't have changed what he did. He would have dived in to retrieve his mother’s body. He wouldn't have let the bus carry her away.
Sympathy for him soon gave way to distress, though. He thought Con’s dad had started it, Con’s dad who blamed his mom for the accident, saying she drove into the low-water crossing. Austin got that the family was upset, because Claudia had died too. God, Claudia, who he’d known since she was practically a baby, had died, and Bridget, the daughter of the diner’s owner, with her. He and Bridget had spent many days sitting together doing homework at the counter while their mothers worked. The two girls had never gotten out of the bus.
And he was sad for them, sad for the family, but he knew his mother never would have taken a chance like that. Never would have put any of the kids in danger. She had died, and they were blaming her because she couldn't defend herself.
Lacey Davila had, though. She told everyone that she’d been paying attention, that she had watched the caliche road washing away from beneath them. But her observations had been dismissed. She didn't know anything because she was a kid, too young to drive.
But she’d stood with him, and got her dad, the Air Force Major to believe her. Poppy, too, and her family. And all of the survivors went to the funeral. He was only vaguely aware of that, standing in the church in the same place he’d stood three years ago when his dad died, vaguely aware of them shaking his hand and hugging him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.
And then he went home alone.
He was eighteen. He’d be going to Baylor in three months. He had enough credits to graduate without finishing the year, so he never went back to school. He couldn't have even if he’d wanted to.
Javi’s mom offered him a place at their house. She didn’t want him living alone, thought he was too young to take care of himself, but he’d been the man of the house for three years. He knew how to cook and do laundry. And since he wasn’t going to school, he had all day to clean out the piles of magazines and other junk his mom had started accumulating after his dad died. He had his dad’s old truck and he loaded it up every day, drove it to the dump, emptied it out.
He hated how the house looked with all the crap in it, hated how it looked without it. His mother had been trying to fill something up in herself, he guessed, after his dad died, but damn, she had accumulated a lot of crap in those three years. He didn't even know where she’d found it all. They surely didn't have that much crap in all of Broken Wheel. She must have gone to other towns to get this much stuff.
And he was throwing it all out. Not keeping anything.
He didn't know what he was going to do. Sell the house? He wasn't coming back to Broken Wheel until he was out of med school. That was a decision that had been made last summer, when he’d said he wanted to be a doctor, and his grades had proved he’d be good at it, so he and his mother had made an agreement with the town council that they’d pay for his school, undergrad and med school, in exchange for ten years of him serving the town.
