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On Friday, January 8, 1988, buoyed by the knowledge that Wind and Stars would hold the number one spot on the Times list that Sunday for the fifth week in a row, they drove up to Big Bear in the afternoon, as soon as Chris ca Tuesday was Laura’s thirty-third birthday, and they intended to -_e an early celebration, just the three of the on a cake and the wind to sing ": - her
Accustomed to them, the deer ventured within twenty feet of their house on SaturdayBut Chris was seven now, and in school he heard the ruer so sure that these were more than ordinary deer
The weekend was perfect, perhaps the best they had spent in the mountains, but they had to cut it short They had intended to leave at six o’clock Monday e County in time to deliver Chris to school However a major storm moved into the area ahead of schedule late Sunday afternoon, and though they were little more than ninety minutes from the balmy temperatures nearer the coast, the weather report called for two feet of ne byChris to miss a day of school-a possibility even with their four-wheel-drive Blazer-they closed up the big stone and redwood house and headed south on state route 330 at a few minutes past four o’clock
Southern California was one of the few places in the world where you could drive from a winterscape to subtropical heat in less than two hours, and Laura always enjoyed-and marveled at-the journey The three of them were dressed for snoool socks, boots, thermal underwear, heavy slacks, warm sweaters, ski jackets-but in an hour and a quarter they would be in milder climes where no one was bundled up, and in two hours they would be in shirtsleeve weather
Laura drove while Danny, sitting in front, and Chris, sitting behind hiame that they had devised on previous trips to a snow found even those sections of the highway that were largely protected by trees on both sides, and in unsheltered areas the hard-driven flakes sheeted and whirled by the h- the way ahead She drove with caution, not caring if the two-hour drive home required three hours or four; since they had left early, they had I plenty of time to spare, all the ti curve a few miles south of their house and entered the half-on parked on the right shoulder and adown the hill, waving both ar between the thu windshield wipers, Danny said, "Looks like he broke down, needs help"
"Packard’s Patrol to the rescue!" Chris said froan frantically gesturing for theht shoulder
Danny said uneasily, "So odd about hiuardian The sight of hihtened Laura
He had just gotten out of the stolen Jeep when the Blazer turned the bend at the bottom of the hill As he rushed toward it, he saw Laura slow the Blazer to a crawl a third of the way up the slope, but she was still in the naled her et off onto the shoulder, as close to the embankment as possible At first she continued to creep forward, as if unsure whether he was only a erous, but when they drew close enough to each other for her to see his face and perhaps recognize him, she immediately obeyed
As she accelerated past him and whipped the Blazer onto the wider portion of the shoulder, only twenty feet downhill from Stefan’s Jeep, he reversed direction and ran to her, yanked open her door "I don’t know if being off the road’s good enough Get out, up the embankment, quickly, now!"
Danny said, "Hey, wait just-"
"Do what he says!" Laura shouted "Chris, coripped Laura’s hand and helped her out of the driver’s seat As Danny and Chris also scraine above the skirling wind He looked up the long hill and saw that a big pickup truck had topped the crest and was starting doard the Laura after hiuardian said, "Up the ean to climb the hard-packed, ice-crusted snow that had been shoved there by plows and that sloped steeply toward the nearby trees
Laura looked up the highway and saw the truck, a quarter-inning a long, sickening slide on the treacherous pave sideways down the road If they had not stopped, if her guardian had not delayed them, they would have been just below the crest when the truck went out of control; already they would have been hit
Beside her, with Chris riding hiht, Danny obviously had seen the danger The truck ht come all the way down the hill without the driver in control,Chris, he scra for Laura tofootholds as she went The snoas not only ice- away in chunks, and a couple of tihway below By the tiuardian, Danny, and Chris fifteen feet above the highway, on a narrow but snow-free shelf of rock near the trees, it see for minutes But in fact her sense of time must have been distorted by fear, for when she looked up the highway, she saw that the truck was still sliding toward them, that it o hundred feet away, had ain
On it ca snow, as if in slow motion, fate in the for pickup’s cargo bed, and it was apparently not secured by chains or in any way restrained; the driver foolishly had relied on inertia to keep it in place But now the snowainst the walls of the cargo hold and forward into the back wall of the cab, and through the quarter-mile slide its violent shifts contributed to the destabilization of the vehicle under it, until it see radically, would roll instead of spin through another co the wheel, and she saood, those poor people!
As if sensing her thoughts, her guardian shouted above the wind, "They’re drunk, both of them, and no snow chains"
If you know that ht, you must knoho they are, so why didn’t you stop them, why didn’t you save them too?