Chapter 2 - Dale
The snow was coming down hard on the other side of the bridge, as if he’d passed into a wholly different eco-system, so he’d not expected to see two small figures walking along the wrong side of the road, headed into the snow.
When he saw them, he put on the brakes.
Given the lack of recent snow, the chemicals on the road rose up in a foam, and he skidded sideways, almost hitting them. When he came to a stop, his heart was jackhammering in this chest, his palms sweaty, the back of his neck tight.
The two little girls were behind him now, on the wrong side of the road than they should be, as they were walking with traffic, not against it. Luckily there was no traffic, just him and his over enthusiastic brake-brake-brake reaction.
Turning the wipers to slow, he pulled over, watching ahead of him on the road, and behind him in the rear view mirror at the same time, thinking crazy bad thoughts about how maybe he’d actually hit them, that they were so small, he’d not even noticed.
Leaping out of the truck that he’d left in idle, the parking brake solidly on, he went around the front of the truck at a trot, and there they were.
Two sad-eyed, wet-haired, shivering little girls, wearing not enough coat for the coming weather, which was going to be a two-day blizzard, if not more, bringing with it a white Christmas.
Any fool could see the way the clouds clawed at the low ridge of mountains to the west, any fool could see the way the sky was coming down like wet, gray towels. So what fool let his kids go outside like that?
“You girls okay?” he asked them, slowly, keeping his voice low and calm.
They both looked at him silently, the wind pressing their wet hair against their pale faces. The smaller girl had bright pink earmuffs that were falling back off her head, and the other girl had a scarf that was still letting in the wind and snowy rain.
“Where you headed?” he asked, coming a little closer.
His truck was a bit too far out in traffic, not enough on the shoulder, for his liking, and somebody might hit it if they weren’t paying attention. Luckily there was no traffic, so as long as he kept watch, he could get the girls safely in his truck, and take them wherever they were wanting to go.
“You going home?” he asked, still patient. “Can I give you a lift?”
The two little girls, their eyes dark and solemn, looked at each other, and the smaller girl tugged on the older girl’s hand. They weren’t old enough to be teenagers and they weren’t so little, either. He didn’t know much about kids so it wasn’t easy for him to guess their ages, just the same.
“Melanie says we’re going to the store to get Daddy some soup,” said the younger girl. “Maybe some throat candy.”
The older girl, Melanie, shook the little girl’s hand, scowling, blinking against the large snowflakes batting her face.
“Which store?” asked Dale. “I can carry you there, if you like.”
“The grocery store,” said Melanie, the older girl. “In Wheatland.”
“That would be Wheatland General store,” he said, knowing it was almost two miles away. Easy enough to do in a truck and while not impossible for two determined little girls, with the weather coming down hard the way it was, still not an easy feat. “Can I take you there? Where do you live?”
The girls looked at each other, hands still clasped, almost as if they were silently communicating about the rule where they should never talk to strangers and would it be okay to break it just this once.
“Is your daddy real sick?” he asked, trying a different tack. What adult would be haphazard in his child care to send two little girls to get him some soup and cough drops in this weather? It sounded irresponsible, to begin with, and maybe even downright cruel.
“Rebecca got scared because Daddy won’t wake up,” said Melanie.
“He’s been on the couch all day,” added Rebecca, moving closer to her older sister.
That sounded to Dale like the girls’ dad had a bad cold or maybe even the flu, which would explain why the two little girls were out in such weather, unprepared, shivering, and soaked to the bone.
He debated in his mind whether it would be worth it to carry the girls to the store and then take them home or whether he should take them home first so he could assess what was the matter with their dad. And then either head to the store for cold medicine or call an ambulance.
Deciding on heading wherever their dad was first, he moved close and then crouched down so he wouldn’t be looming over them. Holding out his hand, propped on his knee, he could now look them level in the eyes.
“Where do you live, little ones?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, not wanting to betray his growing sense of urgency as the snow began slapping on the back of his neck.
Taking a deep breath, Melanie looked at Dale with dark eyes and he could see in them that she’d decided to trust him. That she’d run out of options and was desperate.
“We live under a tree in a trailer,” said Rebecca, chiming in.
“It’s the old Meyer’s place,” said Melanie. “We don’t have a home anymore so Daddy brought us here, where his grandma an’ grandpa used to live. It used to be a farm, with chickens and cows, but it’s just a trailer under a tree now.”
Dale rubbed his jaw, and then his nose, which was dripping with freezing rain. In fact, all of him was pretty damn cold, and if he was cold, the little girls, Melanie and Rebecca, must be chilled all the way to the bone.
“Look,” he said. “I’ll take you two home and check on your dad. See if he just needs medicine or maybe something more. Okay? I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. Let’s just get in the truck where it’s warm and dry.”
Melanie sighed as she nodded, and then she let Dale put her and Rebecca in the passenger seat of his truck.
The step up was too high, and there was a wind whistling under the truck, pulling dampness with it, so he lifted them in, and buckled them in together.
Then, when they were carefully secured, he closed the passenger-side door and hustled around to the other side.
When he got in, he cranked the heat up to high.
“Which way is home, Melanie?” he asked.
Both little girls pointed down the road, past Lafitte Church, and left in the direction of the flat of land that was mostly used for ranching and farming. But where was the trailer under the tree? It couldn’t have been far, after all, Melanie and Rebecca had just come from there.
“The old Meyer’s place?” he asked, an odd memory fleeting across the back of his eyes. He pushed on the accelerator very gently, and guided the truck down Palmer Canyon Road.