“Maybe there are no accidents,” Thessie said. “My mom says there’s a meaning to everything.”
Thessie’s mom also believed that the earth was under the control of aliens who had to consume people’s blood to maintain their human appearance, but in this case she might actually be right.
I dropped Thessie off at her sagging sedan and headed home. Sort of.
Though I’d logged hundreds of miles in my car while planning bookmobile routes, driving the same route in the vehicle itself was a far different experience. I’d taken into account hills and curves and narrow roads, but what I hadn’t considered enough were the potholes. Thanks to the freeze-and-thaw cycle of late winter and early spring, the roads are full of the little buggers, and some of them aren’t so little. And it quickly became clear that hitting a pothole in a small sedan was a far different experience from hitting the same pothole in a thirty-one-foot bookmobile.
The poor bookmobile didn’t like it. Thessie didn’t like it. The books didn’t like it. And Eddie really didn’t like it.
“Mrrrooowwww!” he’d yell, then give me a dirty look.
After dropping Thessie off, I taped the county map to the dashboard and looked at Eddie. “This isn’t about you, you know. You’re not supposed to be here in the first place. As far as this rerouting is concerned, you don’t exist. This is about the bookmobile and minimizing its maintenance.”
Eddie settled into the passenger seat and closed his eyes. He didn’t believe a word of it.
I patted his head and dropped the gearshift into drive.
• • •
The sunlight was starting to slant low when it happened. I’d wanted to find a new east–west bookmobile route in the middle part of the east side of the county and wasn’t completely happy with any of the three possibilities. I drove over each of the roads three or four times, trying to imagine their surfaces in ice-slick winter, eyeing the cracking asphalt, anticipating future potholes.
“Which do you like best, Eddie?”
Mr. Edward opened his eyes just wide enough for me to see the yellow in his irises, then went back to sleep.
In spite of his lack of interest, I continued to articulate my thoughts. “The county road is probably in the best shape, but that stretch near the potato farm is going to drift over like crazy in winter. If I take the most direct way, that hill—”
BAM!
The bookmobile gave a bucking lurch and started pulling hard to the right. “Hang on!” I yelled to Eddie. The steering wheel tried to spin itself out of my hands.
“MMrrrrrRRR!!!”
But I didn’t have time to calm Eddie—it was taking everything I had to calm the bookmobile. My foot was off the gas, I was pumping the brake lightly, staying out of a skid, I could do this, I could do this, I was doing this, I would—
BAM!
The bookmobile lurched again.
Eddie hissed and howled and spat. “MMrrrrrRRRRRR!!!”
The little control I had over the bookmobile vanished. My mouth tasted of metal as the adrenaline flowed through my body, into my heart, into my tingling skin.
To the right, the road’s shoulder dropped away fast into a hill that rolled down steep to a narrow creek. If I couldn’t keep out of that, if we pulled that way . . . into my head came an image of the bookmobile falling and rolling and tumbling, all the books, Eddie, and me, jumbling together in a broken heap.
“No!” I shouted, and gripped the steering wheel with all my strength and all my might. I kept on pumping the brakes. Was it doing anything? I didn’t know, but I had to think it was helping. I had to try.
My arms quivered with the strain of keeping the vehicle headed straight. We were slowing, but not fast enough, not nearly fast enough. My jaw muscles bunched. My lips went dry. “Steady, Eddie,” I whispered. “It’ll be okay.”
The steering wheel was doing nothing. I was doing nothing. My pumps on the brakes were doing nothing. There was nothing I could do except try to steer and try to brake and hope hope hope that something I was doing would do something.
It had to work.
We had to stop.
We had to.
Bare inches from a steep slope that would have carried us off without a second thought, the bookmobile came to a slow screeching stop.
We’d made it.
I sat there, panting, my hands still gripping the steering wheel.
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
I blew out a breath and reached out for a cat snuggle. “You and me both, pal, you and me both.” My laugh was a little too loud.
Then my brain started working again. “What on earth happened?” I asked Eddie.
He butted his head against my shoulder. Comforting, but not much of an answer.
“You stay here,” I said, putting him on the seat of my chair. “I’ll be right back.” I opened the rear door and jumped to the ground, stumbling a little at its steepness.